Tarnish (12 page)

The king isn’t coming.

A sharp whistle from the audience wakes me, and I hear Wyatt, already narrating. Mary puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Remember, you’re better than they are, Nan.” She gives me a little push. “You’re a Boleyn.”

I adjust my mask and step into the chamber. The light from the torches blinds me. The colors of the doublets and gowns and the brilliance of the jewels and gold dazzle me.

“Smile.”

Mary’s disembodied voice comes from the shadows at my elbow.

I smile.

Mary moves past me, circling the great hall past all the courtiers, the brush of her skirts sighing over the floorboards and rushes.

I hear a muffled yelp as she passes the duchess.

“Excuse me, Your Grace.” A carrying whisper.

I smile and look up. Wyatt is watching me. I imagine he has been the entire time, acting the part of the besotted lover.

“Atalanta,” he says, raising a cheer from the men in the audience. “The most beautiful girl in Athens.”

He turns to include the audience.

“But also the swiftest, my friends. She is quick as a doe and loath to be caught. Only one man will suit her: the only man who can catch her.”

A boom of cannon sounds from outside, and the doors at the end of the chamber burst open. Four men enter, dressed in white and silver and cloth of gold, burning like flame and carrying with them the odors of night and saltpeter.

Four?

They, too, are masked, but easily recognized. Norris with his ink-black hair. Bryan, his dark-red tunic pulled tight around his wiry frame. George, his shambling gait giving him away.

And the fourth . . .

The fourth is the king.

He looks to me, his gray eyes clear and hot and knowing. A prickle at my neck quickly becomes a hum at the top of my head. I hardly know what to do with myself. I glare at Wyatt, who offers a minute shrug as if to say,
How could I refuse the king when he asked?
And then I feel a rush of warmth through me and turn back to the king. He must have asked to join in. I raise a hand to my lips, remembering the press of his there.

The king winks at me.

Wyatt stumbles over a couplet rhyme, and I glance at him in shock. Thomas Wyatt never drops a rhyme. He ignores me.

When I look back at the king, he has turned to Aphrodite, and my stomach roils with an unpalatable mix of jealousy, self-recrimination, and shame.

Fortunately, the play is a carefully choreographed dance and I know the steps well. Pursuit and escape. I can’t actually run about the room—it would look ridiculous. But the dance allows me to skip ahead of the men. Always in front. Always pursued. Never caught.

Mary sets up the final race, giving Wyatt the golden apples one by one. He rolls the gilded fruit before me to slow me down. Part of me wants to ignore them. To win the race. Lead the pack. But that isn’t how the story goes.

So I pick them up as he races past me, toss them to the audience. All eyes are on me, faces upturned.

Wyatt, victorious, takes me as his prize, and Mary blesses the union to the applause of the audience. But just as we are about to move into the final dance, he stops us with an upraised hand. The court quiets.

“We come to you disguised, my lords and ladies. Is this who we are? Or merely who we wish to be? Beautiful.” He indicates Mary.

“Loyal.” He bows to Jane.

“And unobtainable.” He turns toward me and hesitates.

His eyes are unquiet. The room falls into silence.

“Unmask!” a voice shouts from the audience.

“Let us be the judges!”

“Dance.” Butler’s growl is unmistakable.

“Let me set you a riddle.” Wyatt turns from me to face the audience. “Solve it, and you tell me who is our Atalanta.”

All eyes are on us as he approaches me with the measured steps of the verse.

“What word is that, that changeth not

Though it be turned and made in twain?”

I struggle to follow the riddle myself. A-N and N-A. It doesn’t change, however it is turned. Unlike me.

“It is mine answer, God it wot,

And eke the causer of my pain—”

Wyatt cannot see my eyebrow raised behind my mask. He’s laying it on a little thick.

“A love rewardeth with disdain

Yet it is loved. What would ye more?

It is my health, eke and my sore.”

Loved?

He stops in front of me, catches my hands before I rub them on my skirts, and holds them both to his heart. I take a step forward, wanting to taste the almonds on his breath, but his grip tightens and I stop. I study his face, but his true intention is hidden behind mask and make-believe.

“What word is it?” The voice is to my left. A mellifluous tenor. “Why, dear troubadour, the answer is simple.”

Wyatt lets go of me and steps back, leaving me impoverished. So I turn to the speaker. The king is facing me, his hand extended, his gray eyes shining behind his mask.

“Anna.”

16

B
ECAUSE HE IS STILL MASKED,
I
CAN DANCE WITH THE KING.

Because he asks.

I dance with the king.

The eyes of the entire room are on me. Still. Me. Anne Boleyn. I am nobody. And yet I am everything. I will not waste this chance. This time, my dance with the king will propel me forward, not send me home.

The top of my hood barely reaches his chin. I find myself facing the elaborately embroidered doublet—layered and appliquéd in damask and satin, blue, gold, yellow, and bronze. And the heat coming from it is intense.

Or perhaps that heat is coming from me.

This is my moment. This is my chance. I can be what I am. Only better. I know I can dance. In France, I was praised for the lightness of my feet, for the effortlessness of my movements. For the way I seem to feel the music in my limbs.

I feel the same rhythm in his.

The king lifts me with what seems to be so little effort, I feel like I am flying. Floating. His hands at the base of my ribs are like a tether to the sky. His touch sets my sinews vibrating like lute strings, all playing the same note.

My entire world is nothing but silk and velvet, fur and damask and the scent of cloves.

Until the dance ends.

He bows to me and turns, without a backward glance, to the audience, and we all unmask to gasps of practiced astonishment and wild applause. I manage a curtsy, though the note thrumming through my body conspires to unbalance me.

