The Queen's Rival

  “And have some wine, a basin of water, and fresh cloths sent up.”

  “All of it already well on the way.”

  They covered Bess over with a quilt that had been neatly folded on a traveling trunk beneath the window. The room smelled of must, Henry noticed, but there was also the faint fragrance of rosemary from an herb garden below the window, and thus the house was not without a certain charm he might have appreciated in other circumstances.

  “Thank you, Charles, for not admonishing me about Katherine,” Henry said as he heaved a huge sigh.

  “It is the least I can do, considering.”

  “Indeed, you are right about that,” Henry quickly countered.

  They both knew what he meant. The bitterness over how he had married the king’s sister without his permission was still too fresh in both their minds.

  “Do you. . . love this girl, Hal?” his old friend then dared to ask.

  “I cannot afford to love anyone. I have a duty. That is all there is.”

  “A duty as king, perhaps,” Charles cautiously observed. “But as a man, do you not have a duty to your heart? I have seen the way you have looked at her for years.”

  “I can have no heart, Charles. I have a wife, remember? And England has a queen. Like the end of a story, that is all there is. All there ever shall be.”

  Henry looked back at Bess, who seemed to be coming slowly back around finally. Only then did he realize that he was squeezing her hand very tightly.

  The woman he had seen at the door came into the room with her two adolescent daughters just then. They were bearing wine, the basin, cloths, and each girl wore an innocent but openly flirtatious smile. Henry surprised himself, realizing that, as the two younger girls left the room, he had barely even looked at them for concern over Bess. That was something new for him. When he glanced back at Bess, he saw that her eyes were open at last—those beautiful blue eyes that always stopped him, even before he’d had a mind to admit it.

  “What happened?” she softly croaked.

  “You took a rather nasty fall, sweetheart.”

  Henry gently lifted her head and helped her take a sip of wine as the woman silently ran a cloth through the water, rung it out, then handed it to Charles Brandon to give to the king.

  “Does your head hurt?”

  “Not so much as my pride,” Bess softly admitted. “I thought I could ride him.”

  “It is my fault for having chosen such a horse, for putting you at risk like that. Forgive me.”

  “You did me a great honor. You cannot be sorry for that.” She tried to smile.

  Henry took the cloth from Charles, then placed it very gently on her forehead. “I have sent for my physician and for a more tame horse for you to ride back.”

  “That is entirely unnecessary, and I cannot hold up the others. They were expecting a hunt. So were you.”

  “I care nothing about that. Besides,” he said with a smile, “there shall be plenty of time for more hunting parties. I am sending them all back to court soon anyway.”

  “And Your Highness?”

  God, he wished she would not look at him, at least not like that. Attraction to her was one thing, but he simply could not afford to actually care.

  “Perhaps I shall remain,” Henry answered a little more gruffly than he had meant to. “If you would not object, that is. The mistress below is making some delectable stew or other.”

  “It smells delicious.”

  “That seems a good thing if you have an appetite,” Henry said uncomfortably.

  “I do, my lord, for many things.”

  Henry softened a bit more beneath her gaze and the wanton sound of her declaration. Struggling was futile. He leaned across the bed to gently kiss her. He could hear the others still behind him near the door: the wife, the daughters, and Charles. They left the room then, and the door squeaked as it swung to a close on its hinges.

  Safe within their private moment, Henry kissed her again, this time more passionately as he slid up onto the bed and lay down beside her. Filled with desire at her nearness, he ran a hand down the length of her body, feeling very carefully for the willowy shape of her beneath her dress, the petticoats, and the cambric chemise. Then suddenly his hand stilled. He could make himself go no further. A moment later, he pulled away.

  “What is it?” Bess asked with a soft tone of surprise.

  “You are injured.”

  “Only my head, sire, I told you. Not the rest of me.” She smiled seductively, her long hair soft around her shoulders now that he had removed her hood and her shoes.

