Free The Three Crowns epub by Jean Plaidy Page A

you the truth?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Don’t you know anything?”
    “Yes,” said Mary, “I know I hate you.”
    “You mustn’t hate. You go to hell for hating.” Elizabeth made the movement of turning a sheep on a spit and there was an ecstatic light in her eyes.
    “Stop it,” said Mary.
    “That doesn’t stop. It goes on for eternity, and you know that means forever and ever … amen.”
    Mary turned to go but Elizabeth caught her arm. “We won’t have Catholics here,” she said. “Your mother’s one. She tries to hide it but everybody … except you … knows it.”
    Mary wrenched her arm free of her tormentor, and as she ran from her, heard Elizabeth’s taunting laughter.
    She was puzzled and uneasy.

     
    The King had heard the rumors of his sister-in-law’s conversion and guessed that James was following her lead; he himself favored the Catholic faith and would have proclaimed this fact but for the memory of those early wanderings of his. He was more realistic than James and understood the temper of the people better than his brother. James was a sentimentalist; Charles was never that.
    Charles hated intolerance and he would have liked to bring some relief to his Catholic subjects. It would give him a great deal of pleasure to reunite England with Rome—providing of course the changeover would not bring about trouble, which was the last thing he wanted. But he was a King and a Stuart and in spite of his good nature and love of peace there was in him an innate belief in the Divine Right of Kings. Why be a King if one must be governed by a Parliament? How tedious constantly to be told that he could not have this or that grant of money! And he was a man who always had a demanding mistress at his elbow.
    Every Stuart would be haunted throughout his life by the martyred King Charles I. They would always remember how, being in conflict with his Parliament, he had lost his head. No Stuart should ever run afoul of his Parliament, and yet how could he but help it?
    The nation was behind him, and he was convinced that the people would never allow the head of the second Charles to roll, for his father—with all his nobility and virtuous ways—had never appealed to his subjects as his merry son had done.
    Could he take a chance?
    How many chances had he taken during the days of exile—and after? It was second nature to take chances.
    He needed money—desperately; and the Parliament would not grant it to him, so his eyes were on France. His sister—his beloved Minette, the favorite of all his sisters, who was married to the brother of Louis XIV—had been in secret correspondence with him. Minette had assured him of Louis’s good will toward him; she had made him see that a French alliance was imperative. Imperative to the King or to the country?
    “The King is the country,” said Charles to himself with a cynical smile.
    Sir William Temple had formed an alliance with Sweden; but negotiations were going on with Spain at the same time—and of course France.
    Colbert de Croissy, the French ambassador, had proposals to put before him; he brought letters from Minette; Louis was ready to pay the King of England handsomely for his cooperation, but it was an alliance which, for the time being, must be kept secret even from the King’s ministers.
    What Louis wanted was alliance with England, and he would feel happier if this alliance were with a Catholic England. The King of England was half French; his mother had been a Catholic and it was natural that he should lean toward her religion. The King would be willing enough; but England was a Protestant country and the people would not easily be led to the Church of Rome. Still, a King could do much.
    Charles knew that Louis wanted England to join forces with him for an invasion of Holland, and Charles to make public his conversion to the Roman Catholic Faith; he wanted the Church of England abolished and England to return to