The Crown of Destiny (The Yorkist Saga)

by Diana Rubino

  She approached the giant bed and steadied herself against one of the bedposts. Her fingers nervously played through the carvings as she clasped the post, gathering her skirts and hoisting herself up to sit on the bed, her feet dangling over the edge.

  At first she could not see him; he was covered with the velvets and the furs he so loved to burrow under, but as she strained to see, she could discern a figure, a head against the white of the pillows, a nearly bald head, the eyes slits under folds of puffy yellow-gray skin.

  This was not her beloved Henry, not the strong, willful man she'd given her life to, the man she'd nurtured and loved and shared her very soul with. His face was puffed up to grotesque proportions—only because she knew him so well did she recognize him. His breathing was raspy and irregular—every other breath was a wheezing gasp that made his chest rise and his face strain in agony.

  He opened one eye and saw her gaping at him in disbelief, her jaw slack, her lips parted as if to trying to form comforting words and soothing thoughts that were just not there. She hadn't meant to let him see her staring at him so—but the horror of seeing him this way could not be concealed with a mere smile.

  Her face felt drained of all color with the shock of having seen him like this, like a helpless invalid dragging the last breaths of life through his body.

  "You are here..." he croaked, his voice thick and muddy with the fluid that bloated his body and pressed against his brain, causing his thoughts to be disjointed and distorted. "You are here, my love."

  "Aye, Your Majesty, I came as soon as I got the message."

  "You have been so good to me..." He reached out an arm and it, too, was puffy and distended, the fingers so swollen that she could not see the joints; they no longer tapered down to a wrist, they were fingers attached to an arm, all one big swollen mass of flesh.

  Without thinking she reached out one shaking hand and touched his distended limb, as if her touch could somehow comfort him, bring him back to a bearable state, but the skin was stretched, taut, waxy and cold.

  He could not grasp her hand with his fingers. The fingers were paralyzed, five stubby appendages that could barely wiggle, unable to bend, clasp, or clutch. She occupied her other fidgety hand by clutching a corner of the bedspread for support, her nails tensely raking over the fine embroidery one stitch at a time.

  "'Tis all right, my lord. I am here now," she whispered, not knowing what she could possibly share with him. Should she talk about Harry or the Christmas gifts she and Matthew had exchanged? Or Emerald's new son? Would he even hear her?

  He began to speak, and she had to lean forward to hear, for his voice was faint and weak. "My dear Jane, you've come back to me..." The sentence ended in a sigh and he struggled to open his eyes again.

  "Jane, I missed you so...Anne killed you, I know she did. She killed our son, she killed you, when you were so young and beautiful. Jane, my dear Jane..."

  Her breath caught in her throat and she sat paralyzed at the edge of his bed as his hand groped for hers once more. He was incoherent. She heard him mumbling something about Jane...

  Without a word, she placed her hand inside his as he continued to mumble sentence fragments, first Jane, then Anne, then calling Cromwell over and over. She sat, stupefied, unable to help him, for he was beyond help. He was slowly slipping from this world and she would not leave his side until he had departed completely.

  She sat with him through the remainder of the night, not stirring. The chamber was quiet except for the tiptoeing of the groom of the chamber as he rekindled the fire.

  At one o'clock in the morning, the door opened and shut, and she jumped, startled, turning to see a rangy lad walking up to her. "I am Anthony Denny, come to tell the King he must prepare for death and ask him if he wishes to confess."

  "Now?" she whispered, for she still wasn't sure if the King would suddenly regain his senses and comprehend what was going on around him. "Why not before?"

  "No one dared before, but the physicians tell me now that it is their opinion that the King has not long to live." He spoke brazenly, as if he were speaking of someone not present.

  Ignoring Amethyst's tug on his sleeve, he approached the King from the other side of the bed and put his lips to the King's ear, shouting, as if to someone at the other end of the room, "Sire, is there anyone to whom you wish to confess?"

  The King did not reply. Denny tried again.

  "Sire, you are in man's judgment not like to live. You must prepare yourself for death!"

  The King lay still, and she thought he'd slipped into a coma, but at length he finally spoke: "The mercy of Christ...could pardon all my sins, though they were greater than they be."

  Denny persisted, in that high-pitched voice that nearly shattered the windows. "Sire, do you want to see a priest?"

  After another long silence, the King spoke once again. "Only Cranmer, but not yet. I will take a little sleep, then, as I feel myself, I will advise upon the matter." His eyes fluttered, then shut as his head lolled to one side.

  "Cranmer! So be it!" Denny rose from the King's side and scrambled out of the room.

  "I love you, my lord. I will always love you," she whispered into his ear.

  Although he registered no response, she knew in her heart that he'd heard her.

  She sat with him for another hour, listening to his raspy breathing, his labored sighs, alternating with incoherent babblings about Anne, calling her Jane, cursing the Pope, Anne, Catherine, or was it Catherine Howard? He ranted about whatever entered his jumbled mind as it slipped further away.

