My Love, I Am Coming Back to You (1)
“To lose one’s partner in life is … like losing half of one’s body and soul, torn forcibly away.” — Queen Victoria, 1862
Anne read the line twice.
Then a third time.
My love, I am coming back to you.
“That’s all?”
Henry leaned slightly closer, though not enough to read over her shoulder. “It appears so.”
Anne frowned at the paper.
Arthur’s letters had grown shorter since the fever worsened, but this was hardly a letter at all. One line. No complaints about Ludlow. No irritated remarks about physicians. No questions about Aldercombe, her drawings, the latest absurdity from London, or whether Henry had managed to steal another recipe from her kitchen.
Just one line.
“He must be exhausted.”
Henry said nothing.
Anne ran her thumb over the edge of the paper. The handwriting was unmistakably Arthur’s, though less steady than usual.
I am coming back to you.
For the first time in several days, something inside her loosened.
“Good,” she murmured.
“What?”
Anne shook her head. “Nothing.”
She folded the paper carefully along its existing crease.
Arthur was coming back.
That was enough.
Henry watched her slip the letter into her sleeve.
“I assume this means you are in a better mood.”
Anne looked at him. “Was I in a bad one?”
“You have asked me that before, and I have learned not to answer.”
“That may be the wisest thing you’ve learned this year.”
“I’ve learned Latin.”
“That only proves my point.”
Henry looked offended.
Anne almost smiled.
The door opened.
A servant entered, bowed, and looked at Anne.
“My lady. Lord Ashcombe asks that you come to him.”
Something in the man’s face made Henry stop talking.
Anne rose.
“What happened?”
The servant hesitated.
“My lord will explain.”
The small relief she had felt a moment earlier disappeared.
Anne looked at Henry.
He had seen it too.
Neither of them spoke as they left the room.
Thomas was standing near the windows when Anne entered. A man in royal livery stood several feet away, his travelling cloak marked with mud. Another of Thomas’s household officers was near the door. No one appeared to be doing anything.
That, more than anything, frightened her.
Her father looked at her.
“Anne.”
She stopped.
There were certain moments in life when the body understood something before the mind allowed it to become language. Anne had experienced that once before, years ago, when she had opened her eyes in a world that should have existed only in books and discovered that everyone around her believed she belonged there.
This felt different.
Colder.
Her fingers closed around the letter hidden in her sleeve.
“Where is Arthur?”
Thomas did not answer quickly enough.
Anne looked at the messenger.
The man lowered his eyes.
“No.”
“Anne—”
“No.”
She took a step backwards.
Thomas crossed the room. “The Prince of Wales died at Ludlow.”
The sentence entered the room and remained there.
Anne looked at him.
She understood every word.
The Prince of Wales.
Died.
Ludlow.
They were ordinary English words. She had known them all for years.
Together they meant nothing.
“No,” she said again.
Thomas reached for her.
Anne stepped back.
“No. He was ill.”
“Yes.”
“He wrote to me.”
Thomas said nothing.
“He wrote to me.”
Anne pulled the folded paper from her sleeve with shaking fingers.
“Henry brought it. Just now.”
Thomas looked at the letter.
Anne suddenly turned to the royal messenger.
“When?”
The man looked uncomfortable. “My lady—”
“When did he die?”
“On the second day of April.”
Anne stared at him.
For several seconds she could hear only the fire.
“The second?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“What day is it?”
No one answered.
She knew what day it was.
She knew.
Anne looked down at the paper in her hand.
My love, I am coming back to you.
For one terrible instant she could not remember when Henry had said the letter arrived at court. She could not remember how long it had taken to reach London, when Arthur had written it, whether he had already known how ill he was, whether the hand that had formed those words had still believed them.
Coming back.
He had written that he was coming back.
Anne turned toward Henry.
He had gone very pale.
“Did you know?”
Henry’s eyes widened. “No.”
“Did you know he was worse?”
“I knew he had been ill.”
“How ill?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must know something.”
“Anne—”
“You’re his brother.”
Henry flinched.
Anne crossed the distance between them before she understood what she was doing and caught both his arms.
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know.”
