Jean Plaidy - Mary, Queen of France: The Story of the Youngest Sister of Henry VIII

François walked away from her and pulled thoughtfully at the hangings.

He said, without turning to look at her: “I can tell you this. Your brother has no intention of keeping his promise to you. He is negotiating for the Prince of Castile as your second husband.”

“When I see my brother I can persuade him.”

“As you hope to persuade me?”

“I know that you are kind at heart and would always want to help a woman in distress.”

“You ask too much,” said François. And indeed she did, she who refused his embraces and had the effrontery to ask him to help her to enjoy a rival’s!

“Not of you … the King … the all powerful King.”

“The marriage of Princesses cannot be settled at the whim of one King.”

“Not even when the King proposes to make a princess his mistress after marrying her to a complaisant husband?”

François muttered: “It is the wish of my ministers that you remain in France.”

“But you will not allow your ministers to rule France, surely?”

She came to stand demurely at his elbow and when he looked down into her lovely young face and saw the purpose there, when he remembered how moved she had been at the tournament, he was touched. He admired women who knew what they wanted and determined wholeheartedly to get it. He believed—and he knew he would continue to do so all his life—that the two most wonderful people in the world were his mother and sister. They had always known what they wanted and would always be bold enough to fight for it. Mary Tudor was another such. So he had to admire her while deploring what might have been called her insolence. François was deeply affected by women; having been brought up by such a mother and sister, women had been his chief companions during the formative years of his life. He idealized them, preferred their company to that of his own sex, and could not bear to disappoint those for whom he had some affection. Women aroused all his chivalry, and as he had been ready to sacrifice his desire for Françoise, he was now ready to do so for Mary Tudor.

He took her hand and kissed it.

“I envy Suffolk,” he said.

She threw back her head and laughed, showing her perfect white teeth and plump, rounded throat. What I am losing! thought François regretfully.

“You! ” she cried. “You envy none. You are the King of France which is what you have always longed to be—and you will be beloved by your subjects, particularly the females, so you should envy none.”

“None but Suffolk,” he answered.

“François, you are going to help me? You are going to allow me to see Charles when he comes? You are going to put nothing in the way of our marriage?” She leaped up and threw her arms about his neck. “François, how I love my beau-fils. ”

He smiled down his long, humorous nose. “But not as you love Suffolk?” he asked plaintively.

She shook her head sadly and kissed his cheek. Then she knelt demurely before him and, taking his hand, kissed it.

“I shall remember you all my life,” she said, “as one of the best friends I ever had.”

Mary paced up and down her chamber. In that adjoining, the English embassy was dining, and among them was Charles. She had not seen him yet, but she knew he was there.

The six weeks since the death of Louis were not quite at an end, but the Duke of Suffolk, as emissary of her own brother, would be allowed to visit her.

Burning with impatience she had plagued young Anne and all her attendants. How weary she was of her white mourning! How she longed to put on something gay. They assured her that nothing could have been more becoming than her white garments, but she was uncertain and so eager to appear at her best before her lover.

François, who on the 28th of January had been crowned at Rheims, clearly intended to keep his promise to her, for he raised no objection to Suffolk’s enjoying a private interview with Mary; and it was for this that she was now waiting.

It seemed hours before he came to her; she studied him intently for a few seconds and then threw herself into his embrace.

“I thought I should never be free,” she told him.

He kissed her with both tenderness and passion but she sensed his disquiet.

“Why, Charles,” she said, “are you not happy?”

“I could be happy only if there was nothing between us two.”

“But we are both free now. Think of that, Charles! And François is my friend. He will help us. There must be no delay. I shall not allow you to leave me again.”

He took her face in his hands and shook his head.

“There is the King,” he said.

“Henry? But I have his promise.”

“He is making plans for your marriage, and they do not include me.”

“Then he must change his plans. You forget that he has given me his word. Why, dearest Charles, you must not be unhappy now. I have been so excited … waiting for this moment. And now it is here, I do not intend to be cheated again.”

“I had a long talk with your brother before I left England.”

“But Henry knows what will happen. He would not have sent you here to me if he had not approved of our marriage, for he must know that I intend to marry you.”

“I must tell you something, my dearest. Before I left England, Henry made me take a solemn oath.”

Mary stared at her lover with tragic eyes.

“And there was naught I could do but take it.”

“And what was this oath?”

“That I would not induce you to plight your troth to me, nor seize the opportunity which my presence here might give me.”

“Henry made you promise that! And you did?”

“My beloved, you know your brother. What else could I do? I should not have been allowed to come here if I had not made it.”

Mary stared ahead with narrowed eyes. Her lips were firmly set. “I’ll not be cheated again,” she declared. “I tell you, I will not.”

Then she was twining her arms about his neck, giving him kiss after fierce kiss.

