The Secret Bride

by Diane Haeger

  Charles did not argue further. Wolsey had convinced him that he was right. She must go with Jane. He must go to France. That was all the future there was for Charles and Mary just now. All that there could be until the time was right.

  On the eve of Henry’s departure for France, on his mission to aid in the Holy Church’s recovery of Bordeaux and to gain back for England that which had been lost at the legendary battle of Agincourt a century before, he knelt on cold stone inside the royal chapel. He lowered his head as he received Wolsey’s exceedingly reverently delivered Latin blessing, and the melodic sound of the murmured words was a tonic to the fear overwhelming him. Fanciful thoughts, through the mists of time, of Sir Galahad, Lancelot and Henry V, had been replaced with trepidation and even a hint of dread. The French were a powerful force and would not surrender land easily no matter how methodical or powerful was his strategy. But chivalric glory was the only way to win respect with his powerful allies, Maximilian, Pope Julius and Ferdinand, from which his youth and inexperience had so far kept him.

  “God grant me the strength and the wisdom of my father, and those who came before us both,” he murmured like a prayer. “Let me be half the warrior king that he was.”

  Piously, he made the sign of the cross, drew in a breath, then stood and went to bid farewell to the queen, who was pregnant again. He found her alone in her bedchamber, a collection of maps of Europe tacked up on the walls. They were similar to his, yet most of these were written over with what looked like routes or directions. There were books lying open on top of her bed—books about war—a large statue of her patron saint, Catherine, and between the maps a large Spanish cross hung. When Katherine came to him, he saw that she was dressed for travel, in a long rose-colored riding jacket over her dress, bulging in front, and a simple unadorned hat. She clutched a pair of fawn brown riding gloves in her clean, jewel-free hand. Her dark eyes glittered with commitment.

  “It is impossible, Katherine.”

  “But I want to go with you, Hal. I know I could actually be a help to you. I have studied naval strategy! I know all about the French. I am the daughter of a warrior queen. You know my heritage. I ache for my chance to prove myself, as you do. Our chance is now! And you were the one who entrusted me with writing the dispatches to Venice. I could advise you as we go along.”

  He touched her softly rounded belly gently to calm her.

  “No, mi amore. It is not safe for you in your condition. We must both think first of the child.”

  “My place is by your side. Other aides have gone.”

  “But not the mother of the next king of England,” he reminded her tenderly when he saw too much desperation in her passionate, black Spanish eyes. This was her third pregnancy in four years without a living child, and they both knew how serious it was that she soon produce an heir who could survive. “Besides, you are to be regent here in my absence.”

  Her intense expression changed quickly to one of marked surprise. “Regent?”

  “Who else has studied the situation as you have?”

  He could see her overcome with pride, and the disappointment withered beneath it. The proud and wise daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella would finally be called upon to do more than produce a child. Henry valued his wife—he loved her deeply—and he wanted her to know that without doubt. This was his gift to her. Now if only she would give him a son.

  Chapter Eleven

  The common folk do not go to war of their own accord but are driven to it by the madness of kings.

  —Sir Thomas More

  August 1513, Lille,France

  By late summer on a hot and dry day as Henry sat astride a magnificent white Barbary horse, caparisoned in tooled silver and crimson velvet, gilded stirrups hanging from his saddle, he rode victoriously through the countryside, Charles, as always, right beside him.

  The young girls of the town followed behind bearing garlands of flowers. Behind them were attendants and forces that were strung out for miles. Numbering nearly a thousand riders were his courtiers and servants, including six hundred guardsmen, over thirty of his physicians, his pages and his secretaries. He was also accompanied by a personal bowyer, a trumpeter and his own minstrels, then gunners and black-smiths to keep the weapons working and the camps comfortable. Behind them rode his favorites, the Duke of Buckingham and Thomas Wolsey, brought along for his ability to deal and negotiate with the French. Wolsey’s own motivation for coming had been to ensure that Buckingham did not steal too much ground with the king.

