Blaze Wyndham

by Bertrice Small

  Anthony turned at the man’s frantic signals, and seeing her barely able to hang on to her horse, he drew his own animal to a stop, leaning over to catch up her flapping reins so he might control her beast too. He leapt from his saddle only seconds before his wife fell from her horse, and catching her up in his arms, he cried frantically to her, “Blaze! Blaze! What is it, my angel?”

  “Hot,” she muttered, not even opening her eyes. “So very hot, Tony.”

  “My God,” Anthony whispered. “She has the sweating sickness!”

  “Let me take her and put her in the coach, my lord. You must not get infected!” the captain interjected.

  “No,” his master answered him. “I had the disease when I was a young man.” He carried Blaze to the coach, and calling the young man-at-arms from the vehicle, he placed his wife upon the seat.

  Their journey began again, but this time it was a desperate race to reach RiversEdge. Heartha had passed the crisis, and was now well on the road to recovery, but Blaze was only beginning to run her course of the illness. They had to get her home, where she could be nursed properly. The captain had sent two of his men ahead to alert the household staff of the latest developments, and of their needs.

  The moon rose, lighting the road ahead for them as they traveled along. Finally the night landscape began to grow familiar, and at last they recognized that they were on Langford lands. They galloped through sleeping villages, hurrying to get their precious burden to safety, cutting over onto the shorter river road. The moon silvering the waters of the Wye gave the impression of great tranquillity, a peace broken only by the thunder of frantic hooves and the noise of the lumbering coach. At last the house itself came into view, the windows lit and awake as RiversEdge anxiously awaited their arrival.

  Servants poured from the house as the vehicle clattered up to the front door. The doors of the carriage were pulled open before Anthony was even off his horse, gentle hands reaching in to lift their countess out of the coach; to help the weak and dazed Heartha. Blaze was quickly carried to her own bedchamber and laid tenderly upon her bed, which was already prepared for her. A bevy of maidservants scurried forth to remove her garments, to place her in a dry nightrail.

  “The lasses will watch her ladyship around the clock, my lord,” said Mistress Ellis, the housekeeper.

  “No,” said Tony, shaking his head. “I will care for her myself. I must!” He removed his traveling cloak and his doublet. “Bring me what I need, tell me what I must do, and allow only those who have had the disease into this apartment.”

  “My lord,” Mistress Ellis admonished him, “it is not a man’s place to nurse a sick woman.”

  He looked up at her, and his eyes were filled with such pain and fear that the housekeeper was startled. “She is my wife,” he said simply, and drawing a chair up near the bedside, he sat down. She looked so small, he thought, looking at her lying there, and when her body began to be racked by tremors, he felt actual pain knifing through him. He remembered the sweating sickness from his youth, when both he and Edmund had contracted it. Neither of them had suffered greatly, and within a day, each had passed through his crisis; but he also remembered that there had been many deaths from the same epidemic that had struck them.

  Blaze could not die. She could not! There was so much he had to tell her. So much that they had to do together. She was his very life. She was the heartbeat of Langford and its peoples. Surely God could not take her from him, from the children, from them all. Gently he mopped the perspiration that streamed down her face, and placed a fresh cool cloth upon her forehead.

  Hot. Hot. Why was it so hot? she wondered. She could never remember a summer at Ashby being so hot. Mama? Where was her mama? Bliss! Blythe! Where is Mama? Probably taking care of her new baby. There was always a new baby. This one was called Delight. Father John had gotten so angry at Mama when she had told him the baby’s new name. Mama had laughed, saying the baby would be baptized Mary Delight, as her other daughters were baptized Mary Blaze, Mary Bliss, and Mary Blythe, and the church would be satisfied. Mama said that Mary was the best of saints’ names.

  Hot. Hot. Would they ever find husbands? There was no gold for their dowries. Papa and Mama were worried. The squire’s oldest son tried to kiss me in the orchard. I hit him. He will not dare to tell. Bliss says I am a fool, for if he’ll take me without a dowry at least one of us will have a husband. I would sooner remain a maiden than marry the squire’s son. Let Bliss have him, the slimy toad, but she will not, for she would climb higher.

