No copyright infringement intended. I own nothing and all characters belong to the writers of the shows. I don´t make any money with it, just writing for fun.
This story jumped to my mind when I learned to know that Jonathan Rhys Meyers appeared on the new show DRACULA. The actor had been seen as King Henry VIII on The Tudors. We know Henry VIII as the father of Henry Fitzroy who was turned vampire by his love Christina, who had left court after Fitzroy´s death. More than a decade later the life of his father is about to end and even when a king is dying he won´t find peace so easily as he wishes. Decisions are to be made which won´t only change the life of people around the dying person but may have influence on history centuries later...
Results can be totally different from what you´re expecting due to which direction a decision is made!
I tried to pull the story lines of Blood Ties , a view into The Tudors, and Dracula together. Bits of historical background in here. More details can be found on Wikipedia or anywhere else on the web or in the books. I restricted myself with the historical backgrounds, because this is no lesson in history but a short story for entertainment (I hope it´ll be. LOL) I have no beta yet, so all mistakes belong to me.
Your life for your life
January,28th.1547 Whitehall Palace, London
The hall way to the chamber of King Henry VIII was almost empty but for the two guards who were ordered to protect the door to the king. It was a cold winter day and the doctor had spent hours in the room where Henry VIII was lying in his bed since five days. The wound in the king´s leg was swollen and worse than before when the infection which Henry VIII had caught had constantly improved. The blood poisoning had shown resistance to any treatment, including incision and two attempts to lower the fever by bloodletting. Further bloodletting were out of the question because the King was weakened by now, not only by the loss of blood but by the fever itself.
Henry VIII was still conscious but he had denied the meal that the servant had brought in.
"The doctor has said that you should at least drink this herbal tea and the water, your Majesty!" the servant tried to convince him into drinking anything to cool down his feverish blood.
"Herbal tea is for old women and children! Water is for cattle! A man drinks wine! Nothing else is worth for a king!" Henry barked at him and shoved the tray from the small table at his side. It fell to the ground with a loud noise, the decanter made of glass broke on the stone tiles and the water was building a small pool. In a hurry the servant bent down and tried to sweep them up while he shot a look at the angry king. Thomas was used to the eruptions of bad and fast changing temper of Henry VIII which had become common over the last years. Since two years he was the personal servant of the king, one of the few men Henry VIII still trusted to.
The once blazing star at the sky of England, reigning supremely since 1509 now was becoming a mere shade of his old glory. His last wife, Catherine Parr, who had escaped execution only within an ace, was kept on distance despite the fact that Henry wasn´t able to lead government affairs by himself in the moment. She once had been his first and right hand when he had been at war with Franz I of France, ruling as a regent over England while he had been out on the battlefields. His doctor at court had tried to keep out all the men who usually worked as the king´s counselors but Henry had reminded him harshly that he was still alive and still the King of England!
Thomas grabbed the tray and the shards, bent down in obedience and when Henry VIII looked at him he dared to ask;
"Is there anything I may bring to you, your Majesty?"
"That´s all, Thomas! Now go!" Henry answered and Thomas left the room, glad that the king hadn´t punished him for the mess.
When Thomas went down the sparsely lit corridor he almost collided with a tall woman who came around the next corner. With much effort he managed it to prevent a collision and mumbled an excuse to her.
"Keep your eyes open or you should keep someone at hand with a light at your side!" she grunted at him, her voice a bit darker as usually by a woman.
"I´m so sorry Milady! It won´t happen again and I beg for your gracious pardon!" Thomas blushed and tried to regain his composure. The woman wasn´t familiar to him and she wore a long black robe under a long cape, obviously made of velvet and richly trimmed with fine black lace and silk stitchery. He couldn´t remember her to be seen at court and he asked himself if she was an envoy of Catherine Parr or one of Henry´s multiple mistresses.
She moved with the matter of course of someone who looked at it as a testified right to get access to the king´s rooms.
"I guess so, Thomas! You haven´t seen me here!" she demanded, her voice got a darker and more convincing timbre and the servant nodded, mumbled anything of being an idiot and his view became an empty stare when he slipped to the side to give her space to move on.
The woman silently smiled and went forward until she reached the guards at the door. Their arms moved to deny her access.
