Wolsey looked at her closely then, summoning his best expression of heartfelt concern. He pursed his lips with regard for her, lowered his eyes thoughtfully, then exhaled deeply.
“It is Mistress Blount, my queen.”
Wolsey watched her expression darken as she steepled her simply adorned hands. Her eyes were discerning as she gazed at him, yet impossible to decipher at the same time. “Tell me.”
“She is to bear the king’s child.”
He did not dare to move, or even breathe, as he waited for her reaction. Only then, once she gave him anything, could he know positively what to say next. “And you have come all the way to Windsor to bring me this news for some reason of value to you, I presume?”
“I have indeed, Your Highness. But the value is to us both. I have always believed in the maxim that one should keep one’s friends close and one’s enemies closer.”
“That was one of my mother’s favorite sayings.”
“To vanquish an enemy, he, or she, must be dealt with as a friend.”
“You have a plan in mind?” she asked, her voice very low, almost husky, and suddenly cunning.
“You cannot rid yourself of her just now when the king craves the fantasy of sons more than all else. But I believe you can alter the fantasy, which may gain you your desire in the end.”
Silence fell between them then as Wolsey let his words play out in her mind without having to engage in the objectionable practice of spelling it out entirely.
“You propose to unseat one rival with another?”
Indignation flared strongly in her eyes with the question, and Wolsey felt a burst of respect for the queen Katherine of Aragon had always meant to become.
“Perhaps not so much to replace as put a new option more clearly before him,” Wolsey clarified.
“Is there a distinction?”
“If Your Highness will forgive my being frank, once one has tasted the forbidden fruit, there is little hope of losing the craving for it. The king may believe he wants a son badly enough to claim a bastard, if it comes to that. But if we act in concert, we can see to it that the child is only ever that—a bastard.”
“If I do not act, you believe the king might actually attempt to divorce me, or annul our marriage in favor of her?”
“Forgive me, my lady, but there have been whispers of those options for some time, and that was before there was the hope of a living child.” His expression changed to display just the right amount of contrition as he shifted his gaze out the window and to the forest beyond.
He must give her time to believe the idea was her own.
“I knew from the first the Blount girl was a rival to be feared. Now she will truly be so if she bears Henry a son.”
Wolsey saw her stiffen at the sound of her own declaration. He waited a moment to respond. “Not if his affections have been weakened while she has gone to childbed.”
Doña Elvira appeared predictably before them then, and Wolsey waited in silence while the two women conversed in a low tone. He spoke not a word of Spanish, but he did not believe the queen had told her confidante why he was there, for Doña Elvira never once looked at him before she nodded, then retreated once again across the room in a sweep of severe black silk. A moment later, Katherine looked back at the cardinal.
“And now you shall tell me precisely how you are to benefit from this, why you brought yourself all the way to Windsor. And do not bother telling me, Cardinal, that it is your loyalty to me.”
“It is not that alone, madam. I would not dishonor you with a lie.” He pinched the cross at the point of his broad chest more tightly in order to pace himself. “It can be no secret to you that I am an ambitious man.”
“Are your ambitions not alone to grow closer to God?” she asked judgmentally, arching a brow.
“Alas, my queen, they are. I wish—rather, I dearly pray—one day to be fortunate enough to be elected pope in order to glorify our gracious God. To do that, I must walk a thin line in diplomacy, not angering the French, the Italians, or the Spanish—that, for Your Highness’s sake, of course.” Nor can I allow the king to waste a future match, which I would otherwise negotiate, on a country maiden like Mistress Blount, he thought. “The world sees me as counsel to the king. If he were to divorce you and marry someone such as her, only because of a child, my own credibility on the world stage would be dangerously diminished.”
“But a rival for Mistress Blount? Have you one in mind strong enough to unseat her, yet one who would not be my undoing?”
“I do indeed. I believe I know of the perfect girl for the temporary diversion we both require,” Cardinal Wolsey affirmed with only the faintest glimmer of a smile.
Henry had told Bess that he was glad about the child. And after all, it was not a complete lie. Although the prospect of a baby changed everything, he was glad. While Bess and Elizabeth strolled in the gardens beyond the grand windows, he and Nicholas sat by the fire, drinking Rhenish wine from large tooled silver cups. They were trying to laugh and converse as if Elizabeth, and a royal command to marry her, had not long ago come between their friendship.
“I truly did assume you knew about the child,” Carew finally said apologetically. “Elizabeth’s mother can, upon occasion, be a bit more free with details than she should be. I remember that well enough.”
“Bess said she was frightened to tell me, so you only did me a favor.”
“Do you know yet what you are going to do, sire?”
Henry paused for a moment to watch Bess outside the window—lovely, smiling Bess, her face shining in a mellow ray of autumn light as the ermine collar at her throat fluttered gently beneath her chin. He never should have come to care for her. He should have taken her to his bed, but not to his heart. He was old enough to have known better. But it was too late for that now.
