by Diane Haeger
“Not our good Henry,” Charles countered, taking a tankard of ale. “He is still hopelessly in love with the queen.”
“Last time I looked, love had little to do with this,” Knyvet quipped as he kissed the stout, ruddy-faced girl in torn purple taffeta perched on his lap.
That was true enough, Charles thought. It always had been for him anyway. Why his feelings for Mary were so different he was not certain. Yet they were. And she had made him want to be different, in spite of the fact that she was a young royal . . . and there could be absolutely no chance of anything ever between them. He had come here tonight to try to escape the reality of that, and the images of the forbidden princess who plagued his mind and his dreams. He slumped more heavily into the chair as if it could swallow him up, then took another mouthful of ale and let it numb his tongue. Hopefully, his mind would follow. He did not want to think about his uncle . . . or money or even of Mary just now. The girl on Knyvet’s lap smiled at him, and Charles leaned over to touch a coil of her curly, tawny-colored hair. It felt like little coils of steel. Better, he thought, that nothing in this place would remind him of Mary tonight.
Chapter Eight
A prince should therefore have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study, but war and its organization and discipline, for that is the only art that is necessary to one who commands.
—Niccolo Machiavelli,
The Prince
January 1511, Richmond Palace
Henry had determined to go against his father’s plan and wage war with France. Hostilities commenced with the help of his father-in-law, Ferdinand. Initially, England and Spain joined with the pope, ostensibly to protect the papacy and recapture the former papal territory of Bordeaux.
Ferdinand also assured Henry that if he would help him regain Navarre, Spain would assist in the return of the Aquitaine to English possession. All of the members of the Holy League would gain, and Henry VIII would soundly establish himself on the world stage.
The efforts, however, went anything but according to plan.
While Ferdinand did manage to reclaim Navarre, at a key moment his troops left the English to fend for themselves. The disaster that followed was predictable. In order to solidify his other alliances, Henry’s own father-in-law callously blamed England’s defeat on Henry’s inexperience and extreme youth. Henry was humiliated.
Tempering the defeat—and Henry’s unwarranted anger at Katherine for her father’s betrayal—Katherine gave birth a second time, on New Year’s Day. This time she gave Henry the son he needed and for which he longed. The child was christened Henry, Prince of Wales. Henry called for a great celebration, in spite of Wolsey’s counsel against it. Katherine as well feared angering God with premature boasting, but Henry’s joy would not be put down.
In the streets across England bonfires were lit in celebration. Once again the deep resonant sound of church bells rang out, though this time it was with joy and not sorrow that they pealed. A tournament was staged at Richmond, and courtiers, servants and ambassadors spoke excitedly of nothing else for days. Henry would ride in the role of Sir Loyal Heart. First, however, Charles Brandon would joust against Thomas Knyvet.
In the tiltyard, Mary sat beneath a gilded arch, and above a hanging cloth of gold emblazoned with the intertwined letters H and K, castle gargoyles glaring down on them. Transformed by time at court and by her heritage, Mary was now a striking beauty. Her skin was flawless, her features were delicate, and her green eyes were wide and bright. She smoothed her richly ornamented dress of yellow satin with gray fur at her lap, then touched a wide gold medallion at her throat, aware of the gaze of more than a few men upon her. Beside Mary, Jane, Muriel Knyvet, Anne Howard, Lady Monteagle and the ever-present Lady Guildford were all chattering. Yet Mary was keenly aware of the attention she drew now when she went out like this. Sons of dukes, earls and lords watched her every move, clambered to dance with her and whispered to one another or smiled at her whenever she did even the least little thing out of the ordinary. Every day now, she commanded attention. Yet all Mary saw and thought about, with increasing frequency, was Charles. And as he now entered the lists, he again captured her complete attention.
