Tarnish (19 page)

“You’ll never be a nun.”

“At least we agree on something.”

Butler grabs me by the shoulders. “I will not hear that you are Wyatt’s doxy. Or find your brother in your bed!”

I see a flash of memory: Butler outside the maids’ room.

“Bed
chamber
,” I correct him. “Don’t be disgusting.”

Butler shakes me so hard my neck hurts.

“You are nothing without me,” he shouts, frustration straining his voice into the higher registers. “Nothing!”

I open my mouth to speak, to argue, to contradict, but I’m cut off by a rising shriek that echoes across the cobbles.

“How dare you!”

A tiny ball of deep-blue fury flings itself past me and straight at Butler’s chest. Jane Parker beats at his arms with pale fists. Her hood is askew, strands of hair flying like witches’ wings.

“How dare you?” she howls again, sounding like a madwoman.

Butler covers his face with crossed arms, releasing me from his grip. I take a step back. Jane looks like a weasel attacking a bear, leaping and stretching, the big beast reduced to terror at the surprise of her onslaught.

It would be laughable under other circumstances.

But fighting in court is forbidden and can cost the instigator a hand—or a head—so I grab Jane from behind, avoiding her flailing elbows, and pull. She steps hard on my slipper, the heel of hers digging into my instep, and I stumble.

The two of us fall backward, a tangle of skirts and pearls, to the damp cobbles of the walkway. She lands on me, heavier than she looks.

My chest collapses and a stopper is put into the bottle of my lungs. Everything tightens. My face strains with the effort to squeeze a tiny bit of air back into my body. Helplessness makes me rigid.

Jane rolls off me and turns, panting. When she sees my face, hers goes pale.

“Butler?” she cries. “What’s wrong with her?”

James Butler has disappeared. He left us when we fell. Probably ashamed to be terrorized by a mere girl.

“Anne!” Jane kneels beside me, cradling my head in her hands.

I gasp, a long, low, whining sound. My chest heaves, my stomach with it. I might vomit. I turn to the cobbles, retching.

“I’m so sorry.” Jane strokes my hair away from my face. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

I wonder manically if Wyatt would rebuke me for apologizing in a similar situation.

I struggle to draw another breath, and discover that this time, it is a little bit easier. This gives me courage, and I nod faintly at Jane to let her know I understand that she meant only to protect me.

Little, mousy Jane Parker rushing to my rescue.

My third breath gives me enough air to wheeze out a laugh.

“Oh! You’re breathing!” She starts to cry.

I push myself into a sitting position and find myself patting her back. Comforting my comforter. The air comes more easily into my lungs and I feel the blood return to my face. Delicately, I touch my ribs, hoping nothing is broken. But the rigidity of my bodice seems to have protected me.

“He just made me so angry!” Jane sobs.

“He has that effect,” I croak. “You knocked the breath out of me. I think I’ll live.”

She wipes her eyes with the heels of her hands.

“I can’t believe you have to marry him.”

“I won’t if I can help it.” I reach out to adjust her hood. A French one. “I’ll marry someone else.”

“Someone you choose?” Jane asks. “A love match?”

I think of Percy and wonder if love enters the equation.

“I would like to have a choice. Or at least some control.”

“And your family will honor that?” The hope in Jane’s voice is heartbreaking.

“My father only wishes to use me for leverage,” I tell her, “and thinks my only goal should be to better my family.”

“So . . .” Jane pauses and bites her nail. “What makes you think you can make a difference?”

I think of how a few months before, I had no friends. I was an outcast sitting on the fringes of the court. Now I may not be on top, as Wyatt wants, but I am certainly somewhere in the middle. Closer to the royal circle. I have made a difference already—escaped some of the restraints that bound me—with Wyatt’s help.

“I hope we have more control than we are led to believe.” I stand up shakily. “Perhaps I can circumvent my father’s wishes. Use my own leverage.”

I demonstrate by leaning back to pull her up.

“I have to believe that what I want matters, Jane,” I tell her. “And what I think.”

“And whom you love.” Jane’s voice is thick with thought. Then she brightens.

“Anne, are you my friend?”

I stare at her. The directness of her question startles me, because it had never occurred to me to question our friendship. Not like Wyatt’s.

“Never mind.” Jane shakes her head. “It’s ridiculous. I’m too quiet. I never speak. I just watch. That makes people nervous. They can’t stand to be watched. It makes them feel judged. Anyone who has done anything remotely wrong always feels judged badly.”

“That covers just about everybody at court.”

“I know! Which is why no one likes me.”

“I like you,” I say, giving her arm a squeeze. “Of course we’re friends.”

She smiles weakly. “I’m nothing like you and George.”

“That can be a good thing. We both tend to speak before we think. Not always an ideal quality.”

“But you’re both so vivacious. And elegant. Everyone follows you. George is the most talked-about man at court. And everyone is madly trying to copy your French hoods.” She touches her fingers to the exposed hair at the edge of her own.

“What about the Duchess of Suffolk?”

Jane pulls her mouth down.

“The Duchess of Suffolk is more of an enemy than a friend. She only pretends to be nice to someone if she can laugh at her afterward and then speak against her. They’re all like that. That entire crowd.”

“At least I know you’ll never speak against me.”

“How is that?”

“Because, by your own admission, you never speak.”

27

J
ANE’S AFFIRMATION OF OUR FRIENDSHIP MAKES ME FEEL
lighter. Lessens the burden of my worries. My father is only days away, Henry Percy is nowhere near making his decision, and James Butler is doggedly pressing claims—valid or not. Yet I still feel hope.

