Tarnish (26 page)

“You did it,” George finally mutters as we enter the courtyard through the gate.

I can’t even nod. I’m strangled by the knowledge that Percy will be married off to Mary Talbot. And I will be sent—alone—to Hever.

I am devastated by the thought that the king knows what I’ve done.

“Congratulations—you managed to be more of a disappointment even than I am.” George’s hair has fallen over one eye. The corner of his mouth is raised.

“She made a mistake,” Mary says quietly.

“There are no mistakes in Father’s world. There is only failure.”

George leaves us on the cold cobblestones, squaring his shoulders before he enters the donjon to go and serve the king.

“If Lord Percy made a promise”—Mary turns to me—“he must honor it. He will have to defy his father.”

I wonder if Percy will choose me and disinheritance. I like the idea of a man who would change his life, his status—his whole world—for me. A nobody.

But if he lost everything, I’d still be a nobody. Exiled. Unwanted. Silenced. Besides, no one does that. That’s fodder for fairy tales and romantic ballads.

“Would George defy ours?” I ask.

Mary pales a little. No one defies our father.

Then her face softens, and I think I see tears in her eyes.

“Do you love him?”

“I don’t think the Boleyns know how to love.”

The tears threaten to spill over.

“We love each other.”

“Do we, Mary? We don’t show it.”

“There are different ways to show love. Forgiveness.”

Mary doesn’t look away, challenging me to contradict her.

“Loyalty is a form of love,” she says. “Even in the face of betrayal. And taking the punishment for someone else’s mistakes.”

“Failure, Mary,” I whisper. “There are no mistakes.”

“If you love each other, it’s not a failure.”

I can’t reply. Mary studies me. Silently.

“I’m sorry, Anne.” She wraps me tightly in her arms and I want to stay there forever. Protected. Safe. Her hair and neck are still scented by sleep. But then I catch the scent of cloves. The king.

I push her away. “Don’t feel sorry for me.”

My body feels rigid. Solid, but on the verge of splintering.

“Maybe he’ll convince his father,” she says. “Maybe he’ll come for you.”

“Maybe Tottenham will turn French,” I mutter, so I’m not fooled into believing the fairy tale. “Maybe we’ll all become Lutherans. Maybe Father will decide he loves us and let us marry whom we like and we can all live happily to the end of our days.”

Mary looks as though she might speak again, so I turn on my heel and go back to the real world. Alone.

I pack. I pay my respects to the queen. I listen for gossip—anything that will give me hope or tear it from me. Father makes arrangements for a few rooms at Hever to be opened and aired, but I hear all this through servants. He will not speak to me and will not suffer me to speak to him.

I haven’t seen George. Or Wyatt. Even my sister avoids me.

I want to hope, but Percy never comes.

Instead, the day before my exile begins, I get a visit from a short and spotty youth of imperious demeanor and dubious hygiene.

“Good day to you, Mistress Boleyn,” he says, sitting beside me and leaning close. His breath smells like the Thames at low tide.

I edge away.

His face appears as if he were afflicted with the pox, and his eyes do not light on anything for more than an instant. Like flies.

“I am James Melton, and I bring word from a mutual friend.”

“Friend?”

I claw through my memories to discover who might be a friend of Melton’s. I’m not sure I have any myself.

“A certain lord with whom I believe you are close,” he says, angling toward me. He’s practically sitting on my lap. My stomach roils.

“Please keep your distance, sir.”

“But this is information of a very delicate nature,” he breathes. “Something only you should hear.”

I turn my head away, as if listening to music. More to avoid the reek of his words than to save my reputation. My reputation is already stained irrevocably.

“It concerns a certain young lord in my lord cardinal’s household.”

I glance at him quickly, knowing that only one young lord could be sending me word through this cretin. Knowing what it means.

“His father has made an emergency visit to London,” Melton continues. “He arrived at York Place and immediately requested an audience with both the young lord in question and the cardinal himself. He spent well nigh an hour berating the young lord, calling him a ‘waster’ and comparing him to his brothers. Not kindly, mind you. The father threatened to disinherit him.”

I bite my lip.

“You see the problem,” Melton says, and allows himself a snaggletoothed smile.

I nod curtly, barely inclining my head.

“So the young lord will return to the family lands,” Melton says quickly. “The marriage arranged for him is going ahead. He will not lose his inheritance. He will not lose his honor.”

All of this is said as if to make me feel better. As if I don’t matter. My feelings. My desires. My honor.

Percy left without me to keep his father’s promise. To keep his inheritance.

“Thank you for letting me know,” I manage.