  “Not at all bad for a summer’s work,” Brandon leaned over to remark behind a hand, gloved and studded with silver.

  Henry smiled, and waved to the crowds surging forward around them. A moment before, just as they passed beneath the city gates, a herald in royal green livery had ridden up beside the king with an urgent dispatch. The news was somber; Edward Howard had been killed at sea, trying to avenge the death of Thomas Knyvet and to revive his honor with the king. But Henry had little time to grieve, especially for a friend he believed had disappointed him.

  This was a moment to savor, for which he had waited all of his life. They had challenged the French and they had been victorious. Advised to protect himself by dashing out ahead of the trouble, Henry had refused, enduring instead the entire battle with his soldiers. After fighting in the dust-choked mists, nine standards were taken and dozens of notable French prisoners who would be held for ransom, before the French troops sped hotly into retreat.

  Henry had single-handedly changed the world’s view of himself, riding bravely before his men, creating a legend of his own—the conquering hero, taking back first Therouanne, then Tournai and five other walled towns that had once belonged to the English. It was not the French crown, which he coveted, but it was a beginning. Now that he had tasted victory, Henry had every intention of returning to France the next spring for a second campaign, and conquering more of the country. The respect he had so craved he had at last received. At the taking of Therouanne, Emperor Maximilian, who had attended the English during their victory, rode at a discreet distance into the town behind Henry. It was a symbolic gesture whose significance was not lost on Henry.

  Now forty miles away, just outside the town of Lille, Henry walked into the massive tent erected there, tanned and handsome, amid dozens of candle lamps flickering on crisp white damask. He was weary and still wearing light armor over a doublet of cloth of silver, but at least he had been doused with the scent of ambergris by one of his gentlemen servants and his hair had been combed by another.

  He drew in a breath to collect himself, then wrapped a weary arm across Charles Brandon’s shoulder. They were comrades in arms as they moved deeper into the huge, magnificently ornamented tent. Their hostess had constructed it in a vast, open meadow surrounded by flaming torches and urns of flowers and plants. Their hostess, Margaret, Regent of the Netherlands and daughter of the emperor, Maximilian, sat now in the center of the tent on a chair, cushioned in purple velvet, to receive them.

  She was mildly attractive, Henry thought, seeing her for the first time. For a woman of her age she was remarkably slender and tall, with chestnut hair and green eyes that in this light looked to him slightly exotic. He lifted the glass of heady vin de Beaune that was offered to him, and drank deeply from it to help bring back his carefree smile. Then he and Brandon went to her together.

  The triumph Henry felt over the day must be balanced with decorum and enough humor to make an impression. It was important to him. While he was politically allied with the emperor against France, the issue of Mary’s marriage still lingered unresolved between them. Henry felt desperate to save political face, and to solidify the still uncertain liaison between his sister and Margaret’s nephew, Charles of Castile. At the moment, ingratiating himself with the lovely widow before him seemed the most expedient path to achieving that. When she invited him to congratulate him on his victory—and presumably to discuss her nephew’s upcoming marriage to Mary—he readily agreed. Watching
her eyes follow Brandon, then flicker with interest at his irritatingly handsome friend, a thought occurred to Henry. Margaret stood and curtsied just slightly as Henry took her hand.

  “Lady Margaret, it is an honor.” He turned to Brandon beside him then. “You will have heard of my dearest friend, Charles Brandon, Viscount Lisle?”

  She nodded, smiled. “Your reputation does precede you, Lord Lisle.”

  “I hope only the better parts.”

  “Ah, yet those parts would hold little fascination for me.”

  Her eyes were wide and pretended an innocence that was slightly appealing even to Henry as he watched the exchange.

  “Dance with her, Brandon,” Henry said impulsively, his smile made wide by the second goblet of wine he had been given. “That is, if she will dance with you.”

