Tarnish (7 page)

“I have to. Or no one else will.”

“So what do we do first?”

“First we get their attention.”

“And how do we do that?”

“It’s already done. We have the entire room watching our intimate little scene.”

I realize how we must look to all the others. Standing so close, gazing intently into each other’s eyes. Like lovers.

“We have their attention. Now we need to capture their imaginations. Display your assets.”

“That’s what my sister says.” I pull away and cross my arms over my chest. “I don’t want lechery.”

This isn’t why I came to him.

“I meant your eyes. Dark. Mysterious. Alluring. And your face. So haughty, but such promises in those lips.”

“My lips have promised you nothing.”

“But the point is to look as if they might. You look like someone who has something to say. Something important.”

“I do.” I take his hand in mine again, hoping he’s really listening. “I have ideas. I’m more than breasts and eyes and lips, Thomas Wyatt.”

I pause for breath. I’ve said too much. But I can’t stop.

“I deserve to be heard.”

He studies me as one would a new species. We are separated by space and silence, no longer the portrait of young love. This will never work.

“You’re right,” he says quietly. “You do.”

He closes the gap between us, bends over me to whisper directly into my ear.

“Let’s make sure you’re heard. If you do as I say, if we work together on this, the most important ears at court will listen.”

I snap my eyes up to his.
The king?
Our lips are inches apart.

“Good. Now, you must follow my directions exactly. Lower your gaze.”

I continue to keep my eyes on his face. To show him that he cannot order me like a servant. Or a wife.

“They all see us. The men will watch your every move.”

I hesitate. If he’s right, my life at court could turn completely.

Perhaps even the king himself will notice. Will hear.

I follow Wyatt’s instructions and look to the floor at the center of the room. To the cluster of leather shoes pointed just slightly in our direction. I do not bow my head. I merely lower my gaze.

“Perfect.”

The praise is like a strand of melody in my heart.

“Think in terms of music,” Wyatt whispers, as if listening to the same tune, “of poetry. Because flirtation is a dance. Count the time in your head.”

He taps it out along the pulse at my wrist.

“Now wait for a count of four. Count it in your mind. Then raise your eyes. Tilt your head. And smile. Just a half smile. Don’t look away. Another count of four. Then turn. And walk away.”

I picture it, as if I am the one watching. The measured way it operates, like a crescendo, or an unfinished chord, leaving the listener breathless for completion. If he keeps his eyes on me no matter what I do, I will look as if I’ve captured him. As if I have the power.

“But wait,” he says, just before I lift my eyes, his words like a caress on my cheek. “And this is the most important part.”

He pauses. And then he does trace the line of my jaw, almost, but not quite, touching my lips.

“When you walk away—and every time you walk away from me—
don’t look back
.”

Like Orpheus. Like Lot’s wife. Looking back would break the spell.

He strokes one finger down the center of my upper lip, as if asking me to hush, then releases me.

“Now go.”

I do exactly as he says. The look. The smile. The turn.

I feel him watching me. I feel everyone watching me. I consider emulating Queen Katherine, fingers pressed around each other like a gift, head bent in humble piety. But I am not a queen. Never will be.

So I straighten my spine, elongate my neck. I look down and to the left, not back at Thomas Wyatt. Showing just a hint of my face—an enigmatic glimpse—before I straighten again and walk through the door to the gallery and out of their view.

I hear a rising tide behind me, as if the room has released a collectively held breath.

A sense of power swirls through me like a draft of potent wine, and I have to steady myself, one hand on the cool stone wall. I long to lay my forehead against it but hear the returning murmur behind me and walk away.

8

F
OR FOUR DAYS, NOTHING HAPPENS.
T
HEN, AT
W
OLSEY’S NEXT
visit, Henry Percy smiles at me again. One of the king’s men asks me to dance. And I hear, in the ripple of whispers around the duchess’s confederacy, “What do men
see
in her, anyway?”

It’s not much, but it’s something.

I try to carry on my normal routine. Serving the queen. Avoiding Mary because I still do not know what to say to her. Practicing my music on strange lutes because I left mine in her room, at the mercy of the king. When I need to escape the castle walls, I visit my falcon.

The mews at Richmond is smaller and more cramped than the one at Greenwich. But I believe the falcons are treated better here, because Simnel, a falconer from the Royal Mews at Charing Cross, has come to care for them.

I carry sugar comfits in my pocket, stolen from the kitchen, nod a good morning to Simnel. Make my way to the dark corner of the back of the mews.

My merlin, Fortune, is smaller than an average female, but persistent. And tenacious. Once she gets hold of something, she will not let it go. This makes her a less than ideal hunting companion, but I find her character faults appealing.

Fortune emits a piercing cry when I run out of comfits.

“Shhh, little one.” She dives at my empty hand. Her sharp beak pinches the skin of my finger, raising a welt. I shake my hand and laugh at her.

“What’s the matter, little one, don’t you love me anymore?”

“Actually, falcons are incapable of love.”

I turn to see Henry Norris haloed by the light around the door. Everyone knows Norris. He tilts in the lists and wins accolades in every tournament. He is a gentleman of the bedchamber, and therefore assists the king in his most private moments. Helps him dress.

Every time I see Norris, I think of the king’s bare back.

“Sir Henry,” I stutter as I dip a little curtsy. “You startled me.”

Fortune pipes her agreement.

“That certainly wasn’t my intention,” Norris says smoothly, and moves over as if to examine Fortune. This is the closest he’s ever been to me. And the most he’s ever said to me.

