The Secret Bride (17 page)

“If I did not know you so well, I would say you were changing your mind about Brandon, actually coming to care for him.”

“But you
do
know me better,” Mary said a little too quickly.

“The king has a right to be told about that,” Buckingham loftily declared, striding boldly in black and silver between Wolsey and the Earl of Surrey as they passed Mary and Jane going the other way.

“It would be a grave misjudgment,” the cleric calmly countered. As usual, Wolsey’s words were succinct and pointed, made slightly less lethal by his charmingly rotund appearance, and the affable tone he took as they strolled the paneled corridor.

“I agree with Buckingham. His Highness has a right to know what is going on right beneath his very nose,” replied Thomas Howard, the distinguished-looking, silver-haired Earl of Surrey. He had seen the cleric’s expression and the way he had so judgmentally shaken his head as the two girls had emerged alone from Brandon’s apartments. Daylight or not, going there had been a daring move—even for the king’s very indulged sister.

The Earl of Surrey had been at court for a long time, and he knew how to wait like a fox for the spoils of someone else’s kill. The ruthless nature that possessed his soul seemed to have branded his appearance as well with a sharp elongated nose, small black eyes with dark arched brows and steel-gray hair. He was taut and fit for a man of his age, a contemporary of the previous king, and there was nothing he despised more than a gluttonous opportunist like Thomas Wolsey, whom he was forced to befriend. The Earl of Surrey believed Wolsey had worked for nothing he had received. Rather he cajoled, manipulated and banqueted his way to power, taking advantage of a young, immature and pleasure-loving sovereign.

Wolsey was exceedingly distasteful, the earl had determined, himself having struggled mightily for power and place. Wolsey’s rise was almost as meteoric as Charles Brandon’s, and Thomas Howard believed he simply could not survive the competition for most powerful place from two sources. Wolsey’s Achilles’ heel lay in a blind greed he was certain the king did not see. But the Earl of Surrey saw it.

Wolsey believed he helped Brandon with Mary, she who was most dear to the king. But the Princess Mary was a willful little thing, far too driven by pretty gowns and dancing to have the slightest notion what was best for her. That could never be Charles Brandon. The earl had seen Wolsey ingratiating himself with her recently. After today, he knew why.

This was a battle now for highest place of influence with the king, when Thomas Wolsey had thought it merely a smooth rise to elevation. No one could outfox the Earl of Surrey—even if he had to align himself with Buckingham to triumph.

“Is it that he has a right to know,” Wolsey asked then, “or more that
you
, my lord, have an ambition to elevate yourself by making a harmless girl’s flirtation into more than it can ever be?”

“My ambition is to seek the truth in all things,” Buckingham disingenuously declared.

Wolsey shrugged, his chin doubling and his mouth turning down as he did. “My advice is that you both leave it alone or you shall live to regret it.”

“A man of God threatening an earl and a Howard?” Surrey asked.

“Only a wise old friend reminding you that the king’s sister will marry the Castile boy. But she is young and willful, as most privileged adolescents are, and this one has England at her feet. My lady Mary is finding the first true power of her beauty, and you must admit there really is no one among us like Brandon on which for her to test her power. But however you find their harmless little flirtation, Henry will believe her, not you.”

“I know not how you can be so cavalier.”

“I am realistic, not cavalier. There is no one the king loves so well as his sister, and no one—even among us—he trusts so much as Brandon. Surely my lord of Surrey is wise enough to know what they say often happens to the messenger?”

They came to the foot of a staircase, then took the steps together, Wolsey climbing each more laboriously than the fit and trim earl, and Buckingham silently a pace behind. “In my experience, His Highness values loyalty above all other things, even trust.”

“A wager, to be sure,” huffed the wizened cleric.

The day was made for celebrating, clear and full of sunlight.

The azure sky was a broad canvas for the scudding clouds, and flocks of blackbirds passed across it. Above them grand tents of yellow and blue striped silk fluttered on the vast lawn behind Richmond Palace. First, there had been an intricate disguising—an allegorical play in which Henry and Mary played the lead parts. Henry was costumed most grandly as Zeus and Mary was the Greek goddess Athena, drawing the rest of the court in amid laughter and shouts of support for their performance. They reigned happily over the production, which included complicated scenery and a stage that had been constructed complete with a working fountain and a mulberry tree.

They then led dancing once the disguising was over.

Mary took the prominent place by her brother’s side as they began an intricate pavane, and then a lively branle, in which only a few of the most well placed joined. Katherine had become increasingly fearful that any sort of activity or court illness could harm her son, so she rarely attended any of the entertainments, preferring to remain with him in the nursery at Richmond. Here, the best dancers at court, brother and sister, were well matched, and Mary had no rival for attention as the crowd of elegantly dressed onlookers watched and applauded wildly after each dance.

In spite of the carefree air, the looming specter of war was lost on not a single member of King Henry’s court. After the humiliating defeat for which Ferdinand still blamed his inexperience, Henry was determined to be victorious on the battlefield against the French. He would, he declared, finish what he had begun. But for now, the king and his closest group of friends laughed and danced and sipped claret from tooled silver goblets in the warm afternoon sun.

