The queens apprenticeshi.., p.11
The Queen's Apprenticeship, page 11
There was now only the question of the widowed Queen Mary.
‘She must be watched!’ Louise fretted. ‘In fact, she must be guarded. She is to be confined in the Hôtel de Cluny until such time as all danger is past.’
Danger, thought Marguerite: it was such a strange way to describe the possibility that Mary was with child, an heir who might precede François! But for Louise, it was the worst fear.
Marguerite could not help seeing the other viewpoint, though it was not to her gain. Awful to be confined if you had done nothing wrong; dreadful to be prodded and questioned and under guard, your body held for inspection. Yet it was the custom in France, and the future of the kingdom depended on it.
‘Your brother’s future, and your own!’ her mother insisted.
In the middle of Paris, only a short way south of Notre Dame and the river Seine, sat the Hôtel de Cluny, like a compact castle with steep roofs and small elegant windows, and a crenellated outer wall. The place was suitably retired for the purpose. To be shut in there with only your maids of honour for forty days, at just eighteen! When the whole of France had seemed at Mary’s feet.
‘I will, of course, visit her,’ Marguerite said, determined to ease the widowed Queen’s discomfort.
‘Yes – to observe and question her, in your subtlest manner! Any sign she’s had contact …’
Marguerite frowned at her mother. ‘Had contact? When there are only her ladies present? And when Claude sits with her day in, day out?’
‘Never underestimate a woman,’ Louise said sharply.
The only man who visited, other than the odd friar, under supervision, was François, and that was every evening, rather too often. It made Marguerite uneasy. Yet she resolved to ask no questions and put no pressure on the young Englishwoman, who must already have grief enough. If indeed she grieved the late King – some called it relief. But still: the shock, the change in fortunes.
Mary was clad in white after the French custom for royal widows, and her room darkened for mourning. All curtains were drawn, and by the candles that gave very little illumination, Marguerite saw only fatigue and impatience on the angelic face of this Queen Dowager. Already the rumours were spreading that Mary had padded her form with cushions, either to provoke her French inquisitors or else to tease and joke – but that was not how Marguerite found her. As she stepped in, Claude arose to take her leave awhile; it was surely wearing, watching to make sure no man could get to Mary!
‘I desire to go home,’ Mary said gently, in her simple French.
‘It will not be too much longer, I am sure.’
‘I do not wish to marry again with a Frenchman.’
Marguerite was jolted. ‘That is not so soon proposed, I am certain.’
She hoped her brother had not made foolish overtures on his own behalf, with some idea of putting his poor wife Claude aside – when that very wife was keeping vigil here to protect his way to the throne! The plan was meant to make sure there was no heir and that Mary was not turned against them by some new alliance.
As if reading Marguerite’s mind, Mary said, ‘But France would not like me to remarry in England’s favour.’
Marguerite must be tactful and careful. However much she sympathised, none of this was about feelings: it was about the kingdom. Her brother would have his own strategy, his own reasons for whatever he suggested to Mary. Marguerite did not reply.
‘And I have the headache, and the toothache.’
The headache! That and Mary’s low mood might arise from being shut in here – or it might be because her courses were due and no baby would come. The whole Angoulême family watched and waited for Mary to have her monthly issue. It was an irony: the opposite situation from Marguerite’s own, where a baby was craved and her courses lamented.
‘It is hard to be kept to bed,’ Marguerite said softly, ‘yet it will not last forever.’
‘I am worn out by weeping.’
Was it weeping for her late husband the King, or for her situation? Everyone knew by now that Mary loved Suffort, as Louise had suggested. It was said Mary’s brother the English King Henry had promised her that any second marriage could be of her choosing – and that Suffort was the man so chosen. Nothing need hold Henry to such a promise – Marguerite well knew what it was to be the sister in such circumstances. A king would have his own intentions for his sister. François might even turn this to his advantage, particularly if it meant Suffort’s help with getting Tournai, for instance, back from the English!
