JAMES. You’re the wine.

ANNE. You’re what I saw in the thirteen seconds.

JAMES. Thirteen seconds…?

ANNE. While my head was in the straw. I saw my body. (Giggles.) No head! And I saw the people kneeling by the scaffold. And behind them, I saw you. (Aside, to the audience.) And you. The demons of the future.

JAMES (drinks). It was the money, wasn’t it. That’s why you fell.

ANNE. Men and the money.

JAMES (finishes drinking, suppresses a hiccup). I looked at the records of the dissolution of the monasteries. I saw how Cromwell filched thousands. I have an eye for accounts.

ANNE. The money was meant for schools, universities, houses for the relief of the poor. Cromwell stole it.

JAMES. You were going to tell King Henry.

ANNE. The last three weeks I was alive, I couldn’t speak to Henry, couldn’t send a message. Cromwell cut me off. While he told his lies. Oh, how I begged. (Sing-song.) Beg beg beg, funny how you do that, when you’re going to die, you say you won’t but you do. Beg beg beg. (Smiles.) But Henry was a good husband.

JAMES. Who had your head spin into the straw?

ANNE. When you were young and they came to you and told you they were going to execute your mother, what did you say?

JAMES is silent.

Royal families are different.

JAMES. You mean others only dream of cutting off the heads of wives and mothers?

ANNE. We have to do God’s Will.

JAMES. If we know it. (Drinks.)

ANNE. We know His Will because we have His Word.

JAMES finishes drinking. He is sagging.

JAMES. The Word, the one Word, God’s Word, what is it?

ANNE. You don’t know it because you’re a demon.

JAMES. Demon?

ANNE. You all are in the future. Godless demons.

JAMES. Were you an… (Slurs.) insufferably holy cow when you were alive?

ANNE. Oh no, I had a lot of fun.

JAMES. I’m giving the future a new Bible! God’s Word!

ANNE. Not God’s, yours.

JAMES. God’s Word my Word, God’s Word my Word. My my my Word. I… Tell me this, Queen Anne, great Queen. (Takes a great breath.) Why… (Takes another great breath.) Why is it that all we do in the name of God is always exactly the same as what we need to do in our own self-interest?

ANNE. That is a demon thought.

JAMES (grunt). Hunh! Ha! Hunh.

With a great big snore he rolls over and passes out.

ANNE (aside). Dear demons of the future, what I can’t tell… what I can’t tell is what you believe. You’re so strange to me, as I must be strange to you. Be careful of love. No, don’t be careful. Why not live for love? Why not live for a better world?