The Last Heiress (15 page)

“And how is your dear mother?” the king wanted to know. “Still shackled to that Scots border bandit she would insist on wedding?”

“Aye, your majesty,” Elizabeth replied, laughter in her voice.

“And how many children did he sire on her?” the king demanded.

“Four sons, your majesty,” Elizabeth said.

“He is a fortunate man, that Scot,” the king remarked. “You are having a good time, Elizabeth Meredith? Your mother, despite her protests, always enjoyed her visits.”

“It is my first day at court, your majesty, but I have been made to feel most welcome, and especially by Mistress Boleyn and her companions,” Elizabeth said.

“Indeed?” The king turned to the girl at his side. “That is good of you, sweetheart, and nothing could make me happier. Mistress Meredith’s father was a most loyal servant of the Tudors, and her mother spent part of her girlhood first in my mother’s household, and then in my grandmother’s house. Rosamund Bolton and my sister, Margaret, were close friends. Do they still correspond, Mistress Elizabeth?”

“Now and again, your majesty, they do. I bring you greetings from my mother, your majesty. She said I was to remind you that she is always your loyal servant.”

The king laughed. “When you write her, you will tell her that the king said if she were as loyal as she claims she would not have wed that Scot of hers, and then gone over the border to live.”

“I will quote your majesty precisely,” Elizabeth promised with a smile.

Flynn Stewart watched and listened to this exchange. So Elizabeth Meredith’s mother was a friend of his half brother’s mam. And she was wed to a Scotsman. It was indeed a small world, he thought.

The king was now laughing, for Mistress Boleyn had repeated Elizabeth Meredith’s jest on George Boleyn. “Be careful, George,” the 
king warned the young man. “If Mistress Meredith is anything like her mother, you will never get the best of her.” And he chuckled.

“Did you never get the best of her?” Anne Boleyn asked him.

“Nay, sweetheart, I did not,” the king said. He knew how jealous his Annie could be, and he did not want her transferring her jealousy from his long-ago relationship with Rosamund Bolton to her daughter. It had been the most discreet of all his dalliances, and never been public knowledge.

Anne Boleyn smiled. “Mistress Meredith is a beautiful girl, Hal. 
You have always favored fair women.” She was probing.

“Aye,” the king agreed. “She is like her father. But I prefer a dark girl with sparkling eyes and a quick wit. Do not fret, Annie, love. I could never be attracted to Mistress Meredith, having been her parents’ friend. It would be like incest, I fear.”

Anne Boleyn sighed happily at the king’s admission. She was always fearful of losing the king to another woman. A less chaste woman. She had led him a merry dance for several years now, but while she had allowed him many privileges of her body, she had never allowed him in her bed, and she remained a virgin. Anne Boleyn would not be one of Henry Tudor’s whores like her foolish sister, Mary.

Anne Boleyn meant to be the king’s wife. But now she could be friends with Mistress Meredith, for the girl obviously posed no threat to her ambitions. Anne had no real women friends, though some pretended to like her.

Her Howard relations were almost wild with fury over her actions.

They wanted her to yield to Henry Tudor and get what she could from him for them. The Duke of Norfolk, the head of the family, thought her mad, but he did not desert her. Eventually Anne would yield to Henry, and they would all profit from her lost virtue. But queen?

She would never be queen. In the end the king would marry a princess as he should, and Anne would be given a husband, and that would be the end of it. That was what they told her. But Anne would not give over. “I will be queen,” she insisted to her uncle, the duke.

“I remember your mother saying that you were musical,” the king said to Elizabeth.

Actually Elizabeth played several instruments, but she knew the in
strument of choice at court now was the lute. “I play the lute, your majesty, and I sing,” she answered with a small smile.

“I am composing a special song for a certain lady right now,” the king said to Elizabeth. “You will learn it, and sing it for us when it is finished.”

“I would be honored, your majesty,” Elizabeth said with a curtsey.

“Let us go boating!” Mistress Boleyn suddenly cried. “The river is sweetly still, and the day so fair, my lords.” She drew away from the king and began dancing towards the Thames, singing as she went.

“Now is the month of May, when merry lads do play! Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la! Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la!”

The king looked amused. He turned away. He had other guests to greet. He well knew his beloved. She had grown impatient with him.

