“I have the latest news from court,” said Bliss. “Adela keeps me well-informed in her letters, one of which came just before we departed home for this visit.”
“How is the king?” asked Blaze.
“Desperate, my dear, simply desperate!” crowed Bliss. “The queen has rejoined him and now refuses to retire from the court. The king is forever moving about without informing her, in his efforts to court Mistress Boleyn, but the queen always catches up to him within a day or two. Adela says they are exhausted with all the traveling.”
The sisters laughed as each thought about the situation. It really was quite ludicrous, and secretly Bliss and Blaze were relieved to be in their own homes, and not dashing about on the summer progress as the king attempted to escape from the queen so he might pursue his little amour.
“Why will the queen not retire if Hal wishes her to?” wondered Blaze aloud.
“She has taken the most strong dislike to Mistress Boleyn,” came Bliss’s reply.
“ ’Twould not be a hard thing to do,” remarked Blaze. “Mistress Anne is a most infuriating chit who has the habit of putting herself quite above her station.”
“She is of good stock, sister,” said Bliss. “Her mother was the daughter of Thomas Howard, the Earl of Surrey. As for Sir Thomas Boleyn, her father, his mother was Margaret Butler, daughter of the Earl of Ormonde.”
“But Sir Thomas’s father was a London cloth merchant,” Blaze replied. “Mistress Anne is all Boleyn, for she is as ambitious as her antecedents who, in two generations, have gone from trading in the London marts to a castle at Hever.”
“We were poor once too,” reminded Blythe. “Remember, Blaze, that had not Edmund married you and dowered us, we should all still be at Ashby without our husbands and children. Even Father should not have been able to regain some prosperity raising horses without Edmund’s aid. There is nothing wrong with ambition, sister.”
“It is not so much Boleyn ambition that bothers me as Mistress Anne herself. The king needs a kinder and more biddable companion.”
“Such as the queen?” asked Blythe. She did not approve of the king’s efforts to put aside his wife.
“Nay, Blythe,” replied Blaze, who knew her sister’s feelings on the subject quite well. “The queen is not an easy woman, which is where the problem lies. There is a precedent for a king to put aside a barren wife. Queen Catherine could easily step aside so that the king might marry a young wife on which to get his legitimate sons. She will not, and hence, we have the problem.”
“Certainly she will not,” noted Bliss, “if she thinks that she will be replaced by Mistress Boleyn. For a daughter of Castile’s queen and Aragon’s king to give way for the daughter of a Kentish knight is not within the queen’s character.”
“Nor should it be,” said Blaze. “As much as I would have the king divorced and remarried, he must remarry in a dynastically correct fashion. A princess of France, or one from the German or northern kingdoms, but certainly not Anne Boleyn.”
“What other news from court?” demanded Blythe.
“It all revolves around the king’s great matter.” Bliss laughed. “Mistress Boleyn, it is said, has not yet yielded her virtue to the king, and he suffers greatly.”
“He would, for his appetite is great for female flesh,” said Blaze. “Poor Hal! Whatever I may think of Mistress Anne, I must agree she is chaste, unlike merry Mistress Mary.”
“She wields her chastity like a weapon,” chuckled Bliss, “dangling her virginity like some great prize before the king’s twitching nose. In the end he’ll grow tired of having naught of her, however, and then ’twill be farewell to Mistress Anne Boleyn. She’ll not even get herself a husband for her trouble. Perhaps a few baubles, but nothing more.”
“Nyssa,” called Blaze, “you and Mary Rose are to stop teasing Robert this instant! What scamps they are,” she laughed at her sisters.
The autumn came, and with it the harvests. On All Hallows’ Eve day Anthony ordered a Mass for the soul of his uncle, now gone two years. Great with her child, Blaze, nevertheless, insisted on attending, pulling herself up slowly from her knees after she had prayed. Something had changed, she thought. Edmund had always seemed so close to her, and yet now, to her growing horror, she could scarcely remember his face.
