Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Lord Morgan rode to see his three married daughters several weeks later that he might explain to them that there would be no wedding at Ashby come August.

"You do not seem unduly distressed," remarked Bliss as she nursed her greedy son.

"I am not," her father said. "Cormac O'Brian is the man for Delight, whether she has the sense to admit it or not."

"Ohhh," said Bliss. "You make him seem quite fascinating, Papa. I am sorry I did not get to meet him."

At Kirkwood the gentle Blythe smiled at her father's news. "Delight," she said, almost repeating his very words to his wife, "will survive quite nicely, and before it is all over with, poor Cormac O'Brian will find himself her slave. He was quite obviously mad for her, Papa."

Lord Morgan left his horse with the Kingsleys, and took their barge across the Wye to RiversEdge. There he encountered his eldest daughter dozing upon the green lawns beneath a tree in the late July sunshine. He looked down upon her, and he smiled. Blaze had surely grown even lovelier over the years, and being with child obviously agreed with her, for she had a glow about her that he had not seen before.

Kneeling down, he gently shook her awake. "Blaze. It is Papa, my dear. Wake up."

She stirred, yawned, and then with a sigh she opened her violet-blue eyes. "Papa?"

" 'Twas such a fine day, I came for a visit. I was with Blythe earlier, and yesterday I went to Marwood Hall to see how my new grandson is doing."

"Mama?"

"Fine, but still somewhat in shock. Lord O'Brian has taken Delight back to Ireland with him."

Her look both surprised and startled, Blaze sat up, brushing a lock of her honey-colored hair aside as she did. "What? Why on earth would they go to Ireland with the wedding so close? Will they be able to be back in time?"

"There will be no wedding here in England. It is to be celebrated in Ireland. Lord O'Brian could not stay away from his lands any longer for fear of encroachment by his neighbors, and he worried that late-summer storms could prevent his claiming Delight in August. He did not want to wait until next year. They were gone when we returned from little Owen's birth."

"I am quite surprised that Delight would go with him without waiting for you and Mama to return," said Blaze.

"Vanora says that Lord O'Brian forcibly kidnapped your sister," came the amused reply, and then Lord Morgan went on to explain to his oldest child what Vanora had seen.

Seeing her father's amusement as he told his tale, Blaze could not help but smile. "You are not saddened by this turn of events, are you, Papa?" she said.

"I am saddened that a looked-forward-to family event will not be, my dearest, but I know that Delight is going to be very happy when she ceases being very angry," their father wisely noted.

"Now," teased Tony that night as he and Blaze curled together in their bed, "I shall not have to fight with you. about traveling in your maternal condition."

"Then I shall have to find something else for us to fight about, my lord," she taunted him back.

She felt him push her hair off her neck, and then his warm lips pressed a series of little kisses upon the sensitive skin. Drawing her back against him, he sought for, and found, a plump breast, which he fondled. She murmured and purred as he touched her, grinding her bottom against him until finally, carefully arranging her legs as she lay upon her side, he was able to enter into her, thrusting with long yet gentle strokes until they both found sweet fulfillment. "You are such a randy fellow," she mocked him afterward. "What will happen when we can no longer do this? And we cannot much longer. I want no harm to come to this child."

"Neither do I, my angel," he whispered back, wondering if she would ever love him.

The summer passed, and the Countess of Langford ripened with her child even as the apples in their orchards ripened. It was a happy summer. Doro grew plump with her contentment of family life, and Nyssa, nearing her fourth birthday, seemed to lose her baby looks. Bliss and Owen came from Marwood Hall to show off their healthy young heir. Blythe, Nicholas, and their offspring came from across the river to visit. They spread cloths upon the lawns and picnicked. The three sisters, their colorful skirts spread out about them like the petals on a flower; the men, their formal attire put aside, and sleeves rolled up as they played at bowls; the children, scampering about barefoot, and wading in the shallows of the Wye.

"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 delicatematter.

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!"

"Then why does he send for you, Blaze?"

"I shall not know that until I go, shall I?" she replied with what he felt was infuriating logic.

"Let me go with you," he insisted, as he had been insisting for the past few days.

"You have not been invited, my lord, and besides, you are needed here. It is spring, and there is much work for you. The shepherds will be beginning the lamb count in another day or so, and a decision must be made whether to plant barley or rye in the western portion of the estate fields. You are the Earl of Langford, Anthony, and you are needed here. It is tradition that we run our own estates," she told him.

She made him feel like such a small boy. Edmund had taught her well. Sometimes he felt she was more a part of Langford than he was. If only he did not love her so very much. If only she loved him. Perhaps then he would not be so fearful of her leaving, but he could not prevent her. The king had called, and she must go, and so he saw her off, albeit reluctantly, the following morning.

