The Secret Bride

by Diane Haeger

  “Your Majesty,” the stout, awkward young duc’s wife said as she fell into a proper curtsy.

  “See that my things are readied,” Mary said. “It is time to rejoin the king. Send word that I will join him in Paris in plenty of time for my coronation.”

  As the late autumn wind blew a warm breeze, Charles Brandon and Wolsey met in Canterbury, where Brandon had gone to, at last, meet his young ward. Safely away from the prying eyes and open ears of an ambitious court, they sat together in a house belonging now to him, through his title as Lord Lisle, a stately home with soaring paneled walls and costly Italian paintings framed in gold leaf. They sat at his long table for dinner, with the young Elizabeth Grey and her governess at one end, and Wolsey and Brandon at the other.

  “I believe having Lady Guildford and the others returned is Norfolk’s cleverly malicious doing,” Wolsey said, confiding in Brandon, to whom he was like a kind old uncle, as he was to Mary and Henry. “But why should Norfolk wish to cut the queen off from those who give her comfort?”

  “It seems a small price to pay to elevate himself—and undermine the two of us.”

  Charles felt his heart seize. He had believed Mary in good hands in France, with Lady Guildford at least to comfort her, and her friend Lady Monteagle as well. He was glad Norfolk was being forced to return to England, along with his wife and daughter, even if it meant Mary was alone, because none of that trio had ever had her best interest at heart.

  “I must go to France.”

  “You?” Wolsey whispered in surprise. “Then Henry will know for certain what has always been between you. You risk too much, my son.”

  “I would risk anything for her.” He pushed the piece of lamb, untouched, around on his plate. “Why should I not simply request that I head the delegation to attend Her Majesty’s coronation? With all of the others now returning from France, there really must be an English representation. Henry cannot dispute that.” His mind whirled with plausible scenarios, pressing away the burst of panic at the thought that she was alone and that Norfolk had cruelly orchestrated this.

  He had seen Norfolk enough in his dealings with Buckingham to know how deadly he could be. This threat to Mary was not to be taken lightly. “I could take Dorset as my companion, and then to joust with the French king’s heir at the celebrations. I hear Francois is a tolerably good athlete whom Harry will want to match in kind.”

  “Hmm. He shall want to make a good showing of English for that,” Wolsey cautiously agreed as he stroked his beardless, doubled chin. “You could check on her that way. I worry only of what the two of you risk. Putting you together, now especially, is the most incendiary combination of which I can think.”

  “I must make certain she is all right, Wolsey. This is as good an excuse as any. That is why you came to me about this anyway, is it not? You knew I alone could be trusted to see that your policies would not be tampered with again.”

  “I thought you might advise me. Not offer to go there in my stead.”

  Charles laughed. “Then you do not know me as well as I thought, old friend. Since I have been looking for a reason to go to France since the day Mary left England.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Wives are young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses.

  —Francis Bacon

  November 1514, St. Denis

  “J ésu, you are going to kill me!” Louis chuckled as he tumbled onto the tall canopy bed, bringing Mary with him, letting her ply him with kisses and a gentle touch that instantly excited him. They were reunited just before her coronation in Beauvais, fifty miles outside of Paris. “Yet I would have it no other way in the world.”

  Recovered enough from his last bout of illness to be a husband to her again, since their reunion Louis had showered his queen with affection, attention and gifts. Each day he strained to do his best to walk with her, dine with her, and even dance with her, to the amazement of a court who believed all of those days were behind him. They even began to whisper that there might well be an heir to show for it, after all.

  “Tell me, how am I different from your two other queens,” she bid him teasingly late one night as she lay against his thin chest, its rise and fall now actually something of a comfort to her in this place where she had been isolated enough that she now considered Louis her only ally.

  “Ah, but a comparison would be impossible since there is no one, and never will be anyone, like you,” he answered, reveling in her, the luxuriant profusion of hair, wild across her shoulders, and spilling onto his chest, her full young breasts touching, exciting him the more.

  Mary liked the way he said things like that, whether they were true or not. She was alone here now, but for the few distant English servants he had allowed to remain, and she was totally at his mercy. Perhaps he realized that, wanted that. . . . He pushed her back and arched over her now himself, his mouth on her throat.

  “Take care,” she whispered. “You have only just recovered.”

  “I meant what I said,” he murmured into her hair. “I would have things between us no other way.”

  The next morning, Louis was again too ill to attend matins with the queen, but he sent word to her through the duc de Longueville that His Majesty had every intention of attending the dinner banquet with her later that afternoon.

  “He said that he shall not be gotten rid of quite so easily.”

  Mary looked up in surprise from her embroidery hoop, and the intricate fleur-de-lys she had been sewing there in the little glass-covered outbuilding from across the dormant garden. Claude looked up absently, as if she had not quite heard, while Mary stifled a smile. “His words?”

  “Each and every one, Your Majesty.”

  Mary liked Claude, yet they were wary of one another. Louis was Claude’s father. Mary was her much more beautiful stepmother, her husband’s rival, and her own rival in becoming Queen of France. Still, there was an oddly strong kinship between the two young women. Each in her own way was alone. Mary had been given over to France. Claude had been given over to a husband who did not love her, and who had followed their recent marriage with a sudden and blinding series of infidelities.

