The Queen's Rival (45 page)

“And an earl as well,” Wolsey calmly added. “Your son is heretofore Earl of Nottingham as well as Duke of Richmond and Somerset.”

“He is a six-year-old child!” Bess gasped, looking back and forth at each of them.

“He has also been granted appointment as Lord High Admiral,” Gil read on incredulously.

“The king wishes there to be no question in the court, or in the country, as to the high regard in which he holds his son. Those titles elevate him to the second most powerful position in all of England.”

Bess was on the edge of her seat, glancing back and forth to the miniature in her hands and then to the cardinal and her husband.

“He cannot make Harry his legitimate heir,” Gil said, intervening, “so he is doing the next best thing.”

“Precisely,” Wolsey replied with a nod. “The king has not always behaved wisely in his personal dealings; he is well aware of that. But our sovereign, while a fallible man, is a pious one as well—one who places honor very highly, just as his father and brother did before him.”

“Is Harry still happy, though? Is he allowed opportunities just to be a little boy with all of that heaped upon his shoulders?” She heard her voice break, as she ached to know.

“Your brothers take him daily either to play his favorite game of shuttlecock or primero, and when he is with the king, they spend hours making games with all of the maps they both so fancy.”

“I did not know he could play a card game like primero,” Bess said sadly.

“He is a growing boy with a sharp mind, swiftly changing,” Wolsey carefully told her.

“We do appreciate your always coming here, Thomas, asking Bess for her opinions on decisions about the boy,” said Gil, intervening again when Bess was no longer capable of speech. “It is very good of you for both their sakes.”

“You are like my own family, both of you,” the cardinal replied, keeping the full truth just out of Bess’s reach, for decorum’s sake. Yet he had clearly grown fond of her through the years and let go of whatever judgments had fueled his condescending behavior toward her early on.

“The queen cannot be happy about this,” Gil said. “A natural child with so many honors and privileges bestowed upon him right in her midst.”

“I would suppose it is torture for her. But the queen is a woman whose faith has long sustained her, since the king himself no longer can.”

Bess felt a spark of guilt hearing that, knowing what part she had played. She could tell herself she had been young and innocent, but at the end of the day she had done it more than willingly. She had wanted him. She had wanted what had happened, and more.

Katherine ached for the days of Bess Blount.

It was the same sensation she’d had many times these past few years when she was faced with this new rival for her husband. The following winter became a spring five times over, and she watched her husband walk hand in hand down in the garden below for what she knew would be the last time she ever would have to witness it. And for that alone she was grateful.

Anne Boleyn had managed a great deal in the years she had come to possess Henry’s heart. Knowing the evil temptress for what she was, Katherine very nearly hoped that somehow the Blount girl and her little bastard boy would triumph over Anne, even now. At least Bess was an enemy she knew. Of course, Henry meant to divorce his queen, no matter how fiercely Katherine battled against it. He had given up trying, and waiting. He had made that abundantly clear. It was why today she was being sent away.

Poor Hal. He was such a fool for love. He always had been. But there was something. A last glimmer of hope, Katherine thought, even as she watched them now, arms around each other, warmed by their heavy layers of rich velvet and priceless fur as they paused beneath her window. Why had Hal lavished upon his son all of those unbelievable honors five years earlier if the rumors were not true? Were the dukedom, the earldom, the palaces, and the important posting as Lord High Admiral all the first steps in seeing the now ten-year-old Henry Fitzroy made heir for lack of a legitimate son? That Rome would ever grant Henry an annulment seemed increasingly unlikely, since Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, was Katherine’s nephew, and the emperor ruled Pope Clement. But even if Henry did receive an annulment, there was no guarantee that the little Boleyn she-devil would be fertile.

Katherine bit back an uncharitable smile. One thing was guaranteed: If Anne Boleyn wanted her husband, she was going to have a royal fight on her hands, particularly that hand with the evil little extra finger. Katherine had certainly suffered rivals before, and she knew precisely what to do, if not to win, then at least how to make her rival’s life a living hell of waiting and indecision. And in the end, without a divorce or an annulment, Anne Boleyn would be unable to marry Henry and become queen.

But there was another pressing matter. After Katherine was banished, she would need a well-placed ally who would remain here and see, by whatever means necessary, that Henry Fitzroy did not become heir in place of her own daughter, Mary. She needed Cardinal Wolsey. Yes, Wolsey was duplicitous, self-seeking, and ambitious to a fault. That went without saying. But, outwardly at least, he was also a pious man of God. Plus, there was something else that might well motivate him to help her cause.

Katherine had long heard the whispers, as everyone else had, that there was more between the great cardinal and the young Baron Tailbois than just a relationship of master and ward. Thus, there might be some secret loyalty to Bess Blount’s bastard son she could use as motivation as well.

She watched with an oddly voyeuristic interest then as the king’s favorite horses were brought and one of his dearest friends, Nicholas Carew, joined him. Anne and Henry were laughing now, so carefree. There would be a price to be paid for that, Katherine knew, but what it would be, only time would tell. It was the first time in all of their married years that Hal had left one palace for another without bidding her farewell, if for nothing else than polite courtesy. Apparently, for her resolute refusal to divorce him, he would no longer extend even that.

