In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,25

In my position I should be reserved for a ruler. I should be betrothed when it was convenient to make some treaty. That did not matter much—the treaty would surely be broken before the marriage took place.

“In the meantime,” he was saying, “I have seen something of the world and I shall see more if I am as fortunate as I have been so far. People have been good to me in my travels abroad. Oh, it was not myself who was honored. It was the King, for I was his representative. There were times, I confess, when I might have been guilty of pride; but I always reminded myself of the truth.”

The days passed with astonishing speed. I was constantly afraid that one day he would tell me he was leaving. But he lingered and his mother smiled benignly on us.

“I believe, Princess,” she said to me, “that my son finds it difficult to tear himself away from Ludlow.”

Then one day messengers arrived. I was terrified that they might bring news of my proposed marriage to François. I had been lulled into a sense of security, for everyone had assured me that there was no danger of the match's ever taking place. But when I saw the messengers I awaited their revelations in trepidation.

In due course the Countess came to me.

“We are to leave Ludlow tomorrow and go to Greenwich,” she told me.

I looked at her apprehensively but her smile told me that my fears were without foundation.

“There will be no marriage with the King of France,” she said. “He has said that he knows of your erudition, your beauty, your virtue, and of course you are of royal birth. He says he has as great a mind to marry you as any woman, but he is sworn to Eleanora, the sister of the Emperor Charles, and she is the one he must take to wife; and while the Emperor has his sons, he has no alternative.”

I clasped my hands together in relief.

“Was that not what I always said?” demanded the Countess.

“It was,” I replied.

She hesitated for a moment, then she said: “There is another proposition.”

I stared at her in growing concern.

“This marriage could not take place for a very long time. As you cannot marry the father, you are to be affianced to his son.”

“He… who is in captivity?”

“With his elder brother, yes. It is to be the little Duke of Orleans for you—the second son of the King of France.”

“He is only a child.”

“That is all to the good. There will be a long delay before the nuptials.”

My pleasure in the knowledge that I was no longer to marry the King of France was dampened a little because I was to take his son. So from a bridegroom who was thirty-two I was to be given one who was three years younger than myself.

I felt frustrated and humiliated. It was distressing to be passed from one to another in this way. At the same time I must rejoice in having escaped a man whose reputation for lechery was notorious; and the little prince did not seem so bad in comparison, particularly as he had such a long way to go before he grew up.

“The French envoys will be coming over soon,” said the Countess, “and you know what this will mean.”

“Yes. We are to leave Ludlow tomorrow.”

“For Greenwich.”

So that pleasant interlude was over. It had lasted for about eighteen months; but it was the last weeks which had been the most enjoyable, and that was due to the presence of Reginald Pole.

GREENWICH HAD ALWAYS BEEN of especial importance to me. I suppose the place where one was born always must be. My father was born there too. He loved it, and it was natural that he should choose it as the place where he would receive the French envoys who had come to draw up the terms of my betrothal to the Prince of France.

My grandfather, King Henry VII, had enlarged the Palace and added a brick front to it where it faced the river. The tower in the park had been started some years before, and he finished it. My grandfather was a man who could never bear disorder. He was, I gathered, constantly anxious lest someone should take the throne from him, and I imagine he felt guilty for having snatched it from the Plantagenets. He was frequently trying to placate God, and at Greenwich he did this by building a convent adjoining the Palace