Tarnish (11 page)

Again the rustle of suppressed giggles. A jostling of sleeves and gowns around me, and I am shuffled to the back of the group. Propelled out the door. And deposited outside, like refuse.

A peal of laughter rings through the door before it closes.

13

“W
HAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE TO YOURSELF?”

I’ve never seen Wyatt angry before. I touch my face. I can hardly feel my fingers through the mask.

“You look like a fool.”

He grabs my chin in his hand, fingers digging in. I try to pull away, but find I can’t move. We are in the pages’ chamber, where our costumes and properties are stored. No one else is around to see, but the great watching chamber is just the other side of the door, full of people.

“Aren’t you the one who tells me we should always be making eyes at each other?” I ask him, setting my jaw and looking at him directly. “Even in private? What happened to your grand façade, Thomas Wyatt?”

He throws his hand from my chin and stumbles away.

“Perhaps it’s time for a lovers’ quarrel,” he says to the wall beyond. His voice is tight, the set of his shoulders rigid.

“We can’t have one if we’re not lovers.”

My eyes, already burning from the ceruse, feel pinched with the onset of tears, and my throat constricts. I can’t lose my only friend. My only almost-friend.

“That’s good, because I wouldn’t want a painted doll in my bed. All show and no substance.”

I don’t understand why he’s so furious. Or why it shatters me.

“The duchess said I was beautiful.”

I hate the sound of my voice. Like a child begging for sufferance. I press my palms on my skirts to still them.

Wyatt turns like a cat on the prowl.

“The Duchess of Suffolk?” He stalks back to me, and I flinch. At the sight of it, the predation in him melts away.

“Watch out for her, Anne. She will not be a true friend.”

“But she is part of the royal circle—that inner sanctum of status and nobility. Shouldn’t I be cultivating that?”

“Not with her. Not with them. No one in that family can be trusted. I advise you to stay away.”

It is well known that Wyatt and the Duke of Suffolk don’t get along. Some long-standing dispute. The stories make them both sound like infatuated girls, jealous over the king’s attention.

“They can only bring you misery.”

I’m suddenly tired of instruction. Tired of always getting it wrong, always seeking improvement and never seeming to achieve it.

“Your point is taken, sir.”

I rub my hands on my skirts and turn to walk away.

“Don’t do that.”

More?

“Don’t do what, Wyatt?” I don’t even turn to look at him. I can no longer muster the energy to keep up the pretense.

“That.”

He takes my left hand—turning me to face him—and flattens it to his. It requires every bit of my resolve not to pull away, my crooked little finger awkward in his palm. He doesn’t seem to notice—at least, he doesn’t react. Someone must be watching.

“Rubbing your skirts. It’s a habit, Anne. And a nasty one at that. It’s as bad as Jane Parker biting the skin at her fingernails. But at least that brings attention to her face. Your compulsion makes your face invisible.”

“You don’t even like my face at the moment,” I mutter. Like a sullen toddler.

“Try this.” He reaches out to stroke a strand of hair loose from my hood. He winds it along the length of his finger, slowly. “You want to attract the eye.” His hand releases mine and drops to my skirts.

“Not here.” He draws the backs of his fingers slowly upward, like a man’s gaze. “But here. To your breasts, your neck, your hair.”

I feel a shiver of heat and hold my breath.

“Your eyes.”

His own eyes find mine, and there is something in them I’ve never seen before. He rests his palm on the side of my face. I smell the ink, metallic on his fingers. I tilt my head slightly, his hand taking a little of the weight from my shoulders.

I want to rub my hands on something, but one is caught up against the velvet of his chest. And the other I find covering the hand that cradles my face.

I swallow, and his gaze trails the action at my throat and comes to rest on my lips.

“We’re putting on quite a show,” I murmur, and his eyes snap back to meet mine.

“You’re learning well.” A compliment. But his smile is tight. So after all his criticism, I’m not sure he means it.

“Let’s hope it pays off tonight,” I say.

Wyatt takes a step back, dropping my right hand from his chest and pulling my left to his lips in a showy, chivalric kiss. But he continues to hold it tightly.

“Absolutely.” He nods. “Now go and get ready.”

But he doesn’t let me. He holds on. And I want him to.

“One more thing, Anne. Before you leave.”

I suddenly wonder if he’ll ask me to kiss him. I wonder if maybe I’ll say yes.

“Yes?”

“Take that rubbish off your face before I see you again.”

He bows, drops my hand, and walks past me to the watching chamber. I take a deep breath, avoid touching my skirts, and turn around to leave, assuming I’ll meet the half-averted gaze of an inveterate gossipmonger.

No one is there.

14

I
SCRUB MY FACE, THE PASTE LEAVING WHITE STREAKS OVER RED
skin. The rough linen and cold water scour and burn. The cloth drags at my eyelids and plucks at the lashes. My eyes are as red as my lips—inflamed—my entire face mottled and puffy.

