Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (41 page)

“I’d not have thought young Ivo capable of murder,” Guy said.

“A reluctant killer.” I frowned, considering. “It was only when I said, in his hearing, that I would return to France, even without King Henry’s consent, that he acted to stop me.”

“Do you suppose Alain Jumelle had you confused with your mother, too? And yet, why would they suppose Longueville would take an old woman for his mistress?”

I stared at a tapestry showing a hunting scene. The border was filled to bursting with flowers in a multitude of varieties. “She would have been only a year or two older than he. And nothing
else explains King Louis’ contention that Jane Popyncourt should be burnt. If Maman
had
conspired to cause King Charles’s death, as Alain Jumelle made King Louis believe, then that would have been her fate.” I shuddered at the thought.

Guy wrapped his arms around me. “You are safe now.” Turning me in his arms, he lowered his head and kissed me. “Safe with me.”

I came to believe him when days turned into weeks and no one troubled us. Guy consulted a man of law and brought formal suit against Alain Jumelle to claim not only my inheritance, but reparations in the form of the other half of the property. While we waited for the outcome, Guy instructed me in the proper management of a country estate. During the warm summer nights, he taught me other things.

It was late July before our peace was shattered by the arrival of an urgent message from Beaugency.

F
ROM MY MANOR
house to Dunois Castle in Beaugency was but a few hours’ ride. We arrived less than a day after receiving word that the duke was on his deathbed. Longueville had not been wounded at the battle of Marignano, but he had fallen prey to that other battlefield killer, the flux. His recovery had been slow and incomplete, with frequent relapses, each one draining his strength more than the last. A year after the French victory over Milan, his defeat at the hands of this insidious illness seemed imminent.

I’d not have recognized my former lover. His skin had a ghastly grayish pallor. His once luxuriant black hair lay in dull, lank clumps and some of it had fallen out. His physicians had been dosing him with tincture of gold given in wine, but it did not appear to have done him any good.

Longueville looked first at Guy and then at me. He managed a
faint, ironic smile. “Would you have come to see me, Jane, if I were not dying?”

“Your Grace, you must not talk that way!” Tears sprang into my eyes, blinding me. I had never loved this man, but for what we had shared and lost, I grieved. I moved to the side of his bed and took one of his thin, wasted hands in mine. “You are young yet and strong. You must not lose your will to live.”

He snatched his hand away and his voice turned querulous. “Spare me your pity! I am neither a child nor a fool.”

Behind me, I heard Guy move closer. He did not touch me, but just having him near gave me strength. “You asked us here for a reason,” I reminded the duke.

It had come as a shock to realize that Longueville knew I was in France, but it had not taken much thought to understand how. By filing a lawsuit against Alain Jumelle, I had brought myself to the attention of the local gentry, and Beaugency was not that far distant from my father’s holdings. I wondered how exaggerated the story of our takeover of the manor house had become.

Ignoring me, Longueville now turned to Guy. “I have sent for a lawyer to make my will. You will receive nothing.”

“I did not expect anything, Your Grace. I have never expected anything.”

“And that is why you have been so valuable to me.” His voice grew fainter with each word and his eyes drifted closed.

“He needs to rest now,” a hovering physician whispered.

I started to move away, but clawlike fingers curled around my wrist, preventing my retreat. I looked down into the duke’s dark eyes and froze at the cold calculation I saw there.

“I have news for you, Jane. The king wants to meet you.”

My mouth went dry. “King François?”

More death rattle than laugh, the sound he made contained
nothing of humor or goodwill. His grip tightened and he tugged me closer, until my face was only inches from his and I could smell the fetid stench of illness on his breath.

“I told him all about you, Jane, what you like, how talented you are. He likes to hear such tales from his friends. He likes it when they share.”

A chill passed through me and I felt my face blanch.

“He knows how you won permission to leave England, too.” Another dry, rattling cackle issued from his thin, cracked lips. How had I ever thought that mouth appealing? “A warning, Jane. He will want to know what it was like to bed King Henry.”