  “Merci bien,” Mary said in perfect French, and nodded to Longueville in a courtly gesture that masked the more intimate things they knew of one another.

  Seeing him, she always longed to speak to him of Jane and England, of things they both knew, experiences shared.

  But she never did. Instead, she always reminded herself that he was home now, returned to his wife—and she was home as well. After he had gone, Claude began her embroidery again, pulling the needle rhythmically through the white linen, framed and posed on a stand. Beyond the glass, a chill wind blew.

  “Take care with him, Marie,” Claude said, absently saying her name in the French manner. She did not look up, yet the words were taut with meaning. “My father is very dear to me.”

  “I like to think I am taking the utmost care of the king.”

  “He is happy, I do see that. But my father is not a well man, nor a young one. Surely you are aware of that. In his current circumstances, it seems quite possible to me that you would be capable of loving His Majesty quite to death.”

  Mary set down her embroidery needle and leaned back in her chair to gaze at Claude. Madame d’Aumont, the dour, silver-haired gentlewoman who had replaced Lady Guildford, silently withdrew, taking along Anne Boleyn so that the queen and the king’s daughter might speak privately.

  “What on earth would I have to gain from that? I would then be powerless and stranded, dowager queen at the mercy of your husband, his mother and you. Powerless, stranded.”

  “I did not believe you had thought it through quite so well.”

  “I assure you, I think of nothing in this world quite so much as the future.”

  Claude’s round young face in this light was full of contradictions: smooth skin, full lips and small dark eyes full of worry.

  “Tell me something
. Did you love your husband when you married?” Mary asked.

  “I knew him not enough to think about him any way at all.”

  “But still you keep to your duty without complaint.”

  “It is simply the best way for women as we are.”

  “All I ask is that you allow me to keep to my duty. That way we can stay the best of friends. At least I hope that,” Mary said.

  They wrestled like boys again, brothers. But Charles was mindful now always to allow the king to win, even as he gave Henry the brawling struggle he craved. He knew the king was distracted. Katherine had discovered Henry’s affair with Buckingham’s sister, Lady Fitzwalter, and in anger she had seen the too beautiful young attendant banished to a convent. The battle between them that had followed had been the gossip of Richmond Palace every day since. Still not a father, Henry had become angry and bitter. Disinclined toward sympathy for his wife, he had shown her no mercy for what was his own betrayal, and certainly no remorse. He had actually upbraided his wife for having interfered.

  Henry hurled him powerfully onto his back, then hovered over him. “Had enough?”

  “More than enough,” Charles laughed, playing along with the scene that had him incapable of besting the fit, young sovereign. And in truth, he was not certain that he could have been victorious any longer because he wisely never pushed himself, or Henry, that far. They both got to their feet and took towels from two waiting young pages standing off to the side of the wrestling floor.

  “So tell me, have you considered my proposal?”

  “Send you to France?” Henry asked on an incredulous little chuckle, his chest still heaving from the exertion, and his face mottled red beneath his neatly cropped amber-colored beard.

  “Send me to head the delegation. There should be a proper show for Mary’s sake. And now that I am Duke of Suffolk, I would hope you would find me a suitable enough candidate to represent you.”

  “The thing is—” Lowering the towel slowly, Henry looked at his friend. He handed the damp towel back to the page without regarding him and began to walk. Charles dutifully followed. “There was some talk . . . wild though it seems, before Mary left for France.”

  Charles took a breath, exhaled. He was absolutely calm.

  Believable. “Gossip?”

  “It was said that you and the Queen of France had . . . very well, I shall just say it then—that you had feelings for one another that extended beyond the childhood affection we all three shall ever bear for one another.”

  Having prepared for this moment since the day he fell in love with the king’s sister, Charles tipped his head back and laughed boldly. He would do whatever it took to get to France.

  “Rumors really are ridiculous.”

  Henry looked at him then, copper brows arched. “So that was all they were? Rumors?”

  “Just that,” Charles replied, lying so believably that he nearly convinced himself. “And I was hoping to take Dorset with me. He is nearly as strong at the joust as am I, and I do believe we are the only two who can best anyone they may put forth, in a great show for England.”

  “Best even the duc de Valois? I am told that Louis’ rather arrogant heir is a strong competitor who does not suffer defeat well.”

  “When I represent Your Highness, he shall need to get in line behind me, I’m afraid.”

  There was a moment of silent consideration as they walked. Charles could feel his heart quicken. “Very well, then, Charles. Go to France. And give Mary a hug for me, will you?”

  “Of course I will,” he replied, hiding his relief, and his excitement, behind an exceedingly practiced smile.

  On the fifth of November, amid a chill wind and beneath a slate-colored sky, the citizens of St. Denis pressed forward in a crowd, hoping to catch just a glimpse of their new, young queen, gowned in gold brocade dotted with pearls. A huge diamond, with a great pearl suspended from it, was at her throat. Merchants mingled with monks, soldiers and women, some of them holding children on their shoulders, others shoving one another onto the cobbled stones, to see her atop a tall, sleek palfrey leading a snaking train of nobles, ambassadors and royalty. Ahead of her, the dukes of Longueville, Alçncon and Bourbon rode in great elegance, amid bursts of cheering from the crowd.

