The Other Elizabeth

Chapter XIV: Winter 1452- Autumn 1453

Chapter XIV: Winter 1452-Autumn 1453 

Worlington, Suffolk, England 

Today is Lady Day- a quarter day, and the official start of the New Year. I have never enjoyed having my birthday on this day, for my birthday feast was always amalgamated with the day's festivities anyhow. I am most lucky to know of my birthdate- many other girls do not have this recorded; girls are deemed so important. I only know of mine, for my mother used to jest she was in labour for two years- she started in the year of Our Lord 1435, and gave birth to me in 1436- how witty is she?

Henry has left early to collect the rents from our tenants. As I close the door, I find leaning against the wall next to the door of my bedchamber a large looking-glass. It is encircled with metal framework in the forms of many spirals, and the bottom row has my very own gold escallops for my de Scales lineage. I smile, picking up the piece of parchment tucked into it.

I bestow this gift upon my wife Elizabeth in joyous celebration of her sixteenth birthday, from her husband Henry.

This was clearly made especially for myself. How much can this have cost? How can I celebrate another year of my own life, when my baby lies dead in her grave, never to live one more day, snatch one more breath, ever again? I sigh. I have to move on.

Matters are still strained a little; our relationship, although eased, is still not as affectionate as we were as children, simply agreeable and amiable; we never gaze at one another, burning like the candles about us, anymore. I thought that we were in love, but mayhap that was another of my childish fantasies, for I feel as though I have greatly aged, leaving behind any happiness and ignorance I once knew. We are not children anymore so; this day is my sixteenth birthday. I feel rather old!

I stare upon my reflection, and I blink, for I suddenly appear older to one's eye. Looking back at me is not a skinny wench with an insatiable smile and the gleaming eyes of a minx with skirts muddied from where she has rolled about in the grass, with tangled golden hair. Instead, there is a... woman. She is tall, and her body is firmly shaped now. She stands straight, her hair now tucked beneath her headdress; this is of a heart-shape with blue silk billowing from the tops and resting about her face. Her face is serene, pallid as milk, with round, wide eyes the shade of a tempest-tossed sea. When did I start to change in my looks so much, and how could I have hardly noticed?

I knew that Henry's appearance had changed- he has cut off his curls, cutting away the past, cutting away his youth. He has indeed lost all traces of youth, becoming a man with his lips pressed firmly together and narrow eyes as dark as death. He towers above me, and speaks in a gruff, short voice. I have lost Henry and Elizabeth, Harry and Lizzie. I lost them long ago along with Isabel. I just did not realise so much, until this strange woman greeted me in the looking glass. Never will my little Isabel stand before a looking glass beside me; she is just a ghost of a girl. How would she have looked? Would she have favoured Henry or I, and which of our traits would she have inherited? I will never know...

The irises I saw at Isabel's grave last year stood for the hope that would help me to part with my grief more so. I used to yearn after her every day, but now I miss her with a sad, desperate fondness. She died over a year and a half ago, but I do not think I will ever forget that day, when Jane walked into the great hall at Tolleshunt D'Arcy. It had taken five seconds for my livelihood to be destroyed. I knew by the look on her face; I knew that Isabel was dead. I wake up every morning thinking of her, of how perfect she was. She was so small. She was my own child. I loved her so greatly, with every inch of my own person. Why did she have to die, why not I? She had not a chance to live her life. I cannot think of one lady whom I know who has not lost one child- in infancy, in their youth, in battle, to the Black Death, to fever... It is the pain, which we mothers have to endure, of losing them, for the rest of our lives.