Just a Girl by Jane Caro Read Free Book Online Page B

merely thought that by occupying your mind in debate with me I might distract you from the pain in your poor leg. I felt it preferable that you be irritated by my inferior logic than by the discomfort of your ailments.’
    â€˜Was it so, sweeting?’ The king’s face had softened and his small suspicious eyes had filled with sentimental tears. ‘If you speak true, it is a noble, wifely sacrifice that you have made.’
    â€˜Not a sacrifice, my lord, because in the wisdom of your responses I learnt much about the true glory of God and the best way to worship and interpret His intentions here on earth. Perhaps it was through my delight in hearing the brilliance of your arguments and the true mettle of your mind that I fell into error. I could not bring myself to cease our conversations because of the pleasure your superiority of mind and heart brought to me. Can you ever forgive me, my lord?’
    â€˜Right heartily, my darling.’ And he kissed her, just as heartily. ‘But you will not dispute so with me again, will you?’
    â€˜No, my lord. I have learnt my lesson. Your Majesty doth know right well I am not ignorant of the great imperfection and weakness allotted to us women by our first creation, to be ordained and appointed as inferior and subject unto man as our head, from which head all our direction ought to proceed.’
    With that, and with much else beside, good clever Queen Catherine Parr saved her own life and that of her friends. The Fair Gospeler was not to be so fortunate. She was fed to the flames to appease the plotters.
    Now, when I close my eyes and think of mystepmother, it is not as much her face I see, as her calm presence. I can sense her in the room with me now, silent in a corner, her head with its smooth, dark hair bent over a scholarly tome or her embroidery. After her great fright, when my father was near, she spoke little, but when she did, all stopped to listen. The king’s suspicions were lulled by her continuing meekness and as he grew more querulous with increasing age and illness, he began once again to ask her advice in ways he would never have asked any other woman. Much as I loved Queen Catherine, and grateful as I was that she had used the good sense God had given her to save herself (whatever men may think of female brains), I could not help wondering if she was as my mother might have become, if she had been allowed to live and mature beside her husband. But it does no good to wish. The world is as it is, not as I may like it – not even now, when I am queen.
    The world was not as Queen Catherine wanted it, either, yet she made the best of the circumstances she found herself in and, when my father died, she hoped her patience would be rewarded. As is so often the way with those who must manoeuvre for power rather than deal in it directly, she was to be both rewarded and punished. Although she never said as much to me, no doubt she harboured hopes that her skill as regent would be remembered and that she would return to thatrole while my brother remained in his minority. But it was not to be. Powerful men stepped quickly between the king and his family and made sure that the regency fell to them. Her compensation was that, at last, she was able to marry the man she loved.

Most of the people I have seen die in their beds – and there have not been many lucky enough to make their exit in such a way – shrank their way out of the world, getting smaller and smaller until they almost disappeared. My father did the opposite. He swelled and swelled, growing so big that his legs could carry him no longer and he had to be wheeled from room to room. The ulcer on his leg stank so of decay that, despite all the expensive perfumes they bathed him in, it was hard to be in his presence for any length of time and courtiers spent much more time playing with their pomades than hitherto. Any exertion, simply getting him from bed to chair, from chair to