The Queen's Rival Read online

  He was a good boy, Wolsey reminded himself, doing his best to finish his letter, but Gilbert was completely distracting him with his endless pacing and dramatic sighs. Wolsey knew the signs well enough. He had been a love-struck lad himself once, before his ambition had begun to speak more loudly to him than the call of his heart. Gilbert Tailbois was his one reminder now of that other world, his other life, and perhaps even love. It was a world he tried not to dwell upon too much on days like this, when a skillfully written letter to the Princess of Navarre, thanking her for her hospitality, seemed far more important.

  Gilbert ambled tentatively toward Wolsey’s writing table then, and, with a little thud, sank onto the leather chair opposite him. Wolsey lifted his eyes but kept his chin down.

  “Are you planning to tell me what and who?”

  “No.”

  Wolsey let a small, contained smile pass his lips. “I didn’t think so. But whoever it is, she must be quite remarkable to have you in such a sorry state at the moment.”

  “She is remarkable. But she is no passing thought, Father.”

  Wolsey dropped his pen onto the parchment. It clattered, and ink sprayed onto the desk and his hands. He lifted his thick chin and frowned at the boy. “You know perfectly well you are not to call me that.”

  “Not saying something does not change the truth of it. Is that not what you always say?”

  Wolsey sank back against the high upholstered chair and wrapped his hands over the carved arms. Most of the time he saw so little of himself in the boy that, throughout the years, he had frequently doubted his paternity. But then there were moments like this—the small stubborn streak that flared, the set of his mouth, defining him—that dispelled all doubt.

  “Be that as it may, you refer to me as ‘my lord’ and ‘sir,’ as we have agreed.”

  “When I remember to.”

  He stiffened. “Well, remember it. You are a Wolsey, not a dolt.”

  “Very well, Father.” The boy smiled at him then. The expression was not disrespectful, but one that showed he held a powerful secret in the palm of his hand and seemed to know how to use it. He could not blame the spirited lad for that. Seizing opportunity was a Wolsey trait. Gil would have a brilliant future, the cleric silently reminded himself, if he did not let the wrong girl turn his head. The court was brimming with temptation for everyone, and falling in love could be wildly dangerous. Gil might be a bastard son, but he was still his son, and Wolsey would never allow that to happen.

  Wolsey had seen the longing glances he had given the new Blount girl. He had nearly been able to feel them. In the first few days, Wolsey had assumed it was only adolescent infatuation. Now, he could not be so certain. But she must have nothing to hold against Gil, nothing to threaten his future, or change his life, just as Elizabeth had changed his own life long ago with the advent of their child. Wolsey must be certain. He must confirm to have any peace. He excelled at fading into the woodwork. And he would do that tonight when he searched her room for assurance.

  “Is there anything I can do to help things with her along, lad?”

  Gil glanced back like an afterthought. The soft laughter of young girls came up softly through the windows below. “I wish there were. But this is something that would be better if I did it on my own,” Gil replied.

  Wolsey nodded his approval, yet silently he wondered if his son—this gangly, shy boy—was up to such a daunting task, especially if she proved to be as remarkable as he claimed.

  Later that afternoon, Gil rode a horse from the royal stables alone out to Hounslow to the hospital there. Since George Tailbois was one of his royal Knights of the Body, the king had offered Sir George accommodations at court while he recovered from his battlefield injuries. But, fearing that the mental collapse might be permanent and that his condition might cause the sovereign embarrassment, Gil had declined the offer on behalf of the man who had raised him.

  George Tailbois had always refused to acknowledge the story of his son’s true conception, and so Gil knew little about himself, or even why George had taken on a child as his own. What he did know had come to him in bits and pieces grudgingly imparted by Thomas Wolsey.

