sworn by both the spectre and the blood
It is with the strangest sense of freedom I walk the trails of the jungle island today. The air is not so thick with its usual moisture and is cooler given the recent rain, this brief reprieve from which I have decided to take make full opportunity of, and the sun, which already fights the thin and gently rolling cloud cover is fully tamed by that further buffet of the canopy. I have today foregone all but the flimsiest of my chemise, plain corset, and single long skirt, each wholly unadorned. I have not dressed so plainly since first I returned to court as a woman, endeavoring so tirelessly to project chastity and purity so that my mother's unfairly given titles could not be applied as easily to her spawn. After the many days of migrem that have thankfully now passed me, I fear to wrap my head that any such pressure might bring the ache back again and so, though choosing to do so shook me this morning and should I come upon any whom I recognize I will surely feel its absence with a panic that may only be born of ruined vanity, I have left both of my wigs on their forms in the cool of the house, and gone without them.
I have not shorn my hair since my arrival- there are none save my mother in whom I could place my trust to have it done, and the years of wrapping it close and covering it each day and for most of the day's hours with wigs curbed its inclination to grow so well that I had scarcely noticed it lengthening at all. Unadorned, uncovered, I find myself surprised to feel it at the nape of my neck and the backs of my ears. It is paler than once it was, not so fierce a red as my father's, when it served as an unquestionable emblem, a pendant as easily recognized as the Tudor rose that said who I was, whose daughter I was. It has more gold in it now, a faded sort of patina not even so deep as copper. A shame, for my hair once could distract from any fault enough that I might forget it quite entirely. Now, also, it waves- falls neither in curls as my beautifully constructed wigs would have the world suppose it ought nor in the straight heavy veils it did in my youth. Waves, God's teeth, as though it knew not what it was at all, nor what it should be, although I suppose that in this place that would make both of us. Even as a sad semblance of its former glory, my hair and I shall keep each other's company but good.
There is ahead a place where the natural path diverges, burgeoning out at its sides before splitting, leading in one way to the stage which has remained woefully without spectacle and the in th eother toward the ocean. I wonder at the idle nature of the decision I daily must make now. Where to take England riding. Whether or not to call upon any of the scarce acquaintances I have forged. I wonder that after a year I have not grown accustomed to how empty of people and rules my life has become. it is the swarm of these thoughts that stop me from seeing what is there before I am upon it. With my eyes on it, however, it cannot ever be unseen. I fear it will always be there, etched forever into my eyes, over whatever else might turly be there. It will be like a blindness of a kind. I would wish for blindness in this moment.
There is a great wooden block at the point where the path breaks, carefully beveled on one side so that it slopes smoothly inward, half a bowl cut away. Two iron rings trail heavy weighted ropes from either side, but there is no wooden platform here to which they might be anchored, and so they lie half coiled in the grass. It smells even some yards away of old wood and leather and metal. It smells of the tower, a fragrance which once it has permeated ones lungs for long enough will immediately bring back all the feelings that one harbored when they were exposed to it for the first time at the faintest whiff. Standing on the still-wet Earth, surrounded by the lush verdant wood of this impossible place, I am at once a girl again, so terribly young, awaiting my death in a cold room that bleeds fear and unshakable damp. Neither the birdsong nor the smell of clean sand so close by will dispel it.
I am also a Queen who signed by her own hand the death warrant of another Queen, an act I did so desperately attempt to hide myself from even as its consequences were carried out.
There is also a head. Its pallor is ghostly against luminous colors of the earth and blossoming ferns, though these are not so luminous as the burnished burgundy hue of the meticulously coiffed hair that the deceased must have taken such time to prepare. A butterfly lands nearby, flutters softly near the block, and is away again. Perhaps the fresh blood appalls it as it does me. Though I cannot guess, it is the only creature that has stirred of the three of us.
I am sick enough at the sight, my gaze straying helplessly to the ragged line where neck ends, that I may forgive myself for not recognizing her instantly. It is the only aspect of my actions which may be.
For it is Mary, Mary, my loathed cousin, Mary, who damned herself before I did, O! Mary who caused the tearing of my soul, not by her own attempted treason but by the treason I was perforced to enact by it! And even now my princely stomach fails me for I am sick and heartsick, turning away, aghast, stumbling to catch my hand on the bark of a tree and losing what little water and fruit I had eaten into the moss. I killed a Queen and could not watch, and now my cowardice is met.
