Game of Queens by Sarah Gristwood Page B

English forces; ten days of ‘great solace’. (In celebration of the victory, Margaret was presented with a six-piece tapestry depicting Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies .) It is likely that Anne Boleyn was in Margaret of Austria’s train, observing the phenomenon that was the young Henry VIII. Spectators reported that one evening Henry danced ‘from the time the banquet finished until nearly day, in his shirt [that is, without his doublet]’ with Margaret and with Margaret’s ‘damsels’.
    But Margaret of Austria may not have had eyes only for Henry. What she saw in those ten days was Brandon and King Henry answering all comers at the joust, Brandon and King Henry dressed identically in purple velvet decked with gold, Brandon coming in disguise with the king to the masque that followed a banquet of a hundred dishes. On 20 October Margaret and her nephew returned to Lille but talk of their visit to Tournai continued.
    When Brandon was created Duke of Suffolk, it may have been in tribute to his prowess in France but such a leap, for such a man, attracted a great deal of international comment. Erasmus was among the shocked. Some said Brandon had been dramatically elevated so as to make him a more fitting match for Margaret: ‘Gossip has it that Maximilian’s daughter Margaret is to marry that new duke, whom the King has recently turned from a stableboy into a nobleman.’ In May, Brandon and Henry were once again defenders at a tournament, bearing the motto ‘Who can hold that will away’, perhaps suggesting that Brandon might be about to make a foreign journey.
    If Brandon indeed had pretensions to Margaret of Austria’s hand, it looked as though Henry were encouraging them. But the king found it at least prudent to express annoyance, writing to Margaret to promise signal punishment of the rumour-mongers. He acknowledged, however, ‘that the common report is in divers places that marriage is contemplated between you and our very dear and loyal cousin and councillor the Duke of Suffolk’. Margaret’s feelings can be seen in two long letters, signed simply ‘M’. [see note on sources ] ‘M’ dared not write directly to king or duke, she said, ‘because that I fear my letters to be evil kept’. Discretion was the watchword, for all this was a tardy slamming of the stable door, and Margaret sounds a repeated note of almost hysterical caution.
    After having been some days at Tournai, she had been, she declared, struck by King Henry’s love for Brandon and by ‘the virtue and grace’ of Brandon’s person (‘the which me seemed that I had not much seen gentleman to approach it’). Because of ‘the desire the which he always showed me that he had to do me service’, she forced herself ‘to do unto him all honour and pleasure’. This seemed to be ‘well agreeable’ to King Henry, who indeed ‘many time spake unto me, for to know if this goodwill . . . might stretch unto some effect of promise of marriage’. As Margaret tells it, it was Henry who urged that this (a love match, a woman making her own choice?) ‘was the fashion of the ladies of England and . . . was not there holden for evil’. Margaret replied that ‘it was not here the custom and that I should be dishonoured and holden for a fool and light’.
    But Henry VIII would brook no argument. Margaret of Austria was forced to find another plea: that the English were so soon to leave the country. This went down better but Henry warned Margaret that she would surely have to marry somebody: ‘that I was yet too young for to abide thus; and that the ladies of his country did remarry at fifty and threescore years’. Margaret insisted she had no desire to marry again: ‘I was too much unhappy in husbands.’ But the men would not believe her. Twice more, in Brandon’s presence,