Hello readers ! I know it took a while, but I have been busy with the new geek festival in Paris (Geekopolis), the office and my friends all having children at the same time... and my dear beta-reader The Dork was also away from her keyboard.
All in all, we managed to finish the job and here is the last chapter of this fanfiction.
Of the first part of this fanfiction, since a sequel is being written, which will cover the reigns of Elizabeth Tudor and her successors.
Good reading to you all !
XXXVI. The Old Guard Surrenders
May 1551, Dover
One of the doctors in town was eyeing his newest patient with worry. The man was shivering, said he could not breathe properly and, according to his wife, had been plagued for a whole day by sudden panic attacks. After gathering some information to make sure the patient had not, for instance, any trouble with the authorities or with the headhunters for the local coast-guards, the doctor began to wonder if that old Sweating Sickness was not making another appearance in the country. He recorded the facts in his register, then wrote some colleagues to inquire about similar cases in their districts.
Mail was circulating slowly and he only received the desired answers after the issue had been proved, and a persistent rumour now whispered of several suspicious cases.
As summer started, the dreaded news were confirmed. The Sweating Sickness had come back. The epidemic had started near Dover, then had gone back up the Thames to London and from there, had spread in the whole country without sparing the Court.
# #
July 1551, London
As soon as people began to talk about an epidemic of Sweating Sickness, many wealthy Londoners sent their families to the country in order to breathe some fresher air. Gregory Cromwell was no exception: he sent his pregnant wife and their four children to Launde Abbey. However, he remained in the city. He was only working occasionally in the family trade and his charges at Court were lighter than his father's but he considered as his duty to remain.
At mid-July, the first cases were reported within Whitehall.
The Court learnt it on the following day: the queen had caught the Sweating Sickness. Her mother and the doctors were not leaving her bedside.
For four days the city - and by extension all England - remained waiting and praying. Then, at last, the royal doctors announced that Elizabeth was safe, but she would have to remain bed-ridden for at least two weeks to ensure a proper recovery. The Dowager Queen, however, had also caught the sweating sickness while taking care of her daughter. She had already survived the disease once, but it had been nearly thirty years before, and meanwhile Anne Boleyn had ruined her health ruling the realm. So the courtiers were rather surprised when she left her rooms a week later, undoubtedly much thinner, but definitely not dead.
And while her daughter finished her convalescence, the Queen-mother took control of the kingdom again for some time, having to manage, amongst other things, some problems of public relations.
"I think we should not make the news public, but the Queen was pregnant", the royal doctor explained, lowering his voice. "The fever and her weakened state caused the loss of her child."
Anne hid her face in her hands.
"- The pregnancy was roughly three months old. I cannot say if we lost a prince or a princess."
"- Does she know?"
The man shook his head.
"Then tell her nothing."
Elizabeth had already lost one child during the previous year, in the first half of her pregnancy, nobody knowing exactly why. She had been healthy, then, and nothing could have foretold that end.
# #
When the epidemic ended at last two months later, it had devastated the "old guard", and few remained from King Henry's Court. The first death to reach Anne's ears was Anthony Knivert's. The old knight had not resisted the illness long. Lady Bridget remained alone with three children, the eldest of which was barely thirteen. Anne wrote her to invite her and her family to Hampton and try to entertain them all. Bridget accepted gladly to leave the countryside and arrived two weeks after receiving the queen-mother's letter. Elizabeth and Alice were delighted to have some companions closer to their age.
The Sweating Sickness had also taken Jane Parker. George Boleyn's former wife had followed the Queen's advice, had not remarried, and had settled in the manor George had been forced to give her in Kent, where she had lived in a way that the most polite people would describe as eccentric.
Wriothesley and Gardiner, the two demons of Anne's regency, had disappeared as well.
Suffolk's two sons had both died within a handful of days, leaving their elder sister Frances and her husband to inherit the title and the duchy. The new duchess did not mourn her brothers very long.
# #
A few days later, Lizzie Cromwell came back from her stay in Launde Abbey, having lost a lot of weight but still pregnant. And once again dressed in black from head to toe, like the day she had first taken her service with the Queen. Anne felt her heart clench when she saw her friend looking so broken.
