In the Shadow of the Crown - Plaidy Jean - Страница 61

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He petitioned against it, and the petition was taken to my father. He must have been enraged at the thought of someone's enjoying Catharine's charms before him. He should have known that she was not the girl to have come through her early life without some amatory adventures. If he had wanted an entirely chaste woman, he should have stayed with Anne of Cleves. He wanted everything to be perfect, and if it were not, those who denied it to him must pay with their lives.

So at Tyburn the terrible sentence was carried out on Dereham. He died protesting his innocence, as did Culpepper, who was beheaded at the same time.

The heads of both men were placed on London Bridge—a terrible warning to those who offended the King. People might ask how Dereham could possibly have known he was offending the King. Was no man to love a woman or to speak of marriage to her… for fear the King might fancy her?

Perhaps people were asking themselves a good many questions during those terrible times.

IT WAS A MISERABLE Christmas. I was glad I was not at Court. I could not imagine how my father could celebrate it. It would be a mockery. Catharine was still at Sion House. I wondered if she still thought the King would pardon her. The uncertainty must be terrible. I expect she had been fond of Dereham once; I believe she still was of Culpepper; and she would know that these two had died because of her. Doubtless she would have heard how they stood up to torture and had tried to defend her to the end.

February came—a dreary, desolate month. There was mist over the land until the cold, biting winds drove it away. They brought the Queen from Sion House to the Tower. I guessed that meant her death was inevitable.

I heard she was a little calmer now. She seemed to have accepted the fact that she was to die. Lady Rochford was in the Tower, condemned with her. She was accused of contriving meetings between Catharine and Culpepper; she was therefore guilty of treason.

I kept thinking of Catharine's youth. Such a short time she had been on Earth, and she had been such a merry creature, relishing life in the Duchess's household, reveling in that sexuality which pleased the men. And then the King's devotion, which, they said, she believed to the end would save her.

Susan and I talked of her. We could think of nothing else. I supposed the whole nation was talking of her. She would be the second of my father's wives to be beheaded—but that had not yet become commonplace.

It was the thirteenth day of February when she was taken out to die. Young, so pretty, her crime being that she had been too free with her favors before the ill-fated choice had fallen on her.

At Havering we heard that she had died with dignity. When she knew there was no hope and that the King, who had professed his love for her, was going to leave her to her fate, she accepted it meekly.

What seemed to worry her more than anything was that she might not know what she had to do on the scaffold, and she asked for a block, which would be exactly like the one on which she would have to lay her head, to be brought to her so that she might practice on it. She did not want to stumble on the day of her death. This was done. Later she went out bravely, and before she died she declared that she would rather have been the wife of Thomas Culpepper than a queen.

Lady Rochford died with her. I felt no compassion for that woman. In spite of my hatred for the Boleyn clan, I could not believe in the incest between Anne and her brother, and I thought how depraved she must be to have accused them.

Her last words were reputed to be that she deserved to die for her false accusation of her husband and sister-in-law and not for anything she had done against the King; for she was guiltless of that.

So perished the King's fifth wife, Catharine Howard, on that same spot where his second, Anne Boleyn, had died before her.

THE KING CAME TO VISIT US AT HAVERING—OR PERHAPS not to visit us especially, but it happened to be on the route he was taking to somewhere else.

Edward was always uneasy when the King was under the same roof as he was.

“I am not the son he wants,” he told me, his pale face anxious, his blue eyes a little strained, as Margaret said, from too much reading.

I told him he was wrong. “You are everything he wants,” I assured him. “Elizabeth and I…we are only girls and a great disappointment to him. You are the son for whom he has longed for many years. Of course you are what he wants.”

“He would like someone big like himself.”

“You have a long way to grow as yet.”

“He said when he was my age he was twice as big as I am.”

“Big people are not always the best.”

“But they can ride and hunt without getting tired.”

I studied him carefully. He was a delicate child; his attendants had always fussed over him, terrified that something would happen and they be blamed for it.

“I would like to be able to dance and jump and run like Elizabeth,” he said.

“Oh, there is only one Elizabeth.”

He laughed. He agreed with me. He was completely in her thrall.

When the King arrived, we all had to make our respectful bows and curtsies, and when he looked at his son, I could see he did not like the boy's pale looks; he tried to stop himself looking at Elizabeth but she had a way of pushing herself forward, even in the royal presence, and at times I saw him giving her a furtive glance. She looked more than a little like him. If he would have allowed himself, he could have been very pleased with her. She was the one among us most like him.

To my surprise, shortly after his arrival he sent for me, and when I entered his presence I found that he was alone.

“Come and sit beside me, daughter,” he said.

I was amazed at such condescension and obeyed with some apprehension.

He saw this, and it seemed to please him. “There, there,” he said. “Do not be afraid. I wish to talk to you. You are no longer a child… far from it.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“How long is it since you were born?”

“Twenty-six years, Your Majesty.”

“And no husband! Well, these have been tragic times for me. I have been disappointed in my wives… though Jane was a good wife to me. It would seem that there is some curse upon me. Why has God seen fit to punish me thus?”

I felt myself growing stiff with anger, as I always did when anyone said a word against my mother. I wanted to shout at him: You had the best wife in the world and you cast her off for Anne Boleyn.

I think he sensed my feelings and, as he was favoring me at the moment and meant to continue to do so, he was mildly placating.

“I was under the spell of witchcraft,” he said. “I was bewitched.”

I did not answer. His eyes had grown glazed. He was seeing her, I imagined, the black-eyed witch with all her enchantments, seducing him … turning him from a virtuous wife and the Church of Rome. It was necessary to see her thus now. It was the only excuse for murder.

“And Jane,” he went on. “She died…”

“Giving Your Majesty your son,” I reminded him.

“How is the boy? Does he seem weak to you, Mary?”

“He is not strong like Elizabeth, but Lady Bryan says that delicate children often become stronger as they grow older.”

“I did not have to grow out of weakness.”

“Your Majesty cannot expect another to have your strength and blooming health, not even your own son.”

“I do expect it, daughter, and methinks I do not expect too much… only what is due to me. I am too trusting. You see how I am treated. I believed that girl was sweet and innocent…”

I thought: Then you can have had little experience of women. It was strange to be with him like this—answering in asides remarks which I dared not say aloud.

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