Tarnish (10 page)

“Jane.” I sit cautiously.

“Mistress Boleyn.”

“Oh, please, call me Anne.” I’m irritated by her formality. She may be of the duchess’s confederacy, but we sleep in the same bed, for pity’s sake. She lifts her hand to bite the cuticles, but I put out my own to stop it.

“Has Wyatt spoken to you?” I ask.

Jane’s hand freezes beneath mine, and she looks at me like a startled rabbit.

“No.” She casts a glance around the room to see who’s watching, who’s listening. Frowns. “Why would Thomas Wyatt want to speak to me?” Her upper lip twitches at the corner, and she peeks at me from beneath her lashes. “Not that I’m not delighted at the thought, of course. He’s rather gorgeous. And highly beddable.”

I fight back the irritation that continues to grow.

“I don’t think that was going to be his topic of conversation.” Though it might have been, knowing Wyatt. The irritation threatens to ignite and engulf me.

“Oh!” Jane’s other hand flies to her mouth, and I can barely understand the words around it. “I’m sorry. Truly. I meant no offense. And no presumption. I forgot, I mean, I didn’t think . . . I’m sorry.”

She bites the curve of her knuckle and I wince because she doesn’t.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” I say, thinking of Wyatt’s rule.
Never apologize
. Especially when you have nothing to apologize for. And I add, “Stop doing that. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“It doesn’t really hurt anymore.” But she puts her hand in her lap and covers it with the other.

“Well, it will make your hands ugly.”

“That’s what the duchess says.”

“Probably the only time we’ll ever be in agreement.”

Jane laughs out loud and then ducks her head, her hands bouncing in her lap as she struggles not to move them.

“However, the reason I asked if Wyatt has talked to you is because he’s planning a masque. An interlude. An entertainment for the king.”

“And he wants me to join?” She sounds surprised.

“You were in
The Château Vert
.” I manage to say the name without cringing. “It’s not like you’re no one here. Your father is Lord Morley, a gentleman of the chamber.”

“But no one ever notices me.”

“That’s because you never speak.”

“I’m sorry.” Jane shrugs.

Again the unneeded apology. I had never thought about the useless, ineffectual habit of offering an expression of regret. Like bandaging a healed wound.

“But we’re going to change that,” I whisper to her. “Wyatt is penning his own script. For you and me and Mary.”

Jane’s expression is one of delighted awe. “Me and the Boleyn girls.”

I save the best for last. “And George.”

Jane’s smile completely consumes her, and I hope her joy can make a difference in George’s life. Perhaps with Lord Morley’s influence, he can get out from beneath Father’s thumb.

“When do we start?” Jane leans forward—childlike in her eagerness—and I feel a flutter of jealousy.

“I’ll let you know.”

Jane tilts her head at me.

“Are you his muse?”

“Whose?” My mind is full of the king. Of how I would feel if he were participating in—and not just viewing—the performance.

“Thomas Wyatt’s.”

My laugh carries an edge of embarrassment. Jane must think I can’t follow a conversation. I contemplate Wyatt’s inspirations, and his promised poem about me. One that will be passed down through the ages, he said.

But only if I win the bet.

“Hardly,” I tell Jane. “I think women in general are his muse, so he doesn’t need a lot of prompting.”

“Oh.” Jane appears to ponder this. “Well, he certainly seems . . . interested.”

“As I said, Wyatt is interested in anything in a skirt. And I know where my boundaries are.”

“You must admit it though. He is delicious.”

Her face is lit with mischief. But her expression alters in an instant as she spies something over my shoulder. I have to force myself not to look.

“Mind you, that one is striking as well.”

I turn. Henry Percy. His stillness is the complete opposite of Wyatt’s and seems to emanate from a deep discomfort. But Jane is right. Definitely striking. I look away before I can be accused of staring.

“The duchess says that he’s supposed to marry the Earl of Shrewsbury’s daughter,” Jane whispers. “But they hate each other.”

“Poor boy,” I mutter. The court is full of such stories. My own included.

“Hardly,” Jane scoffs. “He’ll be the Earl of Northumberland soon and will run the Scottish borders and half the country.”

I glance up again at Henry Percy—destined to be one of the most powerful nobles in the country. Destined from birth to be a member of the royal circle. A captive in Cardinal Wolsey’s household. So free, and yet still tethered.

He is an enigma.

And he’s watching me.

12

I
ALMOST ASK
W
YATT TO INVITE
P
ERCY TO PARTICIPATE IN HIS
poetic interlude. But then I look at Wyatt’s profile, head bent over parchment and ink. The set of his jaw, the intensity of his eyes. And somehow, I can’t.

So instead, I stake everything on one night. On the hope that someone watching will see me and save me from my fate, like in a romantic ballad. Because I can’t think of another way to save myself.

The interlude is a lovely little joke of a play based on the myth of Atalanta. No set. Simple Greek-inspired costumes wrapped over pale gowns and doublets. We will be the only entertainment of the evening. Except for the dancing.

Wyatt casts me as Atalanta and Jane as my companion. Mary is Aphrodite. I can’t complain, because Mary does nothing but stand on a dais and look beautiful. I get to lead the chase.

Wyatt will play Hippomenes—the man who catches Atalanta through cunning rather than fleetness of foot. He dresses in golden sandals and a sky-blue tunic that reflects the periwinkle of my gown, giving the appearance that we are meant to be together. George, Norris, and my cousin Bryan round out the cast of men who lust after Atalanta enough to risk death for a chance at her. I find it a bit perverse that George plays a potential lover, but say not a word. This is Wyatt’s show, and I’m following instructions.

