Mary, Queen of France: The Story of the Youngest Sister of Henry VIII

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ALTHOUGH THE WIND blew from the northeast, whipping the cold waters of the Thames, bending the rushes and long grasses on the banks and throwing itself, as though in anger, against the Palace walls, the barges continued to arrive, and great personages alighted at the privy steps.

The young girl kneeling in a window seat watched them with satisfaction.

“Why, Katharine,” she said, without turning to look at her sister-in-law, who sat sewing on her stool near the window, “my lord Dudley and my lord Empson are arriving now. Who next, I wonder.” She pulled at her plentiful red-gold curls. “And to think, Katharine, that they are coming to honor me!”

“Nay, Mary, you are over-vain. You should remember that it is not you they honor, but your father’s crown.”

“By God’s Holy Mother,” retorted Mary, “is it my father’s crown then who is going to solemnize its nuptials tomorrow in this Palace?”

“We know it is yourself who is going to do that. But the honor these men do is not for an eleven-year-old girl, but because she is the daughter of the King of England.”

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