Reluctant Queen: Tudor Historical Novel About Mary Rose Tudor, the Defiant Little Sister of King Henry VIII

by Geraldine Evans

  ‘And would it be in my best interests, think you, to marry a man so old, with creaky joints and gouty limbs? What of love? What of romance?’

  ‘Foolish notions for a princess, as I’m sure your brother told you. Both your mother and grandam married for duty, though I’m not saying love didn’t come. You should put such thoughts out of your head for I know none of high rank who were permitted to marry for love.’

  Mary, about to remind her of the love-match that had formed the basis of her own Tudor dynasty, remained silent as she recollected how that love-match had ending. The marriage between Catherine, Henry V’s young French widow and her own paternal great grandsire, Owen Tudor, the Welsh gentleman of her guard, had been a secret one, ending in tragedy with Owen eventually clapped into prison and Catherine forced to retire to a convent where she had died at an early age. Such was not the future Mary wanted for herself and Charles Brandon. So, although she brooded, Mary said nothing when her Mother Guildford told her she would submit to her duty, as many before her had submitted and that her brother, for all his gay charm, would see to it that she did so.

  Mary knew it was useless to speak to her Mother Guildford of love and passion. Like Henry, it was clear she thought the match an excellent one. But Lady Guildford was old. Piety was her passion. And neither she nor Henry would have to endure King Louis' shameful fumblings. Beneath her lowered lids, Mary's blue eyes darkened. But as Lady Guildford continued to pull the silver-backed brush through her silken hair, Mary's mind quietened. And as thoughts of the future were so distasteful, she cast her mind backwards, to the carefree days of her childhood at Eltham which she and Henry had shared; their sister, Margaret, long married and in Scotland and Arthur, Prince of Wales, in his own establishment. Henry, as second son, had been destined for the church until Arthur's early death altered his prospects. Mary had always found it impossible to imagine her tall, adored, handsome brother a man of the cloth. He exuded too much of the love of life and its many pleasures for that. Henry had basked in her adoration and loved her the more for it, far more than he had ever loved their elder sister, Margaret, who, once betrothal to King James of Scotland, had delighted in queening it over them.

  Mary wished she could remember more of her mother; but she had died shortly before Mary’s seventh birthday and all she had was an impression of soft arms and a gentle voice crooning lullabies. Her father, a thin, solemn man with a careworn face, she could remember more clearly. He had arranged the ‘great match’ for her with the young Prince of Castile. She could still remember the betrothal ceremony held at Greenwich with the great throng of nobles and clerics. Her betrothed, or more probably his grandsire, had sent her the brilliant jewel in the form of the letter ‘K’ for Karolus, made of diamonds and pearls, which Henry now wore in his hat. She had been proud of the jewel and had loved to show it off. It had an inscription on it, which, with childish notions of love, she had taken to her heart—'Maria had chosen the good part, which should not be taken from her.'

  But it had been taken from her. The marriage had been due to be finalised this year, despite her lately wayward-leaning heart. Her father had paid her dowry of 50,000 crowns, but had cautiously demanded a pawn for the money. Mary could still remember his delight when his demand had been met and a magnificent cluster of diamonds worth twice the dowry sum had been sent. But then her father had died. And although he had left her her dowry, in the form of the diamond cluster, when he had become King Henry had taken a great fancy to the jewel and refused to part with it. Mary had been left with nothing, not even her Castilian Prince who had repudiated her after many months of wrangling and recriminations.

  And now her brother proposed another, even grander, match for her. But Mary's taste for grand marriages had turned to ashes. She had only to look at those of Catherine and her sister, Margaret, to know they often brought misery and humiliation in their wake. Had not Catherine, Henry’s queen, suffered near-destitution for seven years after the death of her first husband, Arthur? Her misery only alleviated when Henry became king and married her. And owing to her faithless husband’s ‘fatal weakness for women’ Margaret’s marital humiliations had been without number. Such memories strengthened Mary’s resolve to marry Charles Brandon. She wanted only to live in peace with her beloved. She must find Charles and persuade him to declare himself. Surely Henry, who could be sentimental, would relent when he realised how great was the love of his sister and his bosom friend.