  I am to be wed! Oh, I am so afraid, but no one must see my fear. A countess does not show such emotions. I shall have to find a husband for her. I shall have to help them all. Ohhh! He is so handsome. If only my husband is as attractive, but nicer. Oh, please, Blessed Mother let my husband be kinder than Anthony Wyndham!

  Edmund! Edmund! Dear God, how I love you! We have a daughter, though I’d as lief it been a son for Langford. Nyssa? You would call her Nyssa? Aye, lord, it is a good name! Edmund, I love you. Oh, Edmund, do not leave me! You cannot be dead! Not dead! Not dead! I hate you, Anthony! I hate you! You have killed my Edmund!

  Oh, God, I am afraid! I am so afraid! Why do they bow and scrape to me simply because the king wishes to take me to his bed? I want to go home to RiversEdge, but I cannot. I should not have come here. Oh, God, I cannot cry out else I offend him. Please! Please do not force me! I do not want a lover. I do not! Oh, why do I feel such pleasure when I do not want to feel it? I do not understand. I do not understand.

  Poor Hal. Being a king is not easy. Power, like everything else, has its price. Everybody wants something. Hal wants a son, but he cannot get one on the queen. He says he is not truly wed. I do not know. Poor Hal. Poor Hal. What will happen to me when he tires of me? I did not want this. I hate it! Poor Hal. Only Will, the fool, and I truly understand him.

  Hot. Hot. Why am I so hot? I want to open my eyes, but I cannot. Help me, Tony! Help me!

  Helplessly he watched her throughout the night as she poured sweat from every pore of her body. She burned with a terrible fever, and he could only try to aid her, placing and replacing cool cloths upon her forehead, forcing wine and chilled well water down her throat. She moaned incessantly, and moved restlessly upon her bed, and he could do naught.

  In the morning two little maidservants entered the bedchamber, bringing with them fresh linens and instructions from Mistress Ellis that his lordship was to come and eat something while they changed her ladyship’s bed and put a fresh gown upon her. Anthony rose stiffly, and with a worried look at his wife left the room. He was not gone long, however. Just long enough to ascertain that Heartha was awake and stronger. The tiring woman wept at learning that her mistress was even now in the throes of the illness.

  “She should not have nursed me, my lord. I would have told her so, but that I could not! Oh, if she dies I shall never forgive myself!” Heartha declared.

  “She could have contracted the disease from anyone at court, and not necessarily from you, Heartha. You must not blame yourself. Blaze will not die. She cannot! We all need her too much. Now, you must get well, for I shall need your help in the nursing of my wife.”

  “You are not nursing her yourself, my lord?” Heartha was as shocked as Mistress Ellis had been the day before.

  Anthony smiled. “I must be with her,” he said, and then he left his wife’s servant, promising to see that she had the latest news on her lady’s condition. He stopped in the kitchens to take a plate of cold meats, bread, and cheeses, then returned to Blaze’s bedchamber, where the two maids had already changed the bedding and seen to dry attire for their mistress. With a curtsy they hurried from the room, leaving him alone with Blaze once more.

  Slowly Anthony chewed his food, eating more from habit than any feeling of real need. He could taste nothing. Only the burning heat of the strong wine he drank made any impression upon him. She lay so still. So quiet now, and yet, taking the cloth from her forehead, he felt it, almost recoiling
from the heat. She was so sick. Dear God, help her, he said silently. Help her! It was then that Blaze began to shake.

  Hot. Oh, it was so hot! She was Anthony’s wife now. Not Edmund’s, but Anthony’s. Anthony told the king a great lie in order to become her husband. He should not have lied to Hal, but how very convenient for the king that he did. Still, Hal must not know. He must not know that Anthony had lied. He lied because he loves me. He loves me! I do not love him. Oh, I should! He is so good to me. He is so good to Nyssa. Delight loves Anthony. Poor Delight. I would not hurt her, but I have. I don’t love you, Tony. I don’t! I don’t! I do! Oh, yes, I do! I must not! I must be true to Edmund’s memory. I will not tell, and no one will ever know. God will know. Oh, what will I do? The queen won’t listen to me! Poor Hal! Oh, Poor Hal! Mistress Boleyn is a wicked creature. She would be the king’s wife. Poor Hal! Poor, poor Hal!

