AN: This story takes place in the same continuity as My Lord, my life. You can read it separately. I may write a part two for this one.
Oliver Cromwell
Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones! –Arthur Act 4 scene 3 King John by Shakespeare
It was madness. He hadn't thought about it before he had done it. Even as he rushed through the rain, he hadn't paused. He allowed his feet to move through the palace; taking out of the way corridors, halting at voices, and slipping through the shadows. Until he had secreted himself away into his rooms.
Only then did he allow himself to think.
His hair dripped water on to the treasure he cradled against his chest. He looked into the empty sockets as if they held the answer for his actions.
The features that were once familiar to him were long gone If he had not spent the past decades seeing the head every time he came to the palace, he wouldn't have been able to tell this head from any other. He had seen so many heads roll across battlefields and hung on posts. All but the dearest corpses were indistinguishable from the others. It was the nature of a long and at times bloody life.
He couldn't say why he had done it. It wasn't as if he had cried over the head or its removal from its tomb. True, he hadn't been delighted by the beheading at the time, and he had said so, but it had nothing to do with feelings of affection for the man. Beheading a corpse was simply unseemly, truly not worthy of a king or a nation.
Charles would be furious to learn the head had gone missing. Even more so if he learned that England had found it, had brought it back to his rooms, had cradled it in his arms.
But this man he had been his. Not in a way that any before him had been nor would be for some time.
England paused at that thought. His lips moved ever so slightly upwards. That was a thought. He would not have another Protectorite. No. But he would have something else. Something not a king and yet still uniquely his.
The grin that came his face was a nasty thing meant for battlefield and sorcery.
Until then… England shuffled closer to his fireplace. He wedged his fingers into a small crack and wiggled a stone back and forth, back and forth. Slowly the stone slipped from its place. Webs of long dead spiders and dust followed after it. A small collection of objects hid inside; an old knife with never fading bloodstains which his mother had used against Rome, a charm or two of cold iron, and jewels long thought lost. He peered inside the space measuring and rearranging objects. He loosened his hold on the head, shifted the knife around, and slowly, tenderly slipped the head in beside it.
He returned the stone to its place. Perhaps someday he would bring Oliver back out, but for now he would stay with the rest of his secrets.