Afterward, she almost ran to the family picture gallery to stare into his portrait, grateful that she had it, but as she stared she faced seriously for the very first time that Edmund Wyndham was really gone from her. He would never return. She found herself crying, and then she felt Anthony’s arms go comfortingly about her. He said not a thing, nor did he even turn her about so she might weep upon his chest. He simply held her, and raising her eyes up to Edmund’s portrait, Blaze said her final farewell to the gentle, loving man who had been her first husband. Her tears ceased as suddenly as they had begun, and wiping the evidence from her cheeks with the heel of her palm, she turned to face Anthony.
With one tender finger he brushed away a single rebellious tear that had dared to streak down her face. “What now, madam?” he asked her gently.
A sudden spasm crossed Blaze’s face as she looked up at him, and with a weak laugh she said, “What next, my lord? The birth of our son, I believe.”
“Can you walk?” he asked her anxiously, and she nodded. He helped her to her apartments, and called for his mother to come. “Do you want your own mother? I will send for her if you do.”
“It is too late in the day, my lord. Let us instead send a messenger tomorrow announcing our son’s birth.”
“You are so certain,” he laughed.
“This time I am,” she agreed.
“Go, my lord, go!” Heartha shooed him from the chamber. “This is woman’s work. You did your part those nine months back,” and she cackled her laughter.
Anthony had not long to wait. He went to the family hall, and calling a servant to him, sent the man across the river to fetch Blythe. He knew how much having someone of her own meant to Blaze. Then he poured himself a goblet of Rhenish. Nyssa wandered into the hall full of self-importance.
“My mama is having a baby,” she announced to him. “She is having it this very minute.”
“I know,” he said.
“Will the baby like me, do you think, Papa?” Nyssa cocked her head even as he had seen Blaze cock her head a thousand times.
“I am sure the baby will like you, Nyssa.”
“If I do not like the baby, Papa, can we send it away?”
“Nay, sweeting, but you will like the baby, I promise.”
“Will you still love me even though there is a new baby, Papa?” She stood by his knee looking up at him with Edmund’s face, and Blaze’s eyes.
“I will love you both, Nyssa. There is enough love in my heart to love a hundred babies, and still not take a bit of my love away from you. I love your mama, and yet I love you too,” he explained.
Nyssa nodded. “Will Mama have four babies? Fluff, my cat, had four babies this summer.”
“Sometimes a woman will birth two children at once. Your own grandmother Rosemary has done so four times, but I think your mama will have but one child this time.”
Nyssa stayed talking with him for a few more minutes, and then suddenly his mother was calling his name. He looked up to see her standing there smiling and holding a swaddled bundle.
“My lord,” she said, “here is your son.” She bent and lifted the coverlet from the baby’s head.
“My God.” He breathed as he looked down into a replica of his own face.
“He looks like you, Papa,” cried Nyssa, standing on tiptoes to peer down at her half-brother. “I like him!”
The baby took that moment to open his eyes, and a look not unlike a tiny smile touched his mouth.
“He likes me too!” Nyssa said excitedly. “Oh, Papa! The baby likes me too!”
“So he does, sweeting, so he does,” Anthony said, feeling close to tears. Then he looked at his mother. “Blaze?”
“Never have I seen such an easy birth as she had. She is fine, and asks if you would approve her choice for your son’s name. She would call him Philip Anthony Edmund Nicholas. She says he should have his own name to answer to, and not someone else’s.”
“Aye,” he said, “she is right, Mother, and I shall go and tell her so this minute!” With a final look at his son he raced from the family hall. He had not been certain earlier if she had been grieving for Edmund or bidding him farewell. Now he knew! But did she love him? God, how he wanted her to love him with all her heart as she had once loved Edmund. As he loved her. Possessing her body was not enough. He wanted her love!
“My lord, behave yourself!” the startled Heartha admonished him as he raced into his wife’s bedchamber to find Blaze sitting up, drinking from a goblet.
“You have seen the baby?” she queried him.
“Aye! He’s a fine lad, Blaze! Thank you! At last Langford has its heir.”
“And you approve his name?”
“I thought you meant to call him after Edmund,” he queried her.
“Blythe has just named her son Edmund, and besides, as I told Doro, this boy should have his own name. Not yours, nor Edmund’s, and God knows this country does not need another Henry! Let him be our Philip, my lord.”
“ ’Tis a good name, my angel.”