  Before, caution had made Charles reluctant to claim Mary’s hand, but the time for caution was past. Unless he wanted to lose her to old Louis, he must speak out. She must find the words to persuade him to it. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mary looked back down the Dover Road at the snaking tail of the royal party, its last third obscured by the dust kicked up by the horses’ hooves. She wished her fast-approaching future could be as easily obscured. But they were nearing the end of the leisurely seventy-mile journey through Gravesend, Rochester, Sittingbourne, Faversham and Canterbury, which had given her ample time to consider what awaited her at journey’s end. Soon now, they would reach Barham Down and Dover Castle.

  In spite of the choking dust, the courtiers were gay. But why shouldn't they be? It was a beautiful day. Her brother, who rode a little way ahead, had got his way and was merry. And when her brother was in an ebullient mood so must be the rest of the court. Mary didn't share their gaiety. Even the glorious weather didn't lighten her mood. Although it was already October, all along the roadside the flowers still bloomed; everyone said they couldn't remember such a year for flowers – lovely, wild, deep pink thyme, purple, fragrant lavender, sweet, white, creeping chamomile – all nodded their salute in the slight breeze created by the passing of so many riders.

  The peasants in the fields stopped their labours and gazed, open-mouthed at the bejeweled courtiers as they passed, the sun glinting off their finery. Even Mary had to admit –that none in the party could match the magnificence of her brother. At twenty-three, Henry, who stood head and shoulders above most of the courtiers, was broad-shouldered and handsome. His loud laughter rang out frequently. Mary saw him glance back to where she rode with her sister-in-law, Queen Catherine, saw his smile fade as he took in her woebegone looks. Mary knew she didn't look her best. The only member of the party who looked more wan was the five months’ pregnant Catherine.

  Henry turned his horse around and waited for them to come up to him. ‘Marry Madam, you look as though you were riding to your funeral instead of to your husband,’ he told her as he twitched the reins and pulled his horse into step with theirs. ‘King Louis will not like your glum looks, I swear.’

  ‘Perhaps he will repudiate me, then brother, like the Prince of Castile,’ Mary replied pertly. ‘She glanced at Catherine for support. Catherine had been delighted when she had been betrothed to her nephew, the Prince of Castile and had not been pleased when the match had been replaced by the one with Louis. But Catherine was a dutiful wife and did not criticise her husband in public, so she said nothing and Mary turned back to Henry.

  ‘Anyway, Henry, did you not tell me that marriage is a serious voyage on which to embark? Surely, then, I must leave smiles and other inappropriate and frivolous things behind.’

  Henry’s rude snort told her what he thought of her answer. He wheeled his horse about, gave him the spur, and galloped back to his friends, where loud laughter soon once again drifted back. She was glad to see him go, for although her words had held a soft defiance, in truth, she had had enough of arguments. Henry had her unwilling agreement to the French marriage and must needs be satisfied with that and not also seek to ease his conscience.

  Mary felt Catherine watching her, sensed the sympathy and armed herself against it as she had armed herself against her brother's reproaches.

  ‘You won't find it so bad, Mary,’ Catherine tried to console her. She was speaking from the purely personal view, Mary knew; politically, she would never be rec
onciled to this French match. ‘I understand that Louis, though old as you say, is likely to be kind. Resign yourself to it, child and a lot of your unhappiness will be eased. I know 'tis hard at first to leave your home, but try not to fret too much. It'll only increase your sadness.’

  Catherine's accent, her tiny body wearied by heat and pregnancy, was more strongly Spanish than ever. Shamed by her sister-in-law's stoicism, Mary reminded her, ‘But sister, you married young men. First my brother, Arthur, and then on his death, Henry; a handsome, manly man I have to say, though he be my brother.’

  ‘Youth and handsome looks are not everything, Mary. For all my husband's fine face and figure, we can't get us a son.’

  Mary glanced at her sister-in-law and her mound of a stomach. Poor Queen Catherine had already suffered several previous pregnancies, all but one ending in either miscarriage or a stillborn child. The longed-for son had tragically died at seven weeks.