  “It would not be right,” he persisted.

  “Neither is anything else we have done together, apparently,” she said with a slight note of defeat in her voice.

  “It is not that I do not want you, because I do, desperately. But I cannot take advantage of you like this.”

  Bess coiled her hands in the hair at the nape of his neck and tried to draw him forward. “That is my favorite thing that you do,” she wantonly teased.

  Henry weakened for a moment, kissing her passionately again and pressing his full weight against her. He felt the force of his own desire, but Henry was the sum total of many things beyond his unquenchable lust. He was a son who had learned the power of restraint from a mother he had adored, and he was a boy who had learned to place duty above all else from a father he respected. Achingly, he moved away from her again and, with a little groan, rolled onto his back and closed his eyes.

  “You do have an increasing power over me,” he murmured truthfully.

  “It seems quite the opposite,” she countered, and again he could hear her disappointment.

  Henry took a moment to collect himself, his body still burning for want of her. He needed to control himself if he was going to even look at her again. He waited for his racing heart to slow and the heat of his desire to cool by a degree at least.

  “That is just the point. In the past, I have cared nothing for a girl’s welfare. I was a bit of a reprobate, I suppose, in that regard.”

  “You told me once that you did not take mistresses, and I believed you, you know.”

  “I may be a king and a husband, but sadly I am also a man. They were lovers only, momentary dalliances, not mistresses, Bess. There is a distinct difference.”

  “Is there?”

  He thought about how he had slept with Anne, Lady Hastings, Jane, and Elizabeth, but how he had never had deep or lasting feelings for any of them. “Lovers satisfy the body, but with a mistress there is something more. She is acknowledged. Honored. Special. A part of his life, not just his bed.”

  “Which one shall I be?” she asked, the full power of her bright blue eyes descending on him then and filling him with a mixture of desire and fear that in spite of his reserve he would come to care too much for her.

  Bess turned onto her side, moving herself against his body, then running a hand along his smooth, beardless jaw.

  “You are far more than a lover to me, Bess.”

  “Then am I the mistress of Henry the Eighth, King of England?”

  Something about her words undid him. Unable to hold himself back any longer for the raw chemistry between them, Henry drew her forcefully onto him, anchored her delicate face in his powerful hands, and opened her mouth with his powerful kiss. When he pulled away, he looked deeply into her eyes.

  “It appears so,” Henry declared.

  PART IV

  Step. . . .

  Thus, Lancelot drove him back and forth in whatever direction he pleased, always stopping before the Queen, his lady, who had kindled the flame which compelled him.

  —CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES, LANCELOT

  Chapter Eleven

  November 1518

  Richmond Palace, Surrey

  While the king was at the little country cottage tending to Bess, the queen was at Richmond Palace giving birth to another daughter. Katherine had dared to call the girl Isabella after her own powerful mother, in hope that the nam
e might portend good things. She knew, even as she did, however, that it was futile. The child died within days.

  Full of bitterness at his wife for continuing to withhold the one thing he needed most, Henry became more flagrant in parading his mistress before her as punishment. Some part of him, of course, knew it was cruel and wrong, but he felt incapable of stopping. He still needed a son; he must have an heir. England was dependent upon his securing the succession, or all that his father had battled for a generation earlier would be forever lost without it. But if God meant to go on punishing him for the sin of marrying his brother’s widow, Henry decided there was no point in avoiding pleasure—or in denying it.

  When Katherine was well enough recovered to leave court for Windsor to mourn the loss of the child privately, Bess’s world quickly shifted. Not only did Henry call for her to be brought to his bedchamber every night after the court had retired, but each day she was directed to join him at everything from prayer to tennis to evening banquets as his companion. While he did not parade her before any of his foreign ambassadors or political dignitaries, there were few at the English court who did not fully understand her new place of prominence. The proof most noticeably was on the faces of the queen’s own ladies and maids, who had been left behind to attend Bess.