It rained almost the entire journey, and the roads grew worse each day. Gooey brown mud clung to the wheels of her coach, making the going almost impossible. It took two days longer to reach her destination than she had anticipated. She and Heartha sat together in the carriage as it slogged its way along the high road. Although she had never thought that she would be glad to see Greenwich again, she found that she was. To her vast amusement, the sun peeped through the clouds as they arrived, and she said to her tiring woman, "Undoubtedly at the king's request. Hal does hate the rainy days so."

To her great surprise she was led by the king's majordomo to the apartments that had once been hers. She felt uneasy even being here, and to be placed in such familiar surroundings gave her the feeling that perhaps nothing had really changed. Perhaps there was no Anthony, no Nyssa and Philip. Even Heartha was grumbling beneath her breath about it.

A very young royal page arrived. "My lady Wyndham?" he inquired in a piping voice. Blaze smiled and nodded at the boy. "The king sends his greetings, and asks that after you have refreshed yourself from your travels, you join him in his privy chamber. He suggests that you use the inner staircase."

"Tell the king that I shall be with him in but one half of an hour," Blaze replied.

The boy bowed and departed.

"Such goings-on I don't know, m'lady. You should be home, and not back in this place. Having to turn the baby over to a wet nurse, and travel with your poor breasts all bound up to stop your milk," Heartha fussed irritably.

"I know, Heartha, I know," soothed Blaze. "But the king must really need me to have called me from all that I love best. I thought that you liked the king."

"Then was then, but this is now," answered the tiring woman. "You are a Wyndham of Langford, and at RiversEdge is where you belong, not here at Greenwich. 'Tis your husband you should be waiting on and not the king, I'm thinking!"

Blaze gently cajoled her servant, and water was brought for her to wash away the evidence of her travels. She changed from her traveling gown of plain black into a court gown of scarlet silk whose underskirt was embroidered with black silk and gold-thread hummingbirds and small sparkling garnets. Her lovely honey-colored hair was neatly fixed into a French knot that Heartha dressed with fresh red roses. She wore garnets in her ears, and a long, wonderful rope of jets and pearls.

With a final pat to her coif Blaze slipped through the hidden door and descended the narrow inner staircase. Reaching the bottom, she put her hand out, feeling for the doorknob, for she had no candle. Her fingers closed around it, and turning it, she stepped into the king's privy chamber. The page whom she had earlier spoken with leapt to his feet from a stool by the fire where he had been catching a moment's rest, and hurried out into the king's anteroom. Blaze waited patiently, and then suddenly Henry Tudor was there, filling the doorway first, and finally the entire room, with his presence. He closed the door behind him, and Blaze swept him a graceful curtsy.

"So, my little country girl, you have answered my summons, have you?" he said as he raised her up.

"Could I have refused you, sire?" she asked him. "You did not make that clear in your communique. Had you, I should have far rather stayed at RiversEdge."

"It is so great a trial I have visited upon you, madam?" the king demanded.

"Aye," she said blandly, "it is, Hal. For one thing, I have been forced to stop nursing my son because I am here, and he is there."

"For that great injustice I tender my apologies to my lord Philip Wyndham," the king said, his eyes twinkling. "I know how grievous an injury I have done him."

Blaze laughed. "My lord, this is serious!" she scolded. "I have fought bitterly with my husband, who is convinced that you have summoned me in order to seduce me again. I have had to reassure him that your majesty is far too honorable a man to even consider such a thing."

"Madam, you wound me!" the king protested, and then he caught her in his arms. Quickly he kissed her pretty lips, and fondled her breasts. "Not even a small seduction, Blaze?"

She shook him off. "Nay, Hal, not the tiniest!" she replied sternly.

"Do you love your husband then, my little country girl?"

For a moment his question took her unawares, and then the truth burst upon her with such startling clarity that she did not understand why she had not known it before. "Aye, Hal," she said. "I do love my husband. I love him very much!"

The king stared at her shrewdly, and saw the look of dawning realization in her eyes. "I think, Blaze," he said, "that you owe me more now than you did when you first walked into this room."

"Aye, Hal, I think you speak the truth," she admitted slowly.

"Then surely now you will aid me, for only you, I believe, can help me in this matter." He led her to a chair, and seated her, placing himself in a chair opposite her.

"Tell me, Hal, how I may help you, though I cannot imagine how a simple countrywoman could be of help to so great a king."

"You know," the king began, "that I have sought quietly for several years now to dissolve my marriage in order that I might seek a younger and more fecund wife."

