Carefully, the queen suggests that Bessie Blount might go with Princess Mary to France, and the princess at once asks pretty Bessie would she not like the chance of seeing the French court? Princess Mary knows well enough that her sister-in-law the queen would go into her confinement with a lighter heart if Bessie were not dancing with the king while she is in labor. But instantly Bessie’s father refuses the honor offered to his daughter, and we know that he is obeying the king. Bessie is not to leave court.
I catch hold of her arm when I am on my way to Katherine’s darkened room one day and Bessie, dressed for hunting, is running in the opposite direction.
“Bessie!”
“I can’t stop, your ladyship!” she says hurriedly. “The king is waiting for me. He has bought me a new horse and I have to go and see it.”
“I won’t keep you,” I reply. Of course, I cannot keep her. No one can exert any authority over the king’s chosen favorite. “But I wanted to remind you to say nothing against the queen. She is anxious in her confinement, and everyone gossips so. You won’t forget, will you, Bessie? You wouldn’t want to hurt Queen Katherine?”
“I’d never hurt her!” she flares up. “All of us maids-in-waiting love her, I’d do anything to serve her. And my father told me especially to say nothing to worry the king.”
“Your father?” I repeat.
“He told me, if the king ever said anything to me, that I was to say nothing about the queen’s health, but only to remark that we come from fertile stock.”
“Fertile stock?”
“Yes,” she says, pleased at remembering her father’s instruction.
“Oh, did he?” I say furiously. “Well, if your father wants a nameless bastard in his house, then it’s his concern.”
Bessie flushes, the quick tears coming to her eyes as she turns away from me. “I am commanded by my father and the King of England,” she mutters. “There’s no point scolding me, your ladyship. It’s not as if I can choose.”
DOVER CASTLE, KENT, AUTUMN 1514
The court turns out to escort the princess to Dover and see her party set sail. After waiting for the storms to die down, finally the horses and carts with Mary’s enormous wardrobe, furniture, goods, carpets, and tapestries lumber on board and finally the young princess and her ladies walk up the gangplank and stand like fashionably dressed martyrs on the poop deck and wave to those of us who are lucky enough to stay in England.
“This is a great alliance I have made,” Henry declares to the queen, and all his friends and courtiers nod. “And your father, madam, will regret the day that he tried to play me for a fool. He will learn who is the greater man. He will learn who will be the maker and breaker of the kingdoms of Europe.”
Katherine lowers her eyes so that he cannot see the flash of her temper. I see her grip her hands together so tightly that the rings are biting into her swollen fingers.
“I do think, my lord . . .” she begins.
“There is no need for you to think,” he overrules her. “All you can do for England is give us a son. I have the command of my country, I do the thinking; you shall have the making of my heir.”
She sweeps him a curtsey, she manages a smile. She manages to avoid the avid gaze of the court who have just heard a princess of Spain reprimanded by a Tudor, and she turns to walk back towards Dover Castle. I go half a step behind her. When we are in the lee of the wall that overlooks the sea, she turns and takes my arm as if she needs the support.
“I am sorry,” I say inadequately, flushing for his rudeness.
She gives a little shrug. “When I have a son . . .” she says.
GREENWICH PALACE, LONDON, AUTUMN 1514
The king is remodeling the palace of Greenwich on a grand scale. It was my cousin’s, his mother’s, favorite palace, and I am walking with this queen where I walked with her predecessor, on the graveled paths which run alongside the great expanse of the river, when the queen pauses and puts her hand to her belly as if she felt something deeply, powerfully move.
“Did he give you a great kick?” I ask, smiling.
She doubles up, folding like a paper queen, and blindly reaches out a hand for me. “I have a pain. I have a pain.”
“No!” I say, and take her hand as her legs give way and she goes down. I drop to my knees beside her as her ladies come running. She looks up at me, her eyes black with fear and her face as white as one of the sails of the ships on the river, and she says: “Say nothing! This will pass.”
At once I turn to Bessie, and to Elizabeth Bryan. “You heard Her Grace. You two say nothing, and let’s get her inside.”
We are about to lift her when she suddenly screams loudly, as if someone has run her through with a spear. At once, half a dozen yeomen of the guard dash to her, but skid to a halt when they see her on the ground. They dare not touch her, her body is sacred. They are at a loss as to what they should do.
“Fetch a chair!” I snap at them, and one runs back. They come from the palace with a wooden chair with arms and a back, and we ladies help her into it. They carry the chair carefully to the palace, the beautiful palace on the river where Henry was born, the lucky palace for the Tudors, and we take her into the darkened room.
It is only half prepared, since she is more than a month before her time, but she goes into labor despite the rules in the great book of the court. The midwives look grim; the housemaids rush in with clean linen, hot water, tapestries for the walls, carpets for the tables, all the things that were being made ready but are suddenly needed now. Her pains come long and slow, as they prepare the room around her. A day and a night later the room is perfect, but still the baby has not been born.
She leans back on the richly embroidered pillows and scans the bowed heads of her ladies as they kneel in prayer. I know that she is looking for me and I stand up and go towards her. “Pray for me,” she whispers. “Please, Margaret, go to the chapel and pray for me.”
I find myself kneeling beside Bessie, our hands gripped on the chancel rail. I glance sideways, and see her blue eyes are filled with tears. “Pray God that it is a boy and comes soon,” she whispers to me, trying to smile.
“Amen,” I say. “And healthy.”
“There is no reason, is there, Lady Salisbury, why the queen should not have a boy?”
Stoutly, I shake my head. “No reason at all. And if anyone ever asks you, if anyone at all ever asks you, Bessie, you owe it to Her Grace to say that you know of no reason why she should not have a healthy son.”
She sits back on her heels. “He asks,” she confides. “He does ask.”
I am appalled. “What does he ask?”
“He asks if the queen talks privately to her friends, to you and to her ladies. He asks if she is anxious about bearing a child. He asks if there is some secret difficulty.”
“And what do you tell him?” I ask. I am careful to keep the burn of anger out of my voice.
“I tell him I don’t know.”
“You tell him this,” I say firmly. “Tell him that the queen is a great lady—that’s true, isn’t it?”
Pale with concentration, she nods.
“Tell him that she is a true wife to him—that’s true, isn’t it?”
“Oh yes.”
“And that she serves the country as queen and serves him as a loving partner and helpmeet. He could have no better woman at his side, a princess by birth and a queen by marriage.”
“I know she is. I do know.”
“Then, if you know so much, tell him that there is no doubt that their marriage is good in the sight of God as it is before us all, and that a son will come to bless them. But he has to be patient.”
She gives a pretty little moue with her mouth and a shrug of her shoulders. “You know, I can’t tell him all that. He doesn’t listen to me.”