The Other Henry VIII

Checkmate

Clara clung to the body long after it had fallen still. Her ladies tried to enter, tried to tear her away, but Lizzie shut them out. She sat in wait by the fire, baby balanced precariously on her lap. His gaunt little face peeked out from the swaddling cloth, eyes and lips screwed shut, too hungry even to bawl. There was no wet-nurse, no servants to tidy away the bloodied sheets; just the pair of them left as a new day dawned on the kingdom. And when at last her sister rose from the bed, drawn and pale as though she had aged a hundred years, Lizzie unlatched the door, told the others to lay out the body, and took her hand.

Lizzie slept for nine hours. Clara slept thirteen. Night had fallen again, clear and crisp and eerily still. Together they returned to the dusty room in which Anne Saxby had died and looked upon the white linen sheet which now concealed her. Upon the silhouette of her unmistakeable profile against the alabaster moonlight. Upon the tips of her fingers reaching out from beneath the shroud. No-one else came.

Tears were leaking from Clara's eyes, yet she made not a single sound. Her features were still and grey as an effigy, utterly oblivious to the silver beads trickling down her cheeks. Lizzie could not understand it.
"I thought you hated her."
"I did." Ah there it was: a shade of moisture at the back of her throat.
"Then why —?"
"We all did. That was the problem. She was a woman who never felt a trace of love in her entire life. Even her family used her for their own ends."

"She was not a victim," frowned Lizzie. "She was her own person: a vile, nasty, selfish person who blackmailed you while I was still in the nursery and cursed you with her dying breath to —"
"She was nineteen years old."
"And that is an excuse?"
"She was nineteen years old."

She capitulated with an agitated scowl, which Clara seemed to catch, for she grabbed her sister's hands and stared right up at her with an iron gaze. "Anne Saxby was young," she said firmly, "And lonely and unloved, and yes she committed some terrible acts, but if you will learn one thing from me, little sister, let it be this: do not antagonise. And if you must, then do it with the right people. There are those who earn our contempt, and there are those who deserve our compassion. Promise me that." Lizzie swallowed. She had never seen her sister so serious. "Promise me, Lizzie."
"I promise."

Another two days slipped past. War descended upon west London as the King's army retreated further still, struggling to hold off the snarling opposition, while inhabitants ran screaming for their lives. The streets became a game board, and the soldiers the pieces. Only God himself held the dice.
Meanwhile, tucked away to the east, Princess Clara flitted from one tower to the next, directing her ladies to gather their belongings and ready themselves for a sudden departures should enemy soldiers come calling. They would seek sanctuary at All-Hallows, she assured them, a church older than the monarchy which overlooked the Tower. No-one could seize them there, most certainly not a man who professed such godliness as Norfolk.

"But it shan't come to that, shall it?" asked Mary when the pair were alone. "We are of the true faith, you and I. They might welcome us into their court."
"They might," replied the Princess. "And equally, they might slaughter us all. I am not willing to take that risk, are you, Your Grace?"

Edmund's child never left her arms. She bundled him close against the frosty air, dripping flour-water into his tiny mouth whenever he began to writhe in hunger, and curled her warm body around him each night. She rejoiced when he grew strong enough for a true, deafening wail, when his eyes finally opened to reveal his father's vivid blue, and even when his coin-sized hand clasped around her finger for the first time. She did not know what his name would be — Robert perhaps, for one grandfather, and Lord Dorchester for the other — but she knew that she loved him, and she refused to let him suffer the fate of his poor, wretched, embittered mother. He was hers, and God would not take him if she had anything to do with it.