“They call Mademoiselle Anne the ice maiden,” Madame de Langeac jested. They were sitting in the gardens of the chateau of Blois, enjoying the hot July sunshine while sipping lemon juice. Behind them the pinnacled and turreted chateau that Fran?ois had restored for Claude rose majestically below an azure sky.
“I have had enough of men,” Anne retorted, shuddering inwardly at the memory of a recent infatuation that had turned sour. What a fool she had been to think that the gentleman had had noble intentions! In fact, few of them did, at least in this court. Cloaked and masked gallants thought nothing of climbing over garden walls and waylaying the Queen’s maids as darkness fell, forcing their unwelcome attentions on them. They left notes containing indecent proposals and naughty verses. Following the King’s example, they molested any lady they fancied with impunity, and some, Anne knew, would not take no for an answer. Several times she had had to slap a gentleman’s face, and she had stamped hard on one persistent rascal’s foot.
At a feast only last week, she had been seated next to a young chevalier who presented her with wine in a gold cup. It was only when she drained it that she saw inside the bowl the engraved relief of a couple very explicitly enjoying the act of love. She had felt herself growing hot as the young man guffawed loudly at her blushes and shared the joke with his friends, and she had spent the rest of the evening in a state of mortification. She was now beginning to understand why Claude was so strict.
“There is more to life than men!” she declared.
The ladies laughed. “What can a woman do outside of marriage?” one asked.
“She can learn, she can be creative in many ways, and she can be herself,” Anne told her.
“I could be very creative with a husband with sixty manors and a title!” another scoffed. “Really, child, you need a man to be anything in this world. Only marriage opens doors to women.”
“I think it closes more doors than it opens,” Anne observed.
She knew she had a name for scorning matters of the heart, but time had not lessened her antipathy to men—in fact, it had only confirmed her poor opinion of them. And now she was angry with herself at falling head over heels for the handsome deceiver who had led her on and then dropped her when it became clear that she would not give herself to him outside wedlock. She, who prided herself on being independent, had behaved so foolishly that she could not now bear to think of it. Instead she had surrounded herself with a protective carapace. Her fellow maids sometimes seemed wary of her strong opinions and barbed wit. Even she did not like the brittle person she had become.
Queen Claude, preoccupied with her little daughter, her philandering husband, and her many charitable interests, did not seem to be aware of the jaded views of her maid of honor. After all, Anne was just one among three hundred, so why should Claude notice her especially?
Of late, Anne had almost convinced herself that she should be done with the world and enter a convent.
“I am seriously thinking of taking the veil,” she told her companions, even though she knew deep within herself that she was not the stuff of which nuns were made.
“You, a nun?” Madame de Langeac cried. The others laughed.
Someone must have repeated it, because at a court reception later that week, the King himself sought Anne out. She took care to keep her eyes modestly downcast as she rose from her curtsey.
“Mademoiselle Anne,” Fran?ois said, his own eyes alive with humor, “it is hinted among the court ladies that you desire above all things to be a nun. This I should regret.”
“Sire, it is something I am thinking about seriously,” she told him. “I hope I will have your blessing.” Let that ward him off, she thought.
“I pray that you will think hard about what you would be giving up,” the King said, and passed on. And, of course, she did think about it, and gradually it dawned on her that she was enjoying life too much to immure herself in a nunnery, and that really it was her desire not to be taken advantage of by men that had driven her to consider such a drastic step. The world had too many pleasures to offer.
—
From time to time she received letters containing news from home. It was good to hear that George was making himself noticed at King Henry’s court; he would shine there, of that Anne was confident.
Their great-grandfather, the old Earl of Ormond, had died. It was hard to feel sorrow, for he had been very ancient, and she had rarely seen him, since he lived in London and had long served at court. Father’s tone was almost gleeful as he informed Anne that her grandmother, the Lady Margaret, had come into a rich inheritance as the late Earl’s heir. The old lady’s wits had at last deserted her, so he himself was to be in control of it. That will please him mightily, Anne thought.
Father’s letters were always full of his achievements and the honors that were being showered on him. He was cock-a-hoop when, early in 1516, he was chosen as one of the four persons who were to bear a canopy over King Henry’s baby daughter, the Princess Mary, at her christening at Greenwich Palace. “It is a high honor indeed,” he wrote, puffed up with pride.
But the following year saw England visited by a terrifying plague called the sweating sickness, which killed within hours. Every time a letter arrived from England, Anne opened it with trembling hands. Not Mother, nor dearest George, the people she loved best in the world, she prayed. But it was not them who died. It was her eldest brother, Thomas, struck down and buried at Penshurst, because the Duke of Buckingham had not thought it safe to transport his body to Hever. And then came the news that Hal had succumbed too, in plague-ravaged Oxford.
Sorrowing herself, Anne could only imagine what blows these had been for Father, losing his two elder sons. In his letters he was stoical, dwelling more on Mother’s grief than his own, but he was a man who would never show his emotions. Anne mourned her brothers, but she had not been close to them, and a part of her could not help rejoicing that George was now the heir. Mercifully God spared him, and Mary.
—
A year later, Father came to the French court as England’s resident ambassador. It had been three years since Anne had seen him, and she knew she had changed immeasurably in that time. What would he think of her now? Would he approve of the woman she had become? She waited in trepidation to find out.
When they met in the H?tel des Tournelles, in the galerie des courges, with its tiled heraldic ceiling and walls painted with green pumpkins, she was struck by how sadly he had aged. His face was as pugnacious as ever, but etched with lines of grief, and his brown hair had turned gray. He greeted her with unusual warmth and looked her up and down with approval.
“You have grown sophisticated in France, Anne,” he said, which was praise indeed.
He had brought her a book, Caxton’s edition of the Morte d’Arthur, as well as news of her family. The King had noticed George and praised his learning. Mother and Mary were still at Hever, which was no surprise.
“Have you found Mary a husband?” Anne asked.