Blaze Wyndham (26 page)

“She bullies them disgracefully,” said Blaze.

“My goddaughter is a child after my own heart,” remarked Bliss laughingly. “I wish we could take her with us, but the court is really no place for a child. You will come even so, won’t you, Blaze?”

She considered again her quick decision. She was bored at Ashby although she tried hard not to show it. Her only other choice of a place to live was RiversEdge, and she would never live there again as long as Anthony Wyndham was Earl of Langford. Then a small smile touched the corners of her mouth. Tony had thought himself quite the fine lordling telling her that he was now in charge of her life. How magnanimous he had been when he had
permitted
her to return to her childhood home with her daughter. And ordering her back by the week after Easter! She almost laughed aloud now. She knew he would not bother with them thinking them safe at Ashby. Aye, she acknowledged to herself, Nyssa was better off here with her parents and her sibling uncles to bully and play with; but the dowager Countess of Langford was going to court, and his mighty lordship would not know it until after Easter when they did not return to RiversEdge! It would be impossible for him to interfere with her then.

“Aye, Bliss, I’ll come with you, and I thank both you and Owen for the invitation as well as the lodging.”

They left Ashby the second day of January, for the Earl of Marwood had promised his sovereign that they would be back in time for them to take their usual places in the king’s Twelfth Night masque. Bliss, who was considered one of the most beautiful women at court, had an important role to play. She was to be
Innocence
, who would be overcome by the king’s
Ardent Desire.

Blaze had never seen a masque before, but Bliss assured her that she would love the pageantry that surrounded the king. “He is quite in his prime, being only thirty-three his last birthday. He is very, very tall, and he has the most wonderful red-blond hair, though it be thinning. His eyes! God’s mercy, such eyes! They are as blue as a lake, and so deep that you could drown in them! He is learned and witty, and altogether most amiable. He is the greatest king in the world, Blaze. There is none to match our good King Harry!”

“Indeed,” agreed Owen FitzHugh, “Bliss speaks the truth. You will be amazed at the wonders and delights that you find at court. I am proud to be considered among the king’s friends. He is a great and noble lord. Only in his wife has he been unfortunate.”

“Why is that?” Blaze asked.

“He should have never wed Catherine of Aragon, Blaze, but this, of course, you must not ever voice aloud. There is talk that he has been denied living sons because he committed a sin by taking his brother’s widow to wive. Although it is not known widely yet, the king is seeking to gain a papal dissolution from his marriage to the queen so he may remarry and sire legitimate sons. Elizabeth Blount, who is now Lady Tailboys, has given the king a fine lad, young Henry Fitzroy, who is to be six this year. Mary Boleyn’s baby son, Henry Carey, is also said to be the king’s get. So you see, the king can sire strong sons, but not on the Spanish princess. Besides, she is now past her childbearing years, sad lady. The king deserves better, and with God’s blessing he shall have it,” finished Owen FitzHugh.

The Earl of Marwood’s traveling coach was extremely comfortable. Well-sprung, it had real glass windows that could be raised and lowered, which was considered quite a luxury. They traveled to Greenwich, where the king was now in residence, snug and warm beneath lush fur rugs, hot bricks wrapped in flannel at their feet. The weather had turned milder on New Year’s Day, and though muddy, the roads were passable.

Blaze had bid her family farewell, hugging her little daughter to her heart and promising to bring the child a present when she came again. Nyssa, who had received a surfeit of gifts just several days before upon her second birthday, was not overly impressed. Bidding her mother goodbye, she immediately turned back to her playmates. Blaze laughed weakly. “I am glad she is so self-reliant at such an early age.”

The coach rumbled away from Ashby, and looking back at her family standing before the house, Blaze had a feeling of déjà-vu. Once before she had left Ashby, and she had found great love. What would she find this time? she wondered.

Twelfth Night 1525
—
Autumn 1525

“
W
ill I really get to meet the king?” Blaze asked her younger sister for the third time.

