This is a sequel to my previous fic, The Very Best of Men, so I'd recommend reading that one beforehand to make the plot a little clearer.
Reviews, as always, are much appreciated. :)
Three weeks after Thomas died, I missed my courses.
I thought nothing of it at the time – after all the distress and grief I had had to bear in those weeks, it was no wonder that I was irregular! And with mourning Thomas occupying the chief of my waking moments, I barely gave the matter a second thought. But then they didn't come the next month either...
I begun to feel desperately sick when I awoke in the morning, and for three days straight I spent the first half hour of the day being violently sick. My breasts hurt and I began to come over light-headed very often. That too I put down to the innumerable moments of sadness I had had to contend with lately – after all, it was only a matter of weeks ago that the man I loved had been falsely accused of treason by the evil snakes King Henry called his friends, locked in the Tower and then beheaded on Tower Hill.
All of this I had had to bear with no one to comfort me; Thomas had always kept it secret that he had a mistress. I had insisted on it, as I knew it would have inevitably damaged his career had it come out that he was sleeping with his servant. As such, no one knew of my love for him, nor of the dreadful loss I was suffering. I had to mourn the best man I had ever known in secret, continuing to tell myself that my monthly courses would soon come again. They would. They had to!
When Elizabeth, my closest friend and fellow serving maid, with whom I had to share a chamber, expressed concern that I had been sick two mornings in a row, I told her that it must have been something I ate. When the same thing happened the following day, I said that my humours must be out of balance, and my organs full of bile. Eventually, by the time the fifth day came along, she was having none of it.
"You are pregnant, Issy!" she said firmly, looking at the marginally swollen abdomen I was hiding under my tightly-laced bodice. "You know you are!"
My knees gave way and I sat abruptly down on my bed, tears flooding my eyes and my treacherous stomach heaving yet again. I had constantly been denying it to myself up until now. I looked up into Elizabeth's face and saw only sympathy there – sympathy and concern.
"It's Lord Cromwell's child, isn't it?" she asked me quietly.
"How do you know?" I felt the colour drain abruptly from my face in shock.
"Do you think you managed to hide how smitten you were with him? Or all those nights you spent in his chamber?" Elizabeth said incredulously. "I know you were sleeping with him for more than a year before he was arrested! The day he was beheaded, you could not do anything for weeping! And at any rate, you talk in your sleep. You've been murmuring 'Thomas' over and over again for weeks now!"
I burst into violent sobs.
"What am I going to do?" I asked, terrified. With Thomas gone, my baby had no father to protect it or to provide for it. My position as a maid at the King's palace was all I had, and when it was discovered that I was with child out of wedlock, I would lose that too! I would be destitute!
"Talk to Mrs Astley," said Elizabeth firmly, and then raised her hand to stem my protest. "Yes, she is harsh, but she is fair and sympathetic also. It was she that Bess went to when Brandon got her pregnant, and she managed to get her settled in a respectable house outside the city. I'm sure that she will try to do something to help you."
But I could not go to her. Not yet. For several weeks, I refused to tell anyone besides Elizabeth, or to take any other action regarding my suspicions. I continued to attend to my duties as normal, in the desperate hope that this might all prove to be a mistake. But it was no mistake: my belly gradually began to swell as the child within me grew and it got to the point that I could not do my stomacher up without incredible pain. From that point on, I had no choice but to tell Mrs Astley – the chatelaine of the palace, to whom we maids were all answerable.
I went to see her as soon as I had tended to Lady Juliette in the morning and begged for ten minutes audience with her. She acquiesced, and sat in her great embroidered chair, as though she herself was a member of the royal family, watching me out of stern blue eyes and waiting for me to speak. Speech failed me and I stood there dumbly, fiddling uneasily with my locket and trying to get words to form in my gullet.
"Well girl, out with it!" she at last commanded, sharply. "I am not waiting here to watch you cringe!"
"I fear I am with child, Madam," I stuttered out eventually, and immediately burst into tears.
I expected to be scolded, rebuked, branded a hussy and turned out of my position there and then. Mrs Astley, however, did not become furious as I had expected her to. Instead, she looked almost saddened.
"Another one," she said to herself, sighing, before looking at me disappointedly. "You stupid girl! Which one was it this time? Brandon? Bryan?"
