I cannot be your mistress,” I say simply. “I would rather die than dishonor my name. I cannot bring that shame on my family.” I pause. I am anxious not to be too discouraging. “Whatever I might wish in my heart,” I say very softly.
We are not ordered by God to judge each other. We are not even ordered by him to consider another person’s sin. We are ordered by God to let Him consider it, to let Him be judge.
Makes no difference,” he said, with his intuitive knowledge of my thoughts. “No difference at all how your first marriage was. This is my marriage, and I want my wife in my bed.” I laughed aloud and snuggled back into his arms. “It’s where I want to be,” I confessed. “Why would I ever want to be anywhere else?
She was a woman whose spirit had been hammered and forged until she could only ring true. Compared with the rest of us sho was silver, while we were pewter, a common of lead and tin.
Learning is an ornament to a good woman, not a distraction.
But this world is changing. Perhaps by the time you are old enough to marry the world will hear a woman’s voice. Perhaps she will not have to swear to obey in her wedding vows. Perhaps one day a woman will be allowed to both love and think.
But Elizabeth and I are accustomed to loss, we are Plantagenets – we dine on a diet of betrayal and heartbreak.
She stood silent among the quiet sounds of the night, and certainty came to her.
This is a woman who has not been tamed to be as others want; she has not been cut down to fit her circumstances.
The one thing that Jane’s death should teach us is that life is precious and every day is a gift that we should treasure.
He will come to trust you, perhaps,” she says. “If you have years together. You may grow to be a loving husband and wife, if you have long enough. And if I never tell you anything, then there will never be a moment where you have to lie to him. Or worse – never a moment when you have to choose where your loyalties lie. I wouldn’t want you to have to choose between your father’s family and your husband’s. I wouldn’t want you to have to choose between the claims of your little son and another.” I.
I am exhorted to be virtuous and fertile. The people see me indicated as the choice of God for Queen of England. Choirs sing as I enter the city, rose petals are showered down on me. I am myself, my own tableau: the Englishwoman from the House of Lancaster come to be the Queen of York. I am an object of peace and unity.
I knew when I first saw you that you were the woman I would want for all my life.
I cannot catch courage from his smile. I have to do this all entirely alone, with thousands of strangers watching my every movement. Nothing is to detract from my rise from gentry woman to Queen of England, from mortal to a being divine: next to God. When they crown me and anoint me with the holy oil, I become a new being, one above mortals, only one step below angels, beloved, and the elect of heaven.
God speaks to us individually, each and every one of us, that we need neither pope nor priest, nor bleeding statue, to find our way to faith. God is calling and we only have to listen. There are no clever tricks to forgiveness. There is only one way and there is only one Bible, and a woman can study it as well as a man.
I have my own loyalties and obligations that I consider and honor. They are not his. They are not at the beck and call of any man.
For a moment we glared at each other, stubborn as cats on the stable wall, full of mutual resentment and something darker, the old sense between sisters that there is only really room in the world for one girl. The sense that every fight could be to the death.
She knew that being a mortal woman is hard on the heart, hard on the feet.
You will be the mother of the next King of England,” she declares. “The red rose and the white, a rose without a thorn. You will have a son, and we will call him Arthur of England.” She takes my hands. “This is your destiny, my daughter. I will help you.
The queen sees me coming, turns toward us and waits, with a killer’s patience, for me to reach the chancel steps.