Rivals in the Tudor Court by D. L. Bogdan Read Free Book Online Page B

not worry, Thomas. We will get through this. You will feel better. We have no other choice.” I recall my grandfather’s words, words that seemed so cold but were the best he could come up with. “We are Howards.”
    Perhaps it is better clinging to this abstract idea of a name and the greatness that can be associated with it than to the realness of people, people who are bound to leave in one way or another.
    I rise, leaving his bedside. In the hall I encounter the princess, who has brought a basket of sweet-smelling herbs to the room along with some embroidery.
    I seize her upper arm. Her eyes widen in surprise.
    â€œWhat are you thinking, passing your fancies on to our son?” I seethe. “Aren’t we in trouble enough as it is without his having to believe in such drivel? There is nothing that can come of it. Shroud him with illusions and the world will be all the more cruel to him when reality sets in.”
    â€œReality has set in,” returns the princess. “And I can think of no better way to ease his pain and sorrow than with these ‘fancies’ of mine. What else have we to cling to but our faith in the unknown, our faith in something bigger and better waiting for us on the other side? If we have not that, we have nothing.”
    I release her arm, half pushing her from me. “It is all nonsense. I’m sick and tired of it.”
    Her face is a mingling of sweetness and pity. “Of course you are. But it isn’t that you’re tired of; it’s the death and the pain and the grief. You want something to blame, so you will blame anything to make sense of it all. I do not seek to make sense of it. There is no rational explanation that could ever justify what has happened. So let me keep my nonsense. I will lose my mind without it.”
    â€œPerhaps, madam, your mind is long since gone,” I say before turning on my heel and quitting her presence.
    Everything is so simple to her. I want to accept things as she does, but I cannot. I cannot throw myself into some fantasy world while reality stalks me with the relentlessness of a falcon.
    I have never realized to this day how different the princess and I really are from each other.

    The angel of Thomas’s vision claims him in August, four months after the death of his sister. His is a peaceful passing. He complained of a headache, something the princess and I had come to grow used to, and closed his eyes. That was it. He was gone.
    Six servants hold me down to force a sleeping posset down my throat after I have screamed my throat bloody and raw for four hours straight. The princess takes her grief out of doors and sits swaying on a garden bench, singing to herself.
    I am alone when I awake; my children are still gone. No amount of screaming against the fates or God or whatever force of divinity that decides these things will return them to me. I am silenced. I require no comfort. It is over, all over. My dynasty has collapsed.
    As my heir and namesake, he is interred at the family chapel of Lambeth, and the occasion is celebrated with the property dignity.
    Some of my siblings attend the funeral and we are approached by my sister Elizabeth and her husband, the ambitious and untalented Thomas Boleyn.
    My sister wraps her arms about my princess in an impulsive embrace that she does not know how to respond to. She is rigid and almost frightened of the show.
    I reach out, resting a hand on my sister’s shoulder. “Thank you for coming,” I murmur.
    Elizabeth turns a tearstained face to me. “I don’t know what we would do if our situations were reversed,” she whispers, reaching up to touch my cheek with a long-fingered hand. “My God, brother, I’m sorry.”
    I swallow the ever-present lump in my throat. “There’s nothing that can be done,” I say in husky tones. “They are gone. All gone.”
    â€œThere may be more,” says Elizabeth, her voice taut