  The hours passed, and Blaze lay unconscious upon her bed, burning with fever one moment, then racked by fierce tremors that Anthony feared would pull her apart. Night came, and the earl left his wife’s bedside to go once again in to Heartha to tell her that nothing had changed. He returned to find another plate of food on the table by his side. He ate listlessly, without appetite, leaving half the food upon the server.

  Soak the cloth in water. Wring the cloth. Remove the warm cloth. Put a fresh one on her forehead. Drink, my angel. Put the goblet to her lips, and slowly drizzle the liquid down her throat. Drink, Blaze. You need the liquid. His eyes grew heavy, but he would let no one else watch until the danger was past. He struggled to keep awake, head falling forward, jerking with a start. Finally he could no longer help himself, and he dozed.

  Hot. Hot. Would it ever be cool again? We have a son. Oh, he is so beautiful. I will call him Philip. Not Edmund, for Edmund is dead. Not Anthony, for I have my Anthony. Not Henry. Too many Henrys, and I will not have his parentage impugned by those fools who cannot count upon their fingers. Oh, Philip, I love you. How like your father you are. I love your father too, my little son, but dare I tell him? I have to leave you, my son. The king needs me. I am ever and always the king’s most loyal servant. Poor Hal. How he suffers for lack of a son like my Philip. How he suffers for the love of Mistress Boleyn. He loves her. I know he does, but she will not admit to her own feelings. I think she loves him. She is so jealous. Poor Hal. He does not know she loves him.

  Hot. Hot. It is not so hot now as it was before. I have been so hot for so long, it seems, but it is not so hot now. The king does not know he is loved. Anthony does not know that I love him. I must tell him that I love him, but we must get Heartha home. She has been so sick, my good Heartha. I must tell Anthony that I love him. I must tell him! I must! What if I die and he does not know that I loved him? I must tell him! Anthony! Anthony!

  “Anthony!” Her voice was a raspy whisper. “Anthony!” Blaze opened her eyes to see him sitting by her side. There was a rough stubble of beard upon his face, his shirt was unbuttoned. He looked haggard and untidy. “Anthony!” she called him a third time.

  He heard her voice. It penetrated deep into his sleeping consciousness, and he was suddenly awake. “Blaze!” He tore the damp cloth from her forehead and put his hand upon it. It was cool. It was cool! The fever was gone, and she had survived her crisis. “Oh, my angel, you will live! Thank God, you will live!”

  “Anthony, I love you,” she whispered. “I love you!”

  He felt his eyes welling with tears, and embarrassed, he roughly brushed them away with the back of his hand. “You do not have to say that to me, my angel,” he said softly.

  “But I do! I love you! The king asked me if I loved you, and I realized that I did. Oh, Anthony, I have been such a fool! What sane woman would have a dead husband in place of a living one?” She reached out to take his hand in hers. “I love you, Lord Wyndham,” she said.

  Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed it fervently. “And I love you, Blaze Wyndham. I have loved you from the first moment I ever saw you. How I curst the unkind fate that conspired to keep us apart! Now you are really mine. I will love you for the rest of my life, and beyond!” he declared. Slipping her hand from his she reached up to touch his face with a gentle pat. “No woman,” she said quietly, her voice stronger, “has surely ever been as greatly blest as I have, Anthony. I have been loved by three men, and I have given my love in return; but never, my darling, have I received a greater love than that which you have given me. I shall thank God for you for the rest of my days.”

  “And I shall see that you do, madam,” he teased her tenderly, “for I intend to be by your side for always.”

  “For always,” she agreed. For always! Did that not have a fine ring to it?

  Epilogue

  GREENWICH

  May 19, 1536

  Blaze stood in the king’s privy chamber looking out upon the River Thames. Yesterday had been rainy and extremely windy, but today the sun shone brightly from a cloudless sky. Across the river the king’s fleet bobbed in the gentle flow of the incoming tide. It seemed as if nothing had changed, Blaze thought, and yet everything had changed.

