In the Shadow of the Crown by Jean Plaidy Page A

been a happy wife and mother and much anguish spared to many.
    My father, by this time, was beginning to be deeply enamoured of her and ordered Wolsey to prevent the marriage with Percy going ahead. Young Henry Percy was humiliated by the Cardinal, and the Earl of Northumberland wassent for. He came to London and berated his son for his folly. Henry Percy was banished to Northumberland, and Anne Boleyn to Hever.
    I could imagine her grief and anger. She would be passionate in her emotion, although at the time she would not have known that the breaking up of their match had been due to the effect she was having on the King and that he was forming plans for her. She thought it was because she was not considered of noble enough breeding to mate with the mighty House of Northumberland, which had deeply wounded her dignity.
    The rest of the story is well known: her return to Court at the instigation of the King, a place in my mother's household as one of her ladies-inwaiting, where she could grace the Court with her special talents of dancing, singing and writing masques with the young poets of the Court, most of whom were her slaves.
    She was one of those women who I believe are called a
femme fatale
. My father was not the only one who desired her.
    I did not know—I am not sure even now after so many years have passed—whether she deliberately set out to wear the crown. She could not in the beginning have believed this possible—she, from a family associated with trade—and in any case the King already had a wife. It seemed quite preposterous. No, I think at that stage she might have been sincere.
    When he made it clear that he wished to be her lover she told him that she would not be the mistress of any man and as, by reason of her unworthiness and the fact that he was married, she could not be his wife, that must be an end of his aspirations.
    It was bold. But then, she lived by boldness. It had served her well in the beginning, but it was to be her downfall in the end.
    My father could not bear to be crossed; in any case, he was obsessed by the woman. He wanted her so desperately that he contemplated drastic steps to get her.
    We could not believe it at first—not even Wolsey, who knew the King as well as any of us. Wolsey was our enemy—my mother's and mine. He was a clever man who believed there was a need to produce a male heir, but for him there was a greater need than that, which was to placate the King. But he was an astute politician who would immediately see the folly in divorcing my mother in order to put Anne Boleyn on the throne. He had his eyes on an alliance with France. Divorce my mother, yes, but only in order to marry a princess, possibly of France.
    I did not know how much the proposed divorce was due to the lack of a son and how much to the King's desire for Anne Boleyn. My father was adept at dissembling. He had the gift of being able to deceive himself in theface of logic, and he did it so effectively that one was inclined to believe him…as he believed himself.
    He came to my mother one day and I was present. Looking back now, I think that made a turning point in our relationship.
    My mother and I were embroidering together, which was something we often did. The Countess said it had a soothing effect and calmed the nerves. It did seem to do so, for my mother would become quite interested in the stitches and we would sometimes talk of happier subjects than that one which was uppermost in our minds.
    When my father arrived, I rose and curtsied. He came toward us, smiling benignly.
    “Well, Kate,” he said to my mother, “I would speak with you.”
    He turned to me and laid a hand on my shoulders.
    “So…you are keeping your mother company? Good. Very good. And getting on with your studies so that you do not disgrace us, eh?”
    There was a faraway look in his eyes, and his mouth showed signs of tightening. They were aspects which always alarmed me as well as others because I was beginning to