In a Treacherous Court (17 page)

Boleyn crouched down and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him. “I had to leave Margaret’s court in disgrace because of you.” Spittle sprayed onto her face, and she could not look away from his mouth, the lips red and wet, forming an ugly line.

“Not because of me.” Susanna jerked her chin from his hand, but continued to look him in the eye. She was in a crowded room, and the guards were paying them a good deal of attention. She would say what she wanted for once, instead of biting her tongue. “You left in disgrace because of your behavior, not my protest at it. And I was but the straw that broke the camel’s back. I heard afterward you’d already drawn six complaints before my own. You are responsible for your own disgrace, my lord.”

He looked at her and she thought she saw a clearing in his eyes, a return to sobriety. Then someone laughed. Whether it was at what she’d said or not, Boleyn flinched.

“Don’t you know how to speak to your betters, girl?” He rose, his hand grabbing the hair at her nape and forcing her up with him. “Come now, let us finish what I started.”

Shock held Susanna silent for the first few steps toward the door, then she turned to the guards. “Help me. Call Parker.”

She saw them exchange an uneasy glance, and knew suddenly they could not leave their positions. They were bound to protect the King, not her.

“Parker!” Her scream cut through the conversation of the crowd, and in the silence, every head turned their way.

“Boleyn.”
Whoever called out did so in a voice heavy with warning, trying to rein the bastard in.

“Fuck you,” he called back, and laughed. By now he had her at the door to the outer chambers, and he gripped her hair harder, bent her head back even farther as he shouldered it open.

As the door swung shut behind them, she knew she had to fight.

It was all there was left.

As Boleyn shoved her forward, she slammed her heel into his instep, glad she was wearing boots instead of court slippers. As she stamped down, she jabbed an elbow as hard as she could into his side.

He cried out but his grip tightened, his fingers digging
viciously into her scalp. He lifted her up by the hair, and through the pain bursting across her eyes and forehead, she lashed out with both feet as they left the ground.

Boleyn suddenly let go of her with a scream, and she fell to the floor.

Then in a swift, sure move, she was scooped up and held safely against a dark-clad side. Parker.

“My … cheek.” Boleyn half-lay, half-sat on the floor, his cheek dripping blood from a thin cut from outer right eye to chin.

Parker stood with his knife loosely held in his right hand and Susanna saw a thin rivulet of blood run down the blade.

Boleyn, his eyes averted, started to get to his feet, and with a sweep of his right foot Parker knocked him down again.

“Parker.” Boleyn tried for bemused irritation but his voice shook too much.

Parker’s face was a cold, furious mask. He wanted to kill Boleyn. Slowly and painfully.

She wanted to kill him herself.

She took a deep breath. “Come.”

Parker turned to her, and she felt the jolt of his gaze: rage and deadly intent, and something deeper, bigger than she’d imagined.

“Perhaps if you could move near the wall,” he said to her, his calm voice a thing apart from his eyes. “Just rest a moment on one of the chairs.”

She looked from him to the chair he indicated and back. “Parker—”

“Please.” His eyes told her he would not make her watch him kill a man. But he would have some reckoning.

She moved toward the chairs, glancing at Boleyn as she did. He was staring at her, pure hatred in his eyes.

If he’d looked shaken or sorry, she would have begged Parker to leave it. But he did not, and she kept her eyes on him deliberately, and sat.

Boleyn started to get up again, and this time, Parker let him.

When he was on his feet, his hand went up again to where Parker had cut him. “You’ve scarred me.”

Parker transferred his knife to his left hand, stepped forward, and punched Boleyn in the face so hard he fell down again.

Then he waited in silence for Boleyn to stand once more.

Boleyn lay sprawled on the floor, blood pouring from his nose. He wiped at the blood, smudging it across his upper lip. “You cross a line, Parker.”

“It is not I who crossed a line.” Parker stood absolutely still. He looked deadly.

“Too much to drink.” Boleyn tried to shrug with nonchalance, undaunted by his position on the floor. “No harm done, eh?”

“Harm was done.” Parker looked at Susanna, then back at Boleyn. “Or perhaps you enjoy being lifted off the ground by your hair and dragged through a party of snickering cowards?”

Susanna could tell Boleyn had realized what Parker planned to do at the same instant she did.

“No—”

“You said no harm done. I’ll take that as reckoning, Boleyn, and by your own words, no harm will be done.” Parker was beside him in a single stride, his knife out in case Boleyn thought to struggle. He lifted him by the hair, and Boleyn began to shriek.

“It seems my lady has more courage than you, Boleyn. I don’t think she shrieked like a maid. She only called for help.” Parker turned and began dragging Boleyn back to the privy chamber.

Susanna saw that a crowd had gathered at the door through which Boleyn had dragged her, and the people scattered as Parker headed straight at them, Boleyn squealing like a stuck pig behind him.

Susanna followed Parker, completely in thrall to his boldness. He managed to drag Boleyn halfway across the privy chamber before someone shouted, “Parker, enough.”

It was the man who had tried to check Boleyn earlier.

“Enough?” Parker threw Boleyn to the floor. “I think Boleyn had a mind to rape my lady before he’d have called it enough. Any of you care to do the honors on him?”

There was shocked silence.

“Ah, my pardon.” Parker’s voice was pure steel. “Judging by the aid you gave a helpless woman, none of you have the equipment to do the job.”

