The Boleyn Prince

Chapter 2

"Sweetheart!" Henry burst into the birthing room, snatching her hand that was cupped under their swaddled son and smothered it in kisses.

In a flash, he was her devoted love once more. The trials and troubles of the last three years had completely melted away, like snow in the sunshine. He looked at her with the same adoration he had during the first years of their courtship.

"My dearest lord," she purred, offering him a smile. Henry loved it when she was deferentially affectionate to him. He had spent so long proclaiming himself her servant in waiting for this moment.

"I have a son! My son!" The King repeated the words to himself as if he could not believe them. After twenty years of struggling, he finally had his longed-for heir.

"Yes, My Lord, you have a son. And he has the golden hair of his father." She smoothed back the gold cloth from the child's head to give the proud father a better look.

"We must give our golden prince his name," Henry murmured softly, enraptured at the sight of the wrinkled little face.

"I remit that honour to Your Majesty," Anne conceded begrudgingly. She would have liked to have called him George after her brother. The only ally that she could truly and wholeheartedly trust. But she knew Henry was no slave to sentiment. This child would have a regal name. A name befitting his station as a future King of England.

"Henry!" Her husband declared; his smiling gaze still fixed on his newborn son. "He shall be called Henry, after my father. Just as Elizabeth was named for my mother."

Anne tried to accept the name with good grace. Deep down she knew that Henry would choose his own name to glorify his son, yet a part of her hoped that he might allow her to choose. Still, she reasoned to herself. His name was not what was the most important, but the titles that Henry would confer upon him. When Mary had been his only hair, he had all but created her Princess of Wales in her own right and sent her there to learn the art of statecraft. He had never honoured Elizabeth so. He was waiting for a son. This son. It was now free to be bestowed on Henry. Anne would make sure of it.
Anne suspected that Elizabeth had never quite held the same place in his heart that his eldest daughter had.

Mary had been born when her mother was still young. Younger than Anne had been when she had first given birth. When the disappointment of her gender was overlooked because she was the promise of more of what was to come. Healthy children.

Anne had promised Henry a son from the first moment she had agreed to become his wife. The temptation of a legitimate and healthy son had been one of the driving forces in their relationship and what had kept her from becoming his mistress. Katharine had failed to provide any more living children after Mary's birth and by the time Henry was courting Anne, was past being capable of it. She was no use as Queen, but Anne, years younger than her mistress, offered the desperate King a lifeline to continue the Tudor line. She had conceived the first time they lay together.
"Such good fortune has to be a sign of God's blessing," she had told the King when she broke the news of her condition to him. She had boasted of her ripe belly to anyone who would listen, Astrologers and soothsayers had been summoned from all corners of the country. All had predicted the child she carried was a boy. However, it was not to be. Elizabeth was healthy but she was not the boy her father had craved. He had taken her in his arms, blessed her and thanked his wife for her efforts, but Anne could see he was humiliated. He never spoke as warmly of Elizabeth as he had Mary. He did not visit her residences as often as he had Marys, nor did he spend as much time with her as he had his eldest daughter.

"Perhaps now he will be more affectionate to her," Anne thought as she watched Henry traipse the floor of the confinement chamber with his son in his arms. He was clearly enraptured. Surely, he would not deny his son the title of Prince of Wales. She was tempted to bring up the matter now. But begrudgingly resigned herself to peace. The labour had been long and hard. More so than with Elizabeth. She longed to have the windows of her chambers thrown open to let out some of the thick musty air. She was exhausted and knew if she encountered Henry's resistance, she would need all her strength to put her argument across effectively.

"You are well?" He enquired of her at last, still refusing to take his eyes off his newborn son.

"I am very well, my lord. Thank you. To have done this for you makes me the happiest I have ever been in my life."

"The most happy?" He quoted her official motto.

"Of course," she replied with a laugh. "The Most Happy!"

Henry was the first of the visitors to Anne's bedchamber, but he was not the last. Against all protocols, she allowed her brother George permission into the room.
Tradition laid down by the King's infinitely pious grandmother Lady Margaret Beaufort had forbidden any male visitors during a Queen's confinement. But Anne was in the mood for breaking the rules. She felt invincible. As though nothing could touch her and resolved to do as she pleased.

"Madonna and child," he teased, slouched against the doorway.

"You are drunk!" she scolded him.

"The entire court is drunk," he smiled. "Raising a drink to the new Prince Henry. They all want to ingratiate themselves with the uncle of the future King. How can I refuse?"

"I didn't think you could be so cheaply bought," She teased him.

"You've seen my wife," he wrinkled his nose in revulsion as he dropped down on the large bed. "Only a fortune could induce any man to marry her."

Anne was all too aware of her brother's disdain for his wife, Jane Parker. Neither of them had much time for her. She was a queer sort of woman with a deceitful streak. Something Anne had attempted to utilise in the first year of her marriage when the king's eye had fallen upon one of her ladies in waiting. Together they had schemed to get the girl sent from court. Until Henry had caught wind of their plot and Jane had been packed off to the country to cool her heels, whilst Anne was frozen out of Henry's favour for a month.

"Shall I have her...put away?" Anne joked.

George bolted upright. His eyes lit up at the idea. "Now there's a thought! I could bag myself a nice young heiress with castles and land. Or a foreign Princess even. Now I am the uncle of the future King of England." He moved up the bed to get a better look at his new nephew, his clumsy hand pulling at the gold swaddling cloth, knocking the prince's feet.

Playfully slapping his hand away, lest he wake the sleeping baby, Anne hit upon an idea. "Perhaps, we could marry you to the Lady Mary?"

Georges' eyes widened in surprise. The Lady Mary would certainly be a catch for any man, despite her fallen status. She was not conventionally beautiful, with her thin figure and deep voice. But she possessed all the graces of a child raised as a princess.

He raised his gaze to match his sisters' dark eyes and inquisitive look. His tilt of the head and raised eyebrow convinced her that she had found the ideal way to deal with Henry's irritating daughter. Smiling to herself, she lowered her gaze down to the exquisite sight of her sleeping son.