In the early months following Margaret's birth, she is torn in two. On one hand, she is an infant. Only three moons old with her father's hair and eyes and her mother's warm smile. She has never known pain nor death nor suffering. She does not know what love is- she is not even aware of the world going on around her. All she knows is discomfort and how to cry, and that there should be another body curled up next to her at all times.
But deep within this royal child who should have never been, a woman sleeps. A woman who has known what it is like to stress, who has felt heart break and loss and pain, who knows what it feels like to have a knife slide between her ribs and twist. A woman who has lived twenty long years, who was seen friends and family come and go.
This woman sleeps, deep within the recluse of the infant's mind, a prisoner of her own new body, trapped with a soul that is fracturing day by day. But she is waking, slowly, slowly, and with each passing moment, her host grows more and more discontent.
The physicians, wary after the New Year's Prince, Hal, take immediate notice. They hear her whimpering and see the sheen of sweat upon her brow, and take immediate action. They separate her from her twin and alert the king and queen whilst they do what they can- they mix poppy for her pain and dab wet cloth along her burning forehead, drizzle tonics and elixirs from Rome down her tiny throat.
Nothing works.
The king rages, drinking his sorrows away and punching at the wall until his knuckles are raw and bleeding. He looks into the physicians' eyes, each and every one of them, and snarls out that if the Princess Margaret should die, their heads will be the next to roll.
The queen rushes to the chapel as soon as she hears the news, her ladies in waiting and maids of honor in tow. She stays by the cross and kneels in prayer, drinking little and eating less as she begs for her daughter's life. The Heavenly Father has already called upon her unborn children, He has already taken her beautiful baby boy from her. Surely He will not do the same to Margaret as well?
The Princess Mary cannot be comforted as her twin struggles for her life. She wails constantly, keeping servants up deep into the night, and not even her wet nurse's sweet songs can soothe her. It's almost as if she knows that something is amiss- that something deeply, deeply wrong is occurring. Whatever the reason behind her shift in demeanor, it only serves to heighten the tension around court.
In the coming days, everyone will hold their breath and hope the little princess survives- for her sake and the royal family's as well as their own- for if a second Tudor child dies in the cradle, England will become a very dark place.
In the end, it is not the physicians' backwards medicine nor the prayers of her people that save Margaret, it is herself. The infant part of her, who would have been unable to withstand the conflict, flickers painfully, and the waking adult leaps at her chance. Two warring souls merge, splintering and breaking and clawing at one another. For a moment, there is only white- hot pain. Then, there is peace.
The Princess Margaret's cheeks lose their feverish flush. The whimpers she lets out gradually lessen. Her shaking subsides. After a few days, it becomes apparent that she will survive. The king laughs heartily, relief evident upon his face, and orders for bonfires to be lit and for every man in London to have free ale. The queen, although weakened by her fasting, finds enough strength within herself to cry out in jubilation and praise God as tears wet her cheeks.
The royal children are reunited and all seems well. But for Margaret, who now remembers two lives, her very existence has been turned upside down. And everything you have read in the history books, dear reader, everything you think you know, forget it now. For the world will never be the same.