“Point well made, but enough, Parker. Finish it.”

Parker looked across to her. “Is it finished?”

The room held its breath.

Susanna gave a tiny nod, her eyes on his beautiful, fierce face.

“Then it is finished.” Parker walked toward her and held out his arm. “But my business with the King is not.”

The Chiefe Conditions and Qualities in a Courtier:
To be pleasantlie disposed in commune matters and in good companie.

Of the Chief Conditions and Qualityes in a Waytyng Gentylwoman:
To make her self beloved for her desertes, amiablenesse, and good grace, not with anie uncomelie or dishonest behaviour, or flickeringe enticement with wanton lookes, but with vertue and honest condicions.

Y
our Majesty.” Parker bowed, but he kept his hand on Susanna’s arm. It was a battle to hold it steady. If he were to release the control he imposed on himself, his whole body would be shaking.

“Trouble?” Henry glanced into the privy chamber as the door closed, at the courtiers standing subdued for once. “The yeoman guards were right to interrupt us?”

“They are to be commended. Boleyn was drunk. He sorely insulted Mistress Horenbout, dragging her by her hair out of the chamber.”

The King’s expression sharpened on Susanna’s face. “Are you harmed?”

Parker saw her hesitate; then she nodded. Her face was white, her eyes overbright.

“My head is pounding.” She massaged her scalp. “It would have been much worse had Parker not come to my aid.”

“Boleyn must heed the warnings he’s been given. I’ll speak with him myself. A woman should be safe in the King’s own privy chamber.”

Boleyn would feel the chill of royal displeasure, which would hurt him more than anything Parker had done to him. The King might have many mistresses, but he believed in discretion. And he was in thrall to the notion of courtly love.

Boleyn’s actions tonight could not be considered courtly in any way.

“If it pleases Your Majesty, I would have Mistress Horen-bout remain in the room with us.” Parker would not stay if the King refused him, no matter the consequences.

Henry hesitated. “Our business concerns secret matters.”

“I can wait outside.” Susanna’s voice began on a tremble but finished strong, and she drew herself up.

Parker waited for the King’s pronouncement, excruciatingly aware that his future depended on His Majesty’s answer. To walk out on the King would most likely get him banished from court. To leave Susanna alone outside was not possible.

He turned his gaze from Susanna and found the King staring at him.

“You take your duty of safekeeping very seriously,” he said.

“I take all my duties for you very seriously, Your Majesty.”
Parker spoke the truth, though even if the King released him from his duty to watch Susanna, he would not leave her.

“Very well. She can sit at my desk and illuminate some writs and title deeds I finished this afternoon while we conclude our business.”

Parker opened his mouth to protest that Susanna had been violently attacked and could not be expected to work, but she gave an infinitesimal shake of her head.

“I do not have my paints with me, Your Majesty, but I can work on the designs now and paint later.”

The King nodded, and gestured Parker toward a suite of chairs near the fire.

Susanna was already sitting at the King’s desk with a quill in her hand, tracing a design, by the time they settled themselves.

“So, what news for me, Parker?” Henry shifted in his chair to get comfortable. “I broke off my evening entertainments and called for you because my spies bring nothing but disturbing rumors.” He hunched away from Susanna and lowered his head. “I heard you are legend for the attacks you have fought off in the last two days.”

“Who knows of the attacks?” Parker’s voice was hard. If the King’s spies had been there, why had they not given him aid?

“Again, it was told me as a rumor. What is the truth?”

“Mistress Horenbout and I have been attacked four times since we left your closet almost three days ago.”

The King looked thoughtful. “The reason?”

“The reason becomes harder to grasp the more I uncover. I
can only say it seems connected to de la Pole. But even that may not be the truth.” He withdrew the letter he’d retrieved from Harvey’s widow and held it out.

The King took it, and there was no mistaking the horror, the rage on his face. “I
burned
this. How …” A vein throbbed at his temple, and Parker handed him his cup of wine.

“It is a copy, or perhaps a draft. See the lines scored through? The lack of a seal?”

The King swallowed his wine in a single gulp and brought the letter closer to his face. “You are right. Where did you come by this?”

“Harvey.” This was a most delicate moment. How much to implicate Harvey’s widow, how much to leave vague?

“It was on his body? Who found it?”

“His widow gave it to me.” That was the truth, without going into detail.

“She read it?” The King lifted his cup and scowled at the lack of wine within, and Parker filled it from the jug at his elbow.

“She says not.”

“Thank God she gave it to you, of all people.”

Parker looked across at Susanna. The King still had cause to feel threatened by what she knew. Time to swing the balance in her favor. “You can thank Mistress Horenbout. Had she not insisted on going to speak to Mistress Harvey of her husband’s last words, we would not have known of the letter.”

The King sat back. “There are many who would have told me some untruth to reassure me or to advance themselves.” He
snorted. “There are some who would have kept this for leverage at a later time. You never fail me in that way, Parker. And because of it I will support you, even though you may find yourself annoying powerful men.” He gripped the letter in his fist, crunching it into a ball, then threw it straight into the fire.

The message was clear. If the de la Pole conspiracy led to the highest levels of court, as it surely must do, Parker could question or harass whom he would to get to the truth. There would be no repercussions for him.

A surge of triumph gripped him. Now he had the means to go for the throat.

And he intended to use it.