"Oh, God!" I cry, though through the rushing in my head I can scarcely hear my own voice. I trip away from the scene, falling to my knees which abruptly fail my flight, covering my mouth with one hand and holding myself up from collapsing entirely to the ground with the other.
"Oh, God, forgive me."
[Item post!]
I have not shorn my hair since my arrival- there are none save my mother in whom I could place my trust to have it done, and the years of wrapping it close and covering it each day and for most of the day's hours with wigs curbed its inclination to grow so well that I had scarcely noticed it lengthening at all. Unadorned, uncovered, I find myself surprised to feel it at the nape of my neck and the backs of my ears. It is paler than once it was, not so fierce a red as my father's, when it served as an unquestionable emblem, a pendant as easily recognized as the Tudor rose that said who I was, whose daughter I was. It has more gold in it now, a faded sort of patina not even so deep as copper. A shame, for my hair once could distract from any fault enough that I might forget it quite entirely. Now, also, it waves- falls neither in curls as my beautifully constructed wigs would have the world suppose it ought nor in the straight heavy veils it did in my youth. Waves, God's teeth, as though it knew not what it was at all, nor what it should be, although I suppose that in this place that would make both of us. Even as a sad semblance of its former glory, my hair and I shall keep each other's company but good.
There is ahead a place where the natural path diverges, burgeoning out at its sides before splitting, leading in one way to the stage which has remained woefully without spectacle and the in th eother toward the ocean. I wonder at the idle nature of the decision I daily must make now. Where to take England riding. Whether or not to call upon any of the scarce acquaintances I have forged. I wonder that after a year I have not grown accustomed to how empty of people and rules my life has become. it is the swarm of these thoughts that stop me from seeing what is there before I am upon it. With my eyes on it, however, it cannot ever be unseen. I fear it will always be there, etched forever into my eyes, over whatever else might turly be there. It will be like a blindness of a kind. I would wish for blindness in this moment.
There is a great wooden block at the point where the path breaks, carefully beveled on one side so that it slopes smoothly inward, half a bowl cut away. Two iron rings trail heavy weighted ropes from either side, but there is no wooden platform here to which they might be anchored, and so they lie half coiled in the grass. It smells even some yards away of old wood and leather and metal. It smells of the tower, a fragrance which once it has permeated ones lungs for long enough will immediately bring back all the feelings that one harbored when they were exposed to it for the first time at the faintest whiff. Standing on the still-wet Earth, surrounded by the lush verdant wood of this impossible place, I am at once a girl again, so terribly young, awaiting my death in a cold room that bleeds fear and unshakable damp. Neither the birdsong nor the smell of clean sand so close by will dispel it.
I am also a Queen who signed by her own hand the death warrant of another Queen, an act I did so desperately attempt to hide myself from even as its consequences were carried out.
There is also a head. Its pallor is ghostly against luminous colors of the earth and blossoming ferns, though these are not so luminous as the burnished burgundy hue of the meticulously coiffed hair that the deceased must have taken such time to prepare. A butterfly lands nearby, flutters softly near the block, and is away again. Perhaps the fresh blood appalls it as it does me. Though I cannot guess, it is the only creature that has stirred of the three of us.
I am sick enough at the sight, my gaze straying helplessly to the ragged line where neck ends, that I may forgive myself for not recognizing her instantly. It is the only aspect of my actions which may be.
For it is Mary, Mary, my loathed cousin, Mary, who damned herself before I did, O! Mary who caused the tearing of my soul, not by her own attempted treason but by the treason I was perforced to enact by it! And even now my princely stomach fails me for I am sick and heartsick, turning away, aghast, stumbling to catch my hand on the bark of a tree and losing what little water and fruit I had eaten into the moss. I killed a Queen and could not watch, and now my cowardice is met.
"Oh, God!" I cry, though through the rushing in my head I can scarcely hear my own voice. I trip away from the scene, falling to my knees which abruptly fail my flight, covering my mouth with one hand and holding myself up from collapsing entirely to the ground with the other.
"Oh, God, forgive me."
[Item post!]