Baynard's Castle, July 1537
The baby snuffled at her mother's breast, kneading the warm flesh with her nose in an attempt to find the sustenance she sought. The young woman huffed out air in a sound that was half amusement, half pain.
"Oh, little one," she whispered, tracing the dark down on the infant's head with a fingertip, "Do you know how happy you've made us? How happy you've made all of Albion?"
The baby blinked deep hazel eyes in response, and the young man who stood at the foot of the bed chuckled.
"She can't understand you, Rachel. How can she? She's only a few hours old."
"No," Rachel admitted, raising her head to smile at David, "But you do. And the country does. Listen to those bells!"
And indeed, what seemed to be every bell in London was ringing out in full merry peals, sending the royal joy into every corner of the city, and thence into every corner of the realm.
David returned his wife's smile and moved round to the head of the bed to peer more closely at the babe she held in her arms.
"She's a real mix of us, isn't she?" he asked, after a few moments' consideration.
"Indeed. My hair, your eyes…with any luck your height and cheekbones as well. The midwife said she was long for a new-born, so there's hope for her to have your height. I hope she does. She'll find it easier to rule if she has a proper physical presence."
"Planning her rule already?!" David scoffed in disbelief, "Let's get her named and christened before you plan her entire future out, shall we?"
"Esther," Rachel breathed the name over her daughter's head as though it were a blessing, "She'll be Esther, Crown Princess of Albion, as I was Crown Princess before her."
"You still want to call her an Old Testament name, then?" David arched an eyebrow and Rachel looked up at him, copying his gesture to the life.
"A family name did Beth no good, did it? No. This little girl needs to be a fresh start, to be Albion's saviour after the last twelve months of turmoil. I can think of no better namesake than the beautiful Queen who saved her people."
"I don't suppose I get a say, do I?"
"You can name the next girl…or our second son," Rachel offered teasingly.
"Second! What about the first?!"
"I told you. Our Prince has to be James after Papa."
David pulled a face, then shrugged, "I suppose I can live with that."
The tender moment was shattered as the newly-named Esther, finally realising that her mother's breasts had been bound and she wouldn't find the food she wanted there, decided to voice her protest. She did so raucously, and Rachel looked down at her, then back up at her husband.
"Fetch the wet nurse, would you, love? Someone's hungry."
"Of course. And I'll see about getting you some food as well. You look like you could do with it."
David pushed a strand of dark hair off Rachel's forehead and bent to kiss her temple, before turning on his heel and striding from the room in search of the wet nurse his new-born daughter so clearly desired.
Westminster Abbey, October 1537
The grand carved doors of the Abbey were flung open to a hail of trumpets. George, Consort of Spain, turned with the rest of the crowd to watch his niece process down the aisle. Rachel was resplendent in glittering cloth-of-silver, her luxuriant black hair cascading over her shoulders and woven with a net of diamonds that sparkled in the candlelight.
The breath caught in George's throat. For a moment, an all-too-brief moment, Rachel had looked so like her mother that he'd thought he'd gone two-and-a-half decades back in time and seen the teenage Anne coming up the nave towards him, not the twenty-two-year-old Rachel.
And then she was past him, and he was dipping his head in salute as the Abbess of Canterbury helped her first to prostate herself before the altar for the blessing and then to seat herself on the coronation chair. Ana, who had carried her train down the aisle, helped her arrange the yards of fur-trimmed cloth at her feet and then stepped back. She dipped down into a half-curtsy and then stepped back to join George in the throng of onlookers.
There was a low gasp as the crowds saw who Rachel's chief attendant was. It was almost unheard of for any royal daughter to dance attendance upon a Queen, let alone the grown heiress to another country. For the Princess of Asturias to carry Rachel's train, even at an event such as her coronation, and to do it with a smile on her face, was a strikingly bold act of Albionic-Spanish unity.
George felt his heart swell with pride and he half-turned his head to flash Ana a smile, as the Abbess of Dunfermline stepped forward to read the acclamation.
"Ladies, I here present unto you, Rachel, your undoubted Queen. Wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service, are you willing to do the same?"
"By the Grace of God, we are!" George blended his voice with the thousands of people behind him, thrilling inwardly at the joyous shout that rose to honour Rachel, as he imagined it had once risen to honour his late sister.
Once, twice, a full four times the acclamation was read, the throng threatening to raise the Abbey roof off its rafters each time, before the Abbess of Dunfermline was satisfied. Nodding briefly, she yielded to her English counterpart to administer the Oath.
"Rachel Stewart-Howard, will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of the blessed realm of Albion, according to time-honoured custom and the law of God?
