The Queen's Rival (4 page)

“I am Anne, Lady Hastings, Mistress Blount,” she said as Bess made a proper curtsy, which she had spent a lifetime perfecting. “And this is my sister, Elizabeth, Lady Fitzwalter. We are the king’s cousins, and our brother is the Duke of Buckingham.”

Bess had already heard plenty from her mother about Edward Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, who was Lord High Steward. It was the highest ceremonial position at court, and his influence would have been unparalleled had there not been whispers about the king and Buckingham’s married sister, Anne, who stood before her now. Catherine Blount had told her daughter that such an estrangement had developed between the two men over the girl’s flirtations that the only means of healing the fissure had been for the duke, as a show of fidelity, to follow the sovereign into battle, where both now remained.

Bess tried to look a little more closely at the elegant girl without staring once she remembered the story. Lady Hastings had a smooth face free of wrinkles or scars, but her dark eyes were wide set, her nose was long and prominent, and her mouth was too small to balance it all. Looking at her now, a liaison with the great and dashing king seemed slightly preposterous to Bess when he had such an undoubtedly wonderful queen. Lady Hastings’s sister was slightly more attractive and younger. Bess knew they were highly placed attendants to the queen and both were well regarded. She turned slightly then and honored Lady Fitzwalter with the same proper and well-schooled curtsy.

After the introductions and a chilly welcome, the sisters turned unceremoniously, as if their duty had been fulfilled, then went together back up the stairs, the intricate trains of their gowns sweeping along the steps behind them. That Bess should follow was implied, not stated, and she scurried to keep up, trying awkwardly to brush the dust from the hem of her own dress as she did.

“We are to show you to your accommodations. There, you may change and rest,” Lady Fitzwalter said in a glacial tone, without turning around. “Presumably you have something more suitable to wear when you are introduced to the queen later today?”

“Yes, my lady,” Bess replied nervously, wondering which of her three dresses, all far more plain than theirs, would be considered suitable by either of them.

Her mother had told her that since she was now one of the youngest maids of honor, and certainly the prettiest, she must not incite any sort of envy among the others. Sabotage was a pastime she would not know how to battle, and the family was depending on her. Looking at the backs of Lady Hastings and Lady Fitzwalter, their elegant gowns sweeping across the tile floor of the first long gallery, Bess herself was quite certain that was true.

The gallery in the east wing led to a wide-open loggia in the Italian style, with a view down to the king’s intricate knot garden, ornamented with fountains, benches, topiaries, and stone statuary much like the courtyard. It was almost too much to take in so quickly, and Bess was not even sure where to look. Kinlet was elegant, but this was grandeur on a massive scale.

The walls of the gallery around her had the fragrance of fresh lime wash and were decorated with torches and vast Flemish tapestries on heavy black iron rods. The tile floors on which they walked were laid out in a beautifully intricate mosaic that resembled, almost perfectly, the shape of the knot garden below. The soaring beamed ceiling above was painted in a brilliant azure and decorated with the same crowns and Tudor roses as the servants’ livery.

Just as they were turning toward a prominent, sweeping staircase, a young girl about her own age and a boy, dark curls spilling onto his forehead, came stumbling down the stairs, laughing and chattering. Quickly and without missing a beat, the girl made a proper curtsy and the boy dipped into a bow, their laughter ceasing only as long as it took to honor Lady Fitzwalter and Lady Hastings before dashing past.

“Typical,” Lady Fitzwalter grumbled, rolling her eyes.

“If that empty-headed churl’s father were not one of the king’s closest friends, I do believe she would have been ousted long ago.”

“Who was that?” Bess asked, biting back a smile at the very last thing she expected to see amid the seemingly structured and rule-dictated court.

“’Twas Elizabeth Bryan. Her father is Sir Thomas Bryan and her mother, Lady Margaret, is one of us. It was a foregone conclusion that their little terror of a daughter should be placed as a maid of honor. But personally, I believe the child needs a sound flogging,” Lady Hastings declared.

“And the boy?” Bess dared to ask.

“Gilbert Tailbois,” Lady Fitzwalter said with a sniff as if his name alone were objectionable. “The wastrel boy lives by some mysterious connection to Thomas Wolsey. Appointed to the cleric’s household at the king’s pleasure, the frightful little urchin nevertheless seems free to roam the halls of court, disturbing whatever he wishes whenever he pleases.”

“His father is not of sound mind. You know that, Sister,” Lady Hastings amended as they began to climb the same staircase the youths had only just descended.

“See that you do not model their behavior, Mistress Blount. The queen has no fondness for folly,” Lady Fitzwalter warned.

“Nor patience for it,” added Lady Hastings.

“I shall keep that in my mind always,” Bess dutifully replied in the way she knew she was meant to.

At the end of a second tiled gallery, hung with portraits of various ancient dukes, lords, and kings, they came to what Bess realized must be the queen’s apartments. A collection of elegantly dressed ladies was gathered beyond the open double doors in the watching chamber and in the presence chamber beyond. Her heart quickened again, so near to the absolute pinnacle of England’s power and importance.
At last
, she thought as they moved into the queen’s actual privy chamber. Before her lay the glamour, the music, the excitement of the queen’s world . . . and by some miracle, she was about to be a part of it!

Bess moved more tentatively, however, behind Lady Hastings and Lady Fitzwalter. She was mindful of her mother’s warning, even though she was secretly relieved to have seen at least one other noble maid, Elizabeth Bryan, with her same sense of spirit. If God favored it, perhaps they could one day become friends.

