The Secret Bride (38 page)

“On my life, sire. I shall take the utmost care.”

On All Saints’ Day, the Duke of Norfolk bowed deeply before the new young queen, and pressed away the distaste at having to do so. But image, he reminded himself, was everything. Then he kept an even pace with her as they walked across the gravel path in the garden. Lady Guildford had already been taken to Calais, and waited there only for final word on whether Henry VIII would intercede regarding her return to England. Mary was so angry with Louis that she had refused to go immediately with him to Paris for her own coronation. She knew that by waiting she was sacrificing the very public tradition of freeing prisoners, and thus an opportunity with the French people, but she was so upset she did not care.

Guildford’s dismissal was a complication Norfolk had not bargained on when he decided to be so exceedingly kind to Mary. She was trying to find a way to maneuver around the will of her own husband. But if Joan Guildford did remain in France, the soft old woman would surely find some way to encourage a renewal of things between Mary and Brandon.

If that happened, there was no telling how long it would take them to return to England and resume power, because between the two of them their influence over Henry would be unmatched. So he had planted a seed with the French king. It had taken hold with more speed than he had thought possible. Norfolk knew there was little he could do about it now—even if he had been inclined to. Yet he also knew that Mary, the spoiled twit, meant to ask him anyway when he was summoned by her. He had struggled and fought for everything he had. And all that was required of her was to maintain her beauty, he thought, as she walked beside him now in her vulgarly expensive gown, the collar and long bell cuffs of which were trimmed with rare marten fur.

“Thomas, my dear friend,” she began beneath an autumn sky full of heavy gray clouds, “I do so need your help. I have no one else to ask.”

“If I can, Your Majesty, anything,” he lied.

“My husband favors you.”

“I have been graced by his pleasure in me, yes.”

“Then stop him from sending my Mother Guildford back to England. You alone can reason with him at this point. I have written to both Henry and Wolsey, but to no avail.”

They stopped walking as the cool wind blew the fur at her collar and flushed her pale cheeks. He let out a heavy sigh as though he were about to express real regret. “Oh, Your Majesty, I cannot.”

“And why not?”

“Because I do not disagree with him. He is your king after all.”

“Would you tell that beautiful little niece of yours, Anne Boleyn, the same thing if she asked you?”

“I would even tell a daughter of mine the same thing, yes, Your Majesty.”

“Then I pity her and I am glad you are leaving France,” she said in an angry staccato retort. “I thought you were my friend, Thomas. I have always thought that.”

“Ah, Your Majesty should take care with illusions. Few people in life shall ever be for you what they seem,” Thomas Howard calmly countered.

Since she was meant to be praying, Mary lowered her head, but her thoughts moved away from the memorized words and toward her strongest memories. They were always the same. England . . . Eltham. The laughter. Jane . . . Charles.

Happy times. Pulling her. Beckoning her to be remembered.

Dear Lord . . . help me . . . keep me. . . . I am alone here now. Afraid. I despise France . . . I detest my life. But it is not my life. Not truly. It all still feels like it belongs to someone else.

She shot to her feet, stubbornly determined not to be undone by her heart. She would not, could not, give in to this. Survival was the thing. Norfolk, Lady Guildford, all of them had left her now. Mary made the sign of the cross, genuflected and very swiftly left the chapel. She then went up the twisted staircase to her apartments. Francois’ wife, Claude, was waiting for her there. Willful little Anne Boleyn was beside her.

“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.”

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.