The Secret Bride (8 page)

The grand banquet that night was attended by nearly four hundred guests. Ten courses were served on gleaming gilt platters piled with wild boar, loin of veal and delicate lark’s tongue. The tables upon which they were placed were covered with crisp white damask, strewn with flowers and herbs and topped with cups, goblets, ewers and finger bowls.

And at the center of the king’s table sat a roasted peacock, its plumes artistically re-attached in an impressive display. The king’s coat of arms in the colored windowpanes glittered down onto the candlelit tables, and from the gallery above, a consort of musicians serenaded the guests. Ladies of the court sat around Mary, arrayed in tight-bodiced gowns of crimson velvet, emerald satin and cloth of gold, all with chains and pearls at their waists and throats.

Mary danced and danced, and she reveled in the gazes and whispers of several of the young and very handsome men of her father’s court. Most of them were sons of dukes and lords, all privileged, all desirous of her attention. After a time, she was called upon to take the lute to entertain the company. It was Mary’s best instrument and she was pleased to have so grand and important an audience after playing only for the servants at Eltham. Having all eyes on her was like a potent drug that made her heart race.

As she began to play “My Own Soul,” she glanced over at the king sitting in his grand throne at the head of the room, hands curled over the chair arms, his head against the leather back. He was nodding off as she played. She was hurt at first.

Insulted as well. But then she saw the old man before her, not a king, but a father, who had lived a long and complicated life, who was frail now . . . with a small measure of time left that was slipping swiftly away.

A feeling of sadness struck her, potently mixing with the elation she had felt only moments before. The king would die one day and then there would only be Henry left. He would be the new energy and the power for England. Henry was even taller now, handsome and commanding—a striking presence. Where their father was stoop-shouldered and gaunt-faced, haunted by time, her brother bore himself already as a king, one with more than a passing interest in a particular girl.

She watched Katherine and her brother huddled together deep in conversation as all the music, servants and the other courtiers swirled around them. They seemed cocooned in a little world of their own. Mary had watched him with several girls as he entered adolescence, but she had never seen him this way. Katherine smiled at him and he blushed. She averted her eyes. They looked at one another. Giggled. Mary thought it like a romantic little dance. Henry was clearly taken with their brother’s widow, and it was far beyond what he had revealed to her on the barge up from Eltham. To care for someone in that way seemed a fantasy to her.

With the years since Arthur’s death, Katherine’s clothes had become increasingly threadbare and tight-fitting, as her body changed but her circumstances did not—an unsettling result of the dispute between Spain and England over her dowry, which Henry VII stubbornly refused to return. While the two sovereigns haggled over the details of her first marriage contract, which did call for her substantial dowry to be sent back to Spain with her, she had to rely on the Spanish ambassador to buy her what she needed, only the most basic of necessities, for he had to pay for them himself. What money poor Katherine was allotted was required to pay the retinue that had remained with her in England. Principal among them was Katherine’s stout duenna, Dona Elvira, who seemed never to be far from Katherine’s side, along with her husband, Don Pedro Manrique. There was also Maria de Salinas and the small, sharp-eyed Spanish ambassador, Don Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida. In addition, the two monarchs haggled over the inheritance that she was to receive, a steady income, as the Dowager Princess of Wales. While they argued, Katherine remained a virtual hostage, having no idea whether her future lay in England or Spain. But by the expression in Henry’s eyes, Mary knew what it was her brother wished.

Mary realized then why he had wanted her there, why he had ridden all the way to Eltham to make certain she would join him. He wanted to tell her he had fallen in love with Katherine. She sank back in her chair, unable to take her eyes from the two of them. She was not so young that she did not realize the ramifications for a girl who had already given her whole heart to him, but then had her betrothal forever terminated.

“Do they not make a handsome pair?”

The voice belonged to Charles Brandon, who was suddenly sitting beside her, taking up the chair of a dinner guest who had gone to dance a lively saltarello. Charles held a silver wine goblet in hand and bore an easygoing smile as he surveyed her. She turned with a small start and looked at him.

He had changed since she had seen him last Christmas, Mary thought. He was even more magnificently handsome now, if that were possible, dressed in a blue velvet doublet and sleeves slashed with gold cloth. But she believed him to be such a horrid womanizer and flirt that she could never admit her attraction to him, even to herself. Just that morning she’d learned that, less than a year into his marriage to Margaret Mortimer, Charles was looking for a way to have it invalidated.
Consanguity
was the term for having a common ancestry with one another, and Charles was going to prove it between himself and his wife. Distastefully, Mary noted that he was not likely to return Margaret’s houses or her land along with her freedom. Apparently he planned to marry his wife’s niece, Anne Browne, who was also the mother of his child.

As Mary looked at him now, she saw that his hair was a shade darker than Henry’s, more auburn now than red. He still wore it long over his ears, and he had a mustache now and neatly trimmed beard. It all made his eyes even more prominent than before.

It also made him look older, certainly more dangerous.

At just twelve to his twenty-three years, she was too young, and he was certainly too dangerous for her even to have had the thought. She knew that Charles was married and that he was now a man not only with a past, but with a child, by a woman who was not his wife. Even though Mary had long known the details, his actions were still unseemly, no matter how ambitious he was, or how incredibly handsome.

“Since the marriage is canceled, they make no pair at all, sir,” she coolly replied.

“And yet you see with your own eyes that still they do wish to . . . pair.”

She lowered her gaze upon him, angry for the liberty he took and for the familiar way he spoke to her. “Do you encourage the king’s son to behave as you do with women, sir?”

He chuckled at that, as if her words had no impact. “The prince is his own man, my lady Mary. He shall do quite as he pleases, and already does, I assure you.”

