In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,118

and methinks I do not expect too much… only what is due to me. I am too trusting. You see how I am treated. I believed that girl was sweet and innocent…”

I thought: Then you can have had little experience of women. It was strange to be with him like this—answering in asides remarks which I dared not say aloud.

He made a self-pitying gesture, and I tried to look sympathetic, but I kept seeing that poor child running along the gallery at Hampton Court. I kept thinking of her terror as she realized that the axe which was poised above her head was about to fall on her as the executioner's sword from France had on her cousin—his second wife.

“Daughter,” he was saying, “I want you to be beside me. I have no Queen now. I need someone beside me … someone who can play the Queen. We will have a banquet and a ball. We will set aside our gloom. We must, for the sake of our subjects. They like not this sadness. The people must be amused. So …you will come to Court. You will be beside me.”

He was beaming at me, expecting me to express my joy.

I was uncertain of my feelings. I was finding life dull and monotonous. I wanted to be at Court. I wanted to know what was happening, to see events at first hand, not learn of them through hearsay.

And here was a chance.

Yet to be near the King was dangerous. Well, I had lived with danger for most of my life.

He was looking at me steadily.

“I see the idea pleases you,” he said.

He leaned over and patted my hand in a fatherly gesture.

Not since I was a very little girl had he shown me such affection.

MY POSITION HAD CHANGED. I was now in high favor. The King would have me beside him. He made it clear that he recognized me as his daughter.

The loss of Catharine Howard had had its effect on him. He looked much older; even he could no longer deceive himself that he was a young man. His legs were swollen and very painful; his appetite had not diminished, and now that he had less exercise he was beginning to grow very fat. His glinting eyes and his petulant mouth often seemed almost to disappear in the folds of flesh about them. He was melancholy and irascible. People feared him more than ever. I was amazed at his gentle attitude toward me. His health was clearly not good. That running sore on his leg was an outward sign of the state of his body; for some time he had tried to conceal it, but now it was impossible.

Naturally there were spies about the Court whose intention was to report everything that happened, and it was soon known throughout Europe that the King was not in good health, that Edward was frail—and at that only five years old; and it would seem significant that my father had brought me to Court and was treating me with more affection than he had shown toward me since he had decided to discard my mother.

It was not long before King François of France was putting out feelers. His son Charles of Orleans was in need of a bride, and there was none he would welcome as he would the Lady Mary.

I was not very pleased. I had almost become reconciled to being a spinster, to living on the fringe of the Court; after all, there was a great deal to be said for a certain obscurity. One did not have to suffer those alarms every time trouble with which one could be connected sprang up somewhere.

I had settled into a routine, where I could read, write to my friends, occasionally receive them, walk a good deal—I was fond of fresh air, be with my ladies in the evenings by the fire or perhaps, in summer, sit out of doors with dear old Jane the Fool to enliven the hours. It might be a little dull and unadventurous but it was not without its pleasure, and peace of mind was something to treasure when one had had little of it.

How should I know what would be waiting for me at the French Court? Moreover, Chapuys would be against it. If there was to be a union—and I could not have Reginald; that seemed impossible now for he was getting quite old—I would have liked it to bring me closer to the Emperor.

In fact, I