"I solemnly promise so to do."
"Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in mercy, to be executed in all your judgments?"
"I will."
"Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you maintain and preserve inviolable the settlement of the English Church, begun by St Hilda, and that of the Scottish church as founded by St Margaret? Will you cherish and defend the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law united into one Holy Church throughout Albion? And will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of Albion and to the churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to any one of them?"
"All this I promise to do. The things which I have here before promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me God."
The promises over, Rachel was discreetly escorted behind the rood screen and anointed by the Abbess of Dunfermline, before returning to the coronation chair, and being handed the orb and sceptre by the Abbess of Canterbury, the older woman's words ringing through the vaulted nave as she pitched her voice to carry, "Here be the two sceptres of the sovereign. May you go forth and prosper and may you bear many children of the blood of Albion. Honour and Grace be to our Queen Rachel!"
"Alleuia, Amen!" came the full-throated roar in response, before it was time for the ladies of the realm to swear their oaths of fealty to their newly-crowned sovereign.
As a visiting Consort, George wasn't expected to swear allegiance to Rachel, but as her Uncle, as her mother's beloved older brother, he'd insisted that he would, if only to underline, in his own way, that Rachel had international support in her new role as Queen. In deference to his rank, therefore, he was the first to swear allegiance to his niece. He knelt before her and placed his hands in hers, as he had once done with Juana, all those years ago.
"I, George, Prince Consort of Spain and the erstwhile Prince of England, do hereby pledge my allegiance to you, my sovereign lady, Queen Rachel of Albion, from this day until my last. Excepting any duty I owe to my wife, Juana, Queen of Spain, and to my daughter, Ana, Princess of Asturias, I pledge you my love as a kinsman, my sword in your honour, and whatever service I may do you from overseas. May God and the Virgin strike me down if I so much as falter in my oath."
As he finished reciting the very carefully written oath, George glanced up at Rachel, breaking protocol to drink in every detail of the features of the niece he had only just met and would likely never see again once her place as undoubted Queen of Albion was secure.
"Uncle George?" Rachel murmured, recalling him to himself as their eyes met – God, her gaze was so like his sister's!
He lingered for just a few seconds more, unable to tear himself away.
"Your mother would be so proud," he whispered, his voice so low that no one but Rachel could hear him, "She'd be so proud to know she'd raised such a lioness."
Then, before Rachel could respond, he rose and yielded his place in front of her to her young husband.
Glastonbury, November 1537
Glastonbury Cathedral towered above the small town, its bells pealing joyfully, as Rachel, mounted on a gleaming bay palfrey, rode out on to the Cathedral steps, the four-month-old Esther nestled in the crook of her arm.
The heralds paused as she drew rein, waiting until she had the horse firmly under control before they blew their instruments.
"Her Majesty Queen Rachel of Albion! Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess of Albion!"
"Queen Rachel! Princess Esther! Queen Rachel! Princess Esther!" The crowds in the square and surrounding streets took up the cry, until it seemed the very houses would come tumbling down from the force of it.
George heard the jubilation from where he still stood in the nave of the cathedral, but he didn't react to it. Instead, as the rest of the guests at little Esther's investiture spilled out into the autumn sunshine, he slipped from his pew and moved hesitantly toward the chancel, where a freshly engraved stone marked the final resting place of his sister and her husband.
It had taken over a year, but the Portuguese had been as good as their word. They had trawled the seas around their shores until they found Anne and James's bodies, and sent them back to England, so that they could lie together for all eternity in the cathedral they had married in, in the cathedral that Anne had once planned to turn into the Stewart-Howard's dynastic resting place. They, and little Cecily, had been interred in the chancel a few months previously. Heavily pregnant, Rachel hadn't been able to be present, but the Prince Consort had, as had Prince George and her cousin's little daughter, the eleven-year-old Duchess of Lancaster.
"It was a glittering ceremony, by all accounts, Annabelle," George whispered, sliding to his knees, ignoring the way they clicked in protest, so that he could lay his hand on the smooth cuts of his sister's name, "You'd have loved it. David, George and little Anne did you proud. I promise. Indeed, they've all done you proud."
As he spoke, George let his mind wander, thinking of each of the children his sister had once called her own. Dickon was in Denmark, and by all accounts had made something of a name for himself there as a scholar as well as a beloved and generous Prince Consort. Not for him the acrimonious marriage that his parents had had. He and his wife, Queen Dorothea, shared a love of riding and adventure as well as books, and had three young children, Dorothea, Anne, and Hans.
