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?

†††

Candles lit the stone dining hall of Throckenholt Priory to a warm glow. I mustered every manner I’d ever been taught as I sat straight backed in my chair and tried not to look at Elizabeth, whose mischievous smile had danced across her lips all through dinner. She had cinched my whalebone corset tighter than normal, thus making this entire dinner affair even more uncomfortable.

I tried not to look at the two courtiers who filled the seats on either side of me, dressed in their fancy velvet doublets, but they looked at me. I caught their glassy eyes roving over the blue velvet that clung to my curves. The fabric hung dreadfully low, lower than I thought necessary, but Lady Denny had been insistent that we reveal just a bit more. Both men drummed the French lace tablecloth, and their gold-encased jewels squeezed their fat fingers like sausages.

Elizabeth however had no qualms with dressing to impress. Her smooth black damask gown didn’t leave much to the courtiers’ imaginations, as evident in their lusty gazes at her voluminous chest.

All evening, through heaping platters of black pudding and marzipan, I laughed when I was expected to laugh, sipped the royal wine the courtiers brought when I was expected to sip, and nibbled bits of roasted beaver tail and boiled potatoes when I was expected to nibble as Lady Denny lorded over us silently from the far end of the immaculate table.

I tried to pay attention to my plate and draw none unto myself. After the spice cake was reduced to crumbs and the last of the wine was drunk, the courtiers pushed back from the table in unison. Elizabeth and I stood, followed by Lady Denny, whose face was severe, but somewhat less pinched than it was during dinner.

The two men shared a look before the pudgier one with the white plume in his hat spoke. “I believe we shall retire till morning.”

The other, with a voice much higher pitched than the first, interrupted him. “At which time both young ladies, Lady Elizabeth and Lady Bridget, shall accompany us back to Court.” He stuck his thumbs in the waist of his matching velvet chauses that stretched tight across his bulging waistline. “Both have satisfactorily met the minimal requirements issued by His Majesty including grace, dignity, and feminine beauty. And, of course, a royal bloodline.” They shared a quiet cackle.

Elizabeth dipped into a deep curtsy as my jaw fell open. Remembering myself, I followed my cousin’s lead and dipped down in a bow.

“Thank you, sirs,” I muttered through trembling lips. Something knotted in my stomach and fell like cold stones in a pot of three-day old soup. It wasn’t the beaver tail or the artichoke stew that brought the green hue to the world before me. It was fear.

Tower Green Scaffold