Charles wore a full suit of gleaming gilt armor and feathered plumes on his helmet as he cantered out onto the field a moment later with Knyvet, amid the pealing blare of trumpets. Brandon’s plume, not coincidentally, was the same bright yellow as Mary’s dress. The crowd erupted in applause for Brandon, who was the most dashing and victorious combatant next to the king himself. Mary herself was cheering wildly, until Lady Guildford shot her a reproachful stare above her own more polite applause.
Then Henry entered the field in tooled armor that glittered beneath the mild noonday sun. A forest green plume danced atop his helmet, as he led his horse to the stands amid a thunderous ovation to where Katherine proudly sat. Visor up, Henry nodded to his wife, paying homage to the mother of his son as he offered her the tip of his lance, to which she tied her own Tudor green silk scarf. He clutched at his heart in response and the crowd erupted again. Henry VIII was a consummate showman, Mary thought as she watched the exchange.
For Katherine, however, it was something more. In her every glance and gesture, Mary could see her pure adoration for her husband. It was the same thing that motivated Katherine in everything.
Lance after lance was broken as the afternoon wore on.
The score was at a tie in the final run as Brandon now had the unenviable task of facing the king himself. Spectators from the outlying villages who had paid to stand behind the barricade cheered wildly with each blow, mesmerized by the contest. Mary strangely thought of the Prince of Castile again.
As she watched the magnificent man battling her brother, she wondered if he ever jousted or could even wield a two-handed sword in a tournament, as she had seen Brandon so brilliantly do many times before. She knew she was being childishly romantic, and unfair to keep making comparisons, but she could not help it. Charles had been her childhood fantasy and that desire had followed her unchecked into womanhood. She wanted him to win. Secretly, she cheered for him against the king, loving the dangerous betrayal in that.
“Careful, Mary. You are staring,” Jane whispered.
“At Brandon?” she asked Jane, who had leaned over to her and begun to giggle behind a raised hand. “That is ridiculous.”
“It is. Yet still you are.”
Jane Popincourt was seventeen now and as proud as Mary of her own clever tongue. Like her royal friend, she had matured into a beauty, yet with features less delicate than Mary’s and golden hair more thin than lush, eyes more intense than brilliant. Jane fluffed her skirts and glanced back down onto the field.
“Do you suppose anything less than every single soul here has noticed that Brandon’s plume matches your dress exactly? What are the odds of a coincidence like that—being a coincidence?”
“Brandon would do nothing like that.”
“He is not married now. And I have seen the way he looks at you.”
“Well, I, at least, am betrothed.”
“Perhaps not for long to the Prince of Castile. Master Knyvet has told me that the king has begun to consider other suitable husbands for you. Besides, I was not implying anything like a real marriage between the two of you.”
Mary shot her a scowl. “That is vulgar. Just because you indulge in scandalous liaisons does not mean I am one to do so!”
“Ah, do not be too critical of that which has gone untried.”
They had lived together for so long, nearly all of their lives, that they spoke with one another like sisters. And as a sister would, Mary knew Jane’s heart. Jane was not happy as an occasional mistress, yet somehow it seemed she had begun to convince herself that there was self-protection in denying the truth. As drawn as Mary was by the idea of a dangerous love like the ones Jane entertained, she was afraid of it. Her virginity was as prized as she was, and she had been raised to know it. It was one
thing to dream of Charles Brandon, even to fantasize about him. But even Mary knew that was all she could ever have of him.
The deep sound of thundering hooves brought her back to the moment as the combatants charged their horses across the vast yard toward one another in a swirl of dust and heavy leveled lances. Mary held her breath. The crowd fell silent as Brandon and the king rode at a full gallop. In an instant, so sudden that there was a gasp from the crowd, the king’s lance plunged at Brandon’s heavy breastplate, knocking him off his horse and into a cloud of dust. Mary fought the sense of alarm and an overwhelming urge to lunge over the balustrade to reach him. But she clutched Jane’s hand instead, holding it in a death grip as everyone waited for Charles to move, or at least give some sign to show them that he was still alive.
“He is a strong man. He will be fine. You will see,” Jane murmured in French as several of the yeomen rushed onto the field toward him.
