"Tom?"

"Yes?"

Thomas Cromwell turns to look at Anne, wondering when they forgave each other and she smiles, in a way that is still beguiling but happier;

"Why did we waste time on that lackwit?"

He looks over at their children (all their children - the More's, Jane's, Katherine's & Katherine Howard herself, still a child) at Thomas, cuddled between him and Alice, with Anne running one hand through his hair & he wonders the same thing himself. Why had they all, in great and small ways allowed such a man to have such a hold on them.

Sometimes Thomas wakes and thinks he can feel Henry's hands on him. Cromwell knows now that it was always easier when the King is just angry. When he is charming or kind it can be worse, because then you are once again, beguiled.

It had begun with the man in the blue box. The one with 'policy' engraved upon it, a warrior of Rome & the Lady Amy who reminded him of a Celtic Queen of legend. And somehow all of them had been taken to the stars, taken through time in a way that Cromwell admits he does not entirely understand. Nor does he understand how they have all managed to find each other, in such a way.

Though perchance it had involved the Lady Amy & a strange variant on sweet wine, ornamented by a
bright paper decoration.