  After he was named Dean of Lincoln sixteen years earlier, Wolsey had met a woman called Elizabeth. Only Wolsey’s tone, when he spoke her name, gave Gil any indication at all that he had ever truly cared for her. She had been married off shortly thereafter to the sheriff of Lincolnshire and Northumberland, Sir George Tailbois. Gil had always been forced to draw his own conclusions about how and why the noble family, with a claim to the barony of Kyme and the earldom of Angus, had agreed to take Gil on as their own. Then, several years later, when he was still a boy, both Gil and his adoptive father found places at court among the king and Wolsey’s staff. Thus the ruse had been cemented, and Gil had realized the Tailbois family had been driven by money and position. Gil’s loyalty to George Tailbois, thus, was born not fully of affection but of gratitude for having given his mother and him a name if not the tenderness he still craved.

  Gil was shown now by a stone-faced guard into a room locked from the outside. It looked to the fifteen-year-old boy more like a prison cell than a place where anyone could recover. There was an icy draft in the spartan room with only a single bed, a small table, and a window that let in noise from the street below and just a sliver of afternoon sunlight. The room smelled heavily of urine.

  “He has been yelling for two days, although no one can quite make out the words,” the guard said matter-of-factly. The jangling keys seemed to rouse him.

  “Who is it?” came a clotted, rheumy voice from the bed, but the man was buried beneath a mountain of blankets.

  The guard returned to the door. “ ’ Twill be safer for you if I lock you inside. Just rap on the door when you’ve finished your visit, lad.”

  The well-groomed boy gave in to a small shiver of panic. He drew in a steadying breath and moved forward. “ ’ Tis I, Father.”

  “Who? Make way for the soldiers, lad! And mind the lances!”

  “Father, you’re not in France. You’re safe back in England.” He moved tentatively nearer the bed just as George Tailbois bolted upright, casting off the blankets and wrestling them like an enemy onto the floor, his body sharp with tension.

  “Careful, boy! He’s dangerous, that one! He’s got a dagger!”

  Gil felt his eyes fill with tears. No matter what he thought of this man who had teetered on the edge of sanity for years, and embarrassed him more than once with his outbursts, George Tailbois had given him a name and legitimacy, if also not the privileged life among dukes, earls, and beautiful noble girls like Bess Blount that Wolsey had. He sank carefully onto the edge of the bed, forcing himself to be brave. “ ’ Tis all right, Father. You stopped him. He’s given up.”

  “Bollocks! Never trust the enemy. They’ll play dead as a sturgeon, then rear up and gouge your heart out without even a thought. Who’d you say you were again?”

  “Gilbert, Father, Gilbert Tailbois.”

  “Gilly?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  He waited, almost not breathing, as a veil seemed to lift from the thin, haggard man’s watery blue eyes.

  “It is you.”

  “It is.”

  Gil reached out and struggled not to recoil from the sour odor as he took the hand of his adoptive father.

  “Forgive me. I must have been dreaming.”

  “You must be very tired,” Gil said gently. “I brought you a sliver of marzipan.”

  The older Tailbois smiled. “Ah, ’tis my favorite.”

  “I remember.”

  The formerly powerful sheriff, and servant to the king, took the small confection like a greedy child and pressed it between his lips. The taste seemed to bring him back a little, Gil thought.

  “Thank you, Son. How is your mother?”

  “She writes that she is well, sir.”

  “And your sisters?”

  Girls who were only half sisters.
“My mother writes that they are well, also.”

  George’s eyes filled quickly with tears. “I miss her so. . . . How many years has she been dead now?”

  “She is not dead, Father. Mother wrote to me only a few days ago. She is home safe at the estate in Kyme with my sisters, eagerly awaiting your return once you are well enough.”

  As quickly as the tears had come, they dried on his ruddy cheeks and rage took their place.

  “Do not lie to me, Captain! ’Tis war!” He tensed again and sprang from the bed, but he lost his balance just as quickly and fell back.

  Hearing the commotion, the guard opened the door again with another clattering of keys. “Everything all right in here?” he asked.

