The Queen's Rival (35 page)

“’Tis true then. Saints above.”

Henry settled his eyes on his childhood friend. “I do love her, in a manner.”

“So it would seem.” Brandon’s smile lengthened above his thickening copper beard. “What of the queen?”

“She need not know. At least, not what is in my heart for Bess. But, yes, she is bound soon enough to understand that I am about to bring a mistress into our lives, and hopefully she can accept that with grace. Although I will be discreet, as my father before me always was. I have no wish to humiliate Katherine. She has tried her best to be a good wife.”

“And to give you a son?”

“She has failed miserably at that,” Henry suddenly growled. “The pursuit of that elusive child destroyed things between us long ago. Every waking moment that woman is not pleading with me to bed her, she is on her knees pleading with God for a son. It does not bode well for passion.”

The hawk returned, and Henry surrendered the bird to the keeper who was waiting at the ready behind him.

“Is Bess the kind who shall be happy as your mistress and want no more when the time comes?” Brandon asked as they each began to remove their heavy leather hawking gloves as the wind stirred.

“She shall have to be, as there is really no more I can give her than that.”

“Would you if you could?”

Henry shrugged, and for a moment he truly considered the question. “Perhaps it is my prick talking and not my logic, but yes, right now I would do nearly anything for Bess. Although if you told her I said that, I would deny it to the death,” Henry quipped, then winked, drawing a mask once again over the emotions he struggled not to feel.

Bess sat at the backgammon table across from her cousin, Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter, and tried to will herself not to be sick again. Appearance was everything in the tight-knit court where people had little else to do but gossip and scheme. The nausea, however, had not abated since the old woman downstairs had made her pronouncement.

It had been life changing.

“Aye, you are indeed with child, mistress, and two months gone already.”

Those could have been joyous words.

If only she were Katherine of Aragon and not Bess Blount of Kinlet.

“’Tis your move again,” Lord Mountjoy’s putty-faced daughter prompted as they sat in a cavernous room, dotted with other young ladies at game tables or embroidery hoops, and an autumn rain lightly pelted the windows as though with tiny pebbles. It made everything around them feel damp in spite of the grand fire blazing in the hearth across the room.

“Are you going to make a move or not?” Gertrude pressed, her flat, wide forehead wrinkling with prominent frown lines.

Not only was her nausea, as well as her circumstances, a distraction to Bess, but she had been made even more ill a moment ago by Mary Boleyn. The pretty girl had come into the room with her mother, the daughter of Thomas Howard, the influential Earl of Surrey—and a more highly placed lady-in-waiting to the queen than Bess’s own mother, Catherine. She even walked with an air of entitlement. It did not help that Bess had seen how Henry had looked at the elder Boleyn daughter the night before.

At Gertrude’s prodding, Bess made a cursory move as mother and daughter strode through the room. Her mind was too distracted to do anything else. What would Henry do when he knew about the child? His
bastard
child? Would he be rid of her, and every other Blount and Mountjoy who depended upon his favor? He had sought to be rid of Elizabeth when that affair displeased him. That precious, first sense of pride she had felt was swiftly being replaced by horror and shame.
Jesú,
she missed Elizabeth and the easy confidence of a trusted friend. She, of all people, would understand, and know what Bess should do because, God help her, Bess herself had no idea.

“Ach, your head is in the clouds!” Gertrude grumbled at her in frustration. “No one would have made so foolish a move otherwise!”

Bess glanced down at the backgammon board and realized that Gertrude was right. Fearing another wave of nausea at any moment, or a wellspring of tears, Bess pushed back her chair and stood. She had never felt more alone in her life, or more frightened. There was only one person who could help her now, one person she could trust to tell—the one person left at court who would help her, and she must find him.

Every other person she passed as she swept down the corridor, every person who came to her mind, was someone to be feared or avoided. Focused on her purpose, she went to Wolsey’s grand apartments, which took up almost the entire west wing of the second floor, overlooking the hawk mews. There she found Gil, as she had known she would, attending to two of the prelate’s long, crimson cassocks. One look at her across the room, and Bess knew he understood there was something very wrong. Calmly, Gil led her by the arm to a chair, his own thin face piqued with concern. He drew up a stool with a padded cushion and tassels on it and sat with her.

“Tell me,” he bid her simply.

She exhaled a breath and when she did, the tears spilled forward like a sudden torrent and her bottom lip began to quiver. “I am going to bear the king’s child.”

Gil was silent for a moment—a moment that stretched into an eternity for her, the declaration echoing before both of them.

“Are you certain?”

“Very.”

“Let’s speak with the cardinal. He will know how to proceed from here.”

“I cannot possibly! Cardinal Wolsey frightens me. I would not know what to say.”