His silence now spoke volumes. Anne Boleyn believed she had won. Henry believed it, too. What would happen next, only time, and God, would tell.

“I wish to stop on the way to Woodstock and visit with my son,” Henry informed his party of elegantly dressed riders, guards, and servants, as they set off on horseback, trotting away from the great palace of Windsor.

Anne Boleyn, cloaked in elegant velvet and ermine, and a matching hat that framed her striking face, began immediately to pout.

“But we have just seen the boy,” she declared with a petulant whine. “I do not fancy that diversion at all, my lord.”

Henry cast a glance across at her as they rode beneath heavy branches blanketed with snow. Only a shaft of winter sun that broke through the gray canopy of clouds warmed them all.

“That was an entire month ago,” he reminded her.

“Truly, it feels like only yesterday,” she sniped.

“’Tis your duty to join me silently and proudly, Nan.”

“Other women’s children are tedious creatures. And Richmond is not your proper son anyway,” Anne taunted him dangerously.

She had Henry twisted in knots and well she knew it. So did he, but he felt powerless against it, and against her. Finally it seemed he was meant to pay fully for toying with women’s hearts by having his own heart toyed with this way, like a cat with a mouse. Passion and frustration mixed daily with pure delight inside him so that he could think of almost nothing else but having her for the challenge she presented. He had certainly met his charming, arrogant match in Anne Boleyn. Henry still was not certain that he actually loved her—not as he had once loved Bess, or even Katherine. But his powerful, unrequited passion for the proud, clever girl he called Nan certainly eclipsed everything else in his life at the moment.

If only Anne would surrender herself, finally he would be able to see if this power she had over him was simply lust or if it was truly love. He had certainly never let anyone speak to him as he had Nan, or withhold so much, reducing him one day to a raging bull and a teary-eyed boy the next. He had grown a beard because Anne fancied the French style over the English, cut his hair short, and begun dousing himself in ambergris exclusively because she said the fragrance excited her more than any other. Henry knew he was pathetic, but he could not stop himself from wanting the challenge. He lusted for her, carnally, powerfully, and completely. Until he had her at last, she was the absolute master of his soul, and she well knew it.

“He is my son, Nan, and if you ever truly expect to be queen, you shall learn well to honor that,” he said, trying his best to sound commanding with her.

“Perhaps she wisely tolerates him, but a queen does not
honor
a bastard. Katherine certainly exemplifies that.”

“You would be wise to leave Katherine out of this.”

“She had better be well out of it. You told her to be gone by the time we returned to Windsor, did you not? You know I shall never warm to the notion of anything intimate between us with her always there, watching us,” Anne warned, her high voice going suddenly low.

Henry rolled his eyes, trying in vain to steel himself against the lure of her body that she kept always just beyond his reach. “I’ll not hold my breath,” he said, bristling, as they wound over hills and through pastureland covered in dirt and melting patches of snow. “You have made me wait five years already with little more to show for it than a stolen kiss.”

They rode out ahead of the others, and Henry was glad they could not be overheard for the jangle of silver harnesses. It was unseemly for a sovereign to be so manipulated, and he knew it.

Sensing that, Anne leaned over and ran her hand down his forearm with a deliberately slow sweep. “Well, once Katherine is gone for good, there are certainly things that I can do, that we can do, to . . . satisfy you. At least until the divorce is secured.”

“You still plan to make me wait to have you?” he growled, tensing in his saddle.

“I’ll certainly not end up like Mistress Blount or my sister,” she haughtily declared, drawing back her hand sharply as the sun went back behind the clouds.

“Best to leave Lady Tailbois out of this,” he warned, growing angry at how easily Anne could play him.

“And why would I when you bring her son into it every single day of our lives? I shall bear you sons when I am your queen, Hal, but I’ll not stand for their being anywhere behind the Duke of Richmond in the line of succession.”

Henry ran a gloved hand behind his neck, feeling tense and irritated suddenly. He did not like thinking about Bess—certainly not when he was with Anne. It had been the same with Mary Boleyn. And he certainly did not like threatening references to his son’s mother. It may have been nearly eleven years since that final weekend with the Carews, when he had allowed himself the excitement of a man in love about her pregnancy, but in some ways that felt like only yesterday.

There was little he did not recall about Bess—the sweet, gentle sound of her laughter; the light fragrance of rose water in her hair; the sensation of her adoring wide-eyed gaze fixed upon him; or how it felt to have her touch him so wantonly as she had learned to. He closed his eyes for a moment to vanquish the images. The memory was more difficult to let go, and he breathed a small sigh that he knew Anne did not hear because she did not care enough to perceive subtleties. They continued over a vast hill, and a broader patchwork of snow and dirt, and she began to chat with one of her attendants.

If it was possible for a man to love two women, then Henry did, although in very different ways. And there were moments even now with Anne beside him, when part of him regretted he had not considered divorce for Bess’s sake as he now did for Anne. After all, Bess had already given him her body, her heart. . . and his son.