The Queen's Rival (52 page)

“It seems a rather grand waste of parliamentary time, since my nephew shall next be king,” Thomas Seymour finally said, yet so blandly that it might not have mattered if Henry had not been focusing on him. In the ensuing silence, Thomas exchanged a quick glance with Edward, his older brother.

“Your unborn nephew,” Norfolk icily amended.

“Not born and not yet even conceived,” Sussex chimed in at great risk.

Henry shot them both a glare for the words that had seemed a swipe at Henry’s manhood, but he did nothing more because he knew they were right.

Norfolk lowered his head, but clearly he had no intention of showing more contrition than that. Fortunately for Norfolk, the side he had chosen to champion so boldly was Harry’s.

Henry IX. . .
Henry imagined the title, rolling it around in his mind as he regarded his son, a boy who grew more powerfully and surely into manhood each day. Was that why God had not blessed him with another son? Was there meant to be this Henry IX after him?

Before he decided, Henry must see Bess. He had had enough of this stalling. She simply must come to court. She could bring her husband, and she should. That would make it far easier on Jane, but he needed her counsel on the matter. If she approved of putting their son into the line of succession, knowing that he might one day be reduced if Jane bore a child, then he must do it. It had been seventeen years, and if Bess agreed, it was well past time to honor their son in that way.

Elizabeth Carew smiled to herself and walked with a spring in her step up the east-wing steps of Greenwich Palace. She was grateful to be back for a time amid the vibrance of court, thanks to her husband, who, praise God, was still tightly allied with the king. She had missed the activity, the gowns, the energy, and the gossip. The only thing lacking here was Bess, and the echo of her presence upon this place was sorely missed. As she walked gracefully through the halls that she knew well, there was still the outline of the beauty Elizabeth once had been—stunning enough for a little while to capture a king. Her face was flawed by only a few light lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, and the strands of gray that wove their way through her thick blond hair were well captured beneath the stylish French hood to match her gown. The years and childbirth had been kind to Elizabeth, and she returned to court each time she was called, her head held high.

And so now Bess was to return for a visit as well. That could be no small thing to have been invited, or for Bess to have finally accepted. She knew through Nicholas that they had always kept up a correspondence and that they had never ceased through the years to exchange gifts at Christmastide. Theirs was a unique and enduring bond, certainly. But this . . . This was something else entirely. Elizabeth Carew could feel it like a coming north wind down to her very core. The king was rarely in London in summer, due to the heat, dust, and the threat of fatal disease. But now he intended to be. Was he actually making that grand concession in order to see Bess?

It clearly had to do with Richmond. The situation, and the king’s lack of a firm stance on the matter of succession since the execution of Anne Boleyn, had been the fodder for debate for months.

The court would move from Greenwich to London in four days’ time, and they would all know soon enough.

While they wrote often, it had been several years since she had seen Bess, and she had never met Lord Clinton, so the excitement for Elizabeth was a charged thing. All of those thoughts whirled like a top in her mind as a collection of elegantly dressed men, speaking in low tones, came toward her, crossing the other way down the corridor. She stopped and stepped back behind the drapery. A childhood of games in these halls made the move instinctual.

“What if Jane cannot bear a son and the king tires of her just as he did of Katherine and Anne?” Thomas Seymour, the queen’s brother, was asking. “Where will our family be then?”

“He does seem to intend finally naming Richmond as his heir,” Edward drily confirmed.

Their footfalls were heavy and stalking as they neared her. Elizabeth held her breath.

“You know how the king adores him. Bringing any harm to the boy would be a treasonous crime,” Edward continued.

“True,
if
a crime were committed,” Thomas Seymour coolly returned. “Yet it is summer, we shall be in London soon, and you know there is always a chance that even a perfectly healthy young man could fall ill very suddenly there.”

“It does happen,” Edward said, voicing his agreement in an oddly callous tone.

Elizabeth saw the men pause to glance at each other. Then their looks cut guiltily away. Her blood ran cold at what was unsaid between them, and the inference there. She shrank back against the heavy velvet drapery, feeling her legs go very weak beneath her. They would not dare. The Seymour brothers could not be that desperate, she thought, her mind a great boiling pot of confusion. What to do? What could she do now in the wake of a circumstance where they had said everything and yet nothing at all?

