“His wrath would be dreadful, particularly directed toward me.”
“But does it not seem just the slightest bit fated to you?
We have waited for so long and he has tried everything to make a different match for me.”
The earnest expression on her young face made him almost believe it could be true. Yet the danger in believing still ruled him.
“Let me handle my brother,” she said then so sweetly that he could not hear the steely determination within the words.
But it was there, a defining part of her. “We have been here for him. He owes us.”
“He is a king. He owes me nothing. I am a duke by his grace alone. It is I who owe him everything.”
“Very well,” she said stubbornly. “Then let it be for my sake that he accepts us.”
Mary found it difficult to find a time alone with Henry. He was surrounded by people from the hour of his rising, when he was taken up with the hundreds there to see to his care with great formality. Ushers, stewards, gentlemen-at-arms, yeomen, dressers, tailors, high-ranking gentlemen-of-the-chamber, gentlemen-of-the-body all gathered for his rising ceremony in the privy bedchamber. Once ushered with great ceremony out to the third and final of the connecting presence chambers, he was greeted by a waiting throng of clergy, ambassadors and noblemen from the countryside, all demanding time to meet with him. Even on the hunt, he was followed always by those wanting something from their sovereign, if only a moment in his presence. So her timing must be exact. Mary could afford no error in this.
The next day, as Henry made his way back from the stables following a check of his horses, Mary emerged from prayer in the chapel. Henry’s face was flushed and he was happy and distracted as he walked laughing in the company of his new admiral, Thomas Howard, eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk, Edward Guildford and Gawain Carew, with whom he liked best to hunt.
“Would that I might have a private word with Your Highness,” she said. Then, along with Jane and Lady Guildford, she dipped into a proper curtsy, their skirts rustling.
He removed his leather gloves and studied her for a moment, his hesitation clear. “Has something happened?”
“Nothing that should make you unhappy. I would like to speak with you about my future.”
He laughed and turned back to his companions, from among whom Brandon was noticeably absent. “I was to visit the queen when I returned but you know perfectly well I can refuse you little. And I need to speak with you about the same thing anyway.”
It was precisely what Mary was hoping to hear. But she did not say that.
“She wishes to meet you.”
“Meet me?” Anne gulped in a breath, then sank stunned back in her chair as her brother’s announcement resonated like a church bell through her small country house.
“You are coming to court with me, and it is about time,” Charles said with a smile.
“But what on earth has happened?”
“Everything. You made me dare to hope, and now I have.”
“You do not mean the marriage to the Prince of Castile?”
His eyes sparkled. “Gone in a blaze of resentment and broken promises.”
“And so?”
“And so there is a chance now, small though it is. Yet hope, as they say, does spring eternal.”
Anne laughed at that, the joyful way he had said it, and a ray of sunlight through the window cast a shadow across the scars on her young face. “Four years is a long time to wait for a woman, brother.”
“I would have waited a lifetime for Mary,” Charles Brandon said.
As Anne and her brother Charles rode toward court, installed again at Greenwich, Mary and her own brother had walked back from the stables and now sat together in his presence chamber. It was a grandly elegant room that had once been a favorite of their father. Over the carved mantel hung a grand painting of Henry VII framed in gold leaf. A similar one had been hung in each royal palace, so that they might never forget his enduring influence in both of their lives. He had been painted as strong-faced and serious, the man he had been in life. Dressed in full armor, the image had captured the very essence of a king, gone to dust, yet whose spirit watched over them. Henry had chosen this place intentionally for the obligation he knew it would engender within Mary when he told her what he must. She knew it always weakened him like nothing else to see that wounded expression in her eyes but today was different. He did not bend.
“You cannot seriously have chosen the King of France for me!” she cried as his announcement hung dark and heavy between them.
“It is a splendid future I have set for you.”
“And a horrifying one!”
“You were raised all your life to expect this, as I was.”
“I beg you, Harry, anyone but Louis XII! He is an old man, and they say a disgustingly ill one! Twice widowed already!”
“And, for it, you shall be a proper queen.”
Mary found the shock of it was intense, and the bitterness rose up like bile. “You cannot want that for me! You would not want it for yourself!”
“If it were my duty I would do it without complaint.”
Mary’s face blanched. She bolted from the chair and began to pace the room, with its wood paneling and rich Flemish tapestries. Her normally well-schooled calm acceptance of her fate began now to crumble like a sand castle because she had allowed herself to believe in something better. Mary wrung her hands, not feeling them, feeling only the shock. Nothing else mattered suddenly beyond that. An old man . . . infirm, wrinkled . . . a widower twice over, used, tired . . . The images swirled in her mind in the echo of her brother’s firm announcement. Henry diligently went on to explain the details of the arrangement to her but his words came at her disjointedly. In the shadow of continuing difficulties with Maximilian, he had been negotiating a marriage with Louis XII for months, he admitted. After the line of communication had been opened regarding the ransom for the duc de Longueville, Henry had chosen to consider it. Through a papal nuncio, who negotiated on the French king’s behalf, Louis XII would have one last chance to beget a male heir. Henry, for his part, would be able to save face for how he had been strung along by the emperor. There was no way around it. The marriage with the fifty-two-year-old king was essential—and it would take place.
