The Queen's Rival Read online

  A heartbeat later, the boys pushed past her and ran to him, past the ring of Blount servants crowding the doorway. The litter on which he had been carried had been set on the sweet-smelling rush-strewn floor. Their mother was beside him, along with the steel-haired physician, Dr. Thornton, who had long attended the family.

  “He really should be put to bed,” Thornton dourly advised. “Sir John has had a long journey home, and he is not the better for it.”

  Catherine Blount held her husband’s hand and glanced up at the kind-eyed family friend. “He said this was the view of Kinlet that kept him alive in France. He wants to look upon it for a moment longer. Then he will let us take him upstairs,” she explained.

  “Very well, but only a moment more,” the doctor said, bargaining with her. “He must rest if there is any hope of a full recovery.”

  “What’s happened to him?” George asked bluntly. He was the first of the children to draw near their father.

  Two years older than Bess, George Blount could well have been her twin. He was slim and blue-eyed, and the color of his hair was exactly the same as her own—like wild honey kissed by sunlight, their father always said poetically. Finally catching up, Isabella pushed past the boys and fell to her knees beside the litter, but Bess remained beside the doors, stunned. It was like looking at a ghost of someone, she thought, feeling a shiver so powerfully that she almost could not look. She wanted her real father back.

  “Shh,” Catherine admonished. “Father has been wounded in the war, but by God’s grace he has been returned to us.”

  Bess glanced at him again, lying there motionless, his expression unchanged. It did not appear that he had even heard his wife, who had returned from court as elegant and graceful as ever.

  As if Bess’s thought alone had brought the censure, Catherine Blount turned suddenly to look with reproach upon the prettiest, most willful, and eldest of her daughters.

  “Bess, pray, do present yourself properly to your father. Do not cower there like that. It is not at all becoming or respectful.”

  Her legs felt like lead as all eyes descended on her and she moved slowly forward.

  “Come, child,” her mother urged with a note of irritation. “He wishes to see you. You know how he delights in you.”

  George reached back, clasped her hand, and drew her forward, knowing too well that their mother’s level of patience did not match her serene beauty. In addition to their father’s support, George’s she could not do without, so she complied, kneeling along with the others, beside the litter. When she took his surprisingly cold hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, Bess was surprised that, at last, their father opened his eyes. Bloodshot and weary, full of war stories she could never understand, they gazed up at her. At last, some small spark of the father she had known appeared.

  “Bess,” he murmured in a raspy voice that did not resemble the one she remembered.

  “Welcome home, Father,” she managed to whisper. When she felt the slight tightening of his hand in hers, tears began to slide in long ribbons down her smooth, pale cheeks. The bond, the unspoken connection between them, was still there. He would always be her father, the man she idolized, and a man who actually knew the King of England.

  As their father rested upstairs, Bess organized her favorite pastime—one into which her siblings were endlessly coaxed. By the hour, the music room became their presence chamber at court; a high-backed chair was her throne. George became Lord Chamberlain, Robert was her steward, and she, of course, was Queen Bess. Rosa, who was eight, and Isabella, who was seven, were her maids of honor. At not quite three, Agnes was too young yet to participate, but she was allowed to sit and watch the fantasy come to life. No one played the king since that seemed disrespectful. And after all, Bess reasoned, there could only ever be one King Henry VIII.

  A copy of his portrait framed in heavy wood, a gift to the family from the king himself, hung prominently in the entry hall. Early on, Bess had committed each of his handsome features to memory. She would stand before it especially whenever a long shaft of butter yellow sunlight moved across the paneled walls and made his image shimmer, almost as if he had come to life. And when Bess was certain no one was looking, she would smile shyly and make her best curtsy before it. Practice, her father said, was essential.

  She would be prepared when her turn came to go to court.

  “Must we play again, Bess?” Robert whined. “I do not at all like being a servant.”

