Tarnish (13 page)

“I enjoy music.”

“And I hear around the court that your voice could rival Orpheus. That it charms all the animals of the forest and entices the birds to dance.”

I laugh. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear at court.”

“There is much loose talk,” he replies, and narrows his eyes once more at Wyatt.

He’s trying to make sense of what he has heard. And I hope he is not one of the small-minded people who believe Wyatt’s hints and implications.

“The court is full of stories told by perjurers and poets,” I say a little more loudly than I had intended. As we turn again, I take a deep breath and when I come back to him, I murmur warmly. “And one can only believe the things experienced in the flesh.”

My timing is just right. As I say the word “
flesh
,” his hand is at my waist. I feel a squeeze of pressure before the flush starts at his ears and floods his face and throat.

Wyatt will be delighted. I risk a glance at him, expecting a nod or a wink or a single dimple at the very least. But his back is turned.

“Then I should like to hear you sing one day,” Percy croaks, and I look up into his face. Vulnerability softens his features.

I lower my gaze, the steps of flirtation taught to me by Thomas Wyatt as measured as the steps of the dance as it comes to an end. Just as I begin to sense Percy’s concern at offending me, I look up and smile.

“One day I will,” I tell him. “For I would like to see what it entices you to do.”

17

“Y
OU CERTAINLY MADE A SPECTACLE OF YOURSELF LAST NIGHT.”

George enters the maids’ chamber at Richmond as if he’s been here a hundred times before. He probably has. I shudder at the thought that he could have been the man I smelled on my bedclothes.

“You certainly made yourself scarce,” I reply. I’m all alone—for once—looking for the little pot of ceruse. Wanting to give it back to the duchess. I find it and twist it in my hands as I sit down on the bed.

George sits next to me with a flourish and then lies down, his head in my lap, looking up into my eyes. Like a lover. He grins.

“The best girl was already taken by the king.”

I stroke his hair, trying to tame it.

“Hardly,” I say, the glow from last night still lodged in my chest. And the glow of George’s praise.

When we were children Father sneeringly called George a girl when he cried. So we played a betting game to soothe the sting.
Who’s the best girl?
The winner got all three desserts at dinner. Mary peed herself laughing the day George came into our room dressed in bodice and skirts, singing a love song in falsetto and salting it liberally with profanity and counterfeit flatulence.

He got all our sweets for a week for that stunt. Made himself sick on them.

“You deny the fact that our sister was the prettiest girl there?”

I sigh and drop my hand to the bed. Of course George wasn’t complimenting me. Or renewing our childhood friendship. I surreptitiously wipe my hand on my skirts—George’s hair is a little greasy.

“No need to be jealous. Mary’s success benefits us all.”

“What good has it done me?” I snap. I’m sick of George. Sick of his backhanded compliments and sly criticisms. I want so badly for him to sit here with me, reveling in our success. Not cutting it to pieces.

“It brought you to court, my dear. And won the king’s support of your marriage to my legacy.”

“I don’t want your bloody legacy!”

“Well, you should, you know. If not for yourself, then for the family. A title is the only way ahead. Money. Influence.” He looks up at me, his eyes savage. “Having a sister to sell. It’s the only thing you’re useful for, after all.”

I push him off my lap, and he lands in the rushes with a thump and a laugh.

“Get out.”

I kick at him and he grabs my ankle and pulls. I cling to the counterpane, but it does nothing to slow my descent and raises a cloud of dust as it falls to cover us.

George laughs again, an almost childish giggle, and I can’t help but feel my anger diminish. We are tented beneath the counterpane. Just the two of us. Like it used to be.

“Girls are good for more than that, you know.” I prepare to give him the same speech I gave James Butler.

“They certainly are, dear sister.” George waggles his eyebrows. “Though I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Don’t be disgusting.”

I scramble with the counterpane to pull it off. Before it suffocates me.

“Don’t make yourself more than you are.” George stands and brushes his doublet. Checks his fingernails. “As a woman, you have no choice. You have to do what your father says. And eventually what your husband says. You can use your feminine wiles to encourage certain outcomes, but at the end of the day, their will is the only will that matters.”

I think of Queen Claude: lame, pious, meek. She should have been a queen in her own right. As the daughter of a king she should have ruled. But French Salic law prevented it, so her debauched and warlike husband, François, rules instead.

Even royalty can be rendered impotent.

“I’ll just have to put my feminine wiles to work then.”

“You already are, dear sister. You have half the men at court panting after you. Just make sure you sell to a higher bidder than Thomas Wyatt.”

“I’m not selling anything to Wyatt.” I stand and put my bed back together. “Our friendship is strictly that: friendship.”

“Anne.” George’s voice is full of pity, as if I’ve just admitted to believing in true love. “Men and women cannot be friends. It’s impossible. It’s like the lion and the lamb. Oil and water. Grain and grape.”

