The Queen's Rival (47 page)

Slowly, Bess forced herself to move forward into the courtyard. She linked her hands together and squeezed them to try to quell the overwhelming trembling that swiftly overtook her as her gaze passed over Henry and settled heavily on the boy she knew was her Harry. At last. . . Ah, yes, Harry.

He was his father’s son, indeed, so much a Tudor—from the close-cropped copper hair, to the vivid green eyes, and the tall, lean frame. He was so like the king the day they first met that it made her shiver again remembering. Harry stood before her soberly, though. In that, he was nothing like the brash young king from years ago. For a moment Bess was not certain Harry knew who she was. To collect herself, she dipped into a deep, sustained curtsy, praying that her legs would not give way.

“Your Grace,” she said, not quite to the king, but as properly as a lifetime of skills had taught her to do in the presence of someone above her in rank.

But as she rose back up, it was the boy, not the king, who acknowledged the movement and advanced. Stiff-spined, formal, and smooth, almost regal, she thought.

“Mother,” he said, extending a small hand as the other hand went behind his back in a nuance she knew he had been taught. “I have wished to meet you for such a very long time,” he said with the crisp, schooled diction of a royal.

“And I you.” Bess felt herself murmur the response despite her impossibly dry throat as she greedily scanned every element of her precious lost child, trying at the same time not to stare. That, however, was nearly impossible.

It was no more than an instant that felt like a lifetime before the king took the same three steps forward, crossing the chasm of years and bitterness to bring her into his commanding embrace.

“Bess,” he whispered, the scent of ambergris she had expected punctuating the absolute maleness of him and, for a moment, overpowering her with memories. “I am so deeply sorry.”

He seemed to be referring to Gil, but the way he spoke, the words seemed to hint at something more. Was it an apology finally for having taken her heart, her youth, her innocence, her son?

Bess entirely lost her ability to think in this odd, jarring moment.

“He is a grand boy, do you not think?” Henry asked her, not quite letting go of his hold on Bess, yet turning back to Harry, his expression full of marked pride.

There was an odd desperation in their interaction, she thought, though linked inextricably with the old familiarity. No matter how much his hair changed or he grew in stature, he was still the same Hal she once had loved so desperately. And somewhere inside herself, beyond the maturity and wisdom of years, she was still the young and hopeful Bess Blount from Kinlet come to the court of the great King Henry VIII with images of romances like
Lancelot
dancing in her head.

“My greatest condolences about your husband. Lord Tailbois was a man of true honor, as Cardinal Wolsey was. No matter what happened to the cardinal in his later years, I shall always remember Wolsey’s greater qualities.” Finally he let go of Bess and turned back to glance fully at their son. “Still, it was an odd coincidence that they should die so closely to each other after the deep connection they shared in life.”

“My husband was extremely fond of Cardinal Wolsey,” Bess answered honestly, trying very hard to keep her voice from trembling against the onslaught of memories that surfaced now, taunting her from every direction. “The cardinal treated him like a son for most of his life,” she added, though unwilling to reveal too much of the truth out of respect for both men who were now gone. She felt in charge, strangely now, of a secret that had died with them, and she meant to keep it that way.

“Indeed he did,” Henry replied in agreement.

“I, too, am sorry about your husband, Mother,” Harry said suddenly and more sincerely than she would have expected. “My uncle George, your brother, tells me that, as a small boy, I knew Lord Tailbois well and that he was good to me.”

Her eyes filled again with tears at the recollection—that one brief, precious year; a jewel lost, never to be reclaimed.

“Indeed, he was that,” she answered softly. “He was very good to you. He treated you as a son, just the way Cardinal Wolsey treated him. ’Tis a pity you do not remember him at all.”

“I am certain that is true,” Harry said maturely. Only then did she notice it around his neck, hidden in the layers of silk and lace. It was the ruby and pearl pendant Gil had given her, and which she had sent to Harry for his birthday, three years after he left Lincolnshire. Contrary to everything she had believed, Henry had allowed her a place in Harry’s life, and the gift symbolized that. Also, he had not called her Lady Tailbois as he might, but Mother, and as directly and matter-of-factly as if he had done it thousands of times before.

“I brought a small coterie of men with me,” her son said, changing the subject and reminding her that they had traveled under the banner of the Duke of Richmond, not the King of England. “I hope I have your leave to feed them and allow them to rest?”

She looked back at the child she had ached for and about whom she had wondered and worried for so many years. She was quite unable to take her eyes from him.

“Of course, my lord, if it is at His Highness’s pleasure.”

Henry grinned. “Now, have we truly gone and gotten so formal with each other just because of a few years between us?”

Bess thought to herself what determination it must have taken to tell Anne Boleyn that he intended to reunite with his former mistress and with the child they shared while Rome still endlessly debated the finer points of his current threat to leave the Church altogether and begin his own church in England. It made Bess sad to think of the queen. The betrayal Bess had knowingly committed had been bad enough, but never once had she sought to replace Katherine of Aragon as Henry’s lawful wife in precisely the way Anne Boleyn was now doing.

Bess had heard the lurid details from both her mother, who still served at court, and from Elizabeth Carew, who did as well. She had decided it was a good thing Gil had never known of Wolsey’s death. Bess had intended to tell Gil once he recovered, but that moment never came. The queen had lost her Catholic champion in Cardinal Wolsey, Bess had lost a friend, and Anne Boleyn was on the verge of full victory now that all of her competition was out of the way.

