The Queen's Rival (36 page)

That night, Bess laid her head on Henry’s bare shoulder and fingered the coils of red-gold hair on his broad chest as his breathing gradually slowed. The firelit bedchamber smelled strongly of beeswax candles, wine, and lovemaking, and it was all too strong now for her senses. Everything seemed to make Bess feel ill. She had tried a dozen times tonight to tell him about the child, but the words would never come. There would be no turning back, and both their lives would be changed forever once she did. The responsibility in that was overwhelming, and he had been so passionate tonight, so much more tender than ever before.

Then he had done it; he had whispered, “I love you,” the thing she had dreamed for years of hearing, and her courage had slipped farther away. Pray God that Cardinal Wolsey had a plan once Gil confided in him. Her whole world, everything, was tied up in the two of them.

“Are you asleep?” she softly asked him as she glanced at the quarter moon through the window.

“No, just enjoying the dream this is to me.” He kissed the top of her head tenderly and drew her closer against his chest. “When we are like this, I want nothing so much as to shut out the entire world.”

Bess knew Henry’s attention was taken up by the recent death of Maximilian, the Holy Roman Emperor, and his own ambitions to replace him. He could think or speak of little else at dinner, on their long walks, or here in bed. He had begun to campaign with other rulers for the honor. Five years earlier, Maximilian had been so taken with the young, dynamic king that he had spoken of even symbolically adopting Henry. Following Maximilian’s death, memory of that intention was what first had put the notion of being emperor himself in Henry’s head.

After all, a son was a son; he could become heir if need be, no matter how that came about.

As Holy Roman Emperor, Henry would be monarch of not just England, but all of Christendom. There was no greater power, no higher honor, in all the world. Henry was not only devout but an ambitious man, and if he wanted that, he knew Bess would want it for him.

“Go away with me,” he bid her suddenly as she lay pressed tightly against him, both their bodies still awash in perspiration.

“What? Go where?” she said with a giggle, her face lighting at the prospect of the impetuous, slightly dangerous invitation.

“We are invited to Surrey, to Carew’s manor there. I am advised that the locals have been preparing for the possibility since last spring. We could give them all a thrill.”

“We?”

“Well, all right, I was invited,” he conceded. “But you are a part of me now, are you not? And besides, would you not like to see Carew’s wife again? The two of you were quite close once, as I recall. You must miss her.”

Bess thought then how he spoke with detachment of Elizabeth as Carew’s wife; yet she was a girl he had known intimately. She was not certain if it was a slight to Elizabeth or a show of deference to her. There was so much about Henry she had not yet come to understand. Bess shivered as she thought of his brother’s cradle blanket, a memento he still kept. She thought of the gentleness behind that. Yet she could not forget that he had treated both Jane and Elizabeth with callous disregard when he no longer fancied them. Try as she might, with that knowledge in her mind now, Bess could not reconcile the two men she knew him to be. She secretly feared them both—even the gentler Henry, because that one could so easily bow to the other.

“I would like to see her, yes.” Bess forced herself to say the words with a smile as she pushed away the disturbing thoughts. “If it would please you to take me with you.”

Henry rolled on top of her, drew her back into his arms, and gazed down at her deeply. His eyes glittered in the candlelit darkness. “Everything about you pleases me, Bess; that is the problem.”

“I love you, my lord,
all of you
. So the problem, I am afraid, is yours alone,” she declared in a voice clearly marked by her devotion to him.

“What, I wonder, would my life have been like if I had met you before Katherine?”

“Your Highness would have met a very small child,” she said with a wicked little giggle.

“You certainly could not have called me Hal then. But you must do so from now on.”

He trusted her with so much. But would he still trust her, she wondered, as he began to kiss the slim column of her neck, when he discovered what she, Wolsey, Gil, and Sir William Compton already knew? Or would he become as cold as he was with Jane and Elizabeth?

When they returned from their trip, he would have to be told. But did she not deserve a few days’ peace and a last bit of happiness before doing so? Bess decided swiftly that she did. The future was far too uncertain not to give herself at least that much before reality took over with a vengeance.

“He’ll not want her once he knows,” Gil declared as he sat across from Wolsey at the cardinal’s carved writing table. It was at the same moment Bess lay in bed with the king.

“No, he’ll not.”

“She will be so hurt.”

“Undoubtedly. They all are hurt in the beginning. And I am certain there will be others after Mistress Blount. But time does heal all wounds.”

“Platitudes, Father? Even with me?”

“You know very well you are not to address me that way, Gilbert, not ever. And I speak with the sage wisdom and the gift of insight with which I address everyone. If that requires platitudes, then glory be to the Lord Almighty. You should be accustomed to that habit of mine by now, if not fond of it.”

“I will want to marry her when the king is done with her, and she with him,” he declared.

“Entirely out of the question,” Wolsey grumbled, and cast down his pen. “Speak to me no more, ever again, of that foolhardy notion.”