“I’ll not let you go,” she insisted. “I kept my side of the bargain, and Henry shall keep his. Charles, if you love me you will not allow a miserable promise to keep us apart. Do you love me, Charles? Do you love me one tenth as much as I love you?”

“I love you infinitely.”

“Then why so sad?”

“Because, my beloved, I fear our love will destroy us.”

They could not remain alone for long. That they should have been given this short time together was a great concession. He must return to his embassy, she to her mockery of mourning.

But before he left she had shown him her determination. She was a Tudor and she would have her way.

She talked to Anne Boleyn of her suspicions. She was certain that many were jealous of her Charles.

“Why, look,” she cried, “he is handsome, so clever, so skilled in everything he does. He is my brother’s best friend. So they are jealous of him—men, such as Norfolk, seek to spoil the friendship between him and Henry. They have whispered poison into my brother’s ear so that he forgets his promise to me. But I do not forget.”

She liked to talk to Anne because the child never attempted to soothe her. She merely sat and listened, and now and then added a shrewd remark of her own.

“It is for this reason that Henry extracted a promise from Charles before he left England. But my brother also gave me a promise, and I have no intention of forgetting that, I tell you. The King of France will help. So I shall insist on Henry’s keeping his promise to me. For if my brother did not wish me to have Charles, why did he send him over here with the embassy?”

“It is said that he sent the Duke of Suffolk in order to lure you back to England, Madame.”

“So they are chitty-chatting about me and Charles, are they?”

“It is said that the Duke is a very ambitious man, Madame, and that, having failed to win an Archduchess, he will try for a queen.”

Mary pulled Anne’s long black hair sharply. “Do not speak of the Archduchess to me. Charles never had any fancy for her.”

“No, Madame.”

“And understand this, little Boleyn, that my Charles would never lure me back that my brother might marry me to that slack-mouthed idiot of Castile.”

The Queen’s confessor came to her apartments and asked that he might speak to her alone; and when Mary signed to Anne to go, the young girl went quietly from the room.

The friar was an Englishman—and that she should have a confessor from her own country was another concession from François.

“Madame,” he said, “I wish to speak to you on a most urgent matter.”

“Speak on,” Mary commanded.

“It concerns one of our countrymen who is here on a mission.”

Mary studied him through narrowing eyes. “Which man?” she demanded.

“His Grace of Suffolk.”

“And what of his Grace of Suffolk?”

“A most ambitious gentleman, Madame.”

“Is that so? I see nothing wrong with ambition. I doubt not that you have some of that tucked away behind that holy expression you show me and the world.”

“Madame, I come to warn you.”

“Of what and whom?”

“Of this ambitious man.”

The color was high in her cheeks but the friar ignored the danger signals.

He went on blithely: “It is said that Your Highness is inclined to favor this man, and I have been warned that I should make known to you the type of man he is. Beware of Suffolk, Madame. He traffics with the devil.”

“Who told you this?”

“It is well known that Sir William Compton has an ulcer on his leg which will not heal. Your brother, the King himself, has made an ointment which has cured other ulcers. Nothing cures Compton’s. And do you know why?”

“Yes,” Mary replied. “Compton has led too merry a life, and the ulcer is an outward sign of all his gaiety.”

“Your Highness misjudges him. Suffolk laid a spell on the man out of jealousy of the King’s friendship for him. Suffolk is a friend of Wolsey who, it is well known, is one of the devil’s servants.”

“They are my friends, also, sir friar. And you are not. You fool, do you not think I shall treat your lies with anything but what they deserve? If there is one grain of sense left in your addled pate, you would remove yourself from my presence without delay, for the sight of you so sickens me that I wish never to look on your silly face again. And I tell you this: If you repeat to anyone the lies you have told me, you will ere long have no tongue with which to tell even the truth, if so be you have a mind to it—which I doubt.”

“My lady Mary …”

She went toward him, her hand uplifted to strike him. The friar hurried from her presence.

When he was gone, she threw herself onto her couch. So many enemies, she thought. Powerful men against us. Where will it all end?

But not for more than a moment would she allow her confidence to desert her.

There was another interview with Charles.

She faced him triumphantly.

“I have the answer,” she told him. “Henry made you swear not to influence me. Well, you have kept that promise. You did not influence me. My mind has long been made up. He made you promise not to induce me to plight my troth to you. Well, have I? Did I need any inducement? Now, Charles, you have kept your promise. But I insist that you plight your troth to me. I command that you marry me.”

Charles shook his head sadly. “I fear it will not do.”

“But it shall do,” she insisted.

“And afterward?”

“Oh, let us not think of afterward. I will deal with that if need be. I will make known to Henry that I was determined to marry you and commanded that you should obey me. Oh Charles, why do you hesitate? Do you not want to marry me?”