In the Shadow of the Crown (67 page)

“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.

Elizabeth's accession now seemed to be a certainty, and people were ready for that. They were waiting for me to die, for they believed England would be a happier place under her. It had certainly not been happy under me.

The weeks were passing. I was becoming more and more feeble. I did not see Reginald. He was too ill to come to me and I to go to him.

I heard that people were calling at Hatfield. I knew that Philip had sent orders to the Spaniards in the country to pay respectful court to Elizabeth.

So he was expecting my death… and he did not come.

It had occurred to me often that he was interested in Elizabeth. I remembered the occasion when he had hidden behind a screen that he might study her. I remembered the look in his eyes… speculative…a little lustful? I had not recognized it then, but now I knew what it meant. When I was dead…he saw himself a suitor for Elizabeth's hand.

I did not want to live. I was aware of that so strongly at that time. She had always been my rival, this vitally attractive, unpredictable sister, so much cleverer than I, always alert for her advantage. And she would succeed me. There was no question of that now.

There would be no more burnings at the stake which had made me so unpopular. Even the staunchest papists did not like them. England was determined that the Inquisition should never be allowed on its soil.

“Bloody Mary” they called me. I could hear the screams of the people as the flames licked their limbs. I could smell the pungent odor of burning human flesh. I called on God to forgive me. I had thought it was His will— and my people hated me for it. Bloody Mary! That awful epithet rang in my ears.

They blamed me, they reviled me… only Mary…Bloody Mary. Yet others had committed greater crimes. Some 300 people had been burned at the stake in my reign. Nobody blamed those who had murdered thousands in the name of the Holy Office of the Inquisition! Isabella, Ferdinand, Charles, who had buried people alive in Flanders—30,000 of them. Yet I, who was held responsible for sending 300 to the stake, was Bloody Mary.

It was small wonder that I welcomed the prospect of death. What was there for me here?

The Court was growing more and more deserted. Why stay with a woman who was almost dead?

What should I be remembered for… the cries of martyrs, smoke rising
from the fires which had been lighted at their feet because they denied the faith which I had imposed on them?

I was tired of life and my people were tired of me. It was time I went.

Susan was with me, so was Jane. They would not leave me. There were other faithful women, too.

Susan tried to cheer me. But nothing would cheer me.

They brought me materials so that I could write, for thinking of the past could draw my mind from the present. Susan was not sure that that was right for me.

“Sometimes it makes you so sad,” she said.

“There are many wounds that trouble my oppressed mind,” I told her.

“And there is one which is greater than any.”

Susan said, “If the King knew you were so ill, I am sure he would come.”

“Do not let us deceive ourselves, Susan, my dear friend. If he knew how ill I was, he would do just what he is doing now, only perhaps he would renew his attention to Elizabeth. But I was not thinking of Philip then. I was thinking of Calais. When I die, they will find Calais lying upon my heart. I lost it, Susan. I lost it because I wanted Philip. I wanted to please him… to keep him with me. Always I have suffered through my affections.”

“Not always, dear lady. You have not suffered through us who have always loved you and will do so until you die.”

I turned to Susan and embraced her. Then I took Jane into my arms and wished her all the happiness I had missed.

“And that,” I added, “is a great deal.”

They left me, and I took up my pen and wrote.

They are all going to leave the Court. To them the Queen is dead. So I shall write no more, for soon they will be at Hatfield crying, “Long live the Queen!”

William Aubrey, Smith, Hickman
The National and Domestic History of England

Bagley, J.H.,
Henry VIII

Bigland, Eileen (Edited by),
Henry VIII

Bowle, John,
Henry VIII

Chamberlin, Frederick,
The Private Character of Henry VIII

Erickson, Carolly,
Bloody Mary

Fisher, H.A.L.,
Political History of England

Froude, James Anthony,
The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon

Froude, James Anthony,
History of England

Guizot, M. (Translated by Robert Black),
History of France

Hackett, Francis,
Henry VIII

Hackett, Francis,
Francis the First

Hume, David,
The History of England

Hume, Martin,
The Wives of Henry VIII

Hume, Martin,
Two England Queens and Philip

Lewis, Hilda,
I am Mary Tudor

Lingard, John,
History of England

Luke, Mary,
Catherine of Aragon

Mattingly, Garrett,
Catherine of Aragon

Pollard, A.F.,
Henry VIII

Pollard, A.F.,
Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation under Edward VI

Prescott, H.F.M.,
Spanish Tudor. The Life of Bloody Mary

Prescott, William H.,
History of the Reign of Philip the Second

Ridley, Jasper,
The Life and Times of Mary Tudor

Salzman, L.F.,
England in Tudor Times

Scarisbrick, J.J.,
Henry VIII

Smith, Lacy Baldwin,
Henry VIII

Stephens, Sir Leslie, and Lee, Sir Sidney,
The Dictionary of National Biography

Stone, J.M.,
The History of Mary I Queen of England

Strickland, Agnes,
Lives of the Queens of England

Trevelyan, G.M.,
History of England

Wade, John,
British History

Waldman, Milton,
The Lady Mary

White, Beatrice,
Mary Tudor

JEAN PLAIDY is the pen name of the late English author E. A. Hibbert, who also wrote under the names Philippa Carr and Victoria Holt. Born in London in 1906, Hibbert began writing in 1947 and eventually published over two hundred novels under her three pseudonyms. The Jean Plaidy books—ninety in all—are works of historical fiction about the famous and infamous women of English and European history, from medieval times to the Victorian era. Hibbert died in 1993.