Reluctant Queen: Tudor Historical Novel About Mary Rose Tudor, the Defiant Little Sister of King Henry VIII (43 page)

Mary couldn’t help the flutter of pleasure she felt when she heard that Charles was coming home on one of his infrequent visits. For all the shame she felt over his behaviour, he was her husband still and she loved him. But his homecoming would be bitter-sweet, reminding her, as it did, of other, more loving homecomings.

She pushed the thought from her mind and set the servants in a flurry preparing his favourite dishes. He had become fond of turkey, which they had enjoyed during the meeting with King Francis when he and Henry had entertained each other at the Field of the Cloth of Gold - how long ago that now seemed.

So the turkeys were caught and butchered and were roasting with a mouth-watering aroma that filled the house by the time Charles arrived home.

Mary felt a frisson of alarm when she first saw him. She was surprised to see how grey he had become. He seemed frayed. But how could he be otherwise? Mary thought sadly as she greeted him. Was he not in constant attendance on Henry and his demanding harpy? Anne Boleyn on her own was enough to fray any man, but Henry’s temper was also becoming increasingly unpredictable.

Worried by the strain he must daily endure, Mary did her best to cosset him. She led him to the solar where a good fire burned and ordered him a mulled ale, a warming drink on a chill day. Gradually, with the draining of the ale, he leaned back in his chair and Mary was relieved to see some of the tension drain out of him.

Later, after supper, as Charles, overfull of good wine, lounged before the fire, he was restored enough to tell her some of Henry’s doings. He even managed to make her laugh when he revealed the many and varied ways her brother was trying to get his own way over the divorce.

Goaded by Anne and her tantrums, Henry had produced a bevy of plans over the months to persuade Pope Clement to grant him the divorce, all equally ludicrous.

He had despatched agents to Rome with assorted instructions. He had proposed that Catherine should enter a nunnery and if, as seemed likely, she insisted on Henry entering a cloister at the same time, the Pope was to help him extricate himself from his unwelcome hooded chastity.

Mary laughed so hysterically at the idea of her larger-than-life brother becoming a monk that even Charles, to whom all this must be painfully familiar, also began to splutter. The abstinence of such a life, would alone, without the chastity, not be in Henry’s capability for more than half a day, Mary knew. His vows would be broken at the first sight of a well-stuffed goose or a well-filled bodice.

Charles said, ‘and if the Pope failed to do your brother’s bidding, the agents had instructions to investigate the novel notion of allowing the king two wives at the same time.’

Mary shook her head in amazement. And as her well-wined and dined husband emptied another glass of wine, he tipsily confided more information. ‘Your brother had the foresight to find examples of multiple partners being permitted and he provided quotes from the Old Testament to back up his arguments.’

Such schemes, must, even to Henry, have seemed unlikely of success. But Mary sobered as she realised that such acts showed her brother’s increasing desperation. Ridiculous as Henry’s antics were, they were truly no laughing matter; the lines of strain on Charles’s face, softened now by the mellow candlelight, bore witness to that. As did his determined burying of his head in his wine goblet.

Mary knew, too, how distressed Catherine was at not being permitted to see her own daughter. But, of course, she had not best-pleased Henry when she had written to the Pope complaining that she would have no justice in England and asked him to transfer judgement on the divorce to Rome – which he had done.

Mary knew better than to ask for news of Catherine; it was one sure way to force an argument and Mary wanted this reconciliation to be a happy one for it would no doubt have to sustain her for many weeks. Her heart softened as she looked at Charles. Sprawled in his seat by the fire, his face highlighted by the flames, he looked more weary than ever. High position and the favour of Henry and Anne Boleyn had clearly brought him little of the joy he had expected; his face was becoming more lined, his hair more grey each time she saw him. Mary wished they could go back and build their life together on a footing more firm than the rocky ground of Henry’s goodwill. But she had chosen to snatch at happiness in Paris and they were both now paying the price.