Their heavy presence lingered along with the deep scent of ambergris and perspiration, and the sense of conspiracy, even after they had gone on down the corridor. They left Elizabeth Carew suddenly with far more concern now than excitement about going on to London. God keep safe the child of her friend’s heart, she thought frantically then, for such would Richmond ever be for Bess.

—JOHN RUSKIN

 

G
rief was an odd thing, Bess thought as she sat alone before the high altar, beside one of the columns near the nave of the little Norman church in Sleaford, not far from the castle where she lived with Edward. Nevertheless, she was still praying to a God who had taken her son away twice, this time for good. Grief was a force that pulled and sucked the life out of those left behind, reducing them to wish they were the ones who had died instead. Yet life continued.

For five days, she had gone through the motions, receiving condolence after condolence, bearing embraces, and seemingly sincere concern for her health from people who had never cared for her. Even Edward had offered little real comfort to her as he sat beside her in silent support for hours, until she had insisted he rest. The only one she had not yet seen since Harry’s sudden and slightly mysterious death was her son’s father. Nicholas Carew gently told her the king was too grief-stricken to see anyone. Even Queen Jane had been barred from the king’s privy apartments. Few outside of court yet even knew that the young Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, so full of promise, was suddenly, mysteriously, dead. Henry seemed in limbo about what to do. Days had gone by. Three had become four. That now became five, as they all waited silently for the king to react, for a funeral to be planned, a burial to be designed.

Praise God, she had been given at least those two precious days with Harry and his young wife. While not an incredible beauty, the Duke of Norfolk’s daughter was kind and gentle, and Bess had been pleased with the match. Her heart ached now to wonder what sort of mother Mary might one day have been to her son’s children if she had been given that chance. But, as with so many other things, that as well was not to be.

Bess closed her eyes, then opened them again, settling them on the great gold crucifix on the altar before her. Harry’s had been a life full of promise left unfinished. That would forever haunt her, and she knew it.

But decisions must be made. If Wolsey were still alive, she could send him to counsel with the king. But there was no one else. She and the king were his parents. What they had begun together they must finish now in the same way.

She must see him. It would be the final step in a journey both of them had made.

Slowly, Bess rose from the pew, colored light thrown upon her face from the colored glass of the mullioned windows, one containing the image of a kneeling knight asking prayers for his soul. She was thinking suddenly of how many times Katherine of Aragon, her former great rival, had sat in places just like this, praying endless prayers for things that were impossible, as she herself had just done. In so many ways, they had been kindred spirits, not rivals at all.

Bess left the chapel then and was met by Edward, who had waited for her outside. Even for her husband she did not lift the veil.

“I must go to Greenwich,” she announced brokenly.

“The king is there.”

“I must see him, alone. There is much to be decided.”

“Let me take you. I shall feel much better if you are not alone. You have not eaten for days, and you have barely slept.”

Through the black gauzy fabric she looked at him. Young, handsome, sent by God, he was a touch of human perfection, she had always believed. Yet she would have given him up, and a dozen other wonderful men like him, to have had Harry back in this world. Harsh as that was, it was the truth.

“Ride with me if you wish,” she responded quietly, accepting his offer, because she knew how much he would worry if she declined, but Bess and Henry alone had to take this step. Alone they had to close this chapter.

Bess was silent inside the drawn litter on the hot, jostling ride across rutted roads from London to Greenwich, knowing the king probably would not agree to receive her. Elizabeth had argued against her going, pleading that his strange outbursts of grief-stricken temper might flare before her. But there was a way. A fitting one, she thought, as she glanced at Edward. He had been clutching her hand in silent support. She could feel his strength through his fingers, firm, sleek, and so masculine, just like the rest of him.

“Are you certain you are prepared for this?” he asked deeply, his voice rich with true concern, as they paused at the guard tower beside the palace gates, then with a courtly nod of approval, were issued inside the vast grounds. She remembered this place so well.