Tarnish (20 page)

“It is God’s will.”

“It seems more like a gamble. And a waste.”

He steps back and a flash of anger crosses his face. My tongue has taken me too far again.

“You were in France too long. It affects your mind. Your loyalty.”

“Not my loyalty, Your Majesty,” I say with a deep curtsy, afraid to look him in the eyes again. “I am loyal to you. But my concern is for my friends still in France.”

He towers over me, lucent with energy, more like the string of a longbow than of a lute. I feel his gaze rake me up and down, scanning my skirts, bodice, and finally my hood. I am unable to move.

“Your manner is French, madam. And your dress. Even your speech.”

“But I am not French, Your Majesty,” I say hastily. I try to lengthen my vowels, harden the
j
in
Majesty
. Be English for the first time in my life. I wish I had gabled my hood just a little bit more.

“If, as the Moors say, the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” he says, his words barely able to escape his clenched jaw, “then the reverse must also be true.”

The friend of my enemy is my enemy.

“You must decide where your true loyalties lie,” he declares. “And who your friends are.”

He turns quickly and walks away like a storm, blowing the grass into whirlwinds behind him. I watch as he approaches the palace, a great gleaming gold beacon, calling the courtiers to him without sound. And they run to catch up with him like a mass of multicolored ants.

Fortune returns to me silently, and I tether her back to my arm. Back to the earth.

28

T
HE KING PROBABLY THINKS
I
’M A SPY.
I
T’S THE PERFECT
disguise—the daughter of a diplomat. He must think I have a network of contacts between here and Paris, all ferreting away information fed to me by my family. By my sister. My father will kill me when he gets back, if the king doesn’t do it first. Or George.

I will get us all thrown from court. The Boleyns, exiled back to Hever. Together. A nightmare if there ever was one.

I run straight to Mary’s room, and George’s presence there, for once, makes me happy. I don’t hesitate to tell them the entire devastating tale.

“Nan,” Mary says, a ripple of concern on her forehead, “the king doesn’t like to be contradicted.”

“I know, Mary! Everyone knows that!”

“I can try to smooth things over for you,” Mary says uncertainly. “But you have to stop doing this sort of thing. Acting on impulses. Speaking without thinking. It doesn’t work here.”

She moves toward me, ready to put her arm around me. Comfort me. Be motherly.

I twitch out of her grasp just as George slams his fist down on the table.

“What the
hell
did you think you were doing?” George grabs my arm roughly. “Telling the king you’re loyal to France?”

“I didn’t say I was loyal to France! I said I was loyal to him!”

“Well, that’s not how he heard it.”

“I said my friends were in France,” I whisper, my anger gone. The choking emotion of it replaced by stifled tears.

“Oh, Nan,” Mary sighs. “Don’t you see that’s just as bad?”

“I do now! But at the time, I thought . . . I thought . . .” I thought I was talking to someone who would listen. I thought, because we shared a love of music, because he understood and spoke exactly what I felt about the lute, that maybe he understood
me
. I thought that maybe—just maybe—the attraction I felt was mutual.

“You didn’t think at all, stupid.”

It’s exactly what Father used to call George when he got his lessons wrong. George lets go of me and stomps over to the little tray by Mary’s fire. Pours himself a goblet of wine and drinks most of it in one gulp.

“That’s not fair.”

“It’s completely fair, Mary! Our little sister has been at court for less than a year and she’s already jeopardized our position here numerous times! She’s an unpredictable hazard. We need to marry her off to Butler and get her out of England as soon as possible if we want to save this family’s reputation.”

“Status at court isn’t everything, George,” my sister soothes.

“Yes it is! It is everything and it is the only thing.”

“You’re talking as if I’m not even here!” I cry.

“It would be better if you weren’t,” George growls, then slams his fist down again. “God damn it, Anne! Father will be here in days. Days! You couldn’t wait until he was here?”

“What difference would that make?”

“In his absence, he can blame me for your indiscretions. For your stupid mouth.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” He comes close enough to me that I can feel his breath on my face, vinegar-yeasty from the wine. “Is it
ridiculous
, Anne? Do you remember when you ran down to the river and ruined your new frock? Or when you told Father to kiss your ass in French? Or when you broke your finger falling out of the apple tree? All. My. Fault.”

The darkness in his eyes threatens to swallow me whole. I curl my misshapen finger into the pleats of my skirt.

“But you weren’t even there when I fell out of the tree.”

George had said girls couldn’t climb trees. So I climbed as high as I could. Just to spite him. I climbed higher than he ever had. I knew it—and he knew it—because I picked the apple he’d coveted the day before and couldn’t reach.

“That’s why he blamed me.” George’s gaze is now flat with menace. He turns away from me and takes another drink. “I’m going to send you to Hever.”

Hever is nowhere. The country. Far from Percy, who will change my life. Far from court and dance and music. Far from the king.

“You can’t send me away.” Desperation makes my voice wispy. Inconsequential.

“I can, and I will.”

I look to Mary, whose eyes meet mine briefly and then focus elsewhere. She isn’t going to stick up for me.

