The Secret Bride (11 page)

“So much of my family is dead. . . . Am I to be next? Or will it be Mary?”

For a moment, Mary could see by her expression that Katherine could not find the words they both knew Henry wanted to hear. She drew in a breath and said a silent prayer.

“It is the Lord’s will to take us when He chooses. But you and Mary are both young and strong. Neither of you is like Arthur. And your mother, God rest her soul, died honorably at the birth of a child.”

He looked at her then, his pale green eyes shining with unshed tears, and his face gone deathly pale. “I need you, Katherine.”

As Henry VII lay so newly buried at Westminster, England’s place in the world’s balance of power was tenuous at best. Louis XII in France had formed the League of Cambrai with the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian. Henry VII had not wanted to be involved, which made England vulnerable.

Mary knew well that Katherine, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, understood perfectly how true that was, and she knew Katherine’s greatest desire was to help. Her own father had been counselor and lover and friend to her mother, understanding her role in a way no other could. In spite of once telling Mary that she despised the cold, graceless country in which she had found herself, Mary could also see that Katherine now had fallen wildly in love with its new king.

“I shall always do anything Your Majesty asks of me,” she softly replied, and Mary saw the heat rise in her smooth cheeks as his gaze settled powerfully on her. He took up Katherine’s hands then and held them tightly as Mary’s heart beat wildly watching them—envying that kind of devotion.

“If it helps to know this, I love you.”

“I have known it all along,” he replied as just a hint of a smile warmed his face before it disappeared behind the more troubled expression.

Katherine reached up to touch the line of his jaw. In the silence that followed Mary watched her blush and lower her eyes. Mary knew that Katherine felt a little foolish suddenly for having opened her soul to him so willingly. But she could see that she had no other choice. Katherine loved him with all of her heart, and she wanted him to know it. She would not allow herself to believe that what he meant by needing her was that, with her, he wished to secure England’s place in the world. It must be, she knew, far more between them than that. Poor Katherine, Mary knew, would wait forever if she needed, to hear him say it. That vulnerability was the part of love that scared Mary quite to death.

Late the next afternoon, Katherine, Mary and Jane sat together on a stone bench in the rose garden, with Dona Elvira and Lady Guildford, as a brightly dressed Italian acrobat tumbled on the lawn to entertain them. The gardens around them were full of other courtiers strolling together, and laughing, others playing dice or chess at tables set up beneath the shade of lacy evergreens, all filling the environment with the easy pleasure Henry defined as his own distinctly new court. As the acrobat began to juggle three small blue balls, and Henry came upon them, hands clasped behind his back, Mary read a letter from her sister, Margaret, in Scotland.

Wolsey, in his cleric’s long pleated coat and wool hat on a stiff band, was beside Henry, wearing that same fatherly expression that he nearly always had for Henry and Mary.

“What says our Meg?” Henry asked as he stood before them, hands on his hips. He may have been her brother, but he did look particularly magnificent that day, Mary thought, wearing an exquisite honey-colored velvet doublet with slashed decorations of crimson satin, jeweled fingers and a stiff, flat cap trimmed with a feather and broach.

“She is with child again.” She smiled up at him, full of hope for their sister’s future.

“They do say third time is the charm.”

“Pray God this one survives,” Wolsey chimed with sudden piety, making a pyramid with his hands.

Their poor sister had suffered much as the Queen of Scots. While King James lavished clothes, furs and jewels upon her, he was notoriously unfaithful and had a collection of illegitimate children. She had lost his first legitimate heir after an entire year of life, and last summer Margaret had held her little daughter only once before she died as well.

Now her husband was disappointed in her, and angry with Mary’s father—and by extension now, with her brother, the new king, for not aligning with the league. It had strained the relations for which Henry VII had surrendered Margaret in the first place.

“It seems so unfair to blame Margaret for not yet giving him a son,” Mary said.

“Nonsense. It is her duty,” Henry coldly countered.

“The babies were both ill,” Mary volleyed, feeling anger ignite within her, replaced swiftly by indignation. “That can hardly be a wife’s fault.”

“That is a wife’s only real purpose—to bear strong, healthy sons. If they are not, then the fault lies with her.”

Mary glanced over at Katherine, but her expression was unreadable. She would make no stand. She loved Henry too much to go against him in anything—so Mary stubbornly did it for her. “Her
only
purpose? It is not to love and support her husband, but only to breed for him like a mare?”

“Rather basely put, sister, but, yes, exactly that. And if there is love additionally, it is all the better.”

He said it so matter-of-factly that time, so without malice, that she was shocked. She had been so innocently raised at Eltham on romantic tales of squires and knights and fair damsels. Henry had been raised on duty and political importance above all else. Again Mary glanced at Katherine and saw just a hint of worry in a tiny wrinkling of her brow, and the ever so slight way she pursed her lips, but that was all.

