Mary Brandon nee Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, former Queen of France and Princess of England lay on her deathbed. Oh, no one told her it was her deathbed, but she knew it was. She knew it by the way her eldest daughter, Frances, stayed at her side, weeping softly, when, normally, she'd have been up and out and riding across the fields by now, ignoring the proper behaviour for a girl of her age. Just like Mary herself used to do. She knew it by the way the blood seemed to thicken in her lungs and at the base of her throat, making it harder and harder to breathe. And she knew it by the way her memories kept flashing before her eyes, playing tricks on her and making it seem as though he stood there, when in reality, he was scores of miles away, carousing and making merry with her brother, the King.
Come like the dusk
Like a rose on the grave of love
You are my lust
Like a rose on the grave of love
I curse the day I first saw you
Like a rose that is born to bloom
Don't look at me the way you do
Like the roses, they fear the gloom
Oh, why had she fallen for him? Why? It would have made life so much easier if she hadn't. She could have gone to France, lived happily as Louis's wife until he died a natural death, then come home to take her place in Harry's court as his widowed sister. She could have been the second most important and the most independent woman in England, but for the fact that she'd fallen for Charles Brandon. Fallen for him as hard as any love-struck maid falls for the object of her first crush.
"Damn you, Charles Brandon! I did everything for you! Everything!" she hissed venomously, taking her wrath out on the spectre who seemed to lurk in the corner of her room, that sardonic smile she'd come to hate so much tweaking at his lips.
"Mama? What is it? Do you need anything?" Frances leaned in to hear her, but Mary was already shaking her head, for it was true. What she really needed was not in Frances's power to give. She needed her life back, her life back so that she could steer a different course, a course that would take her far, far away from Charles Brandon, never to see him or to fall for him. But she couldn't tell Frances that. Not only was it considered a sin for a wife to hate her husband, but it would break the young girl's heart, for she adored her father and thought he could do no wrong.
But wasn't it true? Didn't Mary have every right to hate the man she had once loved? Hadn't she done everything for him? Hadn't she killed Louis for him? Married him in France, in a hurried marriage that was a far cry from the one she deserved, being both a Princess of England and the future Duchess of Suffolk? Hadn't she stood by him when Henry raged at them both? Of course she had. Oh that she hadn't!
Your thorns, they kissed my blood
Your beauty heals, your beauty kills
And who would know better than I do?
Pretend you love me
Come like the dusk
Like a rose on the grave of love
You are my lust
Like a rose on the grave of love
She'd have saved herself an awful lot of heartbreak if she hadn't…if she'd heeded her governess's warnings and reconciled herself to her fate as Queen of France rather than recklessly following her course of pursuing Charles Brandon, but then, she'd only been seventeen. Seventeen and bedazzled by the handsome young gentleman who'd teased her and danced with her, who'd made her feel like her opinions really mattered, even though she was just a woman, and a woman a good decade younger than him at that. She'd loved him and had fooled herself into assuming that the blazing smiles that he favoured her with, the breathless dances they shared and the look in his eyes when she made him her champion for the jousts rather than her brother meant that he loved her too.
Which meant that she was only setting herself up for heartbreak later.
Indeed reality seems far
When a rose is in love with you
Slaves of our hearts, that's what we are
We loved and died where roses grew
They watched us silently
A rose is free, a rose is wild
And who would know better than I do?
Roses are not made for love
To give Charles his due, Mary really believed he had tried at first. He'd tried to treat her as he ought to, those first few weeks in France and later, when first Hal and then Frances and then Ella came along. But he just wasn't the kind of man who could stay faithful to one woman, especially not when that woman came with so many trials and tribulations, as she had. Harry had imposed crippling fines on them both for wedding without his permission, had banished them both from Court, and being the kind of people they were, they both needed the Court. Being trapped in the country had started to put cracks in their marriage and when Charles was finally accepted back at Court, but she had had to stay behind because of her pregnancy, those cracks had widened to the extent where he had taken a mistress. A Mistress, who occupied his days and nights in the way Mary once had. And she wasn't a woman to settle for being second best.
She'd known that from the start, known that her pride and their passionate natures might cause trouble for them one day, but in those heady weeks in France, she'd ignored it, pressed for their marriage because she was sure that they could overcome them; overcome anything as long as they were husband and wife. And now where was she? An abandoned wife who'd married lower than she ought to have done, who'd had four children but seen only three live to anywhere near adulthood, who lay coughing up blood as her husband caroused at Court.
She should have listened to everyone around her when they cautioned against Charles Brandon, should have understood that he'd never have made her happy. But she hadn't. She'd been too stubborn to see anything but her own blind desire and now she was paying for it. God damn Charles! God damn his charm! God damn her foolishness! God damn them both! God damn them both!
Come like the dusk
Like a rose on the grave of love
You are my lust
Like a rose on the grave of love
Come like the dusk
Like a rose on the grave of love
You are my lust
Like a rose on the grave of love