Hello readers!

One chapter after this one, and the first part of this fanfiction will be finished. After that, I'll start on Elizabeth's reign, and maybe a third queen after her, if I still have some inspiration left.

I confess this chapter may be a little sad. It was certainly not easy to write.

XXXV. The end of an era

Beginning of December, 1548

Even before Elizabeth's wedding, Thomas Cromwell had not been feeling well. He had more and more trouble working late and had been coughing for weeks. Not wishing to worry his family nor his queen, he had kept his problems to himself, and had not called for a doctor. Thus when Gregory realized that something had gone wrong, the illness had developed too much already to be treated efficiently.

# #

Winter came and brought no improvement to the minister's health; quite the opposite. He was coughing more than ever and sometimes even had troubles leaving his house to get to Whitehall.

Anne started to worry seriously about this illness. She insisted that Thomas leave a part of his responsibilities to Rich or Wriothesley. After what looked like a quarrel, he accepted and gave up a part of his participation to the royal council. But things did not change even after that. The minister had to delegate more and more work to Ralph Sadler and Gregory, who also partially assured Francis Walsingham's training. The boy still spent most of his time with Cromwell, though, and learnt eagerly the basis of politics. Seeing that even her mother could not make the minister see reason, Elizabeth decided to help her and sent the royal doctor to see the reluctant patient, with the express order from the monarch not to throw him out before he had finished his examination. Being careful, the young Queen wrote everything on a parchment that she marked with her personal seal.

Doctor Barnaby, who had replaced Butts at Court at the beginning of that year, thus visited the patient, though Cromwell could not stand doctors, and came back to the Queen-mother with a sad face.

"My lady, I fear that the news is not good. Lord Cromwell is too exhausted by the amount of work he forced on himself... Making him delegate was a good idea, but it came too late."

Anne gritted her teeth.

"- Is there anything you could do, or is he lost?"

"- It would be better to call for a priest, my lady."

She nodded silently, while musing it would be difficult to have the dying man confess. The list of his wrongdoings was lengthy, and small chance that he would ever admit a priest in his rooms. She hesitated to visit him, but the page serving in the minister's chambers told her that he was neck-deep in his papers to try and put them into some order, and that he had also called for a clerk to clear out some points of his succession. He was not entertaining any delusion about his chances of survival... Anne suspected that he was deliberately burying himself in the subtleties of the law to keep her away. She chose not to go. She started to grow angry, however, when the two written messages she sent her minister remained without answer. It would have been easy to come and knock on Thomas' door to demand some explanations, but it would have meant taking the risk of being seen by a courtier, who would spread the news in less than an hour. Then again, she let her elder daughter act in her stead. You could not say no to the ruling Queen.

Cromwell finally gave up and let the three royal ladies come for a visit, not without protesting.

"- My ladies, what can I do for you?"

"- You do not have to do anything", Elizabeth said. "Rather, it is us who should be doing something for you. Can you at least accept that we are worried for you?"

A tired smile appeared on the minister's drawn face. He gestured to two armchairs where Anne and Elizabeth took place, while Alice sat at the foot of the bed.

"- I can accept it, yes, but not so much that you would neglect your work. What would the realm do without its three good ladies?"

"- Something silly", Elizabeth retorted at once. "Look at what happens when we let men rule a country. A war here, a bankruptcy there..."

"- And you intend to do better, my lady?" Cromwell inquired with his usual snark.

"- Of course. I had the proper teachers for that, don't you think?"

No one had anything to answer, and the little time the queens and the princess spent in the minister's room was filled with friendly trifles. What could you say when facing an impending death?

# #

Three days before Christmas, a page from Cromwell's household bowed before the Queen-mother, his face seemingly made of stone.

"- My lady... He went with God this past night."

"- Bring me to him."

The page bowed and led her to the minister's chambers. Elizabeth and Alice were already waiting at the door, looking pale and drawn. Anne approved the restraint displayed by her second-born, though the child looked ready to scream or run away. The girls flanking their mother, the three women entered the room.