“What illness?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was he awake? Did he speak? Did he know what was happening?”
“I don’t know!”
Henry’s voice cracked.
The room went silent.
He looked almost frightened by the sound of it himself.
Anne’s fingers remained around his sleeves.
Henry swallowed. “They said there was sickness in the household. Catherine was ill too. Arthur became worse. That is all I know.”
“That can’t be all.”
“It is.”
“Someone must know.”
“They will.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I don’t know!”
He was ten.
The fact arrived suddenly and uselessly.
Ten years old, standing in Thomas Ashcombe’s parlour with his elder brother dead in Wales and Anne demanding that he explain death as though being Arthur’s brother ought to have given him some private authority over it.
Henry looked at her helplessly.
Anne released him.
“Oh God,” she whispered.
No one moved.
“Oh God. Arthur.”
The words seemed to break something.
She covered her mouth.
Thomas reached her before her knees gave way completely and caught her by the shoulders. Anne hardly noticed. She could see Arthur in fragments, none of them belonging together: Arthur standing beneath the apple tree at Aldercombe; Arthur complaining about Henry; Arthur looking offended when she insulted English food; Arthur’s fingers around hers; Arthur in scarlet and gold beside Catherine at St Paul’s; Arthur reading her drawings as though badly designed drainage were a matter of royal importance.
Arthur laughing.
Arthur writing.
Arthur promising.
My love, I am coming back to you.
There had been time.
There was always supposed to be more of it.
A movement near the door caught Thomas’s attention. Henry’s senior attendant had stepped closer. Another royal servant had arrived behind him, breathless from haste, and after a brief exchange in low voices the older man looked directly at Thomas.
The meaning was clear.
The Duke of York was required back at court.
Now.
Thomas gave the smallest nod.
Henry looked from the servant to Anne.
“I have to go.”
Anne did not answer.
“Anne?”
She looked at him.
For one absurd second he appeared to be waiting for permission.
Then Anne nodded.
Henry hesitated. “I’ll find out.”
“What?”
“What happened. I’ll find out.”
Anne stared at him.
Henry seemed to realize that he had promised something he might not be able to give. His mouth tightened.
“I’ll try.”
That was worse.
Anne looked away.
Thomas walked Henry and the royal servants from the room. The first messenger went with them, leaving Anne alone with the sound of horses beginning to move in the courtyard below.
She sat without remembering sitting.
The letter was still in her hand.
Arthur was dead.
The thought appeared.
She rejected it.
Arthur was dead.
No.
Arthur was dead.
No.
She had known this.
That was the monstrous part.
Somewhere inside the confused collection of facts she had carried from another century, she had known that Arthur Tudor died young. She had known Catherine of Aragon became Henry VIII’s first wife. She had known there had been another Prince of Wales before Henry.
Arthur.
A name in a paragraph.
A boy who died.
A historical inconvenience before the real story began.
Anne pressed both hands against her face.
She had thought history could change.
She had looked at Arthur and believed it.
Thomas returned some time later. Anne did not know how long she had been sitting there.
He closed the door.
“Why did it take so long?”
Thomas stopped.
Anne lowered her hands.
“Why did no one tell us?”
“The message came as quickly as it could.”
“He died days ago.”
“Anne.”
“Days.”
“Ludlow is not Westminster.”
“I know where Ludlow is.”
“Then you know a messenger cannot cross the distance in an afternoon.”
“I know.”
“There were letters to be written. The King had to be informed. The Queen. The council. Orders had to be given. News of the death of the Prince of Wales is not sent through the country like gossip from a market.”
“I know.”
Thomas watched her.
Anne’s voice became smaller.
“I know.”
That was the problem.
She knew how roads worked.
She knew horses became tired.
She knew official news moved through households in an order determined by rank and necessity. She knew that Arthur had died in Wales and she was a girl in London with no legal claim upon him, no right to stand beside his bed, no right to demand that a messenger ride first to her door.
She knew Arthur had been Catherine’s husband.
She knew he had been the King’s son.
She knew all of it.
None of it changed the fact that while she had been eating, sleeping, speaking, perhaps laughing at something Henry said, Arthur had already been dead.
