The Third Tudor Princess

Mercy

May 17, 1536

King Henry was furious. He had been so close to freeing himself of that whore, only for the physician to bring him the news that she was with child. 

He was forced to dismiss the idea that she had payed a country doctor to lie, in hopes that he would naively believe that the babe was his and reinstate her as Queen, preying on his desperation for a male heir to escape punishment for her crimes and put her bastard on the throne of England. No sane man in England would agree to help the wife that the King had condemned for adultery and treason, a woman reviled by almost every important power in Europe, especially a simple common physician, to whom it mattered little who sat by Henry's side as his Queen. So, the man was telling him the truth.

The whore was once again with child. That in and of itself didn't surprise him. With as many lovers as she had, over one hundred if Cromwell was to be believed, he would have been more surprised if she hadn't concieved. The pregnancy, however, posed problems for her execution. He couldn't execute her while she carried her child as the babe, though concieved from an adulterous, treasonous union, was innocent, he also very much did not wish to pardon her. If she was alive, even living as far away from court as he could place her, he was not so foolish as to believe that there would not still be some faction, however small, to champion her as Queen and Elizabeth as the Princess, and call into question the legitimacy of his children by Jane. And that he could not allow! His beloved Jane deserved nothing but the most honorable and unassailable of unions, and he was determined that he would give that to her.

Logically, he knew that pardoning her would hardly be a bad choice. Nobody would judge a man who wanted to grant clemency to a woman whom he had passionately loved for over a decade. But he refused to let the woman who had betrayed the greatest king in Chrisendom live! She had wounded his pride and made a fool out of him, and for that, she needed to die. If she lived, and her child was a son, there would be foolish, wrong-headed people who would want him to take her back as his wife and the boy as his heir, displacing his beloved Jane and whatever children she may have borne him for a whore and a bastard. If she was granted mercy, there could be rebellion that favored the son of a traitor over a trueborn prince, son of the King and his new Queen. God forbid the kingdom fall back into civil war, less than a century after Henry's father had unified the warring houses, all due to one woman.

There was another reason that he feared her bearing a son, but it was one he did not wish to contemplate. 

Soon, the King was pulled out of his thoughts by the arrival of his Chancellor.

"Thomas, I trust you have heard the news."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"What should I do? I can't risk my immortal soul by killing an innocent child, but allowing her to live could mean another civil war." The King bemoaned his struggles to his secretary.

"Your Majesty, I am happy to report that Archbishop Cranmer has found that your marriage to Anne Boleyn is null and void, on account of your prior carnal knowledge of her sister, Mary. Therefore, even if someone was so mislead as to believe that her child was yours, that child would still be a bastard, and unable to threaten the rights of any legitimate children by your new Queen." 

Thank the Lord for Cranmer! Now he could set her free quietly, sending her to her lands in Pembroke to have the child, and be free to marry Jane! He supposed that, for her, a lifetime of exile away from the masques and feasts of court, which she had delighted in ever since her childhood in France, would be a fitting enough punishment for her wantoness. He would even be so merciful as to allow her child, Elizabeth, to accompany her. 

He told this plan to Cromwell, asking him to see it done, and added a final request to ask Lady Jane Seymour to come to him as soon as she could.

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The Tower

He was setting her free. He had seen to it that their marriage was declared invalid, and he was setting her free. She was to live the rest of her days at Pembroke castle, with her Elizabeth and her unborn child accompanying her. When Cromwell had come to tell her of her fate, he had stressed that she could never return to court, on pain of instant rearrest and execution, without express permission from the King. Like she would want to! If anyone could tell her a reason why she would want to see the husband who abandoned her and killed her brother, the man who had made the charges, and the woman who had stolen her throne and the man she loved, she would be glad to hear it! Although, Henry was probably vain enough to view lifelong banishment from his presence as a fate worse than the sword. 

She could not fathom why he was being so merciful. He was treating her better than he had treated Katherine, a Princess of Spain and niece of the Emperor. He was putting her up as mistress of a castle, where she would have a noble title, servants, and, most importantly, her beloved daughter. He surely knew that casting aside a hated woman for one who wished to restore England to the Pope and Lady Mary as heir would be a far less inflammatory act than casting aside his wife of over two decades for a reformer, and an Earl's daughter at that, but he was going out of his way to make sure she was comfortable, and could keep her daughter. Nothing could make up for the loss of her brother and friends, but, by the looks of things, she was going to have a quiet life in the country, which sounded very appealing. 

Perhaps he knew that there was no one who would fight for her children as heir over Seymour's. Perhaps he knew how hated she was. 

That was the only explanation she would entertain for the clemency he was showing her.

As she took her first step into the carriage that would carry her to Pembroke, she felt a certain lightness that she hadn't felt since before Elizabeth was born.

She was leaving the court, and now, her only ambition was to keep her children safe.

Even if the person she was keeping them safe from was their father.