When the dancing continues, the king partners the duchess. It’s only fair, because she is the lady of greatest precedence after the queen, who again refuses to dance. Norris—looking delighted—partners Mary, who gracefully adjusts his roaming hands. Jane looks at George, who turns on his heel and strides to the far end of the room, plucking up a wine goblet on his way.

“You didn’t look out into the audience.”

Wyatt steps me into a turn and I lose sight of Jane, who seems about to cry. The players are all supposed to dance together. I quell a stab of anger at my brother, but Wyatt doesn’t miss it.

“Smile. You’re supposed to be enjoying this.”

I think of the one thing that can restore my good humor.

“Did you see, Wyatt? The king danced with me.”

“It’s all part of the performance, Anne. He answered the riddle.”

Defeated, I search for Jane as we come out of the turn. She is in the arms of Henry Percy, who is smiling. But not at her.

“Was everyone watching?” I ask Wyatt, wanting to taste once more the heady excitement of being part of the most intimate layer of the royal circle. I look up at him. “Did you see?”

“Everyone was watching, Anne. And yes, I saw. You could have shown more deference to your sister.”

“But he asked me, Wyatt!”

We execute a turn, and I spin away from him.

“During the play. She was Aphrodite. A goddess. And you treated her like . . . your sister.”

“She is my sister, Wyatt.”

“Still, deference is due.”

We chassé four steps, only our fingertips touching.

“And you missed a line at the beginning.”

“Because the king had joined us and I was a little bit surprised! Jesus, Wyatt, can I do nothing right?”

The dance brings us together again. Close. Pressed against each other, my hands in his.

“You dance rather well.”

“A compliment.”

I give him a hard stare until the dance requires me to move away from him, walking in a broad circle, before returning.

“You do,” he says. “You flow with the music. It’s very . . . sensual.”

The word runs like water down my spine. But then I remind myself who it is I’m speaking to.

“You’re still not winning the bet, Wyatt.”

He looks away. I follow his gaze to George, who stands leaning against an embroidered silk wall hanging. George raises his goblet to us. We turn, and I don’t see him drink. But I see Jane, watching his every move.

“Young Lord Percy can’t take his eyes off you.”

I meet Percy’s gaze, his oddly colored eyes. Jane says something to him, and he answers. But his eyes never leave mine.

“You know”—Wyatt’s voice is a little strained, but when I turn to look at him, his face is placid—“Percy could be the entrée into that circle of nobility whose acceptance you so desperately seek. Heir to the earldom of Northumberland. One of the highest—and oldest—noble families in the land.”

There is no mistaking the sardonic edge to his voice.

“That’s why we’re doing this, right?”

He looks at me sharply. “So you can marry Henry Percy?”

“So I can gain acceptance. So I don’t have to marry James Butler.”

“You could always become my mistress.”

The laughter is back in his voice.

“That would only solve one of my problems.”

“Oh, I’m sure James Butler wouldn’t consider marrying a poet’s tarnished mistress.”

“I would be the court darling, and the duchess would invite me to be her most trusted friend.” I lace my words with sarcasm.

“I said before, Anne, she’s not a friend you want to have.”

“I think I’ve figured that out, Wyatt. But you know what I mean.”

“Yes,” he says quietly. “Yes, I do.”

The dance ends and Wyatt takes me by the hand.

“Let’s go see what the night will bring.”

He leads me to Jane and Percy, who are standing silently, as if completely unsure of how to part.

“Mistress Parker,” Wyatt says smoothly. “I hope to have the pleasure of your company in a dance.”

Jane’s face lights up, and I think about her words that first day we really talked. How she described Wyatt as “beddable.” I shoot him a look that’s meant to say,
Don’t try anything with her.
He flickers a frown back at me.

“Mistress Boleyn,” he says, snapping a quick bow. “Lord Percy.”

Percy inclines his head as I curtsy. As the son of an earl, he doesn’t need to offer much deference to the daughter of a nobody.

“Dance?” Uttering one word brings a flush of color to Percy’s face, and I am instantly charmed by his self-consciousness.

But when the music begins, he promptly steps on my white satin slipper.

He doesn’t apologize.

And I wonder if Wyatt has been training him, too.

Percy’s gaze intensifies as he follows the rhythms of the music. His eyes—a blue so pale they’re like sunlight—keep flicking from my face to his feet to the other dancers and back again. Perhaps he’s just nervous.

Of dancing? Or of being with me?

We execute a turn and when we face each other again, he clears his throat.

“The masque was very . . . entertaining.”

His voice is musical. Like the bass notes of a lute. Thrumming. Resonant.

“Thomas Wyatt is quite a poet.” I try to sound noncommittal, but it is obviously the wrong thing to say. Percy’s face falls into craggy shadows and he glances over to where Wyatt is making Jane laugh so hard she can’t find the steps. I miss one, too, but Percy catches me.

He clears his throat again. A judgment. He thinks I’ve complimented Wyatt because of an attachment.

“You dance very well,” I tell him. Men need flattery. Especially noblemen.

“Thank you.” He turns. Frowns at me. “So do you.”

No comments on my sensuality from Henry Percy.

I watch him from the corner of my eye as we promenade away from each other. He is watching Wyatt’s catlike grace. Comparatively, Percy is a bit stiff. A bit unsure of the steps. I find his insecurity appealing, a nice change from Wyatt’s relentless self-confidence.

“I hear that you play the lute,” Percy says when he returns to me, all of his attention focused through that penetrating gaze.