In the Shadow of the Crown - Plaidy Jean - Страница 34

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It was at this time that all the months of anxiety, the lack of food and my deep depression took their toll of me. I awoke one morning and was too ill to lift my head.

Lady Shelton came to me. She was in a panic. They wanted me dead but everyone was afraid of being accused of killing me.

There was much activity in the house. Vaguely I was aware of it.

Then I found myself being carried out in a litter. By this time the fever had taken such a hold on me that I was not aware of what was happening to me.

They took me to Greenwich.

I learned about this later when people were more ready to talk to me. The King was in a dilemma. He must have been hoping for my death and at the same time afraid of the stir it would raise. For six days I lay at Greenwich, unseen by a doctor, while the fever took a greater hold on me. I was delirious, they tell me, calling for my mother.

My father sent for Chapuys, to tell him that I was dangerously ill and that he wanted the ambassador to select doctors to send to me. If he would do so, my father told him, they should be sent to me with the royal doctors.

Chapuys was uneasy. If he sent doctors and they failed to cure me, how would that affect the Emperor?

It amuses me now to imagine those men all watching me on my sickbed and wondering what my life or death would mean to their politics.

My father was surely hoping for my death and thought I could not live long when Dr. Butts announced that I was suffering from an incurable disease. Chapuys, on the other hand, had said that Dr. Butts' words were that I was very ill indeed but good care might save me, and that if I were released from my present conditions the cure would be quick.

I was now under the sole care of Lady Shelton. I had been robbed of Margaret, who of course remained with Elizabeth; and my little maid had been suspected of working for me. She had been threatened with the Tower and torture if she did not confess, so, poor child, she admitted to a little. It was enough to bring about her dismissal. So there I was, sick until death and friendless.

I kept calling for my mother, but there was no one to hear me or care if they did.

I owe a great deal to Chapuys. He may have used me as a political pawn for the advancement of his master's cause, but he saved my life. If the King was sending out rumors of my incurable illness, Chapuys had his own way of refuting that. There were hints of poison.

My mother sent frantic messages to the King. “Please give my daughter to me. Let me nurse her in her sickness.”

The requests were ignored. But the people heard of them and they did not like what they heard.

My mother had at this time been sent to Kimbolton Castle—a grimly uncomfortable dwelling in the flat Fen country where the persistent east winds I feared would greatly add to her discomfort.

People gathered about the castle as they did at Greenwich where I lay. They mumbled their displeasure; they cried, “God save the Princess!” in defiance of those who declared that I no longer had a right to that title.

There was an uneasy atmosphere throughout the land. The King was now Supreme Head of the Church in England, and the break with Rome was complete; so it was not only the treatment of my mother and myself which was threatening revolt all over the country.

I often wondered whether my father paused to think what he had done when his desire to marry Anne Boleyn had possessed him. He would have visualized an easy divorce, marriage to his siren and a succession of sons. And how differently it had turned out! The break with Rome, the cruelty to his wife and daughter and still the longed-for son had not arrived. What he had done could not possibly endear him to his people.

And there was I—expected to die. Then at least one of the causes for disquiet would be removed. It was a realization I was forced to face. My father must be praying for my death. Nevertheless he dared not withhold help from me entirely, and Dr. Butts was attending me. He was a man whose loyalty to his profession came first. I was his patient now and he was determined to save my life. He knew the cause of my illness. It was not the first time that I had been ill, though I was not fundamentally weak. I had been made to suffer deprivations and such anxieties as I hope few people have to endure; and these had had their effect on me. My mother was ill, too, but her ailments were more of a physical nature—rheumatism, gout, chest complaints brought about by cold and uncomfortable dwelling places. She was saintly and her religion sustained her; she was made for martyrdom. Not so myself. I too had suffered from deprivations but it was not they alone which had brought me to my sickbed. I suffered from a smouldering resentment, a hatred against my persecutors. Mine was more an illness of the mind. If I could have been with my mother, if I could have taken the example she set, I would recover, I knew.

Now I must lie in my bed, sickly and alone, longing to be with her that we might comfort each other. If Lady Salisbury could have come to me, that would have helped. But my father did not want me to be helped… unless it was to the grave.

He did come to visit me because of the grumbling discontent in the country. I was vaguely aware of him at my bedside.

I heard him mutter to Lady Shelton, “There lies my greatest enemy.”

Afterward I discovered that he had not asked to see me but that the good Dr. Butts had forced himself into his presence and told him how ill I was and that he knew the cause and begged him to send my mother to me; whereupon the King rounded on him, calling him disloyal and declaring that he was making too much of my illness for political reasons.

The doctor was abashed but nothing could shift him from his ground. He insisted that if I could be with my mother that would do more for me than a hundred remedies.

Why did I want to go to Kimbolton? demanded the King. So that I and my mother could plot against him, raise armies against him? “The Dowager Princess Katharine is another such as her mother, Queen Isabella of Castile,” he said; and he went on to rave about my stubborn behavior, which was part of a plot to raise people against him. Already people in high places were turning to us.

Yes, he was certainly afraid.

I wondered if he knew then that certain nobles in the North were intimating to Chapuys that they would be ready to support the Emperor if he invaded England in an attempt to bring the Church back to Rome and restore my mother to her rightful place and make me the Queen after dethroning my father.

A story was being circulated about a girl of seventeen or so—my age— who impersonated me in the North of England, where it was unlikely anybody had seen me. She went from village to village telling a sad story of the persecution she had suffered, explaining that she had escaped and was trying to reach the Emperor. Her name turned out to be Anne Baynton and she collected a fair amount of money, so she did succeed in deceiving people. It showed their sympathy to me that none attempted to betray her and instead were willing to help her on her way.

Meanwhile I lay sick in my bed, hovering between life and death.

At length I did begin to recover, for Dr. Butts was determined that I should. He had to prove that my sickness was not incurable. I had always known that he was the best doctor in the kingdom. He was aware of the cause of my illness, and although it was due to a certain extent to illnourishment, it was the sheer misery which I had suffered which was the chief cause.

And as I returned to health there was born in me a determination to live to fight for my rights. I had been through so much that there was little worse that could happen to me. I was denied the company of those I loved; those of my friends who would visit me were turned away. I was kept from my mother; I was deprived of the company of my dear Countess; and Lady Bryan was no longer with me. I told myself I had touched the very nadir of my suffering.

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