A Love Most Dangerous (14 page)

At that moment I heard a noise and turned to see the
King in the doorway, watching me. He was dressed in his full regalia, a thing I
had seen on only a few occasions. He shrugged off the heavy coat he wore with
one smooth movement, allowing it to slither to the floor. He took off the
weighty gold seal he wore around his neck and flung it on a table. He never
took his eyes from me.

I performed the lowest possible curtsy, remaining low
on the ground, my gown spread about me, my arms outstretched as if I were
praying for clemency and forgiveness.

'Arise my dear,' I heard the King say, his voice deep
with affection.

I looked up and saw him leaning over me, his hand held
out for mine.

'Have you heard the rumour that your King is dead?' he
asked.

I nodded. 'It is said that someone at Court wrote to
the Abbot of Reading informing him of the fact.'

'And the Abbot believed him and gave the news to a
colleague. I think they believed it because they wished it to be true.' He
laughed. 'But it is far from true. I am alive. Very much alive.'

He led me into the bed chamber and, with sweet
delicacy, sat me on the bed.

He was not so delicate a few minutes later.

It had been two months since Jane Seymour had died,
two months since the King had last slept with me. It seemed as if all his lust
and longing, so long pent-up, crashed upon me like a storm. I could not believe
the passion with which he took me, the fierce intensity, the desperation. But
there was no violence with the roughness. If anything there was a sense of
vulnerability which made my heart warm to him.

Nonetheless, I have to say that the King appeared to
give little concern to my wants or needs. He was intent on taking his own
pleasure, on releasing the deluge of energy which threatened to overpower him.
And release it he did, bellowing out his wild delight like a bull stampeding a
herd of cows.

The moment he had finished he flung himself back upon
the bed, his eyes staring sightless at the ceiling.

I also stared up at the ceiling, wondering now what
the future might bring.

Without intending to my hand reached out and grasped
his tightly.

'I am so glad you called me back to you,' I said.

'I had no choice,' he answered. 'You have seized my
body and snared my mind.'

Within my breast rose two emotions, contrary ones
which chased each other round my heart. One was simple pleasure at his words.
The other was cold dread.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

New and Dangerous Men

31st December 1537

Richard Rich peered into the mirror, his stare moody
and aggrieved. Something was happening, something concerning the King, and he
did not know what it was.

Such a situation made him anxious, queasy and alarmed.
He had to know what was happening, he had to know. He stuck his tongue out,
examining it nervously. It looked yellow and sour.

He dragged his fingers through his hair, which was
slick and tangled. He felt adrift and dangling, without his sure defences,
vulnerable to all his many enemies.

He looked out of the window. The morning was as grey
as nightfall and a thick, persistent downpour hammered against the courtyard
below. It was the last day in December and his year was ending on a sour note.
He must do something about it.

'Mason,' he called. He counted in his head the
interval between his yell and the arrival of his servant. He listened to the
hurrying feet and the cautious knock upon the door.

'Come,' he said in a low voice.

Peter Mason opened the door and peered in. He was a
young man of twenty two years but he had aged ten more in the service of
Richard Rich.

'You called, master?' he asked, bobbing his head.

'Fifty counts ago,' Rich replied. 'I summoned you
fifty counts ago. Please tell me what detained you.'

'Nothing, master.' Mason's bit his lip, realising his
mistake.

Rich sighed and shook his head as if saddened by the
news. 'Fifty counts, Mason. You have kept me waiting for fifty counts. And for
what? You said it yourself. For nothing. If it had been because you were
dealing with a tradesman, or hurt your leg or heard that your mother had just
died, then a delay of fifty counts may be considered appropriate.'

He turned and stared Mason in the eye. 'But you, Peter
Mason, have kept me waiting for nothing.'

Mason wrung his hands in anxiety.

'Unless, of course,' Rich continued, 'you were doing
something but do not wish to admit to it.'

He stepped close to Mason and it was all that the
young man could do to stop himself from visibly recoiling from the fetid breath
of his master.

'Was it the wench?' Rich continued. 'Were you sniffing
like a hound about her privy parts? Is the bitch on heat again?'

Mason's fist clenched but he forced it to relax. 'I
was talking to Jenny, yes, master. She was asking what I thought you might
require for dinner.'

Rich regarded him with disbelieving eye. But Mason had
learnt to hide his feelings well over the past eighteen months. He looked back
at Rich with as bland a look as he could conjure.

Rich stepped away and stared out of the window. 'Just
keep your dirty thoughts and fingers off Jenny Coles,' he said.

He picked up a document and handed it to Mason. 'This
is to go immediately to the Lord Privy Seal.'

Mason took the document, bowed his head and fled the
room.

Rich turned and stared out of the window at the busy
street below, his mind weaving a complex net of bait and snares. Let us see if
Master Cromwell will be piqued enough by that missive to tell me all he knows.
His yellow tongue darted out and caressed his upper lip.

Thomas Cromwell, Baron Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal and a
countless string of other offices which he knew the titles of but disdained to
use, took the document from Peter Mason's hand.

'Wait over there,' he said, gesturing with his chin to
a corner of the room.

He peered at the seal on the document. Master Rich.
What can be troubling him? He tapped the document against his thumb, pondering
whether to look at it or send it back unopened. Sometimes Richard Rich's
correspondence meant little or nothing; too often of late it meant a deal of
trouble for the Lord Privy Seal.

