In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,218

him sharply and told him to be off.”

“She did not tell me.”

“She would not have grieved you.”

“Perhaps it would have been better if I had known.”

There was no pretense now. I could not hide my misery from them, and they would not have believed me, however good a job I made of it.

“He gave me no sign …” I said.

“He was particularly courteous to her afterward.”

“He bore no grudge,” said Jane, as though calling my attention to something in his favor.

“Oh, Your Majesty,” said Susan, “you must not be unhappy. There are such men. They know not the meaning of fidelity. It is better not to care too much. We heard how he used to go off with a group of friends. They were of a kind.”

“I had heard rumors and not believed them.”

“They used to sing that song about the baker's daughter,” said Jane.

I closed my eyes. So they knew! All my people knew, and I was the only one who believed he loved me!

“What song?” I asked.

Susan said quickly, “It was a silly little rhyme … nothing … nothing…I have forgotten it.”

I caught Jane's wrist. “Tell me the rhyme,” I commanded.

“Your Majesty, I…I can't remember.”

“Tell me,” I said coldly.

So she told me.

The baker's daughter in her russet gown

Better than Queen Mary—without her crown.

The humiliation! The pain of rejection! My happiness had been nothing but an illusion. It was a phantom creature of my imagination to mock me now. It was created out of nothing… like the child of whom I had dreamed, for whom I had planned…a will o' the wisp…to taunt me and to leave me desolate.

I wanted to be alone with my sorrow. It overwhelmed me. I could share it with no one.

“Leave me,” I said.

“Your Majesty …” began Susan, but I only looked at her coldly and repeated, “Leave me.”

So I was alone… alone with my wretchedness, staring the truth in the face as I should have done many weary months before. I had conceived a dream, a flimsy figment of my own imagination. It had nothing to do with reality. I had duped myself; and I had been seen to be duped by those around me. There would be some who laughed at my gullibility and others who kept silent and protected me from the knowledge because they loved me.

At length I rose. I went to that chamber where his picture hung.

How I had loved it! He stood erect, as he always did to disguise his low stature. His face was handsome with his fair hair and beard and his firm Hapsburg chin. I had stood many times before this picture, glowing with pride and pleasure, while he had been romping with some low woman of the town. The baker's daughter who was better than Mary … without her crown, of course.

I found a knife and I slashed at the picture. I felt better than I had for some time. The knife pierced the canvas, and still I went on cutting.

Susan came in.

She must have heard me come here. She was terribly anxious and feared what effect the revelations had had on me.

She saw at once what I had done.

“Have it taken away,” I said.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Gently she took the knife from me and hid it in the pocket of her skirt. The next day the picture was gone, but my unhappiness remained.

I WAS ILL after that. No one was surprised. My periodic illnesses had become commonplace… too frequent for anyone to notice.

I spent long hours alone. I brooded on the past. I recalled incidents, our being together, our love-making, which had been conducted in a manner to resemble a stately pavane. There had been no joy in it, no laughter, no fun. It was a ritual which had to be borne—on his side—for the sake of an heir.

As for myself, I had not known it could be any other way. How could I, ignorant as I was of such matters? Now I wondered how it had been with the Duchess of Lorraine, the baker's daughter and all the others.

I stormed…to myself, of course. I wept. I talked to him as though he were there beside me. I told him what he had done to me. He had humiliated me, used me, slighted me, and never had he loved me.

I remembered how he had been with Elizabeth. He had said she should not be forced to marry. Did he plan to marry her when I was dead? He surely could not be thinking of