Snippet #2428528

Eleanor took her seat carefully at the dining table, lowering her enormous weight into the seat slowly. A few servants fussed around her, pouring her a glass of wine and presenting her with bread. They all eyed her warily, treating her with the greatest care and concern. They pussyfooted around her, as though they expected her to break at any moment. Her very advanced pregnancy was responsible for the concern that they treated her with, but the skittishness to speak to her was for an entirely different reason. Despite Eleanor’s best efforts to hide her fears and terror, she was now waking up screaming with her nightmares. All her servants and ladies and even those of the court seemed to be aware of her disintegrating mental state and, though all were too polite to mention it, had begun treating her like an invalid.

“His Majesty is just coming,” one of the servants offered and Eleanor nodded, raising the glass to her lips and taking a sip.
Despite being quite so close to giving birth, Eleanor had grown sick of having her dinner in her chambers and the urge not to spend another night alone with her thoughts had driven her to demanding she be allowed to have dinner with her husband. So he had promised he would be there that evening, and as Eleanor sat patiently waiting for him she saw her brother enter the room to pass through. He was looking down, his eyes fixed upon a letter he held in his hand. He was clearly completely absorbed by the words which graced the page. He stroked a line gently, as though caressing words that were familiar and precious to him. Suddenly, she saw him lift a hand to his cheek, almost surprised, and brush away a tear.

Eleanor felt her heart freeze in her chest and she felt sick to her stomach, setting down the piece of bread on her plate, suddenly put off. Eleanor had known, she had just known. Yet, she’d been ignoring it; not wanting to acknowledge what she knew would be a horrible truth. She had had the feeling for at least a week that there was a secret being kept from her. People seemed to whisper as she entered a room and when she got close to them, they instantly fell silent. It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried to find out what it was that she was not being told. In her present state, she’d been sleeping a lot and the majority of the time she didn’t spend asleep was consumed with worried thoughts for her child. Or, at least, that was the reason she had given herself for her lack of persistence at discovering the truth. But, in part, it was truly that she knew the truth was nothing good, and she thought if perhaps, she ignored it for a little longer, she would save herself the pain a little long.

“Jonathon,” she said, getting his attention and halting him in his tracks. He turned towards her, startled she was in the room. He quickly pushed the paper into his pocket and she saw him blinking viciously before turning towards her. He was clearly regretting taking this route and wishing Eleanor hadn’t halted him.

“Sister,” he greeted her formally. Though Jon had always been respectful towards her, in recent days it had felt as though his respect was becoming distance and he was trying his upmost to avoid her. He spoke to her with a lack of familiarity and affection, an almost frightening detachment, and he wouldn’t meet her eye.

She could see Jonathon preparing to say something, clearly in order to distract her from the real reason she had stopped him, which was something they were both fully aware of. But Eleanor got there first.

“What’s wrong, Jon?” she asked him, her tone confrontational, but also holding an air of desperation and worry, as though she was begging him to tell her. She had seen his tears. She could no longer pretend whatever they were keeping from her was unimportant or inconsequential to her. If she didn’t ask now, the real reason she was avoiding finding out would be wide open with no possibility of pretending she hadn’t noticed. It would play on her mind, worrying her.

Jonathon froze for a moment at her question, clearly weighing up his options. He plastered a look of confusion across his features, deciding upon the innocent, clueless approach. “What are you talking about, Eleanor?” he asked.

Suddenly, Eleanor felt anger take a grip on her, her mood changing instantly, as she found was becoming more and more frequent as her pregnancy went on. How dare he pretend not to know when she had questioned him? He was in on this, with James and all those around her. He was helping them hide something from her, when he was her brother and should be on her side.

“You know damn well what I am talking about,” Eleanor shot back, throwing an accusing glance at the letter.

She watched a look of guilt cross Jonathon’s countenance, knowing he was caught. Then, completely unexpectedly, his eyes filled with tears once more.

Eleanor looked at him, wide-eyed. It truly was something terrible, there was no denying it. “Is it Father?” Eleanor asked in a rush, stumbling over her words. It had always been a deep rooted fear within her mind that something might happen to her once beloved father and she would never have chance to see him again.

Jon shook his head, looking down, embarrassed by his weakness. “Then what is it?” Eleanor begged him.

“I can’t tell you, El,” he said softly. He had cracked, knowing he could truly hide nothing from his sister. But his admission was all she needed to implore him for more.

“Please, Jon,” she said, her voice thick with emotion and her own approaching tears.

He took a step towards her, shaking his head. But he was already beyond the point of not telling her. Whatever terrible thing it was, he needed to share it with his sister, for his own sanity more than her own. Then he said softly, almost imperceptibly, “It’s Lizzie, Eleanor. Lizzie’s dead.”

“No…” the words tumbled breathlessly from Eleanor’s lips, the colour draining from her skin. Her beautiful blue eyes went wide with horror and they shimmered with brimming tears.

Eleanor was in shock. How could Lizzie be dead? She couldn’t. She simply couldn’t be! Though the girl was not hers, Eleanor had spent a great deal of time with the child before she’d left. While Cecily had only been a baby upon Eleanor’s departure, Lizzie already had a tiny personality of her own. She was always such a sweet girl, but there was a sparkle of adventure in her eyes too. A sparkle that had now been extinguished, along with her precious little life. A tear escaped Eleanor’s eye as she thought of her sister, having to say goodbye to her firstborn. No loss rivalled that of a mother’s, even Eleanor knew that. There was nothing worse on this earth than the image in Eleanor’s mind of her sister having to bury her child, long before her time. In that moment, all Eleanor wanted was to be with her estranged sister, to hold her and share her pain.

But before she could dwell on that thought, another over took her mind, forcing itself forward in paranoid panic. Could the death of Harriet’s child be a foreshadowing of her own child’s inevitable mortality? Could it be a sign from God that He would never let her baby pass into this world alive? In an instantly, Eleanor felt bitterly cruel and selfish, to worry for her own baby when she had just heard of the death of her sister’s. But so many thoughts were swimming through Eleanor’s troubled mind at that moment that she could barely sort one from the other. There was such a lot of grief, mixed with terror and horror and shock.

Eleanor shook her head. “No…” she uttered again, rising to her feet. She took a step towards her brother, wanting to feel the comforting arms of a sibling, even if it was not the sibling she most wanted to see at present. Whether it be the shock of what she had just heard, her pregnancy, or the simple act of standing up too quickly, suddenly, Eleanor felt her vision began to swim and a wave of dizziness overtook her completely. She flailed her arm out desperately, trying to reach out for the oak table that she knew was beside her, but her hand continued to travel through the air, missing the table and grasping for something to save her.

Eleanor swayed a look of pure fright on her ashen features. Her body hit the ground with a dull, sickening thud. There were a few moments of complete silence in which she didn’t move. Jonathon watched on, rooted to the spot with shock, unable to do anything. It was the moment of calm before the storm. Then, Eleanor let out a horrific, piercing scream of agony as pain shattered through her body.