The Queen's Rival (46 page)

He had loved Bess Blount, yes. But a child had been a complication. His queen had seemed irreplaceable. Back then much had seemed impossible. . . . Now he glanced at Anne. Beautiful, brash, demanding . . . unattainable, and he felt a moment’s fear for what lay ahead if he were actually to be granted the annulment by Rome. Henry could hardly see past his craving for her, and he knew it. Yet now, in this instant, with her disregard for his son so fresh in his mind, it was all so clear. Henry shook his head. It was pointless. Bess was another man’s wife. He had done all he could to honor and care for her, for her husband as well, by making Tailbois a baron, and for their child—his own precious son. Yet how different might their lives all have been—the fleeting thought came to him when he heard Anne’s hollow laugh—if he had met Bess, not when he did, but rather when he had met Anne Boleyn. . . .

 

H
e had been ill for three days. Now, as she sat at his bedside, Bess had begun to fear the worst. The weakness, the fever, then death. If anything should ever happen to Gil, she was quite certain her own life would come to an end. After two decades, first as her dearest friend, then her husband, Gilbert Tailbois was her soul mate. It had taken three perfect children and a contented life away from the temptation of court to realize that. She had been a fool. She had wasted too much time; time she could never regain.

She held his veined, limp hand now and watched him sleep, content to see the reassuring rise and fall of his chest as heavy snow flurries and a harsh wind pelted the bedchamber windows, shaking them and turning the sky gray and bleak outside. A fire nearby in the grand stone hearth warmed the room and steamed the diamond-shaped panes of leaded glass. Their children came in and out of the chamber, offering her support and inquiring about their father’s condition. His physician did the same, but Bess would not leave his side.

“You really should get some sleep,” Gil said weakly, startling her because Bess had not known he was awake. She leaned nearer and caressed his cheek. There was still the raging fever that would not break. But at least he was awake and speaking enough so she could hold out hope that he would recover from what the physician gravely told her was most probably consumption.

“Do you think perhaps we should send word to Wolsey?” he asked his wife then.

Bess stiffened in response, refusing reality. “Why would we trouble the cardinal with something so minor as a temporary malady? You, of course, are going to recover any day now, and he has his own critical circumstances with which to deal at the moment,” she gently reminded him.

And that was an understatement. From such a mighty height, Thomas Wolsey had fallen far this past year when Anne Boleyn successfully convinced the king that it was due to Wolsey’s poor negotiating skills that the pope had refused to grant an annulment so that Henry could marry her instead. Impatient with not getting his way, and eager for a scapegoat, Henry had stripped his old and dear friend of his palaces in London and Hampton Court as well, and there were whispers now that Anne was urging that the cardinal be tried for treason.

“You do know that he is my father,” Gil mouthed very softly.

Bess had always suspected it but never knew for certain. He and Gil were so alike in certain ways, and the cardinal had always been fair with her, if a little brusque in the beginning. Now she understood fully why Wolsey had made the effort. He had done it because his son loved her. Through the years, he had written directly to her of Harry’s progress, keeping her involved, giving her detailed accounts of his health, his education, and asking for her counsel in decisions that concerned the young duke. She often wondered if the king knew of her involvement in their son’s life, but she never asked because, at the heart of it, she could not bear to lose what little she had of her Harry. Yet never a day, an hour, barely a moment that went by, did her heart not grieve for the child she had lost—the one she had given up to a father who had seemed to need him more.

“I will personally send word to the cardinal myself the moment you are well recovered so that we can bring him happy news for a change. He would delight in that.”

“I believe you are right. . . .” Gil sighed. For a moment his eyes closed and he was still. Bess lurched forward, feeling a flood of relief when he looked at her again. “What day is this?” Gil asked her.

“It is Sunday.”

“No, the date . . . What is the date?”

“March twenty-fourth.”

“Ah, so I thought. Your birthday,” he replied, his eyes crinkling at the corners and a faint smile dawning on a face that now was gaunt, creased with lines, and marked by his bouts of ill health. “In the drawer,” he said, indicating the carved bedside table.

Bess opened the drawer and drew from it a small red leather-bound volume.
Lancelot
was printed on the cover in heavy gold lettering. As he saw her looking at it, in a hollow voice he said, “Many years ago at court, I bought you a far less perfect edition of the same work, but I tossed it into the fire one night in a fit of jealous rage.”

She assumed he meant his jealousy about the king, and she felt a flush of regret for such youthful foolishness.

“I know he gave his personal copy of John Skelton’s poetry to you, but you often said this was your favorite book,” he revealed, giving a weak little chuckle, nothing at all like the robust sound she was accustomed to hearing. “You were right to want the fantasy of a life like the one de Troyes wrote about in these pages.”

“Yes, and
you
gave it to me. Thank you for that. And for this beautiful book,” she said, squeezing his hand. “It shall always be dear to me.”

