The Secret Bride (18 page)

“Brandon and I shall send one for you as well, if you like,” Henry Guildford happily offered as he came upon them in an easy stride, holding a silver goblet.

Mary felt the shock of sudden surprise. “Brandon is to go to sea as well?”

“Together, we are to captain His Highness’ newest vessel, manned by the most elite force. It is a high honor.”

He was right about that. The privilege Henry had bestowed upon them all was clear, but Charles Brandon felt it most particularly for the disadvantage with which he had begun life and how far he had risen at court through Henry’s grace and favor. Involuntarily, Mary found herself surveying the crowd, looking for him. Seeing her as she did, Guildford leaned forward, cupping a hand around his mouth in a gossipy, just slightly feminine manner.

“He has gone to Southwark, my lady Mary. Rumor has it, there is a woman he visits there, though no one at court knows quite who she is.”

Hearing it, and knowing Charles Brandon, the revelation did not surprise her. “Where would you hear such a thing?”

“You know his uncle, of course.”

Everyone at court knew Thomas Brandon, the ambitious braggart who had control of what Brandon fortune there was. “Yes, I know him,” she said coolly.

“At archery two days past, Sir Thomas Brandon could not help boasting that he has great things in store for the family through his nephew. Since Charles has used marriage to elevate himself before, we all assumed it has something to do with the mysterious woman in Southwark.”

Mary felt a breeze across her face, cooling her childish thoughts and fantasies. Charles had a destiny, and obligation.

So did she. Of course there would be another woman, and another and another—until Charles had the power he craved.

“Are you unwell, my lady? You’ve gone pale,” Knyvet asked, pulling her back to the moment.

“Someone fetch her a chair,” Guildford barked in a panic, and the vestiges of her fantasy snapped completely and were gone. She was actually glad now that he was going away, going to sea. It really was for the best.

“I am perfectly fine.” She swatted at them just as Henry always did his servants. “I just lost my balance for a moment, that is all.”

Muriel Knyvet had heard every word because no one had even looked or bothered to see that she was there. Not even her own husband. She had long suspected Jane Popincourt of corrupting Thomas. But having the proof of it had still been a death blow. Now she wanted to kill someone else.

She wanted to kill Jane . . . and Mary, for knowing about it and telling her nothing. Each unmistakable word was like a flame burning, consuming her heart, a heart that had only ever been given to Thomas. She had loved him all of her life.

Her soul now as well twisted, burned . . . turned to ashes.

Yes, him most especially. She wanted Thomas to die . . . to burn with her . . . to turn to the pile of ash he had left her in for the unpardonable sin of having fallen out of love with her. The pain was blinding.

Crying and only now realizing it, Muriel dashed at the tears on her face, her rust brown skirts trailing through the grass as she walked alone away from the tent—away from the laughter, the lies, the rivalries and the deceptions.
Damn you, all of you,
she thought darkly, knowing that the only one who would ever perish for this—the only one who already had—was herself. Hearing about her own husband as she had, Muriel cared nothing at all that she was pregnant.

Because it was Thomas’s child alive within her, a child she knew he did not want, and she would rather face death than live the rest of her life raising it now . . . now that he loved someone else.

Less than two months after his birth, the son and heir who had brought hope and freedom from the past to Henry VIII, died suddenly at Richmond Palace. At the candlelit midnight burial in Westminster Abbey, the king sat stone-faced beside his sobbing wife. He was bereft at the loss for all his son had meant, but Henry had learned well as a child to make no show of his grief, and this occasion would be no exception. As king, he must be stronger than that. Stronger than everyone.

Men flourish only for a moment.

—Homer

August 1512, the English Channel Standing commandingly on deck of the
John Hop-ton
, sea spray moistening his face, Charles grasped the wet railing as the sleek new four-masted warship he captained was heaved and pitched into another, and then another, blue-black wave. A flock of gulls flew overhead. In his captain’s coat made of green and white damask, he was drenched with saltwater, and his beard, which he had not bothered to trim, had grown long.

Beneath him in the hold and at their posts around him on deck were amassed the most elite of the king’s fighting men, proudly wearing the same Tudor colors as their captain.

