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When I lie tangled in her hair
And fetter'd to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.
- Richard Lovelace, 'To Althea from Prison'
When he lies dying in the Tower, Edward Sexby finds himself in Wytham Woods again.
There is no King or Parliament or Army there, but only her: naked as a wood-nymph among the water lilies, laughing up at him where he stands on the bank -- taunting him to join her. The air is still and warm.
This time, he takes off his clothes and wades out into the cool clean water, as unself-conscious as she is. His body has been an instrument and a weapon to him -- lately, a source of torment. Let her see all the scars: the old ones crossing his back, and the wounds of Edgehill, and the new marks gained since that far-away day in Oxfordshire: in France, and at home, and in prison.
The mud on the pond's bottom is soft between his toes as he wades over to join her; the water soothes the fever and the lingering aches. In the centre of the lake, he lets himself fall backward and the water holds him up, seeping into his matted hair.
He keeps his ears above the surface, though, so he can hear Angelica's familiar voice, warm and amused: "Why, Sexby, I thought you could not swim?"
"Even a dead man can float, madam."
"Then I am glad to see you keep your bargain, however late."
"I have kept every bargain that ever I made to you."
He cannot see her, and then he can: she is leaning over him, her eyes so blue that they are nearly indigo, her face -- even starving and exhausted in the woods, she had been lovely as a flattering court portrait, but now she is more -- her skin seems to glow from within, like the angels from whom she takes her name. Perhaps he has always seen her thus.
She had tied up her hair to fit under her stolen hat, but some strands escape to fall into the water: a man could drown in them. Below the pond's surface, he can see the pale, muted outlines of her body.
He reaches for her, but her eyes flash in anger and her hand comes up to ward him off. She is searching for a stick with the other, he imagines; and he drops back defeated into the water.
"Even in a dying fancy," he says, "will you not be kind?"
"Kind?" She tilts her head to the side and smiles, mocking and flirtatious. "Was it because I was kind that you loved me? You said, when we were here last, that men make themselves idols to worship. Tell me true, Sexby: have you not made an idol of Angelica Fanshawe?"
Perhaps she is right. Perhaps all men will take an idol in the end, when they are to be buried in the fens with their arms about their knees.
"I loved you because you were the most beautiful thing in this world," he tells her -- now that he knows that it is true, and has nothing to lose by saying it. "And the most pure."
Angelica laughs, throwing her head back, exposing the long bare line of her neck. "A whore, a thief, a murderess and a Leveller, aye. But there are not many in the world now who would call me pure."
"Then they are knaves as well as fools," he says. "You've saved my life, more often than you know; and you have made me a better man -- in passing. The way one trains a dog."
"Oh, Sexby." She leans over him, her face grave -- whether in mockery or true pity, he cannot tell. Perhaps even the angels, he thinks, are only sent into the world to mock us. "Have you been very unhappy?"
"Nay, madam." He grins up at the sky and the clouds and the swaying tops of the trees, in this peaceful place where he has been but once, and long ago. "I have lived."
Angelica smiles: it is the easy smile that he had first seen on a young bride at Whitehall. And she bends her head and kisses him, at last, and so bears him down into the depths.