The Other Elizabeth

Chapter IX: Whitsuntide 1450

I cleared my throat.

"Elizabeth!" She turned around, and her lips twitched, into something which quite possibly could have been a smile.

"Good day," I said, as I hovered uncertainly.

"Why have you come?" No, it's such a pleasure to see you, or, this was unexpected, but, why did you come?

"I had news to tell you of."

"Could you not have imparted it to me by letter?"

"Lady Bourchier insisted I tell you in person," I snapped. She does not want a visit from her own daughter.

"That important." She rose and walked forward, surveying me. "You are with child," she said flatly. I had deliberately worn my loosest houppelande so as to not flaunt my belly, which at four months, was rather large, and I did not want her weeping about my brother, for the pregnancy had made me very irritable.

"I am," I replied. She nodded, the smallest, curtest nod possible, which lit a fuse inside me.

"You are not going to congratulate me? Say something charitable? Offer the best advice on remedies to take for sickness? When I told My Lady Isabel, she was overjoyed."

"Lady Bourchier this, My Lady Isabel that! If this baby is a girl and not the heir we have all been waiting for, what will you call her, Isabel too?" My mother fired back.

"Yes, I would rather not call her Ismania, she's not a no-body from Cornwall." I knew I should not be insulting my great-grandmother Ismania, for whom she is named after, but I was weary beyond measure, both from travel, and my pregnancy.

The said Ismania clenched her teeth. "Lady Isabel may as well be your mother, not me."

"She is a better mother than you, and I shall endeavour to be a better mother to my child too!" Tears threatened in my eyes, while she took a few steps back, gasping, one hand on her mouth. I pressed my lips together, glaring at her.

I hesitated, and then swept out the room back outside, where I informed the very disgruntled bearers of my litter that we were to travel back to Essex that very moment. I had so wished Henry was not paying a visit to his kinsfolk, for I would have remained in a calmer disposition if he had been present with me. I did wonder if I had exceeded my limit to insulting my own mother, but surely, I could not be punished by speaking what, in all earnest, I believed to be truth? It was strange to see her not scold me, just fall back, her bottom lip quivering and eyes diluting- was I such a bad daughter, to make my mother so upset?

I bite my lip at this thought, and bite down harder so that I taste my own blood, face creasing up. Pain wracks my belly, and I start to push. I can hear Henry pacing up and down outside; he has been there all seventeen hours, since my waters broke. Oh, how I adore him... These past few months have brought a tenderness out in Henry. He was always a gentle, kind, youth, but now he is more assertive and surer of himself, forever fetching me another cushion or something of that ilk, and reassuring me that matters will be fine.

I remember one day when we were in Florence's nursery; my, how she has grown- she is a bonny little girl of two years with a mop of curls like Henry's, and she smiles and giggles constantly. It is strange to think that soon I will be giving birth to one of these little creatures- my relatively small body has had to cope with carrying this large weight, and I have felt very cumbersome.

Anyhow, it was when I was reading aloud to Florence that I first felt our baby kick. I remember dropping the book of troubadour tales and putting my hand to my stomach, gasping.