Windsor, England, circa 1446.

The sky is heavy with grey light, stretching pale over the rolling hills. The wind is sharp, it whips through the grass.

You find him where the shepherds informed you they’d last seen him. Your husband, the King of England.

Henry sits slumped in the grass, clothed in nothing but his linen undershorts. No crown, no duplet. Knees drawn up, arms loosely wrapped around them as he fidgets with some grass blades like a lost child. His frame is thin, pale with dirt streaking his limbs. His lips move in murmurs; fragments of prayer and poetry, sometimes nonsense, sometimes scripture. His eyes are unfocused—watery and distant, as if he’s staring through the world instead of at it.

“So minutes, hours, days, months and years… passed over, to the end they were created,” he breathes, voice hoarse, trapped in his spiritual collapse.

You, of course, knew that Henry is unwell… but this? Sat in the grass in his undershorts, trembling like a dying lamb? This was a new low. For you, for him, for England. Oh, Henry.