Winter's Consort

Chapter Three

"He is with god now, Cis. He is safe." Elizabeth smiled at Cecily as she held her sister in her arms. Cecily's rested on Elizabeth's shoulder as the tears ran down her cheeks. Elizabeth did not really know where Cecily's husband was. He may have died on that muddy battlefield at Bosworth, but it was just as possible that he escaped and is hiding in Flanders or somewhere else across the sea. It is best to presume the worse, that way they could only be relieved by the news and not saddened.

"But, what if I am with child? What if I bare a traitors child?" Cecily sniffed holding her stomach. "I don't want to be a mother." Elizabeth wanted to laugh a little at her, her stomach was still flat, flatter than Elizabeth's own, as it always had been and Elizabeth had never been with a man. Cecily was not with child.

"And you won't. Mother would be able to tell you if you were with child." Elizabeth soothed Cecily as she kissed the top of her head. "The new king shall have the marriage annulled by the pope. You simply say it was not consummated and then you may marry another."

"But if I bear his child. I his son grows within me?" Cecily whimpered. "And if he lives? If he escaped to Flanders? What am I to do with this child?" She seemed to be attached to the fantasy that would ruin her if it were true.

"Cis, you are not with child. Look at your stomach it is flatter than ever." Elizabeth tried to make her laugh. "It shall not help, however, if you continue to refuse to eat. You are making me look fat." That time she got a slight smile. So Elizabeth puffed out her cheeks to empathise her fatness and she got a laugh. "I'm fat Queen Bess." She said trying to keep her mouth full of air. She wasn't queen yet. She knew that at any moment Henry Tudor could deny her betrothal but she also new he couldn't. She had a better claim to the throne than him, as did all her sisters. She was her fathers heir. If he didn't marry her he'd have a war, people would fight for Elizabeth. But if he fathered her son and York's heir, then York and Lancaster would be united in Tudor.

"Fat Queen Bess." Elizabeth chuckled again, but she had to stop for she too was laughing. So was Cecily. At least she is happy.

"Don't." Cecily half laughed nudging her sister. Elizabeth didn't think that the two of them had smiled quite so brightly as they did that day since the death of their father. Not that they had anything to smile about before that point and there was no time for joking.

Their mother scuttled into the girls chamber with their younger sisters, Anne, Catherine and Bridget. Little Anne looked at Elizabeth hopefully. It had been 'Little Anne' forever but she was not so little any more. Not only had she grown a good few inches, but she was rather firm with herself now, she didn't cry at all, not even when she cut open her arm after falling on the steps. Elizabeth supposed the time they spent isolated in sanctuary changed the younger ones more than it did Cecily and her. They had been there before, they assured themselves it would be the same again that they would be freed soon enough. But it had been a long wait.

Then again, none of them cried, at least they tried not to. In truth, it was for their mother. They wanted her to be happy. She had lost so much.

They were always weary around her in those days. Tiptoeing about like they were in the fear they may wake a monster; and to young girls that what she was when she shouted. When she told them off. When she herself fell into floods of tears and screamed the names of their father and brothers. When she remembered they were dead.

Anne sat beside Cecily and Elizabeth, the other two still clung to their mother. For a moment they all stood their in silence. Their mother was once a queen and they were all princesses. They were nothing any more. Not after what uncle Richard did to them. Elizabeth and her sisters were just king Edward's bastards.

"You would do well to get some air." Their mother remarked to fill the silence. Elizabeth remembered how she hated to be alone. The silence amongst them must have terrified her for that moment. Elizabeth smiled at her mother. "You can perhaps go out into the gardens. You are not the prisoners of your uncle anymore."