Rivals in the Tudor Court

It is all to no avail. Wills dies in his mother’s arms. The princess does not scream this time. She bows her head, allowing her tears to mingle with the sweat on our child’s brow.

I cannot watch this.

The only thing I can think of to do is chase the inept physician off my property with a horse whip.

“You did nothing!” I cry as he leaps onto his horse, his eyes wide in terror. “You killed him! You and your leeches killed my son!”

The physician rides away without looking back and I throw myself in the dust of the road, sobbing. There is nothing to be done. I look at the horse whip in my hand and in a moment of sheer madness bring it across my own neck. It curls about it and strikes my back. There is something strangely satisfying in the sting of this blow and as I watch the blood pour down my neck onto my shirt, I start to laugh at the insanity of it all. I strike myself again and again until my arm is too weak and my throat is too raw from the laughter that has converted to screaming, racking, useless sobs.

Thomas does not understand what has happened. He does not understand death. He asks about Wills daily, so much so that I have to extract myself from him. I take long walks and longer rides. I swim, immersing my body in the coolness of our pond. Sometimes I wish I would drown.

One day the princess finds me there, floating on my back, staring at the sky. I do not think of anything but the grey sky, grey as the Gypsy woman’s eyes, and the water that envelops me and comforts my broken soul.

“Come back to me, my lord,” she pleads in her soft voice.

She stares at me pointedly, then walks away.

In that moment, tears of gratitude replace those of sorrow. I rise.

Indeed, no one on this earth is wiser than my princess, for there is nothing that can be done but to press on. I cannot abandon the children who are here, looking to me for guidance. I cannot teach them that it is permissible to wallow in selfish grief while life surges on about me.

With new determination I dress and go into the house. To my children. To my princess. To the life I still have.

It is a vain goal, trying to seize something that is not mine to have, trying to hold in this hand, this hand that is said to be so powerful, the thread of life that binds my children to this world.

In early 1508 my daughter, my precious little Maggie, succumbs to an imbalance of the humours of the bowels. She doubles over in pain one evening at supper and we allow her to take rest in the nursery. I had thought she was trying to avoid eating the eels; she never had a robust appetite and hated trying anything new.

“You’re a manipulative little creature,” I tell the six-year-old, my voice stern. “Feigning a stomach ache to get out of eating supper. Well, you shall have nothing to eat, not one thing, for the rest of the evening, and I don’t care how much you cry or beg. You have to learn that you cannot always have what you want.”

How was I to know those would be the last words of mine she would ever hear?

The nurse fetches us moments later, her eyes wide with fear. “The little one has taken ill, my lord,” she whispers, crossing herself. “She is in such terrible pain …” She bows her head. “Such terrible pain.”

The princess and I rush to the side of the writhing child, her face flushed with fever, her black hair matted to her fair forehead with sweat.

I take her in my arms, rocking back and forth. She is clutching her little belly, her head lolling about from side to side in restlessness. There is no outlet for her pain. She reaches out for my face, seizing it between her tiny hands.

“It hurts, it hurts,” she cries. “Make it go away … please, make it go away!”

There is no physician to call. He would have done nothing but bleed her, anyway, and I could not have suffered it. I hold the little girl to my breast as she slips into delirium. She drops her hands. Her face relaxes, the black eyes glaze over, her small body goes limp.

And she is gone. In less than twenty-four hours she went from a healthy, jolly girl to this. Gone.

I stare at my princess in horror, but she cannot abide to be in the same room with death this time. She runs from the sight as though demons surround us, holding her hands to her ears to blot out my cries.

I hold my Maggie in my arms, rocking back and forth. I cannot let her go like this. She was just here. Maybe she isn’t dead. Maybe she will get better. I have heard strange tales in which people appeared dead only to have a resurgence of life moments later. Yes, this can happen for my Maggie. I must hold her a while, will my strength into her so when she wakes up she won’t be afraid.

I talk to her, I tell her she will get better, she is just sick. I apologise for scolding her about supper. I tell her she can eat whatever she wants whenever she wants if she’ll just come back to me. I tell her she must return so she can become a great lady and serve in the queen’s chambers someday. I tell her I am going to arrange a marriage for her with a strong, handsome knight.

I tell her she cannot leave because no one loves her like I do.

She does not move.

No matter, she just isn’t awake yet. She just isn’t awake yet, yes, that is it.

The princess enters collected and composed late that evening with two gentlemen servants.

“You must let her go now, my lord,” she tells me. “She must be interred soon.”

I shake my head. “I have heard of things … of miracles…. She might not be dead. She may be in that deep sleep some people go into and it takes them months or years to wake up…. What if we bury her and she is merely asleep?”

The princess’s eyes mist over with a pity I loathe. I avert my head. Why doesn’t anyone understand? Why do they all look at me this way?

“She isn’t coming back, Thomas,” she says.

It is the first time in our thirteen years of marriage she has ever called me by my first name.

She steps forward. “You must give her over now.”

“No!” I cry, clutching the child to my breast. “You cannot take her!” I kiss my daughter’s cool forehead, stroking her cheek. “I won’t let them take you from me, Maggie, not ever. I will be here when you wake up. I will always be here when you wake up.”

The princess nods to the servants. Some understanding passes between them and at once my arms are seized. The princess has taken Maggie in her arms and is carrying her away from me. I struggle against the men, crying for Maggie, cursing my wife.

I am too weak to break free, however. Perhaps some part of me knows I can no longer follow where she goes. I go limp, ceasing my struggling.

It is over. It is all over.

I press my face against Maggie’s pillow. It still smells of her, of lavender and roses and little girl.

I do not attend her interment.

My son Thomas isn’t the same after the echo of Maggie’s laughter can no longer be heard ringing throughout our house. He takes to his bed with severe headaches and requires possets to alleviate the pain. My wife attends him, sitting by his side, singing softly, stroking his brow and massaging his throbbing temples.

With me he discusses the other children; we talk about Heaven.

“You don’t feel any pain there, do you?” he asks me one day as I sit beside him while he clutches his head, tears streaming down his cheeks. “There is no pain in Heaven?”

“No pain,” I whisper, taking his hand. I swab his head with a cool cloth.

“And I will see my brothers and Maggie again?” he asks me, his eyes filled with hope.

I nod, swallowing the lump in my throat. “When it is your time, when God calls you to Him. But that will not be for many, many years.”

Thomas shakes his head. “No,” he tells me. “The angel who visited me last night said I will be coming home soon.”

I draw away from him in horror. “You are just sick with grief, Tommy,” I tell him. “We all are. Sometimes when we are agitated, we take on peculiar fancies. That is what has happened. One doesn’t really see angels or anything of that nature.”

“Mummy sees them,” says Thomas. “Only she calls them faeries.”