“But there is more,” he says eagerly, his shoulder nudging mine. “The information about the father’s visit you could get from anyone. I’m surprised you have not heard the gossip already. No, mistress, I have a private message for you from the young lord himself.”

He will escape. He will wait for me. He will convince his father of my suitability.

“He bid me to beg of you,” Melton says, and I hold my breath as his words graze my cheek, “that you remember and honor your promise. Which none can break but God himself.”

He looks at me meaningfully.

My promise.
My
promise.

I shudder. I cannot believe that Percy has told Melton what occurred between us. After exhorting me never to tell anyone. After making me give up my closest friend for our farce. He has told Melton, who ogles me as if he could be the next in line.

I can’t believe that Percy bids of me that I remain unmarried, a spinster, a
widow
to him. Remain his property. While he goes off and marries the Earl of Shrewsbury’s daughter. Has children. Becomes an earl. Has a
life
.

He wishes me to be faithful? To a hurriedly whispered oath in a back room in the dark? To a painful, pathetic excuse of a consummation?

He wishes to have my humiliation known by this ridiculous waste of space, who could tell anyone. Could tell everything. Could ruin me. But nothing can touch the future Earl of Northumberland. The English aristocracy will circle their pikes around their own, shutting me out entirely. I could proclaim my virtue before an entire courtroom full of lords, and they wouldn’t believe a word I say.

Effervescent wrath sings in my blood and it is all I can do to keep my hands still. “Get out.”

“Pardon?” Melton asks, head tilted, an unsure and obsequious smile on his face.

“You know nothing,” I say, standing abruptly. “Whatever the ‘young lord’ told you is a complete fallacy. The vicious lies of a jealous suitor.”

He gapes. Unbecomingly. I long to slam his jaw closed.

“Leave,” I command. “I never wish to see you again. Or him. I will never speak to him more.
That
is a promise you can tell him I will keep.”

Henry Percy has no idea who he’s dealing with.

Melton stands reluctantly, looking bewildered. Like a dog whose bone has been stolen by a fox.

He shoulders past James Butler on the way out. But Butler doesn’t acknowledge him. Butler is staring at me. Not with the angry, belligerent glare he used when he caught me with Wyatt or Percy or even George. No, Butler is smiling, and it freezes my anger and my blood with it.

Then he blows me a kiss and turns away.

Hever Castle

1523

37

M
Y FATHER CALLS
H
EVER A CASTLE, AND LONG AGO, IT WAS.
These days, it is just a fortified and moated house with small windows and freckled walls of golden stone and a garden picturesque in its tidy forms. All of it perfectly represents the Boleyns—the outward show of opulence and strength, the simple lines and calm exterior. Not a hint of what lies inside.

It is hell. Worse, it is purgatory. At least in hell you have something to do. In purgatory, all you do is wait.

Summer fades, and the blue sky is clotted with clouds that change shape like witches from old stories, one moment, a face, and the next, a dragon.

The fruit ripens in the orchard. I avoid going out. Too many memories associated with the scent of apples.

I find myself on long afternoons just staring through the window of the little sitting room. The blue sky crossed with threads of black lead. I let the sky and the lead go in and out of focus, blurring between freedom and prison.

Father’s steward makes me jump by entering the room with a bang. He’s short and skinny with thin strips of hair stretched across his skull and a permanently sour expression on his pallid lips. A jug of ale totters on his tray and he scowls at it.

“Visitor.”

Thomas Wyatt stands at the door like a ray of sunlight too early for spring.

“Well, don’t you look pasty,” he says, his Kentish drawl like a salve.

“Wyatt!” I leap up and run to him, to throw my arms around him. But the immediate fear in his eyes stops me short. We are no longer on the same footing we once were. And I must tread carefully.

“It is so good to see you.”

He’s wearing a forest-green doublet that intensifies the color of his eyes. But they flicker around the room. He’s purposefully not looking at me.

We stand, unable to speak, for what feels like an eternity. Until the steward coughs and I realize he’s still in the room.

“Thank you. You may set it on that table. And tell the cook that Master Wyatt is staying for supper.”

The steward scowls again and exits with barely a bow.

“You want me to stay?”

Wyatt sounds forlorn. Again we face a wall of silence.

“I—” I start to speak, but he interrupts me.

“Don’t.”

I bite my lower lip. “Don’t what?”

“Apologize. Isn’t that one of the first things I taught you?”

He looks me in the eye and the dimple appears. Finally.

Relief runs through me like a zephyr—a gentle wash from head to foot.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, either, Anne. There is little to thank me for.”

“Well,” I say, bustling to serve us. Trying to hide my confusion in busyness. “I can certainly thank you for coming today. For breaking my boredom. Tell me, what news of court?”