  ‘This time you'll bear a son that thrives, I trow,’ Mary tried to console Catherine, ‘a prince as strong and handsome as his father.’

  Catherine put a brave face on her plight. ‘It is what I pray for daily. But you are right, Mary. I will concentrate my mind on happy thoughts of sons.’ She gazed up ahead, at Henry’s broad back, and winced as, in his youthful exuberance, he challenged one of the courtiers to a race. The pair galloped off in a heavy cloud of dust through which Henry’s whoops of delight drowned out the coughing fits of those left in his wake. ‘I would please my husband.’

  Henry didn’t like sad looks, as Mary had recently had reason to know. He thought, rightly in her case, that they hid discontent and lack of obedience. As for Catherine, though Mary knew well how mightily she sought to please her husband, the queen would be twenty-nine in December. Wearied by pregnancy, she looked every year of her age. Although Catherine’s skin retained its admired pink and white colouring, the youthful prettiness Mary remembered had faded. Henry, by contrast, was still a young man, his boisterousness accentuating even more the five years between them. Mary was afforded a glimpse of how Louis, her much older husband, might feel when he came off worse in a similar comparison. But the spurt of compassion for Louis was brief. Louis had had a choice in the matter. Mary tried again to comfort her sister-in-law. ‘But you do your duty, Catherine. No one could have tried harder to provide Harry with an heir.’

  Catherine's smile failed to show its usual serenity and Mary had a glimpse into the other woman’s soul. She hurriedly looked away, not wishing to witness such pain.

  ‘Tried and failed,’ said Catherine softly. ‘Such failure is not regarded as a virtue in Queens. But you, Mary, you are lucky in some ways. Oh, I know you don't agree with me now, but perhaps in time you will. You are to marry an old and sickly man, past worrying about heirs. You won't have to suffer the pain and loss of repeated failure as I have.’

  Though that was small consolation to Mary, she admitted she might have been wed to a lusty and possibly long-lived prince and should count her blessings. There was still hope that she and Charles would eventually be able to marry.

  As they rode on along the dusty, potholed roads, Mary’s thoughts went back through the weeks that had led her on this journey. After alternate soft and harsh words from her brother, her friend Jane's cajoling, joined with the Duke de Longueville's persuasive attentions, she had given in, wearied by it all and wanting it to end in the only way, as she had known in her heart all along, that it could end.

  Once she had agreed to the match, many glittering balls had been held in her honour. Given no time to brood or reflect, she had been whirled through the weeks to her marriage, held in August, in that palace of bitter memory, Greenwich. The Duc de Longueville, acting as Louis' proxy, had put the bridal ring on her finger. Mary's colour rose as she remembered the bedding ceremony after the banquet. She had been undressed by her ladies and put to bed and there, before the assembled court, her proxy husband had climbed into bed with her, one leg naked out of his bright red hose. The marriage announced consumated when he had touched her body with his bare leg.

  Mary shivered in spite of the heat of the day. King Louis, old as he was, would no doubt expect to do more than touch her with his leg. Although she had yet to set eyes on her husband he had already managed to upset her. After being assured on all sides that Louis would be eager to please her she had never thought that his first action should be one he must know would upset her. She had assumed that since the choice of husband was not hers she would at least be allowed to choose which of her ladies would accompany her. It had seemed little enough to expect.

  But Louis had thought otherwise, though he had delayed the messenger who carried the unwelcome news that Jane Popincourt, her childhood friend, wasn’t to be allowed to accompany her to France, until after the proxy marriage ceremony. Although Mary still felt that Jane had betrayed her by plotting with her lover, de Longueville, believing de Longueville to have put the marriage scheme into Jane’s head, Mary had forgiven her. Besotted, Jane had simply wanted to please him. Now, instead of the glittering future she had hoped for, she had lost both Mary and her lover.