Even in the dim light of the mews, I can see the wear of weather on Norris’s skin. Days spent hunting have tanned his cheeks and chin and chiseled creases around his eyes. He is the same age as the king but appears older. And he is not nearly as alluring, though he would like to think he is. I can feel his presence, and his intention, in the way he breathes, the manner of his stance. Too close. Too encompassing.

I fight the urge to step away. This is what I wanted. The attention. Someone important who might—just might—listen. Norris is married. And libidinous. But powerful.

I turn my head to look at Fortune, who ruffles a bit. Nervous.

“I wonder, sometimes,” I say, stretching my words as if searching for them, “if the court isn’t a bit like a mews.”

When I look back, Norris appears a little perplexed.

I finish my thought looking him directly in the eye. “Full of separately caged individuals incapable of love.”

“Incapable?” His expression is one of mock offense. “All of us? By what reasoning do you come to this conclusion?”

I think of King François in France. Of the words he spoke to Mary that she shared with me, the eight-year-old confidante of a fifteen-year-old naïf. How he loved her. Worshipped her. Adored her. How Mary believed him. Believed in love.

How François passed her on to his friends when he was done with her. And each one took a piece of her until finally she was sent away and I was left alone in a foreign land. Again.

“Evidence of the opposite has yet to present itself to me,” I answer.

“Wyatt seems . . . suitably passionate.”

So it’s working. “Oh?” I ask, wanting to know more. “What makes you say this?”

Norris’s eyes drift down my face to my lips. And lower, to my bodice. Mentally, I shake off my revulsion.

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Norris answers. “And at cards last night, he . . . mentioned it.”

Now Wyatt is talking about me?

“What did he say?”

Norris grins. “That the passion isn’t one-sided.”

I narrow my eyes. This wasn’t part of the plan.

“Passion and love are not the same thing.”

“Too true,” says a voice behind us.

We both turn to see George stride in, twirling an empty goblet.

“Passion is easy to show,” he says, “love, sometimes impossible.”

I wipe my hands on my skirt to keep them from shaking.

“Though some of us could try a little harder,” George finishes.

Norris takes a step backward, eyes twitching between my brother and me. George doesn’t look at him.

Fortune cries, the tension too much for her. Or perhaps she is just looking for more comfits.

“Sir Henry, I would speak to my sister alone.”

Norris doesn’t move, stunned, perhaps, by George’s bluntness and lack of courtly protocol. The Boleyns are like that. It remains to be seen if we are forgiven for it. Norris tips a bow to me and stalks out.

“Jesus, George,” I hiss, “what do you think you’re doing?”

“I just thought you should know that Father’s going to be recalled. He’s coming back.” George heaves himself up from the doorframe as if his melancholy has weighted him down.

I feel as if the earth has shifted beneath my feet. We eye each other warily, the rustle of wings around us. Fortune flaps awkwardly on her post. Tethered to it.

Then George turns and walks stiffly through the door and into the wide, open courtyard beyond. I follow, leaving Fortune behind.

“When?” I call, trying to catch up to him, stumbling over the cobblestones.

“Soon. Summer.” George waves a hand bleakly, as if trying to brush me away.

“He’s coming here?”

George spins. “Of course he’s coming here. Or Windsor. Or wherever the court happens to be located. To wherever he can keep me under his eye. And his thumb.”

His
r
’s and
s
’s are overlong. His articulation is blurry, the music of his voice down tempo.

“Not just you.” I offer an ironic smile that feels more like a grimace. “There’s room beneath that thumb for both of us. Because we stick together, George, remember?”

My voice is from my childhood. The one where silence reigned at the dinner table, Father’s palpable disappointment an unwanted guest. A childhood where George could creep into my room at night and I would pretend not to notice when the pillow was wet in the morning. A childhood where we could escape to the orchards and climb the trees and make a pact: that we would always stick together. We would always be friends.

A pact Father broke by sending me to the Low Countries and then to France. By turning George into a stranger.

“Do we, Anne?” George looks at me, his eyes dark with agony or anger—I can’t tell behind the red-rimmed haze of the wine.

“We’re Boleyns. Boleyns always stick together.” I reach for him, but he twists away from me.

“We just present a united front. Unless it suits us otherwise.”

“No, George,” I tell him, wanting desperately to believe it myself.

“You are set to steal my inheritance from under my nose. Wolsey and our Howard uncle are pushing for a resolution of the Ormond inheritance. Their problems will be solved, and Father can’t complain if Boleyn blood inherits the earldom eventually. So they want to give it to Butler—to you.” He spits. “And you flaunt your unworthiness by throwing yourself at every married man at court.” He flings his arm in the direction Norris traveled.

“I don’t
want
your inheritance, George! I want nothing to do with James Butler or the earldom of Ormond.”

“Well, Father will make sure you have it,” George snarls. “To keep it in the family one way or another. Whether or not he finds you in Henry Norris’s bed.”

I bristle. “I’m not—”

“Or Thomas Wyatt’s.” George actually leers at me. “So I suppose you had better enjoy him while you can. I hear his tastes run a little . . . wild.”

“I don’t think I know you anymore, George Boleyn.” I struggle to keep my voice from shaking. Rage and humiliation burn in my throat.

George sags and lifts the empty goblet—turning it entirely upside down—and peers into the void, trying to catch a drop. Then he levels his gaze at me, unswaying, and when he speaks, his words are unslurred.

“When Father returns, Anne, you will be the one who disappoints him. You will be the one who suffers his displeasure. Not me, this time.” His face twists into a horrific smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. “Not me. You’re the one with the court chasing your tail. You’re the one everyone’s talking about. You’re the one who called Mary a whore, Anne. To her face.”