The Queen's Rival (44 page)

“I have never been so instantly in love with anything in my life as I am with that child,” Henry said. “Bess is the one who brought that precious gift into my life, and I shall be forever grateful. But I cannot risk the pleading I know I will hear to dissuade me from my course. Wolsey is better at all of that. Besides, he is quite unnaturally close to the Tailbois lad. It shall be easier on them both coming from him, of that I am certain.”

When she saw the cortege of riders this time, and a banner from court, Bess gasped, then cried out. She knew the king would not be among them, but she no longer cared whether Henry was in her life or not, so long as their son was finally returned to her. It had been nearly a month of silence and waiting. The hours had become days, and those had stretched into eternity as she worried after Harry’s eating, his sleeping, and whether he missed her even half so much as she missed him.

Gertrude, her cousin, had sent her a letter from court a few days earlier about the meeting of the two kings in France at what had been called the Field of Cloth of Gold. She knew Mary, the king’s sister, had been a guest, as had Thomas Boleyn and his two daughters, Mary and her younger sister, Anne. There was a time, nearly two years earlier, when she would have envied anyone who had been asked to attend that sort of important and sumptuous event—and she would have felt contempt for her successor.

Now all Bess wanted, all she craved, was her son, and to see the little boy’s first meeting with his new baby sister.

As all of that played across her mind, Bess could not help herself. Seeing the riders in her courtyard from her window upstairs, she drew up the sides of her dress and bolted like a child herself down the grand carved oak staircase. Mistress Fowler and her own lady’s maid were already there with Gil and Cardinal Wolsey as Bess burst into the sun-splashed courtyard. The shocked expressions on all of their faces stopped her.

“What is it? What is wrong? Where is my son?”

She looked at each of them in turn and felt a swiftly escalating panic.

“Where is Harry?” Bess asked her husband, because he was the one who, she knew for certain, would tell her the truth as always. He was the only one in the world whom she trusted now.

In response, Gil put his arm around her and drew her against himself very tightly. When no one spoke, Bess tried to pull free so that she could find the little child among the tangle of adults getting off horses, out of carts, and milling about. But Gil only held on to her more tightly, bracing her.

“Harry is to remain at court,” he said very gently. “The king feels it would be best for his education and—”

Bess’s legs began to go weak. She could not breathe until she heard her own horrified gasp. “The king
feels
? To the devil himself with what the king feels! What the king wants! Harry is
my
son!”

“And his,” Wolsey added stoically, speaking out for the first time. “Keep in mind, it is indeed an honor, my Lady Tailbois, to have a natural child who has been acknowledged by the king himself.”

Bess began to sob as indignation crawled up through her like a black, evil thing. “He would not
dare
to deny Harry, especially when he is his own mirror image!”

“And that, perhaps, is the point. Harry is every bit the king’s son. He wants the boy with him,” the cardinal calmly countered. His tone was controlled, and as condescending as ever, she thought through a blaze of her own fury.

“Well, he cannot have him!” she sobbed with open defiance. “The great king can play with my heart as he pleases, but not with our child’s. Harry needs his mother. No one will know how to be with him as I do. He needs things—favorite things only I know!” she cried out as the desperation took her completely over and she crumpled against Gil like a rag doll.

Wolsey took a step nearer, the movement stately, grand, and for-bidding in the sweep of crimson silk. “Forgive me, my lady,” he said, “but it is already done. In time the king shall know those things as well. It is his will.”

“No! God in heaven, no! He cannot have Harry and my heart as well.”

Bess could not breathe; she could not reason. Each heartbeat in her chest felt like the blow of a death knell, and it was so because, with her child’s loss, her own death could not be very far away.

A moment later, her legs gave way, and Bess collapsed into the biting gravel and a swirl of dust, everything around her going as black as the death she feared.

—1 JOHN 4:18

 

T
here were five winters more, and as many summers, before the worst of the pain of Bess’s great loss eased even a little. There were two children to follow after Elizabeth. First, a boy called George was born after Harry was taken to court. A second son, called Robert, arrived shortly after that.

When Harry was first taken, Bess could only exist by the hour. Gil rarely left her side in those early, dark days for fear she might do something desperate. It helped when, through his emissaries, the king recommended Bess’s two brothers, George and Robert, go to London to live as companions to their royal nephew and, thus, to offer Bess reports more unbiased than Wolsey’s might have been concerning her son’s progress. In her mind, Bess silently thanked Henry for the gesture, but her wounded heart, still full of the child’s loss, was not fully ready to forgive.

