The Last Boleyn(8)
She stopped her words, uneasy at their import for her young charge, but the blonde girl faced her squarely and did not flinch. “Your father is ambitious and would be even more powerful in the king’s shadow than he is now, so remember to keep your own heart hidden and intact. Maybe you shall find some ploy to choose where you would bestow your love someday, even as I pray I have.”
Her lithe hand briefly rested against her maid’s pale cheek. “But while I can, my English Mary, I shall protect and guide you. I will do that while I yet can.”
Mary nodded and smiled, her golden curls bobbing gently in affirmation. As she curtseyed to the queen and took a few steps backward to summon the royal attendants, her mistress’s voice came again.
“And Mary, we shall each keep one of these little painted pawns as a sign of our knowledge and our secret.” The girl stretched out her perspiring palm, and the queen pressed into it a marble green and white, gilded chess piece.
“See, my Mary, a mirror piece of mine, even to the emerald and white of Tudor colors. Tudor pawns, indeed!”
Again her swift silvered laughter filled the tiny privy chamber and Mary’s amazed ears as she departed the room.
CHAPTER THREE
December 29, 1514
Hotel De Cluny, Paris
The sick and old King Louis XII had been dead for a week. He had dropped off to eternal sleep as easily as a rotting apple drops to the ground from the still vigorous tree. The fruit remaining on the tree was ripe and healthy, and the whole vast orchard of fertile France tensed with anticipation.
The first long-expected cries of “Le roi est mort” soon became the vibrant shouts of “Vive le roi Francois!” as the lusty twenty-year-old nephew of the dead king ascended. Francois’s wily mother, Louise of Savoy, already assembled her son’s new counselors and his clever and passionate sister Marguerite sent him a barrage of instructions and suggestions. All necessary steps were taken by the new monarch to ensure and strengthen his long-awaited and often-doubted succession. Most importantly, the eighteen-year-old English-bred queen, who had gone from “la nouvelle reine Marie” to “la reine blanche” in the brief transition, was under royal orders of close confinement in the tiny old medieval palace of Cluny.
The grieving young widow, the dowager queen, was not in any danger, but was rather being protected and sheltered by her step-nephew, the new king. But, although she was not in danger, all knew she could become a danger, and so the custom was fulfilled: she was to be kept under lock and key for six weeks to assure the new king that no child of the dead monarch would come from her body to supplant Francois on his long-desired throne.
“La reine blanche Marie” would remain at Cluny until Francois and his rapacious family were certain she was not pregnant, though Francois knew well that old Louis had been long since past his vigorous manhood. Still, the former queen was young and vibrant and charming. Had not he himself even wished to seduce her and put away his fat and pious wife, Claude? Perhaps there had been other men about her also, and he must be absolutely sure. Then she must be married off as soon as possible to Savoy or some well-attached French count. She must be kept in France and not returned to her brother, who would no doubt use her again for a marriage advantageous to the English. She must not go to placate Francois’s rival for the title of Holy Roman Emperor, the young Charles of Castille to whom she had once been promised. Then, too, she was so lovely, so desirable, so ripe for plucking, he would have her about his court for his own uses.
The widow herself was in a state of twisted tensions. She was shocked that it was all over so quickly—a few swift months of brocaded processions and twittering courtiers, his withered old hands on her body and it was over. She had written in secret desperation to Cardinal Wolsey through the new French ambassador, Thomas Bullen, and more circumspectly to her beloved brother, for her correspondence would be carefully probed by Francois’s new appointees.
She lay awake long into the chill French nights, her heart, thoughts and prayers pounding in the silence, hoping beyond hope that her dear brother would keep his promise and that she might return to London and wed with her Suffolk. She paced the richly carpeted stone floors muffled in her white mourning wrap, and peered long, watching for dawn in the gray east beyond the imprisoning square courtyard of Cluny. Grotesque gargoyles bent angularly from above her window, their demonic faces haunting her waking dreams and her racing fears. Then, more often than not, the dear little Boullaine, whom she insisted be kept with her and be allowed to sleep in her chamber, would stir and ask if she were well or if she might comfort her somehow.
“You do comfort me, ma cherie, just by being near at this—this most difficult time. My body aches for sleep, but my thoughts will not allow it. No one can truly understand, and that is well. It is enough you are with me. Sleep now, Mary.”
“But, Your Grace, you are so dear to me, and perhaps I can understand just a little.” The girl’s long blonde locks were all the exhausted woman could discern in the gray dimness of the room. She advanced, still tightly encased in her ivory wrap, and sat wearily on the foot of her maid’s narrow bed. She spoke in a low whisper.
“This place shall be the end of me, Mary, if I do not receive word soon. Six weeks to live in this place and but one gone already. I shall turn to the gray, cold stone around me! Does the English court not even know what has happened? Forgive me, Mary,” she said more quietly at last. “I know your father has conveyed all my pleas.”