by Diane Haeger
That night, Mary and Jane lay together in Mary’s bed, protected by the tapestry bed curtains drawn around them, and cuddling as they had when they were little girls. Jane’s nearness was a comfort when so much around her was changing.
Finally, all of the women who watched her every move, anticipating her needs, had gone to bed, and she had a bit of peace. Beyond the curtains, with only the slightest parting for a shaft of light, Mary’s rooms were full of open trunks, paintings down from their mountings, folded gowns, stuffed jewelry caskets, writing supplies, books, all prepared for packing. They were gathering everything she would need to take with her to France.
Even though the hour was late neither she nor Jane could sleep. They had needed to gossip and share, for both of them had stories they could tell to no other, and the evening had been long and humorous. After the proxy wedding, Henry had insisted on the symbolic intimacy between Mary and Longueville, witnessed and duly recorded. With Charles’s wounded eyes upon her and in the middle of all of the other attendants, Longueville, with a single bare leg, had joined Mary, in a silk and lace nightdress, in this very bed. With more witnesses than at a royal bear-baiting, he then touched one of Mary’s bare legs with his foot in what she found a bizarre, yet required, symbolic act. Only then were they allowed to rise, dress again, try to forget the embarrassment of the moment, and attend a wedding banquet.
“What is it like to actually make love?” Mary finally asked Jane on a whisper, looking up into the darkened canopy, her eyelids finally heavy with a need to sleep.
“It hurts at first. Then, before you know it, it is the most wonderful thing there is in the world.”
“And do you love Longueville?”
Jane looked at her, silent for a moment. “He is married with children back in France. But, yes, he makes me happier than I ever thought I could be again. I thank God every day that he will be returning with us, and that we can steal a bit of time together there.”
“You do not care if you are never made a wife?”
“Not if I have him beside me, no. Oh, do you think me awful, Mary? I’m sorry, but it is the truth.”
“I think you want love, and you have found it—albeit in an inconvenient place, yet you’ve found it nonetheless.”
“As you have.”
“As I have.” She kissed Jane’s smooth cheek then and let out a heavy sigh. “What would I do without you in France to confide in, to share with me? I accept my life there with an old and sick husband, but I certainly could not bear it without you.”
Jane laughed softly. “Moi aussi,” she said, then lifted Mary’s hand to study the black onyx and silver ring newly on her forefinger. “From him?”
“How did you know?”
“By the way you look at it, as if it is the Duke of Suffolk himself you are gazing at.”
Now Mary laughed. “I admired it long ago, and he said he wanted me to have something with me always so that I would never forget him.”
“We are not the sort of women who could ever do that. Is there no reasoning with the king? Perhaps asking him to include the Duke of Suffolk in your train who will accompany us? That at least might soften the blow for you both.”
“I was told by Wolsey that my brother leaves for London at first light. He says it is business, but I suspect he does not wish to risk any argument with me until I am safely on the ship at England’s shore. He and Katherine have promised to meet me at Dover to bid me farewell.”
“Poor Katherine—it is little wonder that she would want to be there for you. She knows well enough about leaving her home, and all that she loves, to do the duty to which she was born.”
“That she does.” Mary looked over at her friend then, both of their faces cast in shadow and light as a small, genuine smile began to turn her mouth into a little mirthful half-moon. “In spite of the risks, I really am so glad you will return to see France again, and with Longueville, although if I am ever asked, I will deny to the death that I ever said so scandalous a thing.”
Jane was still smiling, which was a sight Mary would never take for granted again. “Merci, ma meilleure amie.
And something good for you will come of this marriage. I know it.”
“By the look of his face in the portrait he sent, the best I can hope for is that my husband’s illness prevents him from most things,” said Mary as her own brave smile began very swiftly to fade. “But I suspect it will not prevent him from it all.”
“What is this? We leave within the hour and you’re not even dressed,” Mary exclaimed, hands on her hips, as Jane sat curled in the window seat, knees to her chest.
“There has been a change of plans.”
“Whose?”
“The French king has spoken with your brother. I am unwelcome in France. It seems my behavior with a certain duke has scandalized even the French court and I am no longer considered a suitable companion for a virginal English bride.”
“That is preposterous! I will go to Harry myself. I will make him see that without you—”
“You waste your breath. I have just spoken with His Highness myself. It seems some part of his fond childhood memories are not entirely cut off to me, thus he did me the courtesy of informing me himself. Your future husband’s words apparently were rather to the point: he would rather see me burned alive than there to serve his queen.”
The harshness in that surprised Mary and made her despise Louis already. What a vile man he must be to judge Jane . . . to punish Mary when Jane alone would have brought her comfort in a foreign place. It was a foul thing to be a princess, not to have a life of one’s own.
Mary went to Jane and sank onto the window seat beside her. They both gazed down then onto the mist-shrouded, undulating countryside, dotted with sheep and poplar trees.
It was a vista, Mary realized then, she was not likely to see again for a very long time.
