The Queen's Rival (2 page)

The empty throne before her was polished and heavily carved, placed beneath a tall silk canopy fringed in gold and emblazoned with an H and J intertwined. J was for Jane Seymour, his new—and third—queen. Bess was relieved not to have to face her newest rival today of all days.

“Elizabeth, Lady Clinton.”

Hearing her title announced by the herald, Bess fell into a deep curtsy herself. The rich amber-beaded velvet of her skirt, edged in gold thread, pooled around her as Thomas Cromwell, the king’s chief minister, approached. Then Bess heard the whispers flare again, but she did not recognize the voices this time—those of two women and a man. Still, the sentiment was all too familiar.

“What will the new queen say, knowing that the mother of the king’s son has dared to return?” one of the women wondered aloud.

“They shall likely say she looks surprisingly merry for her age, though she must be past thirty now,” the oily-voiced man replied.

“Ah, it seems only yesterday that she was a fresh-faced and eager threat to the queen,” remarked the second woman.

“Back then everyone in a dress was a threat to the Spanish queen,” quipped the man in return.

“Not so much a threat as Bess Blount. He very nearly married her, they say.”

As Thomas Cromwell, a stout middle-aged man in a black velvet robe and cap and a heavy gold and jeweled baldric, extended his hands to her in greeting, the conversation ceased.

“My Lady Clinton,” he said somberly.

“My Lord Chancellor,” she returned deferentially, acknowledging the king’s most influential adviser.

“While I understand that this is the hour of your greatest grief, I am afraid His Majesty does not wish to be disturbed by anyone.”

“His grief is my own, my lord.”

There was a slight pause as he studied her, his gray beetle eyebrows merging. “ ’ Tis true, I suppose. Under the circumstances,
you
are not just anyone.”

Bess pressed back the tears that filled her eyes, refusing to cry at his acknowledgment of what had brought her such notoriety.
Mother of the king’s son
. There had been rumors all across England less than a month before that Henry had actually been about to take the unprecedented step of formally naming his natural son—
his only son
—heir to the throne of England over Katherine of Aragon’s and Anne Boleyn’s daughters.

No one would ever know now if he had truly meant to do it.

His son; her son—precious Harry had been destined for greatness. He was meant to be Henry IX.

As Bess followed a porcine, tottering Cromwell down the long private corridor, her mind, still full of memories, caught and eddied on bright, sharp moments and images through the years. They tugged at her, bidding her to remember how a tender girl from the Shropshire countryside had wound up here at the court of Henry VIII, so naive yet so full of ambitious dreams—mistress to a king; mother of the King of England’s only son.

Oh, yes, I shall go to court one day. . . .
She heard her own voice echo across time, tumbling forward through her memories.
When I grow up, I may even meet the king. Just you watch and see. . . .

When they reached the small rounded door, Cromwell turned back to her. His face was full, his snub nose was red, and his expression bore the barest trace of empathy.

“There is a secret staircase leading to the king’s bedchamber beyond this door, my lady,” he said. “You may be some comfort to each other, if he will see you.”

“He shall see me. And I know well the way,” Bess replied, turning the handle, its movement taking her very swiftly back in time. Each shadowy, winding step was like a year she had passed as the woman Henry VIII had met, loved, and had very nearly made his queen. . . .

—LAO TZU

 

“B
ess, wait!”

Hearing nothing but the wind, she raced back across the broad, waving carpet of emerald grass dotted with rich bluebells, a full pace ahead of her siblings. A canopy of azure dipped low to the horizon, meeting the shadowy stand of oaks ahead, on this Midsummer’s Day. Her rich rose-colored skirts billowed out behind her so fully that she felt as if she might actually fly as the image of their father blossomed in her mind, kindling the excitement of seeing him. Of the six Blount children, she was his favorite, and these months had felt a lifetime to a girl of fourteen. Her mother had just returned from King Henry’s court, where she served in the queen’s household, and now her father was home from the war in France. All would be well with the world—at least with their own little world here in the countryside.

Words echoed across memories, and images tumbled between them as her heart raced. In her mind, she was sitting on her father’s knee, rubbing her forefinger over the smooth plane of his square jaw. He had always resembled a statue, she thought—chiseled, young, magnificent. Surely there could be no other father like Sir John Blount. Shortly after that, he had nobly gone off to France to fight alongside the king in order to reclaim English land. It was like something from a great romance, her mother drawing him to her and whispering devotions in his ear with tears in her eyes and her chin quivering as his great warrior bay stood ready in the distance. Bess and the other children had lingered silently nearby.