They could put their heads together, the Trinity, the perfect triangle, and bring this to fruition. Yet Marguerite had the nagging feeling a deal had already been done: something between her mother, her brother and Mary, that she was not in on.
A cold sensation gripped her legs and body, despite the stuffiness of the curtained chamber. She stared at Mary: beauty could hide terrible truths.
‘You are the most reasonable one,’ Mary said suddenly. ‘You can persuade them to act.’
‘In what sense?’
‘To hasten the matter, when my lord of Suffolk is sent, as he will be, to bring me back to England.’ Mary blushed and pulled at the fine coverlet on her wide bed. ‘You are a woman who understands things; you understand love …’
Marguerite felt it like a sting, yet Mary’s grey eyes were clear and without sarcasm. Clearly this Suffort was all she thought of. ‘I do … I suppose I do. But I also understand duty.’
The Queen Dowager frowned. ‘I have done my duty, as I promised, and I await my due.’
This was confusing. It might be the language difficulty – or it might be a reference to something Louise had promised … that deal Marguerite suspected. ‘Are you talking generally? What do you mean?’
‘If you don’t know already, I’m not about to explain!’ Mary sounded irritated.
‘Her Highness is very tired now, though she most welcomes your kindness.’
Marguerite turned in surprise at the voice, realising the dark, shining eyes of a young maid of honour had been upon her the whole time. It was a little insolent for the maid to speak up like that, yet her manner was engaging, surprisingly precocious.
‘You speak French well for an English girl.’
Though the maid of honour lowered her face, her smile was detectable. As Marguerite took her leave of Mary, the girl accompanied her to the heavily curtained door. ‘I learned it at court, with the Regent in Malines, where I lived before this.’
Marguerite stopped and smiled herself. ‘La Régente, my late uncle’s widow! Raised alongside my mother. Though their paths have diverged greatly since childhood … You must be Mademoiselle Anne Boullan, then?’
‘Yes, indeed, and though I gladly serve Her Highness the Dowager Queen, I would hope to remain in France, whatever happens.’
‘Perhaps you will have your wish, if you are patient.’ Marguerite had to be diplomatic; though everyone believed she held the King’s ear, it was not for her to announce all decisions … Yet something in this girl’s eagerness and self-possession had struck her. She might well find a place for her once Mary was no longer in France; she could have a word with Claude in a moment or two …
The little maid of honour smiled again. ‘Yes, it is only patience, isn’t it? We can have our way if we are clever enough to be patient. And – and wait upon God’s will, of course.’
Marguerite was taken aback. ‘I’m not promising anything,’ she said.
Though she had felt a little manipulated, that last note of reverence was not merely an afterthought: the dark-eyed girl had undoubtedly studied and aimed for Marguerite’s attention, and knew Marguerite’s concern for religion. But she was genuinely devout and refined enough to be brought, along with her sister perhaps, into Claude’s court once their mistress returned to England.
That would not be far off now. Mary, cleared of any possibility of being with the late King’s child, had secretly married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffort, in a small, swift ceremony at the same Hôtel de Cluny that had held her for forty days or so. François saw to it, even though the English King Henry had exacted a promise from Suffort not to do precisely this. François feigned knowing nothing of the marriage till after, so that Henry could not blame him.
‘It will be treason on Suffort’s part!’ said Marguerite. She was chilled, discussing it with her brother – what might a king not do to his own sister, if his command were disobeyed? ‘It might be a short marriage indeed!’
‘Mary’s experienced with a short marriage,’ François joked unpleasantly.
Marguerite glanced at him: could he have had a hand in King Louis’s death? She refused to think of it further.
He went on, ‘She and Suffort will have to find their way somehow. She has written to her brother, and I have written in my own hand – the rest is up to him. What is it Virgil says about love?’
Marguerite smiled despite her distress. ‘Omnia vincit amor. Have you lost your Latin, and want me to fix it for you as I used to?’
