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“You will take your damned bloody leeches and you will leave this room. Immediately. I do not want to see your face here again. And you,” he pointed to the praying priest and the countess who, despite his outcry, had resumed her wailing, albeit it quieter now.

“All of you—get out! And take that smoking contraption with you! Lady Cassia and I will be the only ones to tend to the queen now.”

Charles then herded the shocked and protesting group out of the room, making certain that the door was barred behind them.

When they’d gone, Cassia strode directly to the windows. She yanked open the drapery. The midday sunlight flooded in, and she went on to unhitch the window latches, throwing them wide to allow in the cool autumn air in effort to diffuse the sickly stench inside.

When she turned back to the bed, she stopped, frozen. And then she began to weep.

Without the veil of shadows, in the stark light of the day, Catherine appeared far worse than when Cassia had first seen.

Her eyes were sunken deep into her skull.

Her lips had turned a pasty white. Her fingernails had begun to yellow.

Cassia returned to the window, grasping the ledge as she took a steadying breath.

Outside, on the green lawn that bordered the river, a group of the courtiers were playing at bowls, laughing as if they hadn’t a care in the world, as if their queen wasn’t lying just inside, so near to death’s door.

It was too much to bear. Cassia turned away from the view, looking up when she heard the king enter the room again.

“How in heaven’s name did this happen?” she asked him, her voice cracking with emotion.

“Catherine lost the child—our child—early yesterday morning. The physician said it was inevitable. He said that her body just cannot sustain a pregnancy, but after speaking with Rolfe, I suspect the poison is more likely responsible. Soon afterward, the fever struck—just like you. When the spots on her skin started to appear late last night, they saw it as an omen that she did not have very much longer to live. That is when I decided to send for you. She has been given the last rites from her church. There is nothing more I can do.”

He looked down at his wife, lying there, so still, so close to dying, and his dark eyes filled with tears of anguish.

His voice was hoarse when he spoke again.

“She cannot die, Cassia. I know I have not been the best of husbands to her, but ...,” his voice broke then, “... I need her. I cannot live without her by my side. She is my queen. Catherine must not be allowed to die.”

Cassia stared at him, this man who was ruler over a realm, a man who’d not shown his wife more than passing affection during the course of their short marriage, but who’d obviously come to respect and treasure her in his own way. She stood by as he fell to his knees and wept into his hands.

Cassia spent the rest of that day and on into the night personally seeing to Catherine.

She would not allow anyone other than herself or the king to see to even the most trivial of tasks.

While Charles held his wife’s limp and unconscious body, Cassia herself stripped the bed of its soiled linen, ordering that it be burned far beyond the palace walls.

The mattress was replaced afresh, and the room was completely emptied of the leeches, pigeon carcasses, and filth.

Then Cassia got down on her hands and knees and scrubbed the furniture and the bare floor with lye soap until her hands were red and raw but no evidence of the sickly stench remained.

Charles held Catherine gently in his arms while Cassia bathed her in a tub of warm, lavender-scented water, carefully sponging the sores left on her skin from the damaging leechings.

They dressed her in a fresh linen nightrail, smoothed ointment over her, and then laid her back to repose on the bed.

Only then did Cassia allow herself the same.

A cooking pot with fresh water and food had been brought in, delivered by Rolfe. Cassia refused to allow any food from the palace kitchens inside the room for fear of the possibility of further poisoning.

Mara came early the next morning, offering her knowledge of herbs to help, but Cassia had refused to allow her inside, not certain if the queen’s illness had been induced by some sort of contagion brought on by her miscarriage, or if it was due to the poison. She wasn’t taking any chances.

She did accept Mara’s herbal poultice for the leech sores and a pouch of tea leaves which she had prepared herself.

After steeping the leaves in clean boiling water, Cassia spooned small amounts of it past Catherine’s cracked lips.

Afterward, she applied the poultices assiduously to every sore.

When she finally sat down, her back aching from the scrubbing, her hands burning from the lye, Cassia finally closed her eyes.

She thought only to take a few minutes respite.

In seconds, she was sound asleep.

The morning sun was beaming its soft light through the windows when she first heard the queen’s cry.

“The babies! Where are my babies? I want to see my babies!”

Cassia sat bolt upright in her chair. She saw Catherine sitting up on the bed, poker stiff. The queen, her friend, stared straight at her. Her eyes were wide, and her expression was frighteningly blank. “Where are my babies?”

