The Secret Bride Page 4

  “Who wouldn’t?” Jane giggled in surprise at the question. “Every girl here fancies the Prince of Wales. I do believe he is the handsomest man in the world.”

  “And I do believe you are a silly chit.” Mary laughed with her. “It is only Harry, after all.”

  In spite of what Mary knew, she could not imagine her brother in the way Jane saw him, and it made her laugh even trying to consider the boy with whom she had grown up as the object of any girl’s fantasies. She expected him to do his duty to marry and settle into his role getting his queen with an heir. But politics had changed things, and would likely change them again so that just who his queen would one day be—Katherine of Aragon, or someone else—was still the subject of much speculation and debate across England and the world.

  The Brandon family estate in Southwark across the Thames, just beyond London Bridge, was suitably grand. His uncle having inherited it, Charles was nothing more than a visitor there. Charles felt his stomach seized by a familiar knot of envy as his horse cantered past the brick-pillared gateway adorned by the family crest, then came to the end of the long gravel pathway. Wearing a costly riding coat of brown leather, welted in blue velvet and lined with lynx fur, he pulled the reins just before the front door. He sat astride a gray gelding, borrowed from the Earl of Essex, from whom he had found favor as his esquire. It was the sort of position he had worked toward for years, a position of power through affiliation.

  Charles had achieved much in his time among royalty through ambition and drive. He was also, along with several other young courtiers, a member of the Company of the King’s Spears, of which Essex was lieutenant. It was an expensive affiliation requiring sums of money Charles did not possess, but membership in it was absolutely essential if he meant to continue his rise at court. After losing his parents, Charles believed he had been given one very powerful opportunity by the king, and he was absolutely driven to make something of that, and of himself.

  Earlier in the year, through his ever deepening friendship with Prince Henry, Charles was also made an Esquire of the Body, a highly regarded position in the king’s privy chamber. It was another key rung on the ladder of courtly success, as it was a ranking among the gentry that set him one rung below knighthood. But with all of the promise so tauntingly at his feet, Charles did not possess even the worth of estates required to make him eligible to receive the honor. It was a reality that frustrated him, and only made him want it the more. Marrying the wealthy, older Lady Mortimer had been the sole means of acquiring even some of the funds that were so essential to merely exist among earls, dukes and princes at court but it had not brought him enough property.

  He leaned forward now on the pommel of his saddle and exhaled deeply, trying not to think too much about all of that. He had come to this area of Southwark alone. The errand he was on was degrading and he did not wish or need to make it in polite company, as there would be pleading involved.

  Finally, Charles swung his leg over the saddle and leapt to the gravel-covered ground. He gave the reins over to a waiting stable boy who knew him well but paid him little mind as the impoverished nephew of the master of the manor.

  Sir Thomas Brandon’s own position at court was great, as a prominent counselor to the king, yet he had little inclination to assist his ambitious nephew.

  Charles stood in the entrance hall, richly paneled in oak and hung with tapestries. He was left there to cool his heels intentionally, he knew, in order to keep him in his place. Sir Thomas had introduced him at court when he came of age, and that was all he intended to do. Charles squeezed his leather riding gloves and fought the mounting frustration. If there had been any other way out of his current dilemma he would have taken it.

  What felt like an eternity later, a stone-faced groom formally announced, “Sir Thomas will see you now.”

  Charles knew the tall, spindly-legged man, William Fellows, as the gentleman who virtually ran the estate, yet Fellows always treated him like a stranger. He treated Charles precisely as his own uncle always had.

  The room into which he was finally shown beside the entrance hall was formal and suitably elegant. One wall was taken up with a large black-oak sideboard with exquisitely polished silver plate on display. A clock hung on the wall beside it, and nearby stood a long table hung with fringed green cloth and several high, leather-covered chairs. Charles sank into one of them and exhaled again even more deeply.

  His wife would be furious if she knew he had come here again, hat in hand. She possessed ample wealth for them both and could clothe him appropriately enough for the gen-trified circle, in the rich silks and velvets and the latest hats and chains. But this was very different. His wife would not understand. The money about which he had written his uncle this last time was not for him. It was for Anne and the children, in whom Margaret had little interest, for Anne had no tie at court and thus could do nothing to elevate Lady Mortimer’s stature. In spite of his commitment to his wife, Anne was still Charles’s first priority, and for her he would do anything.

  Thomas Brandon entered the room a moment later with long, labored strides. He was a middle-aged, heavily over-weight man with sagging jowls and thick black brows that merged in the middle and gave him a serious countenance.

  He was wearing a predictably dour black velvet long coat with ermine mantle and cuffs.

  “Charles.” He nodded blandly as he approached.

  “Uncle.” Charles nodded in return.

  “I would ask what brings you here but I can assume it is the only thing that ever brings you to Southwark.”

  Charles steadied himself. It was always the same volley, which elicited the same need to restrain himself. “You know very well what my request is to be used for.”

  “So you do maintain that Anne’s needs remain great.

  Yet I wonder . . . another doublet, is it truly? A new jewel, perhaps a fencing lesson? Or is it Italian lessons now? The need to keep up never ends, does it?”

