Several applauded and commented heartily to one another. She could not see her father to share this fine moment, and she felt it would seem foolish to ask the men where he sat. To her dismay, she did take in the avid gaze of the tall, brown-haired William Stafford, who sat but one person beyond the man she served now. How she would like to bypass him deliberately or give him a pert remark to wipe that wide-eyed smile from his lips, but she dared not in full view of so many.
As she turned toward the spot where she would be forced to offer him his choice, several of the Englishmen about her rose suddenly and she spun slightly, hoping to relocate the king. She nearly dropped her gilded tray, for he was so close that her flared nostrils took in his musky scent, and the white and gold shining satin of his doublet nearly blinded her. The room seemed to tilt as she curtseyed.
“A goddess in gold and white to match her king,” he spoke lightly in his peerless French. His eyes pierced her satins and her skirts, and her heart beat terribly fast. She could not answer. One slanting eyebrow arched even higher over his narrow, dark gaze. She began to tremble and fortunately he suddenly looked aside at the observant group of Englishmen.
“And now you can understand more fully the glories of my France,” he boasted to them. His eyes sparkled and his teeth gleamed in the rampant candlelight. He extended his jeweled hand and, in full view of the avid hall, stroked her blushing cheek with the backs of his slender fingers. He towered over her far into the painted heavens and the tiny instant of time seemed to hang eternally in the stillness.
“But, indeed, Your Grace, this golden nymph is one of the glories of fair England,” came a voice in halting French. “This is Mary, Ambassador Boullaine’s eldest daughter.”
There were a few random stifled laughs, but most trained at court held back to see Francois’s reaction.
“Then I am certainly anxious for more complete French and English relations, my lords,” he chortled, and the surrounding groups exploded in appreciative and relieved guffaws.
Mary went scarlet and her eyes darted from face to face, torn by fears of what her father might think of such sport. Her gaze caught and held with William Stafford’s. He did not laugh with the others, but looked most annoyed.
Francois gently pulled her tray from her hands and set it on the edge of an ivory tablecloth. He boldly tucked her right hand under his arm and held it close to his warm, muscular, satin-covered ribs.
“I think, gentlemen, the English ambassador’s daughter should be a more important part of this grand alliance of nations. Besides, she matches her French king better than any other lady here tonight. Our pure white and gold seem destined to make us a pair!”
He laughed again and kept her at his side as he strolled and chatted and drank in their adulation. But Mary, stunned and thrilled as she was, took in other realities under Signor da Vinci’s gold and deep blue heavens: Queen Claude’s condescending glance, his sister Marguerite’s amused smile, and Francoise du Foix’s bitter glare. Finally, when she saw her father’s proud grin and curt nod, she relaxed somewhat, but she could not seem to escape the disapproving face of the impudent Sir William Stafford. And, too, she kept wondering what Leonardo da Vinci could read in her eyes if she had seen him again as she paraded under his painted waxen sky.
CHAPTER SEVEN
January 10, 1519
Chateau du Amboise
The familiar stifling silence had fallen on the queen’s court again: for the fifth time in four years the twenty-one-year-old Claude was sickly and swollen with royal child. Again her young and vibrant maids whispered begrudgingly in the hallways and took care to smother their giggles and gossip. All too soon the twenty fortune-favored maids who had attended the lavish French and English ceremonies in Paris ran out of marvellous tales to relate, and life fell back into its ponderous pattern of prayers and readings and study and needlework.
But for once the enforced duties in the hush of Queen Claude’s wing of rooms at Amboise seemed a welcome shelter to Mary Bullen. Claude’s chambers were a precious haven before the storms of decisions and rolling emotions which surely must follow if she would be caught in the shoals of Francois’s power outside the queen’s influence. Jacqueline, Jeanne and Eugenie and her own dear Anne might murmur and complain under their breaths at the tightening new restrictions, but Mary was secretly glad for the respite.
It was true that the news of her glorious walk with the king at his banquet in the Bastille had done wonders for her reputation and power among the other maids. Anne had made her tell the story over and over, though she had not told any of her listeners of the ill-bred William Stafford, nor of Francois’s lingering kiss on her lips as he departed to rejoin his imperious sister, nor of his quiet, deep-throated promise that he would see her again soon and in private.