"Milady, you can´t enter the king´s rooms! The king wants to be alone! No visitors, Milady! I can´t let you in!" one of the guards addressed her. He was aware that she seemed to be a woman of noble birth; the way she was dressed and the way she moved. This woman carried with her an aura of self-confidence but the king had given strictly orders to let him alone now at night-time!
"You will not deny me access! You´ll let me in. Now!" her voice was calm but compelling. Her eyes seemed to turn darker but the guard couldn´t explain it to himself other than this was an effect of the flickering candle lights and the shades beyond the circles of light. The woman wasn´t hiding in the shades explicitly and inwardly he shook hiss head no to what his eyes showed him. The flickering lights and the shades for sure were playing tricks on him and she emanated a wave of calmness, her lips slightly splitting when she smiled a bit at him. When the man was fixed by her view her voice became sheer friendliness.
"King Henry VIII ordered me to visit him! For sure you didn´t know! I´m here in a mission of privacy and no man nor woman will learn to know that I came over here tonight! And both of you will forget that you´ve ever seen me!" She fixed the eyes of both guards while she spoke and they stepped aside and the man to her right opened the door for her.
Her robe gave a rustling noise, almost inaudible, when she more slipped than stepped into the room. The door was closed behind her back and for a moment she stopped when her eyes checked the room if she would be alone with Henry VIII. Out of habit she looked into the shades beyond the light from the chandeliers which were placed along the walls despite she didn´t need it. Even before she had entered she had heard only one heart beating in the room, indicating her that she would be alone with the king!
Otherwise she would have warded off any man or woman from the room, using her compelling skills.
King Henry lifted his head from the cushions and turned his face to her. An expression of surprise flickered over his face which once had been of amazing beauty in his earlier years. A man no woman could really resist. She knew how attractive it was for any woman to be close to the king, giving herself over to the hope that any day King Henry would find interest in her. As had happened with Mary and Anne Boleyn who were placed in the range of the king by their father. Out of political intentions naturally. Usually woman were married by political reasons. To get a daughter at court might develop to a guarantee of influence for the family. Love was considered in the rarest of cases and most women accepted their fate, being raised to take up a subordinate role to their parents. Happy those who were chosen out of love or found love in their relationship, given by their husbands.
"Guards!" Henry shouted.
But no one came in to his help.
"Where are my guards?!" he barked at her, sitting up and trying to reach the dagger on the wooden nightstand beside his bed. "WHO are you that you dare to enter without my permission!"
"You won´t be in any need of your weapons nor your guards, your Majesty!" she answered with a calm voice.
"WHO are YOU?" he repeated with anger, his heart beating faster. How did this woman manage it to pass his guards without anybody trying to bar her from entering his bedroom?
Henry VIII managed it to lift up his upper body in a sitting position, his face torn when the pain in his thigh made him almost cry out. He hissed under his breath.
The woman bent down to him, her hands going for his shoulders.
"You shouldn´t do this! The wound in your leg is infected!" she could scent the strong and intense smell of pus from the wound. She could take it from his heartbeat that there was fever within him. It won´t take all too long from now until his body would finally break under the raging fire of traumatic fever, leading to his death.
Henry VIII shuddered under her grip and softly she let go. She looked into his questioning and angry face when he repeated hiss question.
"WHO are you?!"
"You have seen me at court before, Milord! Think back some eleven years! You may remember me when I came in here in 1536!" she softly replied with a slight smile on her pale face. She lifted her hand and pulled back the hood of her cape, baring her face to the candlelight that was framed by a mass of long dark brown, almost black curls.
Henry stared in her face and she could see how his mind fought through the memories of all the countless women he had met...and pulled into his bed...over the years. Then finally he brought out a name which was related to his son in 1536;
"Christina!" He gasped.
How could she dare to return when she had disappeared all out of the sudden when his son had died after he grew sick at age 17, dying only one month after his birthday!
"How dare you? You disappeared before I could banish you from court or throw you in prison and finally drawn and quarter you or behead you if I would have been in a gracious mood! You know that I accuse you for the death of my son Henry!" Henry grunted at her, his hand going for the dagger at his side but with no effort she wrung the weapon from his hands and faster than a human eye could follow, she threw it through the room where it finally ended up under the curtain on the other side.