As Mary studied her weary husband, drowsy from the heat of the fire and the quantity of wine he had consumed, and recalled the worn-down content of his conversation she sensed, for the first time, his longing to escape the sticky web in which he had become ensnared. Hope stirred in her breast as it occurred to her he might now be ready to listen to her. It might yet be possible for Charles to extricate himself from the mess of Henry’s desires. He seemed more open to the suggestion tonight than she had ever dared hope. Their marriage, which for long after their son’s death had seemed a poor thing of snatched meetings and abrupt partings, might again become what it had once been.

Mary rose, moved across to him and knelt at his feet. ‘Stay here with me, my love,’ she urged. ‘Let my brother and his harlot fight their own battles. They have worn you out with their demands.’

As he turned her suggestion over his expression lightened and Mary’s hopes rose as she watched him. He was older and wiser now; surely he had discovered that having the king’s confidence was not such a marvellous thing. Had he not the evidence of Wolsey to help him see the truth of this? For the Cardinal, for all his ability and greatness and for all the years he had spent serving Henry, was now out of favour.

But Mary’s hopes were short-lived. For after draining his wine and refilling the goblet, the light went out of his countenance and she knew he would reject the temptation she had put before him.

‘Would that it were that simple,‘ he told her. ‘I am too deeply enmeshed in this thing now. I must continue. Even should the king permit me to ease myself out, Anne Boleyn would not and she rules the king. Even if she were to agree, there is still Wolsey to consider. Should he somehow manage to worm himself back into the king’s favour, he would waste no time ensuring I lost it. Too many bitter things have been said and done over this divorce for him to take any other course. No.’ Charles drank off the latest goblet and for all that his consumption had been heavy, he seemed more sober than on his arrival. ‘This divorce must be brought to conclusion and for my health’s sake I need to be at the king’s side when it is. Whether it be done with or without the Pope.’

‘Without the Pope?’ Mary didn’t understand. ‘If the Pope doesn’t agree, there can be no divorce. How could there be?’

Charles gave a world-weary laugh. ‘How I envy you your naivety over this matter, sweetheart. Would that I had appreciated more the quiet pleasures of country living when I had the chance.’ He leaned forward and caressed her cheek as if he found it difficult to believe a woman could have such softness in her. ‘Anne Boleyn’s tongue grows sharper by the day. She goads the king increasingly and the rest of us must bear the brunt. You cannot begin to realise how I long for what I once had and failed to appreciate. Does it give you any satisfaction, Mary, to know you were right and I was wrong? Daily I am finding that ambition and power are not as sweet as I thought.

‘Wolsey is on his way out; the recall of the divorce to Rome made sure of that. It is only a matter of time now, but I must remain at court to make sure he falls. And although he has retired to his manor of The Moor and the king bade Norfolk and me to take back his great seal of office, the king is still fond of him. It is not impossible that that wily churchman might even now wangle for himself a return to the king’s favour.’

Mary had heard about Charles and the Duke of Norfolk’s visit to Wolsey. She had heard that the Cardinal had confounded them by demanding to see the written order from the king for the return of the great seal of office. But such had been their haste, they had not thought to obtain it and had been forced to slope off without the seal, much to their mutual fury. Charles had said nothing of this to Mary and she knew better than to remind him of it.

‘I still don’t understand,’ she said. ‘If Wolsey should fall there are other churchmen to take his place. Wolsey is not the church, merely one part of it.’

‘No. If – when – Wolsey falls, the church falls with him. The Lutheran leanings of many at court, Anne Boleyn included, daily fill the king’s head with new ideas.’

Mary stared at her husband in horror. ‘But - but,’ she eventually managed to burst out, ‘that way leads to civil war, the Papal interdict and horror.’ The dead would remain unburied, babies unbaptised and the betrothed unmarried. Briefly, Mary thought of Frances and the tantrums that would have to be endured at any suggestion that marriage and freedom from parental restraint might be delayed.

‘Your brother says he gives not a fig for the Pope or his interdicts. He thinks to do away with Rome and himself lead the church here in England. Woe betide any priest who tried to defy him by refusing the usual sacraments. Baptisms would still go ahead, weddings, funerals. Your brother would insist upon it, ensuring his will with as many executions as necessary. We are in for a time of great turmoil.’

