Destiny - Ch. 3
Almost a sidetrack checking in on Aragon.
Ch 1. Ch. 2
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“Bless you,” Anne called out again. Catherine of Aragon had lost count of how many times she had been blessed by Anne so long ago. Her eyes ached, red and swollen, rubbed raw from days of relentless itching. Catherine turned her face into the couch cushion, clutching the box of tissues tightly to her chest, groaning, wallowing in her misery. This cold just would not quit. A whimper escaped as the burning sensation built in her nose feeling another sneeze coming on. She held a tissue to her chafed nose, wincing as it made contact against the sensitive skin. The sneeze rattled her ribcage, and scraped against her ravaged throat.
“Bless you,” Anne’s voice rang out yet again, just as cheerful as the first time she had said those words days earlier. It somehow made the situation worse.
A wheeze laced coughing fit overtook her, and she turned her head back into the couch, pleading with every higher power she had ever heard of to end her suffering.
“Alright, love?” Jane asked, perching herself on the edge of the couch next to Catherine. She set a cup of tea down for her on the end table, giving Catherine’s arm a reassuring squeeze.
“No,” she said petulantly. Her voice was muffled by her position and weak from the abuse her body was enduring. “I’m dying.”
Jane tightened her grip on Catherine’s arm. “Don’t joke like that. You know I don’t like it,” she admonished.
Catherine could only grunt in response, feeling sleep overtaking her.
***
When she woke hours later, she was laying on her back with her arms thrown over her head, hanging painfully over the arm of the couch having pinched off the blood supply for too long. She wasn’t sure if it was the discomfort in her arms or if it was her own snoring that had roused her.
As she waited for the feeling to return in her extremities after a laborious trial of repositioning them, the sound of her own mouth-breathing, coarse and rasping, filled the room. Her pulse in her ears kept time with her breaths, resounding in her head, echoing off the walls. Irregular and scratching.
She struggled to prop herself up on her elbows.
She really was dying. She’d been here before. Her heart pounded in an unsteady rhythm, sporadically beating in conjunction with the fitful clamor of her lungs drowning in their attempts to expand.
Of course it would happen now, while she was alone.
Catherine was torn between conserving her energy or calling out for anyone in the house to come to her, to give her one last moment of comfort before she closed her eyes for the last time. She lowered herself down once again and brought her hands to her chest, resting them against her sternum in her final prayers.
The Lord’s Prayer brought her peace, each line bringing her more tranquility. Unsure of the effectiveness of the Prayer of Commendation when said for one’s self, she said it twice to be careful. She reached the last verse of her second recitation. “May you rest in peace and rise in the glory of your eternal home,” she took in a deep breath. “Forever in the paradise of God,” she exhaled, slow and steady. “Where grief and misery are banished,
and light and joy abide. Amen.”
With her next deep breath she readied herself to begin her next prayer. But something didn’t match up.
Her hands were pressed against her chest. And beneath them was the firm, unfaltering rhythm of her heart.
But faint thudding still resonated in her ears.
She listened further. The scritching sound wasn’t her poor lungs either. It sounded as if mice were scurrying just overhead. Miracle or conspiracy, her newfound lease on life gave her the vitality to lift herself from the couch and investigate. She followed the sounds to the hallway upstairs.
The soft thumps and scuttering led her to Katherine’s door.
“What are you doing?” Anne asked. She had materialized in a spot Catherine was certain had been empty a moment before. It seemed to add credibility and validity to the claim that Anne practiced witchcraft.
“Does Katherine keep food in her room?”
Anne’s brow furrowed. She tentatively stepped toward Catherine with her arm stretched out in front of her. As her hand came closer to Catherine’s face, Catherine batted it away.
“I’m concerned about your well-being,” Anne said as she reached her hand toward Catherine’s forehead again.
“Stop. Listen,” Catherine evaded Anne’s hand again and directed her attention toward Katherine’s closed door. “I think there are mice in her room.”
Anne blanched. “I don’t hear anything,” she exclaimed loudly. Her words tumbled out of her mouth before she had taken any time to listen.
Catherine narrowed her eyes at her, knowing precisely what the tone Anne had used meant. She was lying. She sized up her opponent and found her wanting. She knew her ability level even impacted by her illness. Without wasting another second, she leapt to Katherine’s door and whipped it open.