"- Who..?"
"- He left me alone", Elizabeth stammered, "he left me all alone..."
before falling on her knees on the carpet, crying.
Anne understood that this time, Gregory had not escaped the disease – he had in fact died on the 4th of July. In order to help the grieving widow to face all the inheritance issues caused by Baron Cromwell's death, the queen-mother sent her one of her own lawyers, as well as a doctor.
In November, poor Lizzie gave birth to a boy, named Thomas for his grandfather, then the whole family went back to Leeds Castle, a residence that Cromwell had once bought for his son and daughter-in-law.
# #
If Lizzie Cromwell managed to find some joy with her children and her numerous nephews and nieces that her sister Jane regularly brought to Leeds, the same could not be said for the Queen-mother. Of all the little troop that surrounded her at her beginnings at Court, only Thomas Cranmer and her cousins Madge Shelton and Henry Howard remained. All the others, Francis Bryan being the last one to depart, were dead. And she knew she would join them soon.
Anne entertained no delusion about her chances of survival. The disease had not killed her, but had weakened her body so much that she could not remain amongst the living for long. On one evening, sitting in front of her mirror, she observed herself closely. Twenty years earlier, she would have never thought she would one day see white strands in her hair. They showed against the dark brown of her locks like the Howard long nose on Elizabeth's face. She had never imagined she would grow old, she realized with sadness. Not that she was proud enough to believe that time would spare her, but she had just convinced herself that she would die before discovering the first wrinkles on her face. Being married to Henry Tudor could do that to you...
Anne patted the side of the mirror, then went to her desk, took a quill and some paper, and began to write her will.
# #
21st of March 1552, Whitehall
After a very long day spent at the Queen and Prince Consort's side to meet ambassadors from Venice and the Netherlands, the Queen-mother felt tired, really tired. She resisted sleep in order to write a letter that she wished to be sent after her death. After some minutes, she set the quill back on her desk. Her letter was finished.
It was time she got some sleep.
# #
On the following morning, the lady-in-waiting that came to wake her hastily took three steps back after she touched the old Queen's cold hand. She quickly crossed herself, then ran towards Elizabeth's chambers.
# #
Anne had specified that she refused to be buried beside the king, and neither with her father in Hever. Elizabeth decided nonetheless to give her the honours of Westminster, but in a grave far away from Henry VIII Tudor's and close to the place the Queen had chosen for herself. The effigy showed her wearing the dress of her coronation, her crown on her head, the orb laid at her feet and the sceptre in her right hand. The sculptor had individualized the statue by adding around her neck the well-known pearl necklace and its golden "B" that Queen Anne had worn before her marriage.
# #
Mid-April 1552, Leuven
Though he had definitely retired from diplomacy, Eustache Chapuys never lacked for news of the outside world, and an impressive amount of mail was always piling upon his desk.
On that day, at the top of the pile, he found a letter from England. Who would write him? Since Gardiner's death on the previous year, nobody English would send him mail. That bitch Boleyn, may the Devil have her soul, had made sure of it.
He unsealed the letter and began to read. He first believed it to be a joke. The message was not very long, traced in a neat, small writing.
Monsieur Chapuys,
I do not doubt that when you receive this letter, you will have already learnt of my death.
You will surely be disappointed to learn that no appointed assassin from the Vatican caused it. I simply caught ill and my age did not allow me to recover. I finally became the « old thin woman » that you described fifteen years ago.
I do not think you should find any joy in it.
Despite all your efforts, I led the regency to its term, and my daughter is now Queen of England, and married to a French prince. Lady Mary became the very happy Duchess of Bavaria rather than a queen cloistered in some palace in Spain. England, France, the German princes and the United Provinces are bound by a strong alliance. Your master cannot threaten one of them without facing the others.
And last, and it is certainly what makes me particularly proud, people in my country can pray as they like without risking their lives.
I wish you, Monsieur Chapuys, a pleasant retirement.
Anne, the queen
Addendum : we will not meet again in Hell...
Chapuys crumpled the letter in a tight ball and threw it at the other end of the room. Even in death, the Boleyn woman was able to exasperate him.