She was too proud to reveal herself more than that.

“This is far off the subject of why I am here,” he said, looking at Katherine as he advanced toward her. As he neared, she stood. “I have something I would like to say to you privately.”

Her furrowed brow smoothed above a weak smile as she stood. Then she took his hand and they went alone down the ordered brick path toward a wooden pergola covered in vines. The fact that he had brought Wolsey, his personal almoner in charge of giving food and money to the poor on the king’s behalf, was lost on none of them.

“What is happening?” Mary asked the cleric.

“He is going to marry her, just as he has been vowing for months, and he is telling her now. The privy council has advised it to keep strong our tie with Spain.”

“But you know him, Wolsey, and you care for us both,”

Mary said, looking into the fleshy face with its blotchy complexion and endearingly reddened hawkish nose. “Did
you advise it?”

“It is what the king wishes, and so it is my wish for him as well.”

“But privately, as a man of God, do
you
believe in this marriage? Do you believe, as Katherine defends, that her marriage to Arthur was never consummated? Must we not all believe that in order to support them?”

His expression, usually so warm and jovial, changed, hardened then. “I will do nothing to dissuade His Highness from his wish to make Katherine his bride, no matter what I privately believe. That would not be prudent, nor, my lady, would it be effective.”

“But surely, Wolsey, you see that my brother is new at his role and needs the counsel of those he can trust.”

“He has you for that, my lady Mary.”

“And what does he have you for, Wolsey?”

“Hopefully to become his chancellor one day. And perhaps, after that, if prayers are to be answered . . . cardinal.”

Mary had, until that day, believed entirely that her brother and Katherine were meant for one another, and the most romantic thing in the world would be for them to find a way to marry. It was a child’s view of the world; being at court, she had slowly come to see that now. A marriage, when it happened, would be a political match first and foremost, and a means to an heir.

Her destiny was no different. Mary was a little girl no longer, and she resolved to remind herself more often of that.

Time to pass with goodly sport our spirits to revive and comfort; To pipe, to sing, to dance, to spring with pleasure and delight To follow Sensual Appetite.

—Henry VIII

June 1509, Greenwich

A s if in defiance of his father’s command against it, Henry VIII and Katherine were married less than two months after the death of Henry VII. The ceremony was a quiet one in the Church of the Observant Friars at Greenwich, but all across London church bells pealed joyously for the union. Katherine had waited in England for seven long years to become a queen, and when she and Henry were crowned a fortnight later at Westminster Abbey, she was twenty-three years old; Henry VIII was eighteen. For a bliss-ful time, no one reminded either of them that she was Arthur’s widow, or that the word in Leviticus had expressly forbid their marrying.

On the day of the coronation, Mary rode through the lavishly draped streets of London, the gray cobbles covered in yards of cloth of gold and decorated with tapestries and embroidery. Dressed in scarlet and ermine, she rode a white 
palfrey that cantered evenly just behind the new king and queen. They were shaded by a pavilion of purple velvet and a valance of gold, all of it embroidered with
H
and
K
. Henry’s own crimson velvet robes were sewn with diamonds and emeralds and he wore a baldric of rubies across his chest so that, with his now towering height and square jaw, he was set apart as something almost divine to the people of London. Sweet Katherine beside him in a litter wore shimmering white satin, her hair long and loose to her waist as she gazed up adoringly at him. Mary was surprised that day that just behind her, it was Charles Brandon who rode beside her grandmother. The position, she knew, was an intentional gift from Henry to his friend—as if he were a part of the royal family.

They passed a collection of local priests standing along the street, each holding up a gleaming cross in their honor.

She turned to acknowledge them with a nod and Brandon caught her eye. Recently made Warden, chief justice of all the royal forests, and Marshal of the King’s Bench, the tall, broad-shouldered Brandon rode in his silver-appointed saddle, smiling broadly. Yet in his expression there was something more than polite acknowledgment as their eyes met. Mary felt a shiver turn her skin to gooseflesh. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen, although she would rather die than admit it, even to Jane. His wife was expecting their second child. When he nodded to her again, Mary simply turned away. No matter what Henry believed of his friend, Mary was determined not to like him . . . at least not too much.

“You wished to see me?” Mary asked as she lingered just inside the door of Katherine’s chamber after the ceremony.

The new queen stood at the window, wringing her hands, her expression darkened with worry. Her dress was regal, elegant, no longer a remnant of the former court, nor something Mary had cast off. This was a fur-trimmed overgown of topaz velvet with a tight bodice to show off her pretty waist.

Her hair was loose and long, as only a virgin—or a queen—could wear it, pulled away from her face and crowned by a simple band of pearls.

“I so wish to be a good wife to him, Mary,” Katherine said in her halting English. “I want it more than my life.”