The Secret Bride (45 page)

The Hotel de Cluny, on the rue des Mathurins St. Jacques overlooking the Seine, with its turrets, beige stone and gray roof, had once been a Benedictine abbey. Stark now and forbidding, it was the customary royal palace used for mourning. There, the law dictated, Mary must spend a full month’s time in isolation, heavy black draperies covering all of her windows to blot out any light or fresh air. She lay atop the bed, face to the ceiling, feeling as if she could actually suffocate, and with no earthly idea how she would survive the next twenty-eight days treated like a virtual prisoner.

As footsteps passed in the corridor beyond the heavily sealed door, she took up the letter from Wolsey once again and pressed it against her chest. His words had brought tears when she first had read them an hour ago for how much she missed her dear Thomas, his counsel and his friendship. She knew he was not well liked. His reputation, even here in France, had become one of a cleric bitten by wild ambition, greed and a raging desire to become pope, no matter the sacrifice.

. . . move with great care in all that you do and say. And if any motions of marriage be made unto you, do not listen or heed them. . . .

Great irony, she thought bitterly. The only man she had ever loved or wanted to marry was a country away—a world beyond her once again. An impossible dream. Light from the candles flickered endlessly across the folds of her thick white robes in the blackness of midday. Flames cast odd shadows around her. She was angry at Wolsey’s words, the presumption in them. Angry at her circumstances. A wasted life.

Someday,
she thought,
I must speak with Katherine, tell her that there is someone who understands. I hurt for her now in a way I did not, nor could I, before. I wish I had tried to understand better then. She deserves someone’s understanding, the way I deserve it now
.

She missed Charles . . . Jane . . . and especially Henry. . . .

Why did her brother not write her some encouragement?

Her French secretary, a mouselike man with protruding teeth and small eyes, sat before her at an inlaid writing table topped with ink pot, sand and paper. His poised hand and nails were stained black. He dipped and waited for her words of reply, his face, like hers, illuminated by the dancing candlelight.

I trust the king, my brother, and you will not see in me such childishness. I trust that I have conducted myself well since I came to France and to the utmost honor of the King. . . .

She paused, feeling tears push at the back of her eyes, missing so dearly a time of her life that could never be again.

. . . and if there is anything I may do for you, I would gladly do it. . . .

Mary brushed away tears she could not contain and drew in a breath, trying to steady herself, trying to remain, in manner, royal. “Yes, send that. Only that. They know me. They will both understand that I have been faithful to His Majesty’s will in spite of my desire to do everything to the contrary.”

At the very moment when Wolsey bowed to the king in England, Mary curtsied fully to the new sovereign, Francois across the Channel in France. She rose slowly in the dark of the shadows and flickering light of her mourning chamber, her world for the month that seemed to stretch endlessly before her. There was no youthful smile lighting her flawless face any longer, no blush adorning her cheeks. No music lightening the somber rooms. Only silence, and the crack and snap of the wood blazing away in the hearth. Her skin, it seemed, matched her starkly sewn and unadorned snow white gown.

Louis had been dead for nine days, and the whispers, even at the Hotel de Cluny, had reached a crescendo. Was the queen with child? Would the dauphin ever be crowned or was he to be replaced by the son of an English queen? Servants lingered silently in the corner as Francois now advanced toward her in a sweep of elegant black velvet.

“You are well, I trust?” Francois asked, casually glancing around with a little sniff of disapproval at the spartan surroundings, and the darkness.

“As well as can be expected.”

“Is it mourning sickness that plagues Your Majesty, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. But not at all likely,” she replied with a taunting calm. “That is why you have come, I assume?”

Francois smiled slyly in response as he sank into one of the collection of brocade-covered chairs near the fire. “Will you not offer me a cup of wine for my trouble in coming?”

“I need offer Your Majesty nothing. You are King of France. You may take what you desire.” She leveled her eyes on him as the civility in her tone slipped by a degree. She hovered near his chair, declining to sit with him, as it would be, she believed, too familiar. They both knew what she meant.

“A king uncrowned is really the same as no king at all,” he said.

“Just as a queen without a king beside her is only a dowager?” Mary parried.

Francois sighed, shrugging his shoulders as he accepted a silver cup of wine from Madame d’Aumont, who had heard them, accommodating him in a swift sweep across the floor, her gown rustling in the silence.

“The physicians who examined me said the very thing I told Your Majesty just now. The possibility that I might be with child by the late king is very small.”

Francois balanced an elbow on the chair arm and rested his chin on his hand as he studied her then, his smile smug and overly confident. “And so whatever is to be done with you, until we know for certain?”

“We do know.”

“Ah, but how desperately I do want to believe you,
ma
belle-mère
.” He reached out so suddenly then to take her hand that she could not resist or pull away. She stood stone still above him, firelight playing off the stark white silk of her mourning gown. “It is so inescapably dreary in here. I truly would like nothing better than to cut short your mourning and free you from this perpetual night, ushering you like a beautiful bird back into the daylight.”

“There shall be no challenger to Your Majesty’s rightful place on the throne.”

“But were you not a wife to him in every way?”

