25
" Here, where the lonely hooting owl
Sends forth his midnight moans,
Fierce wolves shall o'er my carcase growl,
Or buzzards pick my bones.
No fellow-man shall learn my fate,
Or where my ashes lie;
Unless by beasts drawn round their bait,
Or by the ravens' cry.
Yes! I've resolved the deed to do,
And this the place to do it:
This heart I'll rush a dagger through,
Though I in hell should rue it!
Hell! What is hell to one like me
Who pleasures never knew;
By friends consigned to misery,
By hope deserted too?
To ease me of this power to think,
That through my bosom raves,
I'll headlong leap from hell's high brink,
And wallow in its waves.
Though devils yell, and burning chains
May waken long regret;
Their frightful screams, and piercing pains,
Will help me to forget.
Yes! I'm prepared, through endless night,
To take that fiery berth!
Think not with tales of hell to fright
Me, who am damn'd on earth!
Sweet steel! come forth from your sheath,
And glist'ning, speak your powers;
Rip up the organs of my breath,
And draw my blood in showers!
I strike! It quivers in that heart
Which drives me to this end;
I draw and kiss the bloody dart,
My last—my only friend!
—Poem attributed to Abraham Lincoln "
― Candace Fleming , The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary
28
" Up in the high palace, my mother is weeping.
She storms and rages. Tears at her hair.
She died thus, driven insane by war and the loss of her ancestral lands.
...
I embrace her. "Mother, why do you rage so?"
"The doings of men have driven me mad. Everyone told me I must accept what I cannot change. But I wished to change what I cannot accept, and that is where the trouble starts."
...
"Mother, do not cry over Wilhelm," I plead, taking her cold hands in mine. "He is not worth it."
"Ah, Anna," she says sorrowfully. "You think I'm crying because I had such a foolish son and everyone knew it. But I'm not. I'm crying because I had such a clever daughter and no one did."
[Anna of Cleves] "
― Candace Fleming , Fatal Throne
31
" I could bear it [the shame] because I knew the truth, child," I say. "There was one of us in that marriage who was old, fat, and smelly, and it wasn't me."
"The King was cruel to speak thus," Alice says, but in a low voice. As if Henry, dead these past ten years, might somehow hear her.
"He was, yes," I say. "But I think mostly he was afraid."
Alice is sceptical. "Kings are afraid of nothing," she says.
"This King was afraid. I know it, for I'm the one who made him so. I made a mistake, child, a grave one."
"What was it?"
"I made my face a mirror when it should've been a mask, and what the King saw there terrified him. He hated me for it, and never, ever forgave me."
[Anna of Cleves] "
― Candace Fleming , Fatal Throne