The Secret Bride (41 page)

That night, a powerfully frigid wind battered the windows and the cold it brought bled through the stone walls of the palace of Les Tournelles, as the longing moved through Charles with what felt like the same force. She had been a beautiful child who had grown into a magnificent woman. A queen. He had wanted to come to France. He believed entirely that it was the right thing to do. To be here, for Mary.

But seeing her brought an ache, rather than reassurance. It made him question every decision he had made for a very long time. She was not his. Foolish as it sounded, even in his mind, Charles had actually questioned that before he had arrived here. But seeing the king made her loss real. He tossed and turned beneath the bedcovers, trying to remember a prayer that might bring him some sort of peace. And if not that, relief at least.

He thought then of the true price he had paid for the reputation that his ambition and carelessness with women had brought him. Perhaps if he had led a wiser, more pious life, like Wolsey, instead of trying so hard to be Henry’s friend, he would have gained a dukedom sooner. He would have been a stronger candidate for Mary when the contract with Charles of Castile was nullified. He tossed and turned again, awash in perspiration and frustration. This was a situation of his own making. He believed that now. In life, with each gain there was a loss. Losing Mary, seeing her with the French king, protectively at his side, was like a small death. Worst of all, Louis had been genuinely welcoming to him. It made the guilt worse. Yet, God help him, it did not lessen his resolve to have Mary. That obsession now was well beyond his control.

The tournament commenced and then continued for the next three days. Lying on a couch, the king attended the contest only briefly each day in order to make a proper appearance.

Mary was relieved each time he retired to his apartments, since it meant she would not have to fear every noise she made or every gesture toward Brandon giving her away to a besotted husband. While she did not love Louis, nor could she, in the days since their marriage she had grown fond of him, and she had no wish to hurt him. Mary reveled in the skepticism turned to admiration of the French people. Each day before the contest began she stood to receive the welcome of the 305 challengers entering the lists as well as the thunderous applause of the crowds. Each time it happened, she thought,
I am a woman in my own right now, a wife and a queen, no longer just the sister of Henry VIII. I have power . . . control, and I like it.

On the second day of the tournament, amid air that was less frigid as it moved through the stands, the contest turned to hand combat. Francois had been injured the first day in his battle with Charles, and his pride had suffered. Today, in an attempt to impress Mary, Francois made a stylishly grand entrance, then sat near her, garbed in velvet of Tudor green and white. It irritated him the more after his defeat, that she did not even deign to acknowledge his effort. He sat now near the queen and her companion, his wife, Claude, and Madame d’Aumont and Louis de Brézé’s very young wife, Diane. Still they were not so near that they heard his exchange with the sly and discreet Claude de Lorraine.

“There is something about Suffolk,” Francois said, with a hand casually across his mouth. “He is rather too arrogant for my taste.”

“You say that only because he beat you in the joust yesterday. And he
is
rather vulgarly handsome for an Englishman.”

“I say it because there is something I don’t trust about him, striding around like this, as if he were absolutely unbeatable in everything.”

“Perhaps he is.”

“Not if I have anything to say on the matter,” Francois quickly shot back, his own self-important smile beginning to broaden beneath his long, prominent nose. “Today, he shall face a challenger of
my
choosing and then we shall see how smugly victorious he remains.”

From the royal viewing stands, they watched the matches silently until Charles entered the field in a flash of silver, his chest plate stamped boldly with the red cross of Saint George.

Francois glanced at the queen and saw the same thing he always did when Suffolk appeared. A broad smile lit her face, like a spark—no more than a flash really—then she stiffened and the smile disappeared as the initial response was pressed back and well hidden. Now it was clear. The foolish chit had feelings for Suffolk!

So that was why she so unwisely chose to rebuff his own advances. No matter, Francois arrogantly thought, touching the point of his small, neat chestnut-colored beard with thumb and jeweled forefinger. That sorry English braggart would return to England soon enough, and the old lion being helped back to his apartments now once again would be dead not long after. That scenario could not play out soon enough for Francois’ taste. Then he would see how eager the queen—widowed and replaced by Claude—was to reject the man with all the power! The vulnerable dowager queen would need him then, by God! Alone in a foreign land, and there would be no one here to rescue her when that happened!

Down on the field today, Suffolk faced the opponent of Francois’ choosing. He was a gigantic Almain ominously garbed and hooded, in black, his clothing designed to be as intimidating as he himself was. Francois heard the crowd gasp and glanced over the row of guests beside him and could not resist a smile as he watched the queen’s face blanch.