The very mention of those names made me turn white; for it was Charles Brandon; Duke of Suffolk and Sir Francis Bryan who were responsible, along with Sir Edward Seymour, for falsely accusing Thomas of treason and persuading the King to execute him. She took my blanching as an assent.
"Witless child!" she cried, shaking her head. "I thought you more sensible than that, Isabel! Well, there is no point in recriminating now, the damage is done and a fine mess you'll be in, with no father or mother to take you back! We'd better get an apothecary in to look at you, just to make certain."
Mrs Astley sent for the apothecary the following day and I had to submit to the humiliation of undressing and lying splayed on the bed while the old man prodded and squeezed at me. In my embarrassment, I came over all lightheaded again, and I believe I fainted. When I regained my senses, I found that the apothecary had finished his examination and was talking to Mrs Astley in a low voice.
'Yes," I heard him say as I groggily struggled to sit up again. "She is definitely with child – a couple of months along. I see no wedding ring on her hand though – do you know the identity of the father?"
"It'll be Brandon again!" said Mrs Astley crossly. She was standing with her back to me, unaware that I had regained consciousness and was listening. "He treats my girls like his own private harem! He's always got one or other of them warming his bed when the Duchess isn't here! Three maids this year he's impregnated – and he takes no responsibility for his actions. 'Where is the proof?' he asks! 'These girls could be whoring themselves around to anyone!'."
"May God forgive him his sins," said the Apothecary piously, pursing his lips up in disapproval, noticing that I was awake again. "Well, if that is the case, then yet another of his bastards will be greeting the world in six months or so. You can redress now, girl."
"You can continue your duties here, Isabel, until your stomach begins to show through your gown," said Mrs Astley, sounding weary. Maybe she really did have some pity for us poor serving girls. "After that, I am afraid, you will have to leave and fend for yourself."
I did not correct them and tell them that it was Thomas Cromwell's child in my belly. Not that I was ashamed of the fact – I'd gladly proclaim the love I'd had for him from the rooftops! But Thomas had (false though the charges war) been executed as a traitor. His lands and his titles had been seized as punishment for his trumped-up crimes; and so any relation of his might be also be in danger while Brandon, Bryan and Seymour were at large. I would risk no harm to our child; so his parentage would remain a secret for now. Let them blame Charles Brandon – I had much to hold against him anyway – he had bedded and used me when I was a gullible and naive young maid first come to the palace, and then he had helped Edward Seymour dispose of the one man who had ever actually cared for me. I hated Brandon!
I spent all of that evening weeping in despair. I had, perhaps, a month at the very most left here. Where would I go after that? I had no family, no friends outside the palace and very little money. Who then could I turn to? I thought of the stinking foundling homes where the poor went to give birth to their children, down on the banks of the River Thames, and I cried all the harder.
There came a quiet knock at the door.
"Come in," I called uncertainly. Who could it be at this time in the evening? Elizabeth would certainly not knock! The door swung open to reveal Cedric Malton – one of the lawyers from the court of Augmentations. He had been a regular around the court since the Reformation had begun; tending to the accounts of the dissolved monasteries, and he had become a good friend of mine.
"Cedric!" I choked out, hurriedly trying to smear away my tears and doing a pitiful job of it. "God's blood, what are you doing here at this hour of the evening?"
"I...forgive me," Cedric gave his usual diffident, rather nervous smile. For a lawyer, he was remarkably mild-mannered. "Forgive me, but...I heard you are with child."
"Good news travels quickly!" I said bitterly, my eyes flooding with tears once again.
"Elizabeth told me. I...I shan't ask who the father is, if you don't want to tell me," he said gently, gesturing to the bed I sat on. "If you'll permit me?" I nodded and he sat down beside me, patting my hand awkwardly. "What are you going to do?"
"I don't know!" Sobs rose in my throat again. They seemed to come so easily these days. "I have no family, no fortune! I have nowhere to go! I...I do not know what I shall do!"
Cedric was silent for a moment, his hands fidgeting in his lap. I could see that he was thinking something over. When he did finally speak, his words came flying from his mouth
"Marry me, Isabel."
"What?!" I was snapped out of my worries to gape at him in shock. Had he really just said what I thought he had?
