The Secret Bride (35 page)

The king and queen stood framing the royal black oak bed with its intricately turned posts and soaring purple satin canopy, fringed in gold thread and stamped with gold fleurs-de-lys. Around them were French courtiers, nobility and ambassadors from England and France, opulently layered in rich velvet doublets and heavy chains. The noble-women among them wore gowns with slashed sleeves and tight-fitting bodices, their bare breastbones strung with gold and pearls.

For all of the elegance, the noxious odor of ambergris, civet and sweat permeated the vast, tapestry-lined chamber.

Most of those around them were drunk and swaying, making Mary weak, making it all seem so much worse. Louis XII gazed at her, his white silk nightshirt showing through the robe, as dozens of long white tapers burned and the flames danced around them.
I must endure a moment of disgust in order to please my brother . . . my dearest friend
—
but it is the 
necessary first step toward the happiness I seek, the sacrifice that will be rewarded with my greatest dream. . . .

Her own resolve helped to ease the worst of the disgust rising up so powerfully within her. Her new husband smiled back, brown teeth glistening at her. Someone cleared his throat but she did not see who as she watched the bed linen being sprinkled with rose water. Mary and Louis lowered their heads dutifully then for the bishop’s blessing of the holy marriage bed. She was glad to have Lady Guildford there beside her, with her fleshy face and kind, pale blue eyes. Yet she would always miss Jane . . . so dear a friend. It was hard to feel more than pity for Louis at this crucial moment, knowing how he had prevented Jane from attending her in France with the others. Whore, he had called Jane for the impure things she had done. They were the very same things Mary would have done with Charles in a heartbeat if he would only have agreed.
Thank the sweet Lord,
she thought then, that my husband knows nothing of the thoughts that steal through my mind even now!

After the blessing, Mary took a step back and lifted her head. Her shimmering red-gold hair was long and loose upon her shoulders, and topped at the crown with a different coronet, this one simply of pearls hooked to a thin veil. She wore a delicate, flowing nightdress of Burgundian lace, with tight, fitted sleeves that were also dotted with pearls. She looked, she knew, far more angelic than she felt.

Beside Louis, Francois stood tall and commanding in a doublet of garnet silk. The expression on his face was a seductive smile, accented with a spark of expectation. It was the expression he always wore when he regarded Mary.
Does 
he truly believe he shall be next in my bed when my aged, ailing husband expires?
Mary had wondered more than once.

Francois’ young bride, Claude, had escorted Mary to the bedchamber, along with Anne Boleyn; Anne’s younger sister, Mary Boleyn; Lady Guildford; Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk. But Mary saw that her new stepdaughter’s kind smile and doleful gaze were downcast. Poor Claude, an adolescent bride, had no idea that her husband had been pursuing Mary with his every look and gesture since she had set foot in France. And why should she worry? Mary knew that the overtures were made in order one day to accuse her of infidelity so that a son’s paternity—and thus the succession—could be challenged.

Louis reached out to her then, bringing the aroma of perspiration, ambergris and his own specially noxious hint of camphor. As he did, Mary’s thoughts ceased, pushed back behind the unease. A huge ruby set in silver flashed on his veined, liver-spotted hand. The moment was near. There would be no avoiding it.

Dear Lord, grant me strength,
Mary thought as her heart began again to pound.
And more than a little bit of blindness!

She had one choice, and one choice only. She could not escape the duty that lay before her this night. The only way out must therefore be for her to give a feeble man all that he craved, and amply, and let God decide the outcome. Could anyone truly fault her or think her hideous, after all, if she simply did her duty to her amorous husband? Her body and her love was what he wished. She would give him only that.

The king drew her to him then, and they stood together at the foot of the bed, her warm trembling hand linked with his cold one. Their faces were both lit by dozens of long, glowing tapers as he lifted her hand and kissed the knuckles with large wet lips. Mary watched a bit of color rise onto his gaunt cheeks. Mercifully, their audience filed from the room then, shuffling through the arched doorway and past the royal guards, posted on the other side. Only the king’s seniormost
gentilhomme de la chambre
remained, yet far from the couple, near the door that had just been closed. Mary blew out one of the candles but Louis stopped her at the next one.

“Ah, my
Marie
. . . ,” he said softly in melodic French, but his voice retained that tremor of an old man.

“Whatever your heart’s desire, I wish to please Your Majesty,” she replied as humbly as she had been trained all of her life to do.

This alliance meant the world to Henry. It was more than a marriage. It was England securing her place in the great triumvirate of Spain, France and the Holy Roman Empire. It was power. Mary would not jeopardize it for him. She must say that to herself again and again, until she heard nothing else. With staunch resolve, she kissed Louis fully then, her lips opening so that he might open his own, nearly choking her at needing to do so. But kissing a man with seduction in mind was something she had already done.

Another moment passed as he lifted his hand to her breast and it stilled there. She thought of Charles yet again . . . of all the moments between them that had brought her to this place. All the things that had made her not his wife but Queen of France.

“I know you shall please me well,” he murmured.

“You are my husband.”

“And you are my queen.”

May the good Lord save me,
she thought,
but I am.
While she had played at lovemaking with Charles in the maze at Richmond, Mary was going to her wedding bed a maiden. So it was a blessing, she believed, that she was a Tudor, and she was every bit her father’s daughter. For surely she needed the courage of a warrior to face what lay before her.

