In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,83

my household at Hunsdon. I said that of recent date it had begun to grow.

“You shall have the comforts you once enjoyed before you were misguided enough to oppose my will.”

“I thank Your Majesty.”

“Aye… and you will find there will be much for which to thank me.”

Jane laughed happily. I thought she was really a good creature and was genuinely rejoicing in my changed fortunes.

I wondered whether I could mention Elizabeth but the dark look which had come into his face when he had spoken of her mother made me hesitate. Not yet, I thought, I must tread very carefully.

“Yes,” my father went on. “Be a good daughter and you will find me not ungenerous. I am giving you a thousand crowns so that you can indulge yourself. Get some little comforts, eh? I'll swear you could use them.”

“You are most gracious…”

His face had become soft and sentimental, as I remembered it from the past. “Aye… and ready to be more so…as you will find, will she not, Jane?”

Jane smiled from me to him. “The most generous King in the world,” she said ecstatically.

I thought how different she was from my mother as well as from Anne Boleyn. Could it be possible that this one could give him what he wanted? If she could provide a son, yes. And if not…I found myself looking at that white neck.

She had taken a diamond ring from her finger and held it out to me.

“It would make me very happy if you would wear this for me,” she said simply.

Then she took my hand and slipped the ring on my finger.

“You are so good to me,” I told her.

My father watched us, his eyes glazed with sentiment. How quickly his moods changed! I wished that I did not see him quite so clearly. Part of me wanted to go on believing in the image I had created in my childhood; but I kept thinking of my mother. On whose order had the Welsh beer been produced? Had she been poisoned? I thought of Anne Boleyn, the one for whom he had sacrificed his religious beliefs and had run the risk of losing his crown; and yet there had come the day when she had been taken out to Tower Green and her head had been cut off with a sword specially sent from France. What could I think of such a man? How could I love him? And yet, in spite of all I knew of him, in a way I did.

Poor little Jane Seymour, what would become of her?

The mood passed. Jane, with her simple reasoning, had an effect on us. She saw this as a family reunion and she made us see it as such. I lost some of my qualms; my father forgot that he was King; in that brief moment we were father and daughter, and Jane's presence, with her simple faith in the goodness of human nature, had created this scene in her imagination and, briefly, we accepted it.

It was a pleasant half hour. There was laughter: I was delighted to be with my father, for after all he had done, he was still my father, and such was the aura which surrounded him that I could suppress my fears of him. Whether it was love, I do not know; but it was something akin to it. And while we were together, I forgot that I was deceiving him, that I had lied to him; and he seemed to forget the past when he had had it in his mind to poison me or take my life in some way.

Jane was there, rejoicing that the dissension in the family was over; and everything was as it should be; in the future we should all love each other.

Such is the power of innocence.

I DID NOT SEE my father for some time. He went off with the Court for the hunting season. My household at Hunsdon was growing, as was customary for a person of my rank. People were sending me gifts. Thomas Cromwell had taken me under his wing and had sent me a horse as a present.

The newly elevated brother of Jane Seymour was now Lord Beauchamp and Chamberlain. He wrote to ask me what clothes I needed.

I was delighted. I was able to ask for some materials which Margaret could make into clothes for Elizabeth. I was getting quite fond of my little half-sister. She was such an engaging child, and our friendship gave great pleasure to