In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,106

the stairs and come toward the palace.

“You should leave me,” she said.

I took her hand and pressed it firmly. “I will stay with you,” I told her.

“No, no. It is better not. They would not allow it … Better to leave me.”

I knew her thoughts. She was seeing herself walking out to Tower Green as her namesake had gone before her. She must have thought during the last months of this possibility, and she had considered it with a certain calm, but when it was close… seeming almost inevitable, she felt, I believe, that she was looking death straight in the face.

I could see that my presence distracted her. So I kissed her gently and left.

I learned that when the deputation was presented to her, she fainted.

THEY HAD GONE.

I went to her apartments. I had already heard of the faint and was surprised when she greeted me with exuberance.

“I am thanking God,” she said.

“But you were ill…”

“I am well now. I am no longer the Queen.”

I stared at her, as she began to laugh.

“I …” she spluttered. “I am the King's sister!”

I could see that she needed to recover from the shock she had suffered when the deputation had arrived, for she had been sure they had come to conduct her to the Tower. But no… they had come to tell her that she was no longer the King's wife. In future she would be known as his sister.

“How can this be?” I asked.

“With the King,” she said, still hovering between laughter and tears, “they do anything he wishes. I was his queen and now he has made me his sister. How can that be? you ask me. It can be because he says it is so.”

“And you…you are safe.”

She gripped my hands, and I knew how great her fear had been.

“I am no longer the King's wife,” she said soberly. “And that is something to be very happy about. Ah, I must be careful. They would call that treason. But you will not betray me, dear Mary.”

“Be calm, Anne,” I said. “You have been so wonderfully calm till now.”

“It is the relief,” she replied. “I did not know how much I wanted to live. Think of it! I am free. I do not have to try to please him. I wear what I like. I am myself. I am his sister. He is no longer my husband. Can you imagine what that is like?”

“Yes,” I told her. “I believe I can.”

“That poor woman… think of her…in her prison in the Tower, waiting for the summons… waiting for death… she was Anne…as I am. I know what it is like.”

“I understand, too.”

“Then you rejoice with me.”

“I rejoice,” I told her.

“I am to have a residence of my own and £3,000 a year. Think of that.”

“And he has agreed to this?”

“Yes…yes…to be rid of me. If only he knew how I longed for him to be rid of me. Three thousand a year to live my own life. Oh, I am drunk on happiness. He is no longer my husband. There is a condition. I am not to leave England.” She laughed loudly. “Well if I tell you the truth, my dear Mary, it is that I do not want to leave England.”

“Shall you be content to stay here always?”

“I think so.”

“He does not want you to go out of England for fear you marry some foreign prince who will say you are Queen of England and have a right to the throne.”

She laughed again. “I am happy here. I have my little family … my sweet Elizabeth and you, dear Mary. To be a mother to you, Elizabeth and the little boy… that is to me greater happiness than to be a queen.”

I never saw a woman so content to be rid of a husband as Anne of Cleves was. My father was at first delighted by her mild acceptance of her state, but later he began to feel a little piqued at her enjoyment of her new role. How-ever, by this time he was so enamored of Catharine Howard that he could not give much thought to Anne of Cleves.

The alliance with the German princes was at an end; and that meant that there was no question of a betrothal to Philip of Bavaria.

THE YEAR 1540 was a terrible one for death. My father was filled with rage against those who defied him. He was probably worried now and then about the enormity of what he had done; it