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September 5, 1548
-FEVERISH, SWEATING, hot, damp, uncomfortable...Catherine wondered if this was how Jane Seymour had felt, moments before her death.
She still had her wits about her, though; just barely. Catherine Parr was reaching her life's end.
It was just six days after she had given birth to her daughter Mary; her first child! And now, it seemed, God was content in making that child motherless so soon. Even Jane Seymour hadn't gone so quickly.
Where was Thomas, the love of her life, her husband? Catherine looked around the darkened room. The windows were shut tight, with the red curtains drawn, so the room was cast in a slightly red glow.
Red, like blood. Catherine frowned, her breathing laboured.
She was glad to escape Henry VIII and his tyranny; everyone was. He had left her a generous allowance, because Catherine had done her duty well. She had presided over Edward and Elizabeth's education, and restored Mary and Elizabeth to the line of succession. She had taken good care of them, befriending them all, and she warily tread through the thin line of her marriage, making sure to coat everything in honey just for her moody, temperament husband.
Catherine had come into trouble when some men were wanting to arrest her for being secretly Protestant...but she had appeased Henry by playing the submissive wife, begging on her knees in front of the council. "I am yours to command," she had said, head bowed down, "I am eternally yours, my King. I would never do anything against you...and if I ever did, I do so you yourself can guide me in my lost state."
Her little speech had done its job. Henry wouldn't have her arrested, and this had lasted until his death.
It was about a week and a bit when she was called to Henry's beside, along with his eldest daughter Mary, who looked grimmer than ever at seeing her ill father.
He looked worse than ever; his face was pudgy with rolls of fat; his eyes were dark, mean slits; his hair was greying, the stench that wafted from him stunk to the high heavens, and Catherine forced herself to not look at his lame leg where the injury festered.
"Catherine...my dear, loyal, wife," Henry murmured, touching her hand. Catherine wanted to flinch away, but she held herself. She looked her husband right in the eyes. "Henry, my dear." She dared not utter "You look much better," since he'd see through the lie.
"It seems..." Henry broke off and coughed loudly, his physicians looking worried. "It seems God has seen fit to...to part me from you..." There was sheer emotion in his words; Catherine herself was shocked that tears sprung to her eyes.
"N-no, my King-" She didn't know why she was crying for this tyrant, for this old, fat, sick man who inflicted so much pain on others-perhaps, he was just misunderstood? "Henry," Catherine spluttered, the tears brimming her eyes.
Henry shook and trembled. "No," he gurgled, his breath heavy. "No; be gone from me, Catherine."
Mary spoke at last. "Father...Father, I..." But Henry spurned her as well. "No; no, be gone from me. Both of you. I cannot...do not look on me, not like this, no; be gone-"
And so Catherine took her despairing daughter's hand and fled from the chamber. She hastily looked at Mary once they were both outside; there was hopeless sorrow on her once-beautiful face.
"Do not sorrow," Catherine tried, controlling her tears and emotions at last. She touched Mary's shoulder. Mary looked up at her with dark, grim eyes. "Even if...even with all he's done to me and my...my Mother...I, I still-"
YOU ARE READING
The Six
Historical Fiction'Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived." In this way, the six wives of Henry VIII were remembered not for how they lived, but in the way they died. It is impossible to know exactly what they were thinking or had to go through, in h...
