Brazen (33 page)

M
Y
FATHER
’
S
HOUSE
IS
G
RAND
AND
COLD
. I
TS
GL
ARING
STONE
front faces the dry scrub of the sandy heath. Miles of gorse and stunted pines, all obscured by the sandstorms that spin down from the north like a lacerating screen.

I feel so far removed from anything Fitz ever said or was, I hardly believe I knew him at all. It’s as if the last three years have vanished, and I’m thirteen again, awkward and flat-chested and so bent in on myself I’m almost concave. Always looking inward and always finding myself lacking.

My mother is not here. Not physically.

But I feel her in the stones. They are as hard as she is. Unflinching, ever watching. Immovable.

Hal is here, closeted in a little room. He never comes out except to call for more wine. I worry that my grief is somehow less than his, because I can still function. I stand and sit and walk and eat. I cannot write. I don’t know which is worse, because Hal seems to be disappearing, each word he writes shaving away a little of his soul.

His wife, Frances, has gone to visit her parents at their castle in Essex. I don’t know if it’s because she can’t face his misery or because Hal asked her to go.

Jane Boleyn is here. She, too, is a widow. She, too, should be able to call upon her family—or her husband’s—to take her in and meet her needs. But her father-in-law will not have her. Whether it’s because he wants no taint of the traitors he raised, or because he blames her for George’s death, I don’t know. I can’t ask.

I have my own grief.

Every morning, waking up is like struggling to the surface of a pond from deep within its depths. If I open my eyes before I reach it, I will drown.

However, it is the mornings I wake and don’t remember that are the worst. Because then it hits me like a stone, and all I want is to sink back beneath the surface and stay there.

Father takes Fitz’s body to Thetford Priory in the back of a wagon covered in straw. There is no string of mourners lined up behind it, just two men I don’t know, dressed in green and unsmiling solemnity. Hal rides Fitz’s favorite horse, bequeathed to him in his will with a saddle and velvet harness. His face is blank, waiting to be written on.

There are rumors that the king will close Thetford, as he has so many other monasteries. That he will seize the assets and turn the monks out on the roads of Norfolk. But my grandfather is buried here. And Fitz will be, too. Surely, the king has enough respect to leave them untouched. Surely, he can allow Fitz that much.

The stone floor of the chapel rings with the sound of Father’s boots as he walks me toward the altar. It is cold and stark and I can hear the wind outside blowing the summer southward. This bleak place is nothing like the chapel royal at Hampton Court. I do not wear pink. None of Fitz’s family—his blood family—are here. Not his father or his mother or either of his half sisters.

I don’t look at the lead-lined casket. I don’t imagine what’s inside. I don’t hear what the prior says. I go through the motions of the ceremony, bowing when necessary, kneeling, genuflecting. Weeping. I hear no words of comfort. I see no symbols of everlasting life.

I leave him there. My husband. Imprisoned in lead and stone.

And I return to my own imprisonment.

A
LL
OF
F
ITZ
’
S
THINGS
—
HIS
C
LOTHES
,
FURNISHINGS
,
G
ILT
,
JEWELS
, landholdings, everything—revert to the crown. The king gets it all, except for two silver spoons and one overlaid in gilt, rough around the edges and slightly bent. I get those. Three spoons for three years of marriage.

The heat of August settles over the fens, making everyone sluggish and irritable. Jane Boleyn keeps to her room. She has petitioned the king—through Cromwell—to claim her marriage jointure from her father-in-law. And to retain her title of Lady Rochford. As she is—plain Jane Boleyn—she has nothing. No money, no home, no prospects. All she can do is wait for an answer, hoping every letter that arrives will mean her salvation.

A flurry of messages comes for my father, causing Jane to rush from her rooms, only to turn back, disappointed. With every letter, my father’s countenance grows darker and more frightening.

Or perhaps more frightened.

When a leash of greyhounds arrives, followed by a leash of merlins, Father throws the accompanying note to the floor with a growl that causes the poor dogs to cower in the corner. He bellows at the servants to bring him paper and ink and sits down furiously to write.

Hal takes little notice. He is drowning in his own words in the corner. Cautiously, I pick up the note. The hand is not one I recognize, but the first sentence I see reads,
I am sorry for the great misfortune that has happened to you through the loss of the Duke of Richmond. . . .

His loss.

“But I have lost everything.” My voice sounds as if it has journeyed across a great distance.