  Henry watched the slight girlish flush rise onto Margaret’s cheeks. Looking at her, a woman of thirty-three now, it was still easy to see she had been lovely once. Her mouth and her eyes wrinkled at the corners, deepening when she smiled, but he liked that about her. It marked a life fully lived, he thought, the bad and the good. He also saw Brandon’s charismatic response—that charming smile, a hand easily extended. He always secretly marveled at his friend’s unfailing ability with women. He had known Brandon was good—he had not forgotten how good, but it had been a long time since he had seen it played out before him, and never so easily on a woman so influential.

  Henry knew the rumor about Brandon and Mary. But he believed the idea that it was anything beyond flirtation was simply a creative fantasy wrought by bored courtiers. Mary knew her duty too well for that. She would marry the emperor’s grandson, as she was prepared to do, and that would be the end of it. But was it actually possible that what Buckingham had said was right? Could Brandon have designs on Mary beyond that charming brand of flirtation of his? Henry knew well enough that his friend was ambitious; he certainly had no illusions about that. Yet to think Charles would be foolish enough to covet Henry’s most prized possession seemed impossible.

  As quickly as he allowed the thought that Buckingham had set in his mind, Henry stubbornly refused it. No, Charles, his dear friend, would never be so great a fool. He was charming and ambitious, not stupid. But if any man had the ability to make an emperor’s daughter fall in love with him and face the challenge of convincing that same ruler that a Master of the Horse was a fit partner for his daughter—it was Charles Brandon. Seeing him with her now, Henry was certain of it. A middle-aged widow seemed just vulnerable enough to make such a notion not seem entirely absurd. Binding Brandon to Margaret in order to ensure Mary’s marriage at last to the Prince of Castile—now that would be like cream rising to the top of a rich cup of milk. Charles Brandon was probably the only man in the world who could make a lonely widow convince her powerful father that such an arrangement was her idea.

  Henry sat comfortably, watching them both with a discerning eye as they made their way across the vast high tent to the area set up for dancing by torchlight on grand Turkish carpets. He allowed the fantasy of it all to blossom fully in his mind. Henry smiled to himself, noticing then that Buckingham, agile and wiry, had been quick to sit beside him, occupying the seat that Wolsey had been lumbering awkwardly forward trying to take. His almoner stood for a moment, chin pressed into his neck, bushy brows fused, staring disgruntled at a row of chairs all taken up before he turned and found a seat several places away. Henry pretended not to notice the silent, all-too-common little power play. There was far too much infighting at court to take any of it. It was his courtiers’ problem, not his. Besides, right now he was far too fascinated by the wonderful little possibility of a dual marriage.

  “You dance impressively for a commoner, my lord,”

  Henry heard Margaret remark of Charles with a slightly giddy giggle as he bowed to her in time with the music.

  “And Your Highness dances even more impressively with a commoner. It cannot be easy.”

  “You make it feel so, my lord.”

  They turned again, bowed again, and the song was at an end. As they walked together to the dais, Henry greeted them, his youthful smile broad and beaming. As Margaret turned to speak with the Duke of Buckingham, Henry leaned in next to Brandon as he sank into the chair reserved for him at Henry’s other side.

  “Did you enjoy her?”

  “She is a tolerably good dancer.”

  “She is also a very important widow.”

  Brandon chuckled at that and took a swallow of his own wine from a goblet waiting for him beside a brimming bowl of fruit. “I have had my fill of widows, Henry, if you remember.”

  “This one is the Regent of the Netherlands, which would be rather a grand step up from your usual prey.”

  “A step up for whom?” Brandon focused on Henry then, and was silent for a moment amid the strains of another song that had just begun and which masked their conversation.

  “I know that look.” Henry smiled cleverly.

  “A look only of concern, I assure you.”

  “Why would it be so? You are an unmarried man and a remarkably ambitious one at that.”

  “Emperors’ daughters do not align themselves with knights, or even viscounts.”

  “Ah, but they do, from time to time, align themselves with important dukes.”

