The ripple, p.18
The Queen's Apprenticeship, page 18
…
On the 23rd of June 1520, the English legate said Mass in the open field, before the two Kings …
…
On the 24th of June 1520, the two Kings departed, and said farewell to one another.
—Louise of Savoy, Journal
There was gold everywhere you looked in this valley. Both English and French had poured everything into the display. The cost was dizzying, Marguerite knew only too well, but the hoped-for prize – firm friendship between the two kingdoms, alliance against Charles V – was beyond accounting. The long-awaited meeting between their two great kings – England’s Henry, eighth of that name, and François – was at last secured.
She would have to face Bonnivet here yet again. Among all the thousands who attended the meeting of two kings, he would be foremost. And she could never say a word of what had happened in his fine château …
It was not as if she’d been able to avoid him since that night. He had stayed away from court just long enough for his face to heal over, so that no courtier might come to know his crime through awkward questions. But he was as much the King’s man as ever – if not more so: counted on, called on. Was she the only one who noticed how Bonnivet blushed and stammered around her? Or whitened and fell silent. It might be shame – or only fear of her speaking up.
She could not endure the thought of all the revelry, all the diplomacy to come, with Bonnivet at hand. He was behind all this today, with Volsey on the English side. Men who didn’t need to be King because they stood so close … Volsey, as it happened, just like Bonnivet, had for years been building himself an impressive palace.
‘Such power and wealth in a man sworn to religion,’ Marguerite whispered to the poet Marot, who had come along with them, her only comfort.
In his great dark eyes she saw the irony shining, but he was not so bold as to say it.
‘I know, I know, I am wealthy also,’ she added ruefully. ‘But I am not a man of the Church!’
Marot said, ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. That’s pretty severe.’ He grinned. ‘Poor old poets will be all right, though.’
‘Very amusing. Are you not well provided for?’
‘Oh, I want for nothing. Well, perhaps one thing.’ He looked at her shyly.
Marguerite chose to ignore that. ‘Anyway, I suppose Volsey cannot be otherwise. In a worldly church, a cardinal is like a great prince.’ Great men could be ‘whitewashed tombs’, as it said in the Scriptures: beautiful on the outside but how different under the surface! If Marot had any inkling about Bonnivet … She reddened to think how men might talk.
‘It’s all about making an impression, isn’t it?’ the poet said. ‘Nothing more.’
Like this artificial valley of gold: gold in the sunshine, when the sunshine showed itself, over the fields in what appeared, at first, to be a golden city, and on the clothes of men and women near and far. It was a low plain between Guînes, which the English held, and Ardres, which was French. And now it glowed like a promise … So much gold that at first they thought the English had come in battle guise and with treachery, because of the gold and silver of their dress. But the golden city was tents, only temporary, and beside the old castle on the Guînes side stood a makeshift English palace of cloth and wood, painted so as to seem built from stone. It had many windows to let light enter, and inside it was hung with the richest tapestries.
Before the palace were fountains that spouted hypocras, wine and water, for all to help themselves with silver cups. Upon the palace gate was the image of an archer, and the motto, Qui j’accompagne est maître: The one I accompany is master – a frightening ambiguity, for Henry could go either way. And they needed him to go their way …
‘I don’t really have to attend,’ Marguerite had tried, with her husband, while they were still en route. There was so much for her to see to already in their Duchy of Alençon, not to mention in her own Duchy of Berry, a gift from her brother, years ago, when he had also made her a peer of the realm: a huge responsibility.
She knew this was wishful thinking; the Duke had laughed. ‘You are joking … You love festivities – this will be the biggest party you or any of us have ever seen! Planned for so long, and this is the first time you speak of staying away!’
Marguerite baulked – he saw her as a lover of parties! Perhaps she had been. Still, since Bonnivet’s last and serious attempt on her, she had felt less inclined. But she could hardly tell her husband why. ‘You see me as a worldly woman,’ she whispered bitterly.