“I cannot bear the thought that I will not have Charles or you any longer in my life.”
“You shall be without your Charles and I shall be without my own Louis. We shall be bonded forever by our misfortune and unhappiness in that, no matter where we are.”
Mary kissed Jane’s cheek. But she spoke no more words. This was not their safe little storybook haven at Eltham. They were little girls no longer. Duty, obligation, that was what lay ahead. Both of them were being made to know that well enough indeed.
Mary and the retinue assigned to accompany her made their way toward the Dover shore, an impressive collection of over one hundred noble ladies-in-waiting, gentlewomen of the chamber, chaplains, her almoner, her own yeomen grooms, everyone she could have wished—but the two she cared about most. She had left Greenwich Palace in a litter, sealing herself up tightly behind the tapestry curtains as if to hide, without saying good-bye to Charles or to Jane because the pain of it would have been almost unbearable. Their final moments, and that last conversation with his sister, Anne, moved through her mind, snaking down over her wounded heart, as Mary stepped down from the litter and onto the dock, wind blowing her hair.
“Take care of him, will you?”
“I will watch over him, always, as he does me. You know, of course, that it will not be the same. There will never be another you for Charles.”
“He is all that is my heart, or ever shall be.”
She felt like a child now, uncertain, afraid, angry . . . so many things as they finally neared the shoreline. Mostly what she felt was desperation for the familiar, for the England behind her, when she turned toward the ink-black stormy water and saw the king’s newly completed ship, the Mary Rose, bobbing in the harbor awaiting them. Her brother awaited her too and as she joined him she saw tears shining in his eyes.
Katherine stood a pace away, arms wrapped around her waist. His sorrow was a surprise to Mary; she had not seen her brother show anything near to sorrow since they were small.
“I told you one day I would name a ship after you.”
“You told me a great many things. Like you
would never want the two of us parted.”
“You will make a splendid queen,” he finally said in a voice that broke, as they walked alone together the final few paces out onto the bobbing wharf. “Forgive me, my Mary. But it is right for England and for France.”
Yet it is not right for me. . . . She longed to say that but there was no point in it. It was her duty. She would do it. She was proud. A Tudor. Charles knew that and understood it as well as she did. Still, the seed of an idea planted by Wolsey had grown to an obsession now in Mary’s mind. Queen or not, this could not be the sum of her life. Her father had made two daughters who were far too determined for that.
Suddenly, Mary wished more than anything that she could speak with her sister, Margaret, whom she had not seen since she was seven years old. Mary longed for her counsel, and had sought it in so many others at court; Lady Guildford, Jane, even Charles’s sister, Anne. Yet Margaret alone would know how she might smoothly bring about a second marriage of her own choosing after a sacrifice made for England.
“Do not look at me like that, Mary. This must happen,”
Henry declared, a guilt she could hear bleeding through his every word. “You must understand. It is not a question of what I would want. It is what England requires!”
“And I am your loyal servant. Yet, grant me one favor and you will ease the burden upon my heart.”
He half smiled, and she realized he must be a little relieved by the idea that he could do something to lighten the burden of guilt he felt.
“I will go to France and marry the old King Louis. But if I am widowed, I ask only one small thing: allow me to make my future my own. After I have been useful to you, permit me to choose my own path.”
“But you are a princess, a king’s sister. Without Margaret now, I may well have need—”
“Do this for me, Harry. I bid you for all of our little remembered moments, for what we have always meant to one another. . . . Give me this one small gift to hold on to. . . . Allow a young woman with dreams to feel that my life is not entirely lost already. Let me hope, girlish and silly as it is, for happiness and love one day before my death.”
“Are you not a trifle young to be considering your death?” Henry asked.
“Tell that to our brother, Arthur.”
He was silent for a moment. His half smile became a frown. “If I agree to this you will go to France? And you’ll not make me feel more guilt, as only you have the power to do?”
“Willingly and without complaint.”
“Then it is promised by us both,” said Henry VIII, the grudging half smile returning as tears slid onto his bearded chin.
Mary could hardly believe what she had heard, what she had got him to promise. Yes, Wolsey had put the notion into her head but she had never actually believed in her heart that Henry would agree to something like that, especially after what Margaret had done to him. Now, just when things seemed the darkest, Mary actually felt she suddenly had something to give her strength. Something at least to hope for.
“Then I will wait with all patience and hope for what my brother promised,” she said.
“Yes, yes . . .” He swatted the air with a dismissive gesture, tired of the cold, the rain, and anxious to get back to his mistress now that this was resolved. “I did promise. One day, if you are widowed, you may have your way in it.”
He held her close then and, in that single fleeting moment, she could feel a desperation in their connection. “God-speed, my Mary,” Henry whispered.
God speed me back to England, Mary was thinking. And pray God, Charles waits for me because he knows nothing at all of any of this.
Chapter Fourteen
On the twenty-second of September 1514, King Louis 12th, very old and feeble, left Paris, to go to meet his young wife, Queen Mary.