Meanwhile, his namesake, Prince George, was Abbot of Syon now, one of the most respected, most cultured churchmen in England, and no doubt in all of Albion. After all, hadn't King James himself asked him to witness his will when he rewrote it to include the late Duchess of Carnarvon? That in itself was a sign of how highly young George was thought of. And, in some ways, George found the fact that Anne had chosen to put the son she'd had with Henry, the husband she'd married for lust as much as for love, into the church, grimly and amusingly fitting.
As for their sister-cousin, the former Duchess of Lancaster, she had never forgiven herself for the death of Rachel's first daughter. Rachel had no sooner secured her reign as Queen of Albion by imprisoning Arabella than Elizabeth, or Bessie, as she'd always been known, had abdicated her myriad of titles to her eleven-year-old daughter and set off for Bari on pilgrimage, hoping to absolve herself by praying to St Nicholas for the infant Duchess's soul. The last that had been heard of her, she'd been in France, and about to cross the Alps into Switzerland and thence to Italy. The new Duchess and her younger sister, meanwhile, had been brought to Court and placed in Rachel's household, where, if gossip was to be believed, they now doted on the infant Princess Esther almost as much as Bessie had once doted on Rachel herself.
Prince Alexander, meanwhile, had taken to his life as a royal exile like a duck to water. He had found a niche for himself at the Queen of France's Court, riding and jousting in her tourneys as skilfully as any boy who'd been raised to be a tourney champion. The prize winnings were funding his lavish lifestyle, and he genuinely seemed to have embraced the freedom that being banished from Albion, and his damned status as a convicted rebel, had granted him. George couldn't help but wish him well, even as he regretted that the boy had been so bitter as to flock to his little sister's standard in the first place. Alexander was Rachel's cousin as much as her brother. He should have been at her side, advising her and his younger brother, as they sought to continue their parents' legacy and unite the Isles into one harmonious realm. Goodness knows Lord Robert wasn't going to do it. He was too feckless, preferring hunting and gambling over the subtleties of statecraft.
But then, being feckless and lazy had kept Lord Robert neutral in the conflict of the past eighteen months, so that was something. Given that, George supposed he oughtn't to complain too harshly about King James's second son.
And then of course, there was Rachel, with David at her side. Rachel, who had just ridden out of the cathedral to such a clamour of applause. Anne had always been so proud of her darling eldest daughter. Nothing had been too good for her Princess of Wales, her Crown Princess of Albion. Nothing. In fact, she'd often indulged Rachel to such an extent that George had almost worried that, if their mother had made Anne a bit too harsh, by pushing her into a woman's role before she was ready, Anne might have made Rachel a bit too soft. A bit too willing to see the good in people. But she'd proved him wrong.
The last eighteen months had been the making of Rachel. Faced with the almost-unprecedented trial of her own sister rising in rebellion against her, she'd risen to the challenge admirably, keeping her friends close about her, and relying on the lessons she'd learnt at her mother's knee and those she trusted most to keep her on her rightful throne, striking hard and fast where it was needed. And she'd been magnanimous in victory. No one could say she hadn't. Why, she'd even been generous enough to allow Arabella's body to be taken north to Scotland and buried at her own home of Stirling. Not many Queens would have been that generous, not to an out-and-out traitor, no matter the blood ties between them. True, there had been the unfortunate incident before that, where Rachel had disinherited Arabella, but then, Anne had made her own share of impulsive mistakes when pressured. George could forgive Rachel for an error made in the heat of the moment, especially when she'd so clearly tried to make up for it once her temper had cooled.
And of course, she'd done her duty. Twice over, in fact. She'd given the country an heiress, a Crown Princess of Albion, to keep the double throne safe, and secure her parents' legacy. Admittedly, a second daughter, a Duchess of Gloucester and Ross, would be helpful, but it wasn't necessary. Not yet, at any rate. Certainly not on this golden, triumphal day.
"You've done it, Annabelle," George breathed, glancing down along the nave to the open doors, "You've done it. You've raised a lioness to hold the throne. The Albion you and James always dreamed of, always wanted to rule, is here and it's secure in Rachel's hands. It's not going anywhere, not so long as she and David live."
His voice broke. He caressed the letters of Anne's name again, fingers tracing them as lovingly as he used to play with her dark unruly curls when they were children.
"I only wish you could be here to see it."
The last of his self-control broke. His knotted shoulders heaved, and even as his niece and her daughter were acclaimed rapturously outside the cathedral, George fell full-length along the floor of the chancel, tears pouring down his cheeks. Face pressed to the flagstones, the capital A of Anne digging into his cheek until it marked him, George Trastamara, Consort of Spain, born George Howard, Prince of England, wept for the sister he had loved and lost.