"And now you have come back to take revenge for it I guess!" Henry went on. The fact, he was without a weapon now didn´t seem to impress him. He had fought down opponents with his bare hands, being strong and taller than most of the men around him! He was the king and a king wasn´t afraid of anybody.
At least don´t show fear when facing an enemy, his father, Henry VII had been hammering into his mind when he had been a child. He had grown up to become a warrior and finally the king of England when his brother Arthur died early.
Christina shook her head no.
"I didn´t kill your son Henry..." she replied with a calm voice.
"He is dead! I have buried him! So don´t dare to tell me it hadn´t been you who killed him!" Henry barked at her and he lifted up more to face this woman more directly, the woman who dared to break into his room to offend him. For sure she had killed his guards outside, how else should she have made it into his bedroom? Women only made it into his bedroom when he had chosen them or invited in. And he hadn´t chosen her the less he had invited her in!
"So you may explain me why you have come back. Isn´t it that the murderer is always attracted to come back to the place of his deadly stroke? What do you think? Did you imagine how you might kill me too? How you´re going to eradicate a bloodline from the surface of earth, fulfilling your dark intentions after you have started with my son?" Henry VIII looked at her with contempt. This woman had been hanging out at court, making friends with his son Henry Fitzroy, to worm her way into his confidence like the viper that creeps into a cradle to spit her venom into the child´s heart. Pretending to love him, until he was convinced it had been him who had fallen in love with her. This woman had turned his son´s head and only his growing sickness had prevented him from marrying her.
"Go away from me, witch!" he hissed but she only smiled coldly at him.
"You´re totally unaware of why I came back, Milord! Even being away from court for my own safety...as you promised to kill me anyway...which you can´t! I followed all you did. The honor of a king and the rumors too are spread all over Europe wherever you go! You might be proud of your regency and once it had spread a shining glory over England, sparkling like a golden armor in the sunlight..."
It spread a sad smile over her face when she spoke out the word sunlight which would turn her into a cloud of sparkling ashes for a mere second. Before she would be reduced to a pile of dust.
Christina licked her lips and looked over to the heavy velvet curtains which covered the large windows. The night had just begun and it was winter and the darkness would be lasting long enough. She stepped back from the bed and started to move through the room, her movements elegant and swift. With a graceful move of her hand she pulled the cape from her shoulders, laid it on a nearby chair. Henry VIII couldn´t resist to let his eyes move over her tall and slim body. Her breasts were slightly lifted by the cut of her dress, rather unusual for an English woman of the age. Her dress rather reminded of the Italian style because it was only slightly rounded at the hips, missing the large rounding which were usually popping out from the tightly fastened waistline, giving the upper body the shape of a triangular. She looked much more voluptuous than the women at court. The way she moved around definitely gave the impression that she seemed to be fully aware of her appearance and making use of it consciously. Despite it she looked like a lady, not like a mistress or worse...a whore.
She stopped dead in her tracks when Henry cleared his throat and he tried to regain control of his voice before he started to speak again.
"When you have come back to kill me you may not waste your time! For sure it didn´t escape your eyes that I´m not well! To tell the truth I..." he begun but she interrupted him. Normally it was an insult when a woman, any woman, dared to interrupt the king´s speech. But she didn´t seem to care about.
"You´re going to die, Sire! As sure as the next morning will rise after this night!" she smiled and moved closer again, directing to his leg. "This wound of yours...I can smell the odor of pus! The wound inflected this fever that is going to burn you up from inside! The medico´s attempts to cure you failed and all your gold and your money and your resources won´t save your life! Death is no respecter of wealth!" she stopped to give him time that the words could work on him to full extension.
"You know that it would need only one word of me to get you beheaded for your impertinence!" Henry gave back at her, his eyes blazing with anger but he couldn´t hide his anxiousness from her. Not from Christina who could smell it on him like a wolf smells the scent of a prey.
A prey ready to be taken.
When she would like to do so.
"Even if you like to threaten me with a death sentence, you won´t live to see it being fulfilled!...And you know it!" Christina was aware that she was playing with the king now like a cat with a mouse. She might leave now and he would be dead before or just after dawn.
Or she could offer him his life...
"You addressed me to be a witch, Sire!" she repeated his very words from before.