“Not with Arthur’s wife, apparently.”

He arched an eyebrow and his eyes glittered in the candle-light. He was slightly amused. “Are you so certain? By the looks exchanged between them, he may well ally England with Spain with a dozen little royal babes.”

“You are smug and vile.”

“And
you
are beautiful when you are angry.”

“I am young and betrothed to the emperor’s heir. And you are old—and married.”

He made as if to grip his heart, but still laughing. “Ah, the little lady Mary wounds me like a much older woman.”

“What good fortune for me I have the wit and not the years.”

He tipped his head back and laughed but there was so much activity, so much laughter and music around them, that no one even noticed. He took a long swallow of wine then and slapped the goblet back onto the table. “Will you watch me at tennis tomorrow?”

“Have I a choice?”

“To cheer for me, yes.”

“I shall cheer only if you should fail.”

“Ah, my lady Mary is every bit as headstrong as her brother. And extraordinarily lovely for one so young,” he said, still more amused by her words than insulted. “No wonder he finds you so companionable.”

“I still cannot say the same for his taste in friends.”

Charles Brandon lingered. Tonight was her night to shine and she had done that. “It is good to be clever, my lady. It is a better thing, however, to be wise. I see it is in that distinction that your youth fails you.” Then he bowed just slightly. “A pleasant evening to you.”

Mary could not sleep that night for the thoughts of Katherine and Henry, and what was to become of her Spanish friend if she was made to leave England. Mary’s young heart went out to Katherine every time she thought that she was in a foreign country, unable to fully speak the language and completely at the mercy of others. Mary had seen quite clearly this day that Katherine was in love with Henry, and it made her believe that they belonged together. As new as she was to court, she had no idea then that life could not ever be that simple, particularly for a Tudor who was about to become a king.

Conversely, the great foolishness of youth made her scoff at the hubris of Charles Brandon, a young and obscenely handsome man who she was certain could not know the first thing about hardship, longing or love. She was wrong about many things that night.

Now unto my lady a promise to her I make, From all other only to her I me betake . . . Adieu mine own lady, adieu, my special, who hath my heart truly, be sure, and ever shall.

—From “Green Groweth the Holly,” written by Henry VIII for Katherine of Aragon March 1509, Richmond Palace

As the trumpeters sounded a regal fanfare, Mary sat in the king’s banner-draped viewing stand in the tiltyard, flanked by Jane and Katherine. A mild afternoon sun shone down upon them and was cooled further by the gentle breeze that ruffled the long bell sleeves of their dresses. Mary’s was an exquisite creation of blue damask edged in velvet with ivory silk ribbons. The breeze quickly cooled the perspiration that lingered between breasts that, now that she was nearly fifteen, were prominent. Despite the fashion, which was to flatten them beneath a painfully tight-fitted bodice, she was proud of her newly shapely, and rapidly changing, body. She regularly glimpsed the looks she received now that she was at court and she was beginning to feel the absolute power in beauty.

Down on the dust-churned field, Charles Brandon waited 
next to joust and Mary was angry with herself when she realized that her heart had begun to beat a little more quickly at the prospect. They saw one another regularly, as he was almost always in Henry’s company. But he was a married man—now for the second time—and she still believed him to be a conceited renegade and an opportunist. She still did not like him well, in spite of how incredibly handsome he undeniably was. As his sleek black charger, caparisoned in shimmering silver, was led onto the field Jane began to giggle behind her hand. She leaned toward Mary.

“Now there is one to whom I would refuse little.”

Mary stiffened and began to twist the lace at the end of her long sleeve. “He is married, Jane.”

“And so?”

“Jane!” Mary forced back a smile.

“We shall both be married off forevermore to men with whom we do not wish to bed. Why not at least
have
a man once—and wildly—before we do? I hear the act itself is very like dying . . . that is, if you actually learn to enjoy it.”

Mary could scarcely believe her ears as she watched Charles ride toward the king, who sat only a few feet from her. Showing his respect, he nodded deeply and deferentially.

She knew Jane to be winsome and flirtatious, and she had certainly seen her attraction to Henry, but she had never before actually considered her so comfortable with the game of seduction. It both frightened and excited her to have a friend like that, who might well become her partner one day in some most delicious adventure.

She glanced over at Katherine then, sitting with her sour-faced duenna, Dona Elvira, and found her Spanish friend gazing in doe-eyed silence over at Henry, who sat beside the king. The difference between her two friends was so comical that she felt a giggle work its way up from her throat. Pious Katherine and wanton Jane. She pressed a hand over her lips but it was too late to stifle it. One moment more and Jane began to giggle as well, and they leaned in together, thick as thieves in some grand unspoken jest—until the king’s stern mother leaned forward from the seats behind them and pinched Jane’s shoulder. They had no idea that the morally pious Countess of Richmond had been listening.

“Guard,” she flatly yet chillingly commanded, still pinching Jane’s bare skin until it brought tears to her eyes. “See Mistress Popincourt to Lady Guildford’s charge until tomorrow.”

“But, my lady grandmother, please,” Mary pleaded, trying to intercede, albeit in a weaker voice than she would have liked. “The festivities, the banquet! She shall miss them all!”

“Prudent to have considered
that
before Mistress Jane chose to put voice publicly to her most impure and inappropriate thoughts.” She flicked her hand dismissively and her velvet sleeve fell back from her bony wrist. “. . . Behaving like the strumpet one assumes she shall quickly become.”

“Forgive me, my lady,” Jane sputtered obediently. But the king’s mother sat back stiffly in her chair and gazed down onto the field. That would be the end of it. She was silver-haired and matronly, but Mary knew the Countess of Richmond was a powerful force with which to be reckoned. No one had ever changed her mind once she had made it.