The queen’s privy chamber, like the rest of the palace, was impressively vast, with one whole wall of windows, ornamented by cornices and columns, facing the gardens below. The other wall was lined with massive hunting scene tapestries and paintings hung in heavy gold frames. Beneath them were carved chairs cushioned with red velvet and gold fringe. Chairs of the same style were also placed in the center of the room, grouped at small carved tables where many of the queen’s ladies sat sewing. But the thing beyond all else that struck Bess, as they moved inside the chamber, was the absolute silence surrounding her. There was no singing, no laughing, and no music. The occasional softly spoken word or whisper in Spanish was the only sound.

His eyes always glittered with excitement when her father told her stories of the gaiety of the king’s apartments. There were endless card games, dice, and laughter, and the sovereign was never without music—a lute player, pipe, dulcimer, tabor, or a performance on the virginals by one of the royal musicians. Bess tried to press back the surprise and disappointment of reality as two more women approached. Both had dark hair and darker complexions, and their dresses were ornamented only by prominent silver cross medallions hanging from heavy chains. Lady Fitzwalter introduced them.

“Mistress Blount, this is Doña Maria de Salinas. She is Her Royal Highness’s senior-most lady, as well as her dearest friend. It is to her authority you must answer above all others.”

Bess dipped into an especially solicitous curtsy and remembered to keep her eyes lowered properly as she rose.

“And I am Doña Agnes de Venegas. My husband is Lord Mount-joy, your father’s uncle and chamberlain over this entire enterprise,” the other dark-haired woman said in an accent heavily laden with her Castellón roots. “It is by his favor that you are here. Remember that.”

Again Bess curtsied. When she rose, she wisely did not smile. While both were young, they were sour-faced, serious women who set the tone for the queen’s household, which clearly Bess was meant to adopt. Her romantic fantasy faded a little bit more.

“I have informed my husband that you have arrived, and he hopes to find time to meet you later. If not today, tomorrow.”

A flurry of other introductions followed with names she struggled in vain to keep straight: Lady Percy, Lady Bergavenny, the Countess of Oxford, the Countess of Derby. Few of them smiled and fewer still acknowledged Bess in return. Even the flat-faced, plain Marchioness of Exeter, the daughter of Agnes Venegas and Lord Mountjoy, and thus her own cousin, seemed unimpressed by her arrival. It was not hostility Bess felt as she followed Lady Hastings from the room, but definite antipathy. In spite of all her dreams and hopes, Bess was apparently just another girl to fill out the queen’s suite. And unlike the others, Bess did not even bear a title. She was merely plain Mistress Blount, an unimpressive maiden whose moderately connected father had called in a favor with a well-placed, distant relative. Everyone knew it, and there was no doubt that she was meant to know it as well.

Bess had not expected the overwhelming wave of homesickness to hit her, or so swiftly. She could not remember a time when she had not longed to come to court. She had dreamed of it and planned for it as if she had known it was the one wish in her life that would come true. Now, washed and changed from the long journey into a new gown and fresh headdress, she walked slowly and full of hesitation, back toward the queen’s vast apartments.

Her dress was a suitably modest one of scarlet velvet with tight sleeves and white embroidery at the square collar. From the girdle at her waist, an enamel rosary hung. Her honey blond hair was swept up into a small, proper gold mesh caul. She was the picture of sweet elegance. Again, the silence in the queen’s apartments startled her. Although the rooms were filled with court ladies all sewing or reading as before, they did so without laughter and with only a minimum of conversation. Bess did not realize it until then, as she stood at the fringes of the activity, that the ladies were sewing banners and copy after copy of the Royal Standard. Clearly, they were to be sent as encouragement to the English troops at war in France. It was a noble, if slightly dreary task that surprised Bess nevertheless. Even though she knew the king had named Queen Katherine as regent in his absence, Bess had expected Her Highness to be engaged in far more entertaining pastimes than those strictly of duty, like this, and prayer. Upon seeing the girl called Elizabeth Bryan, who, seated at one of the tables near the warmth of a charcoal brazier, was sewing a standard with another young maid, Bess felt safe enough to approach.

“May I sit with you?” she cautiously asked. When they both glanced up, Bess said, “I am Elizabeth Blount, but I am called Bess.”

“Splendid. Because I am Elizabeth Bryan, and there can only ever be one of me.” The declaration had been flippantly delivered, but it was followed by a sweet smile. “Yes, do sit with us. We could use some fresh conversation. This is Jane Poppincourt. She is friends with the king’s sister, the Princess Mary. But occasionally Mistress Poppincourt deigns to entertain herself with less important maidens such as I.”

They both giggled softly then, and Jane put her finger modestly to her lips. She was pretty with pale hair, gentle eyes, and a kind smile. Neither girl seemed to possess the same haughty demeanor of the other court women, and Bess was glad of that.

“Your uncle is Lord Mountjoy?” Jane asked as she handed Bess a needle and some red thread. Her accent was thickly French, but her voice was soft and appealing. There was none of the condescension she had heard earlier from the others.

“My father’s uncle,” Bess clarified. “Apparently the Lord Chamberlain took pity on my family since my father was wounded fighting alongside the king.”

“We are all here as a favor to someone,” Elizabeth observed. “Most of the queen’s ladies do not fancy me at all, but my father and the king are inseparable, so, alas, they are forced to tolerate me, poor things.” Elizabeth Bryan smiled a bit more broadly, clearly proud of herself and the place she had made.

“I saw you coming down the stairs when I first arrived.”

“So you did. With Gilly. I am being punished by Lady Hastings for that bit of fun with no supper. Never mind, though, he is entertaining enough to be worth it.”

“Are you and he—”

“Gilbert Tailbois and I?” She giggled at the notion and cut a glance at Jane who lowered her eyes with a shy giggle of her own. “Great heavens, no. He is just entertainment in this dreary place.”

“My father always told me such stories of the dancing and the music here, the great and clever jests, and all of the magnificent banquets,” Bess said a little dreamily.