He took her hands and held them tightly. “Then do you trust me to speak with him on your behalf? He knows everything about this court and its workings. And I would trust him with my life.”

Bess looked at Gil, a friend for so long, her eyes still misted with tears. “It is as I trust you.”

She saw that same small muscle tighten in his jaw as it always did when he was holding back emotion. Otherwise he showed very little of his feelings. He was, she thought, as dispassionate and steadfast as a stranger. Perhaps that was what she needed just then, because her own life seemed to be falling apart.

“I am so sorry, Gil,” she said brokenly then.

“Sorry for what?”

“For not being a better friend.”

He leaned nearer, and she saw that he was trying to smile. As usual, it was probably to make her feel better. “You have been a fine friend. Perhaps you have not always said the things I wished to hear,” he said with a shrug, “but they were most often the things I needed to hear.”

“Odd. I was going to say the very same thing of you.”

“So,” he asked, “will you want to have the child? If not, there are women who—”

“I could never do that to Hal’s child!”

She saw by his grimace her power to wound him, and suddenly his face was flooded with that elusive show of emotion.

“I’m sorry, but I love him.”

“So did Elizabeth.”

Bess shot to her feet, angry suddenly at the declaration. A rush of emotions passed across her face. “That was cruel of you.”

“What do you expect to gain by loving him? He is married, and King of England.”

“He’ll not forsake me after he grows accustomed to the idea of this child. He cares for me.”

“He told Elizabeth that, as well”

“She was not his mistress!” Bess declared in childish defiance. “A lover is a very different thing.”

He arched a brow. “Is it, truly?”

“I need to believe it is.” Her voice broke. “Especially now.”

Gil was still holding both her hands as he drew them up, pressed them to his chest, then let out a heavy sigh. “Shall I speak to Wolsey then? Shall I ask him what to do?”

“I do not believe he likes me very much,” she said, hesitating.

“The cardinal is first a man of God, Bess. He will not steer us wrong in this. You said you trusted me.”

“I do trust you. There is no one else.”

Bess was so confused that she had not heard him say the word “us.” Nor had she seen the look in his eyes. If she had, Bess would have seen the expression of total devotion—one that marked his enduring love for her.

Wolsey had developed the habit of eavesdropping as a child and had honed it into a fine art form later in his life. He stood hidden now behind the heavy crimson velvet drapery, tasseled in gold. It was the very shade of his own cassock, rendering him virtually invisible—or as invisible as a stout prelate in crisp, shimmering crimson ever could be. There was always a payoff for the objectionable practice of listening to others’ conversations. That obviously was as true now as when he was a boy in Ipswich and he had discovered family secrets.

So then, the little trollop was about to give the king a bastard. What a terrible irony that would be if the child were a boy. He mulled the thought over. He felt compassion for the poor queen, with so many indignities and disappointments heaped upon her. Nonetheless, though he pitied Katherine, he realized she held no utility for him. And though he remembered Bess’s kindness toward Gil when he fell ill, he knew Bess was even less useful to him. But what precisely was he meant to do with this kernel of information, the very thing they were about to entrust him with?

As Gil escorted Mistress Blount to the door and whispered something to her that he could not hear, the prelate’s mind began to work very quickly. The ramifications of a royal illegitimate pregnancy, and what he might gain from it, filled his thoughts. The king had come to care deeply for Bess. That much he knew for certain from his one-time rival, Charles Brandon, from whom nearly any information could be bought since he now had a dowager French queen to keep. Henry was also disenchanted with the queen on many levels, and Wolsey could actually envision a scenario where the man behind the title would seek an annulment, follow his sister’s lead, and marry someone beneath him for love—if the Bible could provide an avenue for that annulment, and especially if her little bastard were a son.

This could never be allowed to come to pass. Wolsey would have to see to that.

His ultimate power stemmed from his skill at diplomacy. Henry had come to trust that completely. If Katherine of Aragon were one day to be ousted as queen, a French, Italian, or German princess of Wolsey’s choosing could be negotiated for the throne, thus his own power base retained. A wise match, well made, could secure him a high enough profile on the world stage, and thus pave the way for his election to the papacy once the old pontiff died. He had negotiated Mary’s marriage to the King of France as well as the agreement for Henry’s little daughter, Mary, and France’s dauphin. He had crafted peace after the war of 1514. He needed one more shining accomplishment now, like a crowning glory, which the world could look upon favorably so that he might shine as the most likely papal candidate. Mother of Henry’s child or not, Elizabeth Blount simply did not fit into any of the intricate layers of his future plans for himself. The child might not be a boy anyway, and then concern would be as pointless as intervention. Yet, if it were to be a son—the thing Henry wanted most in the world, the thing he needed—ah yes, that would change everything. Forever.

The wise man avoids evil by anticipating it.
Evil, thought Wolsey. . . and defeat.