Dudley closed the door behind them.
Edward, winded from the walk, sank into his royal, extra-cushy red velvet throne at the head of the half circle of chairs (usually occupied by the other thirty members of the Privy Council). Dudley produced a handkerchief for him, which Edward pressed to his lips while he rode out a coughing fit.
When he pulled the handkerchief away, there was a spot of pink on it.
Bollocks.
He stared at the spot, and tried to hand the handkerchief back to Dudley, but the duke quickly said, “You keep it, Your Majesty,” and crossed to the other side of the room, where he began to stroke his bearded chin the way he did when he was deep in thought.
“I think,” Dudley began softly, “we should talk about what you’re going to do.”
“Do? It’s ‘the Affliction.’ It’s incurable. There’s nothing for me to do but die, apparently.”
Dudley manufactured a sympathetic smile that didn’t look natural on his face, as he wasn’t accustomed to smiling. “Yes, Sire, that’s true enough, but death comes to us all.” He resumed the beard stroking. “This news is unfortunate, of course, but we must make the best of it. There are many things that must be done for the kingdom before you die.”
Ah, the kingdom, again. Always the kingdom. Edward nodded. “All right,” he said with more courage in his voice than he felt. “Tell me what I should do.”
“First we must consider the line of succession. An heir to the throne.”
Edward’s eyebrows lifted. “You want me to get married and produce an heir in less than a year?”
That could be fun. That would definitely involve kissing with tongue.
Dudley cleared his throat. “Uh . . . no, Your Majesty. You’re not well enough.”
Edward wanted to argue, but then he remembered the spot of pink on the handkerchief, and how exhausting he’d found it simply walking across the palace. He was in no shape to be wooing a wife.
“Well, then,” he said. “I suppose that means the throne will go to Mary.”
“No, Sire,” Lord Dudley said urgently. “We cannot let the throne of England fall into the wrong hands.”
Edward frowned. “But she’s my sister. She’s the eldest. She—”
“She’s a Verity,” objected Dudley. “Mary’s been raised to believe that the animal magic is evil, something to be feared and destroyed. If she became queen, she’d return this country to the Dark Ages. No E?ian would be safe.”
Edward sat back, thinking. Everything the duke was saying was true. Mary would not tolerate the E?ians. (She preferred them extra-crispy, as we mentioned earlier.) Plus Mary had no sense of humor and was completely backward thinking and would be no good at all as ruler.
“So it can’t be Mary,” he agreed. “It can’t be Bess, either.” He twisted the ring with the royal seal around his finger. “Bess would be better than Mary, of course, and both of her parents were E?ians, if you believe the cat thing, but I don’t know where Bess’s allegiance lies concerning the Verities. She’s a bit shifty. Besides,” he said upon further reflection. “The crown can’t go to a woman.”
You might have noticed that Edward was a bit of a sexist. You can’t blame him, really, since all his young life he’d been greatly exalted for simply having been born a boy.
Still, he liked to think of himself as a forward-thinking king. He hadn’t taken after his father as an E?ian (at least, he hadn’t so far), but it was part of his family history, obviously, and he’d been raised to sympathize with the E?ian cause. Lately it seemed that the tension between the two groups had reached a boiling point. Reports had been coming in about a mysterious E?ian group called the Pack, who had been raiding and pillaging from Verity churches and monasteries around the country. Then came more reports of Verities exposing and subsequently inflicting violence upon E?ians. Then reports of revenge attacks against Verities. And so on, and so on.
Dudley was right. They needed a pro-E?ian ruler. Someone who could keep the peace.
“So who do you have in mind?” Edward reached over to a side table, where there was always, by royal decree, a bowl of fresh, chilled blackberries. He loved blackberries. They were rumored to have powerful healing properties, so he’d been eating a lot of them lately. He popped one into his mouth.
Lord Dudley’s Adam’s apple jerked up and down, and for the first time since Edward had known him, he appeared a tad nervous. “The firstborn son of the Lady Jane Grey, Your Majesty.”
Edward choked on his blackberry.
“Jane has a son?” he sputtered. “I’m fairly certain I would have heard about that.”
“She doesn’t have a son at the moment,” Dudley explained patiently. “But she will. And if you bypass Mary and Elizabeth, the Greys are next in line.”