  Her hands went to her hips and her tone became one of reproach. “You must work your way up at court, use all of your talents to get ahead. ’Tis what Father always says.”

  “What talents do I have?” he pressed. “I cannot sing or dance like you and George, and you always remind me that I am not at all clever.”

  Bess tipped her head. The expression she made became exactly like her mother’s—serene, indulgent, and full of confidence. They looked so much alike, mother and daughter, with their smooth, milky, apricot-colored skin, wide blue eyes, small, perfectly shaped mouths, and golden hair.

  “Then we must find what you are good at, or you shall not survive the rigors of court life,” she exclaimed so authoritatively that she sounded as if she had actually been there.

  “I am not going to court,” Robert declared, his ginger curls stirring as he shook his head. “And neither are you. This is only a game, Bess.”

  “Not to me,” she quickly countered.

  “What are you so good at?” Robert asked belligerently as he crossed his arms over his chest.

  “She is awfully pretty,” said Rosa. “Is that not enough?”

  “Mother says court is full of pretty, empty-headed girls. So it is most definitely not enough for me. I intend to go there and make the most splendid match with some great baron or earl. Just wait and see if I don’t. That is why you must keep up your dancing lessons and your singing, and you really must improve the way you play the lute,” Bess warned Rosa, who seemed only to be half listening, bored like the others with the repetition of the pointless game.

  “I heard Father say that neither singing nor dancing is what the king fancies most in a girl,” George quipped, suddenly sounding older himself. “And he fancies plenty of them!”

  Bess shot him a glare. “That is a vulgar thing to infer. But he is king, after all, and he can do precisely as he pleases with all of us. Whatever his pleasure with any of us might be,” she said, even though she really had no idea what that meant.

  “Well, you get what you deserve if you ever go there,” he warned.

  “Riches and adventure? Those I would gladly take.”

  “And all that goes along with them,” George shot back.

  “I shall take my chances,” Bess declared, asking herself, at that moment, what harm could ever come from the great honor of living in the presence of the handsome king at his grand and romantic court.

  Bess had been called upstairs alone by her mother’s maid. Such a summons was never good, although she could not imagine what she might have done that would have displeased either of her parents. Father had been home for only a few hours, and she had taken the other children and occupied them all, making certain they were not too loud. She lingered for a moment outside the door, straightening her rose-colored dress, then adjusting her posture. She glanced down at the lace of her flat, tight bodice, remembering there was a small stain of gravy there. She said a silent little prayer that Father would not notice. It had always been important to her to be perfect for Father—as perfect, at least, as he had always seemed to her. If he should notice and remark about it, Bess was certain it would sadden her for the rest of the day. His disappointment in her really was the greatest punishment.

  “Come in, child,” he called to her in that kind, cultured voice of his that was so reassuringly familiar.

  Her mother was sitting beside him on the bed, but as Bess drew near, Catherine stood and clasped her hands before her in a more formal posture.

  The bedchamber was suita
bly large, dominated by a grand tester bed and a vast armorial wall tapestry. There was a large table draped with fine damask silk that held a collection of thick candles and a stack of leather-bound books. Most prominent among the books was the volume of Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot from which John Blount frequently read to his children, filling Bess’s head most especially with romance. She stopped at the foot of the bed but quickly cast down her glance, trying to press back the coming flood of tears with which she was doing battle at the sight of him. It was difficult to see her strong and handsome father like this, wounded and vulnerable. A moment later, he held out his uninjured hand to her.

  “Sit with me,” he bid her as her mother stood silently in her elegantly embroidered gown with turned-back bell sleeves, beadwork, and a heavy rope of pearls hooked onto the bodice.

  “Your mother and I have been speaking, and we want you to know, since I will be unable to return to court for a while, we have decided it will be better for the family that she remain here in Kinlet with me.”

