He sat, or rather was arranged on a pile of rags in a vague room in Windsor Castle. The mood of the others dwelling in the castle was somber, fearful, yet daring to hope that their anointed king would soon free himself from the blankness of the Wall.
This was sometimes made unlikely, as when his mind climbed a step and he saw the ghost of a father he never had known - with a disapproving grimace on his hard haughty famous face. This apparition knocked Henry back, his head against one wall and his mind against another. Like many sons of famous fathers, he had often been able to do nothing but shrug that he was a grave disappointment to his father's example.
When the news came to him that all was lost in France, that he was the son of the one who had won all, and that as that son he had lost all, well, it was the logical outcome of the way things were going. That was when he was first blocked by the Wall. Queen Margaret could have been heard in the room crying angry tears, burning with fear of what would happen if he never stepped through that Wall. The Queen was in the middle of her first pregnancy, and she knew that the court all assumed another to be the father. She knew, however, that it was Henry, and that the same fate might come upon a child of theirs as came upon the King.
And the recurrence of a reign of a boy king at this time would be a great burden upon the country, even greater than the reign of this king who had had so many fingers in the pie that was the Regency of the boy king.
The Queen was fearful of so many things, and as she often sat in the room hoping to see some sort of life in Henry, she occasionally saw a line of spittle draw itself down from the corner of his mouth. This was so sad to see his wheel come to its nadir (sum sine regno), I am unable to reign, I am without a crown. He had seemed to be so innocent, why was he (and the realm) being punished?
No comments:
Post a Comment