Bliss laughed. It seemed strange to her, but she felt more like Blaze’s elder sister at this moment than a younger one. “Owen is one of the king’s best friends,” she said once again, as she had said thrice before. “You will get to meet the king, but I shall tell him that you are in mourning lest he want you to take part in the gaiety. You really should not, you know.”

“You sound like Mama,” Blaze replied, and now it was her turn to laugh. “I do not want to involve myself in the court quite yet, Bliss. Perhaps I shall never involve myself in it, but I had nowhere else to go right now. You know that.”

Bliss wisely held her tongue. For one so young she was amazingly knowledgeable of human nature. As great as her sister’s pain was now, it would pass in time. Bliss did not mention another husband, but she knew the ways of the world well, and of course Blaze would have to remarry eventually. What better place than the court to find a husband, and Bliss was generous enough to concede that her sister was beautiful. Perhaps not as beautiful as she was, but nonetheless lovely enough to capture many hearts.

Despite three years of marriage, however, Blaze was an innocent, Bliss thought. She would have to steer her sister carefully through the shoals of this dangerous and fascinating place, but innocents like Blaze either learned to survive quickly, or they found themselves gobbled up like so many hapless lambs. The court was greedy for pretty little girls, but if one were wise, one could survive.

The room that Bliss had so kindly supplied her with was indeed small, and while her sister and brother-in-law hurried off to practice their parts in the masque to be given tomorrow night, Blaze and Heartha settled themselves.

“I know we’re lucky to have the room,” grumbled Heartha, “for that Betty of your sister’s tells me so often enough, but Lady Bliss didn’t tell no lies when she said it was small, m’lady.” She looked with jaundiced eyes about the almost square, paneled room with its one lead-paned double window and small fireplace. There was nothing in the room except a large bed with a trundle, and a single straight-backed chair. There were no hangings upon the bed, which almost took up the entire space.

“It will be fine, Heartha. It is neither RiversEdge, with all its memories, nor Ashby, where I cannot be myself any longer. This little room is now my home and yours. Let us work to make it comfortable before nightfall.”

Though the tiring woman fussed that Blaze should sit quietly while she made the room presentable, Blaze would have none of it. Surprisingly the room was quite clean, and freshly swept. Together the two women hung the bed hangings, which were green velvet on natural-colored linen. Blaze had beautiful linen sheets, which she brought from a trunk, placing her fine feather bed over the straw mattress first. The sheets were scented with her favorite fragrance, sweet violets, and the bed quickly looked comfortable and inviting. Working together, the two women had the chamber quite presentable by the time Bliss and Owen returned. There were draperies upon the window, a candlestand by one side of the bed, the small trunks holding Blaze’s clothing had been placed strategically, and Blaze’s gowns were already hung in a small section of her sister’s dressing room which had been allotted her by Betty, who was Bliss’s tiring woman.

At supper they sat with Lady Adela Marlowe and her husband, Sir John. John Marlowe had a small place as a gentleman of the bedchamber, and his wife had become Bliss’s best friend since her arrival at court. Adela Marlowe was a pretty girl with coal-black curls and lively brown eyes.

“We are so sorry to hear of your loss, Lady Wyndham,” she said, “but you were right to come to court. It is the best place to find another husband.”

Bliss choked upon a mouthful of rabbit pie, but she managed to quickly say, “Dearest Adela, Blaze has not come to find another husband.”

Adela Marlowe looked disbelieving, but seeing her best friend’s pleading look, she stammered, “N-no? Oh? I ... I did not know.”

“I do not plan on marrying again, Lady Marlowe,” Blaze said softly. “No man could possibly take the place of my Edmund.”

“N-no, no, certainly not,” murmured Lady Marlowe, wondering if Lady Wyndham were mad, but Bliss later confided in her friend, much to that lady’s relief.

