Читать книгу Mary, Bloody Mary - Carolyn Meyer - Страница 10
ОглавлениеYou have nothing to worry about for the present,” Salisbury assured me as we commenced our journey back to Ludlow on a glowing May morning. Dew sparkled on the hedgerows, and the air was sweet with the smell of blossoms. “Before he sailed for France, King Francis complained to your father that “the princess is so small and frail that no marriage is possible for three years, until she is at least fourteen.’”
“‘Small and frail’ — is that what he said?” I cried. “So I do not please him after all! Why did he not say this before we pledged our troth?”
“You please him well, madam. He simply worries that you may not be robust enough to bear children. But this need not concern you. My prayers are answered: you will have plenty of time to grow to womanhood. And who knows what may happen?”
“I shall never marry!” I moaned. “I hate the men my father chooses for me! And if I do not satisfy a pompous old windbag like Francis, then whom can I satisfy?”
This was my third betrothal.
The first had been to the dauphin, the eldest son of this same King Francis, and took place when I was barely two years old and still lived with both my parents at Greenwich Palace. Naturally I could remember almost nothing of that event, but Salisbury had often described the occasion for me.
All I could recall was a jowly hugeness in scarlet satin looming over me — Cardinal Wolsey, that bloated friend of my father’s, who placed a ring with a sparkling stone as big as a wren’s egg on my finger. Wolsey, with his long, yellow teeth and cold, grey eyes, had always frightened me.
I could also remember gazing up at my father and smiling at him, and my father smiling back. How I adored him! How I loved being carried proudly on the king’s shoulder around the Great Hall of the palace as he showed me off or fed me dainty bits from his own plate while my mother frowned in disapproval.
Then, four years later when I was nearly six, my father decided that marrying me to the dauphin would not be in England’s best interests — or in his own. The betrothal was broken.
My mother explained, and Salisbury explained, that from the time of my birth — I was my parents’ only living child — my father had pondered the choice of a husband for me. Not a husband, even, but the promise of a husband. Many promises might be made and broken before there was a real wedding.
“A daughter is not as highly prized as a son would be,” Salisbury said, “but a princess is still precious. She is a valuable tool for forging alliances between kings and kingdoms. You must not concern yourself with it, Mary, because you have no say in any of it. Your mother, the queen, had no say when her own father, King Ferdinand of Spain, betrothed her to Prince Henry. These are the affairs of men, and especially of father’s, and most particularly of kings.”
I loudly protested this idea. My father adored me! Surely my happiness would be most important to him!
“Your happiness has nothing to do with it, madam,” Salisbury said in her infuriatingly calm way.
To my sorrow I learned that Salisbury was right: my happiness did not matter — ever.
After the dauphin, King Henry had next decided on my Spanish cousin, Charles, the son of my mother’s sister. I was just six, and Charles was a man of twenty-two with the title of Holy Roman emperor.
When I was betrothed to Charles, a magnificent procession made its way from London to Dover, on the coast. My mother and I rode in our royal litter, and crowds of people lined the route, cheering and tossing their caps in the air. At Dover we met Charles.
Charles had sailed from Spain with a fleet of one hundred and eighty ships and arrived in Dover accompanied by two thousand courtiers and servants. When I finally saw Charles, his appearance surprised and pleased me. He was clothed in a peculiar manner, so different from my father’s crimson velvet outfit trimmed in fur. Charles wore black velvet with no ornament but a chain of gold around his neck. He had kind, intelligent eyes. And he praised me when I played a little song for him upon my virginals. I liked him, although he was sixteen years older than I was.
King Henry owned numerous palaces and manor houses, and he had prepared Bridewell, one of the most beautiful, for the emperor’s visit. During his stay of several months, Charles began to teach me to play chess.
Then the visit was over. On the day before he sailed away, Charles kissed my hand and promised to return to claim me as his wife when I reached the marriageable age of twelve.
But one day, more than a year after Charles’s departure, a page dressed in the king’s green and white satin livery came to my chambers with a message. I broke the wax seal and read it: the king wished to see me at once. He had signed it, as he always did, Henricus Rex — Henry the King.
Immediately I picked up my petticoats and ran happily to the king’s chambers — down the long gallery, up the king’s staircase, through the guard chamber, where the yeomen all smiled and bowed to me, through the noisy audience chamber crowded with people waiting to see the king on official business, through the first presence chamber where important men conferred, through the second presence chamber where the king’s closest advisers stroked their beards and nodded knowingly as I skipped by, and finally into the privy chamber, where the king was seated at a great oak table, Cardinal Wolsey at his side. Breathless, I fell to my knees before my father and bowed my head for his blessing.
I seldom saw my father, who was usually off performing his kingly duties while I spent my days with my tutors. When I did see him, the visits were usually merry, but this time the purpose was entirely serious.
“You must write to Charles immediately,” the king said.
Quill, inkhorn, and parchment were fetched, and I climbed upon a seat at the table. Cardinal Wolsey himself sharpened the quill for me. I waited for my father’s instructions.
“You shall write the letter in Latin, of course…” that was not a problem; even at the age of eight I had mastered the ability to write in both Latin and English “…and speak of your deep fondness for the emperor,” the king ordered. “Hint at your jealousy that he has sought the favours — nay, the affections — of another. Then swear your devotion. Can you do that, Mary?”
“Yes, my lord,” I replied, having not the least idea what he was talking about: jealousy? Affections of another? But I dared not ask. I dipped the quill and began to write, while my father paced back and forth, dictating the words.
The king slipped a ring from his own finger to send with the letter to Emperor Charles. The ring was set with a large stone that glowed a deep and brilliant green.
“The emerald reflects the truth of lovers,” the king explained, although for me that was no explanation at all. “It will change colour from dark to light if one of the lovers be inconstant.”
Inconstant?
Then he turned to Wolsey, seeming to forget that I was there. I backed slowly out of my father’s chamber (Never turn your back on the king, Salisbury had taught me. Always kneel and remain kneeling until he gives you permission to rise.) and then hurried to find Salisbury to ask for an explanation.
My governess reached for a silver comb and began tugging it through my unruly curls. “The rumour has reached the king,” she said quietly, “that Charles is thinking of marrying someone else.”
“But Charles is betrothed to me!” I pouted, yanking away from the comb in spite of myself.
“Your father must be certain of Charles’s loyalty,” she said.
Weeks later as I sat with my mother and some of her ladies, practising my stitches, my father burst unannounced into her chambers. His face was dark with anger, and his eyes shot sparks of fury. The waiting ladies scattered like frightened doves, and I dropped to my knees and hoped he would not notice me. My mother serenely laid aside her needlework and rose to greet him.
“Damn the Spaniard!” he roared. “The emerald has changed from dark to light! Charles has broken his pledge to us and married a Portuguese princess!” He turned on his heel and stalked out, slamming the door behind him.
“Will my father find me another husband?” I asked, when I dared to speak.
“Of course he will, Mary,” my mother assured me. “Never fear.”
I resumed my stitchery. I was disappointed, for I truly liked Charles, and I was too young to be grateful that for the moment, at least, I was as free as I would ever be.
For a time after the betrothal to Charles was broken, I heard no more talk of future husbands. Instead, I received a message of another kind from the king: I was to be crowned Princess of Wales. I was nine years old.
