The Last Boleyn Read online

  “His Majesty, my dear brother, generous and wondrous kind, ma cherie?” A musical chuckle floated to Mary across the chess board. “Well, maybe, but there is no way to be certain, you see, for it suited him well to give me that promise at the time. And if it suits him not, should I wish to collect on the strange bargain, the rhetorical question is, my Mary, will he even remember it? Will he honor it if I am needed to wed elsewhere? I tremble with the thrill of the possibility, but with the fear of it too!”

  She held out her hand, palm up, fingers extended toward the girl and indeed she did tremble, and the carved queen piece quivered in the dancing candle gleams.

  Her eyes seemed to focus on Mary’s earnest, lovely face. “You must understand the way of it, Mary. You may thank the Queen of Heaven—the first Mary of all Mary’s—that you are born to your lord father Sir Thomas Bullen, ambitious and clever though he is, and not to a blooded king.”

  Mary’s mouth formed an oval of surprise before she could hide her feelings, and her blue eyes widened honestly. Though she had been taught to cleverly mask her feelings at the court of the archduchess as well as at this witty French court, she remained somehow too naive and trusting to master the art.

  “Mary, hearken now. It is this way in our world!” With one graceful swoop of her silken arm, the queen cleared their chess board, scattering the pieces noisily onto the parquet table top.

  “Forget the pretended chess rules, Mary. This is how the game is truly played. This great king can do anything he wills at any time it suits him.” She slammed her elaborately carved king piece down in the center of the board with such vehemence that the girl jumped. “And here, Mary, all the little pawns to be spent at his whim to win his daily games at court or at Parliament or between kingdoms or whatever.”

  She pressed a little handful of the gaily painted and gilded marble pawns haphazardly about the loftier king piece. “Of course, the king is surrounded by a few knights, men who deem themselves great, not quaint horses as these. But though few knights realize it, they are only pawns. And you and even I, Mary, we are pawns to go here or there as the king piece wills it.” Her nimble fingers flicked the tiny pawns about randomly.

  Finally, Mary found her voice despite this sudden strange behavior of her adored companion. “But, Madam, you indeed are this great queen piece and surely not a pawn.”

  “No, Mary. I warn that you must learn the actual rules if you are even to survive at royal courts, be they in France or Belgium or fair England or far-off Araby.” Her lilting laughter filled the room again. “Kings may make certain pawns queens, but be assured they are pawns yet, and their only power comes in realizing this—yes, and in accepting it as I do!”

  She slumped back, seemingly bereft of the mingled passions that had stirred her uncharacteristic outbreak, her raven locks dark against the crimson velvet of the chair back. Her eyes still narrowed in thought, her face flushed, her full breasts rising and falling steadily, she stared fixedly at the bewildered girl.

  “I meant not such a tirade, Mary, and you must know you have nothing to do with my desperation. I usually control it under my smiles and nods and pleasant chatter. It is another lesson you must learn, petite Marie Boullaine.”

  “Yes, my queen. I am learning, and I am grateful to my lord father that I may learn at your court and from your own lips.”

  “It is not my court, Mary. Far from it. But, you see, I am most fond of you and would be sad to lose you, now more than ever since you have seen the real Mary Tudor and her heart’s secret and act as though you love her still.”

  “Yes, my queen, truly!”

  “Then, my dear, I hope I may keep you near me whatever befalls as it soon may.”

  “I would stay by your side always.”

  “But you are only of ten years, Mary, and ‘always’ is a good deal longer than that. I fear and pray I may not be queen here long.”

  “Madam, I...”

  “Hush, Mary. And vow never to speak of my fears and thoughts that you have shared here tonight, to no one, especially not your father, however much you adore him. And never to the charming Dauphin. He, too, waits and watches, Mary.”

  Puzzlement creased Mary’s brow again, but she hesitated not a moment, “I vow it, my queen.”

  The slender Queen of France nodded and rose, her hands on the corners of the huge chessboard. Mary knew she was drained of energy and emotion, and she stood waiting patiently to be dismissed. But the queen leaned close to her again, and her quiet words came at Mary like steel-tipped arrows.

  “You must understand you are an entirely vulnerable pawn, Mary. You are so lovely and will be more so as you mature. As I have told you, you will be the image of your beautiful Howard mother when she first came to my father’s court on her new husband’s arm. All looked on her and adored her. All, Mary, for she even stood high in favor with my brother Prince Harry before he wed the dowager widow, Spanish Catherine.”

  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 marr
ied 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.”

  “Of course he has, Madam, and soon a message will be here.”

  “Did he tell you it would be here soon, ma cherie?”

  “I, well, I have not seen him, Your Grace, any more than usual. He is so busy as the new French ambassador, you see.” Her quiet voice hung suspended in the silence and both were soon lost in their own lonely thoughts.

  “I know you think often of him, of your brother, the king, and of...the duke, my lady. It is only seven days. Someone will come soon.”

  “Yes, indeed, but the one who comes soon is my loving nephew Francois, le grand roi. And this visit will be not for pretended condolences, but to force me to marry his mignon or submit to some other which his mother or sister have suggested. How shall I gainsay him then, Mary, without my brother’s might? I fear, Mary, I fear!”

  They instinctively clasped fingers in the darkness, and Mary wished so desperately to offer her older friend a thread of hope, however slender. “Surely my father will be calling again soon and you can at least ask his advice, Your Grace.”

  “No, sweet Mary. I would not hurt you for all the gold in France, but his advice would be that other charge I fear to obey. ‘Marry wherever your royal brother could best use you for England,’ he would say. Well, never! Never again.”