‘How could you be otherwise? Yet even had you not been the King’s sister, you must admit, you would always have adored a good show.’
‘So perhaps I am not as holy as your mother,’ Marguerite said, immediately regretting it. She loved and esteemed her mother-in-law; the sharpness was unworthy. The Dowager Duchess was planning to enter a convent soon, so little did worldly show matter to that good woman.
Charles looked at her coldly. ‘No, there is no mistaking whose daughter you are.’
‘If you speak of my mother, she has been nothing but good to us.’
Charles turned his face away.
‘My going is not for entertainment,’ Marguerite insisted. ‘I go where I am needed.’
Louise confirmed this when Marguerite raised her reluctance. ‘Don’t be ridiculous – as if you would not be missed! Queen Claude is bland at the best of times, but now with child? You must step in to aid her.’ Louise fixed on her daughter icily. ‘Work to your best effect upon the English King – whatever it takes. The odious Emperor Charles must be held at bay! Queen Katherine already will favour him, being his aunt! Marguerite, use your every charm to override that.’
‘My every charm!’ Marguerite shook her head. ‘I doubt I shall hold much of that for the Tudor King!’
‘He is reputed a man of finer things – of poetry, for instance. There is more than one way to charm a man, Marguerite, if we must.’ Louise gritted her teeth. ‘And I certainly won’t have that Françoise de Foix taking over the role!’
Louise was always going to dislike her son’s mistress, but it was worse because of the young woman’s blood ties to the late Queen Anne of Brittany – and the way the mistress sought advancement for her military brothers! Not to mention the rumour that she’d been mistress to another: their cousin, the Constable Bourbon! Then Françoise’s brother had replaced Bourbon as Lieutenant General in Milan, only a few years ago, which could not have made Bourbon happy. No, Louise was biding her time with this woman …
Did Louise know the murmured story about her son’s mistress and Bonnivet? Marguerite would not bring it to her attention, though it might have meant punishing Bonnivet. Perhaps it wasn’t even true. She would not bring that anguish for no reason to her brother, who was utterly smitten with the woman.
And Marguerite was complicit in so much! Louise would have seethed if she’d known … Writing pretty love-rhymes for her brother to inscribe on jewels he gave his mistress – while supporting poor, heavy Queen Claude as her dearest ‘sister’. She was flattered that he’d asked her to write them, not some more renowned poet – nor written them himself. Yet still she knew it was wrong.
Why, Marguerite asked herself, since the King was God’s anointed, is there such a gap between doing the King’s will and doing God’s will? She had lived her life in that gap, without ever really understanding. The rules were just different for her brother.
Of course she had come to this Field of the Cloth of Gold between Guînes and Ardres – it was always going to be so. François needs me …
The events went on for weeks, and what Marguerite didn’t see, others told her. How the two kings had ridden to meet each other with only two followers close by on each side: Henry with his Dukes of Norfolk and that Suffort who had married his sister Mary Tudor, former Queen of France; François with Bourbon and Bonnivet as his chosen men.
The kings on their fine Spanish horses leaned across and embraced; dismounting, they embraced again. Into their tent of meeting they went, and agreed and signed upon many things that followed on the Treaty of London.
It was decided that at the same time François was dinner guest to the English Queen Katherine, so Queen Claude would welcome Henry to her table, along with many ladies, including Marguerite and her retinue.
The young maid of honour Anne Boullan was excited – her English family was attending the whole affair, since her father was ambassador. She had moved a while ago from Claude’s entourage to be one of Marguerite’s household. ‘I shall see my sister Mary again!’ she said to Marguerite, her dark eyes aglow. ‘And my mother! And – perhaps the English King himself …? This is a great good fortune. What times we are living in!’
Marguerite smiled – though rather world-weary already at twenty-eight, she could not begrudge the younger woman her small joys, nor her more ambitious ones. ‘Of course you will see the King!’ she said. ‘But it’s not as if you haven’t met the finest of kings already.’