Blaze nodded. "There is precedent for such an act, my lord."

"Aye, there is, and yet the pope has niggled and naggled until I am half-mad with the worry that I should die in the night, and England be ruled by a half-grown girl child. She would have to marry, and I do not believe our good Englishmen would be content beneath the rule of the foreign prince who would be her husband. It could be the Wars of the Roses all over again, Blaze!

"Several weeks ago Gabriel de Grammot, the Bishop of Tarbes, came from France to discuss the possibility of a marriage between Fran?ois's second son, the Duc d'Orléans, and my daughter, Mary. I had thought the negotiations going well, and then it was that the bishop brought up the possibility that my daughter might not be my true daughter because my marriage is not a true marriage. He cited texts of Leviticus. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife: it is thy brother's nakedness; and If a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an impurity: he hath uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be childless.

"If the French ambassador would consider the possibility that my marriage to the queen not be a true one, then I am in reality a bachelor after all, am I not? The dispensation issued by the then pope must surely be invalid. I must seek not a divorce, but an annulment. Catherine, however, will listen to none of it. She stubbornly maintains that our marriage is valid, and as long as her nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor, has the pope holed up in his Vatican, I will get no fair judgment. Catherine must agree to step aside, and that is why I have sent for you.

"I want you to go to her. She is here at the moment. You must prevail upon her as a woman to release me from this unclean sham she calls a marriage. I will have no legitimate sons until I can be free of that woman!"

"Sire!" Blaze was both astounded and shocked. "You have sent the highest lords in your kingdom to reason with the queen. She will not give way before the most clever and reasonable of arguments. The cardinal himself has spoken with her, and he has gotten nowhere. Why do you think that the queen would listen to me? I was your mistress, Hal! An offense to her! I am an unimportant woman of no great family. How can you, therefore, send me to her? How?"

The king leaned forward in his chair. "My little country girl, you are my last hope for an equitable settlement with Catherine. If you cannot convince her, then it is war between us, and I swear to you on the body of Christ crucified that I shall win that war! Catherine likes you, Blaze. You are not like Bessie or merry Mary. She liked you enough to punish our daughter when she was rude to you. She has even mentioned you on several occasions with kindness. If there is the smallest chance that she might listen to you, I must take that chance. That is why you must speak to her for me."

"My lord, she will not see me. I am nobody."

"She will see you because I ask her to see you," the king replied.

"Oh, Hal! Hal!" Blaze said softly. "After this there can be no debts between us! Whether I succeed or fail the account between us is clear."

He nodded. "Agreed, madam. Do this for me, and I will not trouble you again."

"Are you so in love then, my lord?" Blaze said quietly.

He flushed beneath her gaze. The king flushed! "Is it so obvious then?"

"To me, but then you are my friend, Hal."

"She is the most virtuous of women, Blaze. I would not dishonor my Nan. She will one day be the mother of England's king."

"You would marry her?"Blaze was shocked. "Oh, Hal, such a thing is not right! You should have a princess for a wife!"

"An ancestor of mine, Edward, who was known as the Black Prince, had for his wife Joan, called the Fair Maid. She, too, came from Kent," said the king, ignoring her. Perhaps he had not even heard her at all. "Good English stock," said the king. "That is what I need in a wife. Good, strong English stock!"

They spoke together for a while longer, and then the king dismissed her. Blaze hurried back up the inner staircase to her own apartments. She did not know whether to be angry or to be sad. The king had tricked her, although she did not think he had meant to do such a thing. Still, how could she speak to the queen, importuning her to release the king from their marriage, or was it really a marriage? She was no cleric to know such things. True, she believed the king should have a wife who could give him sons, and poor Catherine was past childbearing. But how could she beg the queen to let the king go, knowing that it was Mistress Boleyn with whom the king intended replacing the queen?

Reentering her apartment, she exited the bedchamber to find Heartha in the dayroom with a page in the livery of Cardinal Wolsey.

"Ahhh, you are awake then, my lady," said Heartha.

Blaze feigned a small yawn and a stretch. "Aye, my nap did me good after all our travels." She turned her attention to the boy. "You wish to see me?"

The page bowed politely to her. "My master, the cardinal, begs that you wait upon him at your convenience, my lady Wyndham."

"Take me to him now then," Blaze said, wondering when she was going to be left in peace.

The boy led her through corridors she had never known existed, let alone ever seen in her months at Greenwich. He seemed to be avoiding the more public routes. Indeed, he brought her into the cardinal's privy chamber through a door she did not see until after he had opened it.

"Go in, my lady. His grace will be with you shortly." Blaze entered the small paneled room. There were but two places to sit, small tapestried chairs before the fire. She sat down. She was cold suddenly, and so she held her hands out before the crackling fire, starting as she heard a hard voice beside her.