“Harry, I beg you!” She went back to him, her face full of pleading, her hands outstretched as if her horror alone could change his mind. “I felt ready to marry the Prince of Castile.
You know that. I was prepared for it for most of my life. . . . But this, now, such an old, sick man . . .”
“We all have our duty.”
“You married the woman you chose!”
His expression darkened and his amber brows merged into a heavy frown. “Katherine was my duty once Arthur died. My feelings one way or the other were of no consequence.”
“Will it matter to you a bit if I say that with every fiber of my being I do not wish this?”
He lowered his eyes, the brother she knew so well closing off to her then. “In truth, no.” He drew in a breath, softening by a degree a moment later with an exhale. He leaned nearer to her. “I have been made a laughingstock by Maximilian. I have been played the fool. Please understand, Mary. I make this choice not against you but for England.”
“You make it for yourself, not England,” she countered defiantly, bolting toward the door and pivoting back to face him only once she had reached it. “Even when Arthur was still alive, you got your way. Father’s favorite! Always the indulged one, the charmed one, the one that trouble never reached. And you are selfish enough to want everything for yourself. Even your brother’s wife!”
“Mary, I warn you, hold your tongue!” His face mottled red with his own fury.
“Or you will what? Bluff King Hal! That is what the people call you for how hardened you have become.”
“I command you to stop.”
“Or what? Tell me, brother Hal, will you see me tossed into the Tower?”
“Never that. But I shall see you made Queen of France, which apparently for some reason will be punishment enough.”
“Then you might as well finish me off and kill me, because that is what it will surely do to me anyway.”
They had not quarreled since they were children. That, and the reality that her dream of a love match was not ever going to come true, had reduced Mary to tears. After they had prayed together, she wept bitterly into Wolsey’s starched crimson cassock, and against the comforting swell of his belly, as light poured into the chapel upon them through the stained glass image of Saint Jerome.
“Tell me what am I to do, Thomas. I cannot ask him now,” Mary frantically wept.
“Surely not. For Brandon’s sake, at least.” He steepled his hands and leaned back in the chair that faced the small fabric-draped altar. “There is but one small ray of hope.”
“Tell me. Since I surely do not see it beneath the weight of the despair I feel just now.”
He paused a moment, reflecting. “Is this King of France not an older man, and quite ill as well?”
“Yes, and the thought of it adds to my torment.”
“Adds to your torment, child? Or provides you promise of salvation? As with so much of life, this salvation is what you choose to make of it.”
She saw the gleam in Wolsey’s eye and the thought came to her then. The tears dried on her cheeks and a cautious smile began to brighten her face.
“Does not His Highness wish you to be happy above nearly all other things in this world?” Wolsey asked.
“Except perhaps to use me as a bargaining chip with France.”
“Then, when his guilt is at its zenith, why not tell him you will make your peace with his choice, and with him, but at a cost. You alone, my dear, could make that bargain with the king. Forget not that your sister Margaret in Scotland is now married to her own love.”
Although twisted and difficult, a pathway out, a plan, became clear to her although she could tell no one else—not even Charles, for what extreme measure he might take to try to prevent her from one day acting on something so bold. She knew that his love for her would drive him to sacrifice her to her duty to England if she told him. Did she have enough power and courage to gain a solid agreement from Henry to let her choose her next husband once the French king died?
She knew Henry did feel enormous guilt for tying her to someone so old and ill but was that enough? Such a promise could not be extracted, and then fulfilled, without cunning, fortitude and sacrifice. But she was a Tudor. She was strong and determined and she was capable of greatness if pressed.
In France, her challenge would be to love an aged man as best she could.
“You would not tell anyone about this, would you, Thomas?”
Wolsey’s wet mouth stretched into a reassuring little arc of a smile. “Communion with one’s confessor is a private and a holy matter,” he decreed with sudden reverence. “Your secrets, my child, shall always be safe with me.”
Charles had found the vacant chamber quite by accident, but his only desire was to bring Mary here to be alone with her, as their remaining time together was growing swiftly to a close.
He had been planning a reunion since the moment they had moved yet again, this time to Lambeth. The chamber was small, a servant’s room on the third floor, decorated sparsely with only a pallet bed, a rush-bottom chair, a round table with a white tallow candle, a basin and a prayer book. The window was small and leaded with a little iron latch. It opened onto the entrance courtyard below, so that there was the constant hum of activity and the sound of horses and groomsmen below.
As Charles closed the door behind her, Mary flew into his arms and clung to his neck as if her determination and her love for him alone could chase the future away. He bent his head and kissed her and, as she always did, Mary melted against him, the spiraling sensation taking over within her.
“I want all of you so badly,” he murmured into her hair. “It takes the strength of a hundred men just now not to tear your dress away and take what I know you want to give me.”
“You know I do not want to go. . . .”
