The Queen's Rival (23 page)

Gil stood back a pace then, and watched the revelers organize. Bess moved to the front of the group, her velvet skirt brushing against a sea of other green velvet skirts as she moved. He saw that she held her head high and proud. She would be partnered again with the king, he thought, and she seemed to realize it. Gil stepped back, again, out of sync with the moment. God, but she was lovely—still so young; still so entirely unaware. Yet she had a new kind of confidence; the same as Elizabeth, and Jane before her. It was like watching an unavoidable cataclysm take shape before his very eyes. But the most he could do was wait. . . and hopefully pick up the pieces after it was over.

He glanced at Brandon again, leaning casually against the paneled wall, one leg crossed over the other. Vile showman, he thought, especially when all Brandon truly wanted was the king’s married sister in France. But what, and whom, would he take in the meantime while he waited? Apparently any young innocent who was besotted with his royal best friend would do. Gil did not have a chance against either man.

Suddenly, the king, wearing a highly embellished version of the same costume as Brandon’s, emerged through a rounded side door. Rare jewels and pearls glittered on his doublet and full slashed sleeves. The girls included in the evening’s entertainment swarmed toward him like bees to sweet honey. Henry smiled a crooked smile and greeted each of them. When he saw Bess beside Brandon, Henry’s smile fell by a degree. It was a nuance noticeable only to Gil, who had been watching particularly for it and had felt the same thing. The two handsome friends had long been rivals when it came to women, and he seemed to sense a challenge.

In response, Henry suddenly turned from Brandon and Bess and went to Jane Poppincourt. He drew up her hands, kissed each of them, and his smile broadened. Henry was a resilient man, if a little brooding. They were partnered for the celebration dance, which, like the last, the pregnant queen would view. When the king’s trumpet fanfare sounded just beyond them inside the banquet hall, Nicholas Carew took his wife’s hand. Gil was paired with Anne Stanhope, who was nearest to him. He would have given anything for it to have been Bess. Gil watched her tip her head back and laugh blithely at something Brandon said. Seeing her innocent flirtation, and how attractive she was, made his blood run cold. Apparently, she still had absolutely no idea how he felt.

The group danced the intricate steps of a galliard before the queen, the Spanish ambassador, Buckingham, and Wolsey. There were dozens of other nobles privileged enough to have been invited to court for the Twelfth Night festivities in the soaring hall set aglow by candles and torches like a winter fairyland. Yet Gil was aware only of Bess. He watched her graceful steps, the elegant turn of her slim neck beneath the drape behind her little pearl-dotted hood, as she stepped in perfect time to the music. Brandon would never be good enough for her. Neither, for that matter, would the king.

The only person in the world who could have distracted him at a time like this was Wolsey. Gil watched him speak with a liveried page, then bolt from his chair like a shot, his face gone pale with surprise. Immediately, he directed the servant to the Duke of Buckingham, Lord High Constable, seated with equal prominence on the opposite side of the king’s vacant chair. Wolsey then bent down and spoke something quietly to the queen seated beside him. Something was most definitely wrong. All of their faces showed it.

Gil was careful not to miss a step as he watched Buckingham rise as well, and, when the dance was finished, the two men went to the king. There was so much laughter and conversation that at first no one noticed, but when the three of them quickly left the hall and the same page went to Charles Brandon, the gossip began.

“What is it?” Bess asked when she saw the strained expression on the face of her dance partner. “Has something happened?”

“The King of France is dead. The King of England’s sister is a widow.”

Brandon’s tone was telling, she thought. He did not sound particularly sorry. Rather, the expression on his face was one of guardedly pleasant surprise. She remembered then the gossip all that year about the Duke of Suffolk and the Princess Mary and what she had seen for herself at Dover.

“I am sorry,” she murmured respectfully, uncertain of what else to say.

“I most certainly am not. He was old, foul-smelling, and lecherous. I saw that well for myself.”

Of course. Brandon had returned just recently from France, staying longer than the Duke of Buckingham, or nearly anyone else from the wedding delegation. The rest of the dancers began again, but Bess and Brandon moved off to the side near a large tapestry of a hunting scene, hung on a heavy iron rod. His expression seemed to quickly become one of agitation. His gaze darted around the room, and his body had tensed perceptibly following the news.

“Will she remain in France now, do you think?” Bess asked him.

“The new king will hope so. He is more of a lecher than the old one. But she’ll not remain, if I am allowed any say in the matter.”

Brandon’s feelings were becoming clearer with every word, and Bess longed to speak something of encouragement to him, a passage from
Lancelot
about the determined, romantic warrior, but her father’s volume was old, tattered, and back in Kinlet; and her memory of the exact wording remained there with it.