I turn to face him. “And why is that?”

“There are far too many reasons to count. Incompatibility. Dissimilarity.” He leans toward me. “Sex.”

I step back. “That’s not an issue.”

“Of course it isn’t, dear sister. Wyatt has much better taste.”

George raises a smirking eyebrow, but I refuse to rise to the bait.

“The real reason that men and women cannot be friends,” George continues, “is that women don’t know how to have fun.”

I stare at him.

“That is wrong on so many levels, George.”

“All you do is sit around and sew. Gossip. Maybe play a few boring tunes on the lute.”

“Friendship is not based on fun.”

“It is in my book.”

“If we were given the chance to go out to London and roam the streets and attend a bearbaiting, we might do more than sew.”

“You would drink in the taverns and get in a brawl and maybe go whoring afterward?” George laughs.

I scowl at him.

“There,” he says, and pats my cheek gently. “See? No fun at all.”

He kisses me sloppily.

“Be not afeard, my darling. Friendship has no place between a man and a woman. But fun?” He smiles a sly smile. “Fun certainly does—especially when it comes to sex. And occasionally serves a purpose, as well.”

He walks to the door, creaking it open.

“Fun for whom, George? And to what purpose?”

He turns back to look at me. “Why, fun for the man of course. And for the woman, it serves all kinds of purposes, from hooking the man to providing him an heir.”

“But no fun for the woman?”

“You just have to learn how to have fun with it, Anne. And you will, with the right guidance. I suppose Wyatt would serve you well in that capacity.”

I make a rude gesture that he doesn’t see because he has already turned and walked away. I can hear him whistling.

“Bastard,” I mutter under my breath. I feel my hair to make sure it’s tucked under the edge of my hood, straighten my sleeves, and follow George’s footsteps through the doorway, clenching the pot of ceruse in my hand. I might as well have another confrontation. It seems to be the day for it.

But when I round the corner and see James Butler at the end of the gallery, I slow my steps until he disappears into the warren of rooms.

Better not to have more confrontations than absolutely necessary.

18

I
NAVIGATE THE CHAOS OF
R
ICHMOND TO THE ROOM RESERVED
for the Duchess of Suffolk. I take a deep breath, knock, and am allowed entrance. Her confederacy is there, fussing and bootlicking, except for Jane Parker, who sits in the corner, silent and unobserved.

“Your Grace,” I say by way of announcement, and curtsy deeply. It doesn’t hurt to soften a slight with deference.

“Mistress Boleyn.”

I hear the coldness in her voice. And I believe Wyatt is right. She never really meant to be my friend, just wanted to use me as a doll for a day.

“I have come to return this, Your Grace.”

I cup the little pot in my upturned hand and raise my gaze.

My eyes take in Mary Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, sister to the king, with her perfect skin and silky auburn hair. Her damask sleeves are the color of a weathered rose, her bodice covered in pearls and gold. She doesn’t need the ceruse. I should have just thrown it away.

I meet her gray eyes. They hold none of the merriment that the king’s do. Still, the similarity stuns me.

“You have no use for it?”

Silence. Jane’s hands twist in her lap, and I can see the effort it takes for her not to bite her nails. She catches my eye briefly, and I think I see her shake her head.

“No, Your Grace.”

“You have no use for a token of friendship.”

It’s a statement. Not a question. She is equating her friendship with the ceruse. If I refuse it, if I refuse to wear it, I refuse her.

I think of Wyatt. The ripple of his laughter when I make a joke. The way he actually listens to me when I speak.

“No, Your Grace.”

She draws herself up to her full height. She is tall, like the king. She looks down on me, eyes trailing the cut of my hood. My gown.

“You think because you inspire the lust of the men of the court that you have become someone. Someone risen. But you are nothing. And will always be nothing. No matter whom you dance with.

“You will never be one of the inner circle of nobility, Anne Boleyn. A Stafford. A Talbot. A Percy. No matter how many masques you do. Or heads you turn. You should accept the hand of friendship when it is offered.”

“I am a Howard.”

“I’m afraid often that is more of a hindrance than a help.”

Someone in the room titters, but I don’t look away from those gray Tudor eyes.

“One piece more of advice, little Boleyn,” the duchess adds, affecting a generous smile. “You should stay away from that rascal poet, Thomas Wyatt. He has no honor. He can’t be trusted.”

I think about the laughter I heard follow me from the room after she slathered me in ceruse. The way that muck felt when I scrubbed it off. The way she looks at me now as if I’m something she found stuck to the bottom of her slipper.

“That is interesting, Your Grace,” I say, “because he says the same thing about you.”

I know I will regret these words later, but they taste like sugared almonds and I savor them.