  “He is just a bit disoriented.”

  “A bit?” The guard chuckled unkindly. “He has been mad like that since they brought him here, weeping one moment, calling out wildly the next.”

  He may have been only fifteen, but indignation brought courage. “Sir George Tailbois is a servant to King Henry, and thus, you are to show him the respect he has earned, do you understand?”

  “Easy, lad. ’Twas no harm intended.”

  “Is there nothing you can give him?”

  The guard struggled and shook his head. “Whatever the doctors do seems to help him less and less.”

  Gil felt a strange mixture then of pity and cold detachment. He bore the man’s name, certainly, but not his blood. Pray God, he would not somehow share George Tailbois’s slow descent into lunacy as well. One last time he took George’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I shall return soon,” he said.

  “Who are you?” asked George Tailbois with a frightened, disoriented voice in response.

  Very late that evening, after everyone had retired and Bess was at last free to be alone with her thoughts, she sank onto the edge of her small bed. She gave a weary sigh, then drew up from beneath the bedcovers, where she had hidden the delicate cradle blanket. She still could not reconcile the man who would keep such a sentimental object with the carefree, handsome sovereign she had met that day. But she knew well enough that blood ties were indelible and complex. This blanket made the untouchable king seem real. And it made her miss her own brother the more.

  Tomorrow she must write to George. There were so many things to tell him. She must say that she had met the king, that he had actually spoken to her, and that she had begun already to make friends. She must confess to George that she still had possession of something she had stolen, since the guilt weighing upon her was tremendous. Most of all she must tell her brother she missed him desperately—William, Isabella, and Rosa, too. She so dearly longed for the simple games she had played with her siblings, and the days of fantasizing about what life at court would be like. Bess was quickly discovering how serious, and complicated, it was to succeed here with so many people clambering after the king, willing to do whatever it took to be first in his life and heart. As much as she liked it here, Bess could not imagine herself ever doing the same.

  The next morning after prayer, Bess, Elizabeth, Jane, Princess Mary, and Mountjoy’s daughter, Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter, entered the queen’s apartments together, famished. The meal to break their fast was decidedly more appetizing now than when the queen was in residence, and they looked forward to it with great relish.

  “Her Royal Highness believes that self-sacrifice is pleasing to God, and that it will show Him her determination to give her husband a healthy, living son,” Gertrude explained.

  “And while she makes deals with God, the rest of you must eat like prisoners while I am more often permitted to dine with the king,” Mary quipped as they walked amid the swish of skirts and the echo of their collective footsteps across the long pathway of tile. “That is not to say that she is not a splendid and loyal wife to my brother.”

  “Perhaps, at times, a bit naive,” Jane boldly observed.

  Bess watched Jane exchange an odd little glance with Mary, and she wondered how many things the two of them knew that she, as yet, did not. She was young, and still largely untested, but she was determined to change that by listening well and learning quickly.

  “Mistress Blount.”

  The man’s voice booming suddenly behind her was deep and menacing enough that her determination vanished as she flinched. So did the carefree smiles on the faces of the girls around her. Bess turned around to see Thomas Wolsey, the king’s stout and towering Almoner, his full face compressed by a frown, clutching in a single meaty hand the cradle blanket she had taken.

  Bess felt her face burn. She had thought it well enough concealed beneath her bedding. She had not counted on anyone going through her personal things, but his boldness should not have surprised her after what she had witnessed in the king’s bedchamber. She had been caught, and there would be a harsh penalty handed down to her.

  “By your leave, Mistress Blount, explain how it is that this article found its way into your chamber.”

  Her heart beat like a drum against her rib cage. The punishment might well be so severe that even her parents would not be allowed to return to their positions. Her family could sink to ruin because of her. Taking the cradle blanket and then keeping it had been as foolish as it had been careless. A dozen images moved through her mind, foremost the look of grave disappointment that would darken her father’s face when she was relieved of her duties and returned home in disgrace.