From George, Robert, and Cardinal Wolsey, Bess learned that Harry was accorded every possible dignity and, in fact, far more than most Englishmen considered reasonable for any natural son of the king. Henry doted on his now six-year-old son by establishing for him his own household, staffed to the brim with servants, tutors, a nurse, and his two Blount uncles; surrounding him with luxurious carpets and furnishings; and stuffing his wardrobe with opulent costumes.

George sent letter after letter detailing the fine Spanish silks and Burgundian velvets Harry was afforded and how well he could already speak Latin and French. Gradually, Bess began to see, through the filter of her own grief, the advantages her sacrifice had provided.

One sunny spring afternoon, she stood back a few feet, watching with a mix of pride and wary curiosity as Gil and Wolsey embraced in the grand open doorway to their home. The cardinal always came with news from court, and this time would likely be no different. They had learned during his last journey that the king’s affair with Mary Boleyn had ended entirely at last. Most at court believed Mary’s two children to have resulted from this relationship. Curiously, however, Henry did not publicly acknowledge them.

It was so different from how Bess and her son had been treated. Perhaps, Wolsey had supposed, it was because the king had now entirely set his sights on Mary’s younger sister, Anne, and did not want to endanger his courtship with one sister by formally acknowledging the affair with the other. It was a sordid business from which Bess felt very far away now—just as she did from the competition, danger, and the grandeur of court life.

After Gil and Thomas had embraced, the portly cardinal turned to her. Smiling warmly this time, he kissed her cheek, then held her arm in a fatherly gesture before they went inside.

“Tell me first any news you have of Harry,” she excitedly bid him, the animosity between them all but dissolved now. “Is he eating well? How is his health? You never write to me with nearly enough details of his life. I want to know everything!”

“He does tolerably well. He is a tall, healthy-looking young boy. In fact, I have brought you something by order of the king, to prove it.”

The king.
The sound of it still had the power to wound her. She leaned a little nearer to Gil in response once they sat together in the cozy nook near the fireplace hearth that was brimming with fragrant summer flowers rather than fire on this warm summer afternoon.

Wolsey drew open a leather satchel he carried and brought out a miniature framed in gold leaf, studded with small pearls and emeralds. “It was painted last month at Richmond when they were all together there.”

“All?” Gil asked protectively on behalf of his wife as she took the miniature from the cardinal and gazed down at the image she knew without needing to ask was her son. He had been painted in a boy’s white cap and an exquisitely detailed lace shirt. She could see Henry in him instantly, but he had her brother George’s eyes more obviously now.

“His Highness, the boy, Mistress Anne, and her father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, primarily,” he finally answered, and with great hesitation.

“I see,” Bess replied coolly, feeling the edges of her calm beginning to fray slowly.

“Remarkable that the king thought at all to send a picture to his son’s mother when he is so occupied elsewhere,” Gil said defensively.

“On the contrary, he thinks of you often, my lady. I know because he speaks of you regularly, and still quite fondly.”

Her eyes searched his face for truth as he sat stiffly in an upholstered wood chair, hands curled over the arms. Wolsey had changed, Bess thought. He was older now and even more stout, and his face had wizened. Lines and fleshy folds made him more endearing to her. He was someone she had come almost to trust for his connection to Gil, in spite of how he once had not seemed to care for her.

“He makes certain that the child writes to you often. I am to report to His Highness personally of it weekly.”

“How generous of him,” Bess responded, unable to keep the sour note of sarcasm from her voice.

“You are, of course, invited at any time that might suit you to visit him.”

It was an offer the king always extended, and one she always declined. With three small children, Bess saw that her greater duty now lay here. She was certain Henry knew that, and this likely was why he extended the offer in the first place, she thought with a little more animosity than before.

It was a game of bluff for a child they both wanted.

And there was something more. Bess was not certain she was strong enough yet to see Harry again, even if she did go. Her heart, her joy, her love, she thought, glancing down again at the painted image, wide-eyed and half smiling, in that comfortable regal way.

“In the meantime, however, I have come with other news.” As if sensing her hesitation, Wolsey added, “This news is quite extraordinary. I know you and Gilbert shall be most pleased.”

He drew something else from the satchel. It was a document sealed with red wax stamped with the king’s personal seal. He handed it to Bess, but, when her hands began to tremble, Gil took it from her and broke the seal with his thumb. She watched his eyes widen and his lower lip drop open in shock.

“The king has made Harry a duke!” Gil declared with incredulity as the paper fell from his hands and drifted down onto his lap.