  “Nor does the desire. Yet as a Brandon yourself, you should know that well, Uncle.”

  “More avaricious than ambitious, are we now?”

  “Feel free to see them as equally as you like. So, will you give it to me then?”

  “Because you are my brother’s son, and only so, I shall consider a loan to you—not a gift.”

  “As always, you are too kind.”

  There was a tense little silence. “I shouldn’t think you will want to tell your wife about this.”

  “Our dealings do not concern her.”

  He smiled strangely and leaned back in the chair. “Ah, in spite of how you insist on playing the game, Charles, everything a married man does concerns his wife, or should.”

  “Not this.”

  “Very well. I shall honor that,” he said on an irritated sigh. “But you know people talk, especially those at court.

  And your wife, as well as mine, does attend the queen.”

  “Then, Uncle, see that your wife knows nothing more of this than does my own.”

  Thomas steepled his hands as his elbows balanced on the carved chair arms. The ermine cuffs spilled back from his wrists as he considered the request. Charles knew that he enjoyed drawing this out as long as he possibly could. “And just why should I do that when this is not the first time you have come to me for funds—nor, I presume, will it be the last?”

  “Because I am the dearest friend of the next King of England, the current king is an old man—and I have learned well from my father’s brother about greed and about self-preservation.”

  Thomas Brandon was apparently at a loss for words after that, since he stood and went out of the room to fetch the money his nephew had written to request from him.

  The next morning, as a thick white fog swirled at his ankles, Charles ducked down to pass through the low doorway in the cozy bedchamber of a little country house not far from London Bridge. The house was comfortable and stylish, yet a far cry from the family estate his uncle had inherited. A toddler sat bef
ore the fire on the rush mat–covered floor, playing with a stick and ball. Another child, a slightly older boy, with hair in gold ringlets, handed his mother a cup of Anjou wine as Charles drew off his gloves and approached them. A serving girl curtsied awkwardly to him, remaining near the door.

  Seeing him, her clear blue eyes brightened and she almost smiled. “You’ve come after all,” his sister, Anne Shilston, said on a sigh.

  Charles sank into the chair at her bedside and took up her hand. “I told you I would,” he warmly replied, his lips curved into a patient smile that no one but Anne ever saw.

  “You should learn to believe me by now.”

  “It just gets so lonely out here with you away at court.”

  He patted the little boy’s head and smiled affectionately at him. The contrast between his fine velvet doublet and the boy’s more modest linen shirt was stark to him in the cold morning light of his sister’s bedchamber. A moment later, Charles drew a wound piece of cloth bearing a small bit of marzipan from a pocket in his doublet. The boy smiled broadly, knowing the ritual with his uncle, snatched it greedily and popped it into his mouth.

  “You did not forget!” he said, smiling as he chewed the prized confection.

  “Such a doubting family I have,” Charles chuckled.

  “Have I ever let the lot of you down?”

  Born a Brandon, Anne had been pretty once, not all that long ago. But the smallpox had all but ravaged her face and caused her husband to abandon her. That he had later died, leaving her widowed, Charles knew was of little comfort. She was left a widow, and far from the beauty she’d once been.

  There had been three of them once, Charles, Anne and Thomas Brandon. But their elder brother had died several years earlier, not long before Arthur’s death, thus, the comparisons to Arthur, Henry and Mary never escaped him.

  The house in which his sister Anne lived was a charming old timbered building from the last century, with a thatched roof and a bright little flower garden in front. Before it was a white gate with an arch covered with fat vines. Modest certainly, but comfortable enough for one who had never stepped into the absolutely lush splendor of the royal court.

  Charles sat now surrounded by the tokens of a life that was comfortable but not extravagant. There was a feather bed, rather than a pallet one, covered over not with fustian sheets, but with linen, and enclosed by faded velvet curtains from a generation ago. Beside it on a tabletop was a small collection of books, a candlestick in a pewter holder and an old jewelry casket. The room was warmed by a large rush floor mat and a writing table. They were all costly articles placed throughout the house in order to make his sister’s life a bit easier.

  “You are looking much improved since I was last here,”

  Charles finally said.

  “They are recovered,” she replied, glancing over at her children, neither of whom was wracked with coughs any longer or threatened by the looming specter of death from the bout of the smallpox that had infested their home when she became ill a year before. “That is all that matters to me.”

  As an abandoned mother with little to offer a prospective second husband, Anne’s life was focused on her children.

  Charles had not always been fair to women except for her. He knew that. His liaisons at court were not about love but survival. But he believed he could redeem himself with his sister. He could bring her comfort, security and company, yet he could not make her want to get out of bed or be seen by anyone but himself.

  “So are you feeling well?”

  “Well enough. And you needn’t have brought us more, Charles. You have been too generous as it is, and I know that it takes every last shilling you have to exist amid all that opulence.”

  “With my help, you do better,” he countered, showing great calm. He took out a leather purse full of coins and laid them on the table. “When was the last time the doctor was here?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “Did he give you something more for the pain?” he asked, knowing perfectly well that she no longer suffered from anything so much as disappointment and hopelessness.