It was too cold for them to walk outside, and the pathways were slick with frost, so Bess invited them to take a cup of ale beside the fire. To her surprise, the king declined, saying he preferred to attend to a few of his more pressing dispatches, but that he would join them soon. It had not been so long, Bess thought, that she did not understand that Henry was trying to give her time alone with their son. What should have produced a feeling of gratitude instead brought a swell of distress, as she sat with her son, each of them in one of her two imposing, velvet-covered high-back chairs. She was looking into the eyes of a boy who was in most ways a stranger to her now. Yet he was a boy nonetheless who had sought his mother out in her darkest hour, and there was some comfort to her in that.

“So then, Your Grace. You are such an important person now, elevated to the peerage as a duke. I am told by all of these honors and positions, His Highness has actually made you the second most powerful man in England.”

Harry smiled. “I am not very popular with Mistress Boleyn, but I am told that as well, yes. The king has shown me great honor. But with you, I am simply called Harry.”

Bess felt another painful tug at her heart. “I gave you that name myself.”

“Father told me. He told me all about you, actually. How kind you are, how clever, and how lovely.”

“Yet you stopped writing to me and never sought to meet me before now.”

It was the first time she had noticed any discomfort on his smooth young face. He waited a moment before he responded. “He has always told me what a noble thing you did, allowing me to be raised at court so that I could be better prepared for my role as the king’s son. My uncles, both George and Robert, said my leaving had upset you, but that your life was full with your other children now. I assumed that was why you never came to London to see me.”

Her fingers splayed out across her lips in a gesture of surprise as she saw a hint of true emotion in his expression. “Not one of my three other children could replace you, Harry, nor shall they ever,” she murmured, the tears of so much emotion splashing onto her cheeks. Bess tried to steady herself enough to continue. “When you were a little boy of barely a year, you did not want to leave here, and I did not want to let you go.” She began to wring her hands, squeezing them so tightly that her wedding band cut into the flesh of her finger. “There was nothing more difficult than watching you leave that day. And George is quite right. I am not certain I could ever have survived that a second time. So while I did not come, I heard everything about you.”

She tried very hard to smile through her tears, but when she saw his sweet young face now, fully defined by emotion, that became impossible. She sniffed and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, determined to continue. She had waited a lifetime for this moment with her child.

“I know which foods you like, which you do not—particularly salmon pastry, if I am not mistaken? Which subjects you are best at with Master Palsgrave, and which you favor the least. While your French accent is perfect, you do not often apply yourself in French conversation. You prefer discussions on Plato, much like the king, and in fact, you regularly debate with him, always acquitting yourself quite well. You are not good at bowls, and you cannot yet be bothered with the focus archery requires, but you love to ride and are a master at dice as well as primero. And in your bedchamber beneath your bed, there is a small red ball that you were given here as a child in order to remind you of something you believed you had lost, just as the king once similarly kept something dear to him beneath his own bed.” She wept openly, surrendering her face to her hands as he came and sank onto his knees before her.

“Cardinal Wolsey told me of that ball here in this house, the sound it made on the wood floors, how I loved it. . . . I do not remember it myself, I’m afraid, but some part of me does remember
you
,” he confessed
.

“Forgive me for not being strong enough to come to see you,” Bess said, still weeping.

“You are stronger and more noble than any other woman I know.”

“More so than Mistress Boleyn?” she asked suddenly with a crooked, slightly guilty little smile as she sniffled, needing to defuse the intensity of the moment for both their sakes.

“She is positively horrid,” Harry said very low, but with a crooked smile of his own. “I truly hope the king is not granted his divorce if it means having to answer to her, even though he is threatening to leave the Church to get it. But please do not tell him I said that.”

“Of course not.” Bess took his hand then; so soft and smooth it was, not yet the hand of a man. “Are you happy there—at court, and in your own world as a duke with a vast household, staff, and so much duty and responsibility, I mean?”

He tipped his head, considering the question thoughtfully. He was still at her knees, still holding her hand. “It has all come in stages, I suppose. The king acted wisely in that, so it has not seemed a bother.”

“You have heard the whispers, I trust, that if he does not soon produce a legitimate son, he may seek to change the laws so that you actually may be named his heir.”

Wolsey himself had told her that, the very last time he had come to Lincolnshire.

“He has Mary. She shall succeed him if he has no sons.”

“But you
are
his son.”

“Yes,” he said with the sudden calm maturity of a much older boy. “And I shall serve the king in any way that I am called to do. If it ever comes to that, I shall be prepared, thanks to your great sacrifice, Mother.”

If he truly believed her actions had been a benefit to him, then she was glad of it. But Bess was not certain she would ever believe it could be worth the loss of those years with her child, and all that had cost her.

Later that night, when the grand old house was quiet and everyone had gone to bed, there was a light rap on Bess’s bedchamber door. She settled back onto her lap the volume of
Lancelot
from Gil that she liked to read each night, for the calm, happy memories it brought.

“Come in,” she said in a tentative voice, knowing well who it would be.

The king opened the door, lingering hesitantly beneath the jamb, dressed still in the long white cambric undershirt he had worn beneath his doublet, shoes, and heavy wool tights. But she could see that he was relaxed and that he had been drinking.

“May I come in?” he asked her.

“Would I dare to deny you?”

“Perhaps it would have been better if you had.”

When she smiled, he advanced and sank onto the bed, moving to the empty place beside her, as though it had been a fortnight, not nearly twelve years, since he last had lain with her.