around the expected date. It wasn’t a premature labor as more than nine months passed since her last intimate encounter with King Henry, which meant that she had conceived the child not during their last night at the beginning of April, but rather in the second half of March when Henry still visited her bed from time to time, whoring with other mistresses on other nights and pursuing Lady Jane Seymour in the daytime.
Her pains started in the late evening, around midnight. The queen’s chambers were bathed in semidarkness; only the blaze of several candles illuminated the room. Anne’s ladies lit many new candles and placed them at the bedside table, near the bed.
Anne made an attempt to sit on the edge of her bed, but collapsed on top of the covers. She had tried to ignore it, but the pain increased with each hour that passed. At times, the pain subsided, only to have it resume a few minutes later. At times, the image of Henry Tudor, the father of her child, took hold like a flame in her mind and then it disappeared, as a new wave of pain attacked her.
“Find a midwife,” Anne instructed one of her ladies. Her voice was very weak.
“Yes, my lady, I will,” Lady Anne Shelton confirmed as she rushed toward Anne’s bed. “I will also notify the physician just in case we need him.”
“Yes, please,” Anne moaned. She rolled onto her back on the bed, taking in deep, agonizing breaths to try and stop the pain. After a moment, she recanted. “Please, do it more quickly. It is hurting so much,” she pleaded and then pushed herself up onto the pillows.
Lady Anne Shelton pulled the covers up around her. Anne was shivering yet her skin was moist and warm. She was deathly pale. Her blue eyes were clouded, dark circles beneath them.
“I am afraid I will die today,” Anne said weakly. “I faced it once before, but it wasn’t so painful.”
Lady Shelton covered her mouth with her hands to hide her horror. “Oh, my lady, don’t say this.” Her hands fell away from her face.
Lady Eleanor Hampton approached Anne’s bed. “Lady Anne, you must believe that everything will be fine.”
Anne put her head back on the pillows. “I don’t know,” Anne whispered so quietly that her voice vibrated inside her chest. “Lord, please save my child,” she prayed.
It was nearly five in the evening of the next day. The delivery process was very difficult and painful. It was time-consuming and complicated; besides Anne lost much blood. She was very weak and lost consciousness for a prolonged time twice during the labor. It was completely different from her past labor with Elizabeth. It was painful not only due to Anne’s sickly pregnancy, but also because she was emotionally devastated and physically exhausted.
She was lonely in her unblessed solitude. Henry wasn’t with her to console her and to take away all her fears. Henry had betrayed her and she was sure that while she was fighting for the life of their child, he was spending time with his mistress Jane Seymour. Anne desperately prayed to God to let her child live.
Anne was very weak. She was dying from pain. The child nearly sucked the last ounce of strength from her body, and it still didn’t come. Her face was ashen, her eyes closed. She murmured something to herself, then groaned in pain, and then lay quiet for a time. The midwife was shaking her head as the old woman didn’t know how to help Anne who seemed to have lost all her strength. Numerous bloodstained cotton sheets were lying in disorder around her bed. She had lost much blood, and now her life was in danger.
She often screamed aloud when the pain returned, as though she had been transfixed by a sword or a javelin in many parts of her body. It was the pain that tore her body apart and left her sweat-drenched and pleading for her own death and for the life of her child. Sometimes, Anne called loudly for Henry in despair, sobbing uncontrollably in pain. At times, crushed with a new strong wave of
Carol Wallace, Bill Wallance