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Authors: Vanora Bennett
Tags: Fiction, Historical
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wondering if God is punishing him for his sinful marriage by denying him a son.”
Queen Catherine, devout, learned, Spanish, and in her forties, with powerful friends at court and all round Europe but just one young daughter to show for twenty years in the king’s bed, was worried. Not just by her pretty, witty, elegant rival, but by the clique of ambitious nobodies forming around her, the kind of courtiers known collectively as “a threat.”
“I was with the court at New Year at Hampton Court, and I saw them together myself,” John said somberly. “They were in a group of maskers. But there was no disguising the king. And no disguising what he felt about the lady in yellow.”
“But what does the lady in yellow have to do with us?” I asked.
“Don’t be impatient, Meg,” he said. “This is the point. She’s making your father’s battle against heresy many times more dangerous. She has the king’s ear—and she’s flirting with the heretics too. At a time when the king’s of a mind to be interested in anything that undermines the queen, the Church of Rome, and the pope, she’s poisoning him in the most subversive way imaginable by giving him the new men’s books to read. If her influence grows, who knows how far the heretical thinking might spread? And who knows what chaos we might be plunged into? Peace is an illusion, an agreement between civilized people, and something your father has worked all his life to promote; but it’s the nature of humanity that the beast is always lurking somewhere beneath the surface.”
The phrases were echoing emptily in my head now. I pleated a fold of my cloak. I didn’t understand. “You’re talking politics,” I said sulkily. “Not ordinary life. Not us being in love and getting married.”
“But, Meg, politics is life. If you lose peace you lose everything else: love, marriage, children, the lot. You should thank God you’re too young to remember how things were before—in the time of wars,” he answered bleakly. “But anyone a bit older than you will say what I’m saying now. I lost my family in that madness”—he shivered—“and I know there can be nothing worse.”
Had he? He was old enough to have lost family in the wars, but he’d never talked about it. All I knew for sure was that he’d been taken into a family friend’s household as a boy, after his own father’s death. I’d asked him about his childhood once. He’d just shaken his head and twinkled at me. “Very different from the way I live now” was all he’d said. “I like this way of life a lot better.”
“The best we can do, in the weeks and months to come”—his voice rolled on now—“is to hope that the king’s fancy turns elsewhere and this crisis passes. And meanwhile, try not to judge your father too harshly. Some of the things he’s doing may look cruel, but it’s up to him to root up the evil spreading over English soil before it starts clinging to the king. The only thing we can do is let him concentrate on doing his job, and wait for the moment to be right for us.”
He swung me round in front of him, lifted my face, and looked searchingly into my eyes. “Oh, Meg, don’t look so scared. Have faith. It’s going to happen. I’m going to marry you. I only wish,” he added, leaning down and kissing the top of my head very gently, “that it could be today.”
I stayed very still, looking down, treasuring this moment of quiet togetherness, warmed by the sincerity in his voice and the folds of his cloak flapping in the rising wind, watching the shadows of the anxious clouds scudding through the deepening sky chase across the lawn at my feet. Still hardly able to believe that he could be here, saying he felt about me as I
Queen Catherine, devout, learned, Spanish, and in her forties, with powerful friends at court and all round Europe but just one young daughter to show for twenty years in the king’s bed, was worried. Not just by her pretty, witty, elegant rival, but by the clique of ambitious nobodies forming around her, the kind of courtiers known collectively as “a threat.”
“I was with the court at New Year at Hampton Court, and I saw them together myself,” John said somberly. “They were in a group of maskers. But there was no disguising the king. And no disguising what he felt about the lady in yellow.”
“But what does the lady in yellow have to do with us?” I asked.
“Don’t be impatient, Meg,” he said. “This is the point. She’s making your father’s battle against heresy many times more dangerous. She has the king’s ear—and she’s flirting with the heretics too. At a time when the king’s of a mind to be interested in anything that undermines the queen, the Church of Rome, and the pope, she’s poisoning him in the most subversive way imaginable by giving him the new men’s books to read. If her influence grows, who knows how far the heretical thinking might spread? And who knows what chaos we might be plunged into? Peace is an illusion, an agreement between civilized people, and something your father has worked all his life to promote; but it’s the nature of humanity that the beast is always lurking somewhere beneath the surface.”
The phrases were echoing emptily in my head now. I pleated a fold of my cloak. I didn’t understand. “You’re talking politics,” I said sulkily. “Not ordinary life. Not us being in love and getting married.”
“But, Meg, politics is life. If you lose peace you lose everything else: love, marriage, children, the lot. You should thank God you’re too young to remember how things were before—in the time of wars,” he answered bleakly. “But anyone a bit older than you will say what I’m saying now. I lost my family in that madness”—he shivered—“and I know there can be nothing worse.”
Had he? He was old enough to have lost family in the wars, but he’d never talked about it. All I knew for sure was that he’d been taken into a family friend’s household as a boy, after his own father’s death. I’d asked him about his childhood once. He’d just shaken his head and twinkled at me. “Very different from the way I live now” was all he’d said. “I like this way of life a lot better.”
“The best we can do, in the weeks and months to come”—his voice rolled on now—“is to hope that the king’s fancy turns elsewhere and this crisis passes. And meanwhile, try not to judge your father too harshly. Some of the things he’s doing may look cruel, but it’s up to him to root up the evil spreading over English soil before it starts clinging to the king. The only thing we can do is let him concentrate on doing his job, and wait for the moment to be right for us.”
He swung me round in front of him, lifted my face, and looked searchingly into my eyes. “Oh, Meg, don’t look so scared. Have faith. It’s going to happen. I’m going to marry you. I only wish,” he added, leaning down and kissing the top of my head very gently, “that it could be today.”
I stayed very still, looking down, treasuring this moment of quiet togetherness, warmed by the sincerity in his voice and the folds of his cloak flapping in the rising wind, watching the shadows of the anxious clouds scudding through the deepening sky chase across the lawn at my feet. Still hardly able to believe that he could be here, saying he felt about me as I