As It Pleases the King
The King’s Pleasure Series
Book I
Sara Harris
As it Pleases the King is a work of fiction. The author has endeavored to be as accurate as possible with regard to the times in which the events of this novel is set. Still, this is a novel, and all references to persons, places, and events are fictitious or are used fictitiously.
As it Pleases the King
Copyright © 2020
Sara Harris
ISBN: 978-1-952474-10-1
Cover concept and design by David Warren.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations for review purposes.
Published by WordCrafts Press
Cody, Wyoming 82414
www.wordcrafts.net
Dedication
S
ometimes we must chase our happiness like our lives depend on it. And more often than not, it does.
To Wesley.
Thanks for being my happy ever after.
Throckenholt Priory
Lincolnshire—February 1542
“E
ngland is again set to be without a queen?” The news gave me pause as the words rolled slowly off my tongue. The potato I’d been scrubbing dangled precariously over the pail of water that had been clear hours before. Despite the water having grown thick and brown, the giant sack on the floor was still half full.
My cousin Elizabeth glanced at me over her own steaming bucket, her cheeks rosy. Normally she would fret if asked to help with any preparations for guests, especially scrubbing the floors, as if her dollop of royal blood forced her to rely only on our few attendants. Even if it would be quicker to just do it herself. But not today. “Mother told me the truth circles about Court like flies over a corpse. Queen Catherine hasn’t uttered one word to prove her innocence!”
“So she will be executed then, just like Anne Boleyn. Suppose this one will request a French swordsman as well?” The harshness of my words struck me. This was a woman’s life hanging in the balance. I let the potato sink into the murky water and did the sign of the cross.
In nominae Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
Mother died soon after my birth eighteen years ago, but still I preserved her faith in my heart despite the growing popularity of Protestantism. I fished out the potato and set it atop the mountain of those I’d already scoured. “Perhaps the King will choose a good Catholic girl to marry next to bring England back to the True Faith.”
Elizabeth dipped her rag in the bucket and dropped to her knees. “Perhaps he will. A good Catholic girl. Or perhaps not. No doubt she will be younger than Catherine Howard, and fairer too.” She paused in her scrubbing and arched an eyebrow at me. “Perhaps His Majesty is already sending out his groomsmen to scour the English countryside in search of his next bride, having found none abroad?”
I gathered a fresh armload of potatoes and dropped them into my bucket. Dirty water splashed onto Elizabeth’s clean floor.
“Bridget!” she scolded. “Mother said we are to help prepare for supper this evening. And clean. Getting ready for this royal visit is too much for our servants to handle on their own.”
I giggled. “I am helping prepare supper, Cousin. You tend to your floor.”
Elizabeth snuffed and plopped her rag over the dirty potato water.
As our giggles died off, I glanced down at her. “You don’t suppose our guests tonight are coming here on the King’s bidding?” I shook my head at the sheer idiocy of noble groomsmen coming to our home in Lincolnshire in a futile attempt to sniff out the future Queen of England. “Truly I tell you, I pity any poor girl that His Majesty takes to wife. Really. Even if she be a Reformer.”
Elizabeth shrugged. Her white hood shifted over her blonde hair as she scrubbed. “You mean to say you would choose not to be Queen, should His Majesty choose you, out of all the maids in England?”
“Elizabeth, really!” My jaw went slack. “Queen Catherine, that as she was, is set to be executed. Can you not see how they all wind up? Even if His Majesty chose a good Catholic girl, I fear she would wind up a head shorter—or be shoved off to die alone in a faraway castle. Like his true Spanish wife, Catherine of Aragon.”
Elizabeth’s musical laugh tinkled along the stone floor. Each stone, all of them with a bloody past, was dug from the nearby Trent River and carried up to this very farmhouse before being laid by the monks who lived here, back when our home was still Throckenholt Priory. Before His Majesty dissolved the monasteries, burned the monks, and gifted the priory and all its lands to my aunt, Lady Denny.
“I suppose Mother could tell it best, what it is really like in the Queen’s Chambers, since she is a maid to Queen Catherine.” Elizabeth sat back and dragged her hand across her brow. “You don’t suppose Mother...” She squelched her words and shook her head. “No, it’s too absurd a thought.”
I hefted the filthy bucket of water to my chest and trudged to the servant’s door. I dumped it unceremoniously onto the frozen ground. Elizabeth needn’t have finished her sentence. The same question plagued my mind. Could Lady Denny have arranged this dinner so my cousin or myself might become the next wife of Henry VIII? Or perhaps even—I gulped. The next Queen of England?
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