  Bess recognized that now as she was dressed and ornamented for supper in the king’s privy chamber. She much preferred these evenings to the grander displays at banquets where not only were her every move and every sip of wine marked by courtiers, grooms, and pages alike, but by the local citizens who, stuffed raucously into the gallery above, were given the honor of viewing the event. On those occasions, she always felt like a trapped deer in a pen, observed, judged, even ridiculed. Still, she would have done anything for Henry, and she meant to keep him—to fascinate him and enchant him for as long as she could, even if she had to endure the endless scrutiny.

  She regarded herself proudly, dressed now in a chestnut-colored brocade gown with long bell sleeves and an underskirt of gold tissue, as her own mother laid a heavy gold chain woven through with pearls across the square neckline. A stamped, gold medallion filled with jewels was suspended from it. Catherine Blount tried desperately to smile at her daughter standing before her in the shimmering lamplight, but the expression looked more like a grimace. In the reflection, Bess could see her mother willing herself to project an air of approval over a situation that, while financially and socially advantageous for the entire Blount family, could not ever end the way a mother felt it should for a beloved daughter. The king might smile upon his mistress for a moment in time, Catherine had long ago counseled her before sending her to court, and he might shower her with attention and riches; however, in the end, she would never be his wife. She would never be anything but a complication to him—and a concession to the man who came afterward. No matter, Bess thought. Her mother did not understand what was between them; no one did.

  “It is a gift from the king,” Catherine whispered evenly in her daughter’s ear. “His Highness has directed you to wear it this evening.”

  Bess saw the overwhelming hesitation on her mother’s face, now marked by more pronounced lines, and eyes less brilliant than they had once been. Behind her mother’s image in the looking glass, she could see Lady Hastings and Lady Fitzwalter standing together watching. Lady Hastings certainly could say nothing about Bess’s change in circumstance, since it had recently become widely known throughout the court that she, the married sister of the Duke of Buckingham, had been carrying on a torrid affair herself with the king’s Chief Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Sir William Compton.

  Bess bit back a smile, remembering well the condescending sneers from the two sisters when she had first come to court, and several times since, as well as from maids of honor such as Anne Stanhope and Joan Champernowne. They certainly were not mocking her now, she thought as she saw their shocked expressions at the priceless jewel that had been placed across her chest. Now Bess was someone with whom to be cautious, if not to respect, for her ongoing intimacy with the king; she loved the advantage this turn of the tables at last had given her.

  “Be careful, Daughter,” Catherine whispered as she looked again at Bess’s reflection in the mirror, and the expressions of the others around them. “But Father and I both know well what determination it takes to survive here at court, and we are proud of that, even if we are worried about your heart in this.”

  Proud. . . She tipped her chin up in response as her mother adjusted the little French cap on her head and the silk fall behind it. “My heart is full. You needn’t worry,” Bess sweetly replied.

  Henry smiled brightly when she was shown into his presence chamber, already filled with his favorite courtiers. As she advanced, Bess was aware of their slightly more appreciative and welcoming expressions. Wolsey and Brandon were there, as were Sir Henry Guildford, Sir Edward Neville, and Elizabeth Carew’s father, Sir Thomas Bryan. The king’s most prized band of gallants, she thought with a smile as she nodded to each of them in turn. The great Duke of Buckingham, however, was not present, which seemed to Bess something of an indictment.

  Nicholas and Elizabeth were noticeably absent as well. They had gone home to Beddington Park in Surrey. Bess was told by Gertrude Blount, her cousin, that the king had personally seen to their return home. He wanted nothing to upset her or remind her of that earlier indiscretion. Of her original friends, she still spoke with Gil, but the nature of their relationship had been altered, on her side, by his deception, and on his side, by her intimate relationship with the king. Still, she would have given anything to have him there with her. In spite of their smiles, the king’s friends were not her friends, and she knew it.

