The Nymph from Heaven, page 33
part #1 of The Tudor Chronicles Series
The metallic sound of the halberdiers outside his door shifting their weapons made him look up, and there in the doorway stood his grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian. Charles slipped the little painting back inside his doublet.
“You have heard the news? Old Louis has given up the ghost at last!” Maximilian laughed vigorously. “There are two things that do not make for old bones in an old man, my boy, and they are war and a young wife!” He slapped his thigh in amusement, but did not notice that Charles’ face remained expressionless.
A sharp retort rose to Charles’ lips regarding the fact that Maximilian had himself just buried a young wife, belying his grandfather’s theory that young women made dead men of old men, but he bit it back. He was practiced at never revealing his thoughts to others.
The emperor seated himself and signaled a servant to pour him a goblet of wine. “Doubtless that comely little piece who escorted Louis to the grave so quickly after her arrival will not stay unmarried for long. I hear they are already bidding for her hand at the French court! But I beg your leave to doubt that it is the lady’s hand that interests them!” He took a loud slurp of wine and smacked his lips. “And what are you so sullen about this day?”
Charles had winced at his grandfather’s crude remarks about Mary, and when he was angry he tended to jut out his chin. Combined with his deformity, it gave him a look of unusual stubbornness. This was no way to talk about the Queen of France. But he had always known that his grandfathers, both of them, were vulgar fellows. Charles loathed even the thought of his mad mother, Joanna, but she had at least bequeathed him a certain fastidiousness that could have come to him, as far as his observations allowed, from no other source. He strove to return his face to the expressionless mask that he normally maintained.
“I’ve a mind to make a bid for her hand myself,” said Maximilian. To Charles’ surprise, Maximilian retrieved from his own doublet a small painting of Mary. He held it up and said, “It is Margaret’s. I begged leave to borrow it from her as soon as I heard the news.” His grandfather licked his lips, leaving little wet patches at the corners of his mouth. Maximilian continued to gaze at Mary’s portrait. After a few moments he shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
Charles looked away in disgust. He wanted to rise up and slap the old man’s face, with its lecherous, leering look, and shout at him that such a delicate flower as Mary Tudor was not for such as he. Had she not just been married to one old man? She needed a young man this time, someone who would appreciate her beauty and her accomplishments outside the bedchamber. The picture that flashed through his mind of Maximilian’s aging, sagging skin, his paunch, touching Mary’s naked limbs made him shudder with a murderous rage. But he presented a calm demeanor to Maximilian, revealing nothing of his thoughts.
“With you as good as betrothed to the French princess, we could do with such a marriage,” Maximilian said, his eyes still on Mary’s portrait. “Yes, indeed. What a plan! Our empire tied through marriage to both the French and the English.” He stood up and marched in his soldier-like way, wasting no movement, to the door. “I shall apply to the King of England this very day,” he said.
As the halberds swung back into place across his door, Charles allowed himself a little smile.
Palais de Tournelle, Paris, January 1515
A watery sun appeared as a golden disk through the haze of clouds, casting an eerie luminosity through the windows. In the stark light, Marguerite, Duchesse de Alencon, watched as her mother paced up and down the presence chamber like a caged lioness. Each hand held an elbow, except for every few moments when Louise would stop in her tracks, stare off into space, and lift a distracted hand to her mouth or to her hair.
“Maman, do sit down and drink your wine,” said Marguerite. “This incessant pacing back and forth is making me nervous.”
“Nervous!” screeched Louise. “We should all be nervous! To have come so far! And now to be faced with this!”
Marguerite looked closely at her mother. Her eyes were wild, the pale yellow light that bathed her face highlighted her wrinkled brow and pinched nose, and generally showed her to a disadvantage. Louise was still a young woman, but the past few months, reflected Marguerite, had aged her mother by ten years. “But Maman, surely you expected… and we know nothing yet, Maman. Perhaps there is nothing to worry about. Perhaps…”
“A pox on perhaps!” Louise abruptly seated herself on a wide, cushioned chair, took up her spurned wine goblet, and drank deeply. She sat for a few more seconds, then set the goblet down with a crash, arose, and began to pace the length of the room once again. “What if we have come this far, Louis dead at last, François poised to be king, and she produces a child? All will be lost! Lost!” As she passed her chair, she sat down again, took a gulp of wine, slammed the goblet back down onto the table and made to rise.
“Maman,” said Marguerite, with as much patience as she could muster, “please do sit down for more than two seconds together. Your sudden movements and pacings are making me uneasy. Besides, even if the Queen…”
“She is no longer the Queen!”
Marguerite sighed. “Even if the Queen Dowager is with child…” At this Louise let out a moan, and bit her fist. “Forsooth, may not one speak without constant interruption? Listen to me, Maman. Even if she is with child, mayhap it will be a girl. A worthless girl. A girl could not displace François on the throne of France.”
Louise rounded on her daughter like a tiger. The random raking of her hands through her hair had left wisps of it hanging all about her face, and her headdress was awry. With her wild, glittering green eyes, she almost looked mad. “And if she is with child, we will have nine agonizing months to wait for the outcome of the childbed! If that happens, I swear I shall go mad! Oh, what shall we do?”