Bearing gunpowder, wooden chests full of pikes, muskets, saltpeter, and provisions of beer, flour and salted beef, they had navigated through a choppy sea raging with storms, waiting to attack. Around him, the water, full of foam and waves, was teeming with other warships preparing to attack the steadily approaching French fleet. On one was his friend Thomas Knyvet. On another was Edward Howard, Surrey’s son, whom Henry had named Lord Admiral. Charles looked out at each of the ships, buffeted by the wind, both with masts and banners emblazoned with the king’s crest. He should have been comforted by the nearness of his two dearest friends as he prepared for what lay ahead. But Charles’s mind was full of another thing.

Mary believed he intended to marry again. Thomas Knyvet had told him of that conversation with Edward Howard the day before they set sail about a woman in Southwark.

Charles had done nothing to correct the impression he knew Mary had. He had been a fool, even for a moment, to let his mind and heart suggest to him there could be a future with the king’s sister. He knew his silence would put an end to those fantasies on his and Mary’s part. Ambition was one thing.

Absolute madness was quite another.

Suddenly, in what felt like a moment, everything shifted.

He had seen the French ships approaching for the better part of an hour. Knyvet’s ship, the
Regent
, was out in front, vulnerable against them. There was a shot then that ripped through the mist and sea air. A volley of them followed between the French and English ships as they weighed anchor next to one another. Charles felt something then. A premonition? It was an ominous sensation that forced words up from his solar plexus, an order shouted out through the wind.

“Full sail, steady on course!”

If Howard’s ship joined with Knyvet’s, they could more boldly attack the larger French vessel and be done with it.

The idea seized him with little time to see it through.

Another volley of shots rang out, then a sudden violent explosion on the French ship. There was a ripping burst of color, light and sound so powerful that it tore through his chest right to his heart with a force that sent Charles hurling onto his back. The spray-slick deck around him was peppered with debris, wood and fiery cinders, raining down like crimson snow. Charles realized the hold of the French ship must have been stuffed with gunpowder. The water and the waves were quickly littered, and the air was filled with the haunting, plaintive cries of men burning to death. In a moment that twisted before him with color and the acrid scent of burning wood and human flesh, Charles cried out as he watched in helpless agony as the fire that raged aboard the French ship jumped across to the
Regent
, caught hold and began to spread through it, ignited quickly by the English ship’s own store of ammunition and gunpowder. Edward Howard, Lord Admiral, stood at the bow of his own ship, which had come alongside Charles’s vessel.

Both men, captains, friends, stood mere feet away, helpless to go to the aid of the
Regent
or their friend Thomas Knyvet.

The cries went on, screams of terror and agony, breaking through pandemonium and blinding horror, as both Brandon and Howard shouted at their crews to dive into the wreckage-strewn water and search for survivors. Smoke from the burning overtook them completely as Brandon directed his own crew to help him aboard the Lord Admiral’s ship, anchored just next to his own. He wiped the tears away from his blackened face with the back of his hand and drew in a deep breath to try to steady himself as he walked toward Edward Howard, who stood frozen, staring at the still burning massive wreckage of two ships before them.

Charles approached him slowly as the admiral’s crew carefully pulled three badly burned men onto the deck. Watching with horror, Charles very cautiously put a hand onto Howard’s shoulder. But his old friend seemed not to feel it.

“It’s not your fault,” Charles murmured. “You could not have known.”

“I am Lord Admiral . . . I should have known.”

A thick gray smoke enveloped the ship completely now, hiding them from all but each other, and the stench of burning flesh was so strong that Charles was forced to cover his mouth and nose. But short, stout Edward Howard stood completely unmoving as the call from a dozen voices for bandages and fresh water rose up over the continuing cries of agony. Even as Charles gave the order to draw up anchor, Edward Howard said nothing else other than the single phrase he had already uttered.

“God help me, I should have known. . . .”

News of the gruesome death of Thomas Knyvet, and the rest of the
Regent
crew, swept through court. The shock of it extinguished the optimism of the new reign. The romance of war was quickly replaced in the minds of sheltered courtiers with the gritty reality of battle. The ladies in Mary’s apartments were sympathetic to grief-stricken Jane, but there was little public comfort they could offer, since Muriel Knyvet was lady to the queen.

Thinner now than ever, pale and gaunt, Muriel wore widow’s black, and Jane avoided her. At night, Mary held Jane as she wept, Mary alone knowing the truth—that someone else’s husband truly had cared for Jane—and she felt the horror of the last words she had spoken to Knyvet herself.

Perhaps you should stay out at sea. . . .

“I wish I had died with him. . . .” Jane keenly wept, safe in Mary’s tight embrace that first night after hearing. “God take me . . . I feel as if I am already dead.”