  Henry embraced her, kissed her cheek, then wrapped his arm around her waist in a familiar fashion that surprised even Bess. No one there could have missed seeing it. By the gesture, he was making her status known among his circle of friends. Even Mary, the king’s sister, who came into the room late, acknowledged Bess with a solicitously polite smile.

  A group of musicians began to play something light and appealing as silver dish after dish of aromatic, steaming delicacies was placed before them.

  While Henry ate heartily beside her, Bess only picked at the delectable offerings. It was an odd sensation, having everyone staring, judging, paying attention to whether she ate or not. She still was not accustomed to it. She touched the coolly reassuring jewel at her throat and tried to remember the honor this was rather than giving in to her apprehensions.

  As the king ate and conversed casually with the others, she glanced at the door when Thomas Boleyn drew forward in a velvet cape and plumed cap, accompanied by two young girls, each dressed with striking elegance in sweeping brocade dotted with pearls. They were pretty girls, dipping into practiced curtsies before the king. One was slightly older, with a fuller face, but possessed of beautiful blue eyes and a small, sweet mouth. The other was remarkably petite, but with a woman’s shape already, a flawless face, and haunting dark eyes. Bess had not seen either of them for a while, but she knew only too well who they were.

  “Your Highness, as you requested, these are my daughters. May I present my younger, Anne,” he said of the smaller girl. “And this is my elder, Mary.”

  With a quick sideways glance, Bess could see that Henry’s smile was broad and full of interest. She felt her throat constrict and her spine stiffen slightly.

  “I would not have recognized either of you,” the king affably replied as he set down his heavy silver, jeweled goblet. Since their return from France, they had been at home at Hever Castle in Kent, and so he had not had them in his company. “You have grown into lovely young women. Your family has done well by you both.”

  “Many thanks, Your Royal Highness,” they said in unison, each bobbing into little curtsies.

  Bess felt her stomach churn. Henry was staring a little too admiringly for her taste at Mary, the elder Boleyn daughter, who was blushing like a child at the attention as Anne held ba
ck a strangely confident little smile.

  “Were you able to speak to the queen or perhaps with Doña Elvira about an appointment before they left for Windsor?” Henry asked their father with interest.

  “There was no time, I’m afraid, sire. Her Highness departed rather quickly after. . .” Boleyn let the words fall away. “Forgive me, sire.”

  “No, no, we are all saddened by the latest turn of events here,” Henry replied magnanimously, with a little wave. “So then, Mary, is it?”

  “It is, Your Highness.” She was still smiling; still blushing.

  “Can you sew?”

  “I can, sire. Tolerably well, I am told.”

  “She does remarkable needlework as well as embroidery, Your Highness,” Thomas Boleyn said, interceding proudly.

  “That is imperative since the queen takes to that particular pastime by the hour. Is that not so, Mistress Blount?”

  Bess was startled and could only sputter out a reply. “’ Tis true, sire.”

  “And prayer, Mistress Boleyn, there is a great deal of that as well,” he warned.

  “I welcome any chance to commune with our Lord God,” Mary replied softly and, Bess thought, flirtatiously.

  “When the queen and I reunite at Greenwich for Christmastide, I shall see to it myself that she has a place,” Henry decreed, and drew up his heavy silver chalice again.

  “Many thanks, sire. It will be an honor to our entire family,” Thomas Boleyn said as he dipped into his deepest, most courtly bow yet, and Bess felt a sweeping and intense wave of nausea take her over completely.

  From where it had come she had no idea, other than it made her ill to see the king look at anyone else as he looked at her. She was not easily given to nausea or illness. Was this what the queen felt when she saw the king with her? Bess suddenly felt ashamed. She had been so increasingly taken up by her attraction and growing love for Henry that Bess had nearly forgotten how the queen might feel. But just as she was a true rival to the queen, could not the elder Boleyn girl easily become a rival to her as well?