Hello there fanfiction! Welcome to the Pilot chapter of a story I hope to pick up and finish someday. Do not get your hopes up for a second chapter very soon, as this is just a sample of what I may want to write later on in the future. My focus is still very set on my other story.

So please do not get mad if I don't update this one for a very long time, I just wanted all of you to read it and tell me what you think about it before I even begin to write another chapter. This idea would not leave me alone, and I just needed to put it out somehow and see if anyone else thought it was a good idea to continue.

Am I making any sense? I hope I am. Anyways, without any further a do, I present to you my story 'The Stolen Prince' in it's Pilot chapter.

It was a dark, cloudy night. There was not a single thing to be heard other than the wails of a baby boy and the loud sound of horse hooves. The baby's captors had tried everything to hush him. He was not just any baby boy after all. He was Henry, Duke of Cornwall, the son of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. He was precious cargo, he was dangerous cargo.

If anyone ever found them with the young prince in their arms, they would be tortured to the extend of terror. That is not to say that stopped them from stealing the boy and placing a dead, pseudo 'prince' in his place. They were getting paid real good money for this, they were going to be wealthy for this!

"How much long until we reach the village?" Susan Greene asked her husband.

"Not much longer Susan, just please make the boy stop crying, if anyone were to find us, we'd be placed on a stake before tomorrow's nightfall." Susan did everything to calm the baby. She rocked him. She sang him a lullaby. But it was to no avail, the stolen prince continued to cry until he fell asleep from all his wailing half way through their journey.

It was nearing dawn when they reached their tired village. Manchester had a good semi-stable community, but it was not as great as the grand city of London, or even the towns of York or Canterbury. Susan held on the little bundle tightly as she and George exited their carriage quietly and quickly rushed into their home. As promised there was a purse of coins on their table. Never had they wanted to be traitors, especially not to the gracious Queen Katherine, but they were in desperate need of money, and of a son.

The queen could always have more children, but Susan could never bear another child again. This baby boy was the answer to all their questions. They felt sorry for what they did, but decided it had been God's way.

Susan strode to the other side of the room to where the bassinet of that had belonged to her own, now dead, baby boy. She felt tears sting in her eyes. That was the baby they had placed in the prince's own bassinet back at Richmond fool an entire country.

As Susan was about to set little Henry down a sense of guilt traveled up her spine. She turned to face her husband. "George, what if they find us? They will kill us!"

George shook his head. "They won't find us. Were protected. That man promised us that, and here's the proof." He pointed the purse of money he held in his other hand. "He hates the Queen, he won't dare say a thing. Besides, we can change our name and move to another town. We're set for life Susan. They can never find us then, and besides, it's too late to turn back."

Susan nodded unsurely. "What about his clothes? What do I do with them?"

George looked at the baby in her arms before walking over. He smiled as he looked down at the innocent little bundle. He had red hair and a round pink face. He would grow up to be very handsome, they both had realized that the minute he had been placed in Susan's arms. But he would grow up to be their son. They had the money to prove that he was theirs, even if he was stolen property.

"Take them off him and sell them. It's no use to him now. He'll grow up to be a Greene, or whatever name we take on later. He's going to be a farm boy, a merchant. He's going to be our son Susan."

She rocked the still sleeping baby in her arms. A tear fell from her left eye. "I just wish our son had lived George, we would never have done this."

"It's God's way, besides we might be doing him a favor. If someone who claims is loyal to the king can go out and sell his future monarch, imagine what else could happen in that court of betrayal."

"But we cannot be his parents George. He looks to different from us. No one will ever believe he is ours."

"Then he'll be our nephew. We'll say his parents died of a terrible fever. We'll move to a new town tomorrow, maybe we'll even leave to the nice countryside somewhere. We'll leave the past behind and begin anew Susan. As a family."

15 years later.

There was nothing young Henry Cornwallis could say against his aunt and uncle. They had always been a united little family, even when George had died and their was only Aunt Susan and him left. He had lived a nice childhood in the countryside of Kent, in a nice, mid-size house. As a boy he had gone to school and had excelled in learning Latin and Greek. He found learning to be a passion of his. He had even considered going into the church to learn more about the world and about God himself.

Sadly his studies were cut short when his Uncle George died suddenly when he was thirteen. It was the end of many things for young Henry. It was the end of a paternal figure, it was the end of a comforting, guiding wisdom, and the end of a source of income for both him and his Aunt.
He had to grow up and mature then. He became a man of work. He worked with a blacksmith, then as a lumberjack, before he became carpenter. He often liked to boast how he had a talent for carving the most intricate and detailed work.

