The Secret Bride (48 page)

“It would seem the ring she suddenly and permanently wears in place of the king’s wedding band—the one into which she gazes as if a mirror would tell a different tale than your own, my lord of Suffolk?”

Mary would never have divulged something to Francois so private and precious as his gift of the onyx ring. And spies were everywhere. Charles felt his anger flare again amid his defense of Mary, but he drew in deep breaths to press it back. They could both find themselves in grave danger if Francois was not convinced.

“Surely you would not look at me, here at my private table, and try to tell me there is nothing of the heart between the two of you. A man in love is a difficult thing to conceal.”

Everything raced through his mind.

Mary . . .
You have a choice, Charles. . . .
Henry . . .
I want your word, Charles, that you will do nothing. . . .
Anne . . .
She belongs to you. . . .

“Very well then, yes. Fate be damned—I do love her.”

The declaration was firm. Unyielding. From inside of his mind it sounded to Charles like someone else’s voice. “Our history is a long one. But I did not come to France to act upon that, or in any way to betray Your Majesty or my own king in it.”

“Is it your desire to marry her?”

“As I have told Your Majesty most emphatically, I would never have come to France with that in mind.”

“But in your heart?”

“I am a duke. She is a queen.”

“I was a duke, who now is a king,” he said, shrugging with a sly, slightly thawed smile. “From my own perspective, Suffolk, nothing is impossible. Tell me this: Do you believe she would marry you if it were your desire as well?”

“I believe she would, yes.”

“Well, then.” He leaned back, paused. “There is no reason I cannot aid and guide the course of true love.”

“As I said, I promised my master I would do nothing without his approval.”

Francois fingered the medallion at his chest. “Why not write to your Cardinal Wolsey, explain things as they are?

Explain that you have the best wishes of the King of France in your endeavor. That should suffice initially to smooth the way and at least prepare my good cousin for what quite likely is inevitable between his sister and you.”

It seemed a logical step, a way out of his predicament, but Charles knew well he must avoid a potential trap. There was nothing in the world he wanted so much as to marry her but he must be cautious in every step now.

“Your Majesty’s kindness is an honor to me.”

“Write to Wolsey, then,” he said, in what sounded almost like a command.

The next silence extended out for what felt like an eternity to someone with everything to lose—one who had come to manhood and power led by blind ambition and prevarication, one who had just taken what felt like the greatest gamble of his life in his honesty now. He hated being at this foreign sovereign’s mercy but there was no choice.

“I find that I like you, Brandon,” Francois magnani-mously declared. “I will do all that I can for the sake of that rare thing that is between you and the dowager queen, as that which is so like what I possess with my own queen, my Claude.”

Across the room, Lorraine put a finger over his lips.

Hearing those false words, it was then, from his place near the door, that the duc de Lorraine knew that the King of France had something very different in mind than a genuine desire to help Charles Brandon and Mary find a way to be together.

After Suffolk had thanked him with irritating profusion and had gone from the chamber, the duc de Longueville and Claude de Lorraine advanced in a blur of silver thread and silver chest chains, from the place where they had stood together nearly unnoticed, beside the door.

“Do you believe from what you heard that, with my tacit approval offered up, Brandon shall now find the courage to ask for her hand?”

“It is my understanding, Your Majesty, that the dowager queen has already asked
him.
My spies tell me that her ultimatum was delivered rather boldly this morning and with a rain of tears so abundant that she could be heard down the length of the corridor.”

“Ah, women and their tears. They do know how to use them.” Francois’ smile broadened. His teeth flashed. “Feisty English rose . . . what a dreadful waste she shall be on a scoun-drel like Suffolk, who could not begin to know how to nurture her as I could.”

“Your Majesty has offered the bait with perfection,” flattered the duc de Lorraine. “Now we must wait to see if he has more ardor or good sense.” He was smiling with complicity.

“I’m not certain I understand Your Majesty’s decision,”

Longueville dared to say.

“Well, obviously, she is not going to agree to marry Lorraine here,” Francois declared with a flash of irritation. “And she is apparently not going to become my mistress—not with a man who looks like Suffolk so close at her heel. Nor do I want that sly fox in England to win this by marrying off so beautiful a sister to the emperor’s grandson, after all these years.”

“It does make France far too vulnerable for anyone’s liking.”

“And so Your Majesty has an alternate plan?” asked Longueville.

“Always, Louis. A prudent king must always have that.

After all, is it not you who always says power is like a game of chess and one must always consider not only the move at hand but the next move, and the next?”