  At one point she tried to press a chalice of wine to his lips. He slurped at the cup, sputtered, swallowed and sighed, as if knowing this taste of the beloved wine he'd savored so much throughout his life would be on his lips in death.

  Cranmer then burst through the door, rushed up to the bed, and leaned way over, trying to extricate a confession from the barely breathing king.

  "Your Majesty! Your Majesty!" he spoke just above a whisper. When the King did not reply he glanced up at Amethyst helplessly.

  "He is incoherent. I do not believe he hears you."

  Cranmer leaned over the bed, climbed upon it halfway, one leg astride the huge mound of mattress, and supported himself on his elbows. "Your Majesty, it is I, Cranmer!" he shouted, as if simply raising his voice would enable the dying man to comprehend. "You sent for me! Do you die in the faith of Christ?" he asked several times, with no response.

  "Give me a sign that you hear me! Let me know if you die in the faith of Christ and that He has redeemed you!"

  Amethyst hadn't moved her hand from the King's, and could feel a slight gesture. The fingers had tried feebly to grasp at hers.

  "He moved his hand, I could feel it!" she whispered to Cranmer, and she knew that was the last touch she would ever know of her king.

  She sat quietly, watching as his lips formed a word, and she leaned forward, nearly bumping heads with Cranmer, whose ear was virtually pressed up against the King's lips. "I, I love you..."

  Who was he speaking to now? Jane? A young and long-ago Catherine that he had indeed loved, his childhood love, the first wife whom he later denied and cast aside?

  Cranmer lifted his head, cleared his throat and discreetly looked away, fingering his cloak.

  "I love you… Amethyst," he whispered, a feeble sigh, his final farewell to the cruel world that he'd passed through so briefly.

  "Farewell, Henry. Farewell, my lord," she whispered, as his face became a blur through her tears.

  She looked over at Cranmer and could see a tear at the corner of his eye. "He is with Our Lord now," she said softly.

  Cranmer, gazing down at his departed King, nodded.

  After another moment of silence, Cranmer looked up and the courtiers came busting into the chamber, wanting to know if indeed he had slipped away, shouting like a deranged mob, "The King is dead! Long live the King!"

  "You shall remain for the funeral, Lady Gilford?" asked Cranmer, who
still hadn't left the King's side, oblivious to the shoving courtiers who wanted a chance to gape at the King's corpse.

  She was still holding his hand. She could feel it growing cold beneath her fingers. She knew he was at peace now. A strange kind of relief washed over her and for the first time since entering the chamber, she was able to speak normally. "Aye, of course I shall. Now I must summon his widow."

  Amethyst rose and covered the King's face with the bed sheet. She wanted to slip off the ring he had given her and place it on his finger, but she knew it would never fit, not even over the tip of the smallest one.

  With one last glance over her shoulder at the rumpled bed bearing the King's body, she shoved her way through the shouting and bumbling fools, and headed for the Queen's apartments.

  The two women embraced as Amethyst entered the Queen's privy chamber, for Kate knew as soon as she saw Amethyst appear.

  "He said goodbye last night, then sent me away," Kate said, finally able to let the tears flow, placing a candle on her table next to all her Bibles and prayer books. So the Queen hadn't slept all night either.

  "I arrived late last night. I must have just missed you."

  "Did he speak to you at all?" Kate said.

  "Nay," she said with a sigh, allowing herself the lie to preserve her relationship with the great man from those who would never understand it. "He spoke, but most of it was incoherent. He was delirious, Kate, he called out for Jane several times...denounced the Pope, Wolsey, and Cromwell, cursed Anne—"

  "All those people are dead. Did he not speak of anyone alive?"

  "He asked for Cranmer. That...that was the last he spoke." Never could Amethyst tell the King's widow that his very last word before departing the earth had been her own name. As Cranmer had not been not close enough to hear, she and only she would carry that, Henry's last spoken endearment, to her own grave. "That was all, Kate. Then he slipped away."

  The two women King Henry VIII had left behind stood side by side and linking arms, they knelt before God and prayed for his soul.

  Amethyst went back to the King's bedchamber at dawn. The bed was empty, the covers spread neatly over the mattress, the window thrown open, letting in a blast of the raw January wind. The dying fire was throwing sparks about the fireplace.

  "Where is King Henry?" she asked one of the Yeomen of the Guard.

  "They've taken the body to embalm it. The body will lie in state in the King's Privy Chamber while the Chapel Royal is being readied."

  She took one final sweeping look at the bed in which she'd shared so many passionate nights with her king. The guard was watching her, so she fought the dreamy mist that began to fill her eyes. Aware of what he must be thinking, she quickly turned and exited the chamber for the last time.

  She borrowed a sheet of parchment and a pen from Kate and wrote to Matthew, asking him to join her immediately. He would certainly hear of the King's death by the time the note arrived, but she wanted him there with her for the funeral.

  She then thought of Topaz, wondering if her sister was now expecting to be set free. But of course the decision belonged to the nine-year-old King Edward now.

  Kate was alone in the Privy Chamber, kneeling and sobbing quietly before the blue velvet-draped coffin when Amethyst approached the guarded doorway.