And none of it explained the letter still crushed between her fingers.
“I should have known.”
Thomas’s expression changed.
“How?”
Anne looked at him.
There was no answer she could give.
Because I came from a century in which your King is a chapter in a textbook.
Because I knew his younger son would become Henry VIII.
Because Arthur’s death was always there, buried somewhere in my memory beneath six wives and a Reformation and portraits of a man who had not yet grown into his own shoulders.
Because I thought loving him might be enough to make history forget what it had already done.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Thomas came closer.
For once he did not tell her what was sensible.
He simply sat beside her.
Anne leaned forward, pressed her hands to her face again, and finally began to cry.
She was ill by nightfall.
At first Madam Alice thought it was exhaustion. Then Anne vomited what little she had eaten, began shivering beneath blankets despite the warmth of the room, and by midnight her skin was burning.
The fever frightened the household more than it frightened Anne.
She remembered very little of the next two days. Alice’s hands. Jane’s voice. Thomas standing at the foot of the bed. Water she did not want. Broth she could not keep down. Once she woke convinced that someone had said Arthur was waiting downstairs and tried to get out of bed before Alice caught her.
When the fever finally broke, grief remained.
It was quieter than illness.
And more patient.
Food became difficult.
Anne tried.
That was what made everyone around her increasingly desperate: she did try.
She sat at the table. She lifted the spoon. She swallowed three mouthfuls of broth and discovered the fourth would not go down. Bread became dry in her mouth. Meat smelled too strong. Sweet things were worse, because sweetness belonged too easily to memories.
Apple tarts.
Custard.
Sugared almonds stolen by Henry.
Recipes folded among Arthur’s papers.
She stopped asking what the kitchen had prepared.
Within weeks, her gowns began to hang differently.
Madam Alice noticed first.
Thomas noticed next.
Jane said nothing, which meant she had noticed too.
Anne noticed when a dress that had fitted properly at Christmas had to be taken in.
She looked at herself in the mirror and thought she resembled someone recovering from a long illness.
Perhaps she was.
The ceremonies for Arthur seemed to continue long after Anne had ceased to understand what day it was.
His body remained far from London. Worcester would receive the Prince of Wales in death as Wales had received him in life, and the great funeral rites surrounding his burial belonged to another place, another procession, another set of people fulfilling obligations Anne would never see.
London mourned him too.
Bells sounded. Masses were said. Black cloth appeared where colour had been. The court moved through grief according to rules older than anyone living inside it.
Anne attended one of the royal memorial observances with the Ashcombe family.
She had buried her mother.
She had believed that experience would make death less strange the next time.
It did not.
Royal grief was larger, certainly. There were more candles, more clergy, more heraldry, more carefully arranged black cloth. Rank determined where people stood. Every movement carried meaning. Arthur had been a son, a husband, a brother and a boy of fifteen, but here he was also the Prince of Wales, and England mourned not only a person but a future.
Yet grandeur did not silence people.
Nothing ever silenced a court.
Anne noticed the glances before she heard the whispers.
They were not blatant. No one was foolish enough to stare openly at Lady Anne Ashcombe during a memorial for the dead Prince of Wales. But heads inclined. Eyes moved. Conversations paused when Thomas passed and resumed afterward.
Ashcombe.
The name had meant something different only months ago.
Arthur’s attention had brought Thomas closer to the royal household than he had stood in years. Land, favour, access, invitations—none of it had been imaginary. Everyone had seen it.
Now everyone could see the source of it lying beneath funeral cloth hundreds of miles away.
Anne stood beside her father and felt herself being recalculated.
That was the word that came to her.
Not judged.
Calculated.
What was an Ashcombe worth without Arthur?
What remained of Thomas’s advantage?
What would happen to the lands already granted?
What use was the girl now?
Anne almost laughed.
The sound would have been inappropriate, so she swallowed it.
Gold digger.
The phrase appeared in her mind with such perfect modern ugliness that for a moment she could almost hear it spoken in another life.
She wondered what Tudor English had instead.
Probably something longer.
People in this century were very good at making insults sound like moral instruction.
