Reluctant Queen: Tudor Historical Novel About Mary Rose Tudor, the Defiant Little Sister of King Henry VIII (35 page)

Taking her silence for acquiescence, Charles’s voice softened. ‘Let us not part with harsh words, Mary. I want to be able to remember you with a smile, not a frown, when I am in France.’ Gently he teased, ‘Do you think me, the hero of Tournai, so inexperienced in war that I will act like a smooth-skinned boy? For shame, Mary. I had thought you held me in higher esteem than that.’

Mary had the grace to look discomfited. She attempted a denial, but Charles waved her efforts away. Strengthening his embrace, he demanded, ‘Now, are you going to kiss me or not?’

Having kissed her soundly and allowed her a few final minutes of fussing around him, Charles departed. His next word was a message that he had reached Calais safely. The following letter told her that he had set out from there on 19 September, which left only seven or eight weeks of campaigning weather left. Mary knew that must have infuriated him. She then sat back to fret and worry and wait for his next letter.

At first, all went well. At the end of October, Charles wrote jauntily that he had advanced a hundred miles into French territory, crossed the Somme near Bouvain and was within sixty miles of Paris. Proudly, he listed his achievements and how pleased with him Henry would be; English troops had not been so near the French capital for generations.

Mary began to share her husband’s pride in his achievements. The excitement in England at fever-pitch, Henry, full of dreams of at last wearing the coveted French crown, enthusiastically agreed to throw in reinforcements to keep the campaign going through the winter. But by the beginning of November it was clear things were going less well. Charles’s next letter told of the early sharp frosts they had experienced. Mary, concerned lest he might take a chill, hurried to her bureau to reply. She urged him to make sure he wore dry clothing, even though she knew in her heart he would spurn to cosset himself when the ordinary soldiers would suffer far greater hardships. Which they did, according to his next letter; a hundred of his soldiers had died from cold and disease. Francis had rushed troops to Paris and its population looked set on making a determined stand in defence of their city.

Clearly, there was to be no easy victory. Charles’s dreams of success had turned into a nightmare of bone-chilling weather, sickness and disaffection. The looked-for thaw, when it came exchanged icy ground for thick, clinging mud. It was now impossible to even pitch a tent and the supply carts of their Burgundian allies were bogged down. His soldiers were mutinous because they hadn’t received their pay. Charles berated Margaret of Austria’s ministers who refused to risk sending the money for the soldiers’ pay from Antwerp so far into France along the unguarded roads. Large contingents of the foreign troops started to melt away, seeing their chance of booty vanishing. Once again, Charles complained, England was let down by allies who had the unfortunate habit of giving up or turning tail at the most inopportune moments.

Mary suspected that, for Charles, the thick mud would be an ill-omened reminder of that earlier time in France when they had waited in fear for Henry’s response to their secret marriage. And so it was to prove, for his next letter was clearly penned in the bitterness of ignominious failure.

Without the means to advance, retreat was the only option. As swiftly as conditions allowed, Charles and his Burgundian co-general turned back to Flanders, even as the reinforcements from England were being made ready for dispatch from the south coast.

Henry, all his dreams left lying in the mud of France, at first refused to believe that the campaign was over. He put his mind to feverishly devising schemes to continue with it, but eventually, even he had to accept the inevitable and agree to postpone campaigning till the next year. Such was Henry’s disappointment, that the troops were left to linger in Flanders. Charles, to Mary’s relief, was recalled home.

She awaited his return with some trepidation, for how could she not be aware of the pinpricks her husband had endured from the high nobles of Henry’s court? Low-born, like Wolsey, Charles had not risen like her brother’s right-hand man from intelligence and ability alone. For all that many of the courtiers hated Wolsey, they could not deny the man’s ability, whereas Charles, it was felt, had risen only by virtue of his friendship with her brother and his marriage to herself. She knew how the knowledge gnawed at him and how much he longed to make one achievement that would force men to look at him with respect that he had earned visible in their eyes. That was why he had wanted so desperately to do well during the French campaign. And it had all come to naught. How bitter must the knowledge be that he would now secure for himself not only further and more savagely-jabbed pinpricks, but had failed also to secure respect as a fighting man and, into the bargain, had certainly ensured the loss of her dower income.