The doctor had put some order into the room. All his tools had disappeared, and Lord Cromwell was lying on his bed, dressed in his black velvet coat, his chain of office around his neck. It looked so unlike him that one could have believed that the body lying there was a wax model and not the minister's mortal remains. Anne quickly crossed herself, while all around her the servants began to mumble prayers. After some minutes, she pushed her daughters and the servants out, then closed the door behind them. With mechanical steps, she came back to the bed and knelt, her elbows on the blanket, and began to pray.

Suddenly, as if someone had cut the invisible threads keeping her up, she fell forward, her head hitting the sheets, and started to cry. She spent a long time that way, deaf and blind to the world around her.

Then she realized that the servants would be coming back to prepare their master for his last journey, and would see her thus, then would tell what they had seen, and the whole Court would know... Refusing to give the courtiers such an opportunity to gossip, Anne got up, left the room by the small hidden gallery that linked both chambers, and started to run towards her quarters, holding her skirts with both hands to go faster. Once she was safe behind her own door, she locked herself in her bedroom and sat in a corner, her knees folded against her chest.

"I am alone, alone, alone", Anne said, staring at the wall. "I will mourn him with all my soul. My great sorrow is that he will never know it. God, what a life..."

She spent the whole evening that way, sitting against the wooden panel under her window, without fire nor a single candle, shivering.

At first light the following morning, she crawled to her bed so that her chambermaids did not find her crumpled on the floor, and curled under her covers.

# #

Gregory wanted to give his father a discreet burial and have him rest with his wife and two daughters. Anne could not object. The young man probably did not know about her and Thomas. And had he known, what would have he thought about the fluctuating relation his father had kept with the former Queen Regent? She would rather not know. She would not even be able to go in that small graveyard without attracting unwanted attention and questions. Thomas' nieces in particular were very strict Reformers, and the Queen-mother knew their opinion about relations out of wedlock, even between a long-time widow and a even longer-time widower. Unlike Jesus Christ, those ladies would not have forgiven the adulteress. It would be counterproductive to give them something to chew over. Anne would have to make herself nearly invisible if she wanted to pray at her old friend's grave. She could not even imagine how Alice could feel, when the child had acknowledged her relation to Thomas barely some months ago.

# #

The princess did her best to hide her sorrow in front of the courtiers, but alone with her sister, she allowed herself to grieve, and the young Queen tried to cheer her up by telling her amusing anecdotes.

"What I like to remember", Elizabeth said on one evening her younger sibling was feeling particularly down, "is the day he shamed Uncle Charles in an archery contest. In front of the whole household, no less. Henry told me once, and his father was really furious. Our poor cousin got such a scolding!"

Alice giggled behind her sleeve. Everybody knew that the late Duke of Suffolk was excessively proud of his prowess with a bow. It was him who had insisted that the girls train in that noble sport with his son Henry, and they had both really enjoyed that present. They truly had a gift for hitting their targets.

# #

January 1549

Once the modest New Year celebrations had ended, the Queen-mother progressively withdrew from Court life. She reduced the number of her ladies-in-waiting and stopped going to every single ball as she did before. She also gave her seat in the council to her son-in-law, and worked almost exclusively for the schools and hospitals she had created years ago.

At the end of January the wedding of Kathryn Howard and the Earl of Shrewsbury was celebrated in Whitehall. The first thing the groom did was to send his wife away from London, to his lands, to learn the management of the family domains... and get her away from all the seducers swarming around her. The earl was a good-natured fellow, but he was also a dangerous swordsman, and it was better not to give him a pretext for starting a duel.

The feast was a poor one. Queen Anne did not appear at the wedding, though the bride was her cousin, and Princess Alice did not come either, even though Kathryn had served her during two years as lady-in-waiting. Queen Elizabeth, however, led the revelry with her husband, smiling and cheerful, though she knew that all the lords of the kingdom were staring at her to find out whether she was already pregnant or not.

The wisest courtiers considered that the old Court had just ended, and the new one was finally going to take over.