What A King Wills

WHAT A KING WILLS

I will do as I please, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.

For I am not merely a man—I am ordained. And what a king wills cannot be wrong.

A man whose name is now unspoken, whom I made a cardinal, erred in his slowness over my Great Matter. Had he moved with the urgency my cause deserved, he might have lived. Slowness before righteousness is a kind of treachery.

The man I raised after him lost his life when he put conscience before obedience. When he denied my supremacy, his end was inevitable. One died before trial, the other after.

I regretted the second. Until things soured, I enjoyed our little spars. He understood the nature of power, or so I believed. I showed mercy in the manner of his death—beheading rather than the butchery of the gallows. He called it conscience. I call it defiance. A dangerous thing in any man. Intolerable in a subject.

I dream of him sometimes in the dead of night, but that is inevitable with someone who was once a friend.

NEVER LET IT BE SAID I WASN’T A GOODLY MAN!

At first, she was my dream girl. Beautiful, quick-witted, alive in a way that made the court seem dull by comparison. I believed she would give me everything I desired. Above all, she would give me a son.

In return, she would have everything.

To think I was such a pitiful creature in her presence, now pains me acutely! She must have wanted me, but her refusal to yield made me crave her all the more.

She was the only woman who denied me and it spurred me on. I was consumed by her; I drowned in her eyes, and at every opportunity tried to kiss that fine gazelle-like neck—even when she brushed me away and said, “No, my lord. It is not right.”

Her alluring voice and foreign, elegant manners were intoxicating. I knew if I pursued her long enough, I’d eventually win my prize. Later when we were officially together, she joked she’d had no choice in marrying me. I judged her boldly devilish to come out with such words and laughed heartily. Not content, she said I’d “pestered her to death by bombarding her with letters and gifts” — so much so she’d been forced to withdraw for a year. Had she been trying to escape my advances? No, it was just another ploy. She played me like a lute, and I was a willing string.

I waited seven years to sleep with her. Like Jacob, I served my time only to find the prize was a poisoned chalice.

Divorce from my first wife should have been straightforward, but when the authorities refused, I grew increasingly desperate. I would alter the very fabric of the kingdom.

I can hardly believe I once loved her and did my best to comfort her in her miscarriages. It was only after years of failing to provide me with a male heir, I realised the marriage must have been cursed and that I’d been wrong to marry my own brother’s widow when I was but seventeen. By marrying her, I had unwittingly “uncovered my brother’s nakedness.” In doing so, I had gone against Scripture.

NEVER LET IT BE SAID I WASN’T PIOUS!

That being the case, I had no choice but to look elsewhere. In the early days, I ignored my first wife’s tearful pleas. As far as I was concerned, our marriage was over. I had been supremely kind, but my patience had worn a beard.

Distance is no barrier to a lover’s heart. I deluged my new prize with letters and gifts at her family home. I was amazed when she kept sending them back! Most women would have been falling over themselves for such attention. Her sister had happily given herself to me in the past, although it had ruined her reputation.

Of course, I knew she couldn’t resist forever. By the time she consented to marry me, the people had long been calling her the “whore of Babylon.” An accusation that no longer appears as unjust as it once did.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but after I had her, my passion quickly extinguished like a blown candle. A curious thing—to labour so long for a prize, only to find it diminished in the holding. But the fault could not lie in me. Admittedly, after her second pregnancy, my eyes started wandering a little, but after all I’d gone through to get her, I could hardly rid myself without cause. I bided my time and hoped for the best. But then, she miscarried again. A stillborn boy. Proof beyond doubt.

A cursed union, then. It must be so. For if it were not cursed—if the failure were mine—then all I had done…

She maintained she miscarried on account of my jousting accident when she feared I was going to lose my life. She kept telling me I was never the same after the horse fell on me and I lay unconscious for two hours. She dared to suggest the fault was in my blood not hers. She looked at me as a broken, aging man. And to think, I was once the finest, most handsome prince in Christendom!

I now knew the marriage was cursed.

Before the miscarriages, she had given birth to a healthy girl! A redheaded thing—too much like me for comfort. As she was our firstborn, I did my best to cover my embarrassment, but did not bother with the expected bonfires and rejoicings a male birth would have produced. I could almost hear the bawdy remarks in taverns, feel the conversation dry up whenever I entered a room. Secret scornful laughter mocking my failure.

So there it was. The witty personality that had once so delighted me, now grated. When she wasn’t laughing with male courtiers, she was accosting me about reforming practices and the money from the monasteries. Who was she to question me?

Once convinced our union was cursed, I could think of nothing but finding a way to get rid myself of this plague. I turned to my new right-hand man. He immediately grasped my infatuation had soured and turned into something else.

Before long, my dream girl was escorted to the Tower and was charged with having slept with five men, one of them her own brother! Nothing would have surprised me. They were always sneaking off in corners and chattering together. I could well believe her capable of it even though she strenuously protested her innocence. Vileness indeed.

But how could she betray me thus? How could she lie so? And how could I ever have fallen under her spell?

She has been hunted down and will be slaughtered like a deer tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. I have already been more than magnanimous in acceding to her request for a foreign executioner and a sword; that way her end will come swiftly for she only has a little neck. I consider it a final act of kindness to a treacherous wife.

FOR THERE NEVER WAS A BETTER MAN THAN MYSELF.

I will wait for the cannons to announce the witch’s death. Then I will turn horse and ride to my palace. I will celebrate with my next lady, Jane, once the deed is done. Jane is not well educated, but she is loving and submissive, and I plan to marry her soon. I know we will be blessed with a son.

FOR THERE NEVER WAS A MORE PATIENT MAN THAN MYSELF.

I have bent a kingdom to my will. Broken men greater than most kings will ever know. Taken what I desired—wrested it, if I must, from God Himself.

And still, it slips me.

Yes.

The cannons will sound. They must. I have waited long enough. No more defiance. No more failure. No more laughter smothered behind hands.

Only silence. Erasure.

And yet—

In the dark, they return.

Not as ghosts. Not as accusations.

Worse.

As they were.

A lifted brow. A quiet voice. That half-smile. Eyes that met mine without fear—without submission.

Waiting.

As though I were the one to be judged.

I see her now.

Kneeling.

Not weeping. Not pleading.

Composed.

The curve of her neck exposed to the sky. An audience watches. What will she say? Pale. Smaller than I remember. And yet—some part of her is larger than before. Silent. Unyielding.

The blade glints. The wind carries the click of steel.

I feel my pulse in my throat. Too fast, too loud.

I swallow.

Anything else?

No.

Nothing.

It must be nothing.

For if there is meaning in it—if there is truth in those dark eyes, in that stillness, in that final, measured breath—

then I have been wrong.

The cannons have sounded.

Now, I will ride on.

I will not look back.

Because if I look—

I will see her as she was in that final moment—

then I will know that I did not destroy her.

Only myself.

I cannot.

For a king who has taken everything must not see…never truly see… what all that patience cost him.