‘Perhaps the English King will match him for sons one day,’ Anne said cheekily.
Marguerite looked at her in surprise. It was well known that Henry’s Queen Katherine had lost more than one baby son, as well as daughters, and might now have no others. But Anne was voluble with all the diversion; Marguerite could not chastise her.
Though Marguerite had squirmed when her husband mocked, she was not against enjoyment. Even the soberest, smartest girl like Anne might wish for festive thrills. Marguerite remembered how it used to be, awaiting feasts and dances – and what a gifted dancer Anne was. Perhaps once you were nearer thirty than twenty, it simply started to wane …
‘I wonder will you see your beautiful sister, then?’ Marguerite asked Anne.
Mary Boullan had been recalled to England the year before. Anne’s face was a mixture of pride and – was it dismay? What was she hiding?
‘Well,’ Anne said, ‘she is Madame Carey now, so her life is quite different.’ There was stiffness in Anne’s tone. She had too much self-mastery to say more; Marguerite knew how that felt – knew also what rumour said François had done to Mary Boullan. Would marriage protect her from men now? François seemed to share Bonnivet’s view: that marriage was no obstacle.
How had he misused young Mary Boullan? Marguerite would not ask, though it was in the air, and Anne must know the details. People at the French court spoke ill of Anne’s sister, but then women – even girls – were always blamed when … and especially if their looks … but not only.
Marguerite was not her brother’s keeper, even if she tried. These days his main mistress kept him well occupied, so perhaps that was something to be thankful for. She pushed the thought of Mary Boullan aside. The English King had a mistress too – and even a son by her, born last summer. By his true wife Katherine, he had only a daughter.
It was on a Sunday that the queens hosted each other’s kings. Artillery was fired to announce that one king was leaving his lodgings and heading for the other, each departing by different ways.
All the French ladies were clad in gold within the golden tents; so too was the English King Henry when he arrived, his cloak and collar studded with jewels. Louise met him at the main entry and led him in. Gasps went through the group of women who surrounded Queen Claude. She was near term, her gown covered in precious stones and her sleeves set with diamonds. Marguerite and her mother were also richly bedecked.
François would be treated to the same sort of display the other end. It was tiresome for Marguerite. It was diplomatic theatre: you just had to play your part.
As did Claude, rising with her vast belly and small but lumbering frame, to greet Henry. He removed his bonnet, knelt before her and kissed her. He then kissed Louise – and Marguerite. Though this man to her surprise repelled her, she must not show a hair’s-breadth of it. Only one year her senior, with pink cheeks and pale ginger hair, Henry was towering like her brother, yet alien, exuding force. She knew what force like that could do if unchecked.
François had confided to her what his spies reported. After meeting the landed and powerful Constable Bourbon, the English King had said, ‘If I had a subject like that, I would not leave his head a long time on his shoulders.’ She shivered now to think of it. Was Henry a despot as well as a lecher?
Maybe the English ladies felt this way where her brother now stood, in their palace at Guînes. Did François radiate such vile bluster and indifferent potency? No, that could not be. He was vastly more spiritual and refined – she was sure of that.
She was lucky not to have married Henry, or his brother, or his father, long past though the threat was. Suddenly she caught the eyes of la petite Boullan upon her, and a faint smile beneath them. So Anne glowed in expectation – but of what?
I suppose she is an Englishwoman at heart, Marguerite mused, though her manners and grace have become entirely French …
But the English King scarcely looked at Anne. He kissed the rest of the ladies in turn, from greatest to least, then took his place beside Claude. Marguerite sat with them at the main table. His very voice made her fingers curl, her nails turn to claws as they had for Bonnivet.
Every course served was announced by a melody – the music was beautiful, the dishes sickeningly rich. This table was a dead bestiary in itself, as if to annihilate all the birds and beasts that France could muster, and spread them before England. The view of it turned Marguerite’s stomach, though normally she was a good eater.