 

B
ess withdrew swiftly from the horse litter and sailed into Elizabeth’s open arms, the past, for the moment, swiftly forgotten. Elizabeth had been standing with her husband, Nicholas, in the courtyard of their impressive brick manor house on a broad expanse of green near the village of Croydon when the king’s entourage arrived. Both Bess and Elizabeth clung to each other and wept like little girls as Henry and Carew embraced beside them, each man in finely embroidered doublets and heavy neck chains. A collection of household staff and townspeople stood in awe of the royal visitor in their midst after a month of preparation and anticipation. No one even seemed to notice that the king’s companion was not the queen, so stunned they were that someone of such great import was here at last.

���It has been too long,” Henry declared of his friend as he slapped his back affably.

“Your Highness,” Elizabeth said properly as she dipped into a low curtsy in a gown of rose-colored damask dotted with pearls and trimmed with lace. It pooled at her ankles on the gravel beneath her dainty shoes.

Bess saw how formal they were with each other now. It was as if the former lovers were virtual strangers. Yet there was a civility, even a kindness in Henry’s eyes as, at last, he took Elizabeth’s hand and brought it to his lips for a brief, chaste kiss of truce. It helped to see that, Bess thought, and to know that perhaps bygones truly could be just that for the two of them as well.

They went inside together afterward, and the large contingent of Yeomen and other guards who had accompanied the entourage were posted outside. The manor inside was befitting a companion of the king, with its tall entrance hall paneled in dark wood, and massive staircase with an oak banister. Bess could smell the strong scent of beeswax, oil, and fresh flowers. There were sweet peas, columbines, and roses set out in great pewter dishes everywhere. She found it easy to imagine just how much work had gone into preparation for this visit, since her family had done nearly as much once, years earlier, when the Duke of Buckingham had ridden through Kinlet. And this was a reception for the king.

“Your home is lovely,” she said.

“I miss court,” Elizabeth countered. “Country life is so achingly dull.”

“Then you must return. ’Tis not the same without you,” Henry said with a happy smile. “Especially for Bess.”

The two girls exchanged a little glance, the rivalry between them fully gone for Bess now in the face of the king’s open devotion only to her.

They went together then into the great hall with another soaring, magnificent beamed ceiling. Henry and Nicholas sat in two tall upholstered chairs beside a roaring fire. Bess and Elizabeth took two needlepoint-covered stools opposite them as wine was brought on a grand silver tray by a servant dressed as formally as if he were at court.

“The townspeople have organized a grand banquet in your honor for tonight, sire.” Nicholas smiled as he revealed the plan.

“I shall be pleased to accommodate them then,” Henry replied, accepting a large silver goblet emblazoned with the Carew family crest. “It is a difficult thing to reject adoration.”

“And you, Bess?” Nicholas suddenly asked, turning his attention to her. “Will you be up to such an event, or would a rest better suit you at this stage?”

Henry exchanged a quizzical glance first with Bess, then with Elizabeth. “And why would a rest better suit her? My girl here is the very picture of youth and good health.”

“And yet surely it is not every day that a woman comes to Sussex carrying the king’s child.” Nicholas chuckled. “Or is that to be kept a secret from the others for a while longer?”

In the silence that quickly fell, Nicholas’s glance slid from Bess to his wife, then to the king. His smile fell. “I assumed only since Mistress Blount was accompanying Your Highness publically that you—”

Henry shot to his feet.

Elizabeth gasped as Bess went very pale.

She did not have time to think of how Nicholas knew of her pregnancy. She was unprepared for the blow. Bess could not breathe. She felt the familiar nausea swell. The moment stretched on forever as Henry’s gaze settled hard upon her. He was no longer smiling.

“Sire, I meant no harm, truly, only to share what my wife’s mother wrote from court, which is becoming widely known in court circles. You do know how swiftly gossip there spreads,” Nicholas rambled nervously, glancing back and forth.

“Is it true then?” Henry gruffly asked.

Nicholas and Elizabeth stood, then slipped together from the vast room. “Forgive me, Hal. I was afraid to—what I mean is, I did not know how to tell you. The time had simply never seemed right.” Bess began to sputter as tears and a flush of panic colored her pale face. “I know it sounds foolish, unimaginable really, but I never once thought this would happen.”

He touched her face gently with the back of his hand. The mood suddenly shifted. “Nor did I, honestly. The situation with the queen had made me think the time for children, for heirs, was nearing an end.” Henry pressed his other hand lightly against her abdomen. “This
is
to be my heir, is it not?” he asked her with endearingly gentle concern.

“It could be no one else’s but yours, my love,” Bess replied with a tentative smile, brushing the tears with the back of her hand.

An instant later, Henry drew her against him and embraced her so forcefully that she could not breathe. But she did not care. “I am so sorry for the complication,” she whispered, feeling the tears come again. This time there was no way to stop them.

“It certainly is unplanned, but not unwanted, sweetheart,” he said. “A child of God, of ours, could never be that. . . if it is to be a son,
my son.
. . .” Henry, overcome with emotion, let the words trail off.

“He shall never be king.”

“But he shall be as glorious and powerful as the King of England can make him.”

“You desire any son that badly?”

“And his mother as well.” He kissed her tenderly then, a light brush of his lips, like a small devotion. “Who at court knows of this? Did you write to the Carews of it on your own?”