Charles, summoned from the cot he’d had brought in to sleep on, came forward. Neither he nor Cassia spoke. Something in Catherine’s expression, the haunted emptiness in her dark eyes, gave them pause.

Catherine turned to look at her husband then, saying quite clearly in accented English. “Charles, where have they taken our babies?”

Charles glanced at Cassia a moment. “They are sleeping, my love. The babies are sleeping now in the nursery.”

“They are well?”

Charles’s voice broke only slightly when he answered. “Yes, my love, they are. Healthy little children, I am told.”

Catherine turned to look at Cassia then, who had not moved from her chair. “And the boy? Have you seen the boy, Lady Cassia?”

Cassia hated lying to her friend, but sensed she should continue the charade so as to not upset her. “Yes, Your Majesty, I have.”

“Is he very ugly?”

“Oh, no, not at all. He is a fine looking lad. A head full of dark hair. Quite the image of his royal father.”

Catherine seemed to smile at this, and then fell back against the pillows, her voice dropping off softly. “That pleases me to hear. I so wanted to give Charles a son that would be as handsome as his father.”

In the next moment, the queen fell in to a deep state of sleep, leaving Cassia and the king to stare.

Cassia looked to Charles. “She does not know she lost the babe?”

“Apparently not. She was still unconscious from the poison when she began to bleed. She must not have realized what happened, that she passed the child with the flux. And we must not allow her to find out either. At least not yet. Not now. It may cause her to fall into a depression and lose the will to live.”

Cassia nodded in agreement.

At odd times during the rest of that day, Catherine would call out as she had that morning, asking about the children, requesting a drink of tea, telling her husband how much she truly loved him.

Mostly, though, she slept, deeply and peacefully, giving Cassia the first inklings of hope that she would recover.

Until the fever returned that night.

It came upon her suddenly and with a fierceness that had Cassia working furiously to combat it. She soaked Catherine’s overheated skin with cold water, trying to fight down her tears when the delirium took over.

Catherine began to rave, thrashing about on the bed. “The child is dead! I saw him! They took him away all bloody!”

Cassia took Catherine’s hand in hers and squeezed it. “No, Your Majesty, you are mistaken. The babe is alive. He is fine. He is sleeping peacefully now in his bed in the nursery.”

But Catherine did not hear her. Instead she began to weep, sobbing loudly, her head thrashing violently back and forth on the pillow.

Her hands reached out to invisible images.

“Please, Charles, don’t leave me. I will give you a son.

I swear I will. Please give me another chance and I promise you I will not fail again. ”

It was heartbreaking.

Twice Cassia had to hold Catherine down, throwing her body over hers to keep her from flinging herself out of the bed.

She raved on, begging Charles to return her love, weeping about dead babies and her failure to deliver him an heir.

Charles seemed to fall into some sort of trance, for he just stood at the side of the bed, dumbstruck while Cassia worked furiously to calm the wailing Catherine.

He stared at his wife as if he didn’t know her.

Finally, just as the dawn was breaking over the Thames, the fever subsided. Catherine fell back into a deep, restorative sleep.

Charles came to Cassia as she moved to the foot of the bed to fetch the fresh linens, taking her hands with his.

“Dear Cassia, what have I done to this poor woman? What will I do if I lose her?”

Cassia hugged Charles to her, this man, a king, so helpless to do anything more than pray. Together they wept for Catherine.

It was thus that Rolfe found them when he came into the room.

He’d brought a fresh supply of clean water and the ingredients necessary to make a healing broth for the queen, having received Cassia’s written request for it earlier that morning.

Seeing her standing there—this woman who was his wife—the woman he loved, seeking comfort from the king struck him a sharp and telling blow. It should be him she was clinging to for comfort. He should be the one to soothe her misery.

But then, he thought, even though he was her husband, he was still an utter stranger to her.

Rolfe was caught between the urge to turn and leave, and the even stronger urge to break them apart. Instead, he merely stood there in the doorway and watched until at last they separated. But theirs wasn’t the embrace of lovers. It was the embrace of shared grief.

It wasn’t another moment before they noticed him standing there.

“I have brought the water and things you asked for,” he said.

Despite his attempt, Cassia could see the emotion in his eyes. She knew he believed the king to be her lover. She wished she could tell him that it wasn’t true, that, despite the rumors, she had never been the king’s mistress, but knew it was neither the time nor the place.

“Thank you, Lord Ravenscroft. You may set them on the table near the teapot.”

And with that, Rolfe turned and left the palace.