Not exactly the image I had in mind for my bid to conquer the court.

Mary and Jane say nothing when we meet to dress for the play. My face feels raw and my eyes ache. Even without a mirror, I know I look a fright. Jane won’t look at me, and Mary just purses her lips together. I dawdle while they dress, helping Mary with her stays while she helps Jane with her skirts. They are beautiful, their faces unmarred.

I’m still in my chemise and bodice, my gown thrown across a cedar chest. Mary shakes out my sleeves before coming to me to lace them on.

“Stop,” I say, and she freezes, a sleeve held out before her like a peace offering. “I can’t. I can’t face them. The crowd. The chorus. The cardinal.” The king. “Not like this.”

Mary lowers her arms, looks at me sternly.

“Yes, you can.”

“Look at me! They will hate me. For my face. My dress. Because I’m a Boleyn. No matter what Wyatt says, they will hate me. The duchess hates me.”

“The duchess hates everyone, Anne.”

“You can take over my role, Mary.”

“No, I can’t. I’m Aphrodite.”

“Then Jane . . .”

But Jane is no longer in the room. Mary drops the sleeves and takes my face in both of her hands. Gently. Like a mother.

“Nan, you can’t let a little animosity stop you. If I had, I would be pulverized by now. Don’t you think I feel this every day?”

“You have the king.”

“Yes. And that’s part of the problem. I’m the king’s mistress.” Mary pauses. “But for how long?”

Before I have a chance to respond, the door bangs open and Wyatt strides into the room, fierce and feline. Jane pauses behind him, closing the door with her foot.

“What does Jane mean, you’re not going on?”

Wyatt grabs me by the shoulders, then realizes he’s touched bare skin at the neck of my chemise. He leaps away, shaking his fingers as if he’s been scalded.

I’m so ugly even Thomas Wyatt can’t bear to touch me.

I take a deep breath. Hold my hands still. “I can’t go on like this.”

He studies my face, and his tone softens.

“Good God, what has she done to you?”

Somehow this hurts more than his anger when he called me a fool.

“It will go away,” Mary says quickly. “It already looks better.”

When Wyatt reaches out to touch my face, I duck and step aside.

“Right,” I say. “Let’s just put it off for a couple of hours. It’s only the king and the cardinal waiting.”

Wyatt coughs a laugh, and while his back is turned, I grab a cloak to cover myself, then tie my hair into a knot.

“Actually,” he says, “I already have a solution. One that won’t require our notoriously impatient monarch to wait.”

He turns to Jane, who brings her hands out from behind her back, and with them, three decorative masks. All in white, trimmed in gold. One simple, trimmed with braid. One plumed in peacock feathers—Aphrodite. And one edged around the eyes with black and gold, wings of gold-dusted feathers at the temples. Mine.

I look at Wyatt.

“When did you plan this?”

“When I decided the whole production would be more fun as a masque. Lends an air of mystery.”

“And allows the men to choose their dancing partners,” I add. He’s thought of everything. If only the roles were reversed and I could be the one to make a choice.

Wyatt’s dimple disappears when he catches a glimpse of my chemise beneath the open cloak.

“Get dressed.” He turns back to the door. Pauses. Looks back. “You’ll be wonderful. A jewel held to the light.”

He disappears, and I find myself wondering what it would be like to dance with him.

Mary and Jane each fasten a sleeve, and we tuck my hair into the gold caul of my cap before tying on the mask. I feel hidden. Mysterious. Sheltered.

Beautiful.

I silently thank Thomas Wyatt for that.

15

T
HE GREAT WATCHING CHAMBER IS LIT WITH TORCHES AND
candles, their dragon’s breath swirling in the rafters along the gilded battens and Tudor roses. The walls are covered in tapestries shining with pigment and gold thread. But even they are unmatched by the riot of color presented by the audience. Mary, Jane, and I stand together in the pages’ chamber, peering out at the assembled masses.

Wolsey is a beacon in his cardinal red—a great, round hump of velvet and fur, beaming with self-satisfaction. Behind him run layers of courtiers and sycophants, ladies with faces etched in envy. Percy is near the door, a pillar around which a tide of courtiers flows, bringing with them James Butler, ursine and unruly.

The queen sits on a dais, dressed in lustrous gray that tinges her skin green, and a Spanish hood that cloaks her face in shadow, the soft folds veiled and saddened.

The musicians in the minstrels’ gallery start up a galliard, and a group of finely dressed ladies dance with the king’s men. I see several of the duchess’s confederacy amongst them. A well-cast prologue. Wyatt is quite a diplomat.

The dance is athletic and breathless, and the audience shouts and applauds when the dancers are done.

The person I wish to see most, however, is not here. When he enters a room, he infuses it with light like the moon and the sun all at once—drawing the eye to him, then searing the vision. But he isn’t here.