The bedchamber door opened, and Blythe peeped around it to be waved into the room. She came smiling and saying, “Here I am sent for because you have gone into labor, and I arrive to find my godson already birthed! What will you name him?”
“His name is Philip,” said Anthony.
“Lord Philip Wyndham. It has a good ring to it,” said Blythe.
The baby was christened the next day, with Blythe and Nicholas standing as his godparents even as messengers were dispatched from RiversEdge to the various family members about the countryside announcing his birth.
“We should best send a messenger to the king,” said Blaze quietly. “He would want to share in our good fortune.”
Anthony nodded, and it was done.
The baby thrived, and Blaze quickly recovered from the easy birth of her son. Nyssa was fascinated with the infant. She was constantly begging to be allowed to help with him. It was decided that the entire family would gather at RiversEdge for the holiday season, for Blaze would not hear of them doing anything else. They had not celebrated the Twelve Days of Christmas together in several years. A messenger arrived from the king just before New Year’s. He brought a velvet-lined box holding a dozen silver goblets engraved with the Langford crest, a royal gift for the baby.
Blaze was pleased by the king’s generosity, but Bliss pithily noted, “You earned them!”
For a moment Blaze stared at her sister in astonishment, but then she was forced to laugh. “I suppose I did,” she said.
“I think her worth far more than just a dozen silver goblets,” Tony teased his wife.
“Well, at least no one will say he is the king’s son,” retorted Bliss. “He is far more generous to his bastards than that,” and the whole family laughed at her wry, yet truthful observation.
Winter came, and the landscape lay quiet beneath a mantle of white, the trees black and stark against a pearl-gray sky. Still it was not an overly harsh winter, and when the snows had melted, revealing the brown earth of very early spring, there were still stores enough in the granary to feed the peoples of the Langford earldom.
The days grew warmer. The newly turned red-brown earth sprouted with its first green, and Blaze took her children into the flowering orchards to enjoy the fragrant apple trees. Nyssa ran about filled with excitement at being allowed to go barefoot for the first time this year. Her mother sat beneath a large old tree enjoying the
hummm
of the bees amid the blossoms, watching Philip, who could now roll over, sit up, and was seriously contemplating crawling. At this moment, however, Philip slept, his thumb tucked firmly in his small pink mouth. Then Blaze saw her husband coming through the orchard. With him was another man. A man who wore royal livery, and Anthony did not look very pleased.
“Papa! Papa!” called Nyssa, spying him. “Here we are!”
“Lady Wyndham,” said the king’s man, “I have a message for you from the king. I am to await your reply.”
Blaze struggled to her feet, and took the parchment from the messenger. Breaking the seal, she read the brief message:
To Blaze Wyndham, Countess of Langford, from Henry Rex:
Come to me as quickly as you can. I need your aid in a most delicate
matter.
Blaze handed her husband the king’s letter. Reading it over quickly, he swore softly. “Damn him! What can he want with you now? You are mine!”
“We are the king’s loyal subjects first and foremost, my lord,” she reminded him with a flick of her eyes toward the waiting royal servant. Royal servants were such notorious gossips. “I must obey this royal summons, and you know it.” She turned to the messenger. “Where is the king now?” she asked him.
“At Greenwich, m’lady.”
“You are to return to the king, and tell him that I will need a few days to prepare my family for my absence, but then I shall come to him with all good haste. It is late. You will stay the night, of course.”
“Thank you, m’lady,” replied the messenger.
They fought. For the next few days the house rang with their constant battle over the king’s summons.
“I forbid you to go!” Anthony shouted for what surely must have been the hundredth time. “I absolutely forbid it!”
“Why do you make foolish pronouncements that you know you cannot enforce?” Blaze demanded of him. “Would you bring the king’s wrath down upon this house? Remember that Langford was given to this family by a Henry. It could just as easily be taken away by another Henry!”
“How do you think I feel, having my wife summoned to that satyr’s bed?” he raged.
“You think he summons me to his bed?”
Blaze burst out laughing. “Believe me, Tony, swiving me is the furthest thing from the king’s mind. He is far too busy in his pursuit of Mistress Boleyn. I do not know why he desires my presence, but it is not to make me his mistress once again. Of that I am certain!”