  Mary had counted on Jane's company to lighten her hours at Louis' dour court and she had asked Henry to intervene. But as he had explained, she was now married to Louis and was his responsibility. Henry had suggested she should try charming her husband into changing his mind. Doubtless, he meant she should play the harlot in order to get her own way. The far more knowing Jane had tried a similar ploy. It had gained her nothing. Perhaps if she had held out Henry would have come round. But Mary had felt hounded into giving a hasty assent which Henry had seized upon. After that, there was no going back. It was too late to wish she had been stronger. Now she had all the time and peace in the world to regret her momentary weakness.

  If only Charles, her love, hadn’t so skirted around the subject and hedged them in with ifs and buts and maybes that their love had been doomed before it had a chance to take wing. She had pleaded with him to declare himself, sure that together, they could have swayed Henry, but he had refused, his low birth and his fear of what her brother might say and do to him for having the temerity to aim as high as the king’s sister, put forward to placate her.

  Mary's gaze flew again to the front of the train. Henry, some of his ferocious energy burned off by his gallop, was once again in fine fettle, laughing and enjoying himself as he knew well how to do. But thwarted, Henry wasn't such a merry companion, as she knew to her cost. Mary dropped her gaze to her bridal ring. Louis' bridal ring and thought of might-have-beens. She and Charles, her lost love, had had a last meeting in a quiet part of the palace gardens. Charles had plucked roses for her to try to cheer her, red and white roses for Lancaster and York, the two rival arms of her family whose warring had largely ended with the marriage of her parents, Henry of Lancaster and Elizabeth of York. He had kissed her and they had plighted their love, using their secret language of love, as the red and white blooms tumbled from her arms.

  Mary had felt herself drunk with love, but Charles, twelve years older, and more cautious, had restrained her abandon, pushing her from him in spite of the longing in his eyes, in spite of the ardor that heated her body. Wretched, she had taunted him. ‘Do you not truly love me, then, Charles?’ she had asked. ‘How can you let us part like this? Do you not care that soon old King Louis will kiss me as you now kiss me? That he will take what should be yours? I offer myself to you yet you spurn me.’

  He had tried to comfort her. ‘Mary, sweetheart, try to understand. You know my situation. I can offer you little as yet. You are the daughter of a king, whereas I am merely the son of a lowly knight. How could I dare marry you now?’

  ‘Lowly knight he might have been,’ Mary replied. ‘But he was a valiant one. If he had not sacrificed his life to save my father on Bosworth Field, there would have been no kingship and none of these royal marriages, either. My brother might remember how much our family owes to yours and give you your due.’

  ‘But sweeth
eart’, Charles had protested, ‘the king, your brother, gave me the Dukedom of Suffolk February last past. Doubtless he considers he has now given me my due and that I should not look for more.’

  ‘It seems you would rather please my brother than me. You cannot love me as much as I love you or you would not give me up so easily.’

  ‘I would please both of you, if I could. You must know how I long for you. How can you think that I do not?’

  She had clung to him then, thinking he was weakening, but he had only pushed her away again and told her not to torment him. ‘It appears I must find restraint enough for both of us. What do you think your brother and his Council would do to me if we were discovered? Let us only bide our time. Your brother is right, Mary. Old King Louis is not a well man. You must marry him since you have agreed, but it'll not be for long, I swear. Only be patient, sweetheart, be patient and do your brother's bidding this once and he'll be tender towards us later. Have you not his promise? Our position will be that much stronger in the future for giving him what he desires now. We must just be patient and trust the king.’

  Mary had protested. ‘I would have one sweet memory at least to look back upon to make the waiting easier to bear. Must I beg you to love me?’

  ‘Nay, sweetheart, please do not. I'm not sure I'd have the strength to resist, for resist we must. You know it as I do.’

  Dismayed, with an ache in her chest and a throat so tight she feared it would choke her, denied even one memory of their passion to warm her in France, Mary said, ‘If you won’t ask my brother for my hand, I hope you will at least kiss it — and me — goodbye.’

  ‘Not ‘goodbye’, he insisted. ‘Only ‘au revoir’.

  ‘We cannot be sure it is not ‘goodbye’ in very truth and that forever,’ Mary reminded him. He said nothing. ‘Very well. ‘Goodbye’ or ‘au revoir’, whichever it is to be, I bid you farewell.’ She held out her hand, her manner distant, as if she was already moving away from him.