I sensed rather than saw Guy’s shock. Too late to silence Longueville, I stood immobile, my hand still held prisoner in his, as he pounded more nails into my coffin.

“Give King François every detail, Jane. And then demonstrate what you did for one king to the other. Do that, and he will be inclined to be generous with you. He likes his mistresses lively but submissive. A few weeks, a few months, and you will have earned his gratitude. Your father’s lands, jewelry, mayhap even a wealthy courtier for a husband.”

When the duke had finished showering me with unwanted advice, I tugged my hand free. He lacked the strength to hold me. He watched me back away from him, his smile a death’s-head, and I wondered if this had been his idea of petty revenge because I had turned to Guy and not to him. It did not matter. When I reached the door, I fled.

Guy followed me out, his face grim. He took care not to touch me. “Is it true? Were you King Henry’s mistress?”

“Guy—”

“Answer me!”

I wanted to tell him the truth, but did I dare? Guy did not want
to hear that I had bartered my body for passage out of England, but would he be any happier with the knowledge that I had agreed to gather intelligence against France? And how could I explain the king’s failure to bed me without breaking my solemn oath never to reveal my mother’s parentage?

I could lie.

I was beset by a terrible temptation. I could claim the king of England was well nigh impotent and repeat that story to the king of France if he should ever ask.

Drawing in a deep breath, I met Guy’s eyes. “I have had only two lovers in all my life and have no desire ever to take a third.”

The hard lines of his face softened. When he took my arm, his grip was firm but gentle. We left Dunois Castle and the village of Beaugency riding side by side. During the journey home, I told him everything, even the name of my mother’s father.

I expected some overt reaction to this news, but Guy merely nodded, accepting it as calmly as he had the rest of my story.

“Shouldn’t you be more impressed—or appalled—that I have royal blood in my veins?”

“So do I,” he reminded me. “It matters very little when it is the result of being born on the wrong side of the blanket. That your connection to the King of England is unacknowledged makes it even less important. Then again, I am glad you had a good argument to convince King Henry to change his mind about making you his mistress.” He reached across the distance between our horses to take my hand and squeeze it.

“And the spying? That does not disturb you?”

He shrugged. “You are not an English agent now and I can scarcely object to a lie when it brought you back to me.”

I regarded him warily. “What if I am lying to you now?”

“Are you?”

“No, but—”

Abruptly, he brought our horses to a stop and turned in the saddle to face me. “The past shapes our lives, Jeanne, but it doesn’t have to rule them. If our trust in each other is strong enough, we can make what we will of the future.”

Guy was a good man,
I thought. The best man I had ever known. When we were children, he had taught me how to play card games and climb trees and he’d made me laugh. As an adult, I was still learning from him. And he could still make me laugh.

“I am not certain I deserve you,” I told him.

He chuckled. “We both deserve all the happiness we can find.”

My horse shifted restlessly. I would have ridden on, but Guy brought his hand up to my face, lifting my chin until I was staring straight into his eyes. “Are you certain you do not want to return to England? You have friends there. And family, even if you cannot claim your royal aunts and uncle.”

I shook my head. “The king would be a dangerous kinsman to have, acknowledged or not, and friendship cannot truly flourish at any court.”

Neither could love.

T
HE DUKE DIED
on the first day of August.

The summons to Amboise came some four weeks later. King François had at last returned to his château on the Loire. Awaiting him had been a petition from the Seigneur de Villeneuve-en-Laye et de Saint-Gelais, complaining about the usurpation of his estates. According to Alain Jumelle, his lands and manor had been unlawfully seized by Guy Dunois. He begged King François to settle the matter.

I would have relished a confrontation with Jumelle in front of
the king, but that was not to be. Guy and I saw no sign of Ivo’s father as we waited in an anteroom of the palace.

“What is taking so long?” I fidgeted on the bench we shared and craned my head to try and see into the inner room.