The following day the two women showed Blaze about Greenwich. The palace had been built in the previous century and originally was called ’Bella Court. Over the years it had passed through various royal hands, becoming Pleasaunce under the ownership of Henry VI’s queen, Margaret of Anjou, who paved the floors with terra-cotta tiles, and glazed all of the windows as well as adding a vestry to house her jewels, and a pier on the river for her barge. Henry VII changed the palace’s name once again, this time to Greenwich Palace, and gave the stone buildings a new face of redbrick.

The palace was built around three quadrangles, which were called the Fountain, Cellar, and Tennis courts. Its main gateway stood directly opposite Queen Margaret’s pier. On the land side of the palace were gardens and a hunting preserve that was enclosed. It was Henry’s favorite residence, Bliss told her sister.

“How many does he have?” asked Blaze, curious, for it seemed odd to her that anyone would need more than one house, even a king.

“Well,” said Bliss, “there is Westminster in the city, although since the great fire in 1512 the king has not lived there, although his bedchamber, the Painted Chamber, was untouched. There is The Tower, of course, and Baynards Castle on Thames Street, which is considered very beautiful, and is large and modern. There is Bridewell, also in London. The king built it just a few years ago, but we only sometimes stay there. Outside of the city there is Richmond, Eltham, Windsor, Woodstock in Oxfordshire, but that is just a tumbledown hunting lodge, and the court never goes there. And, of course, Greenwich.”

“I still do not understand why it is necessary for him to have all those castles,” said Blaze.

“He has them because he is the king, silly,” laughed Bliss.

They had exchanged Twelfth Night gifts that morning, Blaze giving her brother-in-law a fine jeweled dagger with a gold hilt. For Bliss she had a pair of pearl-and-sapphire earbobs, which caused Bliss to squeal with delight, for she loved beautiful jewelry. In return she and her handsome husband gave Blaze a lovely gold-and-black enameled chain from which hung a large tear-drop pearl with a pinkish hue.

“Oh, how lovely,” Blaze exclaimed. “I shall wear it tonight.”

In the evening after the feasting, Bliss left her elder sister with Lady Marlowe while she hurried off to change into her costume. The king had been in the banqueting hall, but Blaze had only seen him from a distance, but he indeed seemed everything her sister said. It would be exciting to actually meet him, which she would do after the masque.

The masque was beautiful to the eye. Young pages in red velvet and cloth-of-gold suits rolled in a castle with four delicately soaring towers, all constructed of wood covered in paper of silver and gold gilt. Suddenly there was a dull boom and a puff of smoke, which, upon clearing, revealed a most fearsome dragon with green-gold scales and ruby-red eyes guarding the castle.

“Look,” whispered Adela Marlowe, pointing to the four towers of the castle where had suddenly appeared within each window a beautiful woman. “They are Innocence, Charm, Wisdom, and Virtue,” said Lady Marlowe. “The dragon is Gloom and Deceit.”

Blaze could see that the women were clothed in beautiful glowing draped silks. Bliss in sky-blue and gold, the others in pink and silver, green and silver, and red and gold. Then from the dimness of the area set aside for the masque came four knights, each garbed in a single color. There was a gold knight that Adela murmured was the king, as well as a silver knight, a green knight and a red knight.

“They are Ardent Desire, Tender Passions, Worldly Wise, and Sweet Pleasures,” said Blaze’s companion, “and they must overcome Gloom and Deceit in order to gain their ladyloves.”

Blaze’s violet-blue eyes were wide with amazement. She had never seen any entertainment other than Morris dancers and mummers. She had not even imagined that such elegant amusement could exist. Fascinated, she watched as the mock battle was fought between the brave knights and their fearsome opponent. At one point the dragon belched flame and smoke, and she shrieked her surprise along with the rest of the audience. Finally however the great beast was overcome. From the castle emerged Innocence, Charm, Wisdom, and Virtue in their flowing garments to dance gracefully with Ardent Desire, Tender Passions, Worldly Wise, and Sweet Pleasures.