He glanced up at Mason who stood in the corner staring
at his feet.

He's scared of me, Cromwell thought. And well he might
be. He stared at the young servant for a few moments longer as if he might
divine the contents of the document from his demeanour. Foolishness of course.
Rich was a man who loved to hoard his power. As a miser hoards his coins he
never lets anyone get as much as a sniff at what he knows. Save me only. And
the King; perhaps.

He cleared his throat and broke open the seal,
flattening the parchment on the desk.

It read: 'What is making the King so happy?'

Cromwell frowned and studied the words. His fingers
began to drum a gentle tattoo upon the desk and he read the message a second
and a third time.

He rubbed his tongue along the tips of his teeth, a
movement he had almost forgotten he made when troubled. He had not been
troubled for a long while now, such a long while.

What is making the King so happy?

He leaned forward in his chair, his eyes focusing
without seeing on a space a few feet from him. His fingers brushed his lips as
if he were searching for a spot which irritated him. He heard the soft shuffle
of Mason's nervous feet, the hiss of a log in the fire.

Thomas Cromwell's Jaguar mind raced back over his last
few meetings with the King. How happy had he been? Had he been happy at all?

Ah yes. He had. He had indeed.

Rich was right. The King has been happy of late,
almost playful as if he had regained his youth. As if he had been returned to
the time before the tournament injury had, in an instant, loaded years upon
him.

Cromwell's eyes narrowed with spite. How had Rich
noticed this? How had he noticed it when I had not?

A part of his mind clicked out a plan to punish Rich
for his temerity while the rest sieved his own dealings with the King to try to
find the cause for his new-found levity.

He looked up at Mason and the man quailed under his
gaze.

Might it be the death of the Queen? Might her exit to
the grave have lightened his spirits so? Did he really love her, indeed could
he have loved her, milksop as she seemed?

He worried at his teeth once more. It's said that
demure seeming women can be voracious in bed. If Jane Seymour had been as
passionate as she was prim it should have been the King who expired in bed and
not his pallid paramour.

His fingers beat out a tattoo once more. Surely not
even the King could be so crass. It was only two months since Seymour breathed her last. No, there must be some other reason for it.

Perhaps Rich knows something; something even I don't
know. His eyes narrowed. If that is the case Rich will come to regret this
knowledge. And regret even more his boasting of it.

He glanced at Rich's servant and crooked his finger to
him.

Mason hurried over to the desk.

'Return to Master Rich,' he said.

'Is there a message for him, my lord?'

'No message.' He dismissed the boy who hurried to
leave the room.

But just as Mason opened the door Cromwell called him
back.

'There is a message after all.'

The servant turned. 'My lord?'

Cromwell's eyes blinked and then opened wide like a
mouth.

'Give Master Rich this message. Tell him that I send
him no message. No message whatsoever.'

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

New Year Gifts

1st January 1538

It was the first day of January, New Year's Day, the
season for the giving of gifts.

For most people the giving of gifts was a pleasant
matter. True one might worry whether a gift for a special friend would give her
the pleasure you hoped it would. And sometimes one was given a gift which was
not to one's liking and so had to smile and dissemble while wondering how to
quietly dispose of it. But in the main, most people found the giving and
receiving of New Year gifts a light and pleasant matter.

Not so the lords and great ones of King Henry's Court.

For them the whole Christmas period had been a truly
desperate time. No field of battle, no lengthy diplomatic negotiations could be
quite so arduous and dangerous. Every day and every festivity was an occasion when
they might find their star had risen or fallen. A casual word or a careless
gesture might be open to any number of interpretations by the King and the
courtier would awaken next morning bemused at how his standing in the Court had
become so abruptly exalted or debased.

The most spectacular rises and chilling descents took
place at the New Year's gift giving.

It was a time of sharp elbows, fawning words and backs
bent low to the floor. Not even the great god Janus was as two faced as the
nobles of the Kingdom on that day.

And Jupiter, the King of the Gods, was the most
duplicitous of them all.

Men would have wracked their minds for months
concerning the gift they would give to the King. Some, it was said, even
appointed experts to ponder this and advise them. The value of the gift and the
quality had to be calculated to a nicety. It had to be a little more expensive
and a little bit finer than the gift given the previous year. It had to be
appropriate to one's current position in the King's favour yet always a tiny
bit better in order to indicate that the giver rejoiced to give more than was
expected of him.

And needless to say, every gift, whatever its value,
would be far more costly than any of the givers could easily bear. Every man
begrudged the expense the gift had cost and the King knew it. Every man
pretended blitheness of spirit at this cost. And the King knew this pretence
also.

The ceremony was always conducted in the Great Hall.
The King would sit on his throne upon a dais at one end of the Hall,
proclaiming the majesty of his grandeur.

On this chill January day, to everyone's astonishment,
the smaller throne, the Queen's throne, had been set beside it. Most of the
palace had assumed that this throne would have been discreetly left elsewhere.
But the King had decreed otherwise and the empty throne sat silent and cold as
if to impress upon people his continuing sorrow and distress at her death.

Four people in the Hall knew this to be a masquerade.
The King's Groom, Nicholas Frost; the King's go-between, page Humphrey and the
King himself, of course. And me, Alice Petherton, who had for the past seven
nights striven with all my might and main to banish any sorrow the King might
still suffer and ease the slightest trace of distress.