Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.

Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and in the hour of our death.

 The sun rises suddenly, weak white winter light creeping up onto the windowsill, gliding across the floor, and finally falling on Mary’s face. It is only then that she realizes she has been there all night.

Kneeling, praying, her fingers stumbling on rosary beads, or curled up like a child on the cold stones, her body shaking, sobbing—perhaps she drifted into sleep, when the tides of her tears had ebbed. She cannot remember. Her body is numb and sore, dried tears stiff on her cheeks and salty when she licks her dry lips.

Morning is unwelcome, strange light intruding on the lonely dark. She rises, stiff legs screaming in protest, to avoid the shaft of sun in her eyes. Involuntary, possessed, she reaches once more for the rosary. Her left hand cradles the smooth silver beads, while her right clutches the crucifix, the sharp dagger of its tip digging into her palm.

Mary remembers the first time she stayed awake until the new day dawned.

Easter Vigil; she was six years old. In the queen’s pew, nestled between her mother and the Countess Salisbury, she fidgeted with her skirts, pinching the grass-green silk between her small fingers. Salisbury had nudged her, nodding towards the priests celebrating Mass.

“Listen to the Latin, Mary,” her governess had whispered.“You need to stay still so we can all focus.”

She dozed more than once against Salisbury’s shoulder, but the choir always called her back.

Above the altar, the stained-glass glowed scarlet, blushing around the figure of Jesus on the cross, as the sun finally shone through.

“Surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia!” Cardinal Wolsey’s deep bellow broke the expectant hush.

The Lord is risen indeed.

The chapel erupted in response, worshipers embracing each other. In the king’s pew, her father stood, candlelight glinting off the gold embroidery on his doublet. Mary flung her arms exultantly around her mother, than looked up to see that the queen was crying.

“Mama? Why are you sad? It’s Easter!”

Her mother kissed her on the forehead.

“I’m not upset, mi vida Maria. These are joyful tears. For new life.”

The queen’s hand strayed to her stomach, where Mary knew her little brother or sister was, even if it was too early to see or feel. She wrapped her arms tighter around her mother, closing her eyes, and prayed with all her heart that this baby would make it into the world.

Now, clinging to her rosary, Mary mouths the comfortable words as she has hundreds of times this night alone, thousands of times before. She wonders if, somewhere in England, other faithful have heard the news, if any renegade priest will say a Mass for the repose of the soul of her mother. If they haven’t all been hanged. The common folk, she’s heard in whispers, still pray for Queen Catherine. Not Queen Anne, not for them.

Perhaps she is the only one weeping. The only one saying rosaries. The only one mourning.

Surely her father…she cannot let herself hope.

She will pray all the harder, for the chance that she is alone.

Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum.

Adveniat regnum tuum.

Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come.

Thy will be done, on earth as in heaven.

On the third day, Mary comes down from her prison-sanctuary, high in the drafty aeries of Hatfield Palace. She returns to her tasks, hands willing even as her mind is numb. She mingles with the others, with the servants, yet she feels as if a veil were draped between them. Grief, not station, sets her apart now.

The others leave her be, and there are not many of them now, with only a skeleton staff left at Hatfield when Mary’s sister—not the princess, Mary will not call her princess—is at court for the holidays. Alone, she wanders through the empty halls. There is something painfully secure in her solitude.

On the fourth day, she props open the shutters of a third-story window and sits on the sill. With her skirts wadded up around her waist, she dangles her legs against the stone wall outside. Swathed in woolen stockings, the cold January wind barely tickles her skin. Nearsighted as she is, she can still see the gaps where the clouds pull apart and reveal the brilliant blue beneath.

The ground, far below, is all tramped-down mud and old, blackened snow, ugly and mundane. She could fall, she thinks idly. Or fly; heaven must be lovely this time of year. Instead, she scrambles back, boots clattering on the window’s edge, and runs away, leaving the window open. Sprinting down the hallway, she might scream, but she’s too much a coward. To be so quiet feels remarkably like dying; despite it all, she still wants to live.

On the fifth day, Ambassador Chapuys rides up the Hatfield drive in the pelting winter rain. When Mary hears she has a visitor, she knows immediately who, and runs again.

This time, her feet are flying and her heart is soaring, for the first time since she heard of her mother’s death. This time, she is running to, not from. When she halts in the entrance-way, her breath comes in shallow gasps and she is light-headed, not from the exertion so much as the great surge of feeling overcoming her.

Chapuys is nearly as bedraggled as his exhausted horse, with half-frozen droplets of sleet rolling off his hat’s wide, flat brim and clinging to his short-cropped beard. She could almost weep to see his dear, familiar face. Halting on the threshold, she finds that she does blink back tears, even as she smiles, bright and tremulous.

There are still servants in the entrance hall, watching curiously, and even though the heads of household are at court, there are doubtless spies of Anne’s about. So Mary is grateful when Chapuys, after carefully phrased formal greetings and condolences, gives her a sad, soft-eyed smile, and invites her to fetch her hood and walk with him.

Potential eavesdroppers would be daring indeed to venture into the rain-drenched gardens after them, and could not come close enough to hear them over the teeming, blustering sky. Even though raindrops carve frigid paths down Mary’s cheeks and the wind tears strands of her hair from underneath its wrappings, it is oddly peaceful in the winter garden. Stripped-bare branches curl towards the clouds, and only the boxwood hedge maze remains green, albeit battered.

Leading her to stand in its entrance, Chapuys turns to face her, and lets his diplomat’s mask drop. The lines of his face deepen with grief, and his warm dark eyes beseech and comfort all at once.

