In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,64

he sent doctors and they failed to cure me, how would that affect the Emperor?

It amuses me now to imagine those men all watching me on my sickbed and wondering what my life or death would mean to their politics.

My father was surely hoping for my death and thought I could not live long when Dr. Butts announced that I was suffering from an incurable disease. Chapuys, on the other hand, had said that Dr. Butts' words were that I was very ill indeed but good care might save me, and that if I were released from my present conditions the cure would be quick.

I was now under the sole care of Lady Shelton. I had been robbed of Margaret, who of course remained with Elizabeth; and my little maid had been suspected of working for me. She had been threatened with the Tower and torture if she did not confess, so, poor child, she admitted to a little. It was enough to bring about her dismissal. So there I was, sick until death and friendless.

I kept calling for my mother, but there was no one to hear me or care if they did.

I owe a great deal to Chapuys. He may have used me as a political pawn for the advancement of his master's cause, but he saved my life. If the King was sending out rumors of my incurable illness, Chapuys had his own way of refuting that. There were hints of poison.

My mother sent frantic messages to the King. “Please give my daughter to me. Let me nurse her in her sickness.”

The requests were ignored. But the people heard of them and they did not like what they heard.

My mother had at this time been sent to Kimbolton Castle—a grimly uncomfortable dwelling in the flat Fen country where the persistent east winds I feared would greatly add to her discomfort.

People gathered about the castle as they did at Greenwich where I lay. They mumbled their displeasure; they cried, “God save the Princess!” in defiance of those who declared that I no longer had a right to that title.

There was an uneasy atmosphere throughout the land. The King was now Supreme Head of the Church in England, and the break with Rome was complete; so it was not only the treatment of my mother and myself which was threatening revolt all over the country.

I often wondered whether my father paused to think what he had done when his desire to marry Anne Boleyn had possessed him. He would have visualized an easy divorce, marriage to his siren and a succession of sons. And how differently it had turned out! The break with Rome, the cruelty to his wife and daughter and still the longed-for son had not arrived. What he had done could not possibly endear him to his people.

And there was I—expected to die. Then at least one of the causes for disquiet would be removed. It was a realization I was forced to face. My father must be praying for my death. Nevertheless he dared not withhold help from me entirely, and Dr. Butts was attending me. He was a man whose loyalty to his profession came first. I was his patient now and he was determined to save my life. He knew the cause of my illness. It was not the first time that I had been ill, though I was not fundamentally weak. I had been made to suffer deprivations and such anxieties as I hope few people have to endure; and these had had their effect on me. My mother was ill, too, but her ailments were more of a physical nature—rheumatism, gout, chest complaints brought about by cold and uncomfortable dwelling places. She was saintly and her religion sustained her; she was made for martyrdom. Not so myself. I too had suffered from deprivations but it was not they alone which had brought me to my sickbed. I suffered from a smouldering resentment, a hatred against my persecutors. Mine was more an illness of the mind. If I could have been with my mother, if I could have taken the example she set, I would recover, I knew.

Now I must lie in my bed, sickly and alone, longing to be with her that we might comfort each other. If Lady Salisbury could have come to me, that would have helped. But my father did not want me to be helped… unless it was to the grave.

He did come to visit me because