“My beloved, you know your brother. What else could I do? I should not have been allowed to come here if I had not made it.”
Mary stared ahead with narrowed eyes. Her lips were firmly set. “I’ll not be cheated again,” she declared. “I tell you, I will not.”
Then she was twining her arms about his neck, giving him kiss after fierce kiss.
“I’ll not let you go,” she insisted. “I kept my side of the bargain, and Henry shall keep his. Charles, if you love me you will not allow a miserable promise to keep us apart. Do you love me, Charles? Do you love me one tenth as much as I love you?”
“I love you infinitely.”
“Then why so sad?”
“Because, my beloved, I fear our love will destroy us.”
They could not remain alone for long. That they should have been given this short time together was a great concession. He must return to his embassy, she to her mockery of mourning.
But before he left she had shown him her determination. She was a Tudor and she would have her way.
She talked to Anne Boleyn of her suspicions. She was certain that many were jealous of her Charles.
“Why, look,” she cried, “he is handsome, so clever, so skilled in everything he does. He is my brother’s best friend. So they are jealous of him—men, such as Norfolk, seek to spoil the friendship between him and Henry. They have whispered poison into my brother’s ear so that he forgets his promise to me. But I do not forget.”
She liked to talk to Anne because the child never attempted to soothe her. She merely sat and listened, and now and then added a shrewd remark of her own.
“It is for this reason that Henry extracted a promise from Charles before he left England. But my brother also gave me a promise, and I have no intention of forgetting that, I tell you. The King of France will help. So I shall insist on Henry’s keeping his promise to me. For if my brother did not wish me to have Charles, why did he send him over here with the embassy?”
“It is said that he sent the Duke of Suffolk in order to lure you back to England, Madame.”
“So they are chitty-chatting about me and Charles, are they?”
“It is said that the Duke is a very ambitious man, Madame, and that, having failed to win an Archduchess, he will try for a queen.”
Mary pulled Anne’s long black hair sharply. “Do not speak of the Archduchess to me. Charles never had any fancy for her.”
“No, Madame.”
“And understand this, little Boleyn, that my Charles would never lure me back that my brother might marry me to that slack-mouthed idiot of Castile.”
The Queen’s confessor came to her apartments and asked that he might speak to her alone; and when Mary signed to Anne to go, the young girl went quietly from the room.
The friar was an Englishman—and that she should have a confessor from her own country was another concession from Francois.
“Madame,” he said, “I wish to speak to you on a most urgent matter.”
“Speak on,” Mary commanded.
“It concerns one of our countrymen who is here on a mission.”
Mary studied him through narrowing eyes. “Which man?” she demanded.
“His Grace of Suffolk.”
“And what of his Grace of Suffolk?”
“A most ambitious gentleman, Madame.”
“Is that so? I see nothing wrong with ambition. I doubt not that you have some of that tucked away behind that holy expression you show me and the world.”
“Madame, I come to warn you.”
“Of what and whom?”
“Of this ambitious man.”
The color was high in her cheeks but the friar ignored the danger signals.
He went on blithely: “It is said that Your Highness is inclined to favor this man, and I have been warned that I should make known to you the type of man he is. Beware of Suffolk, Madame. He traffics with the devil.”
“Who told you this?”
“It is well known that Sir William Compton has an ulcer on his leg which will not heal. Your brother, the King himself, has made an ointment which has cured other ulcers. Nothing cures Compton’s. And do you know why?”
“Yes,” Mary replied. “Compton has led too merry a life, and the ulcer is an outward sign of all his gaiety.”
“Your Highness misjudges him. Suffolk laid a spell on the man out of jealousy of the King’s friendship for him. Suffolk is a friend of Wolsey who, it is well known, is one of the devil’s servants.”
“They are my friends, also, sir friar. And you are not. You fool, do you not think I shall treat your lies with