Greenwich is tucked into the bottom of a curve of the river Thames, facing water and a wide expanse of marsh on the other side. Behind it is a single, knoblike hill. At the hill’s peak is Duke Humphrey’s Tower, a pretty little place where King Henry has been said to hide his mistresses.

From the southeast flank of the hill, I can see for miles—all the way to St. Paul’s, its spire like a beckoning finger. So I take Fortune up there for a taste of freedom.

I want to roll down the hill like I used to at Hever with George. Mary would stand over us, mothering, until we convinced her to join us by tickling her so hard she couldn’t breathe. Then we all rolled together, George and I racing to see who could get dizziest fastest.

Fortune shuffles and cocks her head. She can sense the wind blowing in off the river, carrying odors of the court and the Isle of Dogs beyond it and the rattle and cry of men in the tiltyard.

She flutters again, lets out a high, trilling shriek.

I loosen her hood, untie the jesses, and unblind her. She blinks, squints, flaps, and becomes still.

That is when I release her.

I watch as she glides out over the slope, her cry coming back to me, pitched more like a song.

I lie down in the grass, its scents rising around me like steam. But I don’t roll; I sing, my face tilted to the sun. I sing a silly little frottola in Italian by Josquin des Prez about a cricket who needs a drink. A cricket who sings in the sunshine for no other reason than love of the song.

There on the empty hill, I can sing whatever I want, however I want. No one listening. No one watching. On this hill, I am unobserved. Unjudged. I am free.

“
El grillo è buon cantore
, Mistress Boleyn.”

I know that voice far too well. The buttery tones. The high-domed warmth. I’m surprised I didn’t feel the vibration of his presence before I heard his voice.

I scramble to my feet, the breeze chilling my back where the dew soaked into my bodice and sleeves. I curtsy while surreptitiously trying to brush seeds and stems from my skirts.

“Your Majesty.”

“The cricket is a good singer,” he translates, obviously delighted to be able to associate me with the song. “And yet I rarely hear you sing.”

His eyes meet mine as I stand. Those clear, intense gray eyes that appear to look at me and into the future at the same time. As though anything he sees, he can make happen.

“I prefer to play the lute.”

He nods as if understanding me perfectly. “The tenor of the strings speaks to me somehow. And the diversity of tones available.”

It hits me:
I’m having a conversation with the king. King Henry of England. Alone.

“I agree!” I cry, and have to stop myself from reaching for him to emphasize how close he’s come to speaking my own mind. “The lute is like a chorus! A single voice cannot compete.”

“Yours can,” he says. And the connection breaks. He’s flattering me.

“A king should only speak the truth, Your Majesty.”

“You certainly say what you think, Mistress Boleyn.” His tone is even, his face immobile. Regret clutches at my throat. I have just called the king a liar. To his face.

Suddenly, he laughs—a fountain of mirth.

“I like that in a woman,” he says.

“Others would list it as the most heinous of my many faults.”

“I find it difficult to believe you have any faults.”

Is the king flirting with me?

“I was taught to hide most of them by King François’s sister.”

“Marguerite.” The king nods. “She was once put forward as a possible bride for me.”

I try to imagine the fiery, opinionated Marguerite of Alençon in the place of complacent and pious Queen Katherine.

I fail.

“You are lucky to have known her well,” he says.

“She gave me this when I left.”

I touch the little gold
A
that rests below the notch at the base of my throat. And then swallow when he looks at it—at the teardrop pearl that hangs from it, resting just above my negligible cleavage.

“Beautiful.”

“She is,” I say weakly. Pretending he doesn’t mean the necklace. Or anything to do with me.

“But she is a dangerous woman. Heretical. She supports her brother in a foolish bid to retain English lands in France.”

Despite his assertion that he likes a woman who speaks her mind, I doubt he will countenance my disagreement. Or my opinion that King Henry’s own dubious claim to the French throne does not justify his bid to beat France into submission—nor the chaos and death such an action is sure to generate.

No king wants to hear that. Especially from a woman.

“I can see you don’t agree.”

I look up at him. His face is a guarded question. I don’t know how to respond. If it were Wyatt it would be easy. But the king?

“My brother would tell you that agreeableness is not integral to my character.”

“Actually, your brother told me you’re a very clever girl. Perhaps that’s more important.”

I stare at him, awestruck. My mouth must be hanging open, thus negating the image painted by George. And the king stares back until my emotions spin from incredulity at George’s praise to tingling anticipation of what might happen next.

The king breaks the tension and speaks first.

“You must be wondering why I’m here.”

“I was, actually.” I find my voice. “It seems unusual for you to be . . . without occupation.”

He laughs again. “I’m that transparent, am I? That I am always in need of some pursuit? Music, theology, building projects. If it’s not statesmanship, it’s hunting. If it’s not jousting, it’s war.”

“You have many interests.”

“You are a diplomat like your father. But the truth is, I do have an occupation.” He moves closer to me. The braid on his doublet catches on the silk of my sleeve, and I feel the tug like a heartstring.

I wonder wildly if he followed me. If he intends to have two sisters at once. I wonder if Mary is waiting in the tower. I look up again into his mesmerizing gray eyes, knowing that I couldn’t say no.

Except I’d rather Mary wasn’t there.

“I have come to ponder my responsibilities,” he says quietly into my ear, tickling my hair. “It is not easy to send fourteen thousand men to war. Including my best friend.”

With a flash like gunpowder, my cheeks begin to burn. He doesn’t pursue me.

I turn my head again to look him in the face. He is so close. I can see the stubble of his red beard at his temples, the flecks of gold and umber in his gray eyes.

He does confide in me.

“I believe that the right will win,” he says quietly. “But it is not easy.”

“How do you know you are right?”