• "Nooooooooo." My hand clamped itself tightly over my mouth in terror.

    "It cannot be so!" I pleaded hysterically with the muslin wrapped bundle of deathly silence. Willing it to live by my hoarse screams alone, for it to take a sudden strangled breath and for the room to be filled with the joyous grating shrill of a newborn's cry. I watched in stunned horror as the midwife handed over the bloody and sodden package to my nurse. My whole body racked with pain as the crimson pool beneath me spread across the once crisp fresh linen sheets. The air in my chamber held an unbearable stagnant stench, a sickening mélange of blood and sweat and death, a stench that would both foretell and secure my very destiny.

    I hurled myself onto my front in a fit of neurotic grief, burying my head in the pillows as I sobbed, my spent frame convulsing in my tortuous despair. I heard the familar thud of the oak panelled door to my bedchamber close, the abortion removed I could only guess, and the entry of those who had milled with baited breath in the privy chamber beyond.

    The hushed whispers of rumours and ramifications already started to fill the overheated and overcrowded room. Only once did I raise my head, to my Uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, for I could face no other. My words were spat, the venom in my instruction making clear my intent.

    "Send them away Uncle. Make them leave! I have miscarried of my saviour."

    "Yes!" I hissed and nodded as if it were a revelation, addressing the room yet making eye contact with none but him. My voice wavered on the cusp of tearful descent despite my anger and apparent fortitude.

    "It is true. I... Anne the Queen, have miscarried of my saviour. And I will NOT hear their traitorous gossip!"


    Prompt: Talk about something you lost.
    Muse: Anne Boleyn
    Fandom: Anne of the Thousand Days/The Other Boleyn Girl/Various Historical Works & Source Material
    Word Count: 312