In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,30

never agree that your mother should be set aside. It would be an insult to Spain. The Emperor is the most powerful man in Europe… and his recent successes have made him more important than ever. The sons of the King of France are his hostages.”

“My bridegroom is one of them.”

“Oh, these treaties, these marriages! They hardly ever come to anything when they are between children.”

“You comfort me, Reginald.”

“That is what I shall always do if it is in my power.”

He stooped and kissed my forehead.

I was thankful for Reginald.

THE ONLY BRIGHTNESS during that anxious time was due to his presence and the fact that I was under the same roof as my mother.

She and the Countess were often together; they had always been the best of friends. They were often in deep conversation, and I was sure my mother was completely frank with the Countess, for she trusted her absolutely.

I had grown up considerably since leaving Ludlow; and when I was in that pleasant spot I had emerged from my childhood to get a notion of what it really meant to rule.

But to be plunged into this tragedy which surrounded my mother had brought a new seriousness into my life.

I wished that I knew more. It is frustrating to be on the edge of great events and to be afforded only the sort of view one would get by looking through a keyhole.

Reginald was often with us, and the four of us would be alone together—my mother, the Countess, Reginald and myself. I am sure that both the Countess and her son did a great deal to sustain my mother, but there was little anyone could do to lift the menacing threat which hung over her.

She had suffered neglect and poverty after Prince Arthur's death, when her father did not want her to return to Spain and my grandfather did not want her in England. For seven years she had lived thus until my father had gallantly and romantically married her. I think she feared that she would be forced into a similar position to that which she had suffered before, if the King, my father, deserted her.

She had great determination. She was going to fight…if not for herself, for me, because my fate was so wrapped up in hers.

She was pleased to see my friendship with Reginald, and it suddenly occurred to me that she and the Countess would be happy to see a marriage between us. Instinctively I knew it was a subject often discussed between them. I was excited by this prospect. How wonderful it would be to marry someone one knew, rather than to be shipped off to some hitherto unseen prince because of a clause in a treaty.

I began to think how happy I could be with Reginald. I was eleven years old. He was twenty-seven or -eight. That was a big difference but we were good friends and could be more, for I, brought up on the rules of Vives, was more learned than most people of my age and there had been a rapport between myself and Reginald from the start. It was not so incongruous as it might seem. He was a royal Plantagenet, and if I were to be Queen one day he would be King. The people would like to see the two Houses joined. That was always a stabilizing factor. It would be like the alliance of the Houses of Tudor and York, when my grandfather Henry VII had married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, thus putting an end to the Wars of the Roses.

It was a wonderful, comforting thought during those months.

I was often present when the Countess and my mother talked together. I think they had come to the conclusion that now I was aware of the King's Secret Matter, it might not be harmful for me to know more of it, for, after all, I was deeply involved in it.

Thus it was that I learned of those farcical proceedings when my father had been summoned to York Place where the Cardinal lived in sumptuous splendor.

There the King had allowed himself to be charged with immorality because he was living with a woman who was not, in the eyes of the Church, his wife.

The idea of my father's being summoned anywhere by his subjects was ludicrous. But meekly he had gone; humbly he had listened to their accusations—which, of course, he had ordered them to make. Archbishop Warham had presided.

“John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester,