Tarnish (44 page)

B
RIDEWELL IS TO BE THE VENUE FOR THE CREATION CEREMONY
in which my father will become a viscount. And Henry Fitzroy, the king’s six-year-old illegitimate son, will become an earl and a duke in a single day. The men of the court simmer and sweat as some of them strive for elevation and others remain stagnant. It is like living in a stewpot.

The day before the ceremony, I seek out coolness and quiet, my lute newly strung. Instead of playing, I sit and stare at my hands on the strings. They are very pale, nails smooth and short. Calluses on the tips from the lute strings. A single ring. One crooked finger.

I think of Thomas’s poem, the one he spoke when I played Atalanta. The riddle over my name—the same backward and forward or even split in two. Anna. I pluck two notes. An-na. Two halves. Incomplete.

An usher approaches me and bows.

“The king requests your company.”

A personal request. From the king. For me. All the notes fly from me, my fingers like startled birds. I barely manage to control my tongue.

“I should love to see His Majesty.”

“Good. Then he expects you at eight of the clock.”

I stand, still and anticipatory in the quiet that follows.

Was that a request?
I wonder.
Or an order?

When I sit, I discover that I can no longer find the music within me.

As the hour approaches, an usher comes to escort me through the guard and presence chambers, the last of the sunlight slanting through the towering expanse of glass on the south wall, the gardens and the Thames splayed out below.

We pass through the closet and into the Privy Chamber, where King Henry stands, alone. The usher bows low, and I kneel into a curtsy.

“Leave us,” the king says, and the usher beside me scuttles away. And I am entirely alone with the king. I wonder if he will keep me kneeling, ask the same questions he asked of Thomas.

I can feel his presence in the room, his restless energy. The inaudible hum as though from a constantly vibrating lute string.

“Rise, Mistress Boleyn.” He breaks the silence. “There is wine, if you would like some.”

I look up, surprised. The king is offering to serve me?

But no. Two glasses have already been poured. Every need anticipated.

“And strawberries.”

A dish of them. Red and round and glittering like jewels.

“I saw how much you liked them at George’s wedding.”

He looks shy. Wanting to please.

“Thank you.”

The color of the claret and strawberries reminds me of the dream I had months ago. A dream of red and blood and the inability to sing.

“No, thank you for answering my request. You didn’t have to come.”

“Didn’t I?” I blurt the words, and stutter the next through my hand. “Your Majesty, my greatest fault is my inability to stop my thoughts from becoming spoken words.”

The king laughs. He throws his head back, the wash of red-gold hair flashing against the last of the sun’s rays. His wine sloshes in the goblet, sending drops scattering across the wooden floorboards like fallen beads.

“Then your greatest fault is one of the things about you that I find most charming.” He cocks his head and squints at me a little. “But are you so used to following orders?”

“The men in my family expect subservience.”

“I doubt you give it to them.”

His gray eyes are childlike despite the fan of sun-worn creases just beginning to show around them.

“I believe,” I begin, and look at him again. His posture invites intimacy. “I believe people should have the right to make their own choices. Even women.”

“In life? Or in love?”

He studies me, waiting. We are talking around the very issue I want to avoid. I do want a choice. My choice. I just wish it were easier.

“Both.”

“Did you choose young Lord Percy yourself?”

He asks this so conversationally. As if speaking to an acquaintance, a friend. Not to a subject. Not to the girl whose very choice was thwarted by the machinations of his own chief minister.

I nod. I chose Percy. More fool me.

“He would never have made you happy, Anna.”

I nod again. I won’t make that mistake twice.

“Now I have no prospects at all,” I say. If the king truly was part of the plot to end the match, to get Percy married to Talbot’s daughter, let him feel a little remorse.

“None?”

“Because of the Percy scandal, the man to whom I was betrothed now shuns me. And no one else is interested.”

“The poet Wyatt seems to be.”

There is nothing childlike in his face now.

“He’s married.”

“That’s hardly an impediment to true affection.”

“It seems to me,” I say pointedly, “that the outcome is always the same. At the end, the woman is left with a tattered reputation, no self-esteem, and the label of a whore.”

He frowns and inspects the contents of his goblet. I stare at his lowered brow, holding my breath.

“You certainly speak your mind. I wonder”—he looks up at me again, and I see shame on his face—“what is your opinion of me?”

“You certainly ask direct questions.”

“I wish to know the answer, Anna. I see no reason to beat around the bush. You are the only person who has ever spoken to me as if I am a man as well as a king. Flawed, but by things that can be rectified. I cherish your words even when they run counter to my own thoughts. And I love to hear your voice.” He takes a step toward me, and all the air is sucked from the room.

I see the man—my body makes this embarrassingly clear. But I am also painfully aware of the power embodied in him.

“I think you are a great king,” I stammer. “A humanist and a patron of the arts.”

“Enough flattery.” He fixes his gaze on mine. “What do you really think?”

I take a deep breath that fills me with elation and terror in equal measure. He’s given me license to speak my mind. Without censure.

“I think you treated my sister as if she were disposable. As if she didn’t have feelings of her own. I think you rushed to war with the French over a flimsy excuse, to prove your might and masculinity. I think you wield the fear people have of you like a sword. And that you are blind to the feelings of those around you.”

King Henry’s face darkens. His eyes narrow. The vibrations of his energy increase in speed as if tuned to a higher pitch. A long, sharp note.

I have gone too far.

He twists a ring on his right hand. My ring. I stare at it, sure he’ll take it off. Throw it at me. Send me back to the beginning. To where I came from. To Father. To nothing.

