“The End” by Juliana Gray

That much, everyone remembers: the queen
beheaded; the fat, lusty king, rid
of his second wife and next day betrothed
to his third. You see the shrewish Queen, myself,
undone by her ambition; you see the king
in bulging hose, munching a turkey leg.
A shadow play, puppets behind a screen.

Here are the sobbing ladies, gathering
the head, wrapping it in a muslin sheet
that someone must have reminded them to bring.
Here is the sundered body, laid to rest
in an elmwood chest meant to carry bows
to Ireland, hastily emptied when
they realized no coffin had been ordered.
All that planning, meticulous designs,
and no casket to bear Queen Anne away.
Because the Tower guards expected him
to pardon me, send me to a convent?
Because, in Henry’s forward-leaping mind,
I was already gone? Not flesh, nor ghost,
not even a memory of perfumed air.

Remember, please, that this is a love story,
though it ends, like so many stories,
with a good woman’s body in a box.

* * *

 
“Her Flight” by Juliana Gray

I fled to Kent and home, to Hever Castle.
My lord is a huntsman; I ran that he might chase me.
His letters I tucked, unanswered, between the leaves
of my prayer book, memorizing the words
that darkly shone in bedside candlelight.
I walked the gardens, the hot breath of his hounds
at my heels. My brother George brought a gift,
a buck freshly killed by His Majesty.
“I hope that when you eat of it, you may
think of the hunter,” Henry’s letter read.
“My lord is subtle,” George laughed, already
counting the gold and lands sure to come
his way with another sister serving as mistress
to the king. I let him laugh, and as we ate
the strong meat, I did think of the hunter,
and how I’d not repeat Mary’s mistakes.
Yet I failed to solve his hunter’s riddle,
his emblem of love: a thing that he had killed.

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