The Tudor Secret - C. W. Gortner [98]
My throat knotted. I wet my parched lips. “I heard it once, at court, in idle talk.”
“Talk, you say? Yes, well, my Aunt Mary always did lend herself to talk.” She went still, her eyes turning distant. “I was named after her. She was like an angel, both to look at and in her heart. I adored her. So did my father. It was he who called her the Rose.”
The sorrow flooded my chest. An angel, beautiful to look at, inside and out …
“This interest in our history,” she said. “I find it unusual for one of your class.”
Despite the chasm within me, the lie rolled off my lips as if I’d practiced it a thousand times. “An amateur enthusiasm, Your Majesty. Royal genealogy is an interest of mine.”
Her smile was infused with warmth. “I commend it. You may proceed.”
“I know of the late duchess’s surviving daughter, of course,” I heard myself say, and it was as though I stood apart, listening to someone else. “Did she ever have a son?”
“She did, indeed. She had two sons, both named Henry. One died in 1522, the other in 1534, a year after her. It was a tragedy for his father. Only a few years later, Suffolk lost both his sons of his subsequent marriage before his own death in 1545.”
“How did his other sons die?” I asked, and an icy shiver crept up my spine.
She paused, considering. “I believe it was the sweat, though children are apt to die of so many things.” She sighed. “I seem to recall my cousin Frances helped care for them during their illness. She’d had the sweat before; she was immune to contagion. Their deaths must have been hard on her. To lose one’s brothers is a terrible burden.”
I clamped down on my horrified burst of laughter. The Suffolk male heirs had all perished in childhood. This was how the duchess had inherited her estate! And somehow, everyone thought this was a coincidence?
“And Mary of Suffolk…?” I asked. For regardless of the answer, I had to know. I had to be sure, no matter how much pain it might cause. “How did she die?”
“Of a fever, I was told, though she’d been ill for some time. The swelling sickness, other ailments … She was not old, however, nearly the same age as I am. We hadn’t seen each other in so much time. She deplored the state in which my father had chosen to live and retired from court to her manor in East Anglia.” Her face tightened. “Few took the time to mourn her. It was June; everyone awaited the outcome of that woman Boleyn’s pregnancy.”
She went silent. Though she didn’t say it aloud, the struggle within her was apparent. Here then lay that seed of discord between her and her younger sister.
Then she added, “I remember the details because a few weeks after Charles of Suffolk’s funeral, his squire came to see me. A stalwart man—very proper. He had a terrible scar running from his temple to his cheek. I asked him about it. He said he had served in the Scottish wars. Poor man; he seemed most affected by his master’s death. But what I most recall is that he brought me a piece of a jewel that apparently Mary had left me in her will but was never sent to me. I still have it. One of the leaves from a golden artichoke given to her by that rogue King Francis the First, who conspired to wed her to Charles Brandon after her first husband Louis of France died.”
I felt my knees start to buckle under me, as if I were disintegrating from within.
Mary chuckled. “That jewel meant a lot to her; it was almost all she had when she was finally allowed to return to England. It turned out well enough in the end, but for a time my father threatened to throw both Mary and Brandon in the Tower for their presumption. He also exacted a stiff fine that they never succeeded in paying off entirely, even though she pawned her jewels. But not that one; she once told me that artichoke represented the best and the worst in her life, the sorrow and the joy. She would not part with it.” Mary leaned forward suddenly. “Master Beecham, are you not well? You’ve gone quite pale.”