Sheer delight! The combatants began on horseback, but as Francois watched, it was Suffolk, not his secret giant weapon, who managed to fell his opponent quickly, strike him with the butt of his spear and begin the ferocious ground combat.

He resisted every urge in his own body to spring to his feet and shout down at the field as the opponents baited one other, then wrestled like great bears amid the wind and the fluttering banners and the deafening roar of the crowd. In a swirl of dust, loud grunts and the clink of armor, the giant Almain then grabbed a waiting blunt-edged sword and they began to trade savage blows.

Mary glanced to the panel of judges as the two men thrust and struck, then tumbled, waiting in a panic for them to drop the rail and end the contest. But the judges sat watching in stony silence, allowing it to continue for what felt to her an eternity. The young Diane de Poitiers placed a comforting hand on Mary’s shoulder then, which brought her back to the stands.

“The opponent may be big, but Suffolk is quick,” she said encouragingly.

Mary could not look at her. She could not draw her eyes from Charles, who seemed now to be fighting for his life in what was meant to be a game.

They tumbled again and struggled on. The heavy swords flashed in the daylight as they swung and thrust in a contest of sinewy muscle and glinting steel. Suddenly Charles, who had spent his youth wrestling with Henry VIII, took the advantage, grabbing the opponent by the neck and battering his head with a blinding volley of blows so savage that blood sprayed out in an arc from his nose and he collapsed onto the field, giving Suffolk the victory the dauphin had meant for the other man.

Mary sprang to her feet, unable to resist any longer, in an ovation of her own as Charles dropped his sword, lifted his visor and strode magnificently toward the stands where she stood above him, the fur at her collar fluttering in the breeze.

In a gesture lost to no one there, he then made her a sweeping, courtly bow and she smiled broadly at him in response.

Francois d’Angouleme cursed beneath his breath and dashed alone out of the stands the moment he saw the exchange.

A quarter of an hour later, Mary sank onto the edge of the bed beside Louis, her smile full of genuine concern as she took up his cold hand. “Are you well?”

“Better, now that you have come. I am told Suffolk made quite a masterful showing today.”

“He was impressive.”

“Would that I could be so masterful for you,” he said on a regretful sigh.

“You are King of France—quite masterful in your own way.”

Louis smiled at that and pulled her on top of him, kissing her neck and face in a way that told her what he wished for next. “I was hoping you would say that,” he said with a faint chuckle. “Ah, how the King of France does adore his queen!”

They brought an Almain and put him to my Lord of Suffolk to have put us to shame, but advantage they got none of us, rather the contrary. . . . The Queen continues her goodness and wisdom and increases in the favour of her husband the Privy Council. She has said to my Lord of Suffolk and me that the King her husband said to her that my Lord of Suffolk and I did shame all France and that we should carry the prize into England.

—A letter from the Marquess of Dorset in France to Henry VIII in England December 1514, Les Tournelles

The crowd assembled to see Mary enter the banquet hall this time had swollen to enormous size and was to her a little frightening. They yelled out and called to her, pushing and shoving and surging forth over barriers like a giant wave until, in their fervor, they blocked the queen’s path outside of the castle. Francois was at her side and grasped her upper arm in what felt a protective gesture.

“They mean well,” he called to her through the noise. “But we mustn’t take any chances.”

A few words exchanged with the duc de Longueville and they altered their course, moving away from the main 
entrance to the palace, and instead entering through a side door and up a narrow, far less elegant staircase inside a turret. Mary was grateful for the glass of sweet French wine handed to her the moment she reached the top of the stairs.

But Francois, it seemed, dressed in a stunning purple velvet doublet with silver slashing, had forgotten to let go of her arm. For just a moment, she was aware of how awkward that felt. Then, almost as quickly, she was distracted by her introduction to a round little man, his hair a simple skein pressed over the dome of his head, who bowed so vigorously, smiled and happily chattered on so that she could think of little else.

“Her Majesty must greet her other guests now,” Francois announced with a proprietary snarl and again pulled her by the arm.

The gesture embarrassed Mary, and yet she was relieved, since the mayor of Paris was quite likely the dullest man she had ever met. The dauphin irritated her at times, and could quickly frighten her at others. But he always seemed to know just exactly what to do, and when. But mostly his constant presence in her life made her wish every day that Louis were well enough at least to be a buffer for her at these events, if not a true partner at them.