~𝕭𝖊𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖞𝖆𝖑 𝖎𝖘 𝖔𝖓𝖑𝖞 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖇𝖊𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌~
Born the youngest daughter of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, Constance of Bourbon grows up amidst comfort and splendour on her powerful family's estates in France. A shy child, she prefers her...
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~Sanctuary~
May 1483, Westminster Abbey Sanctuary....
Fourteen days it had been. Fourteen long days of waiting, listening, weeping, lying awake at night with nothing to hear but one's own thoughts swirling around the tortured mind.
There was one way in and one way out, through the abbey anyway.
One great door in one great wall that remained locked and bolted day and night. A small window was in the top where meals would be passed through and Constance would open to talk and pray with Thomas Bouchier. She had the keys, she could slide the bolt open but still the sanctuary was a prison and she, Kate and her children were it's prisoners. They couldn't leave. If they did they would be the most foolish creatures on the earth.
There were three rooms. A large chamber one stepped into upon entry, holding three great arched windows up high along its left wall and a mighty fireplace carved into the opposite, a small wooden bath standing beside it. There were three simple chairs before the fire, a rectangular table in the centre of the room with long wooden benches either side and they made up the entirety of the chamber's adornment.
At the end lay two small doors leading to two small, octagonal rooms, both without hearths, leaving them cold. Each possessed a small, single bed, with an even smaller trundle bed underneath it. It was a unanimous decision made early on to put both trundles in one room for the children and the two single beds in the other, that way, everyone would be rather comfortable - as comfortable as they could be.
It is not that the mattresses weren't pleasant, the pillows weren't soft, no the Abbey had made an effort to provide the royals with the best they had, it was their minds that made them uncomfortable, the state of their ears, ever primed to detect the slightest noise from outside, stirring such fear that all seven members of the sanctuary ended up squashed together in the same beds by the small hours of the morning.
Their existence was one of terror, a game of waiting for the sanctuary door to come crashing down and soldiers to flood in - or at least it was for the adults. For the Woodvilles had taken London. That was all they knew and that was all they needed to know for their hearts to never beat steadily.
On the fifteenth morning, Constance lay awake on her bed, fingers stroking across the locket which cradled the one last thing she still had of her husband, and staring up at the stone ceiling as she had been doing for the past five hours or so. She didn't know exactly.
She knew that her son was meant to be have been crowned by now, a new York reign was supposed to have begun, the land still full of celebrations for their new ruler. The Lords of the realm were meant to kneel before her the night prior to the coronation, kiss her hand and swear allegiance to her as the Queen Regent. She was meant to have her son in her arms, Richard at her side so they may share their grief.
