As the days went by and Brandon did not come, her anger cooled, as usual, and again her heart began to ache; but her sense of injury grew stronger day by day, and she thought she was, beyond a doubt, the most ill-used of women.
The other matter I wish to tell you is, that the negotiations for Mary's marriage with old Louis XII of France were beginning to be an open secret about the court. The Duc de Longueville, who had been held by Henry for some time as a sort of hostage from the French king, had opened negotiations by inflaming the flickering passions of old Louis with descriptions of Mary's beauty. As there was a prospect of a new emperor soon, and as the imperial bee had of late been making a most vehement buzzing in Henry's bonnet, he encouraged de Longueville, and thought it would be a good time to purchase the help of France at the cost of his beautiful sister and a handsome dower. Mary, of course, had not been consulted, and although she had coaxed her brother out of other marriage projects, Henry had gone about this as if he were in earnest, and it was thought throughout the court that Mary's coaxings would be all in vain—a fear which she herself had begun to share, notwithstanding her usual self-confidence.
She hated the thought of the marriage, and dreaded it as she would death itself, though she said nothing to any one but Jane, and was holding her forces in reserve for the grand attack. She was preparing the way by being very sweet and kind to Henry.
Now, all of this, coming upon the heels of her trouble with Brandon, made her most wretched indeed. For the first time in her life she began to feel suffering; that great broadener, in fact, maker, of human character.
Above all, there was an alarming sense of uncertainty in everything. She could hardly bring herself to believe that Brandon would really go to New Spain, and that she would actually lose him, although she did not want him, as yet; that is, as a prospective husband. Flashes of all sorts of wild schemes had begun to shoot through her anger and grief when she stared in the face the prospect of her double separation from him—her marriage to another, and the countless miles of fathomless sea that would be between them. She could endure anything better than uncertainty. A menacing future is the keenest of all tortures for any of us to bear, but especially for a girl like Mary. Death itself is not so terrible as the fear of it.
Now about this time there lived over in Billingsgate Ward—the worst part of London—a Jewish soothsayer named Grouche. He was also an astrologer, and had of late grown into great fame as prophet of the future—a fortune-teller.
His fame rested on several remarkable predictions which had been fulfilled to the letter, and I really think the man had some wonderful powers. They said he was half Jew, half gypsy, and, if there is alchemy in the mixing of blood, that combination should surely produce something peculiar. The city folk were said to have visited him in great numbers, and, notwithstanding the priests and bishops all condemned him as an imp of Satan and a follower of witchcraft, many fine people, including some court ladies, continued to go there by stealth in order to take a dangerous, inquisitive peep into the future. I say by stealth; because his ostensible occupation of soothsaying and fortune-telling was not his only business. His house was really a place of illicit meeting, and the soothsaying was often but an excuse for going there. Lacking this ostensible occupation, he would not have been allowed to keep his house within the wall, but would have been relegated to his proper place—Bridge Ward Without.
Mary had long wanted to see this Grouche, at first out of mere curiosity; but Henry, who was very moral—with other people's consciences—would not think of permitting it. Two ladies, Lady Chesterfield and Lady Ormond, both good and virtuous women, had been detected in such a visit, and had been disgraced and expelled from court in the most cruel manner by order of the king himself.
Now, added to Mary's old-time desire to see Grouche, came a longing to know the outcome of the present momentous complication of affairs that touched her so closely.