“We must remain calm, Rose, and surely my brother will know of this...this problem, before you could tell him. I pray he will always remember his promised duties to his loyal sister.” She smiled a wan but, to Mary, a dazzling smile.
The queen caught Mary’s serious face, and their eyes held. “His Grace did relent one tiny bit, Mistress Boullaine, for indeed he said he never meant that you must leave, since you are but a maid and sent to his court partly for a French education. His Majesty said he never meant ‘la petite blonde Boullaine’ was to be dispatched.”
She held out her hand to the girl, and Mary walked the few steps radiantly aglow, despite the surprised stares of the other English ladies.
“Madam, I am so pleased to be allowed to stay.” She curtseyed, then straightened. “Would that the others dearer to you might remain, but I shall do all I can to keep your company.”
The graceful answer pleased the queen and seemed to soothe the others who clustered about her for a solemn farewell. There would be no grievous departure scenes in public to kindle court gossip and the wicked snickers of which the mannered elite of the realm were fully capable. Mary Bullen’s goods were hastily unpacked and with long last glances and curtseys and clinging of hands, Mary found herself, for the first time, alone with her adored Mary Tudor, the lonely new Queen of France.
It seemed most natural to the queen and most wonderful to the young Mary that they were frequently together in the next few months after the English ladies were banished. The feasts, the dancing, the masques went on without ceasing, although the elderly and ailing King Louis was often too weak to enjoy them. The young queen immersed herself in the royal revelries to the growing delight of most of the courtiers who would have been obliged to feel they should diminish their frivolities because their king was temporarily indisposed. Always nearby, lurked the charming, clever, and handsome Dauphin Francois; only twenty, but ageless in wit and watchfulness. The young queen found him engaging and quite irresistible, so the young Mary Bullen thought. To her ten-year-old eyes, he sparkled with glamor, magnetism and fascination.
And the sensitive, young English companion to the French queen, who observed much but participated little because she was yet a child, idolized her laughing mistress. Yet, though the queen seemed often among the courtiers, she was never really part of them. Indeed, the fair Reine Marie seemed to wish that time would fly on swifter wings.
Often when they were alone, closeted in the queen’s privy chamber, Her Grace would talk on and on of England and her dearest bluff brother Hal from days before he ascended the throne, and of the most wonderful and jovial people of the Tudor court.
“I feel I could readily name them all now, Madam,” Mary admitted to her queen one night as they sat late over warmed wine and a gilded chess board, to which they paid scant attention as their talk skipped from point to point. “I feel as though I truly know our Queen Catherine and His Grace and even his dearest companions as well as, say, Sir Charles Brandon, the delightful Duke of Suffolk.” Mary Bullen laughed her lovely, lilting laugh at the thought of her father’s surprise when she could show him she recognized all the important people of the court before his busy hands could even point them out. Then she stopped, suddenly unsure, for the queen had paled visibly and was grasping an ivory gilded chesspiece in a white-knuckled fist.
“Charles Brandon—delightful? Why do you term him that, Mary?” Her unsteady voice sounded not angry, as Mary had feared, but strangely puzzled and hurt.
“I meant nothing by it, Your Grace. It is a word you have used to describe him and I only thought to...”
“Did I now—delightful? Ah, indeed he is that, ma petite.” She smiled warmly but her gaze seemed clouded and distant.
She sees him even now in her mind’s eye, Mary realized in wonderment.
“What else have I said of my brother-king’s dearest, truest friend, my Mary?” she queried, her voice now playful.
Mary remembered well all the phrases of praise and happily recounted events, but she felt quickly shy of repeating her queen’s words. The sure knowledge came swiftly to her naive mind that this woman could have loved elsewhere than her old husband the French king. Her marriage was, of course, arranged, and she had long before that been years promised to Charles of Castille, but she knew him not. Just because she was a princess and meant for a special marriage bond, could she not have given her heart elsewhere? Would not her own dear brother’s best companion be often about and then...
“Perhaps I have often said too much to be remembered or related, Mary.” Her perfect teeth showed white, and her dark eyes sparkled. She leaned forward across the wide chess board, her jeweled crucifix trailing its heavy pearl-studded chain over the marble noisily. She reached her pale hand across to cover Mary’s smaller one.