But today there was no boasting for Henry. Instead there was grief. His beloved Aunt was on the verge of death and Henry's world was collapsing around him. He had cried and prayed all night long that God may grant the miracle of saving his Aunt Susan from death somehow. But it was no use, her fever had worsened and there was nothing he, or any of the apothecary's could do about it now.

But he kneeled at his Aunt's bedside nonetheless, he owed her that much for having taken care of him all those years.

"Oh Aunt Susan, why you? Please don't leave me," he muttered into the bitter night air. Susan gave a sputtering cough. Weakly she brought a hand up to Henry's cheek before letting it fall back down limply against the white sheets. Henry took hold of her limp, feverish hand and squeezed it.

"Is there anything I can do?" he asked. Susan said nothing. She merely croaked out a groan. Henry stood to reach for the cloth inside the cool water. He fumbled as he placed it on her forehead. "Please Aunt Susan, say just one last thing to me."

With that Susan's glossy eyes turned to face him. She took him in and tried to smile. He was ever so handsome, just like his father, his real father. She mentally shook her head. If there was ever a time to tell him the truth about everything it was now. The truth that had plagued her for so many years. The truth, she decided, that was the death of her.

"Henry," she croaked out, "come closer."

Henry leaned in and a tear fell of his cheek. "Yes, Aunt Susan?"

"Your are not … what you think you are," she sputtered as she gave another cough. "Your are not just a … farm boy. You … are … much more."

Henry chuckled despite himself, "I know Aunt Susan, I am a carpenter, the best, you ought to know that," he teased trying to make it seem like a much happier moment. Like if this was just another conversation at their little kitchen table.

"No," she weakly shook her head. "You .. are … the son of …." She gave another whopping cough. "You are the son of … the queen!" she declared with the strongest whisper she could muster.

Henry shook his head, "No Aunt Susan, I'm the son of Maud Greene, your sister, not the queen."

"No!" She shook her head with a strong conviction. She weakly picked up her hand to point to an old bedside table. "In there, the … third drawer … there is your truth! You are …. Henry … Duke of .. Cornwall …"

Her glossy eyes closed and with one last cough Susan Cornwallis as Henry had grown up knowing her, took her final breath and fell into the deepest of slumbers. With that Henry lost it. Always having been a boy of strong emotions, and there was nothing that stopped him from letting out a strong wail of agony. He cried from deep inside his heart as he clutched his dead Aunt's cold hand. When the Cornwallis' neighbors came in later that morning it took almost three men to pry the young Henry off the side of his Aunt's bed where he had buried his head in to cry.

For weeks he had been inconsolable. His only escape and therapy was his work in which he concentrated on to distract his mind from all the grief he felt. His life was torn, he was no longer able to depend on anyone but himself. He no longer went home to see his Aunt's kind face, or hear her mouse-like voice comfort him. He went home to an empty house. To a pit of loneliness.

He had little friends. No one had ever really talked to him. He was different, he had never quite fit in. With his reddish hair and elegant features and impressive height he stood out from the harsh, ruddy-faced, and short young men in the town.

Tonight he had gone home from work early. Mr. Johnson's shop had closed up earlier than usual. So he found himself sitting outside his lonely little country house looking up at the newly forming stars when he wished he could have been concentrating on cutting wood or doing anything else than being home where his sadness felt rawer than ever.

As he looked up, he counted the stars just as he had done so ever since he had learned how to count. He counted fifty before he gave up. He knew it was impossible to count all the stars in the sky. Just when you thought you had finished one section, dozens of more dots would pop up only to mess up your count.

He sighed as he stood up and dusted the dirt of his trousers. He took off his boots before he walked in. They were muddy and he felt that it would be better if he kept the floors as neat as possible. There was no one to clean up after him anymore.

He begrudgingly walked into his room and lay gingerly on his bed. He just lay there motionless for what seemed like an eternity, he didn't even try to go to sleep. Tomorrow was Sunday and there was no work. He wouldn't go to church either. Although religious, he had distanced himself from everything these past few weeks. He needed to keep it that way until he felt ready to face Kent again.

"It's no use after all," he muttered to himself, "The only thing I'll get are sympathies. I'd rather live on silence than on sympathies."

He rubbed his temples as he turned to his side and began to remember Aunt Susan's last night. He tried everything to block the thoughts but couldn't find something else to distract him. His walls were bare and desolate, there was nothing he could fixate his mind on. So instead he replayed the memories in his head as he softly began to sob. Then something in his memories caught his attention.

He replayed the part of his Aunt's hazy declaration. '"You are the son of …. The queen!" she had declared.