“As dear as I am?” he asked in a whisper, a hint of his old, youthful sweetness shining through.

“Never even close to that much,” Bess replied as her weary eyes filled with tears at the bittersweet truth of it. “I love you,” she declared in the same soft whisper as his eyes closed again, and she said a silent prayer that it was not for the final time—not yet. She was not ready. She would never be ready for that.

It was just after dawn, and it had at last stopped snowing.

The first thing Bess saw through the grand window of their bedchamber when she woke was the canvas of bright white stretched across the undulating horizon, lit by soft, glittering sunlight. She had fallen asleep in the chair beside their bed, still holding Gil’s hand, but it had gone cold, and slackened against her fingers. Bess felt her heart begin to race, knowing before she looked what had happened.

Gil’s face was relaxed now, smooth and free of pain. Bess leaned over to touch his waxy cheek and saw that the burning fever had cooled as well. With the connection of her warm hand against his face, she felt something break inside her. It was sharp, like splintered glass, as the horrendous realization descended on her. The physician, old and stern, was standing at the foot of the bed. She did not know how long he had been there; nor did she care. Gil was her husband and her love. He had given her respectability and three beautiful children. All of the years, the joys, the struggles, and the memories, and in an instant he was gone, and their last moment, just like all the rest, could never be shared with anyone.

Instinctively, Bess reached over and drew the bedcovers up over his shoulders as if to warm him. She smoothed back a bit of hair near his temple; then for a moment, her hand stilled there.
My love
, she thought.
Thank you for saving me.

Gil’s death was the most difficult on Elizabeth, their eldest child, who would not eat or sleep and refused to come downstairs to greet guests and mourners who came in the days following the funeral. Townspeople as well as friends from court made the long, cold journey to Lincolnshire over a winter landscape, spotted with slush and patches of snow. Twigs, branches, and bare tree trunks peeked out from the white as if trying to recover from winter. Nicholas and Elizabeth Carew were the first to come in their heavy fur-lined cloaks, mufflers, and hats. Lord Mountjoy and his wife, Agnes de Venegas, followed, embracing Bess with tear-filled eyes and somber, murmured condolences. Yet none of them really understood what Gil meant to her.

Dressed in a mourning costume of unadorned dark gray velvet, with a high stiff collar, Bess stood looking out the tall, second-floor library window as an impressive train of riders and horses trapped in silver drew up and came to a stop in the gravel-covered courtyard below. Ahead were four riders in yellow and blue livery and another four at the back. On the door of the grand horse litter, which she saw before it was opened by a gloved guard, she caught a glimpse of the emblem, a lion bursting forth from a Tudor rose. It could not be, she thought with a numb, strangely calm realization, not after all these years. Yet it was; of course it was. It had taken the sudden death, two days before Gil’s passing, of the once great Cardinal Wolsey, on the cleric’s journey to London where he would have faced a charge of treason, to engender enough nostalgia apparently to bring him here to her at last, Bess thought with a flaring spark of bitterness she had not expected to feel.

She felt herself stiffen as the king was helped from the litter. But it was a very different monarch who stood in her courtyard now than the one she had seen for the very last time all those years ago. Henry had grown noticeably stockier during their separation. His hair was short now, the red-gold hairline receding at his forehead, and he wore a neat red beard beneath a heavier, square jaw. But the eyes were the same. They were deep, clear, intensely focused sea green eyes that had so often tormented her. If rosemary was for remembrance, then to Bess it would always be the deep scent of ambergris and the way he wore it that brought the past flooding back, as it came now, with a vengeance, especially when she looked into those eyes of his. . . .
Windows to the soul
they were.
. . .
Even looking at Henry in a rich, large-patterned brocade doublet, trunk hose, and a feathered hat that seemed more garish than elegant, brought her back.

Suddenly, she saw the slim, copper-haired boy of eleven, dressed in the finest blue velvet, emerge after the king, and the surprise heightened to panic.
Harry.
God
,
Harry had come home with him, at last.

Bess faltered, bracing herself on the frame of the window as the rosary she held tumbled onto the heavy carpet beneath her feet. She tried to suck in gulps of air, but little would come. After ten years, Hal himself had actually brought their son home. The prospect alone was almost more than she could bear, for how hard she had battled against that dream. She felt tears rise in her eyes.

The moments after that became disjointed. Each instant was full of fragmented sensations. The call of the yeoman suddenly at the door behind her, announcing the Duke of Richmond and the king, was solemn. Bess’s heart was pounding in her chest so forcefully that she almost could not hear. Each beat brought such pain. Sensation after sensation pelted her. The feel of wet on her own cheeks as she hurriedly ran back across the room swiftly cooled the heat of shock on her face. The taste of the bitingly cold air as she struggled again to draw in a full breath was bracing. The thought, the last one, before she turned around, was that she was not at all prepared for this meeting; yet there was the knowledge as well calling from deep within her, like an old friend, that she could never be ready for something like this.