The lawyer Guy had hired to sue Jumelle had told us that the king of France customarily devoted the late morning, after he had eaten alone in his
salle,
to audiences with both deputations and individuals. By midafternoon, he was always out of doors, walking or riding in the open air or engaged in a game of tennis or a hunt. Then he stayed up late, enjoying revels and dancing, much like his brother king in England.

It was already late evening, and still we waited.

Just as a distant clock struck nine at night, one of the king’s minions appeared and announced he would escort me to his liege lord. Guy rose to accompany me. He was told to sit down, the order reinforced by armed guards. The king had sent for me alone.

“You know what he wants,” Guy warned.

“I know what he thinks he wants.” I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt. “I will persuade him otherwise.”

Guy caught my arm. “Do you suppose it would make any difference to him if we were married?”

“It would not matter in the slightest to King François, but it would please me mightily.”

Leaving him with that thought and a quick kiss, I sallied forth into battle. I squared my shoulders and took deep breaths, telling myself that the king of France could not be any more difficult to deal with than the king of England.

I was wrong.

King François would take anyone’s breath away. Tall, broadly built, he was, as Mary Tudor had described to me, a most pleasant
and charming man. His voice was low and agreeable, his countenance had a certain rugged appeal. His eyes were hazel in color, a good match for his luxuriant chestnut-colored hair, which he wore long. He was clean shaven.

“We are pleased to welcome you to our court,” King François said, taking my hand.

He stood alarmingly close.

“I am pleased to be here, Your Grace.” My stomach clenched with nervousness at the lie, but I was prepared to use every skill I had learned at Pleasure Palace to secure my rightful inheritance and still keep my honor.

“I am told you were an…intimate of King Henry.”

Forcing a smile, I put a little distance between us before I answered. “I was given a great honor as a child, Your Grace. I was installed in the royal nursery to be a companion to the royal children and help them learn to speak French. King Henry the Seventh was well aware that all civilized people prefer to converse in that tongue.”

This was not what he’d expected me to say.

“I am an intimate of the Lady Mary—your pardon, the queen of France—and her brother and sister were like siblings to me. I am
older
than King Henry and so I knew him as a young boy.”

Let him think me too long in the tooth to suit him. And let him know that I have heard all about his lecherous overtures to Mary Tudor when she was in seclusion during the six weeks following King Louis’ death.

Some things could not be spoken of aloud for fear of drawing unwanted attention to them. I chattered on for fully a quarter of an hour about the young King Henry, recounting escapades fifteen years or more in the past. Whatever stories King François might have heard about me, he could not now be certain that I had been the king of England’s mistress.

At length, he ran out of patience. “Why did you come to France, Mistress Popyncourt?”

“It was time to return home.” I made it sound as if this were the simplest thing in the world, as if I knew nothing of wars or politics. “I would have come much sooner, Your Grace, but for some inexplicable reason King Louis took exception to that plan.” I sighed. “Indeed, he sent most of the queen’s household home again.”

“Louis must have had more reason than that to single you out.”

I hesitated, but only for a moment. I had hoped to avoid mentioning the rumors that had surrounded King Charles’s death, but there was no help for it now. It might all come out anyway, if I ever had to face Alain Jumelle in a court of law.

I presented my case to the king in a logical fashion, telling him everything Guy and I had uncovered concerning Jumelle’s perfidy. I kept to myself the secret of my mother’s birth, and I made no mention of the promises I had given King Henry.

The fact that Maman had fled to her brother in England annoyed King François, but there was nothing remarkable about Sir Rowland Velville being there. A number of Bretons had accompanied Henry Tudor when he sailed across the Narrow Seas to seize the English throne. More than a few had stayed.

“King Charles died of an apoplexy,” he said when I finally stopped speaking.

“So I have always believed, Your Grace. My mother fled only because she felt threatened. At that time, no one could have known that King Louis would marry Queen Anne. Without the assurance of the queen’s protection, Maman must have been sore afraid.”

A grunt answered my comment. Either he did not care, or he was preoccupied with some other aspect of the situation.