“What about the tournament? The visit from the king of Denmark?”

“What about them?” George sneers. “It’s not like you’re central to the success of either event.”

“But I remember Isabeau from the Low Countries.”

“You can’t remember the Danish queen. You were seven years old.”

I glare at my brother. He stares back, an insolent lift to his eyebrow and his eyes clearly reflecting his words. He doesn’t believe me.

“I remember getting the highest apple from that tree,” I tell him.

George clenches his jaw. He turns to the tray, refills his goblet, and takes a long drink. A drop of claret glistens on his chin until he wipes it on the back of his sleeve.

“You remember her. What difference should that make?”

“She was kind to me. I could make her visit here more comfortable. A familiar face.”

“It’s extremely unlikely that she’ll remember you.”

“I speak French!” I’m grasping at straws.

“Which is exactly why we’re talking about this. Besides, her aunt, the queen
of England, speaks French fluently. I think Queen Isabeau will be fine without you.”

His snide, sarcastic calm boils inside me. I can’t let him win.

“You can’t make me go,” I say, the words tumbling over each other. “I’m going to be a countess!”

George laughs.

“Of
Ormond
. Not exactly the highest rank in the world. And even that isn’t guaranteed. Not if I have anything to do with it.”

“You can have your piddling little birthright,” I hiss at him. “Because I’m going to be the Countess of Northumberland.”

Everything in the room stops. Mary is frozen in place, hesitating between us, unsure which side to support. George can’t quite seem to alter his expression from one of contempt to one of surprise.

My insides twist, lurch, and plunge. I’ve just broken Henry Percy’s very first “rule.”

“How’s that?” George asks finally.

“Nothing.”

“Henry Percy?”

George is cleverer than he lets on. Latin, he never understood. But politics and manipulation come naturally to him.

I say nothing.

He takes a step closer to me. He reaches up to my face, and I try not to flinch away.

But he strokes my cheek. Places a hand on each shoulder. Leans in close.

“Little Henry Percy?”

Percy is taller than George. George means “little” in the sense that George has a bigger personality. A larger circle of friends. More self-confidence.

I say nothing.

“Are you telling me you have an understanding with Lord Percy? Future earl of one of the oldest earldoms in England? A family that came over with William the Conqueror?”

Percy’s voice is screaming at me to stop. But I can’t. It’s the first time since we were little children that George has shown anything like admiration toward me.

“Not an understanding,” I say. “Exactly.”

George’s expression dissolves into distrust.

“Well then what,
exactly
, is it?”

His voice is low and rumbling, like the purr of some great cat.

“An . . . interest.”

“An interest.” The contempt is back. “Like Henry Norris’s interest? Like Thomas Wyatt’s? That’s not the kind of interest that makes you a countess, Sister.” He leers.

“It’s not like that.”

But George sees that he has regained the upper hand.

“And Wyatt’s not really interested, anyway. To him, you’re more of a . . . challenge.”

A piece of truth tears away from my heart, and I feel my resolve begin to break.

“Henry Percy seems like an honorable man,” Mary interjects. “If Nan thinks he intends to marry her, then perhaps he does.”

Mary has sunk her teeth into the depths of the issue.

“And we should stand by her,” she adds. “Because family is blood. And so much more important than these tentative and fleeting connections made here.”

“Blood spills easily.”

“Not ours, George. Not Boleyn blood.”

George looks at me, and for an instant, I see his face across from mine at the dinner table, rigid with pain and determination. Because he blamed himself as much as my father did.

“I will keep Father at bay,” he says quietly. “Mary will sweeten the king.”

He strides back to the door, suddenly purposeful. He stops, one hand on the latch, and turns.

“And you, Anne, make sure this interest of Percy’s becomes enthusiasm. Whatever it takes.”

29

I
DON’T TELL
W
YATT ABOUT MY CONVERSATION WITH THE KING.
I can’t face his criticism as well. We have just started speaking again. So as we walk up Greenwich’s apple orchard, I pretend that all is well.

“How many have asked you for a favor to carry in the joust?” he asks, twirling an apple leaf between his fingers.

“Checking up on my progress?”

“I have to know how my protégée fares.”

He is all nonchalance and superficial concern.
Protégée
. George’s words walk with me—that Wyatt sees me as a challenge. Not a person. Just a girl.

“Henry Norris has asked,” I snap. “And my father. Pleased?”

“Your father? Why? He won’t even be here.”

A shout and the sound of splintering come from the tiltyard beyond the towers and viewing platform. Practice for the tournament has reached a peak of fervid anticipation. Pestilential war games.

“Because he thinks so highly of his youngest daughter that he declared his intention in letter by courier, assuming no one else would offer. Couldn’t bear to be embarrassed long-distance.”

“Your father’s largesse knows no bounds.”

“My father’s largesse is notoriously negligible.”

“You sound bitter.”

“Do I?” I want to strangle him. “Why, that was never my intent.”

Wyatt stops me and holds my gaze. Will not let me go. I’m itching to slap him. Spit at him. Dare him to criticize me one more time.