"As this is what you are! How else as by bewitching my guards and my servants could have brought you in here against my explicit orders!" He gritted his teeth when a sharp pain shot through his leg when he lifted up his upper body furthermore. With much effort he managed it to hide a groan. Henry VIII was not willing to show his growing weakness to this woman who now turned away from the bed, taking up her walk through the room again. She knew that his eyes were fixed on her, exactly as intended.
"Do you think it´s so easy to keep anybody out by a couple of guards?" she started to laugh and he could see her shimmering white teeth. "You seem to have a rather cocky opinion of woman´s skills! It doesn´t need of any persuasiveness to get a man doing what a woman wants, even when you practiced it with success on most of your ladies, your Majesty!" she brought in the fact that the king had been attracted to women, using it to get them into his royal bed.
"So...if not persuasiveness...then by witchcraft! What else? You have used your magic on my hapless son! I remember you staying at court as long until his health left him! I might accuse you of witchcraft, heresy, a heretic! My law lord would be more than happy to take your head for it!"
"What is the word going? The mouse barks in front of the lion before he bites off her head! So you are doing when facing your death!" she answered with a totally calm voice, stepping nearer to him.
He looked up to her, only two feet away from her when she bent over Henry VIII again.
Christina´s smile disappeared and her voice became almost a whisper.
"You are the King of England and you have been reigning for decades. The country improved under your regency as not before under any other sovereign! You had been strong and powerful, physically and by your mind. And now, just along this night, before the morning will turn, all will be gone! You´ll be dead at dawn! And...you know it, Sire!"
"How dare you...?"
"I´m daring what? To hold up the mirror in front of your face that once had been of irresistible beauty? All you have been and all you have done and moved by your hands and your powerful words will be lost. Becoming dust as your body will. Washed away by the river of time! Time and tide wait for no man. Nor are waiting for a King! Even you can´t turn back the clock!"
His mouth fell shut when he wanted to answer her fiercely but her cunning words made him stop. No woman nor wife ever dared to speak to him this way! And Henry VIII knew that his time had come and she was absolutely right about it! The Grim Reaper was about to take his head! Inevitably.
Had he still died and he was at the gates of heaven or hell by now? Was she an angel or out of hell to prove his soul? Or was she simply a witch who was offering him a deal with the devil?
"Tell me...why are you..." he gasped. His heart was beating wildly in his chest when he looked into her pale face and he saw something that seemed to be impossible if not out of a dream of Dante´s Inferno...
Her dark brown eyes had turned into black pools under her long lashes and he teeth which had been white as porcelain showed prolonged canines in the upper jaw now.
"WHAT are you?!" Henry VIII brought out in surprise and fear. He tried to shove his body upwards in the bed, fearfully reminding that his dagger had been thrown to the other end of the room. He was left only with his hands to fight her off.
"I´m offering you your life for your life!" she gave back with a stern face.
The face of Henry had become paler as it had become by the repeated bloodletting, sweat was pouring from his face and forehead and his hands dug into the covers in an attempt to get hold onto anything. Despite his fear he tried to regain his composure.
"Begone! Begone! You´re the devil!" he barked at her, followed by a row of prayers against the forces of darkness.
She let him do, patiently waiting for him until he had ended.
"Your prayers won´t help you against me, Sire! I´m resistant to them as I´m no creature of the devil!"
"YOU are! What else shall I think of you than being a witch or a creature of hell, misleading me to the darkness at the gates of death!"
"I can let you die! Or you can live forever! It´s your choice! When you say no to it, I´ll leave and I won´t return...so much you´ll ever beg me to come back!" she looked into his face from which all color, even the flush from the high risen fever, had gone.
"Live. For...forever..." he mumbled, repeating it again and again until his voice trailed off by his growing weakness. "To live...forever... That´s an offer only the devil himself can make to a human!" In fear he turned his head to the door where he expected the guards to be outside, irrespective by what she had made them letting her in.
"My guards...get me my guards! Get me Thomas Cranmer in here!" (*Thomas Cranmer had been the arch bishop of Canterbury under Henry´s regency)
"There will be no time left, Sire! Either you´ll give in or you´ll die! And all will be lost for you including yourselfas you may remind my words from before."
Christina waited for his answer.