  Her fingers tightened so suddenly that they crushed Mary’s hand painfully. “I must—I shall—tread this course between the Scylla of Francois’s intent and the ugly Charybdis that my brother should make me wed abroad again. Never!”

  She released the girl’s hand and rose, a shrouded figure in the gloom. To Mary, her queen looked oddly ghostlike in white, the French color for mourning. Mary felt the tingling blood rush back into her fingers. She wished to argue with her fair Tudor princess, that surely her father could be trusted as the king’s great ambassador and that Henry, too, was a fine Christian king and would keep his promise to her, for she had heard him say so herself. But she knew well that her mistress did not trust these men when it came to her desperate love for the Duke of Suffolk, and she held her tongue.

  “I am able to sleep now, I believe, la petite blonde Anglaise. I shall not have the new king find me gaunt with gray lines on my cheeks and brows. And pray God this wretched toothache shall abate before I must face him.”

  Her graceful form glided away from Mary toward the great canopied bed which already bore the fawn and white colors and the salamander badge of the new King Francois I.

  “I shall tell the king that you are to remain for our interview on the morrow, Mary. It will lend me comfort and surely he will not begrudge me my only English maid. Sleep well, Mary.”

  “And God watch over us both, Your Grace,” came the whispered voice of Mary Bullen to the silent gray chamber.

  Even the sunlight of December looks chilling, thought Mary Bullen as she gazed at the slate sky over the stony balustrades of Cluny. At least she could bundle up and walk the old Roman ruins in the frozen gardens again today. “If this Hotel de Cluny were on the river, we would freeze indeed, Your Grace,” she observed to her mistress as she sat stiffly in her carved oak chair awaiting the new king. Her heavily brocaded skirts with their stuffed folds looked like carved marble, but Mary knew she was no cold statue. She could see Mary Tudor’s quick breathing move the tight-fitted ivory silk bodice under the folds of tulle and white crepe draped gracefully from her shoulders. Jewels winked steadily from both layers of brocade sleeves where they were slashed for decoration, and heavy girdle and rosary chains drooped to the carpeted floor by the tips of her velvet slippers.

  Mary Bullen herself felt cold and colorless in her heavy white velvet and brocade gown which clung to her yet slender form which promised the full curves of a woman’s body. How still the room was until her dear queen and friend spoke again.

  “I fear we might freeze anyway, Mary, in our hearts at least, if we do not escape this place soon. He knows full well I am not with child. How I long to burn this colorless brocade and silk and tulle and crepe before his eyes and dance laughing at his consecration at Reims!”

  Her vehemence frightened Mary, and she felt the knot in the pit of her stomach tighten. “You are only tired, Your Grace. There will be good news, and soon. How is your toothache?”

  “Worse, Mary, worse and worse. This oil of peppermint and camphor helps not at all. But then, I pain all over, so who is to tell its cause or remedy?” She laughed strangely, and Mary was grateful for the knock on the door. She moved carefully back against the wall to appear as unobtrusive as possible in this confrontation of her powerful betters. Her white skirts rustled surprisingly loudly.

  The door glided open as if of its own volition and he was there, larger and grander than Mary had ever seen him at banquet or masque or gaming. His massive shoulders stretched the white velvet taut, and his sleek black head with the fine-chiseled features towered near the ceiling as she stared, mesmerized. In that stunning instant she tried not to gape, but his agile legs and hips below his short, white velvet, ermine-edged cloak fascinated her as he swept past and approached her waiting mistress. White embroidery, lace, delicate tuckings, and elaborate ribbings rioted across the white of his short doubtlet, breech, and tight stockings. Despite the fact that he, like them, was clothed entirely in white, he radiated warmth and vitality. His muscular legs were revealed in each sinewy twist and turn by the golden filigree material of his garters. He swept off his ermine cap flowing with pure white heron plumes and his golden belt, dagger, and the decorated codpiece that covered his manhood, all emanated a richness and heat that neither Englishwoman felt in her mourning whites.

  Ma
ry Bullen drew in her breath swiftly in the tiny silence of the room before anyone spoke. If her dear mistress Mary Tudor felt anything of the impact this Valois king had on her, this interview would be interesting indeed!

  Francois bent gracefully to kiss both of the pale woman’s cheeks and his embrace seemed to linger. “Ma cherie Marie. How is it with you, my most beautiful queen?”

  “I am queen no longer, Your Grace, as well you know. But I thank you. I am well.”

  “But so pale, ma charmante? Would that Francois could bring sweet roses to those fair lips and white cheeks.”

  His voice seemed of deepest velvet as the cloak he wore, and his caressing tone so intimate and personal that Mary felt a rush of embarrassment even as she saw her mistress blush hot under his intense scrutiny.

  “Your Majesty, I request that my English maid be permitted to stay. She is most dear to me.”

  His sleek head rotated smoothly, and the fierce, dark eyes were on Mary. Unlike anything she had ever experienced, they seemed to sweep over her in a moment, probing, piercing. She remembered to curtsy.

  “La petite blonde Anglaise Boullaine. Oui. I remember. She grows into a Venus, does she not?”

  The sensual mouth under the long aquiline nose had formed the remark smoothly, and Mary’s heart nearly fell to her feet. To be so complimented by the King of France! But then, she thought, he is merely being charming. What a little fool is the “petite Boullaine,” she told herself firmly.

  The new king and old queen sat together near the window under the huge tapestry of Orpheus and Eurydice trying to escape from the black reaches of Hades. Mary perched nervously on a gilt chair in the corner and tried to pretend she took no notice of their passionate interview.

  “You must have no fear for yourself, Marie,” Francois’s resonant voice assured her. “I shall see you are well cared for always.”