In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,140

to the Tower, Your Majesty. My barge is at the privy steps.”

One would have thought my father would have felt some embarrassment. He may have done but he let it erupt in anger against Wriothesley.

“Make sure it is not you who are sent to the Tower,” he growled.

“Your Grace…Your Majesty …” stammered Wriothesley. “The mandate…Your Majesty has forgotten… the Queen was to be arrested at this hour…”

“The Queen is where she belongs… with the King!” shouted my father.

“The order was to arrest her wherever she might be, Your Majesty.”

My father lifted his stick and would have struck Wriothesley if the man had not quickly dodged out of the way.

“Get you gone!” he shouted.

Katharine must have been in a state of terror. The King's mood might have changed. He might have remembered the order and decided to carry it out after all. She had only to say one thing of which he did not approve and which might have sounded to him like arrogance, making a doctor of herself to instruct him…

The King turned to Katharine.

“The knave,” he grumbled.

“Methinks he believed he was obeying Your Majesty's orders.”

“Don't defend him, Kate. Poor soul, you do not know how little he deserves grace at your hands.”

So for this time she was saved. She had seen death very close, and now there was a reprieve. But still there must be the eternal question: For how long?

IT SEEMED CLEAR to everyone except the King that his end could not be far off. His legs were now in such a state of decay that they could scarcely support him. He needed constant attention, and the Queen was essential to his comfort. We did not say it, but it was in everyone's mind that she was the luckiest woman on Earth, for it seemed possible that she was going to outlive him. He was beyond sexual desire now—another point in her favor.

Yes, said the Court—and, I have no doubt, the country—Katharine Parr is a very fortunate woman.

He was irritable in the extreme and his anger could boil up in an instant, so it was still very necessary to take care. As for Katharine she looked blooming, younger than she had for some time; she could see the end in sight.

Intrigue was rife. There would be a young King, and he was already in the hands of his Seymour uncles, who were supporters of the Reformed Faith. This was not at all to the liking of the Howards, who must have cursed fate which gave the heir to the Seymours and not the Howards, who had had two chances, one with Anne Boleyn and one with Catharine Howard.

The more feeble the King grew, the greater was the arrogance of the Seymours. Young Edward doted on them, and in particular on the younger uncle, Thomas; and everyone knew that the Seymour brothers were the two most ambitious men in the country.

The Duke of Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey, stood on one side, and the Seymours on the other. I watched with interest. They were like carrion crows, fighting over the carcass before it was dead, while the King, who had always hated even to talk of death, went on pretending to himself that he had years before him.

It was certainly an anxious time. Edward would be King, and he was not ten years old. No wonder the uncles were rubbing their hands with glee. The government of the country—by grace of their sister Jane—would be in their hands.

Surrey was one of the most reckless men I have ever known. He was extremely handsome, proud, arrogant, a poet of some ability, a scion of a family which considered itself the highest in the land—so great, he implied, that the Tudors were upstarts in comparison.

On the other hand there were the Seymours, and Edward Seymour was, without doubt, one of the cleverest men at Court. I could not say the same for Thomas. Like Surrey, he was exceptionally attractive—and well aware of it. He had charmed Edward and, I fancy, little Jane Grey and even Elizabeth. He was very ambitious but a little lacking in wisdom, I always thought.

The younger Seymour was often in my thoughts, because I knew that the Queen was in love with him. Poor lady, had the King's eyes not alighted on her, she might have been Thomas Seymour's wife by now. I fancied I had seen his eyes on Elizabeth. I could not believe that he fancied her as a possible wife for