In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,142

favor. When those two women had been condemned to death, they had not had a greater enemy than their noble kinsman—apart from Anne Boleyn, whose enemy was her own husband.

There had been a scandal when Norfolk left his wife for the laundress Bess Holland. Yet he had been loud in his condemnation of what he called his lewd and immoral kinswomen. I think everyone hates a hypocrite—so Norfolk was certainly not popular.

How bleak it must be in the Tower with the January winds buffeting the walls, seeping through every crack and crevice to make his prison more uncomfortable than it had been before. How did he feel, I wondered, knowing his son had lost his head … believing perhaps that in a few days he would be led out to meet the same fate?

Everyone about the King knew that he was dying. Wriothesley had said the King was rotting to death. Fortunately for him, not in the King's hearing. But it was an apt phrase. His legs were a mass of putrefying sores. The end could not be far off.

To my surprise he sent for me. I had heard how ill he was but I must confess to surprise—I might say horror—when I saw him. He lay in his bed, his eyes scarcely visible in the folds of unhealthy-looking flesh. Some of his color had gone now but I could see the network of veins where it had been; his mouth looked slack; his beard and hair were white. I would hardly have known him for the King; and the contrast with that grand and handsome figure of my childhood was tragic indeed.

His lips formed my name. “Mary…my daughter.”

“Your Majesty, I heard you wished to see me, and I came with all speed.”

“All speed,” he murmured. “That was well. Daughter, come closer, I cannot see you. You seem far away.”

“I am here, Your Majesty.”

“Fortune has not gone well with you. I have not given you in marriage … as I desired to. It was the Will of God. Daughter, the Will of God… perhaps the state of my affairs…your ill luck…Understand… it was the Will of God.”

“It was the Will of God,” I repeated.

“And now …you are no longer young… and there is not much time left to me. There is your brother. He is little yet. Take care of your brother…a little helpless child…be a mother to him. Be a mother…”

“I will, Your Majesty, I will…Father…”

He nodded slightly.

One of the doctors came and laid a hand on my arm. He led me to a corner of the chamber.

“His Majesty is failing fast,” he said.

Royalty cannot die in peace. Death is like birth. The important men of the day must be sent for to see it happen.

So they were coming to see the King die. Members of the Council. I recognized the Seymours…Lord Lisle, Wriothesley, Sir Anthony Denny. The Queen was not present.

My father half rose in his bed and with a cry fell back on the pillows.

“What news?” he growled. “Why do you stand there? What do you say? My legs are on fire. What do you? Will you let me burn?” Then he said a strange thing. “Monks…who are these monks? They cry to me. Why do they cry? They look at me with their wild eyes. I like not those black-cowled monks. What news, eh? What news, Denny?”

Denny came to the bedside. He said, “Your Majesty, there is nothing more that can be done. Your doctors can do no more. You should prepare to meet God. You should review your past life and seek God's mercy through Christ.”

There was a look of disbelief on his face. Death…so close. All his life he had refused to think of death; he had hated sickness; he always wanted to shut himself away from it; now here he was, face to face with death and there was no running away this time.

“Review your past life!” Did I detect a note of triumph in the words? “You, who have had great power, of whom we all went in fear and trembling, must now face One greater, more powerful than yourself. How does it feel, Sir King?”

Oh no! Denny's face was a mask of sympathy. But the King had made them all tremble for their lives at times.

They told him he must see his divines, but he started up and said he would see no one but Cranmer.

Cranmer was at Croydon, and they sent for him to come right away. We wondered whether