‘In any case, she has earned her reward.’ He looked away and bit his thin lower lip.
‘What are you saying?’
‘Oh, mignonne, some things are better to leave without asking.’
Many a night of anguish was caused her by those words. She prayed to the Virgin; she prayed to Saint Francis, her brother’s very namesake. Always the guilt came back upon her, the underground stream of suspicion – had her brother, her mother, arranged a crime? And if they had, why did it feel as if she herself were to blame?
She knelt so long that her legs ached, but that was fitting, somehow: a penance. She might be mistaken; the King’s death might have been entirely natural, or brought on by his own behaviour, as vulgar people asserted. In which case doing penance would cover Marguerite’s vile doubting of her family – and of poor Mary Tudor, who might be innocent!
None of it could be voiced to the priest. Not for the first time, she wondered what her mother, rigidly devout, must bring to Confession. Louise never seemed to feel guilt.
But the guilt in Marguerite was not new or recent: it had followed her since the first days she could remember. As if she were simply in the wrong to have been born and must compensate for it. As if she owed someone, and the debt was so enormous she could never make it right.
She said to herself, I will increase our charitable works. I cannot bring this to my spiritual director! Even to suggest it would be treason against my brother. But I can cover a multitude of sins if I use my position to do good.
Nobody else in the family or among their followers seemed worried. Now the way was clear, and François was anointed and crowned. He had made his triumphal entry into Paris, only the first of many entries into France’s great towns, in cloth of silver and a white plumed cap. Marguerite and her mother watched, alongside Claude, from a balcony near the St-Denis city gate, under a blue canopy with golden fleur-de-lis. Marguerite had no eyes for her husband, who in his crimson velvet formed part of the procession, but only for her brother who seemed a silver god leading his thousand followers: princes, dukes, counts and gentlemen-at-arms.
Now their new, real life would begin, the one they had been born for.
The goods and duties of the kingdom must be shared out, parcelled off and assigned to those who surrounded the new King, so as to shore up his right and make the land of France peaceful in all directions. That meant change, but not too much change – he had to strike a balance. François promoted men of his own blood but was also generous to those of merit in his court. He was particularly bountiful toward his mother. From Compiègne, he issued letters:
Desiring especially to show attention to our very dear and most loved lady and mother … we are obliged to accord to her and increase her part in the goods and honours of our kingdom.
To Marguerite’s husband, and thus to his own sister’s house, he gave the Armagnac rights, the income from Berry, the governorship of Normandy. The Parlement – the lawmen of Paris – were indignant at that gift of Armagnac, insisting it belonged to the crown, but François stood firm. ‘Money belonging to my sister,’ he said, ‘is exactly the same as belonging to me.’
To both Marguerite and her duke, he gave the right to raise men to masters in their trades all over France; to his old favourites, fortunes and offices. Duprat, his mother’s reliable adviser, was now Chancellor; their cousin Bourbon he appointed Constable of France, in charge of the army’s needs and leader of it whenever the King would be absent. To others, like Bonnivet and his elder brother, Artus, François’s childhood tutor, now made Grand Master, he gave great gifts also.
Marguerite recalled with a frisson her mother’s warning that Bonnivet would rise under her brother – and now his own brother was head of the King’s household. But Bonnivet could scarcely reach her! Taller, stronger, more confident and eloquent than the real Queen, Claude, Marguerite took her place alongside François at public events, as did her husband Charles at meetings with ambassadors whose missives, she knew, said, Approach the King through his sister, and pay reverence to his lady mother.
There were deals and pacts to confirm, allies to secure. A marriage for his aunt Philiberte, aged seventeen, to the Medici Pope’s brother. A treaty to sign with the Flemish Charles, aged fifteen, grandson to both Ferdinand of Aragon and the Emperor Maximilian, that promised him one day Claude’s little sister Renée – just as he had once been betrothed to Claude in hopes of gaining Brittany, before she was given to François. Though Renée was only a darling child of four, as the younger daughter of the late King she was not to be wasted in the marriage field.
