The Other Elizabeth

Chapter XVIII: October 1456- Winter 1457

Chapter XVIII: October 1456- Winter 1457 

Little Easton, Essex, England 

"Elizabeth, do go see who is cantering up the road so hastily?" Isabel says. We are amiable toward one another now, but my childhood self will not forget her slights, her sending Florence off to a nunnery, or the little baby I had born so long ago named for her, who is in Heaven with her sibling.

Indeed, my amorous night with Henry last year proved fruitful, and my quick suspicions when my courses failed to show were true. I was so overjoyed- I could have a child at last, the heir for our anxious families, a child whom I could dote on dearly. If it was a boy, it was to be our little Harry, for the child's father and grandsire; although I am sure my father would be disappointed the child wasn't named after him. If it was to be a girl, we were to name her Eleanor, after the Louvaine heiress to Little Easton here, where I am currently residing, whose blood runs through the Bourchier veins and whose coat of arms are proudly emblazoned in the adjacent church and in the manor.

But whether I bore a little Harry or Eleanor, I confess I cannot tell, for after four months I miscarried. I started bleeding a few days before, and I knew it would occur. I sat in my bedchamber sobbing as the scarlet pooled out of me, as if I were dying. I did wonder if I would. I felt so shamed- I could not even carry this child to full term, I killed my child again inside me- I failed. Another babe of mine dead- although the horrifying bundle I saw Bessie carry away, grimacing, could hardly be called a proper mortal at all- so gruesomely malformed was it. How could I have been carrying something such as that? I watched her carry my child out. I could do nothing. I have now lost two children, I have miscarried like my mother, and at last, I know what she must feel. What is so wrong with me that I should not produce healthy children? Why? Why? Why...? What sins does God still believe I must confess? Isabel tells me gently I am still young, and for some women it takes a while for a strong child to be born, and my loss was due to my deep distress concerning Henry.

Henry had grown into a man fully and was doubtless changed, but from that day William brought him back to me (the Viscount having gone to London, as I later found out) he was never the same. We decided to take him to Isabel, and the two of us, along with the young nurses, have cared for him. He remained delirious for a few weeks as we treated to the awful hole in his right thigh, which never seized to pour with blood. I thought he could die and spent many sleepless nights. He had a high fever and would not utter a word, moaning, tossing in the sheets. I had to tell him I had miscarried, but there was a mist in his eyes, as if he did not truly understand. The nurses whispered he had become mad like King Henry, for after York was made Constable of England and had placed his allies in the other positions about him, the King again fell to insanity and my uncle, swiftly and smoothly, was Protector of the Realm once more. This is as close as he will probably get to becoming the King, and hopefully he is content, for the war he has waged has cost me my husband, my Henry. I regret our time we spent arguing even more so.

For the sleeping man behind me is not the Henry I know. He sleeps most of the day, eats very little, (and has thinned most worryingly) and his wound, still bandaged and smelling the most putrid of scents, prevents us from having intercourse. Therefore, I am a childless woman with a husband who can barely walk unless aided. We live as we did when we first moved to Worlington, and now, as the months have folded into one another, he grows more reclusive, and as I become a young lady, I think of our trifling romance caught in the heat of the war when I was still very much headstrong. I find him slipping away from me, for I was most melancholy after my miscarriage. How can I have lost my child, before I even gave birth to it, my little Harry or my little Eleanor?

How can I have also lost my half-aunt Lizzy? I had not seen her for so long and now I never will. She is just gone... I never had one moment to say goodbye, my doting, loving aunt of my childhood. How can a person just... go? It hurt me particularly as I could not go to pay my last respects, I, her namesake. How is my Lord Father feeling, knowing his sister has slipped away, his own brother having died young, and had he not, my father would have just been some obscure military man and not a Baron, for my Father was never destined to inherit the barony of Scales in the first place. I know not of her exact age, but she can only have been in the fourth or fifth decade of her life. I shall think of her as the merry person I knew her to be than a pile of bones dying from a wasting sickness. Her death makes me realise our years are precious, and look at how I have spent mine...