Free The Star of Lancaster by Jean Plaidy Page A

which she preferred and the Countess insisted that she pay special attention to her appearance.
    Those were the waiting years and Mary knew now without a doubt how wrong it would have been had she allowed herself to be forced into the convent. Henry had saved her from that and she would always be grateful to him. She was intended to be what he would make her: a wife and a mother. Providing a happy well-managed home for her husband and children was her true mission in life and during those waiting years she longed for the time when she would be old enough to go to Henry.
    Often she thought of him, wondering what he was doing at that time. During the day she was busy; her mother saw that she was well occupied; but at night she would lie in her bed, watching the flickering shadows on the walls, for after the fashion of the day she burned a small lamp in her bedchamber. It was a small metal cup filled with oil with a wick in it; and it was a comfort during the darkness when certain fears came to her.
    She was always apprehensive lest something happened and she not be told of it. During the time when she and Henry had lived together and she had been pregnant terrible things had been happening and she had known nothing of them. The peasants had risen and the whole country had been in danger; as for Henry he had been with the King at the time in the Tower of London and had come near to losing his life. She had been – and still was – so appalled at the second near calamity that she could give little thought to the first.
    It was only after the tragic birth of her stillborn child that she had heard the truth and she would never forget as long as she lived the day Henry had sat with her and told her about it.
    ‘A man called Wat Tyler was at their head,’ he had said. ‘The story is that the collector who had gone to gather the poll tax had insulted his daughter and the tyler killed the taxcollector and the peasants rallied round him. They marched to London eventually. They wanted to rule the country themselves; they wanted to take all the riches of the land and divide it between them. They were looting everything as they went. They have destroyed my father’s palace of the Savoy.’
    She had listened wide-eyed, her heart beating furiously to think that while that was happening she had been living quietly in the country expecting her baby and knowing nothing of it. And Henry had been there in London . . . with the King.
    ‘They came into London, that seething rabble,’ Henry went on. ‘The King went out to meet them . . . first at Blackheath and then at Smithfield. He showed great courage – everyone said so – and it has to be remembered that he saved the day. When he was at Blackheath I was left in the Tower and the mob broke in.’
    She felt sick with fear, and he had laughed at her.
    ‘It’s all over now. It came out all right. Richard talked to them . . . promised to give them what they wanted . . . not that he can . . . but he promised them and Wat Tyler was killed. They were without a leader. They broke up and disappeared . . . and afterwards the ring leaders were caught and punished.’
    ‘And you were in the Tower,’ she had murmured.
    ‘I was lucky. Oh Mary, you nearly lost your husband on that day. They would have put an end to me because they hated my father. Everywhere you go, Mary, you hear them murmuring against him. You know all the lies they tell against him.’
    ‘Why do they hate him so?’ she had asked.
    Henry had shrugged his shoulders. Then he had said, his eyes glowing with pride: ‘Because he is the greatest man in England. He should have been the first-born so that he could have had the crown. He was meant to be a king.’
    Mary had begged him to tell her about his lucky escape.
    ‘It was like a miracle, Mary. There I was expecting them to burst in on me at any moment. I was thinking of you. I thought: My poor little Mary, her heart will be broken. And it would have been would it