Jean Plaidy - The Rose Without a Thorn

ALSO BY JEAN PLAIDY

Forthcoming from Three Rivers Press

THE NORMAN TRILOGY

THE PLANTAGENET SAGA

THE TUDOR NOVELS

THE STUART SAGA

THE GEORGIAN SAGA

THE QUEEN VICTORIA SERIES

THE FERDINAND AND ISABELLA TRILOGY

THE LUCREZIA BORGIA SERIES

THE MEDICI TRILOGY

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION SERIES

The Scribe

SHE IS YOUNG, BEAUTIFUL and very frightened.

She said to me: It is coming nearer. I feel it all about me. There will be no way out. It will be as it was with my cousin Anne. Why did I not see it? Tell me.

I answered: Your Majesty must not distress yourself. The King loves you as he loved none other not even your cousin.

The long-lashed hazel eyes regarded me intently.

She answered: He loved her much in the beginning. He defied the Church for her sake. He sent good men to their deaths because of her. And then he ordered her to be killed. The same fate awaits me. I can already see the executioners axe ready for me.

There is no need I began.

There is every need, she replied. I know you love me. I know you speak out of regard for my feelings. You would give me cheer. But it remains, and there is one thing I would ask of you. The desire has come to me to set it all down, to see it all in clarity, just as it happened. Mayhap it could have been different. I could have been happy with Thomas. He is waiting for me even now. If I had never gone to Court if only the King had never looked my way if only I could go back to the time when it had all begun. No, right to the beginning, those first daysthat day when I left my fathers home at Lambeth, before I went to my grandmother in Horsham yes, right to the very beginning, mayhap I could then discover where I might have saved myself. But I am not good with the pen. I was never tutored as I should have been.

Your Majesty would indeed find such writing an arduous task.

Yes. And you are my good friend. That is why I ask you to help me in this.

I? How so?

You are a good scribe. It would be an easy task for you. I have a conviction that there will be some time for us to be together in the weeks to come. It will turn my thoughts from what awaits me. I shall tell you how it happenedscene by sceneand you shall write it down as it should be written, for you will know well how to do that. Then you will read to me what I have said, and I shall say, Yes, that was how it was. And I shall say to myself, This or that is the way I should have gone.

I think Your Majesty will tire of this ere long.

She shook her head. I shall not tire, my good friend, for I want so much to see it as it was. Mayhap Thomas will see it. It will help him to understand that, whatever happened before, he was the one I loved.

Her lips trembled and she hesitated for a while before she said with emotion: And I shall do so as long as there is breath in my body.

I bowed my head and said: I shall be ready to start as soon as Your Majesty commands.

The Duchess Calls

I SEE NOW THAT IT BEGAN when I went to my grandmothers house in Horsham. That was a long time ago but, without doubt, that was the move which set me on the path which led me to where I stand today. There was nothing I could have done about it. I was a child and such decisions were not made by me. If I had possessed a different nature, if I had not been so ready to love and trust, I might have been wise enough to avoid the pitfalls; but we are as God made us, and what was irresistible temptation to me could have been thrust aside with ease by some. The road is laid before us and we must pass along it, and, through ourselves, come to salvationor damnation.

Before that significant event, my carefree days were passed in the midst of my large family. There were eight of us children. I was the fifth in order of age, having three brothers and one sister older than myself, and, in time, three sisters younger.

Looking back, it seems that those days were made up of unalloyed pleasure. The fact that we were very poor did not worry us. We lived in a once-grand house in Lambeth, by the river, and our overgrown garden ran down to the waters edge.