Tarnish (17 page)

“We’ll show them,” I say to Jane, squeezing her hand hard enough to make her whimper. “We’ll run their asses off.”

The king strides into the center of the yard, suddenly the focus of attention. As always, he’s like the hub of a wheel around which all other activity turns. The old hum strikes up in my chest when he spies me holding Jane’s hand and smiles. He hasn’t even noticed me since the masque, yet suddenly I feel I’m the only object of his regard.

“Mistress Boleyn!” he calls. “And Mistress Parker! Mount up, ladies, and get ready for the ride of your life!”

The men bellow, and Jane turns bright as a berry. I see color creeping up the king’s face as well, and realize he didn’t intend the double meaning. He turns quickly to mount his horse, Governatore. And we are no longer at the center of the wheel.

“Allow me to assist you, ladies.”

Wyatt has approached us, dressed in green, the yellow of his hair reflected by a golden feather in his cap. He grins at Jane, who starts to simper. Despite her love for George, Jane unaccountably loses all sense of decorum around Wyatt.

Beddable
, I remember her saying, and fury rises in me like a tide, threatening to flood.

“Your assistance is not required, Master Wyatt.” I will my voice to remain uncharged. And cold.

“Ah.” Wyatt turns the fully dimpled grin on me. “But
required
and
desired
are two different things.”

Jane giggles. I want to smack them both.

“The honey of seduction will go nowhere toward catching me, sir,” I snap. “We only
desire
assistance from our friends.”

Wyatt doesn’t move. Doesn’t falter. “I am your friend.”

I can feel Jane’s stillness behind me, the tension in it.

“My friends do not mock me.”

“I wasn’t mocking you, my dear. I was calling attention to you.”

I hear Jane cough behind me. She doesn’t believe him any more than I do.

“Calling attention to my . . . habits and affectations is not something I wish a friend to do.”

“Perhaps it will convince you to cease them.”

We stand glaring at each other like the still leaves at the center of a whirlwind.

I know he will not apologize.

“My friends don’t criticize everything I do,” I say. “My friends take my side in an argument.”

“If you’re referring to the London adventure, it definitely wasn’t appropriate. Besides”—he finally looks away, and the clamor of the stable yard returns—“it seems to have worked out for you in the end.”

“You sound like a jealous lover.”

“It was a joke,” Wyatt spits. “One you would have recognized as such a few weeks ago. Before you started to think so much of yourself.”

“I hardly recognize you anymore, Thomas Wyatt. Much less your jokes.”

“Do you know what I think, Anne Boleyn?”

“No. And I don’t care, either.”

“I think you’re angry because I don’t support your most recent power play. Your grasp for status. Kick the poet when the aristocracy comes calling. Assuage your doubts by negating all other opinions.”

“Don’t turn this around.”

“Because you need to be angry with me? Is that it? I have a right to be angry with you, too.”

“I am not the one in the wrong here!”

“Are you not?” he asks quietly.

Silence balls like a fist between us.

“Mount up!” Nicholas Carew, the Master of the Horse, cries. The stable yard explodes into activity, and the dogs bay from beyond the gate.

“Master Wyatt,” Jane says evenly. She has heard it all. “Since you are the only man left unmounted, perhaps we do require your assistance.”

Without speaking, Wyatt moves to place his hand beneath Jane’s foot. On the back of her bay mare, she is graceful and more at ease. She thanks Wyatt quietly.

“Mistress Boleyn.” Wyatt goes to one knee on the cobbles before me.

“Why are you acting this way?” I ask him. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why, Anne”—he looks up at me—“all men want what they can’t have. I am only here for the chase.”

The expression on his face—one of longing and wickedness and ambition—makes my heart stop and then start again with a bang. Pounding. The rhythm of the hunted.

He looks again at his hands, the fingers entwined. I raise my foot and place it there. His grip is steady and I feel the heat through the leather of my boot. I look at the feather in his cap, the curl of hair at his collar, the stretch of fabric across his shoulders.

The muscles tense to lift me, and I lose my balance. Fall into him, my bust practically pressed against his forehead. We both gasp, and I push away. I steady myself with one hand on the saddle. My horse shuffles nervously.

Wyatt stares at my boot, shoulders tense.

“Ready?” he asks.

I nod. Realize he can’t see me. Clear my throat.

“Yes.”

In one fluid motion, I am in the saddle, the roan mare shifting beneath me. His hand stays on my foot a moment too long. When he leans forward to speak again, his hair kindles gold in a shaft of dawn.

“I am here for the chase,” he repeats. “But not all pleasure is in pursuit, my dear. And there is little pleasure in letting someone else win.”

24

T
HE HUNT BEGINS IN A RUSH OF COLOR AND LIGHT THAT PLUNGES
quickly into the darkness of the forest. The shouts of men mingle with the frantic baying of the dogs, the pounding of the hooves, and the crack and blast of twigs and branches breaking. Riding fast takes skill and concentration. I will myself not to think about Wyatt’s words. About the look on his face.

Far ahead, I see the flash of white. The tail of the roe deer. With a roar, the company spurs the horses to a froth and we plunge from shadow to light and back again. Horses dodge through the trees, leap fallen branches, vault over streambeds clattering from the spring rain and ditches stagnant with frogs and water.

Does he want me? Or does he just want to win our bet?

We are not bow hunting today, but chasing the deer toward the toils—nets strung yesterday at the other end of the park. This hunt is more of a race.

Wyatt is ahead of me. I can’t let him win.

I lean forward over the neck of my horse, her mane flapping against my cheek, ducking branches that come quick-fire at me.

We pass into a blinding splash of morning as the trees thin, and suddenly the king is beside me.

