I have the Sight, I should have seen it all, but some things are too dark to forsee. These are hard times, and England is a country of sorrows. No mother can be sure that she will not bury her sons. When a country is at war, cousin against cousin, brother against brother, no boy is safe.
A woman who loved him would have to learn obedience, and I was not yet ready to be an obedient wife.
We all want to triumph. But we all have to learn to endure what comes. We have to learn to treat misfortune and great fortune with indifference. That is wisdom.
But seeing those words that were first written, and scratched out, and rewritten again in print and bound into a book, I know that I love the process of writing and publishing. To take a thought and work on it, to render it into the clearest form possible, and then to send it out into the world – this is work so precious and so joyful that I am not surprised that men have kept it to themselves.
The truth is the last thing that matters.
You are my heart. Even if you are a broken heart.
Why not?’ She asks the most challenging questions that a woman can ask. ‘Why should I not read? Why should I not think? Why should I not speak?
The more that I learn, the more sure I am that I have very much to learn...
I will stand up and speak in my own voice and no man will ever silence me again.
He treats her as if he would spare her any fatigue, as if he has dedicated his life to her happiness.
If a woman is interested in her own struggle into identity and power, then she will be interested in other women. The lives of these, and other women, show me what a woman can do even without formal power, education, or rights, in a world dominated by men. They are inspirational examples of the strength of the female spirit.
And all I want to hear are the sweetest words in the world, when he says: “Bed, Wife.
Joan was a young woman who tried to walk her own path in the world of men, just as my great-aunt told me. And it led to this cold tower, this swan dive, this death.
You look as if you would eat me up,” he says. “I would,” I say. “I cannot think how to sate my desire for you. I think I will have to keep you prisoner here and eat you up in little cutlets, day after day.” “If I kept you prisoner, I would devour you in one greedy swallow,” he chuckles. “But you would not get out till you were with child.
If everyone in Christendom ate nothing but fish on Friday, then the fishermen and their children would eat well the rest of the week.
When you are still and thoughtful you are as lovely as the statues they are carving in Italy.
He greeted Anne with a roar of joy, swept her up and kissed her. You would think he had never been Sir Loyal Heart to his Queen Katherine. You would think it had been his worst enemy who had died and not a woman who had loved him faithfully for twenty-seven years and died with a blessing for him on her lips.
I could not love this man, knowing that he would not listen to me, knowing that I was not allowed even to show him my sadness. He was the father of my children and yet he would have no interest in them until they were old enough for him to use as counters in the game of inheritance. He had been my lover for years and yet it had been my task to make sure that he never knew me.
I have a longing for you, Lady Elizabeth Grey, that I have never felt for any woman before. Will you come to me? I ask it not as a king, and not even as a soldier who might die in battle, but as a simple man to the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Come to me, I beg you, come to me. It could be my last wish. Will you come to me tonight?
The mown grass is growing again nearly to our knees; we will take a second crop of hay from this field, rich and green and starred with moon daisies, buttercups and the bright, blowsy heads of poppies.