The Other Henry VIII

The Necklace

21 June 1532
"So there we are then. No going back."
"No, My Lady. The papers were signed this afternoon."

Clara turned her head back from the doorway where Audrey stood, a queer sort of resignation pooling in her chest. It seemed like such a tawdry end to the whole affair. All those lawyers scurrying about in black with fistfuls of documents and ink-stained hands, months of meticulous negotiation and polite conversation, years of Lady Bryan saying she would marry a prince one day, and now here she was: signed away. To be wed before the year's end. She had been engaged before, of course, but she was young then and everything had not felt quite so real as it did now.

Tonight was the summer solstice, a night the Queen had been planning and the court had been anticipating for weeks. Clara held out her arms as Audrey and Bridget fastened her sleeves, eyes fixed squarely ahead. Perhaps also, she thought with a glimmer of hope, a night to forget.

The evening air was still and humid as she strode out onto the lawn, clad in the same green gown she had worn the day Prince Christian arrived. No doubt her father would reproach her about the choice, but Clara found it hard to imagine ordering yet another gown when the Treasury could barely afford to feed its own courtiers. Her betrothed's gift hung on display around her neck, gleaming menacingly; her mother's crucifix, meanwhile, had been relegated to the folds of her chemise. Clara prayed this was not the first of many changes.

One could not tell, from the wine-stained lips and garish apparel, that war had swallowed half this year. She drained her goblet in one gulp and called for another. Did the King not learn from his misdeeds? Had all those lives meant nothing? He must think to play God, signing all those parchments to decide her fate, as if it could not so easily go astray! Clara ate in brooding silence. The Prince's voice faded into nothing. How she loathed it, this endless optimism, these festivities, her father's cheer and Leia's rapacious designs for the future. Surely they understood how precariously this ridiculous life was balanced, how it all could topple any moment now?

The mummers hardly lifted her spirits. Edward sat on her lap, perfectly still as children so often were not, and she clung to him like a log in deep water, as though he might slip from her grasp if she did not hold tight enough. Golden-haired. A shade darker than Edmund's, so it glowed bronze in the torchlight and fell smooth as silk through her fingers. She searched the crowds for his face and stared, too long.

How many goblets? She could not recall. Perhaps this was just a dream. Perhaps she was indeed floating on air, gazing down at this wretched court and their menial pursuits. All these lives, so small and yet so frustratingly complicated. Nothing was ever certain, not really. She rested her head upon her brother's bony little shoulder and allowed the wine to pervade the last of her conscience. She wanted to cry as well, but her tears were trained too well to fall.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Clara was not the only one whose attentions were elsewhere. Two seats away, while her husband chuckled loudly at a bawdy joke, the Queen sat back in her chair and gestured for another plate of honeyed almonds. She had never been much affected by pregnancy, and when the pain came, she had found she could distance herself from it enough to bear. How she wished she had not taken that for granted. Now the baby curled low against her spine, draining her energy and thickening her waist and ankles. She could not write as she used to, for her swollen fingers fumbled and quivered like branches in the wind, nor stroll long, for every step seemed to be uphill. Not to mention it all still felt like a betrayal.

"Perhaps it is time for the children's bedtime," she told her husband as Eleanor tugged at her skirts. "Not now darling, Mama's tired."
"I'll take her," said Lizzie brightly from the other side, "Eleanor, come sit on my lap! There's ever so much space!"
"No, let them stay up." Henry's eyes did not leave the stage. "It's a special night and they're having marvellous fun. Look, even Edward is smiling for once."