“She shall need to go away until after the child is born. It would be cruel to the queen otherwise. I would imagine Wolsey already has a place in mind.”
“The cardinal knows as well?”
“Bess confided in him,” Henry confirmed. “And even if she had not, he makes the workings of the court, and the country, his business, and I am glad of it. There is still no one I trust more. Except, perhaps, Bess.”
“And after the child is born? What will happen then?”
Henry settled his gaze upon Carew, and only then did he realize why the courtier had asked. He believed it would end for Bess the way it had ended for Lady Fitzwalter, Elizabeth, and Jane Poppincourt before her. Carew assumed he would soon be casting her aside, and thus a suitable husband such as he would need to be cajoled and bribed into marrying another of the king’s former liaisons. The difference was that Henry had actually fallen in love with Bess. And although he was not supposed to feel such things, the king was clearly ecstatic about their child.
“I have no idea what the future holds for either one of us, honestly, Carew,” Henry said, feeling that his friend had an odd right to press him on this, so he did not object.
Nicholas Carew was a good man, an honorable man. Henry’s sense of guilt over what he had asked of him, with regard to Elizabeth Bryan, was one of the factors in his visit to Sussex, a visit distinguished by bringing the most important guest his friend would ever be able to boast of to his neighbors in the coming years.
As Henry saw it, each had now done the other a favor.
The women returned shortly after that, and Henry pulled Bess affectionately onto his knee, which was covered in dun-colored nether hose of Burgundian silk. “Did you enjoy your walk, sweetheart?”
“The grounds are lovely,” Bess said, her innocent face still lightly flushed and brightened by a happy smile.
Henry loved to see her like this, yet in some ways it made the guilt worse, since he knew, no matter how he spoke of divorce and annulment, or even dreamed of it, he could never make Bess a proper wife—not his own wife anyway.
Still, Henry thought as he drew her closer, trying to hold on to the last vestig
es of their brief and bittersweet love, there must be a way to make this right. Yes, he must do that—for Bess’s sake.
He was not a bad man, he told himself; he was just one who had learned well to understand reality, his place, and the heavy price of both.
PART V
Step. . . .
Time, which strengthens friendship, weakens love.
—JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
Chapter Thirteen
June 1519
Greenwich Palace, Kent
Henry Norris, a favorite Page of the Chamber, dark-haired and reed thin, scrambled down the staircase, taking the carpeted steps two at a time. Nearly tripping over his own slippered feet at the landing, he then broke into a full run down the paneled corridor beyond. He darted then into the warm summer sun and headed quickly toward the garden in search of the king. A moment later, out of breath from running, he swept into a low bow before the king, the sovereign’s pretty, new companion, Mary Boleyn, and a group of his friends, who were all laughing and joking.
“I come with news from Jericho, Your Highness!” Norris announced in a breathy, excited voice that caused the king to glance up.
The conversation and the laughter around him fell away as everyone else looked at Norris as well. Henry released Mary’s hand and slowly stood. Everyone surrounding the king, his most intimate circle, knew Jericho as the euphemism for the moated brick estate in Essex that the king kept in secret at a place called Blackmore. It was a romantic house on the river Can where Wolsey had recommended that Bess be taken six months earlier in order to wait out her pregnancy.
“Well?” he asked, eager yet almost afraid to know the answer.
“Would you not prefer to hear it in private, sire?”
“Anything you have to say these people can hear,” Henry answered.
“The child is a boy, Your Highness. Word is, he is a strong child, too, with a healthy shock of copper hair.”
Henry had not expected the news. Not once that he could remember in the past ten years with Katherine—the false hopes, the stillbirths, the deaths, and then the birth of their single living daughter—had Henry had the urge to weep. Yet he did so now, and the very last place he wished to show weakness was beside his latest dalliance. Mary Boleyn, with her round face and large, expressive eyes, was sweet, sensual, and certainly eager enough to please. Still, at the heart of it, she was not Bess. Henry had missed Bess these past months. He missed talking with her, laughing with her; he missed the needed escape that being with her had become for him when he faced so many ongoing challenges. But he had been able to make himself visit her only a month ago. Seeing her so heavy with his child had been a dose of reality he had not anticipated, and it had not gone down well.
As he moved away from his friends now, he could not stop himself from weeping. His tears were for dreams lost, for innocence gone . . . and for other things that could never be—things he might once have wished for but could no longer allow himself to covet. Hence, there was Mary Boleyn now—a buffer between his heart and the reality of his duty.
Mary tried to follow him, with her sweet, slightly vapid expression of concern, her silk skirts billowing behind her, but he waved her away with a swipe of his hand and his long, fur-lined bell sleeve. He had not so much betrayed Bess with Mary, he thought, as he had saved his heart, as well as his marriage. Bess would never understand that once she knew. The betrayal she would feel would be brutal. And he despised knowing he would be responsible for that. But she would recover. He would find her someone suitable, as he always did. Better yet, he would have Wolsey do it.
Wolsey always knew the right thing to do.
