Royal Blood. Rona SharonЧитать онлайн книгу.
Your Majesty that his contract…with the Medici Bank—”
“My dear Cardinal Protector of France!” cried Francis. “I won’t pay for your triple tiara with civil war. For all her false vows of loyalty, once this malapert has Brittany, she will recoup her mother’s sovereignty and break from France. I will lose a considerable share of my taxes and have a Franco-Breton war on my hands. No amount of Florentine gold is worth the trouble.”
Renée smiled. Medici gold in exchange for trebucheting Medici into the chair of St. Peter’s. She was eager to see which one of them would cave in first. Her purse was on the buffoon.
“You may have the duchy of Chartres,” Long-Nose relented, as expected.
Pedantically she replied, “His Majesty has already dowered me with Chartres.”
“Revoked! But, if you are satisfactorily obedient, we shall let you keep it.”
“May I be excused?” Renée stared him in the eye. “Soubise is waiting.”
The cardinal glared at Francis, who grudgingly offered, “Chartres and lands near Nantes.”
Was it his last ditch-stand, Renée wondered, or would the millions in gold the Medici Bank of Florence was willing to pay to instate another Medici pope after Pope Leo X moved to higher pastures prove too tempting to refuse? “Your Graces, I fear me you have placed too great a store in my capabilities. I am but a woman—frail, docile, meek, ignorant of the world—”
“Fah!” said Marguerite. “A headstrong trickster is what you are!”
“What if I were to disappear somewhere between France and England and never return?”
“You could, but then you will have forfeited Brittany, as well as your lover, and be forever on the run,” the cardinal reasoned softly.
Renée plunged on. “If I refuse, I die. If I fail, I die. If I succeed, I shall be in mortal danger. Your Graces leave me with little to lose. Anything short of Brittany is not worth the trouble.”
Long-Nose addressed the cardinal. “How will you compensate me for Brittany?”
“Double the figure we agreed upon.”
“Treble it.”
“Done.” The cardinal beamed. “My dear girl, you will travel to England, perform your holy duty, and upon your return, you shall be vested Duchess of Brittany.”
“And Chartres,” Renée amended. “I require this in writing, validated with Your Graces’ seals, and I will be vested before my departure.” She smiled prettily. “If it please Your Graces.”
Marguerite’s face turned beet red. “You…impudent, insubordinate, froward girl!”
Yes, always froward. Renée sighed, dreading to hear what precisely she had agreed to.
Cardinal Medici offered her a wine cup. “Here’s to the success of your mission, Your Grace!”
Renée forced herself to sip, not gulp the calming rosé and prayed she would not become the shortest-living duchess in the history of Brittany and Chartres. “Your Graces, now that all is settled between us, I should like to know the particulars of my assignment. Surely you would not be so generous were I to merely spy on the English, for I am confident you have ambassadors aplenty.”
“All in good time,” said the cardinal, and sent for one Lieutenant Armado Baglioni.
What could it be? Renée’s brain spun with possibilities. “Am I to steal the queen’s jewels? The Great Seal of England, perchance?”
“I would send a thief for that.”
“Poison the Lord Chancellor?”
The cardinal laughed. “I would send a poisoner. Ah, Lieutenant Armado. Madame, meet the commander of your personal bodyguard.”
The Italian officer bowed. A pendant dangled from his neck. It was a gold cross over black. Renée eyed it with interest. “Your family emblem, Lieutenant?”
“No, madame. The insignia—” A hiss from Cardinal Medici hushed him.
She snorted. “If the emblem is so secretive, I suggest you leave it behind, Lieutenant.”
“Sound advice,” the cardinal agreed. “I have made ready special quarters for Your Grace at my chateau. I suggest you depart now.”
“Who is to be my official escort to England?” she queried. “I must arrive with an embassy.”
The overlords of her universe exchanged baffled looks. They had not considered this detail.
“Choose whomever you want,” the king granted peevishly.
“The Marquis de Rougé, with a caveat.”
“What caveat?” the king, the cardinal, and the king’s lady sister demanded in unison.
“A little one.”
3
We have all played the fool once….
—Mantuanus: Eclogues
Greenwich Palace, London, April 1518
The Yeomen of the Guard, fine-looking giants armed with great swords, silver breastplates, and gilt halberds, stood to attention as Cardinal Wolsey entered the king’s state apartments with a purposeful stride. The doors to the guard room, the presence chamber, and the privy chamber were flung open, one after the other, as if blown ajar by his stormy frame of mind.
The grooms of the chamber, supervised by the sergeant of the hall, ceased their labors—scrubbing the oaken floors of leakages and dried mud, replenishing the fire pans with faggots, unfurling fresh saffron-scented rush matting, and airing the rooms before the king arose—to bow to His Grace. The ushers guarding the privy chamber announced him to the gentlemen outside the royal bedchamber, waiting to array King Henry with freshly brushed clothes, and those alerted the esquires sleeping on palliasses in the anteroom.
Richard Pace, Wolsey’s erstwhile secretary who now sedulously served the king, met him outside the bedchamber door. “Carew is back. By commandment. Too soon, after mine opinion.”
“Most unfortunate,” replied the cardinal sotto voce, an undertone he and Pace had perfected during the years the secretary was formally in his employ. “He is working against me, I know it. Keep me apprised of his utterances. Unfortunately, greater evils are descending upon us, next to which Carew is but a pesky gadfly. Mind, a thousand eyes and ears open, Pace. No detail is too small for my scrutiny.” Without further ado, he proceeded inside the royal bedchamber.
Ordinarily Wolsey would send a message to King Henry requesting a private audience to discuss state business and to inquire where his king would receive him. Not this time.
“Wolsey!” His young master, a strapping, auburn-haired man of seven and twenty summers, whom the cardinal had not seen since January, was wearing naught but his slops, having just risen, and a jolly countenance. “Good morrow, my good cardinal! How have you done since last we saw at Christmas? We have wondrous tidings, my lord!” Of a sudden the king’s cheer ebbed. “What is it, Wolsey? Why the ashen face? Tell me now!” The doors opened as a pair of knights, replacements of the night esquires, arrived to assist the king in his morning ablutions. “Out!”
With apologetic murmurings, the doors closed. The cardinal bowed humbly. “Your Majesty, I give you good day and beg Your Grace’s pardon that I need must upset—”
“Pray, to the point, my Lord Chancellor.”
“Your Majesty, I have it on good authority that some unknown evildoers are plotting against Your Grace. My Lord Bishop of Worcester, who is traveling on the continent, reports that during his visit to an astrologer the French king is wont to consult on occasion, three tall men, English, he supposed, came into the astrologer’s chamber on some mysterious errand,