Tarnish (35 page)

50

T
HE
C
HRISTMAS SEASON HURTLES TOWARD US WITH PLANS FOR
another of King Henry’s lavish entertainments.
The Castle of Loyalty—The Château Blanc.
There will be a pageant on the tiltyard. Chivalric oratory and romantic ballads. There will be a tournament of jousting and swordplay and feats of archery. And there will be a great battle over the Château Blanc itself.

In a court obsessed with symbolism, the Château Blanc can stand for many things: Loyalty. Integrity. Trust. Devotion to king and country. Purity.

Virginity.

Unexpectedly, I am one of the four maidens chosen to occupy it. We are given the keeping of the castle, but in reality, we are just ornamentation.

Something over which the men can fight.

The good news is that if I’m meant to represent virginity, perhaps Butler isn’t spreading his vicious gossip. Or no one believes him.

The bad news is that Thomas Wyatt is among the men chosen to safeguard the castle. No one else seems to recognize the irony that the man who is rumored to have stolen many a maiden’s virginity now rushes to its defense.

And when Henry Percy is selected for the assault, I begin to think I am the butt of an elaborate joke. I would blame George, but he is too busy making merry to conceal his disappointment at not being picked for either side.

I try to console myself with the honor of being chosen at all. And I am determined not to repeat my personal disaster from
The Château Vert
.

The men of the court throw themselves tirelessly into the tactics and technical details of this false war because the real war—the war against the French—has to be suspended due to winter weather.

The king will lead the challengers—symbolically putting to the test the loyalty and integrity of his men. He spends countless hours designing ingenious siege engines that will breach the castle defenses, mechanisms to vault the fifteen-foot ditches and elude the great rollers at every entrance that can unbalance an attacker at the slightest touch.

The strategy and avidity applied to this game only serve to make me hope more fervently that they are never applied against the French.

Even so, I, too, feel the hunger for battle. I wish I could pick up a sword and descend with all my fury into the breach. Wyatt. Percy. George. Father. All of them would feel the power of my wrath.

But no. I sit and sew. While Wyatt helps to oversee the construction of a wooden castle out on the tiltyard, I embroider a thousand tiny gold stitches to create the ridiculous emblems on the pageant banners. The castle could probably withstand an actual assault. I feel my defenses weakening every day, every time I see him.

While he is fitted for new armor, I sew dozens of seed pearls onto a pale-blue bodice. Pearls are a symbol of the feminine, of women. And women are the ones considered to be fragile and mercurial. Weak. But pearls are also a symbol of the never-ending cycle and so represent unending loyalty. The cycle I see in the court is not one of loyalty, but one of distortion. Manipulation. Self-obsession.

I guess I fit in well.

The slippery smoothness of the pearls reminds me of the night Thomas came to my bedchamber in Hever. How his hand held mine, interlaced with pearls. How he soothed away my dream. How I felt that I belonged there.

I think I knew then that he loved me. I just didn’t know he had already betrayed me.

The pageant begins on Saint Thomas’s Day, a day swamped in symbolism. Thomas the doubter, who would not believe in the resurrection until given physical proof. His saint’s day is the shortest of the year, the day that night engulfs the earth.

Countless candles and torches are lit in the great hall to dispel the darkness, belching soot and vapors to the ceiling, the dragons of the court circling below. A clamor of trumpets and the bellow of canon fire from outside announce the commencement of the festivities. A herald enters, carrying a placard painted with the symbols and colors of the castle and its defenders.

I stand to one side, shoulder to shoulder with Jane.

The king is up on a dais, sitting in an intricately carved chair with gilded armrests and a velvet cushion. The cloth of state is canopied over him, gold embroidered with Tudor roses.

Energy radiates off of him like a cataract. He is insatiable. Unstoppable. No effort has been spared in this production. It’s like he has something to prove, something to win.

He leans forward slightly, ready to pounce.

He is looking at me.

I reach for Jane’s hand, and she squeezes mine.

Before the herald can issue the challenge, the king stands and strides to the edge of the dais. He towers over the throng, and the herald—who is young and visibly intimidated—is rendered speechless.

He is supposed to announce us—the four maidens—so the king can challenge the defenders. It will be a contest over who will be our champions. But if there is no announcement, there is no contest.

I step forward, tugging Jane with me. A rustling murmur rises around us, lapping to the far corners of the room.

“Impudent.”

“Presumptuous.”

“Brazen.”

I ignore the whispers, propelled forward by the eagerness in the king’s countenance.

“Before you stand four maidens,” I begin.

The herald shudders and steps in front of me. I fight the urge to kick him.

“Before you stand four virgins,” he squeaks. Behind the king, Henry Percy looks like he has swallowed a toad.

Jane squeezes my hand. “The king hasn’t taken his eyes off of you,” she whispers as the herald lays out all the details of the challenge. “What did you call him? Delicious? It looks like he could say the same thing about you.”

I raise my eyes back to the king’s, and all of my bones vibrate with the hum coming off of him. His expression is volatile. Covetous. Hungry.