  Bess could not help it. Her reaction was swift and instinctual. “Not go back? No! You cannot both retire from court! I shall lose my chance, and there shall be no opportunity for me to be presented to Her Grace if neither of you—” Bess lurched forward, her words spilling forward and her tears drying suddenly in panic. “Father, I do beseech you!”

  “Now, my dear, you must not react so strongly, or he will think I was wrong about your being ready. Young maids of honor to the queen have control, not only over their emotions, but over their words and actions,” her mother calmly reminded her with only a hint of a smile turning up the corners of her lips.

  “Ready?” Bess looked back and forth at each of them. “Me?”

  For a moment both were silent, each waiting for the other to speak. “My lord uncle Mountjoy, as you know, is the queen’s chamberlain,” John finally said. “I believe there is a very good chance that once I have written to him of our family circumstances, he shall invite you to function in Her Grace’s household in your mother’s stead. At least until she is able to return.”

  “At court? But when?” The four words leapt from Bess’s mouth in a staccato rush, and her heart began to beat like a hummingbird’s wings against the tight plastron front and square neck of her dress.

  “As soon as possible, before there is any loss of place,” her mother replied.

  “I would go to the king’s court as a. . . maid of honor?”

  “That would be our hope,” her father answered.

  Bess sprang back to her feet as her face flushed with excitement. “I have dreamed of this forever.”

  “We know,” her mother mused. “Your father is not as convinced as I that you are ready for the pace and the complexities of life there, but we haven’t much other choice at the moment.”

  “Oh, I am most ready!” Bess replied excitedly. “I promise you I am. I will be the most extraordinary maid of honor, you shall see!”

  “Settle down, child. Remember what I have told you. With this queen, it will not do to be too extraordinary, or too eager. She has yet to give the king a son, and everyone whispers that she has begun to fear competition.”

  “From her own household?” Bess asked with naive surprise.

  “Especially there. The king and his friends are all young and healthy men, and their flirtations are a daily challenge past which the queen’s ladies must navigate.”

  Bess tipped her head. “A challenge?”

  “To maintain the balance between not offending any of them with rude rebuffs, yet not angering our extremely pious young queen with disrespectful or flirtatious games.”

  Bess felt her excitement pale just slightly as she tried in vain to understand and accept her mother’s words of caution. The king was a married man, after all. Katherine of Aragon was said to be an exotic Spanish beauty, the daughter of the glamorous and powerful Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. Their story was the stuff of legends. Their daughter could not be anything less than magnificent, Bess was certain, and her marriage as romantic as a verse about Lancelot.

  “Teach me, Mother, before I go,” she finally said. “You know I am a swift learner.”

  “That I do.” Catherine Blount smiled with maternal pride at her daughter, so much like herself.

  “I know I can make you both proud of me and keep your place for you until you are ready to return. And I shall keep the family honor as well.”

  “Lofty goals for a girl of only fourteen,” her father observed as Catherine leaned down to give him another sip of wine.

  “I am up to the task, I promise you! And I might even surprise you by attracting my own powerful man one day.”

  John Blount chuckled wearily. “Do not get too ahead of yourself, my little minnow. Let us first see if Lord Mountjoy can secure you a place in Mother’s stead, shall we? And if he can, then we shall need to pray you do not irritate the queen with all of your ambitions and youthful excitement once you get there.”

  Chapter Two

  August 1513

  Greenwich Palace, Kent

  The redbrick palace lay across the river and above a great broad meadow before her like an enormous glittering jewel, with its commanding series of turrets and great towers, both round and square. All of it was surrounded by a wide, mossy moat. Bess gazed at it all in wonder as the party drew near the drawbridge entrance down the long tree-lined causeway. Lord Mountjoy had sent an escort to Kinlet to accompany her, and although the royal guards and the two stout court maids had been largely silent, they had made it apparent that she was a person of value, superior to them, and accorded respect. At her young age, that was a heady sensation for a girl whose dreams alone had been her guide until now.