Henry´s mind was racing. In a rush his whole life went by. His childhood and when he grew up, all the women he had made his wife, had abandoned and had spelled the death sentence onto. His whole life with all victories and success and loss. You´ll be gone in the river of time, will become dust in the storms of history...
Or you´ll live forever!
His mind was tumbling over and the prospect of being lost or to live on...all his life remaining with all what he had done and improved. Living on with all his power and what had come from his hands...being King forever... The promise was all too seductive! He hadn´t been living to dissolve into the dust of history...
Christina felt his resistance breaking. Henry VIII was too hungry and too obsessed for power. His regency had been a row of war, reforms and cunning maneuvers. His honor had been extraordinary and this man, this king was not willing to go despite the fact that his body was giving in to death.
Henry VIII stared at her, his heart beating wildly and his fever shaken body went to the edge.
"So what is your decision, your Majesty?"
"What will you do to me and what will happen to me? Will I cross the thresholds of hell when I´ll give in to you?" he demanded to know from her. His salvation was at question. He had his back up against the wall! Death was waiting for him or he could give in to her offer and live forever...
"I´ll drink your blood and you´ll die, Sire! When you drink from me in return you´ll become like me and you´ll live forever. No disease and no death. Immortality!" she explained to him, baring her teeth that showed a set of double fangs like that of a wolf.
"And I´ll be the devil´s pledge!"
"You won´t be! I have no deal with the devil nor will you! So! What is your decision?" Christina looked at the king and she saw the turmoil in his face. He was at war with all and with himself but she knew him to be man who was used to get his will and that he won´t give up easily. The infection in his wounded thigh had improved over the last days and the poison of the pus had eaten up his body. King Henry VIII would inevitably die! And he knew it! There was no doubt.
Unless he would accept her offer.
"So, have you arranged your affairs? I guess a king sets up his testament to give orders for the time after his passing!"
"Of course I did! I won´t leave without orders!"
"When I´ll turn you into what I am, you can´t stay at court! You´ll have to leave because all those around you who have seen you dead won´t understand and the less accept that you´re still alive! This is inevitably! Or they´ll kill you finally!" she explained in short words the terms of being a vampire.
"You said I´ll be immortal!" Henry VIII protested.
"You will be immortal. Time can´t kill you the less any sickness! But the sun will kill you or fire or a wooden stake driven through your heart! You won´t grow old and die as you´re about now. You´ll have to leave England, Sire!"
"And give up all I have had and all I´ve built up here. Give up all my friends and my family!" he added when he became aware of the consequences.
"Yes, you´ll have to! That´s the price you´ll have to pay for my offer..."
"So I´ll lose my empire..."
"You may build up newly grounded regency, far from here and far from all of those who would like to kill you for what you´ll become! We live at night and we live from the humans around us as we thrive on their blood!"
"And there´s no devil involved?" He was really afraid of his salvation despite the fact that he had broken up with the Roman Catholic Church, had been at quarrels with the Pope and the Catholicism leading to establish the Anglican Church of which he was the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Henry VIII had strong believes in the soul and he didn´t want to risk it...not at all...even not for immortality!
"There´s no devil involved, Sire! We are what we are. No more and no less!"
"So be it!" Henry VIII gave in.
Christina nodded and moved in close. Her hands went for his head. She softly pushed his head aside, baring his throat. After a moment she bent down, her fangs extended and she bit down. Henry VIII groaned with pain and surprise, his body trembling under her and she started to drink.
His blood was amazingly hot from the fire of the fever, thick and bitter with the taste of the ravaging infection within him. But that would not last long. He groaned under her and the trembling grew weaker and weaker until his heart started to falter. Henry felt his body growing numb, his limbs seemed to lose contact to his head and the room around him and the light of the candles around him started to flicker until they solved into darkness. With great experience she waited for the moment before his heart would stop finally and pulled back from him. His eyes became an empty stare and he was lying motionless in the cushions and the messed up covers.
Christina bit into her own wrist, sucked at it to make sure that the wounds would not close too fast and pulled the body of Henry VIII up into her arms. She pressed her wrist onto the grayish pale lips.
"Drink! Drink and you´ll live forever" she urged him and very slowly Henry´s lips began to move around her wrist when he felt the first drops of blood on his lips. It was hot and sweet and he began to lick it up until the drops turned into a red hot stream and he gulped, swallowing hard and he took all he could get from her until she pulled her wrist away with brutal force.