  Brandon sharpened his gaze as he fingered the silver wine goblet. “And do you know of a particular important young duke who is yet unmarried?”

  “Your service to me has been invaluable, Charles, as has your friendship. You know that. You deserve an ample reward for this campaign.” Henry toyed with the signet ring on his forefinger. “I had planned to announce it when we returned to England, but there is no reason my most trusted friend in the world should not know my intention now.”

  “You are making a Master of the Horse into a duke?”

  “I am seeing my greatest friend in the world made Duke of Suffolk. I say this only by way of telling you that, should you come to have an interest in a certain beautiful princess”—he began to smile broadly until he saw the odd expression that dawned on Charles’s face, one almost of surprise—“and if she were to return that interest, you should know that your status would put you within reach of such a liaison.”

  “Your Highness’s faith in me is an honor to which I shall try to be worthy,” he only said.

  “I have no doubt.” Henry smiled. “Because I do have the utmost faith in you.”

  In the semi-darkness of dawn, Charles sat hunched, legs sprawled and bare, on the edge of the bed beside a sleeping Margaret, and raked his hands back through his hair. He should be enormously proud of himself, knowing he had not lost his touch. Instead, he was angry and not a little disgusted. He could not look back at her sleeping there peacefully beside him. He could blame what had happened last night on too much of her sweet French wine, or the lateness of the hour. He could try that. . . . He could blame it on the powerful needs of a man like himself, or even on her willingness.

  In the night, a servant had slipped in and neatly arranged the regent’s dress, her petticoats, her stockings and her small jeweled slippers. But, in a clear, silent statement, his clothing had been left in a pile on the floor as he had discarded them beside her bed. Charles frowned and pushed away the surge of memories filling his mind. Henry had asked him to consider marrying Margaret, not to bed with her. But the only person he wished ever to marry was the one woman he could not have. The same one who had ridden off to Hampton Court without so much as a farewell. That small bit of defiance he could still maintain had taunted him into what had happened last night, and he almost made himself believe it.

  “It is a lovely morning,” Margaret said on a sigh, her voice slightly honeyed and rich, yet, mercifully, nothing at all like Mary’s.

  The sound of it brought Charles back to the reality of his life, and his situation, very boldly, as the sun through the windows deepened to pink and gold.

  He felt her hands on his shoulders then and her breasts aga
inst his back. “Tell me, Charles, what would you like to do on this glorious day?”

  Would that I could just see Mary’s face instead smiling back at me when I turned around . . . feel her sweet breath moving through my hair . . . know that my day, all of it, would be spent in her company.

  “I, of course, must serve at the king’s pleasure.”

  “Has he not an ample supply of courtiers and advisers to call upon for that?”

  “For some reason, His Highness considers me indispensable.”

  “I can see where he would.”

  Brandon stood and turned back to her, determined to face what he had done by regarding her fully in the broad light of morning. The emperor’s daughter lay on her side, her breasts full and her curved hips slender. Her hair, obviously once a rich chestnut brown, now bearing shafts of silver, fell to the side across the spray of pillows behind her. He thought then, cruelly, perhaps, how she had seemed so much more attractive by lamplight. She held out her warm, slim hand, and for a moment he actually considered taking it and letting her draw him back against her. But that would solve nothing, and it would complicate everything. It certainly would not ease the ache battering his heart and closing off his mind to the honor Henry had paid him by offering a dukedom, as well as a regal marriage, and the trust and love that it implied.

  She fingered a coil of his tousled hair just above his neck in a seductive way that drew him back to the moment. “Would I embarrass you, Charles, if I told you that you remind me a great deal of my husband?”

  Charles stopped for a moment, surprised. He looked at her again, hearing something vulnerable in that. May God forgive me, he thought, but until that moment he had not felt an ounce of compassion for her, or thought of her like the flesh-and-blood woman she was. For any other man in the world, she would be a magnificent partner—a prize. “You would honor me,” he finally responded, trying to press away the mounting guilt for how sincere he knew he was sounding to her.