  Bess held herself proudly as she sat unmoving in her blue silk gown, the back of her hair held by a matching silk caul lined with delicate pearls. She was feeling almost grown-up as they crossed the stone bridge on horseback and neared the central gateway. Yet all the while she was trembling. It was more awe than fear brewing within her as she tried to remember all that her mother had tirelessly taught her, and each thing about which her father had warned her, over the last two months. Her heart quickened almost in time to the click of the horses’ hooves as they finally passed into the wide cobblestoned courtyard, with its grand statuary, splashing fountains, and formal ring of conically shaped yew trees. Just seeing it, Bess knew, no matter what, there was no going back now. She wanted to be a part of the court’s elegance, grandeur, and excitement.

  The groom who approached her horse was a formal young man dressed in the king’s green and white livery. A crown and pretty Tudor rose were sewn prominently onto the front of his tunic. But he did not smile or welcome her; he only helped her down, then nodded perfunctorily and turned away. There were other groomsmen around them who did the same for the others in her traveling party, then silently led the horses toward the grand stables.

  Just then, two richly dressed ladies emerged from an open door at the top of a small flight of stone stairs in the palace’s east wing and swept toward them. Bess was stunned by the elegance of their gowns. One was dressed in blue brocade with a square neck cut very low to her ample breasts, pearl ornamentation, and fashionably long, turned-back sleeves. The other wore a gown of topaz-colored silk with an underskirt and wide, puffed sleeves of sable-colored velvet. Both women wore gabled hoods and an abundance of pearls and beads. Neither of the young women smiled as they approached, but the one in brocade extended her hand, which was softer and more strikingly smooth than anything Bess had ever touched.

  “I am Anne, Lady Hastings, Mistress Blount,” she said as Bess made a proper curtsy, which she had spent a lifetime perfecting. “And this is my sister, Elizabeth, Lady Fitzwalter. We are the king’s cousins, and our brother is the Duke of Buckingham.”

  Bess had already heard plenty from her mother about Edward Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, who was Lord High Steward. It was the highest ceremonial position at court, and his influence would have
been unparalleled had there not been whispers about the king and Buckingham’s married sister, Anne, who stood before her now. Catherine Blount had told her daughter that such an estrangement had developed between the two men over the girl’s flirtations that the only means of healing the fissure had been for the duke, as a show of fidelity, to follow the sovereign into battle, where both now remained.

  Bess tried to look a little more closely at the elegant girl without staring once she remembered the story. Lady Hastings had a smooth face free of wrinkles or scars, but her dark eyes were wide set, her nose was long and prominent, and her mouth was too small to balance it all. Looking at her now, a liaison with the great and dashing king seemed slightly preposterous to Bess when he had such an undoubtedly wonderful queen. Lady Hastings’s sister was slightly more attractive and younger. Bess knew they were highly placed attendants to the queen and both were well regarded. She turned slightly then and honored Lady Fitzwalter with the same proper and well-schooled curtsy.

  After the introductions and a chilly welcome, the sisters turned unceremoniously, as if their duty had been fulfilled, then went together back up the stairs, the intricate trains of their gowns sweeping along the steps behind them. That Bess should follow was implied, not stated, and she scurried to keep up, trying awkwardly to brush the dust from the hem of her own dress as she did.

  “We are to show you to your accommodations. There, you may change and rest,” Lady Fitzwalter said in a glacial tone, without turning around. “Presumably you have something more suitable to wear when you are introduced to the queen later today?”

  “Yes, my lady,” Bess replied nervously, wondering which of her three dresses, all far more plain than theirs, would be considered suitable by either of them.

  Her mother had told her that since she was now one of the youngest maids of honor, and certainly the prettiest, she must not incite any sort of envy among the others. Sabotage was a pastime she would not know how to battle, and the family was depending on her. Looking at the backs of Lady Hastings and Lady Fitzwalter, their elegant gowns sweeping across the tile floor of the first long gallery, Bess herself was quite certain that was true.