He closed his eyes for a moment. He disliked being called Eddie, and he disliked being talked down to like he was a toddler in short tights, but he tolerated it from Mary. He’d always felt a bit sorry for his sisters, what with his father declaring them bastards and all. The year that his father had discovered his animal form—the Year of the Lion, the people called it—King Henry VIII had also decided that the king got to make all the rules, so he’d annulled his marriage to Mary’s mother and sent her off to a convent to live out the rest of her days, all so he could marry Bess’s mother, one of the more attractive ladies-in-waiting. But when Wife #2 failed to produce a male heir, and rumors started to circulate that Queen Anne was an E?ian who every so often transformed into a black cat so she could slip down the castle stairs into the court minstrel’s bedchambers, the king had her head chopped off. Wife #3 (Edward’s mother) had done everything right; namely, she’d produced a child with the correct genitalia to be a future ruler of England, and then, because she was never one to stick around to gloat, she’d promptly died. King Henry had gone on to have three more wives (respectively: annulled, beheaded, and the lucky one who’d outlived him, ha), but no more children.
So it had just been the three of them—Mary, Bess, and Edward—as far as royal spawn went, and they’d been their own brand of a mismatched family, since their father was possibly insane and definitely dangerous even when he wasn’t a lion, and their mothers were all dead or exiled. They’d always got on fairly well, mainly because there had never been any competition between them over who was meant to wear the crown. Edward was the clear choice. He had the boy parts.
He’d been king since he was nine years old. He could only faintly remember a time when he wasn’t king, in fact, and until today he’d always felt that monarchy rather suited him. But a fat lot of good being king was doing him now, he thought bitterly. He would have rather been born a commoner, a blacksmith’s son, perhaps. Then he might have already had a bit of fun before he shuffled off this mortal coil. At least he would have had an opportunity to kiss a girl.
“How are you feeling, really?” Mary asked solemnly. Mary said everything solemnly.
“Afflicted,” he answered.
This produced the ghost of a smile from Bess, but Mary just shook her head mournfully. Mary never laughed at his jokes. He and Bess had been calling her Fuddy-Duddy Mary behind her back for years, because she was always so cheerless about everything. The only time he ever saw Mary enjoy herself was when some traitor was beheaded or some poor E?ian got burned at the stake. His sister was surprisingly bloodthirsty when it came to E?ians.
“‘The Affliction’ took my mother, you know.” Mary wrung her handkerchief between her hands fretfully.
“I know.” He’d always thought Queen Catherine had died more of a broken heart than any physical malady, although he supposed that a broken heart often led to a broken body.
He wouldn’t have a chance to get his heart broken, he thought, a fresh wave of self-pity washing over him. He was never going to fall in love.
“It’s a dreadful way to die,” Mary continued. “You cough and cough until you cough your lungs right out.”
“Thank you. That’s very comforting,” he said.
Bess, who’d always been a quiet one next to her solemnly loquacious sister, shot Mary a sharp look and laid her gloved hand over Edward’s. “Is there anything we can do for you?”
He shrugged. His eyes burned, and he told himself that he was definitely not going to cry about this whole dying thing, because crying was for girls and wee little babies and not for kings, and besides, crying wouldn’t change anything.
Bess squeezed his hand.
He squeezed back, definitely not crying, and recommenced pondering the view outside the window and the Meaning of Life.
Life is short.
And then you die.
Shortly. Six months, a year at best. Which seemed like an awfully small amount of time. Last summer, a famous Italian astrologer had done Edward’s horoscope, after which he had announced that the king would live forty more years.
Apparently famous Italian astrologers were big, fat liars.
“But at least you can rest assured knowing that everything will be all right once you’ve gone,” Mary said solemnly.
He turned to look at her. “What?”
“With the kingdom, I mean,” she added even more solemnly. “The kingdom will be in good hands.”
He hadn’t really given much thought to the kingdom. Or any thought, truthfully. He’d been too busy contemplating the idea of coughing his lungs right out, and then being too dead to care.
“Mary,” Bess chided. “Now is not the time for politics.”
Before Mary could argue (and by the look on her face, she was definitely going to argue that now was always the time for politics), a knock sounded on the door. Edward called, “Come in,” and John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Lord President of the King’s High Privy Council, stuck his great eagle nose into the room.
“Ah, Your Majesty, I thought I’d find you up here,” he said when he spotted Edward. His gaze swept hurriedly over Mary and Bess like he couldn’t be bothered taking the time to really see them. “Princess Mary. Princess Elizabeth. You’re both looking well.” He turned to Edward. “Your Majesty, I wonder if I might have a word.”
“You may have several,” Edward said.
“In private,” Lord Dudley clarified. “In the council room.”
Edward stood and brushed off his pants. He nodded to his sisters, and they dropped into their courtly curtsies. Then he allowed Lord Dudley to lead him down the stairs and across the palace’s long series of hallways into the king’s council chamber, where the king’s advisors normally spent hours each day filling out the appropriate royal paperwork for the running of the country and making all the decisions. The king himself never spent much time in this room, unless there was a document that required his signature, or some other important matter that required his personal attention. Which wasn’t often.