I’m grateful for the distraction, because the king has decided to call Parliament to raise funds for the war against France. The galleries and gardens of Richmond are full of the news. Full of men bloated on the thought of war. There is more tension in the court. More rivalry. Less chivalry. And the endless clamor of backslapping and chest-thumping.

The afternoon before the performance, I go to the orchards to smell the blossoms and avoid the heady musk of martial fervor. Unfortunately, the Duchess of Suffolk has had the same idea. I see her gown of deep lake blue, the red of her hair beneath her gable, and realize we are on an intersecting course that I cannot avoid.

She is followed by her confederacy. I’m disappointed to see Jane among them.

“Mistress Boleyn.” The duchess’s voice carries the same tenor as her brother’s.

“Your Grace.” She rarely speaks to me. It is rumored that her husband will lead the English troops into France in the summer, and I can’t help thinking of it as she slips her arm through mine and turns me to walk with her.

People shuffle and bow out of her way. It is as if she has a giant bubble around her, one that cannot be punctured. One that I, miraculously, find myself inhabiting with her. It’s a nice place to be. Watched, but protected.

I pretend I don’t hear the whispers and titters behind me as the other ladies follow. I do glance back once. Only Jane looks at me and flashes an almost-smile.

“I must ask you,” the duchess says, the corner of her hood’s gable preventing truly confidential whispers, “are the women in France very beautiful?”

“Do you not remember, Your Grace? You were the most beautiful woman in the court when you were there.” Flattery will surely get me somewhere with the sister of the king.

The duchess caused a fuss in both countries when she married the aging King Louis. After a year in the Low Countries, I was uprooted and sent to serve her. Until she caused an international incident when Louis died suddenly and she ran away with the up-and-coming and entirely unsuitable Charles Brandon. Despite his title, he had no royal blood and no connections and the match brought the king’s wrath down on them both.

I had to admire her for marrying for love—and against the king’s wishes. But the Brandons were both soon welcomed back to his circle and have been there ever since. We can all pretend the discord never happened.

“I have certainly not forgotten the kindness of a little girl I knew there,” the duchess says sweetly. “I spoke French so poorly, and Louis had just dismissed my great friend and translator Lady Guildford. I was eighteen and terrified. And heartbroken.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” I say. Though she hadn’t cared a whit when she left behind almost her entire entourage. Including a lonely eight-year-old girl and her dangerously pretty older sister.

“You are all grown up now, though,” she continues. “And looking for a husband of your own.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“And not that spiteful savage James Butler.”

I jerk to stare at her, startled.

“No, Your Grace.”

I can’t see her entire face, hidden as it is by her hood, but I think I see her smile.

“I understand being forced into an unsavory marriage, Mistress Boleyn. And I haven’t forgotten your kindness. I’ll keep my eye out for a lovely young man for you.”

“Thank you, Your Grace.”

Why is she being so nice?

I hear a ripple behind me. I try to catch the ladies giggling, but their faces are impassive. Jane won’t look at me at all, her eyes only on the ragged skin around her fingers.

“In the meantime,” the duchess continues, entering the donjon through a door that opens without her even having to touch it, and flicking a wrist at the usher behind it, “you might consider some other forms of assistance.”

We enter her private rooms, and the duchess picks up a little gilded pot of Venetian ceruse, a paint used by some to lighten their skin. She, of course, doesn’t need it. She’s so pale I can see the blue blood at her temple. She’s offering the ceruse to me.

I hesitate. It’s said that wearing ceruse can cause teeth to fall out and hair to thin to near baldness. It’s said it can kill. Slowly.

“It will make you look less . . .” The duchess turns a pretty pink.

“Swarthy.”

I hear the word, sniped from behind me, but the duchess pretends not to.

“Pale skin against your dark hair will make you look more dramatic,” she says. “It will accentuate the blackness of your eyes. It will be like a siren’s call to the eligible men of the court.”

My eyes are not
black
.

But tentatively, I stick a finger in the paste. It smells of beeswax and feels like clay on my fingers.

“Let me help.”

The duchess delicately smooths some across my cheeks, over my brow, right up to my hairline. She rubs it across the skin of my neck and where my jaw meets my ear. She even covers my lips and dabs it around the thin skin of my eyelids. A prickling burn in the corners of my eyes makes me squint and blink.

“There.”

The duchess stands back to scrutinize me.

“Now you need red.”

She finds another paste and daubs my lips and smears my cheeks. My skin feels cold and heavy.

It’s like a death mask, the white lead burrowing into my face and freezing my smile.

“Beautiful.”

One of her ladies holds up a little mirror of Venetian glass so we can see ourselves, side by side. I see a girl, her face as pale as white linen, her lips red as blood, her eyes wide and dark and starting to spiderweb with reddened irritation, next to a clear-skinned, gray-eyed beauty, unmarred and unpainted.

“How do I get it off?” I ask.

The duchess freezes, staring at my reflection. Her eyes harden and narrow slightly.

“Don’t you like it?”

I glance at Jane Parker, who meets my eye briefly, terrified. But then she looks down again, picking at the ragged cuticles of her left hand.

“Of course I do,” I say, gagging back the truth. “I mean for later.”

“You don’t take it off,” the duchess says. “You just apply more.”

She waves the mirror away.

“You’re beautiful, little Boleyn.”

I want to believe her. No one has ever called me beautiful before. Different. But never beautiful.

She presses the pot into my hand. “Use it. And everyone else will think so, too.”

Not only has the duchess given me a gift, she’s also given me a sentence: to wear this death mask until I need a real one. Which, if the physicians are to be believed, will be all the sooner because of it.

A finger pokes me in the ribs.

I sink into a curtsy, barely able to frame my face into a smile.

“Thank you, Your Grace.”

“Enjoy it,” the duchess says dismissively. “You may go.”