Free In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker

produced no son and heir for Henry: only a daughter, Princess Mary. Henry was tired of Katherine anyway, so he divorced her (against the express wishes of the Holy Father) and married Wife Number Two, a court tart with pretensions to trendy radical religious opinions, named Anne Boleyn. Jumping on her Lutheran bandwagon as well as on the rest of her, Henry imported the Protestant Reformation into England.
    Next round: Anne Boleyn couldn’t produce a male heir either, only a baby girl, Princess Elizabeth, so Henry had Anne beheaded and took Wife Number Three: the devout little Jane Seymour, who, like many of his subjects, was still sympathetic to the Catholics. Before her death there even were rumors that England might go Catholic again. She did die, however, right after giving birth to the long-awaited Prince Edward, and any chance of an early Counter-Reformation died with her.
    Endgame: Henry married, in quick succession, three more wives, which sure as hell made rapprochement with the Pope unlikely. By the time Henry died, the Protestant faction was in firm control of the country, especially with the council of regents who ruled for the frail little King Edward.
    New game card: the Royal heirs, in order of their respective rights to the throne. Three stiff children with the coldest eyes in Christendom.
    Protestant Edward, the boy king, soon to die, his prim face closed and folded shut.
    Catholic Mary, sad old maid, with her bulldog face. She’d done a slow burn for years as she watched her father abuse her mother and her Church. She was shortly to get revenge in a big way.
    Noncommittal Elizabeth, somber and alert, despised by the Catholics and Protestants alike for her mother’s disgrace. Cunning and cautious, she was destined to survive her siblings and inherit the throne. She was famous in our classrooms as one of the Exemplary Mortals, right up there with Charles Dickens. She hated war and wastefulness, and didn’t really give a damn what prayers people said as long as the economy thrived and nobody tried to dethrone her .
    Yay, Elizabeth. I scanned for the current events I’d be concerned with.
    1553, June. Edward is dying, lingering on in the last stages of heavy-metal poisoning administered by Mary’s adherents. He finally, horribly, dies, and then—
    Oh, dear. After a messy interlude involving an abortive Protestant coup, Mary Tudor (a.k.a. Bloody Mary) would be crowned queen. She would make the mistake of assuming that her loyal subjects were all still true Catholics in their hearts, eager to forget the distasteful heretical interlude That Bitch had seduced her father into ordering. But, surprise: a whole generation had grown up sincerely Protestant, and wanted none of the old faith. Riots and rebellion would break out, and here I caught the names Wyatt and Dudley. In desperation, she’d begin burning her disobedient subjects at the stake, earning her nation’s everlasting hatred before she died.
    But before she died, she’d marry a Catholic monarch in the hope that he’d (1) love her and (2) help her bludgeon the True Faith back into people’s hearts. Grimly she yearned for love. She was never to have any love out of him: but in the matter of religion he’d assist her ably.
    For she was to marry Philip, most Catholic heir apparent to the throne of Spain, and when he came to England, he’d bring all his pet Inquisidors to share with her. A great respecter of the Holy Office, Philip. Very eager to discuss matters of faith with the English Protestants. They must have run out of secret Jews to burn.
    I sat blinking, taking all this in. They were going to send me with Philip’s entourage. With all those Inquisidors. The Spanish were going to be as popular as smallpox with their English hosts, and I would be one of their number.

Chapter Seven
    I T WAS JULY 21, 1553. Clutching my wicker suitcase to my bosom, I made my way to the transit lounge.
    Behind me, the ship blinked and hummed. People in flight-tech