#timeline: 1536.

[neroengland]

@threecardtrick requested: marmalade, a starter in which one or both muses are content.

Old, feeble Katherine was dead, praise be to God! Henry had not wept at Chapuys' damp-eyed reports that the rheum had killed her; nor did he mourn for the Spanish princess who had unlawfully shared his bed for twenty-years. Relief bade him to revel, to receive the word of God. All threats of war with the Emperor would be forgotten, now. Cromwell––that wily, cunning fox––would cauterize Europe’s wounds with his swift blacksmiths’ hand. Charles would be appeased. Katherine would be interred, a Dowager Princes of Wales, and the son that stirred in Anne's belly would be a true prince, legitimate in the eyes of the world. As Anne and Elizabeth, in their yellow skirts and golden plumes, bobbed out of the tail of his gaze, the King smiled. He clasps a bejeweled hand on Thomas's furred arm, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the chapel.

‘We will hear no more, Cromwell. Today is a time to dance,’ He says, though the ache in his leg begins to smart as the King rises from the velvet-swathed bench. ‘Remember this, good sir, that this year shall be remembered for all time – you and I will see to that, and history will serve us well’.

[neroengland]

@sweetbitterbitten sent : crimson, a starter in which one or both muses are angry. – for anne boleyn.

‘Anne, you test my patience with your demands’.  Standing in the Queen’s presence chamber, with his hardened-gaze riveted to the window and the pleasing stretch of swollen gardens beyond, Henry avoids Anne’s gaze. Were she to peer into the depths of his narrowed eyes, she would see the fury that stoked within – the impatience, the terse uncertainty that God had delivered him out of one unlawful marriage into another. As one bejeweled hand strokes the beard at his chin, another holds fast to the sword at his waist. ‘I cannot command the people to adore you anymore than I can command your belly to conceive an heir’.  Grumbling beneath his breath, the King uttered: ‘were it God’s will, England would have a son and Elizabeth would have France. But I see now God will not grant me that no matter what I do’.