Daughter of Time

June 1555

I have been secluded behind these walls for over six frustratingly long weeks and still no signs of my labour pains are beginning are forthcoming. I do not know what to expect, only pains that begin like cramps women experience during their courses.

I call Susan to me and tell her, the same thing I have said to her every day since I entered this chamber: "Still no pains."

Susan gives me a small smile as she kneels down beside me.

"Perhaps, Your Majesty has mistaken your dates. The midwife believes that whilst Your Majesty's belly is still a goodly size, it is not as great as some women's who are near their time."

This though cheers me. This is why I love Susan dearly. She is always honest with me. She does not pretend that since my accession I have become immune to error, as many Kings would think they have. I am not so prideful that I think myself immune from error. My tutor from my girlhood, Master Featherstone once said to me, "Errors are to be learned from. They are a way of life."

"I think you are right Susan. I must have miscalculated."

"It is easily done, Your Majesty." Susan smiles back at me.

I place my hands on my swollen belly. "Do you think it will be soon?"

I refrain from saying that I long to hold my child more than anything in this world. To hold it in my arms, and watch it grow to be the heir to my father's Kingdom and a champion for the true faith.

"I think Your Majesty may have a little time left." I hear Susan's voice saying which brings me out of my musings. Forcing my voice to sound cheerful rather than disappointed, I say. "Well, at least I shall have more time to finish these," I indicate down to the beautiful tiny clothing in my lap. I pick up the needle, glad to have time to complete them. But frustrated that I must continue the wait for this much-wanted child to arrive.

A further fortnight passes and still no sign of labour beginning.
I have embroidered smocks, silk shoes, and linens to pass the time since I was first shut up in here, and still nothing. I still feel no pains or cramps.

I have no instincts to move the furniture around in the room that is increasingly becoming to feel more and more like a prison with every passing day.

The looking glass I ordered to be put before me every day, so I might continue to see the growing swelling of my belly, no longer affords me the pleasure I once had in it.
I have not called for it in two days since I felt my gowns growing loose against my body. The clothes that once chafed at my enlarged frame, no longer feel uncomfortable, the opposite in fact. I have room to move in them.

Perhaps my anxiety is making me thin, as it did when I younger in those awfully turbulent days at Hatfield. I have lost two stepmothers to the perils of childbirth. I would be a liar and a fool to deny that their untimely demise has not been a constant thought at the back of my mind.

It is not only the deaths of Queen Jane, and Queen Katherine that haunt me. Two days ago, I overheard two of my maids talking. One said that my confinement would surely not last much longer, but the other replied that my mother once took to her chamber, convinced she was with child, and nearing her time. But no child came. Her growing belly had returned to normal.

This cannot be the same as me. I felt the fluttering of life inside of me when Cardinal Pole greeted me with holy words of the Ave Maria. I felt my child move at those words, I know it. I know I carry England's heir. I know it, and I feel it.

Painful cramping in my lower belly wakes me from my sleep. For a moment I think that this is it. My pains have begun. My child is coming. As I move to the other side of the bed I feel a wetness between thighs. Throwing back the bedcovers I see my chemise is stained with blood. My courses have returned. The absence of the very same thing that gave me hope, that convinced me I was with the child has declared to my innate yearning that my dream of motherhood is over. How can I have courses if I am with child?