After what felt like an eternity, Charles sat up on his own, lifted his visor and waved to the crowd. As he turned to her, Mary could see that he was smiling.
He had sprained his wrist and had the wind knocked out of him, Brandon cavalierly explained as the king’s physician nodded to Mary and then excused himself from the bedchamber. Mary stood with Jane at the foot of Charles Brandon’s bed in which he was propped by a spray of silk pillows.
As everyone else listened to a performance in the great hall by a soloist newly arrived from Venice, Mary had brought him a dish of candied fruit tied with a cloth and white ribbon. It was an offering to wish him good health but the gift was truly meant just to give her an excuse to see him.
“You jackanapes! You took that blow intentionally!”
Mary determined suddenly as she looked at him, eating a sugared plum.
He looked up at her, a smile forming on his lips. “I have no idea, my lady Mary, what you mean.”
Jane smiled now too, nodded and then silently withdrew to the other side of the room. When they were alone, partially hidden by the heavy velvet bed curtain, Charles took another chunk of fruit and popped it into his mouth.
“Have some with me?” he bid her with his clever smile.
“I shall grow fat if I do.”
“Ah, I would love you, pretty lady Mary, fat or lean, weak or strong.”
She looked at him critically. “You love me, Brandon?”
“I should think any man who had ever seen you would love you quite unconditionally.”
“Ah, there you go again spouting lines worthy of a great romantic play.”
“You think me insincere?”
“I think you far too polished at court pleasantries.”
He bit back a smile and ate a third piece of fruit. “Yet not insincere?”
There was a faint frown suddenly between her brows. “I don’t know you, Brandon.”
“You know me well enough to have worried after my health, and to have brought me a confection.”
She was uncomfortable suddenly. His gaze was too deep, his voice too honeyed to be as sincere as she wished it to be, and she had cared too much about his health. She knew then she should not have come. She felt childish and defensive.
“Only a court pleasantry, at which I clearly need improvement. You mock me, I think.”
“Nothing could be further from what I wish to do.”
As a reflex, she turned, glancing behind herself for Jane, but she could not see her. “I have made an error in coming here.”
“You only err by leaving.”
Since she was close enough now and they were alone, he took her arm and pulled her near. The attraction between them flared. Very gently, he reached up, cupped her chin in his palm and pressed a kiss onto her mouth. He lingered for only a moment, then pulled away, but his eyes never left hers.
“Did you speak so smoothly to each of your wives, Master Brandon?” she asked breathlessly as her lips burned.
Mary could see that she had cut him with that. She saw his reaction in the way his mouth tightened and the small muscle flexed along the side of his jaw. But he was strong and bold and he would not be insulted, even by the king’s sister.
His eyes narrowed in the silence as he studied her, and his next words were clipped.
“Neither of them was a spoiled innocent. That much I can say with conviction. Each accepted me as I am, my lady.
It is why they were my wives. Acceptance of who I am when I love someone means everything to me.”
She wanted to say she was sorry if she had offended him.
She meant to say it. Yet the words, as she tried to speak, would not leave her lips. When everyone else around her at court made her feel beautiful and above reproach, only Charles Brandon made her feel unsure—in addition to everything else. A moment later she turned and walked to the door, where Jane stood waiting.
“I am glad you are feeling better, Master Brandon. I am pleased that your injuries will not keep you from the next tournament tomorrow.”
It was the only thing she could think of to say in the suddenly tense moment before she walked out the door of his apartments. As they strode down the long gallery, with tall windows facing down into the gardens below, Jane glanced over at Mary, who was pounding her heels noisily into the wood floor with each step.
“If I did not know you so well, I would say you were changing your mind about Brandon, actually coming to care for him.”
“But you do know me better,” Mary said a little too quickly.
“The king has a right to be told about that,” Buckingham loftily declared, striding boldly in black and silver between Wolsey and the Earl of Surrey as they passed Mary and Jane going the other way.
