Crown of Blood | The White Princess

Terrors of the Tower

One month later, June 1499,
the Tower of London...

"Hush now, dearest brother" Lisbet whispered as she mopped Ned's brow with the only cloth they had while he groaned, clutching his stomach. Yet another attack of food poisoning. The third Ned had suffered since being locked up in the tower.

"The baby" he groaned, reaching for his sisters hand "you must rest"
"No" she replied gently, dipping the cloth once again in the small bowl next to her "I must take care of you"

"Ned's right" Francis said as he walked across their large cell and knelt down beside his wife, taking the cloth from her hand "you have been with Ned for hours now, it's time that you rested for a while, go and join Teddy!"

Nodding after a monster of thought, Lisbet got up, clinging onto the jagged stones on the wall for support and stumbled over to her cousin who was lining up apple cores by the window.

"Teddy, what are you doing?" She asked as she flopped down beside him and Teddy turned, his childish grin spreading across his face. Silently he pointed at the cores and jumped up, marching around the small platform beneath the window until Lisbet caught on.

"Ah! An army!" She said and her cousin nodded happily, sitting back down, crossed legged on the wood.
"My army!" He said proudly "an army for King Warwick!"
"King Warwick!" Lisbet laughed, finding one of her only joys was her cousin in the dreadful place that was the Tower of London.

For an entire month they had been imprisoned in the same cell, having no company but each other and the guards that would sometimes come to jeer or beat them for their own amusements.

Finding Teddy still virtually at child at 24, Francis, Lisbet and Ned did all they could to protect him, to give him the best food they could find (though there was little that anyone would consider nourishing) and to take his beatings for him.

They had not been outside once, had never set foot out of the building they had grown to not just fear, but hate. Each morning, Lisbet would wake up beside Francis, wishing with all her might that they were back in Burgundy or in their little lodge by the lake where they had spent the days after they married only to sit up and find it were not so.

She spent most of her time with her cousin, helping him build forts out of the dirty bed sheets or coaxing him to run up and down the cell with her.

Teddy seemed to take a great interest in the baby growing inside of Lisbet. Almost as soon as he found out he seemed to take to the idea of a new little relative and would sometimes lie on his belly, a grin on his face as he talked to Lisbet's slowly rounding stomach.

Now four months pregnant, Lisbet could sometimes feel her baby moving inside of her and relished each time she did, always taking Teddy's hand when it happened and laughing when he did, loving the way his face would light up and how Francis would dart over, eager to feel his child kick.