Queen's Ransom (39 page)

She would be taught, as Helene had been taught, to believe that monstrous cruelty toward those the Church condemned as heretics was the will of a loving God. Wilkins was dead but she would meet those beliefs, all the same. The chaplain here was Matthew’s uncle Armand. He was not by nature a cruel man but even he believed those things. He said he had to; that they were enjoined on him. Could I counter that teaching?

“Not yet,” I said. “I think she should not come yet.” Within me, Matthew’s baby, due to be born in March, kicked restlessly. The child seemed vigorous, for which I was glad. I had had a long struggle to bring Meg into the world and could only hope that Matthew’s child would enter it more easily. “Not until her brother or sister is safely here and I’ve got over the birth. Then we’ll see.”

I wanted Meg so much, so much. But I was not sure that Blanchepierre was the right place for her.

I had not yet brought myself to face the further question: whether Blanchepierre was, after all, the right place for her mother.

Among numerous works consulted while preparing this book, were:

All the Queen’s Men
by Neville Williams (London:Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972).

A Concise History of France
by Roger Price (Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Elements of Herbalism
by David Hoffmann (Shaftesbury, Dorset: Element Books, 1990).

Elizabeth I
by Wallace MacCaffrey (London: Edward Arnold Division of Hodder Headline PLC, 1993).

Elizabeth I
by Anne Somerset (London:Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991).

Elizabeth and Leicester
by Elizabeth Jenkins (London: Panther, 1972).

Elizabethan England
by Alison Plowden (London: Reader’s Digest Association, 1982).

The Elizabethan World
by Lacey Baldwin Smith (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991).

Elizabeth the Great
by Elizabeth Jenkins (London:Victor Gollancz, 1968).

Mary Queen of Scots
by Antonia Fraser (London:Weidenfeld & Nicholson, Mandarin Paperbacks, 1989).

Paris and the Ile de France,
Phaidon Cultural Guide (London: Phaidon Press, 1987).

The Reign of Elizabeth
by J. W. Black (Oxford History of England, edited by Sir George Clark, Oxford University Press, 1988).

The Tower of London—900 Years of English History
by Kenneth Mears (London: Phaidon Press, 1988).

The Tudor Age
by Jasper Ridley (London: Guild Publishing by arrangement with Constable & Co., 1988).

The Tudor Age
by James A. Williamson (London and New York: Longman, 1979).