“No, sire. That was Lorraine,” replied the man whose own heart had remained in England.

Mary waited all afternoon, full of faith, hoping that Charles would find her and tell her there was nothing so much in all the world he wanted as to marry her now when, at last, they were both free to do so. As she sat beside the queen watching a masque performance in the garden, he did not come. Nor did she see him at the concert that followed. Perhaps he did not believe her when she’d said, with all the conviction in her heart, that she would without hesitation escape to a convent rather than submit to another man out of duty and not love.

The truth was, Mary had never meant anything so much in all her life. Everything they had endured, everything she had become, had brought them both down to this single, defining moment.

The queen listened intently to the music and the Italian singer standing before them, but Mary would have given anything in the world to jump up and run very far away right now. Patience had never been a great virtue of hers, and it seemed less so now. Marriage had been a great deal to ask of any man. She knew that. Yet there it was. His choice.

When Claude glanced over at her, Mary forced herself to smile and nod but she had not heard a single note sung right in front of her.

Charles sank to his knees onto the claret velvet–covered prie-dieu and lowered his head. He was in the small chapel at the Hotel de Cluny. Mary was upstairs, and what he did next would affect not only his own life, but perhaps history. She might be meant to marry another king . . . beget a great dy-nasty . . . he could be taking a destiny from her far greater than a common life with him. . . . Charles missed Anne so keenly just then, the trusted counsel of a sister, her honesty and humor. At this moment, he even missed Henry, whose raw clarity in things never wavered. If he could see the king’s face, as he always had—read his expression—he would know far better what to do.

As the French king advised, he had written to Wolsey and explained the situation, but of course the letter could not possibly arrive in London in time. The sound of Mary’s weeping still echoed through his mind, haunting him with thoughts of all he stood to lose.
If I should wait . . . and lose her love because of it . . . if she should be married off to another because I paused for too long . . .
He closed his eyes.
Heavenly Father, I am at a crossroads. I know not what to do. . . . She is my love, my heart . . . but he is my king. . . . I cannot think how I am to honor one and betray the other.

When he went to her chamber a quarter of an hour later, he knew what scrutiny he would face from the French ladies there. There would be no turning back from the gossip it would cause. Whatever they decided to do, soon the world would know their secret and the cocoon of secrecy in which they had always lived would be gone forever. But he realized, only by seeing her one more time would he know the right path to take. He owed both of them that. When he could put it off no longer, he rose, made the sign of the cross and began the long walk to where Mary, and destiny, waited.

Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another’s might.

—Aeschylus

March 1515, Paris

“I tell Your Grace the truth, she has already gone.”

Charles pressed back the panic and pushed his way past Madame d’Aumont and into Mary’s French apartments. His movements were rushed and a little frightening to the ladies who sat playing a card game of imperial. “Surely a queen does not simply disappear!”

“That one certainly has,” she countered ruefully. “Her Grace has done as she wished.”

In all of her life, there had only been one night that Mary had ever done precisely as she wished, Charles thought, and he had been there. But he did not say that as he moved from room to room, opening the heavy carved and painted doors with one powerful thrust after another. She could not have gone through with it—escaped to a French convent. It was not meant to end like this between them, unresolved, unanswered. The impulsive side of her that had so drawn him four years earlier, now made him angry. But just as swiftly the anger changed, flipped to regret. She could not do this.

As he moved in heavy-legged strides back toward the door, a young woman with smooth blond hair and remarkably wide blue eyes stepped before him. Surprised by her boldness, he stopped and looked at her.

“Perhaps if Your Grace took a moment for reflection, you would find the peace you seek in the private chapel below,” she offered with a kind smile and in a very low voice meant for only Charles to hear.

“I was only just there, and I was alone.”

“Perhaps Your Grace should consider looking again,”

Diane de Poitiers suggested calmly. Not thinking, only feeling, Charles took the curved stone stairs two at a time, his heart thundering through his chest. He found Mary a moment later, alone on her knees on the very same wooden prie-dieu before the altar at the front of the chapel where he had knelt. Mary’s head was lowered against her steepled hands, and he could hear her whispered prayers as he came up behind her. He could see that she was dressed for travel, with a white satin jacket lined with white marten fur over her white mourning dress. Her hat was black felt. He knew only then, in that moment as he watched her, that he had never needed Henry or Anne—their approval or their reproach. He would promise her anything, give her anything, so that she would not leave. His answer came as clearly as a broad summer sky as he gazed up at an ancient gold-leaf panel of the Annunciation behind the altar. It felt to Charles as if God himself had sanctioned his decision.