“I know.” They crooned tenderly to one another.
His mouth descended on hers again then and, through her whole body, she felt the groan that tore up from his throat as he parted her lips and pressed her onto the little pallet bed that sank beneath their weight.
“I leave you in so short a time,” she said sadly as he lay back with her, his full length, rigid thighs and broad chest, wildly aroused against her. “Let us do with one another what we can—our own communion and promise.”
Her words were unashamed, an invitation, delivered with wide eyes full of love and trust. She slid her hands down over his hips then and to the codpiece between his legs.
“You must remain innocent,” he responded hoarsely.
Freeing him from the fabric codpiece, Mary took him into her hand and Charles reacted powerfully to her touch, his neck arching as his entire body tensed. He moved with her hand then as he kissed her again, a lover’s kiss this time, opening his mouth to hers, and Mary drank in the smell of him greedily, the sweat on his neck, and the overwhelming rush of her own desire feeling how much he wanted her. She ached for more, to have him bare against her . . . the solid assurance of him inside of her, but for now pleasing him was enough to join them in a way they had never had.
The sensation of what was happening was more powerful and forbidden than anything she had ever known, and Mary surrendered to it, letting it wash over her like a wave, controlling her, dominating her. She moved, she kissed him in return . . . she tasted the moan in his throat. Then suddenly, she felt him shudder. His heart was slamming against his damp chest as she stopped, then pressed herself against the fabric of his shirt. She closed her eyes, feeling her own heart race.
“I must remain a virgin. I remember nothing about innocence,” Mary softly declared as he kissed the tendrils of her hair. “My body may be his, but you alone shall have my soul.”
Her hand tucked tightly in the crook of his arm, Charles brought his sister forward in a new dress for which it would take him months to pay. It was sewn of bright blue French silk dotted with tiny pearls, to highlight her eyes and distract from the scars. But the extravagance was worth everything to him to see the small grain of confidence it brought Anne. As they approached, Mary rose swiftly from the table at which she had been playing cards with Jane. She drew forward, smiling, hands extended, as Anne dipped into a deep curtsy.
“Now none of that,” Mary said brightly, taking Anne’s cold hands and squeezing them. “Not when I feel I know you as well as if we were sisters. Charles has told me all about you.”
“As he has told me of Your Highness, and it was with the greatest delight that I always heard his stories.”
Charles took a step back, linking his hands behind himself as he proudly watched an encounter he felt he had waited an eternity to see.
“Where are your children? I should like very much to meet them, as well,” Mary asked.
Anne looked embarrassed and cast a glance back at Charles, who moved up a pace protectively once again. “They are down in the kitchens eating candied plums, my lady,” Anne confessed.
“How delightful,” Mary said sweetly. “So we have a bit of time to ourselves. Do come and sit with Jane and me. You as well, Charles. It is warm by the fire and you have had a long ride. A glass of honey wine should warm you both nicely.”
Though she did not see it, Charles smiled at Mary, and felt an even more overwhelming surge of love for her in that moment than he had ever known before. It meant the world to him to see them together, Mary so kind and welcoming to a sister whose life these last years had been so difficult.
“If it pleases, my lady Mary, I should like to leave you ladies to yourselves. I feel a bit out of place at the moment.”
Anne shot her brother a stricken look, but he smiled at her in reassuring reply, as if to say You hold one part of my hea
rt . . . and you know that she alone holds the other. It will be fine. You are safe here always with Mary. On that I would stake my life.
Mary found Charles’s sister kind, clever and genuinely sweet—so much like her brother. Their mannerisms, like their noses, and even the shade of their eyes, were the same.
And Mary was surprised to find Anne was not so horribly scarred as Charles had claimed. Perhaps when he looked at Anne he saw too much of what she had lost and the pain of being abandoned by her husband. All Mary saw was a kind and pretty young woman. Mary was instantly at ease with her, and felt they were friends. After a few minutes, Anne’s hand did not tremble so greatly when she lifted her cup of wine, and she even managed a smile when Jane asked her if court seemed to her as ostentatious as everyone else new there always said.
“I trust Jane with my life,” Mary declared. “She knows the circumstances that bring you and I together—as I know the same sort of details of her life. We can speak of anything with her here.”
“And will she attend you as one your ladies of honor when you leave for France?”
Her imminent departure was a subject Mary avoided even considering as it drew near. She tried very hard to control her response so that Anne would not believe she had committed an error in asking.
“I could not even think what my life there would be without her,” she managed to calmly reply. “She will be my rock in a foreign place I do not wish to go to, and where I pray that the good Lord shall not see me remain long.”
“I know that is my brother’s prayer as well.”
She reached across the table and covered Anne’s hand with her own. “I hope you will stay with us a while at court. At least until I must leave for France.”
“I had planned to return home tonight, my lady . . . Mary.”
Mary smiled sweetly at her, then took up her hands. “Do stay. You must meet the king, of course. And there are several unmarried men I know who dine with us regularly, and who would be nearly as glad for fresh company here as I.”