The Queen's Rival (37 page)

“My Lord Compton and Cardinal Wolsey, only.”

“Wolsey knows?”

“Well, the cardinal and Master Tailbois.”

“Ah, yes.” He smiled oddly. “Master Tailbois, who looks at you as if you are his.”

“He is my friend, Hal. Only that. I knew not where else to turn.”

“You could have turned to me, of course.” Henry began to smile more broadly then, his joy outweighing everything else. “But Wolsey is a tolerable second. He is my friend, as Tailbois is yours.”

“I shall accept that. Or try to. But the cardinal frightens me.”

“Wolsey is not to be feared—at least not by you. You can trust him, too, Bess,” he said, full of faith. “More than anyone else in my court, I trust Thomas Wolsey.”

As the king and Bess dined with the Carews in Sussex that evening, Wolsey rode with great speed to Windsor Castle in the beating autumn rain to see the queen. He knew now what he must do to protect himself and his ambitions. Katherine was a part of that plan. Although the details were complex, and the plan would be somewhat distasteful to sell to a pious woman who still loved her husband, there was no other way—not if he ever had a chance of one day becoming pope. Power and position were everything for someone who had begun his life in obscurity. At the court of Henry VIII, there was no one more powerful now despite the eager contenders—including the king’s mistress and her unborn son. No, he had no equal, and he had every intention of keeping it that way.

Wolsey nodded to the two guards posted at the intricately carved doors to the queen’s apartments, then stepped inside, his flowing crimson cassock the only splash of color amid a room dotted with religious-themed tapestries, hanging crucifixes, and quiet women dressed in unadorned black, gray, or deep green dresses. When he found her, Katherine was sitting near a large window reading a prayer book. Thank the Lord there would be no need to finesse his way past the steel-tempered Doña Elvira today, he thought.

“Your Royal Highness,” he said, bowing to her more deeply than usual.

After a moment, she looked up calmly, closed the book, and set it on her lap. “My Lord Cardinal. What brings you to Windsor? Has something happened to the king?”

“The king is well, Your Highness, but I do come on a matter of some urgency.”

“
Por favor,”
she intoned, indicating the empty chair beside her.

Wolsey gratefully sat and drew up the heavy silver cross at his chest, placing it just beneath his chin. It was something he did at times when he needed to consider very carefully what he would say next. He knew he must be exceedingly gentle now, and that was certainly not his forte with regard to women—or with anyone, for that matter. Most of the time, he only played at the emotions others felt. He had found that a useful device.

Wolsey looked at her closely then, summoning his best expression of heartfelt concern. He pursed his lips with regard for her, lowered his eyes thoughtfully, then exhaled deeply.

“It is Mistress Blount, my queen.”

Wolsey watched her expression darken as she steepled her simply adorned hands. Her eyes were discerning as she gazed at him, yet impossible to decipher at the same time. “Tell me.”

“She is to bear the king’s child.”

He did not dare to move, or even breathe, as he waited for her reaction. Only then, once she gave him anything, could he know positively what to say next. “And you have come all the way to Windsor to bring me this news for some reason of value to you, I presume?”

“I have indeed, Your Highness. But the value is to us both. I have always believed in the maxim that one should keep one’s friends close and one’s enemies closer.”

“That was one of my mother’s favorite sayings.”

“To vanquish an enemy, he, or she, must be dealt with as a friend.”

“You have a plan in mind?” she asked, her voice very low, almost husky, and suddenly cunning.

“You cannot rid yourself of her just now when the king craves the fantasy of sons more than all else. But I believe you
can
alter the fantasy, which may gain you your desire in the end.”

Silence fell between them then as Wolsey let his words play out in her mind without having to engage in the objectionable practice of spelling it out entirely.

“You propose to unseat one rival with another?”

Indignation flared strongly in her eyes with the question, and Wolsey felt a burst of respect for the queen Katherine of Aragon had always meant to become.

“Perhaps not so much to replace as put a new option more clearly before him,” Wolsey clarified.

“Is there a distinction?”

“If Your Highness will forgive my being frank, once one has tasted the forbidden fruit, there is little hope of losing the craving for it. The king may believe he wants a son badly enough to claim a bastard, if it comes to that. But if we act in concert, we can see to it that the child is only ever that—a bastard.”

“If I do not act, you believe the king might actually attempt to divorce me, or annul our marriage in favor of her?”

“Forgive me, my lady, but there have been whispers of those options for some time, and that was before there was the hope of a living child.” His expression changed to display just the right amount of contrition as he shifted his gaze out the window and to the forest beyond.

He must give her time to believe the idea was her own.

“I knew from the first the Blount girl was a rival to be feared. Now she will truly be so if she bears Henry a son.”

