Anne swung round and looked sharply at her sister’s face. She knew that gleeful, malicious expression of old. Mary knew something Anne did not. She was enjoying this.
“Our great-grandfather’s earldom of Ormond has gone to our distant cousin Piers Butler,” she told Anne, “but Grandmother, as Great-Grandfather’s heiress, has contested that—or rather, her lawyers have—and since he came home from France for my wedding, Father, of course, has backed her claim vigorously.”
“Then she is certain to succeed.” Father was an important man now, a Privy councillor and Comptroller of the King’s Household. Anne was impatient, wishing that Mary would get to the point. “But how does this affect me?”
Mary smiled slyly. “Father wants to settle the dispute by marrying you to Piers Butler’s son, James. That way, you will become Countess of Ormond, and his blood will inherit the title. But the condition is that James gets the earldom, not Piers. You’ll have to go and live in Ireland,” she added cheerfully.
No! Never! She would refuse. Let them try to force her, and they would see they had a she-cat to contend with! Father should have consulted her, the person most concerned.
“Have you met this James Butler?” she asked, consumed with anger.
“I’ve seen him at court. He’s one of the young nobles in the household of Cardinal Wolsey. He’s quite attractive. He may even be here in the Cardinal’s train. Father says the Cardinal thinks highly of him, and I have heard the King praise him. I see the King quite a lot now that I’m married to one of his gentlemen—”
“You can point him out to me,” Anne said, interrupting Mary’s boasting. “But I must see Father now.”
She flew off, half running through crowded pavilions hung with tapestries, along Turkey carpets spread over the ground, until she saw Father and Grandfather Norfolk talking with a portly, fleshy-faced man in red silk robes and cap, with a huge pectoral cross of diamonds and rubies. The great Cardinal Wolsey himself!
Father noticed her at once. “Come forward, Anne. My Lord Cardinal, may I present my daughter, the one whose future we have been discussing.”
Anne curtseyed, barely containing her fury.
“Delightful, delightful,” the Cardinal said, but it was clear that his mind was on their conversation. She was too lowly for his notice.
“We were speaking of you—and here you are,” Norfolk said. “Come and kiss your old grandsire, child.” He had always been fond of her.
“I gather that you were discussing my marriage with James Butler,” Anne told him. “Mary informed me of it.” She glared at Father.
“You have cause to rejoice, Mistress Anne,” Wolsey said. “If the King agrees, this will be a good match for you and for your family.”
“And will the King consent, my lord?” she asked.
“I shall advise him on the matter. He is, shall we say, well disposed.”
Father and Grandfather beamed. Anne knew herself bested. There was no more to be said. Her heart sank. If the King decreed it, she must marry James Butler.
—
“There he is,” said Will Carey, now divested of his jousting armor and flushed with victory. Anne was growing to like this brother-in-law of hers. He was warm and witty, and had a kind heart, for all his ambition, and he clearly delighted in Mary. “That’s James Butler, over there.”
Anne looked across the tournament ground to the stand where the Cardinal was seated, surrounded by his household. To his left stood a stocky young man of about her own age, dark-haired with a fringe, and personable—at least from this distance.
“You could do a lot worse,” Mary said.
“Yes, but I don’t love him and I don’t want to go and live in Ireland,” Anne retorted. It was galling that Mary’s marriage had brought her a place at court, when she herself was facing exile to a land of bogs and savages, by all accounts—and with a total stranger. Besides, she wanted to stay at the French court.
“I must attend Queen Claude,” she said, and hurried away, not wanting Mary and Will to see how upset she was.
—
The next day, there was another tournament, graced by the presence of the three queens, each seated on a stage hung with tapestries and furnished with a costly canopy of estate made of pearls. In a heavy gown of cream satin, Anne sat in the row behind Claude, with the other filles d’honneur, whose animated chatter went over her head as she faced the bleak prospect of leaving France for a marriage she did not want.
The two kings were riding into the lists now, leading a long procession of knights. James Butler was not among them, but Will Carey was, riding beside a strikingly attractive man with close-cropped golden-brown hair, sensual features, and large light-blue eyes. Anne stared at him, captivated. She did not even know his name, but she could not draw her gaze away. Never had a man’s appearance moved her so powerfully.
Will and the handsome knight acquitted themselves well, and Anne could see that the latter was high in royal favor, for King Henry, victorious himself in the jousts, was clapping him on the back as they rode out of the lists.
There was a feast that evening, in honor of the winners, and Anne seized the opportunity to ask her sister who the noble knight was. She was determined to make him notice her.
“The one who rode out with Will? That’s Sir Henry Norris. He’s another of the King’s gentlemen, one His Grace favors greatly. He’s just married Mary Fiennes—remember, she was with us in the H?tel de Cluny?”
Lucky, lucky Mary Fiennes. “I do remember,” Anne managed to say. “I…I thought he seemed familiar, but I was mistaken.”
—
There was no feast the next evening, so Claude dined in private with King Fran?ois in the chateau of Ardres. Anne, in turmoil at the thought of Sir Henry Norris together with Mary Fiennes, could not face food, and in her downcast mood she was averse to joining the Queen’s ladies in their eternal gambling, so she escaped to Claude’s private chapel. There, on her knees, she raged at God for dangling before her a future she could never enjoy, and for consigning her to an unwanted marriage and exile from all that she held dear. Was it for this that He had sent her into this world? If so, why had He allowed her to be fitted for a far more glorious destiny than that to which she was doomed? Why had He afforded her a glimpse of what love could be, and then deprived her of all possibility of experiencing it?
As she knelt there weeping, a hand rested on her shoulder, and she looked up, startled, into the concerned face and violet eyes of Madame Marguerite, Duchesse d’Alen?on, King Fran?ois’s sister and the living image of him.
“What is wrong, Mademoiselle Anne?” Marguerite asked. There was about this woman who was so famed for her learning an innate kindliness and warmth.
Anne struggled to her feet and dropped a curtsey.