The Heir and the Spared

Chapter Twenty

James scoffed a short laugh. "He is a boy, Mary."

Mary was quiet. Fitzroy's brother Monmouth had scarcely been ten years older when he had initiated a rebellion. That had been quashed, of course; yet at a cost.

"He cannot raise an army," James added.

Though faintly, Mary nodded. She wanted to say that she trusted him, yet her lips would not obey her; they would not form the words.

"We have no need to run from him, Mary," James said softly.

His hand stilled on the shelf of her stomach, and Mary glanced down at it. Her mind returned to James' earlier words: there is a very evident reason.

--

Sarah had tried not to fall in love with her baby.

However, she had not tried hard enough.

She supposed even in ordinary circumstances, expectant women had to prepare for the possibility that their child would die during birth or shortly thereafter. It was quite common, Sarah had heard the queen say, for babies to die within the first year of their life. It was said in the matter-of-fact intonation that only a woman who had experience with such a horror could utter. How, then, could anyone ready herself for such an event? Did women simply remind themselves that this child might live only a short time? Did that help them avoid growing overly attached to a baby, so as to bear a loss with less grief?

Sarah could not do this - not even when she knew her chances of losing this child were much higher. There were only two choices, a boy or girl; it was a one-out-of-two chance. Her destiny hinged on that probability.

How could she not love this child, this miracle being knit together in her womb? The baby's bones were being fashioned together by the Creator with loving care. She could feel her child move within her. Most of the time, she was alone in the silence of her room, sequestered there; in the quiet, she sometimes talked to the baby. Yes, she had told herself she would not do it, but the isolation could make one mad. And when she did talk, telling stories about the day she'd met Bess, or about the wedding, or about her childhood in the country... she could feel the child move, as if hearing. It was remarkable; it was wondrous. How could she not fall in love? How could she not feel that this little being was hers, inextricably bound to her, belonging to her? Even the threat of loss could not dampen such a feeling.

And so every night, even with the difficulty now of kneeling and getting up, Sarah knelt by her bedside and prayed. She prayed that her child would be born healthy, and would be hers to keep. She prayed that her child would be a girl. Most of all, she prayed that the queen would have a son.

It was, perhaps, the first time a Protestant prayed for a Catholic monarch to have a male heir.

--

The uncertainty was growing unbearable. Sarah wished desperately that both she and the queen could have some way to know of their children's fate. Would the child be a boy, or a girl? Would they live? For how long?

Yet if such a device existed, then none of this would have been necessary - none of it would have been possible. At the outset, the queen hadn't known she would conceive, yet once she had, perhaps she would have sent Sarah away. Sarah and Philip would have had far less money saved up, and perhaps their dream of having a house of their own and a life of their own might never have become a reality: they would only have been a poor married couple, with a child on the way, and no certain income. Even the thought of this made a cold sweat break out like dew-drops on Sarah's brow.

Sarah could not yet say that all would be for the best; she simply did not know. It was agonizing.

"Phil," she whispered one night, nudging him.