As she waited for him to return, Mary could almost wish that Charles lacked ambition, for it was that which curdled his soul. But, without the ambition that coursed so strongly through him, would she have loved him so well? Perhaps it would have been better for him if she had never done so, she thought sadly when she saw him. He had lost a lot of weight and looked worn and weary when he finally arrived at their apartments after having first been close-closeted with Henry and Wolsey. He was no longer the confident warrior who had set out believing the war was his opportunity to crown himself with glory. But at least he still had the energy for anger. For once, Mary was glad to see it as he flung himself restlessly about their chamber and launched into a torrent of rage on his favourite theme.

‘This result is Wolsey’s doing. He it was who wanted us to push for Paris. Even the king was against it and warned that we would be obliged to retreat to Flanders. It was too ambitious and sudden a plan and too late in the year. I had feared this,’ he reminded her, ‘but that meddling prelate must, as always have his own way, thinking to save the cost of a campaign next year by joining now with the Emperor and the rebel Bourbon to bring France to defeat. I had bad feelings about the changed policy, but the king agreed, so I had no choice but to press for Paris. As usual, Wolsey took too much on himself. He’s a churchman, what can he know of war and its many difficulties? Better had the king never listened to him. But for Wolsey’s ambitious schemes, we might now have had a good base in Boulogne to work from next year. Now, it’s all to be done again.’

Mary hated to see him so full of resentment. It brought a resurgence of the old grievances against Wolsey to go with the new ones. To suffer such a failure through no fault of his own must be as bitter to him as wormwood. He so longed for Henry’s approbation. Instead, he must be apprehensive that Henry, angry and disappointed at this failure, would lay the blame for it at the door of Charles’s generalship. For this, too, he blamed Wolsey. Mary knew not what she could do or say to comfort him. Nor did she know how to comfort herself. There was no comfort to be had for either of them.

Their spirits were at such a low ebb that Mary managed to find consolation in the thought that nothing else could go awry for them. Unfortunately, in this she was proved wrong. One day, she caught the tail-end of a conversation between two courtiers concerning her marriage. Believing their chat to be no more than jealous tittle-tattle, Mary put it from her mind. But then the rumours started in earnest. Tongues vicious against Charles, eager to wound him and not caring that Mary would also be wounded, tattled that their marriage was not a true one.

Stunned, Mary of course had known that Charles’s marital history was chequered. Such things were the staple of daily gossip. He had been thirty at the time of their marriage so previous entanglements were implicit. Mary, young and in love, had given little thought to just how tangled his previous love-life had been. She had assumed that he was free to marry her. Why would she not? Charles wasn’t a fool. It was one thing and dangerous enough, to secretly marry the king’s sister. But to marry her bigamously was altogether too enormous a folly to be even contemplated by any man, certainly not by one who sought the king’s friendship above all.

Convinced by such arguments that the rumours must be false, Mary did her best to ignore them. But this was easier said than done. And as his previous love-life was laid bare in all its confusion, Mary was horrified to find the gossips might have the right of it.

She had been a child when Charles had wed the wealthy Anne Browne, the daughter of Sir Anthony Browne. Her, Charles had dismissed on some pretext. He had then married his first wife’s close kin, Lady Mortimer, but the church had obliged him to return to his first spouse. She had died in 1513, leaving him with two daughters whom Mary had taken under her wing.