  “The pain is less,” she said with a smile.

  A moment later, the maidservant who had remained near the door came to take the children to the nursery, and Anne and Charles fell swiftly into the deep, easy rhythm of a brother and sister. It was the same one he had seen between Henry and Mary many times. Anne smiled at him more broadly all of a sudden, and then linked her hands in her lap.

  “So now, good brother, give me news of court.”

  He bit back a smile of his own. “Court and my wife?”

  “Just of court. You know I do not like your wife. She has a sour temperament and an equally icy disposition, to which I shall never grow accustomed.”

  “Margaret is a good woman, Anne. I have done well by her.”

  “And doubtless she by you—the handsome young husband she can parade around by the neck like a Christmas goose.”

  “We both profit by our marriage. She is under no more illusion in it than I. But then, we have been over this all before.” He patted the top of her hand gently and then prepared, like always, to regale her with some fanciful story of a life that was so vastly different from her own it could divert her attention from her own dismay. “So tell me, what would you like to know of court this time?”

  “Very well then, let me think.” She perked up a bit, for-getting her own situation in the reflection of a trusted brother’s kind smile. “What do you hear of the celebrations for the new little prince of Scotland?”

  “There has been more feasting and merriment this past fortnight than ever anywhere before. But it is still difficult for me to think seriously of little Margaret as a mother.”

  “All right then, who wears the prettiest dresses at court? Is it still the Countess of Oxford?” she asked in a gossipy tone.

  “The Earl of Surrey’s daughter is a sow, short, squat and exceedingly impolite.”

  “That is not at all how you described her last time.”

  “Well, that is certainly how she seems now.”

  “Which means she refused you?”

  Charles paused for a moment, then laughed. “Twice.”

  “Then she clearly has no taste in courtly lovers.”

  “You always did know the right thing to say.” He drew his sister forward from the spray of bed pillows and embraced her. There was something warm and reassuring about her. Her lack of expectation was something he encountered from no one else in the world. He found, however, that the longer he spent at court the more he began to want it dearly in his own life. And he wanted it with someone other than his sister. But he could not tell Anne that. Not when he had spent so much of his energy convincing her that he was content in his marriage to a coldly domineering woman like Margaret Mortimer, and hoping that a way out would one day soon present itself. Although he had no earthly idea at the moment where that path might lie.

  Two days later, the royal barge bearing Henry, Mary and her household neared London on a damp day, the chilled English air seeping through her sable-lined green Florentine velvet cloak and gabled hood. The mist off the Thames rose up and swirled through her thin silk hose and around her slippered feet. Henry and Mary rode at the head of a long train of royal barges, all of them lacquered in Tudor green and white. Their own bore the royal standard, which fluttered above them in the breeze as twenty-one oarsmen in matching green and white livery silently rowed toward Richmond. Jane Popincourt, Lady Guildford, Lady Oxford and the governess, Elizabeth Denton, were sitting just behind them, each cloaked in velvet and rich fur.

  They passed the time talking of anything and everything as the barge cut through the slightly choppy water.

  Henry confirmed for Mary the gossip she had already heard, that in spite of all the debate, work by the ambassadors and even the papal dispensation he and Katherine had eventually received, the king had subsequently lost interest in the whole idea of the two of them marrying and was, even after ev
erything they had gone through, in the process of terminating the betrothal altogether. She also learned from her brother that Thomas Wolsey had been key in the decision making. The king had just appointed him his personal chaplain, so Wolsey was ever at the king’s side. Henry and Mary both liked him, and he was a great foil to their dour grandmother. The Countess of Richmond had installed herself at court and taken over many of the queen’s duties, ruling for her son where she believed he could not. Mary was not so excited to see her grandmother. Where her mother had once been loving but firm, the Countess of Richmond was only firm.

  “How will you feel if you do not marry Katherine after all?” Mary asked him as the wind tousled his hair.

  “If not her, it will be some princess or other to whom our father shall tie me.”

  “Have you waited so long that you care nothing for poor Katherine any longer?”

  He laughed at her. He was almost sixteen now and had endured the convolutions of this betrothal for several years already. “Poor Katherine is wealthy beyond measure, Mary, and she has become quite pretty now, actually. She shall do fine, no matter what happens.”

  “Will you not miss her?” she pressed, undaunted, having thought there might be something excitingly romantic in what her brother felt. “She has been in our lives for so many years I have long thought of her as a sister to us both.”

  “Precisely. And how many men in the world—especially kings—long to marry one of their sisters?” he asked, his laugh fading to a smile.

  Mary felt her father’s arms around her a curious, rather than a pleasant, sensation. She was not accustomed to her father’s affection. The king had long been prone to fits of unreasonable anger, and at one time or another all of his children had been victim of that. He had fought physically with Henry for no logical reason, and many times brought Margaret or Mary to tears, neither of them having any earthly idea what they had done to displease him. Being called to his chamber had always been a cause for fearful anticipation. In spite of her long absence, today was no different.