He chuckled through a sob, he was pretty sure she meant to say Maud Greene. Aunt Susan had always had the habit of confusing things, especially during the later part of her years, so he hadn't really given her words then much of a thought. However, he continued on from there until he reached her last words to him.

"In there, the … third drawer … there is your truth! You are … Henry .. Duke of … Cornwall," she had said with strong conviction, as if she were saying the truth. Henry tilted his head in thought. Although there was no way he was anywhere near a Duke let alone a low Baron, he still wondered what she meant by saying the third drawer held his truth. He hadn't even bothered to look there, let alone enter her room after she had died.
But his curiosity got the best of him and he slowly got up and walked towards the room he had not dared to enter in almost two months.

'My 'truth' is in there,' he thought, 'but what truth? I'm just the son of Thomas and Maud Greene, nephew and adopted son to George and Susan Cornwallis, maybe she meant an inheritance as my truth?'

As he reached his late aunt's door, he slowly turned the knob and opened the door before peering in. Everything was the same as she had left it, save for the sheets. Those had been replaced by the tedious Mrs. Hutchinson, the only neighbor whom he favored.

He cautiously walked in, his footsteps loud and clunky as the moved towards the bedside table. Carefully he pulled the drawer by the old rusted handle and looked inside to find a letter and a pair of baby clothes with a piece of fabric that appeared to be a blanket made of fine red velvet.

"Well isn't this fancy," he said as he picked it up, "if this is my truth, then it's worth something. I wonder how much it would sell for."

He turned it around to examine it, as he lifted a fold he found a rather tiny "H&K" embroidered on the back. "That's odd," he mumbled into the air, "where'd they get this from? It looks old, but expertly embroidered, no way Aunt Susan did this … These aren't even her initials. Hmm, maybe they belonged to another family member?"

He placed the velvet blanket on the floor besides him as he moved back to pick up the baby clothes. They were small, like if they were for a newborn, and like the blanket, they looked rich and important, like the clothes of a fine nobleman. They were made of warm, fine wool, dyed in deep indigo. Tiny little pearls were stitched to the bottom and top of the little robe, the sleeves held ruffles made of fine silk.

He made a clicking sound with his lips. "This is worth something! Why didn't Aunt Susan sell these earlier! We could have lived good for some time." Like the velvet blanket before him he placed it on the floor. His final reach was for the letter. It was old and torn, and on the inside was the messy hand of his Uncle. He moved to lean back against the bedside table before beginning to read the letter.

"Dear Henry," it began,

"If you are reading this that means that both your Aunt and I have passed on. Do not think of us as any less for what I am about to reveal to you.

It was a dark night, I recall, when you first came into our lives. You were so handsome even then, your Aunt just knew you would grow up to be a fine lad. And she was right. Henry, I loved you like my own flesh and blood. I always tried to provide the best for you, as did Susan. Never would we ever wish that anything bad were to ever happen to you. Your Aunt Susan wanted to tell you this sooner, so that it would have been easier, but alas, it was my fear that kept me from letting her. I realize now that, I should have never done what I did, but that does not change all those years of love and care that we gave to you. We love you Henry, we always have, you may have not been our son, but you were our boy.

Well, here it goes. Henry … You are not the son of Maud and Thomas Greene. Neither are you our nephew or anywhere near our kin. Nor is our own last name Cornwallis, we were George and Susan Greene and we were paid to steal something a long time ago. It was never in our intentions to hurt who we did. We thought it was God's way then, but we were wrong.
It was you who we stole Henry. We stole you from your rightful place, from your rightful life, and we stole your from your rightful parents. But, let me make this clear, it was not us who stole you first, it was a man whose name I cannot mention, but who hated your real mother passionately. If you were to ever return to your real parents I would advise you keep a lookout for him. He is not to be trusted though he is favored by your real father.

Henry, I cannot stall you any longer from reading the truth. I must say it now. Do not think that we are delusional, or even crazy, because this is the truth in its most honest form. And if you need more proof of it, check the fourth drawer, it should confirm what I have said, and give you an easier time without either I or Susan.
Without anymore delay I must declare that, you my boy, are the son of the King and Queen of England. You are Henry, Duke of Cornwall, the Stolen Prince."

So ... what'd you guys think? Was it good, bad, horrible, or just plain 'what the heck was this girl thinking?' I'd really like to hear some opinions, good or bad, I wouldn't mind either, just no offensive things guys, only constructive criticism.

As always, thank you for anyone who took the time to read to all the way down here, I really appreciate it.

- Love,

Mimi, owls-and-asters