Louis pressed another kiss, this one wet and amorous, onto her cheek just then, yet he did so with surprising tenderness before he buried his face in her hair. She felt his hot, sour breath at the turn of her neck. Revulsion rose up once again. He still held her hand to draw her forth as he blew out the last remaining candles. But the effort of doing so led him into a fit of coughing. The sound was rheumy and very unpleasant. Candle smoke snaked and swirled around them, wax dripping onto the cold, inlaid tile floor.

When the coughing did not cease, a servant, dressed in plush blue and red livery, with neatly combed chin-length hair, stoically advanced. He led Louis, shuffling in his slashed and decorated slippers, through a small private door. Mary knew that the passage did not lead into the vast, formal corridor where the court would be waiting. They would assume for the rest of the night that nothing had even for a moment parted the couple.

Promising her, with a nod and a reassuring half smile, that he would return in a moment’s time, Louis and his gentleman disappeared into the adjoining room with a click of the door handle, leaving a still lingering scent of camphor.

Mary sank onto the end of the bed, the enormity of the day descending on her fully only then as flames in the massive fireplace hearth dried the tears on her cheeks. The new smooth gold band on her finger still felt an annoyance, something she had nervously twisted with her thumb since the moment Louis had placed it there. The Mirror of Naples had taken the place of Charles’s ring on her other hand. There had been no other choice. She could have no symbol of him, no constant reminder.

When her husband did not return, Mary rose and went into the adjoining dressing chamber where her things for morning had been meticulously laid out along with anything else personal she might desire. Beside her hairbrush lay an ivory-handled mirror, a jar of her favorite balm of Mecca and a small silver jewelry casket. Beside that lay her journal, bound in red leather and stamped in gold with her brother’s crest—a Tudor rose topped by a gold crown. She waited, still turning the gold band around on her finger, wondering when Louis might return . . . or if he even meant to come to her at all, and not caring at this moment, either way.

Much was made the next morning as the
gentilhomme de la chambre
pulled back the doors and the waiting courtiers flooded into the bedchamber to find king and queen asleep in the same bed. Seeing them around her, Mary rose, avoiding their gaze and ignoring the snickering laughter. She drew on a waiting velvet robe from Lady Guildford and withdrew quickly from the room. As she passed into the dressing chamber and a collection of waiting women surged protectively around her, she heard Louis happily, vulgarly boast, beyond the doors.

“Ah, gentlemen. It is done. I did indeed cross the river thrice last night and would have done more had I chosen.”

A little spasm of contempt worked its way up in her throat. She alone knew the truth. Louis had not returned to her through the little private door until dawn and then he had done so with the huffing groans of an old man. He had crawled into bed beside her, rolled onto his side, seemingly relieved that she appeared to be asleep. That was how they had been found an hour later, as the sun rose, Mary on her back, gazing up at the canopy, Louis asleep beside her.

Charles . . . I miss you . . . ,
she was thinking.

That afternoon, a collection of jewels was laid out meticulously on a strip of crimson velvet for her selection: a diamond and emerald choker, several pearl necklaces, a sapphire bracelet and a cabochon ruby necklace, an overwhelming selection. Nearby lay yards of fabric: blue silk woven with gold, lavender silk edged in silver, and extravagant black and ivory velvet. Louis meant to spoil her with these gifts, perhaps to control her as well—and to make amends for their wedding night. But she would not think of that just now. Not when she was trying to find her way and feel just a little bit less of the pain that loss and love and homesickness had brought to her. She fingered the cabochon rubies. Henry had sent her to France with an impressive collection of English jewelry, but there was nothing like this.

She looked over at the young girl, Norfolk’s raven-haired niece, and paused for a moment. Mary took her chin in her hand so their gazes met. “Tell me, Anne. Which one would you choose for me to wear today?”

The girl examined the selection of jewels glittering before her. As Mary had done, she put a finger to her chin, in consideration. “Definitely not the ruby. It does not suit your hair.”

Mary looked at her, the raven-black tresses falling long over her shoulders beneath a pearl-studded cap, wide blue eyes, lethal in their innocence. “Yet it does suit yours. So you may try it on.”

“Your Majesty,” she had the good grace to gasp, “I could not.”

Mary thought Anne too poised to be truly humbled.  There was something about her, an odd confidence, too marked for that. Mary picked up the jewel, reached behind the girl’s slim neck and clasped it there. Even though she was still a child, as she had suspected, it did suit her perfectly.

Mary smiled with years of confidence the girl did not yet have. “How does it feel?”

“As if an angel himself were caressing my throat, Your Majesty.”

As the ladies around her chuckled with varying notes of condescension, Anne Boleyn reached up very gently to touch the jewel, her eyes wide as saucers now as her sister, Mary, stood silently near the door. “May I look?”

“I bid you, do.”

She stood for what felt a long time admiring herself in the gold-framed looking glass set out on the queen’s dressing table. Mary could hear two of the French gentlewomen whispering as the reflection she saw seemed to transform the child into something she found almost regal. A moment later, when she still had not made a move to return it, Lady Guildford advanced.