  The coffin rested upon trestles under a pall of cloth of gold. Dozens of candles gleamed in the darkness, casting a long shadow from Kate's unmoving figure. Amethyst wiped away tears and quietly tiptoed away, leaving the Queen alone with her husband.

  On the thirteenth of February, after twelve days in the Chapel Royal, the unwieldy coffin was hoisted onto the black-draped hearse for the journey to Saint George's Chapel in Windsor, where he would be laid to rest in the grave next to Queen Jane, as he'd always wished.

  Matthew sped to London upon receiving Amethyst's note. With a comforting embrace but few words to exchange between them, they joined the funeral procession bearing torches in the wet, gray, but warm day that promised the first breath of spring and carried the clanging of the church bells throughout the kingdom.

  Two days later, when the procession reached the King's final resting place at Windsor and the coffin removed from the hearse to be lowered into the grave in Saint George's Chapel, she did not enter. As the Aldermen of London, the lords of the Privy Council, the archbishops, members of the King's household and other nobles crowded the chapel, she stood in the wind which had turned to a biting cold, for the duration of the short service.

  She did not want to see his coffin being lowered into the ground. She somehow felt that witnessing the cold reality and truth of his death and burial would eradicate the memories she held of him healthy, passionate, and alive.

  She could hear the faint squeaking groan of the pulleys as the Yeomen of the Guard lowered the coffin and the final plunk as it hit the bottom. She could hear Bishop Gardiner leading the funeral service, "Beati mortui qui in Domine Moriuntur, Blessed are they that die in the Lord."

  She heard the vault sliding shut, then Gardiner shouted, "King Edward the Sixth, by the grace of God King of England, Ireland, Wales, and France, Defender of the Faith!"

  The crowd echoed his words, and Amethyst mouthed them silently with her husband's arm tightly clasped about her shoulders. Then she and Matthew turned away to begin their journey home.

  "Would you like to stop at the Tower and see the lads?" Amethyst asked as they approached their mounts.

  "Nay. Next time. I have had enough solemnity for one week. I trust they fare well."

  "Oh, I am sure they do, Matthew," she said with a nod.

  "We shall write to them at the first inn we stop at, and explain why we could not stop."

  "Aye, I know how eager you are to be home. I am sorry all my duties have meant—"

  He silenced her with a kiss. "It is no matter now. You have been a loving servant to all who care for you, and whom you care for. Henry is gone now, and he can never come between us again. There will be plenty of time for us to be together now, and I do not wish to waste a minute of it."

  Her eyes glowed. "Nor I."

  "You have helped Edward enormously ever since Jane died. Let us help him mourn his father and perhaps he will soon find it in his heart to allow my sons their freedom."

  "Amen to that."

  "But now, there is Harry to think of. So let us please go back home, home to Pendennis."

  "Is not Kenilworth your home, my lord?" she asked pertly.

  "Nay, home is wherever you are, my love, and Pendennis is where you have been happiest. Therefore, it will always be home in my heart."

  "And mine."

  Riding as one now, side by side, they spurred their horses on and headed down the frozen road to Cornwall.

  She did not set foot in Saint George's Chapel until many years later. When she found herself passing through Windsor, she rode up to the castle and entered the chapel, walking up to the polished stone slab under which rested her king, next to his beloved Queen Jane. "'Tis only I, my lord," she whispered, and left a long-stemmed red rose on the grave.

  His daughter Mary was by then Queen of England. Although this might have disturbed Henry, she knew Catherine of Aragon would have been pleased.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Tower of London, March, 1547

  Topaz was taken by barge from the Tower to the Palace at Whitehall, where she had been summoned to King Edward in answer to her plea for an audience with him. Flanked by guards, she was escorted through the hallways and chambers that led to the Council Chamber.

  The door opened and the King sat at the end of a long stretch of red carpet, a tiny figure dwarfed by the enormous throne. A somber face peeked out from a velvet-plumed cap sprouting unruly tufts of reddish hair. A fur-trimmed crimson velvet robe hung over his shoulders, trailing the floor, spilling down the first three steps of the platform on which sat the throne.

  Three heavy gold chains hung round his neck, and he tugged at one of them uncomfortably. His dark
hose sagged around the skinny knees and ankles, his feet swung to and fro, the shoes flapping off his heels. As she approached him she could make out the young but troubled features. He was Henry's son; she could see Henry in the gold eyes, the tight lips, the erect posture.

  Yet he was a boy, that was all, a boy who should have been romping in the grass, climbing trees and skipping stones on a pond, a boy on a king's throne.

  Before the throne she curtsied deeply, against her will. Never did she think she would ever pay homage to a Tudor, but circumstances had changed and this oaf, the offspring of the fat, monstrous and dead Henry, held her very life in his sweaty little hands.

  "Rise," he said, his voice cracking, and he cleared his throat, trying to cover up his embarrassment. She could see a hot flush burning the pale cheeks, and Edward tugged at the top button of his doublet.