Wolsey saw her stiffen at the sound of her own declaration. He waited a moment to respond. “Not if his affections have been weakened while she has gone to childbed.”

Doña Elvira appeared predictably before them then, and Wolsey waited in silence while the two women conversed in a low tone. He spoke not a word of Spanish, but he did not believe the queen had told her confidante why he was there, for Doña Elvira never once looked at him before she nodded, then retreated once again across the room in a sweep of severe black silk. A moment later, Katherine looked back at the cardinal.

“And now you shall tell me precisely how
you
are to benefit from this, why you brought yourself all the way to Windsor. And do not bother telling me, Cardinal, that it is your loyalty to me.”

“It is not that alone, madam. I would not dishonor you with a lie.” He pinched the cross at the point of his broad chest more tightly in order to pace himself. “It can be no secret to you that I am an ambitious man.”

“Are your ambitions not alone to grow closer to God?” she asked judgmentally, arching a brow.

“Alas, my queen, they are. I wish—rather, I dearly pray—one day to be fortunate enough to be elected pope in order to glorify our gracious God. To do that, I must walk a thin line in diplomacy, not angering the French, the Italians, or the Spanish—that, for Your Highness’s sake, of course.”
Nor can I allow the king to waste a future match, which I would otherwise negotiate, on a country maiden like Mistress Blount
, he thought. “The world sees me as counsel to the king. If he were to divorce you and marry someone such as her, only because of a child, my own credibility on the world stage would be dangerously diminished.”

“But a rival for Mistress Blount? Have you one in mind strong enough to unseat her, yet one who would not be my undoing?”

“I do indeed. I believe I know of the perfect girl for the temporary diversion we both require,” Cardinal Wolsey affirmed with only the faintest glimmer of a smile.

Henry had told Bess that he was glad about the child. And after all, it was not a complete lie. Although the prospect of a baby changed everything, he was glad. While Bess and Elizabeth strolled in the gardens beyond the grand windows, he and Nicholas sat by the fire, drinking Rhenish wine from large tooled silver cups. They were trying to laugh and converse as if Elizabeth, and a royal command to marry her, had not long ago come between their friendship.

“I truly did assume you knew about the child,” Carew finally said apologetically. “Elizabeth’s mother can, upon occasion, be a bit more free with details than she should be. I remember that well enough.”

“Bess said she was frightened to tell me, so you only did me a favor.”

“Do you know yet what you are going to do, sire?”

Henry paused for a moment to watch Bess outside the window—lovely, smiling Bess, her face shining in a mellow ray of autumn light as the ermine collar at her throat fluttered gently beneath her chin. He never should have come to care for her. He should have taken her to his bed, but not to his heart. He was old enough to have known better. But it was too late for that now.

“She shall need to go away until after the child is born. It would be cruel to the queen otherwise. I would imagine Wolsey already has a place in mind.”

“The cardinal knows as well?”

“Bess confided in him,” Henry confirmed. “And even if she had not, he makes the workings of the court, and the country, his business, and I am glad of it. There is still no one I trust more. Except, perhaps, Bess.”

“And after the child is born? What will happen then?”

Henry settled his gaze upon Carew, and only then did he realize why the courtier had asked. He believed it would end for Bess the way it had ended for Lady Fitzwalter, Elizabeth, and Jane Poppincourt before her. Carew assumed he would soon be casting her aside, and thus a suitable husband such as he would need to be cajoled and bribed into marrying another of the king’s former liaisons. The difference was that Henry had actually fallen in love with Bess. And although he was not supposed to feel such things, the king was clearly ecstatic about their child.

“I have no idea what the future holds for either one of us, honestly, Carew,” Henry said, feeling that his friend had an odd right to press him on this, so he did not object.

Nicholas Carew was a good man, an honorable man. Henry’s sense of guilt over what he had asked of him, with regard to Elizabeth Bryan, was one of the factors in his visit to Sussex, a visit distinguished by bringing the most important guest his friend would ever be able to boast of to his neighbors in the coming years.

As Henry saw it, each had now done the other a favor.

The women returned shortly after that, and Henry pulled Bess affectionately onto his knee, which was covered in dun-colored nether hose of Burgundian silk. “Did you enjoy your walk, sweetheart?”

“The grounds are lovely,” Bess said, her innocent face still lightly flushed and brightened by a happy smile.

Henry loved to see her like this, yet in some ways it made the guilt worse, since he knew, no matter how he spoke of divorce and annulment, or even dreamed of it, he could never make Bess a proper wife—not his own wife anyway.

Still, Henry thought as he drew her closer, trying to hold on to the last vestiges of their brief and bittersweet love, there must be a way to make this right. Yes, he must do that—for Bess’s sake.

He was not a bad man, he told himself; he was just one who had learned well to understand reality, his place, and the heavy price of both.