"Such little hands, madam, in which to put England's future." He lowered his bulk into the other chair, waving a hand at her and saying, "No, madam, do not rise. We are to be quite informal here." Cardinal Wolsey stared frankly at her; his gaze half-speculative, half-admiring. "You are lovely close-up," he said. "I have only seen you from a distance in the past."

"How may I serve you, your grace?" Blaze asked him quietly. In all her time at court he had never so much as glanced her way, she thought. Why now?

"You have been with the king," he stated. She said nothing. He smiled, but his eyes were somewhat haunted, Blaze thought. Not the eyes of a secure and powerful man. "You need violate no confidence with me, madam. I know why the king has sent for you. He wishes you to plead his case with the queen, does he not?"

"I do not understand why," Blaze said, neither admitting nor denying anything to the cardinal.

"Because his lust for Tom Boleyn's young bitch is eating him alive," the cardinal said bluntly. "He cannot force himself upon a nobly born virgin, and he has convinced himself, therefore, that she must be his wife. What think you of that, my lady Wyndham?"

"I think, your grace, that though the king certainly needs a young wife to give England sons, he should marry in France, or the German or northern states."

The cardinal nodded. "There, madam, we are agreed. Proud Catherine of Aragon will not give way to Anne Boleyn."

"But what is it you want of me, your grace?" Blaze demanded.

"Your answer to my question, my lady Wyndham, tells me that you cannot be happy with the task that the king has set you. It tells me that though you will obey the king, you cannot put your whole heart into his request, knowing that it is Mistress Boleyn he seeks to queen."

Blaze said nothing, but her expression told Cardinal Wolsey that he was yet a keen judge of character. This was no bubble-headed former mistress, but a woman of principles upon whom both he and the king could rely.

"Listen to me, madam," he said. "The king may think that he is in love with Mistress Anne. He may think that he seeks to make her his wife. He may even believe it at this time, but it will never happen. I tell you now that Anne Boleyn will never sit upon England's throne as its queen, nor will a child of her body and the king's ever rule England. The people will not have it!

"The king must be freed from the barren Catherine, and he must remarry, but I promise you that it will be to a princess of the blood royal, and not the daughter of some Kentish knight. Do you understand me, madam? You may do the king's errand with a good heart, although I seriously doubt that your words will have any effect at all upon that impossible woman. Still, you may try, and try your best, for eventually the king will be freed of her, and he will wed a proper wife. This is all that I would say to you." He held out his hand, and Blaze, kneeling, kissed his ring of office. "The boy will see you safely back to your own apartments, madam," said the cardinal, arising from his seat.

She had no sooner reentered her apartments than another pageboy arrived upon the scene, and without bowing to her said in a strident young voice, "The lady Anne says you are to attend to her at once!"

Blaze felt her temper flare. "Sirrah!" she said in a harsh tone. "Where are your manners? I did not see you bow to me. I am the Countess of Langford, and I am used to far better manners than you have just shown me. Who is this Lady Anne who demands my presence? Only the queen or the king's sisters may demand my presence, and none of them are called by the name Anne."

The page flushed with embarrassment, and attempting to mend his fences, began again. "My lady Wyndham," he said, bowing deeply, "my mistress, the lady Anne Boleyn, requests that you attend her immediately."

"Tell your mistress that I have just arrived after a horrendous journey from Herefordshire. I am far too exhausted to speak with anyone at the moment. Tell her that I hope that I shall see her on the morrow," Blaze concluded. She had had enough. First the king, and then the cardinal, and now that upstart bitch!

"Well, boy?" demanded Heartha. "What are you standing there for yet? Be about your business!"

When the boy scampered out, Blaze turned to her servant and said, "I want a hot bath, and I want it now! No more cardinals, and no more kings, Heartha! Just a bath."

"They are bringing the water in even as we speak, my lady," chuckled Heartha. "That big old tub was exactly where we left it. I do not think anyone has used these apartments since you were last here."

Blaze shortly found herself ensconced within her tub, the warm, oily water with its violet fragrance soothing her weary and travel-exhausted body. "Leave me in peace," she told her tiring woman. "Do you realize that this is the first time in months that I have been really alone? It seems a pity that I had to come to Greenwich to find a little peace."

Heartha chuckled. "When we are at home, you take all your responsibilities too much to heart, my lady. You must make a little time for yourself. We certainly cannot keep coming to Greenwich!"

Blaze smiled as the door shut, and lying back in the delicious bath, she closed her eyes. It was the first moment she had had to think since she arrived at Greenwich. It was the first time she had had to consider her words to the king in answer to his question of her.