“You ride well, mistress,” he says. He is not even winded. Man and horse are like a single creature—a centaur, one rhythm, one heartbeat—beautiful.

“I was taught well, Your Majesty,” I reply, trying to suppress the gasp of breath as I suck it in.

“There is nothing like pursuit.” The king flashes a grin at me, and we dive back into darkness and suddenly he is gone. Off to the right, dodging another tree. Leaping a ditch. Maneuvering his horse expertly, always with his eye on the quarry.

I turn my horse, her hind foot skidding in a fall of leaves, but she rights herself quickly, shakes her head as if to free herself of the rein, and charges ahead.

We break out into the heathland, and I find myself in the midst of the pack, surrounded on all sides. The king is ahead of me, flashes of gold and red in the spots of new sun, Norris on one side of me, Wyatt on the other. I think I hear George laughing.

I look from one man to the other. Check George. They are watching me. The gorse snags at my skirts, washing me with the stinging scent of sunlit resin. Norris spurs his horse forward, then reins it back again. Keeping pace.

I narrow my eyes at him. “A race?”

He grins and kicks ahead, his wild laugh scaring a raven from its perch high in the trees.

I lean over the neck of my horse and laugh, too. Lost in the motion. In the pace. In the race. Forgetting, for the moment, all the confusion.

When Wyatt pulls ahead, I can’t keep up. I spur my horse, but she stumbles, and I fall a length behind. Norris looks back once, laughs again, and dodges into the trees just ahead of Wyatt. George’s horse clears a ditch and he tips his cap as he passes me by.

Wyatt disappears out of sight to the left. Never looks back. Lost in the trees.

“Ha!” Norris shouts again, and they are gone.

Jane catches up to me. Her face is flushed, her cap torn back from it, streamers of chestnut hair following her like a wake upon the river. We slow to a less reckless pace.

“You ride like a man,” she says, and I can hear the admiration in her voice.

Ride like a man. Play cards like a man. I seem to fit better in the men’s circle than the women’s. Of course, the men’s circle is wider. More encompassing. With fewer limitations.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” We slow to a walk. A girl’s pace.

“Oh!” Jane’s face gets even rosier. “I meant it as such!”

She shakes her head and glances at her hands. She can’t let go of the reins. She presses her lips together.

“I always say the wrong thing. It’s the reason I never speak,” she says.

“Perhaps I should take lessons from you.”

We find the rest of the court surrounding the toils, a clutch of deer lathered and anxious in the nets. One doe keeps breaking away from the others, spinning out into the enclosure, only to stumble back again when faced with the men of the court, who have dismounted, ready for bloodshed.

Norris tips his cap to me and I nod in response. George approaches him, and they clasp hands. George doesn’t smile. Norris must have won. George doesn’t like to be bested.

Wyatt is nowhere to be seen.

A shout and a cheer herald the arrival of the king. One of the men beside him carries the weapons that will be used for the kill. The doe goes down first in a wash of blood, the courtiers mad with it, and I have to turn away.

Jane turns with me.

“It breaks my heart,” Jane says.

“It does feed the court,” I manage. Though the sight of all that blood makes me shudder. Death by sword. Why do men seek it out in war? In this respect, I am not like them at all.

“Join us for a feast!” the king cries, and I look at him, blood still on his hands, the blade dripping with it. “I find pursuit whets the appetite.”

We follow him to a nearby clearing, a bower of silks and banners already set up, trestle tables laden with food and drink: wine and cheese and strawberries preserved in honey. Strawberries are my favorite, but today, they look too much like clots of blood to be palatable.

The king wanders the knots of courtiers, urging more food and wine and ale on them. He is lit by the sun that is now high and hot over the treetops. It erupts around him like a starburst when he approaches me, and I flatten my hands against my skirts to keep them still.

“And have you enjoyed the pursuit, mistress?” he asks.

“It was certainly invigorating.”

He raises an eyebrow at my tone. “You don’t like to hunt?”

I wonder at his ability to read me. As if we have known each other all our lives. I feel I can speak the truth to him.

“I prefer hawking.” I lower my eyes. I can still feel his gaze upon me.

“Thank you for the excellent entertainment,” Jane says.

I’d forgotten she was beside me. I’d forgotten everyone. I felt as though the king and I were the only two present.

I follow her into a curtsy.

“Perhaps we shall go hawking next time,” the king says, still watching me. Just me. The bread goes dry in my mouth, and I have to take a sip of wine after curtsying my thanks.

There is a sudden noise from the other side of the meadow. Wyatt finally wanders in on his horse. His cap is gone, his hair tangled with little sticks and leaves.

“Wyatt!” the king calls, and walks away from me. “Someone has led you on a merry chase!”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Wyatt says with a grin, swinging down from his horse and handing over the reins to a servant. I can hardly look at him. He acts as if I don’t exist.

“You look utterly weary, my friend.”

Wyatt leans heavily with both hands on the trestle table, and nods slowly.

“It can’t be the hunt that has exhausted you,” the king says. “For I have known you to ride with me for hours and never tire.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Wyatt hangs his head. “It is the hunt. The hunt for hind, the hunt for heart.” He scans the group until he finds me.

I want to groan at his overwrought melodrama.

The king raises an eyebrow. “Tell us.”

Wyatt strikes a pose. Always ready to share his poetic prowess.

“What means this? When I lie alone

I toss, I turn, I sigh, I groan.

My bed me seems as hard as stone.

What means this?”

Jane squeezes my hand.

“A bad night then, my friend?” the king asks Wyatt.

“Any night alone is a bad one,” Norris says.

Someone lets out a low whistle. And suddenly all eyes are upon me. Because of course I am the reason Wyatt lies alone. I feel the heat rise to my face, but I keep my eyes on him. He will not best me.