The Other Henry VIII

The Price of Privilege

Out of nowhere, the soldier stiffened before her. Clara froze. She heard a muffled thump as his sword hit the ground, followed by a flash of milky-white as his eyes rolled back and a pitiful little whimper. Then, he crumpled.
Panting behind him was none other than Lady Susanna Gill, curly brown hair loose in the wind, a thick bough clutched in her hands. Clara dropped her own sword and rushed to Charles' side, tearing a strip of linen from the hem of her chemise as she had done for Cromwell and enveloping his haemorrhaging arm in it. "Susanna," she called breathlessly, her fingers fumbling in the dark, "Susanna, he is losing a lot of blood. Are you able to dress the wound?"

She glanced over her shoulder, only to discover her friend standing over the fallen soldier with a manic glint just visible in her eyes. Clara noticed, for the first time, that the badge upon his scarlet-splattered chest was a symbol of Christ upon the cross: Norfolk's men. She stared at it, transfixed, until Charles' strangled moans brought her back to earth. "You - must be - unbelievably - strong," he spluttered.
"What do you mean?"
"Even - I cannot - lift my - sword - as you do."
"Do not tire yourself," she whispered, though his remark settled deep into her skin, and turned back. "Susanna?"

The man stirred. With a blow to the head like that, he would not be long for this world. "Ask - him - who - shall - rule," spluttered Charles between grunts.
"Who shall rule next?" demanded Susanna, "If your army wins, whom shall they install?" When the man shook his head, hand groping across the grass for something with which to repel her, she lifted her skirts and planted one foot directly into the bloody pulp of his shoulder where Clara had struck him. The man roared a terrible, bone-splintering roar that seemed to shake the very earth upon which they stood, but Susanna did not waver. "Who will rule?"
"Susanna, stop!" exclaimed Clara, "Let him die in —"
"Who?"
"Lord - Roch - ford," he wheezed wetly, too weak even to writhe in pain, "And if - not - him then - Princess... Princess... Princess Clara." Then, with a sickening whine, he fell still.

Susanna removed her foot cautiously. In a splinter of ivory moonlight, Clara saw her lips rub together — though whether out of disgust, unease or satisfaction she could not tell. For a moment she could hardly recognise the young woman that strode towards her, disconcertingly composed and trim, and clambered towards Sir George's flaccid body before they could come within a metre of one another. Her palm felt empty, hungry; it ached for the sword as a glove does a hand. She filled it with her forehead instead. That man must have been lying. They could not make her Queen, surely. Why would they want her? No, no, he must have been deliberately deceitful just to spite them.

Clara pressed the pads of her fingers where the fallen knight's jaw met his neck and found it cold to her touch, flecked with the silky red-gold bristles of a youth who cannot quite manage a beard. He could not have been more than a year older than her. Married, Charles had told her at supper two nights ago, only last year and with a three-month-old son in the cradle. She brushed his eyelids closed with her ring and index fingers. He may have been near insufferable, but he had also been a skilled warrior who had fought valiantly for her protection. And he had died. As a princess, she had grown up peppered with reminders that a great many people would die for her during her lifetime. Too many, an unspeakable, uncountable number, and that she would come to terms with it, in time. But Clara did not think she had ever believed them until now.

"My wife - will never - forgive me," said Charles dolefully from behind, his words punctuated by groans. "George - was her - favourite - brother."

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Edmund had forsaken supper for his own tent at the very first whisper of sunset. Not out of boredom nor lack of appetite, nor even fatigue — although his tired legs were twinging and trembling as though they were about to fall off, he would have stayed if that had been the sole issue. No, it was something else altogether. The night promised to be a clear one, which of course meant a star-speckled sky and perpetual gusts of steely wind; conditions Edmund would prefer to avoid. These days, he was rather unnerved by stars. He could not, of course, deny their beauty, but it was simply a remote, daunting beauty like that of his current wife: too haughty and pernicious for him to enjoy.