“I have the perfect solution,” said a voice from the doorway.
The change in Louise at that moment was astounding; nothing short of miraculous. Had Marguerite not witnessed it with her own eyes, she would not have believed it. Gone was the wild look. Louise straightened her headdress and smoothed her stray hair back into place, ceased her mad pacing, and said calmly, “François! My darling boy!” She glided over to him and taking his face into her hands, kissed him on both cheeks.
François’ expression was enigmatic. “A boy no longer, Maman. A man, and a king.” He swaggered over to the sideboard where Marguerite had gone to pour her brother some wine, and took the proffered jeweled goblet from her hand, exchanging a double kiss with her as he did so.
“A king!” replied Louise. The wild, distraught note sounded a warning to Marguerite who, standing just behind François, shook her head at her mother. Louise changed again, back into the calm being that had just greeted her son. “That may be, François, for the time being, but it could all be undone if that…if the Queen Dowager is with child.” She shot a look at Marguerite. “And bears a son,” she added. At that thought, Louise clasped her hands to her breast and cried, “Oh, if only we knew! How much easier I should rest!” Louise then changed abruptly from a distraught harridan to the cold, calculating woman they both knew so well. Then she remembered François’ words upon entering the room and said, “What solution?”
François laughed. “Why, ask her, of course.”
“Ask her!” That note again, that look from Marguerite, and again Louise struggled for calm. “She would only lie. She would say that she is pregnant, just to confound us.”
François frowned. “I do not think so,” he said slowly, shaking his head.
Louise looked at him sharply. “Not, you say? Why not?”
“Think about it, Maman.” François took a long, satisfied pull from his wine goblet, and licked his lips. “She has been confined in the dark at Cluny, alone except for the Comtesse de Nevers, for eleven days now. She would probably do anything, say anything, to get out of there. But I think she will tell me the truth.”
Suddenly Louise smiled, and it was as if the clouds had parted and the sun shone in a blue sky. “Of course, you are right! My clever, clever boy!” She rushed to his side, knelt at his feet, and took his hand in her own, kissing it. Marguerite joined her. Both women looked up adoringly at their Ceasar.
François regarded his mother and sister. He loved them more than any beings on the face of the earth, and never more so than when they were adoring him and singing his praises. It was for him to allay their fears, to make everything all right. Had he not always done so, just by being alive? He would visit Mary and see if such close confinement had brought the haughty queen down a notch.
Palais de Cluny, Paris, January 1515
No further opportunities had afforded themselves for Mary to answer the door, and she had been vouchsafed a quick peek out of the window only once in the past two days. There seemed little reason anymore to even get up off of the bed. She had lost her appetite, and ate practically nothing of the food that was brought. She who was so used to gay company, and to being merry, she who was used to fine clothes and the admiration of others, was lonely and heartsick beyond belief. The Comtesse was dreary company, having, it seemed, not even one interest. Madame did not read, she would not engage in anything except the most perfunctory conversation, nor did she play cards.
It was as if time had ceased to move the moment Mary had seen Louis pale and immobile upon his bed on the night of the storm. Paradoxically, that night now seemed as if it had occurred a hundred years ago.
Her raging toothache had subsided to a dull throb for the time being, and she had ceased taking the poppy syrup. But the doses of the stuff she had taken had left her feeling befuddled and lethargic.
Mary heard the door open in the outer chamber, heard a few muffled words of conversation. But she no longer had any interest in who came and went. She was allowed to see, to speak to, no one. She lay on her side in the massive bed in a state of extreme apathy.
“Mon Dieu!” said an imperious voice. “What a drear chamber! Whilst I am here, open these curtains! And bring me some wine! And freshen these rushes!”
Mary could not believe her ears. She sat up on the disheveled bed, wide-eyed, and said simply, “François!”
“My darling, my dear, what has happened to you? Have you been ill?” François sat on the side of the bed and took her hands in his, searching her eyes.
In spite of herself, she was glad to see him. She would have been glad to see the devil himself in the flames of Hell at this point. When he bent forward and placed, one on each cheek, two wet kisses, she did not even shrink back, as she usually did, at his touch.
Tears filled her eyes. “I have had toothache. And Madame la Comtesse is such dismal company, François! You can have no idea. And I have been so lonely.”
“So lonely that you are glad to see even me?” His black eyes danced.
She laughed. It felt good to laugh again. “Yes, even that lonely!”
At that moment the outer door opened and François heard the tramp of heavy feet. It was the guards, come to release the heavy black curtains from their moorings. “One moment!” he shouted. Then to Mary he said, “Your robe.” He retrieved the gossamer white robe from the end of the bed. His heart twisted as he helped her into it; her nightgown, which in her apathy she had taken to leaving on all day, was of the finest, sheerest gauze, and through it he could see the pink tips of her nipples. Suddenly, he realized that more than his heart had been moved. “I have a better idea,” he said, his eyes twinkling merrily. He bounced up off the bed and drew all the bed curtains, until they were sheltered from sight as if in a cocoon. “You may enter!” he shouted.