“He was not able to be a husband to
me
in every way. Not since Abbeville.”

“That was two months ago.”

“Yes, it was.”

He tightened his grip until she could feel her hand begin to throb. “Will you swear this?”

“With the utmost sincerity.”

“I find that I am satisfied with your assurances. So when I return from Rheims, it shall please me greatly to terminate your period of mourning, so that you may attend me, and see what a
true
French court should be like.” Francois finally set down his goblet and ran his other hand caressingly from her waist up to her breast. His fingers stilled there for only a moment as he looked up, daring her to push it away—daring her to reject him again now that he was king. “What a waste of such loveliness.”

“I have not felt a waste in France. Only ever well cared for.”

“Splendid to know.” He was still smiling, but his expression had darkened to one that held an ominous offer. “Your good brother the King of England seeks the return of your dowry—or you—which he no doubt will soon find someone suitable to offer for. Yet it would appear that, with you and your dowry still here in France, I hold all of the cards in that particular game. Would you not agree?”

Mary nodded, seeing fully how well, by his ruthlessly ambitious mother, he had been taught to play, and feeling well out of her league in it. Francois would make a formida-ble opponent for Henry, on any battlefield or council chamber. Mary knew she was likely to become a marriageable bargaining chip once again. This time, however, it would be for both sides. If Francois could successfully marry her off to a French candidate—and the ambitious and wealthy Claude de Lorraine had been whispered about since before Louis’ death—she would be forced to remain in France, as would her substantial dowry. If Henry successfully negotiated her remarriage to some other powerful prince, she would lose all hope of returning to England—and to Charles. She was so isolated from any English companions, even from daylight, that she could think of little else but what mystery fate had in store for her. But she was smarter than that, too determined to succumb. She had spent her early years watching how the game was played. Henry, like Francois, had become a master. No matter the pressure, she would not be undone by it now.

“I want you, Mary, and I mean to have you. Not now, when the risk of a pregnancy is great. But after.” He touched her cheek.
“Oui, apres.
You and I shall have our day.”

“Your Majesty cannot mean that.”

“I never say anything I do not mean.” He looked at her with sharp eyes, then drew her against him, his face meeting her breasts, his hands tightening at her small waist. “You shall remain in France, either as my mistress, or as the wife of my noble associate Claude de Lorraine, or perhaps . . . if you are very good, as my queen.”

She despised his gaze. His touch like this was worse. But she was trapped, and he meant to keep her that way. For now, he had all of the power and he knew it. However much she dealt with the denial in it, the prospect of seeing daylight and freedom a little sooner was worth the risk of not rejecting him fully. She would tell this new king anything he wanted to hear in order to have the warmth of sunlight on her face. She may not be in control of her life, but Mary was a far more worthy opponent than Francois had bargained for. And being a Tudor meant she knew how to get what she wanted. . . .

Yes, eventually she would.

From the luxury of the jumbled satin bedding strewn across his massive tester bed, the heraldic symbol sewn into the silk behind them, Jane Popincourt watched the movements of his magnificent bare body. Tanned and fit, he strode like a lion past a mural depicting the life of Saint John. God, she thought, but Henry VIII was a beautiful man.

Finally, she was with him in the way she had believed for nearly all of her life that she wanted. Small moments between them had convinced her at a very young age that one day he might actually love her. That fantasy had colored and changed her entire life. She knew about his affair with Bessie Blount, and about Elizabeth Fitzwalter before her. Like the other two girls, Jane attended Queen Katherine every day. But none of them had mattered an hour ago. Jane realized now she had used Thomas Knyvet only in order to hurt Henry. She had used Louis d’Orleans to hurt herself. She had no excuse for what she had just done with the King of England.

Like some great bubble that had burst before her, Jane saw now with a raw clarity she had never had before that Henry did not love her. In all likelihood, he did not even actually like her. The only place in his heart for that depth of enduring sentiment had been with Mary. Not even his wife but only ever Mary. He did not even seem aware of Jane now as he picked up a stack of letters and began to leaf through them, his bare back to her, as if she were not even there.

The rumor was that Bessie Blount was pregnant with the king’s child. He would not have as much use for a pregnant mistress, Jane had reasoned in the tense moments after he had sent for her unexpectedly. She had walked, trembling with every step, surrounded by a coterie of his guards, toward the royal bedchamber, as a willing, fresh conquest. The queen had only recently been delivered of yet another stillborn child—this one the much needed son, so that the king could barely look at her. He dined with her only on state occasions now, or when she absolutely would not be avoided.

It was a little world, this place, a microcosm called the English court. Here, gossip was so rampant that everyone knew everything eventually, Jane thought, watching Henry’s every sinewy muscle, every move of his broad, bare body, and trying not to feel the depth of his indifference. Oddly, watching Henry, she thought of Longueville instead. Like Henry and Knyvet, he was a completely unacceptable man for her—noble, important, married. Yet no one had made a more indelible impression on her heart. And then last month, Mary had written that his wife had died in childbirth. The fantasy of Longueville, as it once had with Henry, had increased ever since. This distasteful event with the king had been a tying off, a completion. She had thought she wanted it. Now she was grateful to be done with it.