Do you love your husband then, my little country girl?

And she had answered him that she did. That she loved him very much. It was the truth, she realized. She loved Anthony Wyndham. Not, perhaps, with the young love that she had given to Edmund. That would always be his alone. The love she felt for Tony was something that she had nurtured and that had grown slowly over the short months of their union, and she had never even known it. She wished that she could finish bathing, and get right back into her coach so she might go home and tell him. Tell him that she loved him, loved him and no one else!

Suddenly outside in the dayroom there came the sounds of shrieking and screaming and great protest. The door to her bedchamber flew open, and Anne Boleyn burst into the room, Heartha behind her. "How dare you refuse my summons, madam!" she shouted at Blaze. Her beautiful long black hair swirled about her. She was garbed all in yellow.

For a brief moment Blaze was totally nonplussed, and then in a flash of inspiration she considered what Bliss would do in such a situation. The answer came quickly. She eyed the Boleyn girl in a leisurely fashion, and feigning a yawn, drawled, "You should not wear that shade of yellow, Mistress Boleyn. It makes your skin quite sallow."

Anne Boleyn's cheeks darkened with her anger, and her black eyes were filled with hate. "One day I will be your queen," she said in a low and even tone. "You would do best not to rouse my ire, madam!"

"You would do best not to publicly boast of a position to which though you may aspire, you do not yet possess, Mistress Boleyn," Blaze warned her.

"I called you to my presence, madam!"

"I chose not to come," replied Blaze. "Who are you to demand my attendance? I have just this afternoon arrived after a long journey. I am tired, and filthy, and I wished to bathe in peace."

"You were with the king! Do not deny it! I have my ways of knowing such things!" Anne stormed.

"Aye," said Blaze. "I was with the king." She took the bar of violet-scented soap that Heartha had left for her, and began to soap her arms.

Mistress Boleyn's dark eyes narrowed into slits and she almost hissed, "Do not think that you can trip lightly back to court and into the king's good graces once again, madam. He is mine! Mine!"

"I did not come of my own volition, Mistress Boleyn," said Blaze sweetly.

"What do you mean?" The Boleyn's tone was not quite as sure of itself now.

Blaze laughed, enjoying the girl's discomfort, and allowed her to consider the worst before she said, "The king sent for me, and being the loyal servant of his majesty that I am, I came to find my lovely old apartments freshened and awaiting me." Having washed her arms and shoulders, she now began to soap her legs, humming, as she did, the latest popular ditty.

Anne Boleyn shrieked, her voice rising into a screech of pure anger, "You cannot have him back!"

"My dear," said Blaze, "do you think to rule the king? It is what he wants, and not what either you or I want. You had best understand that."

"I will not let you have him!" The Boleyn's eyes were almost bugging from her head in her rage. Anger did nothing for her looks.

Blaze considered for a moment, and decided that she really was enjoying herself. Slowly she arose from her tub and stepped out onto the rug. The oily water sluiced down her body, giving it a particularly lush sheen in the golden firelight. Her breasts were fuller than they had ever been. Her belly was prettily rounded. Her limbs pleasing in form. Lifting her arms, she undid her hair, and the honey-colored mass tumbled about her shoulders. A drop of water glittered and hung from one of Blaze's nipples. Casually she flicked it off, and looking up, stared directly at the other girl.

"Can you offer the king what I offer him?" she murmured huskily with devastating effect, and then she laughed again at her opponent's look.

Mistress Anne could do naught but stare, and she opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came forth.

"Get you gone from my chambers, Mistress Anne Boleyn," said Blaze haughtily. "You are not welcome here, and it may be that I am expecting a guest."

To her surprise the girl turned abruptly about and ran from her apartments, sobbing.

"Why, m‘lady, I have never seen you behave in such a fashion before, not that the little bitch did not deserve it, uppity creature that she is. Leading her on like that, and making her believe that the king was eager to be your lover once again! For shame, m'lady!" But Heartha was hard-pressed to hold back her laughter. "She's got ambitions, that one, and what big ones they are," Heartha went on as she dried Blaze off. "You've made a bad enemy in her though, m'lady."

"I will not be here long enough for her to even consider it," Blaze said quietly. "The jest of the whole matter is, however, Heartha, that the king has sent for me to try to reason with the queen to release him because he believes that he wants to wed with that strumpet."

Heartha shook her head. "I'm a simple woman, m'lady. I do not think that however long I serve the gentry, I will come to understand them."

Blaze laughed. "I am not certain that I understand either, Heartha," she said, "but as the king's loyal subject I cannot help but do his bidding."