Henry VIII: A Private Life

1546, Whitehall

The room is foul before dawn. Vinegar, hot cloth, old rushes, tallow, and the sweet corruption from my leg mix into something even the gentlemen cannot quite master in their faces when the bandages are changed. A silver basin waits beside the chair that carries me now where I once crossed chambers fast enough to make other men hurry. The windows sweat. So do the men. They speak low, then stop when I turn my head. That is the sound of succession beginning before the body is finished. Edward is still a boy. Mary is watched. Elizabeth is measured. Every councillor in the room already hears the kingdom in another key and hopes I do not. I do hear it. I hear it in the soft tread outside the privy chamber, in the delay before an answer, in the care taken not to mention what happens when this flesh gives way, and it is giving way faster than I will permit them to say aloud.