“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.”
“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.