Tarnish (3 page)

“That betrothal hasn’t been agreed upon.” I don’t react to his criticism.

“Close enough,” George mutters.

“James Butler is like a bear, only less sophisticated.”

This teases a smile from George, and I want more. I want to feel closer to him, as though, somehow, the time and distance between us can be breached.

“I’d marry a bear to get my birthright.” The smile disappears. “And you’re set to steal it from me.”

“I’m not stealing it, George! The earldom of Ormond is Father’s. It’s yours.”

“Father would happily give it to your fiancé if it means pleasing Cardinal Wolsey.”

“James Butler isn’t my fiancé. It’s not my fault Wolsey wants to appease the Irish lords by giving Grandmother’s inheritance to the Butlers. I don’t want your birthright.”

“You don’t want to be a countess?”

“Not if it means marrying James Butler.”

“You should take what you can get, Anne. The only way a woman can advance in this world is through marriage. And the only way anyone can get ahead in this court is through peerage. Without a titled husband, you are nothing.”

“Like Mother?” I slather those two words with all my bitterness.

As we begin a turn, I catch a glimpse of pain on his countenance, but it is gone when he faces me again.

“Mother is a Howard. Descended from dukes.”

“That hasn’t secured her a place in their hearts.” I fling out a hand, indicating the queen, the Duchess of Suffolk, the king. Mother is no longer at court. Not exiled, just not invited.

“You don’t need a place in their hearts, Anne. You need a place in their circle.” He pauses. “Unlike Mother.”

“And how am I to accomplish that?”

“Marry well.”

“And until then?”

“Stop saying whatever comes into your head.”

I laugh hollowly. “You know me too well to think—”

“Then at least make an effort to look the same as everyone else,” he says, exasperated. “Any circle is broken by an odd piece.”

“Is that how you see me?” My tone is teasing, but I extract the words like splinters from my throat. “As an odd piece?”

George takes my question seriously.

“You have to be more like the others if you want to be accepted at court. Your sleeves are too long and your bodice too square. Your hood and your accent are too French. You are too different.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It wasn’t intended as one.”

“Different isn’t synonymous with defective,” I tell him. Though George has managed to make me feel that way.

“But conformity is synonymous with success.”

“Baa-a-a,” I bleat.

We separate in the dance and I turn to the room, confronted by quickly averted suspicious glances. I’ve just been caught making barnyard noises in the queen’s chambers. I lower my eyes and come back to George, who laughs at me.

“Just like sheep,” he says. “Act like the others. Join in the conversations. Fit in. This isn’t France, you know.”

“Yes, I know that all too well.”

“They are our enemies now.” He lowers his voice.

I don’t. “Not mine.”

“Don’t say that too loudly, Anne.”

“Friendship is not dictated by the whims of kings and Parliament, George, but by the heart. I spent seven years of my life in France. I know nothing else.”

I turn away, rubbing my hands against my skirts, ready to leave the room. But George takes my wrist, spins me back into the dance.

“You are English. You are a Boleyn. Act like one.”

“You can’t tell me what to do.” I cringe at my childish rejoinder.

“But Father can.”

Yes. Father can tell all of us what to do. And we will do it.

“Father isn’t here.”

“And I must take his place.”

I can’t help but laugh. “You’d make a great father figure, George, with your gambling and your unsavory activities.”

“I keep my activities discreet.” He has the grace to look affronted. But I see past the mask and catch the hint of a smile, the one he used to have when we spent hours compiling inventive insults until we struggled to breathe through our laughter.

“No, George, you just run with a flock of black sheep.”

“Yes. And the king finds us charming. But what is charming in a man is despicable in a lady, so don’t go getting any ideas.”

There is real warmth in his voice now, the hint of a tease. I look into his face, the sharp features and steeply arched eyebrows. We are so much alike.

“Your point is taken, Brother.”

The music ends and he snaps a quick bow. He reaches to tuck a stray hair back beneath my hood, his fingers soft. I want to lean into his hand, feel the comfort of it. Feel the welcome of family.

He sighs and looks at me keenly.

“You know, if you tried harder, you would almost be pretty.”

I arrange my features to mask how deeply the wound cuts, right along the rift of our broken friendship.

“High praise, indeed.”

And I walk away, cradling the pain like deadweight in my arms.

3

I
KEENLY FEEL MY DIFFERENCE AFTER MY DANCE WITH
G
EORGE.
I
settle into my duties to the queen. Try to remember to hold my tongue. But I feel uncomfortable in my own skin. In my clothes.

After the travesty of
The Château Vert
, that bilious green castle, I spent the days of my incarceration at Hever elaborating all of my gowns. I adapted the French off-the-shoulder look of the sleeves, and turned the oversleeves up to my elbows, showing off the tightly cuffed undersleeves, a dramatic effect. King François had been in ecstasies over the look when his mistress wore it. I modified the tight-fitting bodice, curving the square neckline up over the bust to disguise the insignificance of my breasts. I edged everything in dark velvet and the embroidery of my favorite emblems.

I made my clothing more French, a link to my chosen homeland. Everyone knows the English courtiers have no style of their own and so copy that of France with a passion close to mania. I wanted to set the fashion. Be admired for my innovation.

But the new war with France has changed attitudes. Changed sensibilities. Changed allegiances.

So all I get is laughter. Or worse, pity.

From a few, I sense undiluted animosity. Apparently, English opposition to the French is not limited to political rivalry.

I am a failure. George is right. I am too different. Perhaps it is time to reinvent my appearance.

I study the Duchess of Suffolk, the standard around which all the ladies rally. She wears her clothes like someone expecting to be watched, to be copied. And everyone does, because if they don’t, they suffer a slow social death.

