AUTUMN HAD COME and the King hunted all through the day and returned in the late afternoon to banquets and masques.
Katharine was spending the days in happy preoccupation with her domestic affairs. There was so much to occupy her days. She liked to sit sewing with her women; and it was her delight to embroider Henry’s linen, and garments for little Mary. She had moved away from the sphere of politics and was happier for it.
Her hopes of bearing another healthy child were high. Mary was a joy in more ways than one. Not only was she her charming self but she was a promise of future children, a symbol which insisted that what could be done once could be done again.
This was the happiest of her pregnancies—apart from the first one. This time she could feel almost complacent.
“But let it be a boy,” she prayed. “O Holy Mother, intercede for me and give me a boy.”
She was seated at the table on the dais; the hunters had returned hungry from the forest, and Henry was in his place at the center of the table where there was much jesting and laughter.
Elizabeth Blount was present. Katharine always looked for her among the guests, and she marvelled that Henry could have been faithful to a woman for so long. Elizabeth was, of course, a beauty; and she was entirely the King’s. The marriage to Sir Gilbert Taillebois was one in name only. They could be certain of this. Sir Gilbert would not dare to be a husband to Elizabeth while she was the King’s paramour.
Poor Gilbert! thought Katharine with some contempt. He stands by, like a cur, waiting for his master to throw the bone after he has finished gnawing it.
She felt no jealousy of Elizabeth; she felt nothing but this great desire to bear a son.
She did notice, however, that Elizabeth looked different tonight. She was even more attractive than usual. A diamond glittered at her throat. A gift from the King of course. She was dressed in blue velvet with cloth of silver, and those colors were very becoming to her fair beauty. She was subdued tonight. Had she perhaps noticed that the King was less attentive? Yet she seemed radiant. Had she another lover?
Katharine ceased to think of the woman. It was no concern of hers if Henry discarded a mistress, because there would be another if he dispensed with this one. She was not a giddy girl to look for faithfulness in a man such as Henry.
There was a burst of laughter at the table. The King had made a joke. It must be the King’s, for only his jokes provoked such abandoned laughter.
Katharine set her face into a smile, but she was not thinking of the King nor of Elizabeth Blount.
The child stirred suddenly within her. “Holy Mother, give me a healthy child…a healthy male child.”
HENRY’S HAND touched that of Elizabeth in the dance. She raised her eyes to his and smiled.
He pressed her hand warmly. He too had noticed the change in her tonight.
“But you are more fair than ever,” he whispered.
“Your Grace…” Her voice faltered.
“Speak up, Bessie.”
“There is something I must tell you.”
“What is this?”
“I…wish to tell you as soon as we can be alone.”
“You’re frightened, Bessie. What’s wrong?”
“I pray Your Grace…. When we are alone.”
Henry narrowed his eyes, but she was whirled away from him in the dance.
SHE WAS WAITING for him in the antechamber where he had bidden her go.
“Slip away,” he had said when their hands had touched again in the dance. “I will join you. None will notice us.”
At one time she would have smiled at his belief that, when he did not wish to be noticed, he never was. As if everyone in the hall was not aware of the movements of the King! But tonight she was too preoccupied with her thoughts and fears.
He shut the door and stood looking at her.
“Well, Bessie?”
“Your Grace…I…we…I am with child.”
Henry stared at her.
Then he began to laugh. “By God, Bessie,” he cried, “I had begun to think you were a barren woman. When I considered all the nights we have been together…and no sign of a child. I began to wonder what was wrong with you…or…”
He frowned, as though admonishing himself.
He came towards her then, and there was a tender smile on his lips.
“Your Grace is not displeased…?”
Bessie was thinking: This will be the end. He will not want a pregnant woman. There will be someone else. Nothing will ever be the same again.
“Displeased!” He took her face in his hands and gently pinched her cheeks. “There’s nothing could have pleased me more.”
He seized her in his arms and held her so tightly that she would have cried out with the pain if she had dared. Then he swung her into his arms and held her up, looking at her.
Displeased! he was thinking. He had said that nothing could please him more; that was not true. If Bessie gave him a son he would be delighted, but a legitimate son was what he desired more than anything on Earth.
Now that Bessie carried their child he could look more closely at the fears which had been trying to intrude into his mind.
When there was failure to produce children it was natural to presume that something might be wrong with the would-be parents—both of them perhaps. Katharine was not barren. She could become pregnant; her failure lay in not giving birth to a healthy male child. Among her offspring there had been boys—but stillborn, or, as in the case of the first, living only a few days.
If Bessie Blount bore a healthy child, it would prove, would it not, that the fault did not lie with him.
True there was Mary—but one living girl in all those pregnancies! It was almost as though God was against him in some way, as though He had said, you shall not have a male heir.
His high spirits began to overflow. He began dancing round the small chamber with Bessie in his arms.
Then he was sober suddenly. “We must take care of you, my Bessie,” he said, lowering her gently to the ground. “We must cherish this little body of thine now that it shelters a royal child.”
They returned to the ballroom and were covertly watched.
The King does not grow out of his love for Bessie Blount, it was whispered. See, he is as enamored of her now as he was when he first saw her.
KATHARINE WAS in her daughter’s apartments. Mary was seated at the table, propped up with cushions so that she was high enough to reach the virginals which had been placed on the table.
The plump little fingers were moving over the keys with a dexterity astonishing in one so young.
Katharine watched her. She was not yet three years old; surely there was not another child like her in the whole of the kingdom.
“My precious daughter,” she murmured.
Glancing through the window she saw that the November mist was wreathed about the trees like gray ghosts; the ghosts of unborn children, she thought, and shivered.
She placed her hands on the child in her womb; and involuntarily the prayer rose to her lips. “A boy. Let it be a boy.”
If I have a boy—as healthy, as bright as my little Mary, then Henry will be pleased with me. It is all he needs to make him happy. What need have I to concern myself with the Elizabeth Blounts of the Court if only I can have a healthy boy.
The child had finished her piece. Margaret Bryan clapped her hands, and the Duchess of Norfolk and her daughter, Lady Margaret Herbert, who were both in attendance on the little Princess, clapped with her.
Katharine rose to embrace her daughter and, as she did so, she felt the now familiar nagging pains begin.
She cried out in alarm. It was not the pains which frightened her. It was the gray mist out there. It looked like ghosts…ghosts of children who had made a brief appearance on Earth and then had gone away. It reminded her that this was but November and her child was not due to be born until the Christmas festivities should begin.