—Louise de Savoy, from her journal September 1514, Abbeville, France They met in a town along the silvery, snaking Somme River. The wedding would take place not in Paris but amid the lush beauty of the French countryside. The ambassador explained that Louis wished to meet his bride without the delay of the long trip further on to Paris. Mary knew it was an old man wanting to make his best impression first on a beautiful young bride. So far it was succeeding, she thought, as she rode in her open litter down the long tree-lined causeway toward the grand and elegant brick Hotel de la Gruthuse.
She could already see that France was a completely different world from that which she had left behind. The trees, the sounds, even the fragrances of the flowers were different. An arc of plane trees, and a border of blood-red poppies and pink delphiniums, lined the gravel path that twisted and swayed in the warming late summer breeze.
Mary laid her head back against the cushion, closed her eyes and tried very hard not to see an image of Charles in her mind. This was survival now, and to do that she must not think of him, nor could she acknowledge her longing even to herself.
She must be more clever than her heart by half if she were to achieve her hopes. She withdrew from the litter with help from Lady Guildford and Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk, who was Buckingham’s daughter. Also chosen to accompany her, from a long list considered, were Mary’s familiar companion Lady Oxford, who was Norfolk’s daughter, and her friend Lady Monteagle. Elizabeth dutifully arranged Mary’s headdress, then straightened her thick silk skirts. The Duke of Norfolk, also selected for the journey, stood stoic and fatherly beside her litter, waiting. Mary’s legs were stiff from the journey, and she was still weak from the seasickness she had suffered on the crossing. Mary had eaten little since she had left England. But, nevertheless, she was a striking figure in cloth of gold on crimson, with tight English-style sleeves, and a headdress of matching crimson silk. She gave a defiant toss of her head, determined absolutely not to show the complexity of feeling behind her false smile. She meant with every part of herself to be the most remarkable queen possible and, pray God, the queen of shortest duration in France.
Before her, across a gravel-covered courtyard and past a grand stone fountain, a small delegation was waiting to greet her. Oh, how she missed Jane at this moment! Jane . . . who would have smoothed the way for her and made this first moment even the tiniest bit less awkward.
In the center of the well-dressed men, in their brocade doublets and fashionably padded trunk hose, jewels and chains, stood one much taller than the others—a chestnut-haired man with a regal air. That cannot be the king, Mary thought smugly; he is not nearly old or sickly enough. She bit back a smile as he came forward, hands clasped behind his back, chin lifted to an arrogant tilt and his amber-colored eyes glittering beneath heavy lids and long dark lashes.
“Your Highness,” he said in French, making her a reverent bow and sweeping a jeweled hand dramatically before him. “I welcome you to Abbeville. I am Francois d’Angouleme, duc de Valois, His Majesty’s son-in-law and heir.”
The last word left his lips on a slight note of challenge, just as his eyes met hers. Of course, she thought, the opportunistic son of Louise de Savoy, husband of Louis XII’s daughter. On the stormy trip from Dover, the duc de Longueville had told her all about them, and how Louise had made it her life’s work to see her son one day on the French throne. He certainly cannot welcome me here, the potential mother of the child who would unseat him. No matter how ingratiatingly he smiled now, Francois could never be a friend. Mary made a proper curtsy in return, then met his eyes fully, almost in a challenge of her own.
“I trust your journey was a pleasant one,” he added.
Pleasant as death, leaving behind those I love. “Pleasant enough.”
“You are even lovelier than I was told.”
“And you are even more clever than they said.”
“Your Highness’s French is very good.”
“I have spoken it all of my life, so there are few things that will get past me here.”
Francois bit back a smile and nodded to her, his match having been well and quickly met in this proud little English girl before him. �
�I am certain you are anxious to meet your husband.”
“Most anxious, especially knowing how many others are looking forward to witnessing it.”
“Indeed they are. How did you know?”
“Everyone likes a good show, monsieur. I suspect your king and I are about to give them one which everyone will be speaking about for many years to come.”
So the arrogant heir is to be my true challenge here, she thought ruefully as Francois began to lead her, and her ladies, up the sweeping outdoor staircase and into the palace in a flurry and rustle of silk and petticoats. He did not speak further as they entered the palace and he led them up a second grand curved flight of stairs to the king’s private apartments. But there was nothing positive he might have said to alter her impression. She did not like him.
They moved through a vast presence chamber decorated with massive Flemish tapestries, the ceiling painted azure and studded with gold fleurs-de-lys. It was stuffed with petitioners and ambassadors who had been waiting for hours to ask for favors or to do business with the king. They were silenced instantly by Mary as she passed, and she felt their eyes rooted on her. And she could not help but notice their manner. The French court was obviously an entirely different place from the English court she had thought of as glamorous. Now suddenly she felt out of place, that even her loveliest gowns would appear common. She also felt as if they were whispering as she passed, judging her. Imagine an English girl, she heard them say, the foreign princess pretending to be a proper French queen.