He had given Mistress Meredith too much attention, and she was jealous. But Anne was no fool, and she knew she had no reason to be jealous, so she was embarrassed by her emotions. When she turned to look back at him, Henry Tudor winked at her. The relief in her smile touched him.
Sweet Annie,
he thought.

Flynn Stewart led Elizabeth by the hand as they followed Mistress Boleyn down to the riverbank, where several small punts were pulled up on the mud. “Have you ever been in a punt?” he asked her as he helped her into it.

“No, but I can swim should you tilt us into the water,” Elizabeth assured him as she sat down on a cushion in the flat bottom of the boat.

He grinned. “ ’Tis good to know, for I am not particularly skilled with a punt pole.”

“Then why are we doing this?” she wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, and his amber eyes were dancing with amusement.

Elizabeth began to laugh, and Flynn Stewart began to laugh.

“What is the jest?” Mistress Boleyn asked. She had not entered a punt but was standing on the shore surrounded by her gentlemen friends.

“Why are we here? On the riverbank?” Elizabeth asked Anne Boleyn. “Are you really going boating?”

Anne thought a minute, and then she shook her head. “Nay,” she said. “These little punts are too inclined to be tipsy. I cannot swim.”

“Then please tell me why you suggested it?” Elizabeth wanted to know.

“I thought it might be fun,” Anne replied, “but on reflection I do not. Get out of the punt, Elizabeth Meredith! We will play cards instead. You do have monies to bet?”

“I do, but I warn you I am an excellent player of card games,” Elizabeth responded. “Flynn, help me out of this dangerous little craft.”

He stepped forward to give her his hand, but his foot slipped in the mud of the riverbank. The Scotsman began to fall forward, and in doing so reached to steady himself on the punt’s prow. Instead he ac-cidentally shoved it out into the river. Anne Boleyn cried out with alarm. The gentlemen about her stood openmouthed, staring as the little boat began to drift. One had the presence of mind to try to help Flynn Stewart up. He looked horrified at Elizabeth’s plight.

How tiresome,
Elizabeth thought,
but if I do not do something right
away, I shall surely be caught by the current.
The Scotsman was facedown in the mud, and none of the other finely dressed dandies seemed inclined to come to her aid. Quickly she undid the tapes holding her skirts to her bodice. She undid her sleeves and pulled them off, along with her French cap and veil. She kicked her shoes from her feet.

Then, standing gingerly in the little punt, she dove into the river, leaving much of her clothing behind. Surfacing, she stroked the few feet to the riverbank to be pulled out by Flynn Stewart, now on his feet and covered in mud.

“Are you all right?” he wanted to know.

“Except for a want of clothing, sir, aye.” She stood in the sleeveless bodice, now ruined, her silk chemise clinging to her legs, her feet bare.

“Surround Mistress Meredith,” Anne Boleyn’s voice suddenly spoke sharply. “Put your backs to her so she may be protected and not embarrassed by your gawking. George, go and find her a long cloak! I don’t care if it’s May; she’ll catch her death of cold.” She squeezed into the circle now obscuring any view of Elizabeth to join her. “You are very brave, and it was so quick-witted of you to do what you did. I am so sorry you have lost your gown. I will have the king send you a new one, for ’tis all my fault.” She smiled her small cat’s smile at Elizabeth.

“You will forgive me, won’t you?”

Elizabeth nodded, her lips twitching with her amusement. “You all
looked so astounded to see me suddenly out in the river.” She began to giggle.

Anne found the sound infectious, and she too began to giggle.

“My sister will be furious,” Elizabeth said. “I suspect when she learns of this incident she will wish I had floated out to sea fully clothed rather than take my gown off and swim to shore.” She began to laugh. She couldn’t help herself.

Anne Boleyn laughed with her. “But I was so afraid for you,” she admitted.

“And none of your fine friends would move a muscle to save me.”

Elizabeth cackled. “I could see them thinking they could not damage their own garments. It never occurred to them to take them off as I did.”

“Ohhh, what a fine show that would have made.” Anne howled with laughter. “My brother has legs like a stork!”

Suddenly the king was there, and Philippa and Lord Cambridge.