  She could not even speak to Claude, who rode beside her, for the crescendo of cheers and shouts coming from the hordes along the processional route as they passed into the ancient walled city. Beyond the gates, great vivid banners pinned on giant scaffolds bore the painted images of the king and queen, and they saw a huge ship bearing the live figures of Bacchus and Ceres, and a collection of sailors being battered about as the Four Winds blew air into the sails. It was a fanciful allegorical display that had been organized for the queen. The pageantry was magnificent. The cobbled streets over which they rode were strewn with roses and lilies—the symbolic joining of England and France. As they moved on, there was a second display, the Three Graces dancing around a grand fountain full of the same silk roses and lilies.

  Leaving her horse, Mary walked a somber cadence beneath a stone carving of the Holy Trinity above the door as she entered the Cathedral of St. Denis, a rich crimson velvet cloak trailing behind her on the ancient stone floor. Jewels at her fingers and throat flashed brilliantly in the light through the long, stained glass windows depicting the life of Christ as she made her way through a packed sanctuary to the altar, where a throne had been erected. There she was to be solemnly anointed by the Bishop of Bayeux.

  As he placed the sacred ring on her finger amid the hauntingly chanted Te Deum, and she was ceremoniously handed her scepter and the rod of justice, the heir, Francois, came forward, in sweeping lengths of velvet and fur, to formally crown her. Yet, rather than place it fully on her head, Francois symbolically held the weighty crown above her. The real purpose, rather than simply a symbolic show of compassion, was not lost upon Mary. He intended to be ruler of France, not have the honor go to her son if she bore one, and he meant for the world to know it.

  As she tried to surrender herself to the Mass that followed, and not to the ever deepening loneliness that held her, she glanced out at the crowd. The shock of recognition was sharp. Charles Brandon, looking magnificently statesman-like, shifted in his seat between the duc de Longueville and the duc de Bourbon, directly behind the king. She stared at him, unbelieving—as if he were an apparition that would disappear the moment she blinked her eyes.

  It cannot be, her mind taunted. It cannot . . .

  As the bishop droned on, Mary felt her eyes fill with tears she could not press away, until she could see nothing but colors and shapes. She had not dared to hope and yet she knew . . . yes, she knew, somehow he would find a way to her, and he had.

  She stood still in her dressing chamber, amid elegant dresses of moiré silk and velvet, hats, French hoods, fur and petticoats—and more ladies than she would ever need, all milling around her as her coronation gown was removed with great ceremony and discussion, and another equally extravagant gown replaced it. Spindly, harsh Madame d’Aumont brushed out her hair, as Mother Guildford had always done, and Mary cringed at the sensation that something so reassuringly intimate had become a stranger’s duty. Then her newly brushed tresses were freshly tamed once again into a new coronet of diamonds and pearls.

  Mary had lost sight of Charles after the coronation, though she had frantically tried not to as she was pressed with well-wishers and spirited at the same time away from the cathedral. She rode atop her palfrey in absolute silence after that, stunned by seeing him again, here, especially now.

  The king was unwell, Madame d’Aumont informed her, and had requested her attendance in his apartments. Sight of her was certain to restore him so that he might accompany his beautiful bride to her banquet, a state occasion, that evening.

  She complied without comment, yet wanting only to be with Charles, to fly into his arms, ask how he had managed such a thing and never let him go.

  She found Louis a quarter of an hour la
ter, pale and reclining on a tapestry-covered couch, clothed in a white linen dressing gown and long claret-colored robe fringed in shimmering silver thread. Mary was always startled to see how ill and frail he looked without the trappings of wealth and royalty, the jewels and cloth of gold that helped to mask the pallor of his skin and distract from his nearly constant tremor.

  She sank onto the edge of the couch beside him, took his hand and smiled.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I am feeling my age, ma chèrie. And seeing your youth.” He smiled grimly. “It really is a rather distasteful combination.”

  If it were only springtime, she thought, and the weather was warm and restorative. They could go to the country and sit in the garden. He could feel the sun on his face, gain back some of his color and put some of that warmth he needed back into his bones.

  “Forgive me about Lady Guildford?” he asked so suddenly, and in such a low, uneasy voice that at first it did not register with her. “I am afraid that the threatened old man in me overcame the good sense of a husband who wished to make his young wife happy.”

  “But how could the powerful king possibly ever feel threatened by a sweet old woman like Mother Guildford?” she asked, trying to press back the revival of her anger. “She only ever loved me, Louis, and sought to keep me company.”

  “It was precisely that, I suppose.” He laid his head back against the velvet pillow and sighed. For a moment, his eyes rolled to a close. When he opened them, he added, “I saw the way she looked at me whenever I entered your chamber. Foolish old man, her eyes always said. You can push yourself into her bed but someone like you will never find a way into her heart. Truthful as that may be”—he coughed suddenly—“I could not bear being reminded of it every evening when I sought your company.”