  She had not been in this room, had not been to Greenwich in nine years, and oh, what had happened in that time. Breaking with the church in Rome, the king had finally been freed from Catherine of Aragon. He had married Anne Boleyn, and their only surviving child, the princess Elizabeth, had been born in the same year. The king was now forty-five, and still had no legitimate son. The tragedy was not just for Hal, but for England as well.

  He had called for her once more. The royal messenger arriving like an unwelcome voice from the past less than a week ago. This time there had been no argument between herself and Anthony. He had known that she would go, but this time he came also. She had wanted him to come, for they had grown so together over the past years that to be apart was too painful. So, leaving their children in Lady Dorothy’s care, they had come to Greenwich.

  The king had changed. He was no longer quite so slender, but then, Blaze thought with a wry smile, neither was she. She was thirty years old now, with a marriageable thirteen-year-old daughter. There was a sadness, however, about Hal, and a new harshness about his mouth that had not been there before. She had curtsied low on their meeting this morning, and he had taken her into his arms and just held her for a long minute.

  “How many sons do you have now, Blaze Wyndham?” he asked her.

  “Four, my lord. Philip is now nine, Giles is six, Richard, who is four, and Edward, who is but a year old this April past.”

  “Your husband is fortunate in his wife and family,” the king said, and she heard the sadness in his voice.

  “Oh, Hal, I am so sorry!” she told him.

  “Do not be!” he said fiercely. “You warned me! They all warned me of Anne, but I could not hear any of you, for I was blinded by my passion for her, may God help me!”

  “She loves you,” said Blaze. “I could see it even nine years ago. She was so afraid of losing you.”

  “Love?” the king roared. “The witch knows nothing of love. Of lust, aye! But nothing of love! Had she loved me, she would not have committed adultery with my friends, and involved herself in incest with her brother. Nay, Blaze. Anne did not love me.”

  He dared her to dispute him, but Blaze, who did not for one minute believe in any of Queen Anne’s alleged crimes, realized that she must remain silent. Anne had failed in her primary duty to give the king a son, and now she would suffer for it. Rumor had it that the king had already picked himself another young flower of English nobility to make his wife. “I will not argue with you, Hal,” she told him. “Only tell me why you have called me here.”

  “You and Will are my only real friends, Blaze,” the king said.

  “I tell him that Margot is his friend too,” replied Will Somers, who was also with them. He stroked the small brown monkey that he cradled in his arms. Will had not changed. He was still lean and stooped, with his strangely young face that in a way resembled his pet’s.


  “Margot, as I recall,” said Blaze, smiling, “bites.”

  “And has a great preference for royal fingers,” muttered the king. Suddenly through the open window there came the distinct low boom of a cannon from upriver. Both Blaze and Will crossed themselves, but the king’s face was a blank, giving no hint about what he might have thought.

  “It is done then,” said Henry. “The witch is dead.” He looked to Blaze. “I have brought you a long way simply to hold my hand in my hour of need, as you might do for one of your children. Thank you.”

  “I am, sire, ever your most loyal servant,” Blaze answered him quietly.

  The king smiled at her. “Aye, Blaze Wyndham, my little country girl, you are, are you not? Well, you are free to go now. Back to your husband, who is pacing so impatiently in my antechamber. Back to your beloved RiversEdge, which perhaps I shall even visit someday.”

  “And where will you go now, Hal?” she asked him.

  “To Jane,” he said simply. “It is not like the last time, is it? Catherine is dead these five months past, and now Anne. I am free to marry my gentle Jane. Surely God will smile upon this union, a true union, and we will have a son.”

  “Oh, Hal, how I pray for it,” Blaze told him. “Jane Seymour is a good and sweet lady. You will be happy with her, I know it! God will indeed bless you with a son for England.” Blaze curtsied low to him, and smiling, she backed from the king’s privy chamber out into the other room where her husband eagerly awaited her.

  Together Blaze and Anthony hurried from the palace down across the green lawns of Greenwich to where their barge was awaiting to take them upriver. They went hand in hand, laughing and talking happily to one another, totally unaware that the king was watching them from his windows as they went.