Mother had been home for only a few hours to be with her beloved. Still, that must have been something of a sacrifice, Bess thought, leaving the exciting court and its romantic, fascinating sovereign.

“
And joust!”
Bess had chimed, knowing the details well, yet still loving how her father recounted the tale, as he did with Lancelot and other magical adventures he read to them, filling their heads with fantasy and possibility.

“Yes, after jousts he can dance on into the night, besting everyone!
”

Bess was faster than the others now, and more eager, as she dashed up the brick steps outside the house and scrambled through the vast entry hall, her footfalls softened by the Turkish carpets. She was determined to be first to greet her father once they had heard the sounding of the trumpet announcing his return. It had been almost a year since he had left.

George and Robert, her two brothers closest in age, were not far behind. Their little sister, Isabella, fell back and cried out again.

“I shall tell Master Clarke, and he is going to flog the lot of you properly for leaving me!” the little girl stubbornly warned, using their sour-faced tutor as a threat.

Predictably, they all ignored the stout, rosy-cheeked little girl behind them, who always insisted on tagging along. Bess keenly felt the thump of anticipation in her slim chest as she sailed around the corner and into the drawing room, which bore a massive wall of leaded windows with panes shaped like diamonds and a heraldic panel in colored glass. Then she stopped so suddenly that both boys crashed into her as if she were a wall. The wounded man, covered in blankets and lying on a litter, was not her father, her mind said, yet her heart knew that he was.

For a moment, Bess stopped breathing. Her hands fell limply to her sides; her lower lip dropped. She could not force herself to move forward. He frightened her, this old-looking man with the gaunt cheeks, gray skin, and hollow dark eyes. He did not even sense her presence or call for her approach as he usually would have done.

The memory of his kind voice, so full of command from a year ago, shook her now, and Bess squeezed her eyes to chase it away as she fixed her gaze on someone who was not the man she remembered. This man was weak, defeated, and without the shine of the sun that once had so defined him. This was the last thing she expected. He seemed a stranger.

A heartbeat later, the boys pushed past her and ran to him, past the ring of Blount servants crowding the doorway. The litter on which he had been carried had been set on the sweet-smelling rush-strewn floor. Their mother was beside him, along with the steel-haired physician, Dr. Thornton, who had long attended the family.

“He really should be put to bed,” Thornton dourly advised. “Sir John has had a long journey home, and he is not the better for it.”

Catherine Blount held her husband’s hand and glanced up at the kind-eyed family friend. “He said this was the view of Kinlet that kept him alive in France. He wants to look upon it for a moment longer. Then he will let us take him upstairs,” she explained.

“Very well, but only a moment more,” the doctor said, bargaining with her. “He must rest if there is any hope of a full recovery.”

“What’s happened to him?” George asked bluntly. He was the first of the children to draw near their father.

Two years older than Bess, George Blount could well have been her twin. He was slim and blue-eyed, and the color of his hair was exactly the same as her own—like wild honey kissed by sunlight, their father always said poetically. Finally catching up, Isabella pushed past the boys and fell to her knees beside the litter, but Bess remained beside the doors, stunned. It was like looking at a ghost of someone, she thought, feeling a shiver so powerfully that she almost could not look. She wanted her real father back.

“Shh,” Catherine admonished. “Father has been wounded in the war, but by God’s grace he has been returned to us.”

Bess glanced at him again, lying there motionless, his expression unchanged. It did not appear that he had even heard his wife, who had returned from court as elegant and graceful as ever.

As if Bess’s thought alone had brought the censure, Catherine Blount turned suddenly to look with reproach upon the prettiest, most willful, and eldest of her daughters.

“Bess, pray, do present yourself properly to your father. Do not cower there like that. It is not at all becoming or respectful.”

Her legs felt like lead as all eyes descended on her and she moved slowly forward.

“Come, child,” her mother urged with a note of irritation. “He wishes to see you. You know how he delights in you.”

George reached back, clasped her hand, and drew her forward, knowing too well that their mother’s level of patience did not match her serene beauty. In addition to their father’s support, George’s she could not do without, so she complied, kneeling along with the others, beside the litter. When she took his surprisingly cold hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, Bess was surprised that, at last, their father opened his eyes. Bloodshot and weary, full of war stories she could never understand, they gazed up at her. At last, some small spark of the father she had known appeared.

“Bess,” he murmured in a raspy voice that did not resemble the one she remembered.

“Welcome home, Father,” she managed to whisper. When she felt the slight tightening of his hand in hers, tears began to slide in long ribbons down her smooth, pale cheeks. The bond, the unspoken connection between them, was still there. He would always be her father, the man she idolized, and a man who actually knew the King of England.