Then he sighs.

“I regret any pain I caused your sister. She is a sweet girl, and beautiful. But not someone who is truly my match. I thought it better to cut our bonds now, rather than extend the pain later.”

I say nothing, pegged still by his nearness, by his response, by his confession.

“I have no remorse over my war with the French, for they are a constant threat. But I can tell you now that you were right: women can make formidable foes. And I have ceased my crusade against them.”

He looks at me, his gaze clear and direct.

He said I was right. My words made an impact. Or at least an impression. He has stopped the war. Just as I suggested so long ago.

My words have power. My opinions were correct.

“So it was not God’s will.”

I will push him to the brink of detonation. He doesn’t speak, so I press on. If this is the man I am to choose over Thomas Wyatt, he has to know who I am. My heartbreak has made me reckless.

“It was a waste.”

His gaze will not let me go.

“This sword of fear you say I wield,” he says. “It does not seem to affect you.”

I am afraid. Only my tongue is not.

“I have but a little neck,” I tell the king. “It will not hurt if the blow comes clean.”

He suddenly crosses the distance between us in two strides. His movement makes my heart flutter in panic. His nearness turns it to liquid ready to boil.

The scent of cloves and orange water fills my senses. And something else. Earthy and animal, like ambergris. Wild. I have to lay my hand on the table to steady myself. Everything I ever wanted is right here before me. Everything but one thing.

“I believe I am blind to nothing,” he murmurs, the words fragrant and honeyed. “Especially not the feelings of others.”

He takes one more step forward and moves to kiss me.

“You already have a wife,” I say as fast as I can before his lips touch mine and everything is lost. “And I will not be your mistress.”

“You are very sure about that.”

He is close. Too close. He doesn’t move away. I can almost taste his lips from here.

“All my life I have been shipped and trundled and bought and sold by my father. I want to be mine. I don’t want to be a mistress, Your Majesty, because a mistress is not a person, but a thing. Worse than that. Nothing. I don’t want to be nothing.”

I watch him for a long, slow moment, and he studies me. Cautiously.

“You are not a possession, Anna. Not a
thing
. And you could never be nothing.”

“Exactly, Your Majesty,” I say. Soaring, untethered by the knowledge that he understands. “I will never be anyone’s mistress. Ever.”

“Then there is no hope for Thomas Wyatt, is there?”

The sound of his name makes me want to sink to the floor in defeat. But I manage to keep my limbs stable, to keep my feet under me. I look the king directly in the eye. And shake my head.

“Good.” The king erupts into that devastating smile that first caught me at the age of thirteen and refused to let go. “I will ever live in hope, Mistress Boleyn. Hope that you will never be a mistress. But a partner. A friend.”

“My brother says that men and women can’t be friends.”

“Well, let’s see if we can prove him wrong, shall we?”

He extends his hand, to escort me back to the door.

“What seems impossible is not always so, I have found,” he says slowly. “The sun can turn dark in the sky. The flat earth is actually round.” He stops. Turns to me. “A commoner may marry a king.” He pauses. “My grandmother was the daughter of a ‘new man.’”

A tingling buzz spreads up my arms and into my scalp, sending my thoughts scattering like wisps on the wind. I catch hold of one. “Your grandmother was related to the courts of Europe.”

He chuckles. “Distantly. My grandfather married her for love, not connections.”

“What are you saying?” I manage to whisper through the howl of my thoughts. I can’t take my eyes off of him.

“Only that there are more ways than one around a problem. And that there is always hope.”

My mind retraces all the steps of the conversation, lurching from one point to the next, throwing each one down so I don’t expect too much. I tell myself all the lies I need to hear. He’s flirting with me. Pursuing me. Just like Wyatt used to with his offers to make me his mistress.

The king’s eyes are once more like a child’s. Buoyant. He’s offering friendship. Nothing else.

“A kiss, Anna?” he asks. “Just this once.”

I lift my chin, tilt my cheek to offer it. But he kisses me full on the mouth, warm and strong and sweet.

And wild.

It is not a friendly kiss at all.

And I like it.

66

O
N THE MORNING OF THE CREATION CEREMONY, THE SUN RISES
quickly into the white of the sky and the world is drenched in lemon. The flavor of the air changes the higher the sun rises, from citrus to rose to claret, and the sultriness submerges us as the court makes its way to the king’s chambers.

My father has had me dressed head to foot in finery—my gown, my sleeves, my hood decked with jewels and gold embroidery. And my
B
strung from its chain of pearls.
B
for
belonging
.

I want this. The elevation. The ceremony. The belonging.

The king.

The sun comes hot through the windows, the room awash in gold and silk. I am surrounded by the press and stench of perfume, the musk of ambition.

“Make way!”

Three ushers abreast, arms interlinked, push their way through the crowd. I am stuffed beside Lady Kildare and Lady Arundel. Pushed back against the men behind us, solid as a wall. I step on a wide-toed boot and turn to its owner.

Henry Percy. My skin threatens to crawl off my bones to escape even the possibility of touch, my spine prickling with revulsion. For him. For myself. One wrong choice. I press down the fear that I might make another.

His face betrays nothing.

A blast of trumpets signals the beginning of the ceremony. The Earl of Northumberland, swathed in superiority and ceremony, enters, carrying a sword before him. A herald bears the new coat of arms. And next comes a little boy, flanked by the earls of Arundel and Oxford, shining like a newly minted coin, cast in the mold of his father.

The Countess of Arundel mutters, “Two earls and a bastard.”