“Who defends these maidens?” he asks, glancing at the herald and then about the room. “Their integrity? Their purity?”

He looks back at me. “Their beauty?”

He raises his voice, and it echoes in the silent room. “Who defends the Château Blanc?”

Fifteen men step forward. All of them are young, in their teens or barely out of them. These men—these
boys
—have never been to war. They have never faced a siege. But I can see in their faces that they are ready to. Ready to protect. Ready to prove themselves. Ready to go to war in one way or another.

Thomas strides to the forefront, cutting off Leonard Grey, the captain of their phalanx. I grip Jane’s hand to prevent myself from running.

“We will defend the castle and these maidens,” Thomas says, and glances once between me and the king.

He pauses. Takes a deep breath.

“And we defend against all comers.”

51

T
HE KING IS LIVID.
F
OLLOWING THE PAGEANT’S ANNOUNCEMENT,
it is discovered that the siege engines he designed have been constructed incompetently. His martial fervor has been quashed by the ineptitude of English carpenters. Everything he hoped for has fallen apart. The carpenters flee before his wrath, and courtiers scramble to fill the void. Jesters. Musical entertainments. Gifts.

Christmas Day is celebrated beneath this cloud—a fog of waiting and desperation.

And then it is announced that the tournament is to go ahead as planned. On the day of another Saint Thomas: December 29, when Thomas Becket was murdered by the knights of a different King Henry for defying royal wishes. The siege of the castle will be postponed.

The morning dawns bright and cold. Frost tinges the trees and runs up the hill all the way to Duke Humphrey’s Tower. The cold makes the outlines of everything stark and hard-edged but subdues the colors to a wash—like silks left too long in the rain.

The castle stands to one side. Its walls of wood and fabric and the crenellated battlements, braced and whitewashed, are a simulation of invulnerability. But for today, that conception will remain unchallenged.

George sidles up to me shoulder to shoulder, looking in the same direction. I have not spoken to him. I will not speak to him.

“Ah, the imagery,” George sighs. “The Castle of Loyalty cannot be broken by any of the king’s devisings.”

I keep my silence.

“And the maidens it protects remain unspoiled.”

“I wonder, though,” he says, quietly enough that only I will hear. And I am lost in the wary darkness of his eyes. “Do its defenders realize the extent of the pretense? For virginity lost needs no protection.”

I turn on him, ready to do battle myself. I don’t care if the whole court watches. He sees my movement. His eyes go wide, and he takes a swift step back onto Jane.

“Ow!”

George spins and catches Jane before she falls. His grace is barely marred by his early-morning inebriation, and he manages to keep his balance and hers. Her fingers clench on the muscles of his arms and then she goes a little limp.

“I’m sorry,” she says, breathless.

“No, forgive me, fair damsel,” he says, tugs her upright, and braces her before stepping away.

Jane giggles.

He spins on his toe, back to us, ramrod straight.

“I go to survey your lodgings. Inspect your Castle of Virginity.”

Jane presses both hands across her mouth to disguise her giggles as shock.

He waves a dismissive hand at me and walks away. Jane watches every move he makes.

“He’s very charming.”

“He’s maddening.”

Jane studies George from beneath the gable of her hood. She looks the very model of the ingenue courtier, the virginal maid-in-waiting watching her knight on the field of battle, just like in a romantic ballad.

I take a deep breath, square my shoulders, and stand next to her. I suppress an inward curl of pain, knowing she loves him, that the marriage agreement is signed. That she is consigned to her romantic fate that cannot—will not—end well. My brother is a lost cause. She says nothing. I say nothing. And we watch, shoulder to shoulder.

Suddenly the field goes silent. The men stop shouting. The women stop gossiping. Even the horses stop clanking their armor. All we can hear is the snap of the banners in the breeze.

The queen enters the viewing tower, and we bow as she makes her way to her gilded chair. She seems even more tired than usual. Stooped. Sad.

A cannon fires and the defenders enter the field fully armed, six of them charging across the drawbridge of the counterfeit castle. The crowd roars its approval. I know which one is Thomas by the way he rides, the way his body moves. I grip the rail of the viewing platform with both hands, caught in the still point between running toward him and running away.

Jane catches my eye, but says nothing.

A sudden silence from the audience turns me back to the field. The defenders have adjourned to one end of the lists. And at the other end, two ladies enter on horseback—ladies I’ve never met or even seen. Veils hide their faces. Their hair is perfectly coiffed beneath French hoods. They look awkward on their palfreys, shifting in their skirts and sidesaddles.

They lead chargers carrying two old men whose silver hair and beards shine in the shifting light. The men’s robes are purple damask. The vibration starts deep in my chest. Even grizzled and disguised, I know him. He is a head taller than the rest of the men at court, his shoulders so broad that even when stooped, he looks majestic.

The queen narrows her eyes.

The two ladies ride directly to the queen and bow as best they can. One nearly topples, and some of the men in the stands laugh. Then the tallest lady hands a rolled parchment up to the queen’s usher. As the man unrolls it, I watch the lady. She sits back on her saddle. Scratches under one arm.