The ladies of the court are like a flock of sheep led by a wolf.

The duchess’s entire ensemble falls like water in drapes and curves, from the slight peak of her hood—showing a discreet and modest shock of coppery hair—to the twice-fitted sleeves with draping cuffs, to the long cascade of train behind her.

I know what I look like, standing isolated in the center of the queen’s watching chamber. My French hood sits so smoothly and so far back off my forehead that it has to be held by pins to my black hair. My skirts are bunched over my flat hips with copious organ pleats. The duchess does not need them.

No wonder they all laugh at me.

I leave the queen’s apartments without permission, though I doubt my absence is noticed. Or regretted. I go to the maids’ dormitory and dig through my cedar chest tucked behind the bed I share with Jane Parker. We face the wall farthest from the door. Farthest from the center of the court.

I pick up a bodice of gray silk trimmed in blue velvet that was made just before I left France. It is my least favorite color and getting too tight in the bust. It doesn’t matter if I ruin it.

I take it to the only one of the ladies of the court I know will help me.

My sister.

Mary sleeps in a single room in the lodgings of the inner court. Theoretically, it is assigned to her husband, a gentleman of the king’s Privy Chamber, but he generally makes himself scarce.

I’m glad to find her alone.

“Nan!” Mary looks up from her sewing when I knock and enter her little room. Her voice is round and delicate, though tuneless.

But Mary is beautiful.

Her skin is naturally pale with just a touch of pink. She has wide eyes, smooth hair the color of freshly cut oak, both of which she got from our mother. I once heard my father remark that I must be a changeling child, as all the beauty on both sides bypassed me.

Jealousy rises in me like a twist of smoke from a snuffed candle.

“So nice of you to visit.”

Mary reaches to embrace me, but I thrust the bodice at her before she makes contact. I don’t need my big sister to mother me.

“I need to change,” I blurt. “This. I need to change this. Everyone is laughing at me.”

Mary’s gabled hood makes her face appear even rounder, like a moon, pale and glowing. The only thing not pale about Mary is her eyes, deep brown and kind, but often strangely vacant, as if she has left her body and wanders different landscapes.

Right now, she’s looking at me as if she’s never met me before.

She turns her gaze and runs her hand along the stitching at the neckline.

“Lilies,” she murmurs.

I almost snatch the bodice back from her. I spent days on those stitches. Weeks. Each one took me farther from Hever, reminding me of the lilies around Fontainebleau. Of fleurs-de-lis. Of France.

“Lilies symbolize chastity and virtue.” Mary lifts her eyes to mine and gives a wicked smile. “A bit prim, don’t you think?”

I shake my head. That wasn’t my intention.

“We could alter the shape.” She studies the curve of silk and buckram. “Display your assets.”

“What assets?” I reach for the garment, but Mary pulls it away from me, holding it aloft in her right hand.

“I’ve changed my mind.” I reach again, but her body is in my way. “I don’t want to change.” Not for Mary. Not for George.

Mary giggles and dances away from me.

“Give me a minute to work some Boleyn magic on your bust. You’ll be impressed.” She grins. “So will James Butler.”

I scowl. Mary understands nothing.

“Go play your lute.” She waves me dismissively away.

Go play your lute. Go change your clothes. Go become a sycophant and a sheep.

I cannot wreak my words on Mary. She doesn’t deserve it. So I pick up my instrument, to lose myself in the music.

I keep my lute in her room because she has more privacy. Stuffed amongst the maids in our dormitory, I never know who’s riffling through my things or listening to my music or reading over my shoulder. Yet Mary’s quiet and nearly empty room is the place I go so I won’t feel so alone. Two outcasts together.

The room is little more than a closet, with poky windows and an inadequate fire. An aging tapestry lines the wall, threads fraying loose and the left half bleached by the sun. But the bed is draped in new velvet, with a feather mattress and real pillows.

Occasionally the lesser ladies of the court visit her. Never the duchess and her confederacy. No, the room is kept quiet for the visits from the king—thus the attention paid to the bed trappings.

I keep my lute in the corner farthest from the window. I like knowing I can find it there. A friend. A reminder. A refuge.

I take my time to tune each course of strings, two to a course. They grow taut, twanging. The body of the lute feels like a belly pressed against me. The wood is smooth beneath my fingers, the strings almost sticky. I pluck them individually, like a conversation.

I love the lute for the dual tone of its strings, for the echo of its notes along my limbs. I love the delicate knots carved into the soundboard and the whiskery feel of the frayed frets beneath my fingers.

I pull the music into my mind. I can feel the vibration of the strings like breathing, like a heartbeat. It’s a song I heard the king perform two nights ago, during one of his impromptu entertainments, trying out new material on the girls of the queen’s household. His voice rich and his eyes roaming.

They never landed on me.

Mary hums along, and I grit my teeth to keep from telling her to stop.

The tune breaks and stutters in my mind and I have to go back, close my eyes, concentrate. I’m getting two notes wrong. The highest ones. Either the lute is out of tune, or I am. I bear down a little harder, my anxiety growing to get just this one thing right.

“The king used your lute to play that song to me last night.”

With a
spang
the chanterelle, the highest-pitched string, snaps and whips out, clattering in the quiet.

“Shit.”

I sit in a pinprick of silence. The music is still in me, in my fingers, but I can no longer let it out.

“Nan. Watch your tongue.”

She’s not my mother. And George is not Father.

“Not you, too!”

There she sits, all placid by the fireplace, enjoying her un-demanding life of leisure and prestige. All the queen’s ladies treat her as an abomination, but she has all she needs, all anyone would need. She has the king. And all of Father’s praise.