After that, to settle matters with Henry across the narrow seas, François was swift and clever in his undertakings, always consulting with his mother and sister. Yet not with Claude, who showed small interest in political affairs and seemed happy to be in retreat – understandably, since she was already with child. How could she find time or energy to be involved in ruling the land, when her task was to bring it a royal heir?
On the 5th day of June 1515, my son, coming from Chaumont to Amboise, got a thorn in his leg, from which he had much suffering as I did also; for true love constrained me to suffer similar pain.
—Louise of Savoy, Journal
Claude was well advanced in her first pregnancy when the new King’s court left Paris in the spring of that year 1515, and by the summer they were all at the château of Amboise again. It was easy to believe, as the ladies watched over the Queen excitedly, and basked in gentle weather on the high plateau overlooking the town and the broad Loire, that life could go on and on like this: in pleasure, diversion and contemplation, in hearing fine Masses, in arranging, managing, betrothing, marrying off and begetting – now that the throne was finally in François’s hands.
But a Most Christian King had more than domestic responsibilities, as Marguerite had feared. He and his nobles had a project to bring to completion. Under King Louis, the Duchy of Milan had been won and then lost – it must be conquered anew.
‘I am pleased to set forth by the end of this month,’ François told his mother, wife and sister in June, as they walked in the grounds of the château. There was a short span of each afternoon that he formally kept free to spend time with his queen; somehow it always became the four of them, Marguerite guiltily shifting to let Claude back into the conversation every so often.
‘You are scheming for something,’ Marguerite teased. ‘I can see the excitement in your eye, beyond that of the usual revelries.’
François stopped, and the ladies halted around him. ‘I’m going to get a boar,’ he said.
‘You have often hunted us a feast,’ Louise replied. ‘But how is that unusual?’
‘No, no, not for the banquet.’ There was a noble wedding coming up at the château. ‘No, I will have my men, my veneurs, bring in a wild boar, a live one, here in the palace courtyard, so I may engage him in combat!’ The ladies gasped, but he held up a dismissive hand. ‘It will make such a show and lift spirits for those who will soon be facing battle. They need to see what their new king is made of.’
Claude bit her lip; Louise shook her head.
Marguerite laughed. ‘You can’t be serious. That is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of – sire.’
‘But I am, and I shall. It will raise morale. You’ll see. It’s not as if I haven’t faced one down before, in many a forest.’
Louise clung to his arm as only a mother might. But François narrowed his eyes at her, and she let go with a mutter. ‘It is too dangerous – I won’t allow it!’
‘I’ll be facing wild men on Italian soil in a matter of weeks or months. Much worse!’
‘That you may have to; this you don’t have to.’ Marguerite’s tone was careful. He might still be her little brother, but it was not for her to tell the King what to do.
‘I agree,’ said Claude, and the others looked at her in surprise.
The three ladies linked arms at Marguerite’s behest. ‘We care too much to let this happen. We shall refuse to attend,’ she said. ‘Sire.’
‘Mignonne, you are drunk with your newfound power.’ François laughed. ‘The King’s sister this and the King’s sister that! But you’ll never get the better of me, you know.’
In the event, it was a compromise: a modification of the ghastly display. Instead of the King himself as the boar’s opponent, the courtyard was set up with dummies or fantômes to goad the wild animal. It had been caught with ropes and brought on a cart from the forest of Amboise, in an oaken chest secured with great bands of iron.
The lower and upper galleries that looked onto the château’s courtyard were filled with ladies and gentlemen, courtiers and guests who had come for the late June wedding. The gallery staircases were blocked off with heavy chests and trunks so that the beast could not leave the makeshift arena. Once let loose, it ran toward the lower galleries in a fury, but they were out of reach.
Queen Claude closed her eyes, comforted by her ladies and maids. The women were too afraid to watch – except little Anne Boullan, who gazed unflinchingly at the enormous creature and followed its every move.
