Queen of This Realm by Jean Plaidy Read Free Book Online Page A

myself from summing up the situation, turning it this way and that. Edward was very young and frail. I wondered whether he would marry and could be expected to get healthy offspring. Mary? Well, Mary was thirty-one and unmarried. Would she find a husband? Most certainly. And if she bore a son, what hope had I?
    So I warned myself again and again that I must not be overdazzled by even the remote prospect. I must rejoice that it was a possibility and prepare myself to play a waiting game.
    My father was buried at Windsor and his heavy body had to be lowered into the grave by means of a vise worked by sixteen of the strongest men of the Yeomen of the Guard. The members of the King's household had stood around his grave, the Queen's old enemy Gardiner with the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Treasurer among them. In accordance with custom they broke their staves over their heads and threw them down into the coffin.
    So passed the great King who had astonished the world by breaking with Rome and bringing about the biggest religious controversy ever known, who had had his will all his life, who had married six wives and murdered two of them—and God knows there might have been a third victim but for her adroitness and his failing health—all this and yet they mourned him. Was it because in spite of all his cruelty and his ruthlessness he showed great strength? Above all things, it seems, men admire strength. He was sentimental too and he had a conscience which would never let him rest. What strange contradictory characteristics were his! Yet, withal, men mourned his passing and turned regretful, fearful eyes to the new boy King.
    There was a macabre story about something which had happened just before his burial. Kat told me this hesitatingly, pretending she could not tell and having to be forced to do so.
    “People are whispering about it,” she said. “I cannot say that it is true, but there are those who saw—”
    “Come on, Kat,” I said more imperiously than ever for was I not a potential heiress to a throne? “I command you to tell me.”
    Kat raised her eyes to the ceiling, a frequent gesture.
    “And I dare not disobey my lady's command. On the way to Windsor the cortége broke its journey at Sion House and there the body rested in the chapel. It was at Sion House, remember, that poor Katharine Howard stayed when they were taking her to the Tower. Poor child, they say she was almost mad with fear, for did she not have the example of her cousin to remind her of what lay in store for her? Well, the coffin burst, for the King's body was too great for its fragile wood, and the King's blood was spilt on the chapel floor. Now this is the shocking part. Are you sure you want me to go on? Very well. A dog was seen to run forward and lick the blood clean and although they tried to draw him away he snarled and refused to budge until there was not a speck of blood on the floor.”
    “Kat, where did you hear such a tale?”
    “My dear lady, it is being whispered throughout the land. You do not know of this because you were not then born but when the King was thinkingof ridding himself of his first Queen, one Friar Peyto who cared nothing for what might befall him stood in his pulpit and declared that the King was as Ahab and that the dogs in like manner would lick his blood.”
    “What a terrible story!”
    “Tis terrible times we live in, sweet lady. The Lady of Aragon suffered greatly and was there any one of the King's wives who did not? Your own beautiful mother so desperate… And we saw the terror of the last Queen for ourselves, you and I.”
    “Kat, how dare you talk so about my great father!”
    “Only because commanded to do so by one who may well herself be mistress of us all one day.”
    Kat was smiling at me, and because she was Kat and said such words I could forgive her anything.
    I told her she was the most indiscreet person I knew and I hoped she did not chatter to others as she did to me. She was as excited as