“Then I shall come to Friarsgate when the loneliness overcomes me. Then when I am bored with a surfeit of simple country living, I shall return to court again. It is the perfect solution, is it not?”
“What shall I wear tonight?” Rosamund asked him. “There is to be something titledAn Interlude of the Gentlemen of his Chapel Before His Grace,followed by a pageant,The Garden of Pleasure.They say the king will wear purple satin.”
“The king would do better to accept my fashion direction,” Lord Cambridge sniffed. “Instead he will have his costume approved by those roughnecks with whom he is always jousting and drinking. He will have gold H’s and K’s sewn all over the garment, my dear girl. This fantasy of romantic love he persists in presenting to the world, when we all know he married the queen because she was available and he needed to sire an heir immediately, is ridiculous.”
“Oh, Tom, she is really a good lady, and so brave,” Rosamund defended her mistress.
“Aye, my dear Rosamund, she is, but I am a man of the world. Believe me that, contract or no, Henry Tudor would have married someone else had there been a proper princess of the right age available. This nonsense with little Eleanor of Austria was a farce, and we all knew it. King Ferdinand knew it, but like his daughter he hung on with great tenacity. Only at the end, when it became apparent that the old king was dying, did Spain have Katherine’s dowry transferred to their Flemish bankers across the channel. Then the king died, and the prince became the new king, and suddenly he was most anxious to make Katherine his bride. And his counsel was so very reasonable about the dowry that had to be transferred back to England. No, dear girl, the king married his wife because he hoped, as his father hoped when he matched her to Prince Arthur, that she would prove to be the breeder that her mother was. Already the king’s eye has wandered, and it will not be the last time, I promise you.”
“’Tis true his eye is quick,” Rosamund admitted. “I see him in the chapel now and again casting his gaze among the women there.”
“Hmmmm,” Lord Cambridge said. Then his tone grew intimate. “Does his eye linger on any one lady longer than another, dear girl?”
She swatted at him and laughed. “Not that I have noticed. He certainly does not look at his wife’s ladies, I assure you. I think the debacle with the Duke of Buckingham’s sisters cured him of that. The queen’s women all have their own opinion of who it was, with most of them favoring the Lady Anne.” Then changing the subject she asked him, “What will you wear tonight, cousin?”
“Black,” he said. “It is simple, and I suspect that simple should be the order of the evening if one is not to compete with the king and his purple. Besides, he is letting the general public in, which I never consider a wise thing.”
Rosamund put on the tawny orange gown and preened happily about her chamber. Doll brought her a flat box, another gift from Tom. It contained a beautiful gold chain decorated with golden topaz, and a matching broach in the shape of a diamond and set in gold. Instead of her blue cloak Annie put a new cloak of rich brown velvet trimmed in marten over her shoulders and then drew up the fur-trimmed hood, for the February day was raw and windy.
“You spoil me outrageously, cousin,” Rosamund told Lord Cambridge as they prepared to leave for Westminster, each in their own barge, “and I must admit that I love it!”
He smiled, pleased. “Having you with me is like having my sister back with me again, Rosamund. I know you are not May, but you are much like her in your youth and sweetness.”
The palace was more crowded than Rosamund had ever seen it. The public had been allowed in to view the royal festivities. As Lord Cambridge had suspected, it was a bad idea. When the pageant was over and done with, the crowds surged forward, tearing at the players’ costumes for souvenirs. The king found himself stripped down to his doublet and hose, and laughed uproariously, particularly when one of his gentlemen, Sir Thomas Knyvet, was stripped stark naked and had to climb a pillar for safety. When the crowd began to tear at the gowns of the ladies who had danced in the pageant, the king ordered the guard called in, and the public was ushered firmly from the palace. The court then went in to eat a large banquet that had been prepared for the occasion, despite the condition of their finery, although Sir Thomas Knyvet was forced to withdraw and find some garments to wear.
And then news arrived on February twenty-third that the little Prince of Wales had died suddenly that morning. Rosamund was in the queen’s chamber when the king came to tell her. He took her into her privy chamber, and her sudden great cries of anguish alerted her women to the tragedy. And to everyone’s surprise the king remained with his wife comforting her as best he could, forsaking his own grief in an effort to ease the queen’s sorrow.
“It will begin again,” Lord Cambridge murmured to his cousin as they spoke quietly together in a corridor of the palace. “He should have possessed his soul of patience and found another princess. She has lost two children now, God help England.”
“She is in agony, poor lady,” Rosamund told him, “but you are right. It does England little good. Still, her mother and her sisters have proven themselves good breeders and yet lost a few along the way. It will be different next time.”
“I pray you are right, cousin,” Lord Cambridge told her.
They walked together back toward the queen’s apartments, and then the door to those rooms opened and the king exited. Sir Thomas Bolton bowed gracefully, and Rosamund curtsied. The king nodded brusquely in their direction, and then he stopped suddenly.
The blue eyes fixed Rosamund with a look, and he said, “You are the lady of Friarsgate, are you not, madame?”
“I am, your majesty,” she answered him softly, her heart pounding with excitement. He had not mattered when he was a boy, but now this was the king who spoke to her.
“Aye, I remember you,” the king told her with a small smile. “My behavior toward you was churlish, and Sir Owein said so quite plainly. Yet you were not in the least abashed to learn a wager had been made involving your virtue. You gave poor Neville quite a setdown and he took it badly, but you did not scold me, as I recall.”
“One does not reprimand a young man who will one day be your king,” Rosamund said smoothly. “A king can do no wrong, and makes his own rules, I know. Besides, my lord, you held no grudge, for you witnessed my formal betrothal to Sir Owein and told me to remember it, for I should tell my children one day that you did.”
“And my father reminded me that I was not yet England’s king,” Henry said, and laughed. “I am sorry about Sir Owein. Was he a good husband?”
“There was none better, my lord!” Rosamund said, and to her surprise she felt tears in her eyes.
“And you had children?” the king continued, seeing her tears.
“Three daughters, my lord, and a son lost at birth,” Rosamund told him. “It was a foolish accident that took my husband from me.”
“We are glad you are here with our queen, to whom you were so kind in her difficult years,” the king said. Then he bowed and moved on down the corridor and out of their sight.
“God’s nightshirt!”Thomas Bolton swore softly. “There is a story here, cousin, you have not told me. And may heaven help you, for I could see his interest as he looked at you. And you said all the right things to him! Never again tell me that you do not belong at court, Rosamund Bolton, for you are far wiser to the ways of the court than I previously believed.”
“I know he is the king,” she responded, “but you must remember I knew him as a boy. Of course I respect him as my king, but I still think of him as that mischievous lad, Prince Hal.”
“God help us! He will surely seduce you this time, my dear cousin! And while you may not realize it, you are ripe for it! Oh lord help us, my dear! Go back to your mistress, the queen. I must consider this new state of affairs,” he told her.
