Виктория Холт - In the Shadow of the Crown

Life was so unhappy. I had to create dreams. And as we passed into the autumn I began to believe that I was pregnant.

I did not tell anyone at first. I could not forget the humiliating experience when everyone had been awaiting the birth of the child which had never been conceived.

I clung to the thought. I knew it. All the symptoms were present. I must be so this time. God would not desert me again.

When I told Susan, I saw the look of horror dawn on her face before she set her features into joyous lines.

“Your Majesty, can it really be so?”

“It is, Susan, I know it. Everything points to it.”

“Then…it is wonderful news. It will give Your Majesty new life.”

“What I have always wanted, more than anything, Susan, is my own child.”

“Yes, Your Majesty, I know.”

“As yet I shall tell no one.”

She could not hide her relief.

“No,” I said. “Not even Philip. I will wait awhile.”

“It is best,” said Susan.

“But I am sure,” I said firmly.

I had to be sure. It was the only thing which could draw me out of the morass of misery into which life had plunged me.

I HAD THOUGHT I had touched the very depth of misery, but there was more to come.

We were at war. The people said we were fighting Spain's war. We had not the means to finance a war. The Council had been against it. It was only when the Stafford affair had exposed the perfidy of the French that they had reluctantly agreed to declare war on them.

Now we were reaping the harvest.

One of the greatest blows I had been called upon to suffer had come upon me. The French had taken Calais. It was the final humiliation. That this should have happened in my reign! I was more deeply wounded than I could express. Calais had always meant something to the English. It was the gateway to France, and we had always seen the need to keep it well protected. It had been in our possession since it was taken by Edward III in 1347, and he had won it after a twelve-month siege. Always its importance had been recognized.

And now it was in the hands of the French; and all because we had become involved in a war which we did not want, which would bring us little good, and into which we had gone largely because I wished to please Philip.

It was no use telling me that our garrison had behaved with the utmost bravery—at the end only 800 of them holding out for a week against 3,000 troops of the Duke of Guise.

We had lost Calais, and in my heart I blamed myself.

Not even the thought of my pregnancy could lift my spirits.

THERE WAS SILENCE in the streets. They were burning people at Smithfield and all over the country. They are heretics, I said. It is God's will. He has set me on the throne for this purpose, and I am carrying out that purpose to the best of my ability.

But I was failing. The Pope said so. Pamphlets were being issued illegally. They condemned me. They called me a Jezebel. They said I had brought misery to my country. No man was safe from the accusations of heresy and the fire.

One of my greatest enemies was John Knox. This fanatical misogynist poured forth his hatred for my sex, and what infuriated him so much was to see a woman in control. Having hated Mary of Guise in Scotland and Catherine de' Medici in France, simply because they were women of power, he turned his attention to me. He regarded himself as the great reformer, the guardian of the people's conscience. In his opinion only papists were more to be despised than women.

He thundered forth in his pulpit, and he had only recently brought forth his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women . It was banned in England but this did not prevent reckless people bringing it into the country.

I was indeed the Jezebel. According to my father, I had been a bastard. I had no right to the throne. God must be punishing England for her sin in allowing a woman to reign over her. He referred to my “Bloody Tyranny.”

It was then that people began to call me “Bloody Mary.”

I was deeply unhappy. People were dying for their faith, it was true. But how many more had suffered, and as cruelly, in my father's reign? Yet no one had hurled abuse at him. He had sent them to their deaths because they disagreed with him; I had done so because these victims had disagreed with God's Holy Writ. Why should I be so stigmatized when none had questioned him?

There was disaster everywhere. Calais lost, and my people and my husband deserting me. My friends were dying round me. What had I to live for? Only the child which I deceived myself into thinking I carried in my womb. I had to. It was my only reason for living.

I was ill. There was no disguising the fact. I suffered from the same fever which had attacked Reginald. He was dying. Every time a messenger came from him, I feared it was to announce his death.

News came that the Emperor Charles had died. I felt deeply depressed. I had not seen him since my childhood, but I had always felt that he was there to help me in my need. He had not always done so, I know, but it had been comforting to know that he was there…a friend.

Everything around me was changing. I wrote to Philip begging him to come to me. I knew now that the swelling in my body was due to dropsy.

Yet another disappointment, but those around me had never believed it was anything else.

I left Hampton Court for St. James's. Something told me I had not long to live.

Philip would not come to me. He was too deeply involved elsewhere. He deplored the loss of Calais. “But we shall recover it,” he wrote. He had made me name Elizabeth as my heir, for, as he pointed out, if I did so, that would avoid the possibility of civil war.

He did not say he was expecting my death, but I guessed that he was. He would have been told of my increasing infirmity…of my poor dropsical body which had succeeded twice in deluding me into thinking I was about to become a mother. He told me Reginald Pole would comfort me. Did he not know that Reginald, wandering in a shadowy world of his own, was past giving comfort to anybody?

Susan and Jane Dormer were with me. Jane was very beautiful, young and in love with the Count of Feria, who was soon to be her husband. I rejoiced with her and hoped she would know all the happiness which had been denied to me.

I had asked her not to marry until Philip came back.

Now I thought, when will that be? Dear Jane must not wait so long. I told her so. “You are fortunate,” I added. “The Count is one of the most charming men I ever met and, Jane…he loves you. That is wonderful.”

Jane turned away to hide her emotion. In the depth of her own happiness, she would understand how I had suffered from my loveless marriage.

When one knows that death is close, one looks back over one's life and sees events with a special clarity.

I have made so many mistakes. Yet I cannot see where I could have acted differently, except perhaps in my emotions, my tendency—in love only—to look upon what should have been clear to me and distort it to fit my own needs and desires. Why could I not have accepted our marriage as one of state? So many women of my kind had to do the same. I had been too old for marriage. Why did I not see that? If I had not married, everything might have been different. I would have ruled single-mindedly. I would not have been seeking to please him and so led my country into war. I should have acted on my own judgment.

Had I succeeded in the mission God had set me? I was not sure. We had returned to Rome but not very securely. I could not see into the future. I wondered what my successor would encounter. She would be ready though. Her hands were already stretching out for the crown.