After the death of his first wife, Charles had engaged himself to the young heiress of Lord Lisle, being created a Baron in anticipation of this marriage. But she, on reaching maturity, had declined to marry him. Then, as the cruel gossip-mongers had it, he had been quickly on the trail of another advantageous marriage. Sent on a diplomatic mission to Flanders in connection with Mary’s own expected marriage to her betrothed, Prince Charles, he had been much taken with Charles’s aunt, Archduchess Margaret, though whether it was the lady or her rich dowry that most impressed him, the gossip differed. Her brother, Henry, had encouraged his friend’s wooing of Archduchess Margaret when she visited the town of Tournai after its capture. The Archduchess had apparently been sufficiently captivated by Brandon - who had at the time just cut an extremely dashing figure on the field of battle - to exchange rings with him. But then, Margaret, fearful of the possible consequences, had desired her ring back. Soon after, Charles Brandon had turned his attentions to another high-born lady - Mary herself. And Mary, spurned by the Prince to whom her father had betrothed her, and having for some time admired the tall and handsome Brandon, had fallen in love with him.

Mary wondered now whether Charles had ever truly loved her at all. Admittedly, it had been she who had pushed for the marriage and Charles who had tried to persuade her to wait. But such caution hadn’t characterised his previous behaviour in England when he had been more than willing to kiss and fondle her. Happy, too, to allow romantic thoughts of marriage between them. Even Henry had let Mary go on in happy ignorance and the belief that she would be allowed to marry for love until, with his ambitions for the French alliance, he had insisted she marry Louis. Henry, although he had apparently found it amusing enough to encourage Charles’s wooing of Archduchess Margaret, hadn’t been willing to lose any advantage to himself when it came to his sister’s marriage, even if it cost Mary her happiness.

What price that happiness now? thought Mary. After nine years of marriage and three children, Lady Mortimer, Charles’s second wife, whom the church had forced him to abandon, had chosen to remind them of her existence. Apparently involved in an increasingly acrimonious dispute with her family, her one-time marriage to Charles had been recalled and enquired into and the legality of his marriage to Mary herself questioned.

As Charles’s colourful past rose up to haunt her, Mary took refuge in her bed-chamber. Heartsick, she paced the room, scourging herself with memories of past events; events that she might have been wiser to examine more closely at the time. Hadn’t her brother, on her widowhood, attempted to snatch back the carrot he had so enticingly dangled before her to obtain her agreement to the French marriage? Had he, even then, suspected his friend’s marital affairs would not stand too close a scrutiny? Or had it been that Henry, ever one to look for advantage to himself, had simply sought how best he might again make use of her?

And what of Charles? The man she called husband, the man with whom she had gone through three marriage ceremonies? He, too, had attempted to backtrack on his promises. Had this been because his declarations of love had meant so little to him? Or was it because his fear of retribution from Henry was based on far more than their secret marriage?

Mary no longer knew what to think, whom to trust. All she felt sure of right now was that she had been grievously betrayed by those on whose love she should have been most able to rely.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Mary’s anguish over her marriage that might not actually be a marriage. went on and on. Even in her bed-chamber she could find no respite from the gossips, for when she ordered her women from the room, she spent the solitude tormenting herself with the thought that they would be more able to indulge their gossip in the outer chamber.

Desperate to find some quiet corner in the palace, in her own head, she was driven into the gardens. Fortunately, the weather was calmer than her thoughts, with a bright, though fitful sun that sought to hide itself behind clouds, much as she sought to hide herself from others’ prying eyes by seeking out that part of the gardens that she knew to be rarely visited.

To her dismay, as she approached the enclosed arbor, Mary heard voices. She was about to retreat when she realised to whom the voices belonged. It was her brother and Anne Boleyn. Startled, Mary was transfixed. She had heard rumours about her brother and Anne, but had disregarded them. The court ran on rumours as her own recent experiences had brought home to her. She had considered these particular rumours baseless; in her mind, whatever the present reality, Anne remained the gawky little chit she had known and pitied in France. But now, as she stood in rigid pose, she heard her brother’s voice again.

‘You play with the heart of so many men, Mistress Anne. I have watched and wondered if the heart of your king dared stray within the orbit of such a bright star.’

Henry’s voice thickened with what Mary recognised as desire. ‘You have made of me a man uncertain, confused and fearful, Madam. I would only that you would look at me as you look at Wyatt and the other poets of the court. For am I, too, not a poet of passing skill?’

Mary was unable to catch Anne’s murmured response, but then Henry spoke again. ‘See, I have written an ode to you.’