  “I—I,” she stammered, but no other words would come.

  “Forgive me, my lord; it was my fault.” The surprising admission came from Gil Tailbois, although she had not even seen him enter the room.

  He stood tall and self-assured beside her now but with just the right amount of contrition in his expression to balance the confidence. Bess marveled at him. Was he really about to take the blame for her?

  “Master Tailbois, what precisely is the meaning of this?” Wolsey asked in incredulity, his full cheeks mottled red as his accusatory expression changed to one of anger. “You have never done a blatantly bad thing in your life.”

  “And I did not mean to do it now. Strangely enough, I found it in a pile of other linens on the back stairs when Mistress Bryan and I were having a bit of fun there; just running about as you know too well we do. We took it to show Mistress Blount and must have forgotten it when I was told of your return to court. She, in turn, must have forgotten that I left it behind.”

  The silence that fell around them was sudden and heavy. Bess dared not even look at Gil for the masterfully easy lie he had just told in order to protect her. She had never been more shocked in her life.

  Wolsey’s discerning gaze moved critically from Gil to her and back again.

  “Is that the truth, Mistress Blount?” he asked sternly.

  “My lord, I cannot honestly—”

  “You cannot honestly take the blame for me; that is what Mistress Blount was about to say,” Gil said, interrupting her. “But it was a noble gesture.”

  The nobility belonged entirely to him, but she was too stunned to say more.

  “Very well, Master Tailbois, I shall deal with you later. Mistress Blount, my apologies for any offense,” Wolsey said, nodding perfunctorily, the tension of the moment quickly defused.

  “None taken, my lord, I assure you,” she replied in a much softer voice than she normally used, since her mind was still reeling. Bess had no idea what Gil was even doing here in the queen’s apartments, let alone at that critical moment to save her. Nevertheless, she was grateful.

  After Wolsey and Gil had gone, and the girls sat down to take their meal, Bess turned to Elizabeth, leaning in as she did so no one else would hear. “Why on earth would he have done that?”

  “Because it was our fault in the first place,” Elizabeth replied simply, and with seemingly uncharacteristic charity. “Gilly may not be much to look at, but he is a man of honor. Or he will be—once he is a fully grown man.” She chuckled, pleased with her own sense of humor. “And he has a way with Wolsey. Everyone say
s so.”

  “Gilbert would seem a good friend to have.”

  “How appropriate.” Elizabeth Bryan laughed a bit more loudly. “Because he says the very same thing about you.”

  Chapter Four

  May 1514

  Eltham Palace, Kent

  In the spring of Katherine and Henry’s fifth year of marriage, the queen was pregnant for the fourth time, and once again, all of England waited cautiously for a living heir. Since it was not thought safe for the queen to participate in court activities at this stage of her pregnancy, the dynamic young king sought companionship and entertainment elsewhere.

  Increasingly, that included pretty fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Bryan.

  As Mistress Bryan’s presence beside the king, at tennis matches, hunting parties, garden strolls, and at the frequent banquets, was phased in, so Mistress Poppincourt’s presence was seamlessly phased out. Like smooth steps in a courtly dance, the movements and changes were subtle. Where one of the girls had once been seated at the table nearest the king, the other was now directed. Where one had ridden beside the sovereign, or joined him in his personal barge for journeys down the river, the other now kept his company.

  Bess might not have noticed at all if not for being increasingly placed beside Elizabeth at these events.

  In the year since coming to court, Bess had learned well the players to befriend and those to avoid. Of all the courtiers around her, she trusted only two: Elizabeth Bryan and Gil Tailbois. Owing to the king’s dependence upon him, and his subsequent appointment as Bishop of Lincoln, Wells, and Bath, Wolsey’s attention was in demand to attend and advise the sovereign. Gil came along to attend Bishop Wolsey, so Bess had around her daily those upon whom she most depended.