And all because of the demands of her once little Maid of Honour, thought Mary. Little Anne of the too-short skirts, who, because she prized her ‘virtue’ so highly, demanded the destruction of the church which had denied her desires.

‘Surely, even Henry wouldn’t dare to take such a step.’ But even as she spoke, Mary knew she deceived herself. Henry would dare much and demand that the rest of the country dare also for his sake. Mary had barely touched her own wine, but now she snatched up her goblet and drank deeply, hoping the sweet Malmsey wine would somehow sugar her thoughts and blur the edges of such madness.

‘There are many to guide him that way,’ Charles told her. ‘I cannot risk not being one of his guides. Anne Boleyn’s influence is all now. If I am not with her and her desires I can only be against her. I’ve been involved too long and too deeply. My defection at this time would be regarded as treachery and the Lady Anne would take special care to ensure that the king also saw it in that light.’

Charles stared dolefully into the now-dying flames as if he saw his future there and liked not what he saw. ‘I am trapped, Mary. Don’t you see? Trapped by my own actions and ambitions. There is no going back for me. I can only go forward to the end of the road and to whatever destiny it holds.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

‘At last, that traitorous cur is dead. Pity he couldn’t have lingered a while and we’d have had the pleasure of seeing his fat head on a pole over London Bridge.’

Charles’s pleasure at Wolsey’s death saddened Mary, for she knew he had been a true friend. It pained her to think of all the humiliations that had chased him to the grave; titles and property had been taken from him; he, who had once thought nothing of entertaining hundreds to banquets in one of his splendid houses, had been forced to beg money from his chaplain to pay his servants’ wages. After his fall from grace and his ultimate banishment to his See of York, he and what had remained of his household had no sheets, nor even any beds to put them on.

She remembered his kindness to her when she had feared her marriage to Charles was no true marriage and was thankful death had spared him the ultimate humiliation—execution for treason.

Charles, with the knowledge that Wolsey would now never regain the king’s affection, had been able to spare time to come home to Westhorpe and attend to other matters. Their eldest daughter, Frances, was now betrothed. But in spite of Mary’s conviction that their daughter needed a strong man, one she couldn’t rule, Charles had decided differently and with the king’s agreement had betrothed Frances to her cousin, Henry Grey, third Marquis of Dorset.

Like Mary’s own husband, Henry Grey had been set to marry elsewhere and had been betrothed to the Lady Catherine Fitzalan. But he had cast aside this betrothal on the death of his father in order to marry the king’s niece. History had a habit of repeating itself, thought Mary. Here was another youth who would throw off old promises for ambition’s sake. Between her brother, her sister, her husband and her soon-to-be son-in-law, it was becoming quite a family tradition.

Disappointed in the match, she had tried to dissuade Charles from it, but he would brook no interference. Had not the king sanctioned the betrothal? But neither king nor father could sanction for happiness, and Mary foresaw little of this for her daughter. For Henry Grey was a weak-minded boy, not the strong man Mary knew her daughter needed. Moreover, his weak mind was filled with ambition.

Young Henry Grey now resided with them at Westhorpe so the young pair could get to know one another before they were wed. Charles had obtained the wardship of the boy, backed by the king’s recommendation, which amounted to a command and he was taken from his mother’s keeping and transferred to Charles’s guardianship for the remainder of his minority.

It hadn’t taken the determined Frances long to gain the upper hand over her betrothed. For once, Frances had made use of a certain subtlety, which would, Mary suspected, be discarded once they were formally married and she had the ruling of the empty-headed young Dorset.

Mary wondered what follies the pair - whose union fused the unhappy combination of greed, ambition and stupidity - might not be capable of together. Because follies there would surely be. How could there not be when her daughter’s wilful selfishness would receive no check? Denied the strong husband she needed, Frances’ worst traits could only deepen. Mary was saddened that a girl of thirteen could be so full of gall and bitterness. It was yet another thing for Mary to hold against Anne Boleyn. She was grateful she didn’t know what the future held, for the here and now held troubles enough.

It was near noon and they were at dinner, just a small family group. This last ensured that Frances should be full of pout. Her betrothed didn’t seem to notice Frances’ mood; all his attention was for his prospective father-in-law who had so recently returned from court.