- 𝐸𝑚𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑒, 𝐸𝑚𝑝𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙 -
It's the year 1485 and King Richard III has been slain at the battle of Bosworth along with his beloved wife and Queen, Marian of Lancaster. Their eldest daughter, Lisbet, is given little time to...
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"You must awake, my little bird" Francis murmured at dawn as he propped himself up on the tester bed pillows and placed a hand gently to the side of Lisbet's cheek while Bailarín gave a small tweet.
She mumbled some gibberish and simply turned her head away, snuggling into him again. "Not now" she said "I...I want to stay with you, my love...just a little...longer...before the fighting begins...I cannot bear to lose you..."
"You will not lose me on a battlefield..."
Suddenly Lisbet's eyes were open, her body fully alert as she jerked from the covers and wrapped her arm's around Francis' neck.
"Don't say that" she cried shakily "my father used to say that to mama...whenever there was a coming battle...he would say it...don't you say it too...it will only bring us pain..." "Soft, my little bird" Francis soothed, caught off guard by her sudden distress "all will be well, I promise"
She slowly shook her head and drew away, climbing out of the bed and reaching for a velvet bed robe. She drew it around her shoulders and slipped on her silk slippers before she turned back to her husband and took the hand he extended, placing herself on his lap.
"I shall call for my armour" she said "you should too...the sooner we have our men together, the quicker we shall get to the abbey and take hold of the Beaufort bitch and the Tudor boy...you must not scare him, my love" "They boy?" He asked and she nodded.
"When my brothers and I first concocted the idea of this conquest we said that we would lock the Tudor children in the tower as they did to Meg...and perhaps we still will...but we have not won yet and this boy is but 7 years old...he will most likely be terrified of being taken, Lord knows his father and Grandmother will have filled his little head with tales of our brutality and mercilessness! So do not frighten him, and do not let the men do so either"
"I of all people would not seek to frighten a child" Francis chuckled "and I'm sure Anne shall not frighten him either" "I wouldn't be so sure" Lisbet returned with a small smile "Annie has been wanting to stain her sword with the blood of Tudor since we landed!"
༒༒༒
"For Princess Elizabeth! For King Edmund!" The soldiers cried as Lisbet mounted her horse in full armour, her sword securely at her side and her hair bound tightly with a golden circlet on her head, intricate carvings engraving the metal.
Beside her steed was that of Anne's, who looked both excited and frightened at exactly the same time. In her smile and eyes she showed anticipation, an itch to get going, to accomplish the task at hand, but her older sister could see how she fiddled relentlessly with her horse's reigns and kept adjusting her sword belt, making it tighter and tighter the more anxious she got.
Slowly, her eyes scanned the 100 men before her. In her mind, she didn't think that they would need as many as that to take a house of God and quickly crossed herself, kissing her sister's crucifix as she remembered the Abbey was supposed to house no violence. 'But Lisbet knows best' Anne reminded herself and looked to her, her heart filling with pride as she admired how her sister sat on her horse, a confident smile on her face as she observed her men and they all looked to her for commands.