“What has happened?” Henry Tudor demanded to know.

Anne explained between the laughter that she and Elizabeth could not seem to control now. She finished by saying, “You must give her a new gown, Henry, for it was my fault she had to swim back to the shore and lost her own.”

“My sister is not properly garbed?” Philippa pushed into the widening circle of gentlemen, and gasped. “Elizabeth! What has happened to your skirts? To your beautiful sleeves and cap?”

“Were you not listening, Philippa? They are in the punt, floating down to the sea,” Elizabeth replied. “I am sorry, but it was an accident.”

“You will never live down this unfortunate incident!” Philippa cried. “Could you not have waited for someone to rescue you? If word of such behavior is spread about, we shall have no luck at all in what is a difficult task to begin with. What respectable man wants a woman who removes her garments in public?”

If was fortunate that Philippa did not see the gentlemen with their backs to her, who were all smiling broadly at her distressed query.

“I think your sister showed great bravery and intelligence, Countess,” the king said quietly. “It would have been difficult to rescue Elizabeth. By the time a barge could have been dispatched the pole-less 
punt would have been in the current with no means of guiding it to safety. The river is busy, and all the main shipping channels come up from the sea to the London pool here. She could have been hit by a larger vessel, thrown into the Thames in her heavy skirts, and drowned. We are fortunate indeed she is safe.”

George Boleyn dashed up now with an all-enveloping cape. Elizabeth was wrapped in it, and Flynn Stewart picked her up.

“Where shall I carry her, my lord?” he asked Lord Cambridge.

“We shall go back to my house,” Thomas Bolton said. He was somewhat astounded by what had taken place. “Follow me, sir.”

“I am perfectly capable of walking,” Elizabeth protested.

“Shut up!” Philippa spat furiously, and totally out of character. “You have already caused enough of a scene. Let us at least attempt to repair the damage. Can you not behave like a lady just once in your life, Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth looked to Anne Boleyn and rolled her eyes. Mistress Boleyn winked back at her with perfect understanding.

Flynn Stewart followed Lord Cambridge, who hurried through the royal gardens and into a light wood. On the other side of the trees he came to a tall brick wall. Tom Bolton opened a small door in the barrier. Ducking his head, the Scot stepped through the door into the gardens of Lord Cambridge’s dwelling. “So you are the owner of this charming jewel box,” he said. “I have admired it often on our visits to Greenwich.”

“It suits me, as do all my dwellings,” Thomas Bolton said.

They entered the house, and the older man led his guest up two flights of stairs, Philippa following behind them, still spitting her outrage angrily.

“Ah, here is Elizabeth’s apartment.” He opened the door, calling,

“Nancy, come quickly. Your mistress has had a slight mishap.”

Nancy came hurrying as Flynn Stewart set his burden on her feet.

“Mishap? You call this a mishap, Uncle?” Philippa exploded. “I call it social ruination of the worst kind! When in the history of the court did a respectable young woman take off her garments and jump into the river? Not in my lifetime, or yours!”

“Thank you, sister, I am quite all right,” Elizabeth said wickedly.

Flynn Stewart thought it wise to withdraw. He did so with a bow to the chamber’s inhabitants, feeling sympathy with them as he made his hasty escape.

The women did not notice him. Lord Cambridge nodded, and mouthed his thanks.

“It was an accident, Philippa,” Elizabeth tried to palliate her older sister. “We were going to go punting, then changed our minds. Master Stewart fell attempting to aid me in disembarking from the punt. The little boat got pushed into the river, and they all stood there staring, not knowing what to do next. I had no choice. And I certainly couldn’t have swum back to shore in all those heavy skirts. I would have drowned with the weight of them pulling me down. I’m sorry, but it is rather amusing in retrospect.”

Philippa drew a long, deep breath to calm herself. Why was it that Elizabeth could make her so angry? “If you had not been consorting with that creature and her minions, this would have never happened.

And how was it that you were, I should like to know?”

“A bath, Nancy,” Elizabeth said quietly, and, nodding, the young servant hurried off to prepare the bath for her mistress.

“Well?” Philippa demanded.

“Master Stewart introduced me to Mistress Boleyn,” Elizabeth said.

“I knew I should not let you go off with that royal by-blow,”