Charles Brandon turned to face her fully as he conjured a sincere smile. “Please forgive me for abandoning you this evening. It is horrid of me, but I really must find Wolsey and the king at once.” He pressed an innocent kiss onto her cheek. “Watch yourself around this place if I happen to be gone again for a time, Mistress Blount. There are many men at court whose ambitions for a young beauty like you are not so pure as my own.”

Bess smiled back at him. Her blue eyes were very big. “That sounds odd when so many here have said the very same to me of you.”

He laughed deeply at that, then squeezed her small hand in his much more powerful and large one. “I was never a threat to you or anyone else here. With a great blessing from God, the reason for that shall be revealed to you soon enough.”

Entirely caught up in the romance of a young and beautiful widow, and a dashing lovesick duke, Bess leaned toward him one more time so she could speak softly, as if they were the dearest two friends in the world.

“You are going to France after her, aren’t you?”

He paused for a moment, struck by her words. “Pretty
and
bright as well, you are. That shall be a lethal combination at this court before too long.” He chuckled. “Take care of yourself while I am away.”

“Good fortune to you in it, Your Grace.”

“Thank you, Mistress Blount. Lord knows, in this I shall need all of the good fortune I can get, and perhaps a miracle or two as well.”

Across the room, Gil Tailbois had not taken his eyes from Bess, or from the revoltingly intimate little scene with Charles Brandon, although why Brandon was leaving the banquet without her after that little display was unclear. Perhaps they were meeting somewhere later. So much for Brandon’s great love for the king’s sister, Gil theorized in an impulsive burst of jealousy. His gift to her of a romantic tale, given under these circumstances, would have made him more pathetic than he already was. He had felt bile rise as he watched her laugh with Brandon and hold his hand. All along, Gil had feared the king and had never once thought his real competition might be the worldly, handsome young Duke of Suffolk as well. He did not possess the strength to do battle with them both.

As the dancing concluded and everyone began to take their seats before the meal was served, Nicholas, who had watched him draw the leather-bound volume from the pocket in his doublet, settled his gaze on Gil.

“You really should not jump to conclusions, you know.”

“Say not a word more.” Gil held up a hand in angry admonishment just before he stepped toward the blazing, massive stone fireplace, a gilded H and crown emblazoned above it. Without another word, Gil surrendered to the flames the small, rare volume he had saved up his pay to buy, and which he had intended for Bess. That was where the book, and his feelings for her, belonged. He would have to force himself from now on to remember that, he thought, in the coming days.

 

T
he court had been in an uproar since the previous winter, and just now, as summer drew to a close, had things at last begun to settle down. Not only had Katherine lost yet another child in the interim, but the king’s best friend had betrayed him. Without royal permission, or even the knowledge of Henry VIII, Charles Brandon had gone to France as part of the funeral delegation for Louis XII. Two months later, in March, Brandon secretly married the French queen. As winter then fully descended upon England, Henry felt the full force of rage and betrayal over the treasonous act—not only from his beloved sister but from his closest childhood friend. The two, who had renewed their love affair in France, had subsequently eloped in spite of Brandon’s assurance to Henry that he would do no such thing. For weeks the couple was not permitted to return to England under penalty of death, the king angrily decreed, even though Mary was already pregnant.

It had not helped Henry’s mood on the matter either that, once again, the queen’s child had been stillborn, causing him to begin feeling increasingly cursed by his marriage. Not only was he to be punished with the lack of an heir, but also during that period he had been forced to deny his growing attraction to the ripening Blount beauty.

Throughout the winter and into the spring he had forced his attentions, for duty’s sake, back upon the increasingly pious and unappealing queen in an attempt to see her pregnant yet again. He could not tempt himself by being in the company of any of the queen’s ladies until he knew for certain that he had once again done his duty. By June, he was told he had succeeded.

During those last warm summer days at Hampton Court, Thomas Wolsey’s recently purchased showplace on the banks of the Thames—a glittering symbol of his growing wealth and increasing power—a spark of life returned to the youthful king. As his intimate group of friends joined him to hunt, eat, and drink, Bess and the others noted how much he had been affected by Wolsey’s sage and caring counsel. She had heard gossip that the prelate had taken it upon himself daily to plead with Henry to allow the newly married lovers to return home and be a comfort to him once again. He had done so alone, as the rest of the Privy Council—Brandon’s chief rival, the Duke of Buckingham most fervent among the group—reminded the king daily that Brandon’s actions amounted to treason.

Wolsey’s dogged perseverance and calm advice had eventually, however, won out, and the king began to feel a small sliver of forgiveness. Provided Brandon paid to the Crown a massive fine for his treasonous act, in May, Henry had allowed Mary and Brandon to return to England and be married again in a family ceremony at Greenwich. As the September sun now warmed the thick limestone corridors and tile floors of the newly elevated Cardinal Wolsey’s palace, Henry fully let go of his anger, dared to hope again for an heir, and felt free to socialize, most particularly with the ladies of his court. Bess herself certainly noticed his transformation, about which everyone whispered.