“It would be a grave misjudgment,” the cleric calmly countered. As usual, Wolsey’s words were succinct and pointed, made slightly less lethal by his charmingly rotund appearance, and the affable tone he took as they strolled the paneled corridor.
“I agree with Buckingham. His Highness has a right to know what is going on right beneath his very nose,” replied Thomas Howard, the distinguished-looking, silver-haired Earl of Surrey. He had seen the cleric’s expression and the way he had so judgmentally shaken his head as the two girls had emerged alone from Brandon’s apartments. Daylight or not, going there had been a daring move—even for the king’s very indulged sister.
The Earl of Surrey had been at court for a long time, and he knew how to wait like a fox for the spoils of someone else’s kill. The ruthless nature that possessed his soul seemed to have branded his appearance as well with a sharp elongated nose, small black eyes with dark arched brows and steel-gray hair. He was taut and fit for a man of his age, a contemporary of the previous king, and there was nothing he despised more than a gluttonous opportunist like Thomas Wolsey, whom he was forced to befriend. The Earl of Surrey believed Wolsey had worked for nothing he had received. Rather he cajoled, manipulated and banqueted his way to power, taking advantage of a young, immature and pleasure-loving sovereign.
Wolsey was exceedingly distasteful, the earl had determined, himself having struggled mightily for power and place. Wolsey’s rise was almost as meteoric as Charles Brandon’s, and Thomas Howard believed he simply could not survive the competition for most powerful place from two sources. Wolsey’s Achilles’ heel lay in a blind greed he was certain the king did not see. But the Earl of Surrey saw it.
Wolsey believed he helped Brandon with Mary, she who was most dear to the king. But the Princess Mary was a willful little thing, far too driven by pretty gowns and dancing to have the slightest notion what was best for her. That could never be Charles Brandon. The earl had seen Wolsey ingratiating himself with her recently. After today, he knew why.
This was a battle now for highest place of influence with the king, when Thomas Wolsey had thought it merely a smooth rise to elevation. No one could outfox the Earl of Surrey—even if he had to align himself with Buckingham to triumph.
“Is it that he has a right to know,” Wolsey asked then, “or more that you, my lo
rd, have an ambition to elevate yourself by making a harmless girl’s flirtation into more than it can ever be?”
“My ambition is to seek the truth in all things,” Buckingham disingenuously declared.
Wolsey shrugged, his chin doubling and his mouth turning down as he did. “My advice is that you both leave it alone or you shall live to regret it.”
“A man of God threatening an earl and a Howard?” Surrey asked.
“Only a wise old friend reminding you that the king’s sister will marry the Castile boy. But she is young and willful, as most privileged adolescents are, and this one has England at her feet. My lady Mary is finding the first true power of her beauty, and you must admit there really is no one among us like Brandon on which for her to test her power. But however you find their harmless little flirtation, Henry will believe her, not you.”
“I know not how you can be so cavalier.”
“I am realistic, not cavalier. There is no one the king loves so well as his sister, and no one—even among us—he trusts so much as Brandon. Surely my lord of Surrey is wise enough to know what they say often happens to the messenger?”
They came to the foot of a staircase, then took the steps together, Wolsey climbing each more laboriously than the fit and trim earl, and Buckingham silently a pace behind. “In my experience, His Highness values loyalty above all other things, even trust.”
“A wager, to be sure,” huffed the wizened cleric.
The day was made for celebrating, clear and full of sunlight.
The azure sky was a broad canvas for the scudding clouds, and flocks of blackbirds passed across it. Above them grand tents of yellow and blue striped silk fluttered on the vast lawn behind Richmond Palace. First, there had been an intricate disguising—an allegorical play in which Henry and Mary played the lead parts. Henry was costumed most grandly as Zeus and Mary was the Greek goddess Athena, drawing the rest of the court in amid laughter and shouts of support for their performance. They reigned happily over the production, which included complicated scenery and a stage that had been constructed complete with a working fountain and a mulberry tree.
