Go on then, I'm feeling generous. You can have this chapter a few days early...
Bridewell Palace, September 1523
“Her Grace has given birth to a healthy baby girl.”
At the herald’s determinedly cheerful announcement, it takes all Henry has not to snarl in fury.
Mary promised him a son! She promised him a boy, a healthy, squalling boy to be his Prince of Wales, and he married her on the strength of that promise. He
married her, when he could have had any Princess or Lady in Europe! God, he can hear Charles, Joao, and even Francis laughing themselves sick already.
And that’s not even the half of it. Not only is Mary of lower birth than is ideal for England’s Queen and not only has she broken her promise, but she’s not even a decorous consort. In just nine short months, she’s quarrelled with at least half the lords on his Council. He’s had to appease more than one of them, making excuses about how hard pregnancy is being on his darling. Christ, he feels a fool, knowing how he’s pandered to Mary’s every whim these past few months, quashing any doubts about her conduct with the thought that her fractiousness just proved how strong their son was growing within her.
All this for a girl! Another useless
girl!
He turns on his heel without a word, stalking away from the still-chattering page.
The hours pass, and still Henry does nothing about his new-born daughter. Oh, he knows he ought to at least visit and name the child so that the announcements can go out, lest tongues start wagging, but he can’t bring himself to, not when he is feeling such a crushing weight of disappointment in the baby’s sex.
At last, as Vespers nears, he knows he can put it off no longer. With dragging feet, he presents himself at the door of Mary’s lying-in chambers.
Mary is asleep. Her sister, Lady Dacre, flushes when she tells him, pleading excuses about it having been a hard birth, one that went through the night and most of the morning, but Henry waves her excuses away with no small degree of relief. At least this way he isn’t likely to lose his temper with Mary and risk unbalancing her already precarious humours even further.
“Don’t trouble yourself to wake the Queen, Lady Dacre,” he shrugs, “I’ll come and see her again, when she’s rested. But if you could point me in the direction of England’s newest Lady, I should be most grateful,” he waves a hand and relief flashes in the younger woman’s eyes.
“Of course, Your Grace,” she curtsies, “Her Highness is over there, in the cradle.”
She nods him in the direction of the fine beech cradle standing in the window embrasure and Henry crosses the room to look down at his new daughter.
Unlike her mother, she is awake, and gurgles up at him, her big blue eyes blinking intently.
She is long for her age, and the fuzz that shows through her lace mobcap is dark – darker than that of any of Henry’s other children – suggesting that she’s going to be a brunette like her sharp-tongued mother.
Still, despite her resemblance to Mary, Henry finds his heart softening at the sight of her. She might be a girl, but at least she’s here and alive. That’s a good sign for the future. After all, a healthy daughter is more than Katherine managed at the first time of trying. And Mary’s still young. There’s no reason the next one shouldn’t be a boy.
“Elizabeth,” he speaks for the first time since laying eyes on the infant and Lady Dacre jumps to attention.
Not for the first time, Henry can’t help but chuckle to himself at the absurdity of just
how many young women at Court bear his mother’s name.
“Not you, Lady Dacre,” he clarifies, nodding towards the cradle, “Elizabeth. We’ll name her Elizabeth, for my mother. Tell the Queen when she wakes.”
“My Lord,” Lady Dacre curtsies and Henry pauses, lost in thought for a moment, before exhaling.
“Well, I suppose if we can have a healthy daughter, we can have a healthy son.”
He leaves Mary’s apartments without another word.