Louise, in her element, ate and drank heartily. So did the young ladies. King Henry matched them in zest. Of all the others only Claude, careful of her stomach, picked delicately at the food on her personal gold plate, making light conversation.
‘Engage him with your wit.’ Louise nudged Marguerite. ‘Astonish him – there can be no Englishwoman like you. Poor little moonface Claude will soon run out of words.’
But whatever Marguerite tried, Henry – golden as the royal plate, shining as the tents and canopies that filled this valley, his cheeks darkening to red as he drank – merely nodded and pursed his small mouth. She was no more interesting to him than little Anne.
It was Claude he showered his looks and his eloquence upon; Claude of the two sons already, and more on the way! So be it. This was merely work, not pleasure.
‘More effort,’ Louise hissed into Marguerite’s ear. ‘What is wrong with you?’
The meal, the music, the dancing, went on for four hours. This Marguerite was doing, as always, for her brother. For her brother and his kingdom, she swallowed her revulsion at Henry when even bejewelled masks could not disguise him at the dancing.
‘You dance too stiffly to please him,’ Louise said. ‘Watch la petite Boullan – how winningly she moves. Where is your old spark, Marguerite?’
For her brother and his kingdom, Marguerite nodded and smiled upon the gallant jousters who risked their skins in the tournaments that followed.
‘You are clearly just not his type,’ Louise murmured. ‘How dare he overlook the Pearl of Princesses!’
For her brother and for France, Marguerite sat among the queens and princesses and highborn ladies who oversaw the fighting, and hardened her resolve enough to hand Bonnivet his prize without flinching, without a flicker of fear in her eye, nor any flicker of warmth or forgiveness he might be seeking, when he triumphed in the lists – as he always did. You did not triumph with me, though. The words hovered on Marguerite’s lips like a bitter drink she could not spit out.
Thanks be to God there were other men in her life, men unlike Bonnivet; unlike Henry the eighth of that name; unlike her own husband. Men like her Clément Marot, of poetic fire and luminous intellect. She liked his private poems – full of feeling and laughter, sometimes rude and spicy – better than the ones he wrote for public occasions. Still, the public poems were always skilful … and they were required of him and greatly pleased her brother the King.
CLÉMENT MAROT,
ON THE SIGHT OF THE KINGS OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND BETWEEN ARDRES AND GUÎNES
Of two great Kings, nobility and power
Seen in this place now make us all aware
That friendship takes the courage of a lion,
To strike and knock down old rebellion,
And cause the full delight of peace to flower.
Whether in beauty, knowledge or behaviour,
In former times nobody can remember
Ever seeing such great perfection
Of two great kings.
And feast and pomp and every onlooker
Surpass in goodness the triumph and the flair
Which once was seen upon Mount Pelion:
For it produced the war we call Trojan;
Whereas peace and alliance come forth here
Of two great kings.
Yet the Emperor waited at the Burgundian border, to meet up with Henry too. This huge alliance might prove hollow friendship despite everything. Never mind the great Mass with which Volsey had drawn all events to a close – or the flying dragon, offspring of Tudor symbol and François’s salamander, that soared over gasping crowds to mark the last of this Field of the Cloth of Gold. Though made of wooden rings and canvas, a mere kite pulled from a coach, the creature flamed and hissed as had never been seen before.
‘It’s all trickery, isn’t it?’ Marot whispered, as they gazed upward. ‘Like my poems.’
Marguerite was about to reply in jest but saw he was serious, thoughtful. ‘It’s a fitting sign,’ she said eventually, ‘that all is vanity.’
He smiled. ‘I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind …’ He was quoting God’s Word again.
Was she not also meaningless, in her gems and silk and gold? All this diplomacy – all the agonising and wasteful expenditure – and they were no further ahead. King Henry was in some sort of dark deal with their enemy Charles V.
Such is charm, thought Marguerite. Such is courage of a lion.