He held her hands inside the curtained bed while the guards detached from the wall the spiked rings that held the thick black canvases in place. When the top spikes were removed, the canvases fell to the floor with a thud and the room was suddenly flooded with light. The bed curtains were white, as was everything in the room; Mary, squinting in the unaccustomed glare, shielded her eyes with her arm, but she could still make out the figures of the guards rolling up the black canvases and taking them away. François seized the opportunity to pull Mary close to him in an ostensible effort to help shield her sensitive eyes.
Mary heard the voice of the Comtesse de Nevers say, “The fresh rushes, Your Grace.”
“Yes, yes,” François replied. “Have them laid and leave us.”
There was bustling and whispering as Madame bullied the maids who took up the old rushes and spread the new ones, and then finally the door closed and all was quiet. They were alone.
François reluctantly released his grip on Mary and opened the bed curtains. There were still some very sheer white curtains at the windows, but through them Mary could see blue sky and the yellow-white glow of the sun.
“Oh, François! Thank you !” She stood in the light, with her hair that was as yellow as the sun and as silver as the moon falling past her hips, all in disarray. Her skin was almost as white as her surroundings, but her lips and cheeks, despite her recent travails, were as pink as the nipples he had glimpsed so briefly. Suddenly he regretted the robe. It was all François could do to restrain himself from taking her, there and then.
He handed her a goblet of wine, his fingers hot against her cool ones. “I am sorry that you have been subjected to this most inhumane custom. But even the king cannot flout a time-honored tradition.”
Mary sipped her wine. “It has been a dreadful time. Why cannot I have my own ladies, François?”
His lids lowered until his eyes were mere slits. “It is because…” He felt such an overwhelming yearning for her that to speak of such a subject made him ache with desire. “Because…you must not be allowed any opportunity to…you understand, do you not? There can be no question about…your own ladies might…”
Mary dimpled. She had never before seen François tongue-tied. “But François,” she laughed. “You are the only one from whom I need protection!”
He did not even remember rising from his chair and striding the few steps to the white satin divan on which she reclined. She looked like a being from another world, a fairy, with her white skin and her white hair, in her white robe, on that white fabric. The next thing he knew he was crushing her body with his own, his mouth was on hers, his hands holding her angel face. He did not even know if she resisted him or not, so intent was he on his purpose. But he did not perceive responsiveness, and he was aware instantly the moment she went limp. The frantic madness passed, and he raised himself up onto his elbows and looked at her. Her face was expressionless. There was no anger; no shock; no acceptance. Just a blank indifference. Any response would have been better than this.
And then the torrent of words began. Even François did not know from what wellspring of his inner soul they gushed. He looked down at her as he spoke, her face inches from his own, so beautiful, so unearthly that she could not be real.
“I love you, Mary. I love you, I do. You must believe me. I shall die if you do not love me back. I have never loved anyone like this before. I only know that when I cannot see you, I am tortured by the lack of the sight of you, and when I do see you, I am tortured by your indifference to my affections. I must have you. I will divorce Claude and you will be my queen. There is precedence for it. Charles the Seventh repudiated Margaret of Austria; Louis himself repudiated Jeanne de France. We were meant to be together. We are Anthony and Cleopatra, Abelard and Heloise, Arthur and Guinevere…”
Her small voice startled him. “They all made rather dismal endings, did they not?” She looked up at him with pale, expressionless eyes. Instinctively, she knew that to struggle against him now could be dangerous. She must await her chance to slip away and not allow herself to be pinned down again.
François shifted to one side and used his free hand to smooth the stray hairs away from her face. “But we will not,” he said. “We will build a dynasty, you and I. Our children will be as gods, and will rule the world.”
Mary let out a gentle cough, and as she hoped, he moved to let her rise. She leaned over and coughed some more. “I am s-sorry,” she said between bouts of hacking. “My circumstances of late have not been conducive to health.”
François took the cue, rose, and retrieved her goblet of wine from the table. He knelt at her feet and offered it up to her. “Here,” he said gently. “Drink.” He stayed seated on the floor at her feet, his scarlet and gold costume, glittering with diamonds, making a riot of color against the whiteness of the room. “Mary,” he said softly. “There is something I need to ask you. My coronation is in the planning, and will take place on the twenty-eighth day of January, at Rheims. By that day, Mary, if you are going to, you should have bled. But tell me now. Are you with child?” He lifted her hand and held it between his own.
Her mind worked quickly. Madame la Comtesse inspected her personal linen as well as her bedding each morning for signs. When she used the garderobe, the clouts could not be disposed of, but must be placed in a bucket for Madame’s scrutiny. Surely they all would know when the time came. And she knew that it was not due to come until very close to François’ coronation date. It was an opportunity to confound François and uphold the illusion that she and Louis had tried so hard to create.
Mary shook her head. “I am sorry, François, but I know not. Only time will tell you that which you want to know. I am sorry.”