"Enough! It´s enough!" Christina gasped when she felt her own body weaken. When she would not stop him he would drink until he would have sucked her dry. He looked at her with dark eyes but she pushed him aside, down on his bed.
"They will find you dead at dawn and you´ll be buried as it´s worth for a king! But I´ll get you out after it. We´ll leave and you have to learn!" she explained with cold indifference.
Three nights later Christina slipped into St. George´s Chapel in Windsor. She made safe that she was alone and went to the tomb. After a few minutes she had managed it to open the simple coffin and helped Henry VIII, former king of England, out of the narrow wooden box.
They left for Europe the next night. Christina had arranged a ship that brought them over to the coast of France. She didn´t stop the travel until they reached the eastern part of Hungary where she and Henry were hiding in a small castle.
About twelve months later they split up when Christina chased him from the castle before they would kill each other. These vampires were territorial, not accepting another "matured" vampire in their range. Henry had heard about a castle in southern Romania where a voivode had been living during the war against the Ottoman Empire. His name had been Vlad Draculea or Vlad Tepes, a warrior prince and a fierce fighter who impaled his Turkish enemies who had become prisoners of war. Henry didn´t know how much was true about the cruelty of the prince, due to bad propaganda the death count went up to more than eighty thousand impaled captives. Half of Europe was eager to spread the negative rumors all around after some seventy years they had reached a level one only could call a slander. But it didn´t miss the intended purpose; Vlad was only mentioned in correlation to cruelty, vengefulness and bloodthirstiness! The best base when Henry, former King of England and ruler over a rather modern country in late renaissance, decided to took over the abandoned castle like a thief by night.
The area was sparsely populated but for a couple of small rural communes and very fast he found out that the people living here were more led by superstition than by common sense. Hiding in the castle above a small village at daytime and hunting for blood during the night became an easy task for a vampire under the current circumstances.
Time went by and the farmer population around him kept locked in, being afraid of the risen corpse of Vlad Tepes who was haunting their country, bewitching his victims and killing ruthlessly for his fill adding to the bad rumors of the once warrior prince.
Of Christina he hadn´t heard about in three centuries. When Henry decided to research for the vampiress who had turned him in 1547 he caught up on rumors that she might have left Europe for the new continent, a rather unexploited area where lots of space was available. Currently the New England states and Canada were involved in a war for independence from mother country England. The Revolutionary War threatened to devastate the just populated territory that was won from the natives in hard battles. Especially most of Canada was wilderness with lakes and wood, inhabited by natives who tended to organize in nation like structures as the Ojibwa and Iroquois nation. English and French Europeans teamed up with the different natives to fight each other more effectively, making use of the specific knowledge of the territory by the natives.
Easy to ravage the remains from the battlefields; wounded and dying soldiers which won´t arise any suspect when throats were ripped open to feed from. Enough space to avoid another vampire...
Around the 1840s, some three centuries since he had become a vampire, the former King of England, Henry VIII, left for the new continent. Logically he couldn´t reside as a King in the new area. To avoid any suspect that might relate him to the rumors of a vampire prince in Romania he decided to use a civil name, introducing himself as Alexander Grayson. Grayson was a man of wealth and manners and a scientific mind who was highly interested into the upcoming new techniques. Grayson was a rather common name and the pain in the arse about being reduced to a civilian was soothed a bit at least by his first name Alexander, who was of antique origin by Alexander The Great as a famous conqueror what flattered his own royal origin.
1890s London
Finally he had made it home to the country which had been his property in the 15th and 16th century; Introducing Mr. Alexander Grayson as an American scientist who had nothing in mind but benefiting Victorian London with the newest developments of technical science from the US, he had found a new appropriate residence: Carfax Manor
The hall was large and the whole manor was luxurious and lavishly decorated in a new Roman style, more of the size of a castle than of a house. It fitted well into the manners and wishes of his new owner who had arranged an old fashioned ball for the high society of London.
Mr. Renfield waved with his hand, the music ended and all attention turned to him when he went upstairs halfway, directing to the upper stairs where a tall and handsome man in a black suit appeared.
" Ladies and gentlemen...I have the honor to introduce Mr. Alexander Grayson to you..."
The End