In the meantime, he really should see the boy—his flesh and blood; a son, at last. Or perhaps he should wait to see that the child remained a living son. There was always, after all, danger to be feared.
Bess’s smile flashed in his mind. Then came the sound of her laughter. Guarding against the image and the memory, he pulled Mary toward him and began to laugh blithely at something Sir William Compton had said. Although he had no idea what that was, he must pretend. So much of his life was about pretending, after all.
He was the king’s son, the vaunted male child, at last.
Five days after his birth, Bess still held tightly in disbelief to the fragile, glorious little creature who was hers, not quite prepared yet to surrender him to his cradle. And she could not quite stop staring. His little face was round, smooth, his features perfect, and the fuzz on the top of his head was the same copper shade as his father’s. In some ways, it was like looking at Henry.
Bess’s mother, Catherine, sat on the edge of the bed, watching them together. Her expression bore a mix of fear and pride as George, Bess’s brother, grown almost to manhood now, lingered at the heavily carved footboard.
“Is he going to visit? It has been days.”
It was clear to them all that George had meant the king. Bess narrowed her eyes on her brother in defense of the king.
“He is a busy man. He does have an entire country to care for, after all. I am certain he will come in time.”
“Are you?” George moved a step nearer. His blond hair was now thick and full of waves, as hers was. His expression became very gentle then. “Forgive me, Sister, but they are saying he has taken a new mistress already.”
“George!” said their mother, intervening with a growl of disapproval.
“ ’ Tis the truth, Mother, and you know it as I do. Has she not a right to know what the rest of us know? Having her locked away out here is unfair to her!”
Bess shot her mother an anxious glance, praying she would find denial in the warm, maternal eyes she trusted.
“He would not do that to me, to our child. He loves me.”
“I am quite certain the queen thought the same thing more than once,” George put in. Their mother sprang from the bed and shot him a silencing glare in response.
“George, that will do.”
His arms went out in pleading. “You would rather she be a laughingstock than face the truth, Mother? Has your love of the luxury and power that has gone along with her position so colored your perception that you cannot think clearly about the future?”
“She’ll not have a future if any of us angers the king!” Catherine Blount cried.
So it was out between them, glaring, cold, but every bit the bitter truth.
When the infant in Bess’s arms began to cry, Catherine called to the door for the wet nurse who waited outside.
“No, Mother,” Bess objected in a tone of absolute determination she rarely used.
“And when His Highness comes, you will want him to see you like that? Nightdress open, milking the child like a Welsh sow?”
“This is the king’s son,” she answered indignantly, straightening her back like a board in response. “His Highness shall praise me when he arrives for not handing over my precious duty over his son to a stranger, and he shall do so with me looking spectacularly well, radiating from the experience, and ready to bear him another, if it should please him.”
George and Catherine exchanged a glance.
“Well, what at least are you going to call the boy?”
“I shall let Hal decide that when he sees his son.” There was an awkward little silence before she said, “I know he will come in time. I know it.”
“Do you not even want to know who your rival is?” George pressed. “How on earth can you do battle with her if you do not know who it is?”
There was an uncomfortable little silence before she replied. “She might possess his body while I am away, but she is not my rival for Hal’s heart. That much I trust, with everything I am.”
“Seriously, Sister! Think!” George bid her pleadingly. “Do not be a love-struck fool! Did the king ever tell you that he loved you?”
“He did, once, yes.”
“If it was in the throes of passion, that hardly counts,” he said condescendingly.
“I know what the king said. I know what I h
eard,” Bess persisted defensively. “He shall come. You both shall see. I am not wrong in this. . . . His Highness shall not forsake his son.”
“But will he show you the same favor as the child?” Catherine Blount asked her daughter, giving in to her fear in the strained silence, where no answer rose to meet her question.
Wolsey rode beside Gil, horses paired exactly, harnesses jangling, yet he was careful not to speak. He could almost see the thoughts churning in the boy’s head for the deep frown on his slim face. While he had never understood either Gil’s or the king’s attraction to Mistress Blount, Wolsey had to manufacture some sympathy for it.
The Lincolnshire forest through which they rode was deep, wooded, and filled with shadows and shafts of sunlight. Unseen birds trilled from the lacy branches above them, and the horses broke twigs and crunched fallen coppery leaves beneath them with their heavy, regular hoofbeats.
Once, long ago, he was the Dean of Lincoln, but Wolsey had not been back for a good many years. It had been even longer since he had seen her. The uncertain youth he had been was now well hidden beneath self-imposed layers of duty, ambition, and the heavy, powerful cloak of the clergy. Two months earlier, Wolsey, having been named papal legate, had come one step closer to his dream of one day becoming pope. His ecclesiastical power now, like his political influence, was unparalleled, surpassing even the influential Archbishop of Canterbury. The prominent jewels on his fingers sparkled in a shaft of midday sun weaving its way through the branches. He was really not so different from the king when he considered it all. Perhaps that was why they understood each other’s weaknesses. At the end of the day, duty took the place of all else.