"You and I have always been very good friends," said Cedric gently, his hands fidgeting all the more. "And I trust that we always shall be. I had always thought that it was my destiny in life to be a bachelor; yet now I think God wills me otherwise. I am not a romantic man – I do not seek love from the world; but companionship. I have rather more money than I need for my simple way of living, and you have none at all. I confess, I am rather lonely in my empty house. Every home should have a woman to preside over it, and every child should have a father. Why should we not unite ourselves in matrimony and solve both our quandaries? I will love your child like my own, I promise you that. Will you have me?"
Initially, I could think of nothing to say. The shock almost overwhelmed me. Then I realised that accepting Cedric was the only chance my baby would have for a decent life. Cedric was a kindly and respectable man, nigh on thirty, and one of whom I had ever been fond. I was aware of the enormous kindness and generosity he was showing me; offering to wed a girl who was essentially 'damaged', a servant moreover, and bring up a baby who was not of his own blood.
I accepted him.
We married the following week and I left my post as chambermaid at the palace, taking up residence in Cedric's fine house in Chancery Lane. The two of us were never intimate but there was a strong platonic regard between us and it continued to grow as time went on. I was always very grateful for the kindness he had done me and I cared for him strongly as a dear friend. In our own strange version of marriage we were quite content together.
But the gaping hole in my heart, left by losing Thomas, never closed. I became massive as the weeks flew by and his child grew in my belly. It broke my heart to think that he would never see it.
On the tenth of April, nine months to the day after Thomas had been arrested, I gave birth to a healthy son. I went into labour early in the morning; dull, aching pains knifing through my stomach and my lower back, and Cedric went tearing out into the street to fetch a midwife. He arrived with Goodwife Porter, an old hand in these matters and she set about doing everything as it should be done.
I was changed from my night-shift into a voluminous birthing smock of bleached linen, the window was closed to keep out the spring draughts and the fire in the bedchamber was made up. I lay sprawled back on the bed, sobbing as the white-hot pains stabbed through me and my little one prepared to make his entrance into the world.
After an hour of this torture, I became a little feverish in my agony; the heat of the roaring fire making me lightheaded and woozy. In my delirium, I thought for a moment that I saw a pale vision of Thomas standing in the corner; dressed in his black robes of state and smiling at me. I drew a shaky breath, wanting to call a thousand things to him, but unable to find the words. I hoped that my eyes said it all. Then the midwife wiped my brow with a cool cloth and the moment was lost.
Cedric remained by my side the whole time, holding my hand and stroking my hair as I screamed through the agonies of childbirth. He was in every way good and kind to me, just as he always is and always has been...but he was not Thomas Cromwell. Suddenly, more than ever, I ached for Thomas to be there; to be with me. It should have been he who sat by me, clutching my hand, and it should have been his voice, the voice that I would never hear again, whispering 'Courage, Isabel, courage. You are going to be all right.' I clutched at the silver locket around my neck with my free hand. It had been given to me by Thomas and was now all I had to remember him by. Holding it between my sweaty fingers made me feel ridiculously closer to him somehow.
Three hours after the ordeal had begun, the midwife ordered me to begin pushing. I did as I was told, shrieking my pain to the rafters as my I pushed as hard as I could, my belly and lower back exploding into flames of excruciating pain.
And then, the miracle happened. In a rush of blood, I felt a wet form slither from me and heard the wailing of a baby rent the air. Cedric gave a peculiar sound that was half a laugh and half a sob, kissing the back of my hand in delight.
"God be praised!" cried Goodwife Porter cheerfully. "A fine healthy boy! You have a son, my dear!"
Exhausted and drained, I could only collapse back onto the pillows and weep tears of joy. I had a son! Thomas Cromwell's son.
I was so exhausted, that I do not remember much of what happened next. I know that midwife's assistant tended to the baby while she set about cleaning me up and helping me change out of the blood-stained smock. I did not regain my wits until I was helped back into the newly changed bed and handed a little bundle, wrapped in swaddling clouts.
I looked down at a small pink face, with a miniscule nose and gurgling mouth. I wept with sheer happiness when I found myself looking down into big dark eyes – Thomas's eyes. Now he would never truly leave me. Every time I looked at my son, our son, a little of Thomas would be looking back at me.
"Well Issy, what are we to call him?" asked Cedric with a smile, his big hand gently stroking the crown of the baby's head.
"Thomas," I said, cradling my precious bundle close to my heart. "His name is Thomas."
Little Thomas gurgled contentedly, a tiny hand tugging on a lock of my hair. I laughed giddily, tears of happiness streaking down my face. I am certain his father would have approved.