“Your Highness—Mary—I could not be more pained, and yet I know you must feel this loss deeper than I. Anything you want to know, you may ask. I have seen much more of this awful affair than I would have liked.”

“Did you get to see her? Before she died?”

“I did. I came when she sent for me, and stayed with her as long as I was able. I regret to say the emperor’s orders forced me to return to court when your mother’s illness seemed, for a time, to abate. But I know her ladies loved and cared for her. She was in good hands—in God’s as well as theirs.”

Mary looks down at the ground, the water pooling softly in crevices between cobblestones.

“Was she in pain?”

A silly question, perhaps. She knows more than many how much it hurts to be ill, and she also knows her mother has been in pain for years now, in more ways than one.

Chapuys’ gaze is open and honest, even as he weighs his words.

“Not as much as she had been, not at the end. We spoke mainly of you and her hopes for you. Of her love.”

Mary nods shakily. She cannot give any more acknowledgement, for fear her heart will burst. After a minute, she forces out another query.

“And you were at court, when—when she died?”

“Yes, I was.”

Mary bites her lip, hesitant.

“Did the king mourn her?”

Chapuys, for the first time, looks away, gazing past her at the empty trees.

“I can’t pretend to know the hearts of others.”

Mary can barely hear his faltering voice over the wind. She steps closer, impulsively catching his hands in hers. She can feel his body stiffen, even through that small connection.

“Tell me, please. Did my father mourn my mother?”

He still will not look her in the eye, and his voice, when he speaks, is both flat and bitter.

“Your father and his concubine…they rejoiced, Your Highness. Dressed all in yellow and dancing through the palace halls.”

Despite everything, the news hits like a thunderbolt. Mary feels her knees buckle; Chapuys holds her steady, half propping her up, half embracing her.

“Mary, I am so, so sorry.”

“My God,” Mary gasps. “My God, he is truly lost.”

The ambassador’s voice is quiet and weary and strong, all at once.

“I fear that he may be.”

Mary lets herself cry then, in his arms at the beginning of the maze. She cries until she is limp and breathless, cradled oddly in his stiff embrace, and maybe it’s the rain but Chapuys is crying too.

“Thank you,” she whispers after a long time.

“I wish you did not have to hear such things, from me or anyone else.”

“I mean it. I would know nothing about what my father has done to me and to my mother and to his people, if not for you. I would not have been able to communicate with my mother, if not for you. You may be my cousin the emperor’s advisor in title, but I do believe you are mine in heart. You may be my only friend and ally, but I do believe there could be none better.”

Chapuys steps away from her, looking at her levelly.

“I feel it is my duty—not my orders, but something more than earthly. Your mother was the truest queen I have ever known, even when stripped of her title and her crown, and I was proud to do my part for her, heavy as the duty was.”

He pauses, looking up at the turmoil in the sky, then meets her eyes once more.

"These are dark times, and darker still now that your mother has passed, but I believe there is hope for us all yet. I know that someday, this country will have a queen worthy of it again, and a queen regnant at that—you, Your Highness. And I will do everything in my power to make that happen.

Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiæ.

Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.

Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevæ.

Hail, O Queen, mother of mercy.

Hail, our life, our strength, and our hope.

To thee do we cry,

Banished children of Eve.

On the tenth day after Epiphany—the ninth day after the death of the queen—little Elizabeth and her retinue come home to Hatfield.

Lined up with the others to receive her sister outside, Mary wraps her shawl tighter around herself and shivers, kicking up dust with numb and jittery feet. Looking at the spectacle now, she really sees what a process it is for a royal princess to take up residence. Heavy-laden wagons trundle up the drive, with high-stepping horses alongside. Green-and-white Tudor banners snap in the brisk breeze.

Elizabeth’s coach, rolling to a halt in the thick of everything, is hung entirely in green and white, and festooned with ribboned rosettes. When the door is opened, the whole line bows or curtsies. The little girl’s nurse tries to wrap her charge in a rich purple cloak on the way down the coach steps. Elizabeth squirms away from her ministrations and toddles off, her sharp, curious black eyes scanning the greeting party.

Her little dress is black as well, velvet with white satin trimmings, and a satin hood restraining her unruly curls. Anne has always favored such dramatic coloring. Mary thinks it suits Elizabeth more, with her bright red-gold hair, so much like her own, and like the king’s.

She thinks of Elizabeth clad in joyful yellow, twirling in Anne’s arms while that horrible witch rejoices at the death of Mary’s own mother. Perhaps the king carried her on his shoulders as he used to carry Mary.

She bites her lip until she tastes blood; anything to get the picture out of her mind.

Ahead of her, Elizabeth is still trying to avoid being swaddled up, racing ahead with her chubby little legs pumping furiously. Mary can’t help but smile at her antics, despite the blood in her mouth.

“Ma’y!” her baby sister yells, catching sight of her.

When she runs over, the women on either side curtsy deeply. Mary drops down on one knee and holds out her arms.

Elizabeth is getting too heavy to pick up comfortably now, but she manages, letting her sister shower her with messy kisses as she hoists her up on one hip.

After a moment, Elizabeth leans back to look at her, and her giggles slowly fade.

“Why you c’ying?”

Her voice is plaintive, one plump hand reaching out and patting Mary’s cheek clumsily.

“You sad?”

She sounds as if she’s about to cry herself. Mary smiles at her, reassuring.

“No, dear heart, these are happy tears. I missed you.”

Elizabeth nods decisively. All is right again in her world. She throws her arms around Mary’s neck.

“I miss you too.”