In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,67

of your situation. You carelessly provoke the King's wrath. That can be terrible, you know.”

I took a shot in the dark. I had heard life was not running smoothly for her and the King, that he looked at other women now and then and was perhaps beginning to regret the hasty step he had taken. I said, “As we both know.”

It is true, I thought. I noticed the sudden color in her cheeks, the glint in her magnificent eyes.

She turned to me. “You will regret this,” she said. Then she shrugged her shoulders.

“Well, I have given you a chance.”

After that she left me. Lady Shelton was hovering.

I heard Anne Boleyn say, “The girl is a stubborn little fool. I will see that her Spanish pride is brought low.”

It had been a shattering experience. I sat on my bed, my limbs trembling so violently that I could not move.

WE WERE INTO ANOTHER new year, 1535. Could there ever be another like that which had gone before, when my father had shocked the whole of Europe by the unprecedented action of breaking with Rome?

I could not believe that even he could look back with equanimity on what he had done. He was never one to admit himself wrong, but surely he must suffer some disquiet in the secret places of his mind. How could he not? He was a religious man, a sentimental man. Oh yes, if he paused to think, he must suffer many an uneasy qualm.

The rumors about the differences between him and the concubine were growing. Life had not gone smoothly for her since her marriage. She had failed again. The longed-for boy had not appeared. There had been great hopes of him until she—as my mother had so many times—miscarried. There seemed to be a blight on my father's children. Even that golden boy, the Duke of Richmond, was very ill at this time and not expected to live. If he died, as he surely would soon, there would only be two of the King's children left—and both girls.

People's attitude toward me changed at the beginning of that year. Even Lady Shelton was less insolent. It may have been that she feared she had gone too far. This was because the concubine was falling out of favor. She had a fierce temper; she was dictatorial. I daresay she found it hard to believe that she, who had kept a firm hold on the King's affection all those years, could so quickly lose it. He was becoming enamored of a lady at the Court who it seemed had decided to champion me. Whether she did this to strike a blow against Anne Boleyn or whether she was genuinely shocked at the manner in which I was treated, I could not tell. The outcome was that people were beginning to wonder whether they ought to take care how they behaved toward me.

I was allowed to walk out now. I could even take my goshawk with me. I was feeling a little better, recuperating, and when I left Greenwich and went to Eltham, I was allowed, because I was so weak, to ride in a litter.

And how the people cheered me along the route!

“Good health and long life to the Princess!”

Those words were music in my ears.

IN THE EARLY PART of that year there was indeed danger of revolt. There was nothing weak about my father. He was every inch a king. Everyone would grant him that; and when he was confronted by danger, those qualities of leadership were very much in evidence. All that happened had changed him visibly. I could hardly recognize the jovial fun-loving man in the ruthless autocrat who was now emerging.

Those who were not with him were his enemies—as had been seen in the case of his own wife and daughter.

His peace would be destroyed by the rumblings of discontent throughout the country; he knew that if my cousin Charles, the Emperor, had not been so deeply involved in Europe, he might have attempted to invade England. So he took action and, being the man he was, it was drastic. There were no half measures with him.

In April of that year the first proceedings were taken against those who refused to accept the fact that he was Supreme Head of the Church. Five monks—one of them the Prior of the London Charterhouse—were condemned as traitors and submitted to the most brutal of executions: they were hanged, drawn and quartered. There were many to witness this grisly