“So, tell me, sister,” Henry began as they danced theatrically, both aware of the eyes upon them, both reveling in the attention, “how would you feel at the prospect of cancellation of your betrothal?”

Mary looked at her brother, and smiled for the benefit of the court. But privately, she said, “I had heard whispers you were contemplating such a thing, but I thought it only a bit of the idle speculation of which our court is so fond.”

Henry laughed and kicked with impressive height. The crowd applauded. His reply, however, was said with a note of frustration. “Maximilian is a stubborn prig in this. He believes me too young and untested, and he is trying to make me look the fool because of it. I may be young, but I mean to prove him wrong.”

“Have you another arrangement in mind?”

“There have been suggestions put forth, and if things do not shortly improve I will be forced to consider them more seriously.”

They turned again, her blue dress swirling along with the kaleidoscope of other colored skirts twirling around her.

Then they bowed to one another, as the other dancers did.

“So tell me, my wise young sister, with all the world at your feet, who might you advise me to consider?”

“You seek my opinion on such a matter?”

“I shall deny it boldly if called upon to declare it, but it is your opinion alone that means the world to me, as no one else’s at court could—not even Katherine’s.” He smiled. “But then you already knew that.”

The question put forth, her mind conjured only an image of Charles Brandon. It remained there, stubbornly bright.

Henry so favored his friend that he had recently bestowed upon him not only the vaunted title of Knight of the Garter, but he had made him a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, which left little doubt of his steadily growing influence. In addition, there were few appropriate, other unmarried suitors on the world stage from whom to choose at the moment.

She had once heard the old, widowed French king, Louis XII, proposed, but that seemed absurd for many reasons. For one thing, the war with France was imminent, which thank-fully rendered that match unlikely. As brother and sister laughed and danced, Mary’s mind dared to admit a small glimmer of a fantasy to dress up the vision before her: if she did marry Charles Brandon she could remain beside her brother at court as helpmate and companion. And had he not just said he trusted her like no other? Now that their father was dead and Henry was in control, could he possibly have thought better of losing her? At that moment, her life could not have felt more perfect. All of that whirled now in her head and she felt a happy laugh burst up from her heart as everyone watched them dance.

“Of course I am not well versed enough in court matters to advise the king,” she said with a broad smile, as if she had cleverly just figured something out, “but perhaps you would find favor in a selection that would keep me a bit closer to you than Castile.”

“Nothing would make me happier, my Mary.”

When the dance ended, he bowed to her, and she curtsied. He kissed one cheek, then the other. Mary could not help it, looking up into his eyes: she was overjoyed. Now if she could only convince Charles Brandon to think of her as more than a risk to be taken, her life would be absolute perfection.

As everyone changed partners, Thomas Knyvet, tall and smoothly handsome, dressed as he was in dove gray silk, bowed to her next. Mary had always liked Thomas. She knew he and Muriel were a match, not a marriage, and so she could forgive his attraction to someone beautiful like Jane. She only pitied the toll it was taking on her friend, whose heart was being worn away a little more each day that she maintained her status as secret sometimes mistress.

“Wolsey tells me you are to captain a ship against the French,” Mary said as they joined hands, then bowed.

“We sail at week’s end, my lady.”

“I wonder, in your absence, who you shall miss the more,” she asked archly, which made him laugh. Everyone at court was accustomed to wit, and Mary could spar with the best of them. “Be good to her, Thomas. She deserves better.”

She saw a small glimmer of a smile as his glance automatically cast about for Jane. They saw her at the same moment and Mary saw her return Thomas’s smile. Jane was sitting beside Lady Monteagle, with her slim, lined face and deep-set olive-colored eyes. Both women were on fringed stools beside one of the turned poles that held up the fluttering canopy.

“You have been a good friend to Jane,” Thomas Knyvet said sincerely.

“As she has been to me. You know I have counseled her to quit you.”

“As well you should.” He smiled evenly, not undone by her admission. “She deserves a husband of her own.”

“On that we agree, Thomas. And if you hurt her, I do swear I will never forgive you. Nor shall the king. Still, do take care of yourself out there, will you? You have more than most men to return to.”

Although spoken lightly, her words held an underlying sincerity few of their conversations ever had. She had known him for a long time and cared for both him and Jane. Edward Howard came upon them then, wearing a jovial smile himself and a rich doublet of blue velvet laced with silver thread.

Court companions since birth, Knyvet and Howard were in-separable. Howard was not as handsome as Knyvet or Brandon, being short and stout, but he was every bit as quick with a phrase and half again as clever—like money, wit was an essential commodity to thrive at Henry’s court.

“So I amend that to
three
by whom you shall be missed, and to whom you absolutely must return,” Mary said as Edward bowed to her.

“We captain companion ships for the king, my lady Mary.

I shall be out there right beside Thomas against the accursed French.”

“Perhaps you should just stay out at sea, Thomas,” Mary joked. “That would certainly solve the problem you have back here.”

“It would at that. I shall, as always, consider my lady Mary’s sound advice.”

She laughed. “At the very least, send a shot across to them for me, and for Mistress Popincourt as well, will you, Edward? Just to remind you both that we—and all of the complications of this happy court—shall be right here waiting for you when you return.”