The Star of Lancaster - Plaidy Jean (бесплатные онлайн книги читаем полные TXT) 📗

The Duke was free of Constanza but could he marry Catherine Swynford? If he were not the son of a king he undoubtedly would. But he must always remember that he was King Edward's son. *Of one thing we can be sure,' Mary pointed out, 'Lady Swynford will not attempt to influence him.'

'He cannot marry her,' said Henry emphatically. 'His rank is too high and she is too humble.'

Mary sighed. 'There is no woman in the country more worthy to be the Duchess of Lancaster.'

'In all ways but one,' agreed Henry. 'Her humble birth can never be forgotten.*

'Can it not?' asked Mary almost wonderingly.

Then she said that she would like to go to Leicester for a change. She wanted the new child to be born there.

A terrible tragedy had struck the King. His beloved wife, who was known throughout the country as Good Queen Anne, caught the prevailing sickness and in a few weeks was dead.

The King's grief maddened him and he was inconsolable. Anne had been his constant companion and had grown ever closer since the passing of his friend Robert de Vere. He could not contemplate life without her and was filled with rage that fate could have been so cruel as to take from him this beloved Queen.

In his uncontrollable anger he slashed the hangings in the room where she had died and declared that he never wanted

to see Sheen again.

Then his morbid rage took possession of him so that he was unable to control it. He broke up the furniture in that room; he destroyed it utterly. Never could he bear to look on that room again.

There is death in the air, thought Mary.

The time was growing near. Joan Waring and Mary Hervey were growing more and more uneasy.

'There is no time between for her to recover,' grumbled Joan. 'It is a mercy my lord is away on his travels or the intervals would be even shorter I'd swear.'

'If he were here perhaps he would be aware of the toll it is taking of her.'

'Men!' snapped Joan. 'What do they know of these matters. All they think of is their own pleasure and getting children to bring them honour and glory. My lord will have to be spoken to after this one and if no one else will do it I will.'

'Better leave it to my lady.'

'She, poor soul, does nothing but submit.'

'She is a great lady.'

'The best in the land. But that won't bring her through. I fear for her, Mary. I fear for her.'

'You have always feared yet she recovers.'

'Yes, in time for the next one. It will not continue, I know that.'

'You fret too much, Joan,' Mary Hervey said. 'Blanche's was an easy birth.'

Joan said nothing. She pursed her lips to express disapproval.

The weeks passed and Mary was so tired that she spent most of her time in bed. She was glad Henry was away. She would have hated him to see her so indisposed. Thousands of women were having babies every day. And she had only five. It was not a great number. It was just that they had seemed to follow so quickly on one another.

Perhaps when this child was born, she would try to explain to Henry ...

Summer had come. She thought of Constanza and wondered what her life had been with a husband who had made no secret of the fact that he had married her for the sake of her

crown. Henry would never have been allowed to marry her, she reasoned, if it had not been for her fortune, but they had met romantically and they had been lovers. Yet he had known from the first who she was and had no doubt been advised by his father to court her.

Perhaps it was better not to probe into motives too closely. Suffice it she had been happy—completely happy in those first years before the fearsome task of bearing children had begun.

It is my weakness, she admonished herself. Other women do the same without complaint.

She thought often of the King and his grief. She had heard how he had destroyed the room at Sheen in which the Queen had died because he would never be able to bear to look at it again. And theirs had been a marriage of convenience, arranged by states and they had never seen each other until Anne had come from Bohemia to marry him.

Poor, poor Richard. Unhappy King; who had come too young to the throne but had found a wife whom he could love and then had lost her.

But she must not brood on death. There was a life stirring within her. And she loved her children. She loved them dearly. Once they had arrived and she had recovered from the ordeal she was happy ... until the time came to give birth again.

I am a coward, she thought. And then: But oh, if Henry only knew the pain I suffer!

Leicester was a magnificent castle situated on the right bank of the River Soar, just outside the city but close to the wall which the Romans had built when they called the town Ratae. When the name had changed she did not know but the town and the castle, which had been of great importance both to the Saxons and the Danes, had come into the possession of the House of Lancaster more than a hundred years ago and John of Gaunt had restored and beautified it in the manner he liked to employ with so many of his properties.

June was almost over and the birth was imminent. Mary lay on her bed waiting for her pains to start.

Her labour was long and arduous. All through the day and night it persisted. The pain grew more intense and never before even in her most gruelling experiences had she known such agony.

When at last the child was born she was too exhausted to

ask its sex and if it were healthy in every way.

Her doctors said above everything she must rest. They gave her a soothing potion and set two women by her bedside to watch over her.

The child was a healthy girl. As soon as Joan heard her lusty cries she was there to see her new charge. A fine girl!

'Bless you,' she murmured, 'let us hope your coming has not cost my lady too much strength.'

It seemed that it had cost a great deal for Mary remained exhausted through the days that followed, but when the baby was brought to her and laid in her arms she was content with it.

'I have given my lord six children,' she said. 'That is a fair number—four boys and two girls—is it not?'

Her women assured her that it was.

*I am twenty-four years of age,' she said. 'How long can a woman expect to go on bearing children? Another ten years?' She smiled wanly. 'Not for me, I think. Not for me.'

Joan said quickly: 'Six is a goodly number. It is enough for any parents, no matter who they be.'

'Queen Philippa bore twelve,' she said.

'It is too many,' mumbled Joan.

1 shall call this child Philippa after that Good Queen,' said Mary.

They took the baby from her for she was so easily tired.

During the next day a lassitude came over her and she lay listlessly in her bed. She kept drifting into sleep—though it did not seem like sleep but almost as though she had escaped from the present into the past. She was in the convent and the Abbess was with her. 'You must be sure if this is the life you want, Mary.' Oh the peace of the life—lived by bells, she had always thought. Bells for nones, bells for compline ... working in the herb garden, baking the bread, tending the poor, living in a bare cell chilled to the bone in the winter but somehow happy in the service of God.

She had turned away from it. Henry had made her turn and from the moment she had met him in the forest she had had no longer any desire to be a nun. Her future had been planned she knew. She v;as a pawn in the hands of the great John of Gaunt as she would have been in the hands of her sister and Eleanor's ambitious husband.

But it had come about so naturally and no matter what

happened she would never want to be without her children. Beloved children. Harry the rebellious, Thomas who liked to imitate his elder brother; John who was a good boy, and little Humphrey. Then sweet Blanche and now Philippa. No, they were her life, though soon the boys would be taken away from her, but at present she had them.