God Save the King

It should have been a day of mourning, considering the King had just died. But there were few tears shed in Parliament. Indeed, some of the more rural members of the Commons had cracked the bottle early and were tramping about the square, lustily crying out for all they were worth, "Popery is dead: long live the Church!"

Several of the Lords looked like they might wish to join them. But while any fears of a public conversion for Charles II now lay dead as the King himself, his brother James, Duke of York, was still very much alive and taking the sacraments from a priest.

Popery, then, might not be so dead after all, if something were not done and done quickly.

No one could see that more clearly than the heir apparent's secretary, who upon testing the Parliamentary mood hurried back to Whitehall. Both Churchill and York knew better than to discount a few boisterous bordermen. After all, it was not so long ago that those same bordermen, and the Lords that smiled at them, had cut off a King's head.

"Where's Henry?" was the immediate question, easier asked than answered.

It was, in fact, the young Princess Anne who first spied the Duke of Gloucester. She'd gone out for a ride for the sole purpose of avoiding all the intrigue and to breathe some fresh air, taking only a few attendants and one guard. As is the nature of not looking for a thing, she caught him just a gallop's pace outside of London.

She drew her horse up in surprise. "Hullo Uncle."

He looked up from his stumpy perch and smiled. "My dear niece, and my dear Lady Churchill, well met. Are you out to find me?"

Anne's friend had the grace to blush at his pointed inquiry. "Nay, my lord, we are but riding." Anne thought she would leave it be at that until the woman added, "Though my gracious husband and the worthy Duke are in a sorry state through seeking you."

"I wager they are not the only ones," he mused, his baritone belying his years as much as his chestnut locks. "But I have need of solitude just now, and so I beg your ladyship's pardon if I am not quite for larger company yet. Anne, will you walk with me a pace?"

The Princess dismounted and turned to her friend. "Do not fear, Sarah, we will finish our ride in good time."

Lady Sarah Churchill looked like she'd rather go for a walk herself, but only smiled prettily. "Of course, Your Highness. We will await your return."

When they'd gone but a few paces her uncle whispered, "Did I not believe in such things I would wager my doublet she'd try to summon her husband with a thought now."

Anne struggled not to giggle as she had in former girlish days. "And by that you mean my Father as well, do you not?"

He nodded, his sudden merriment stolen in a thrice. They passed beneath a tree and he stopped, plucking at a leafless branch. "Tis a hard thing, to see the world around us so dead, do you not think so Anne?"

She frowned, uncertain. "Perhaps. But it is a rather warm day for the season: you must have found it the same as I, to come out this way."

Gloucester let go of the branch he'd constrained and it snapped back up, a brittle pendulum. "Warm or not, it is a beastly time of year. I have always thought it so. Today I find it doubly cursed."

Now the Princess actually shivered. She knew her grandfather had been murdered years ago, but it was not a thing she ever cared to think on overmuch. Her kindhearted uncle in particular had shied away from ever bringing it up, regaling his nieces with winsome fairy tales and heroic deeds of yore instead.

As if catching the strain of her thoughts, he turned to her with an intensity she'd only ever heard of. The court might praise the prince as a great warrior, but she had only known him as a benefactor of smiles and gifts, the man who always begged to hear her sing, and taught her how to endure long sermons with rhymes and nonsense. Now, though, the uncle had fled, leaving behind a general of soldiers. "Anne, do I frighten thee?"

As a Princess, Anne knew better than to share her thoughts with any beyond a few, and never even them with the full scope of her mind. Yet strange as he now appeared, her uncle had always been her closest confidante. "Yes."

"Then you are wise," he said. "We are heading for times when all our fears are come to light, and you must face them with both eyes awake. Does your husband's family still think well of him?"

The change in conversation dizzied her, barely giving her time to think before saying, "Aye, Uncle, they have always been most kind."

"Then urge him to pay a visit, soon, and go with him."

"You wish us to go to Denmark, in the dead of winter?" she asked in astonishment, still scrambling to understand. "T'will be terrible weather for such a journey."

"Better the storms of the sea than the storms of court." The soldier took one of her hands, gently but firmly, cupping it with both of his. "Your sister is safely wed and away in Holland and will tend well, what e'er may come to pass; I could wish you as far from what may happen."

Fear tore at her heart. "But Father is to be King now, is he not?"

A raven flew above them, cackling at her innocence, as her uncle dropped her hands in anger. "You must not ask such things, not now, not ever. Do not even think on it. Only get thee hence, and at once."

She had always trusted him, always taken his council to heart, far more so than from her father or her tutors, and certainly more than her stepmother. In a world dark with distrust and suspicion, her Uncle Gloucester shone as a merry star. Now she reached out to that friend, and the days of her youth with him. "Uncle, please, you must tell me. What do you fear?"

His eyes burned into hers, scorching her soul with their fire, until she wanted to beg him to turn away and forget her thoughtless question.

Instead, terribly, he granted her wish. "When our Father was held captive, and I given final audience with him, he bade me to ne'er endure the crown while either of my brethren lived. Though but a child I swore that day to honor his wish. He was not a good man, nor wise, and I have come to know now that his words were often gulled as a rat's, but I hope I have always lived faithful to my troth. I have served our family, and our country, and striven to be as much a true son of Stuart as of the Church."

The chill February wind blew dust up between them as he paused, and he looked away from her before delivering the final blow. "But now the time is come when I may have to chose one or the other. And where my soul is at stake, and the fate of the realm, then I must ponder the worth of my vow."

It was as if the world shifted in that fragile moment, and though nothing about the sky nor the land about them was altered, Anne saw now what had before been veiled, felt it deep in her marrow.

Later at the funeral she mourned with a full heart. But she did not shed tears for the King, or her Father, or even her Uncle. She had always believed the latter a kindly Janus, who might take up a scowl before the world when called upon but who shared his true face, smiling, within the privacy of their rooms.

Now she could not recognize anything in him but a man, as complex and dangerous as all the rest, one who could scheme at once for her salvation and her ruin.

Anne wept for the change in herself.

Point of departure: Henry Stuart, the youngest son of James II, lives beyond his eldest brother's restoration to the throne. He is still a Protestant, and a victor in the Anglo-Dutch Wars, making him an alternative to his Catholic brother James for succession after Charles II's death. William III still gets to wed Mary but otherwise has little impact on England.