Father turns, and when he speaks his tone is so cold the very room shivers with dread.

“And you think I have not?” he asks. “They say I shall be taken to the Tower.”

Hal looks up sharply.

“Why?” I cannot feel my fingers or toes. Even my lips are numb. I can’t lose my father as well. I will be left with less than nothing.

I will be left with my mother.

Father fixes me with a look of hostility I have never seen.

“Because of the funeral of
your
husband,” he spits. “No.” He stops and sneers at me. “Because of the funeral of the king’s son.”

“He was—”

“The king”—Father won’t even let me speak—“who told me to keep it quiet, is now saying that the funeral wasn’t done as befitted the king’s son. That it wasn’t done with enough pomp. That we didn’t treat the bastard with the respect and solemnity that should be accorded to one so high and mighty.”

Hal stands, and I can see he’s reliving the funeral just as I am. It was quiet, yes. But we accorded Fitz more respect and solemnity than the court ever did.

“The king,” Father continues, “who is mercurial at best, has now decided that his son deserved a funeral at Westminster. That he deserved a gilded carriage in the streets of London. That he deserved a princess and not the lowly daughter of a duke.”

“Well, perhaps he should have thought of that earlier,” I snap.

Father strides across the room to me so swiftly, I’m afraid he’ll knock me down. He stands practically on my toes, and despite the fact that I want to step away—that I want to
run
—I stand my ground.

“You think you can criticize the king?” he says. “You think you are so worldly because you spent three years in the company of that
whore
? She taught you nothing but how to talk back. Now she is gone, and so is the child you married, and you are left alone. You were supposed to be my triumph and now you are worthless to me. Worthless.”

My limbs have gone stiff with shock. This is my father, the one who always took my side against Mother. The one who told me I deserved to marry the king’s son. The one who believed I could be a duchess.

A queen.

Hal, in his corner, does nothing.

Father looks at me as he would a horse. Weighing my usefulness against the inconvenience of keeping me. I feel naked in front of him. Like he’s trying to see all my secrets.

“Did you?” Father asks.

“Did I what?”

“Know him.” Father steps so close to me that his breath tickles my ear. “Did you know him, Mary?”

I can’t answer. I stare at the gold braid in front of me.

He grips my chin and raises it so I look him in the eye. “Did you consummate your marriage? Against the king’s wishes?”

Yes.

He puts the flat of his hand on my belly, and something inside me snaps. Like the delicate pop of a bone tipping back into place. It brings with it just as much pain.

He is exactly like the king.

For him, my entire identity is fettered to my womb. And like Anne Boleyn, when that has proved worthless, I am only worthy of contempt.

“No.”

What I did with Fitz is not for Father or the king to know. The night I spent with Fitz is mine. And his. It wasn’t to fulfill a contract or to follow my father’s orders. Love is what’s important. Not the elevation or even the survival of the Howards.

Father steps away. “I thought not.”

I do not look at Hal. And he doesn’t contradict my lie.

Father walks across the room and throws open the heavy velvet drapes that shield me from the vivid sameness of the view outside the window.

“The king says the marriage is not valid,” he says. “It was not consummated, and therefore wasn’t a real marriage at all.”

My thoughts swim in the thick sea of grief and I stare out the window at the flat white sky above the gorse. It’s what they all tried to tell me. Hal. Madge. Fitz. Even the king’s daughter, Lady Mary. A marriage unconsummated is no marriage at all.

“Three years is a long time.” It’s almost like I’m not there, and he’s talking to himself. “I could have married you off to any number of different men by now. Thomas Seymour, perhaps.”

He rubs his chin while I try not to vomit.

“I will have to play this carefully.”

He approaches me again and puts his hands on my shoulders, as he used to. When he said I would be the triumph of the family. Tears spring to my eyes unbidden. It’s been so long since I was touched. Since someone cared.

Father has not yet said he agrees with the king. He will fight for me.

“I say that when I deserve to go to the Tower, then Tottenham shall turn French.” He pats me once, as though all is mended.

He is thinking only of himself.

He cannot see me. He cannot see my shock or my grief.

Neither can Hal, who has gone back to his words.

I am invisible.

Squeezed breathless by a crowd of ghosts.

F
ATHER
RETURNS
TO
COURT
,
AND
SHORTLY
AFTERWARD
J
ANE
Boleyn receives word that she is invited into the new queen’s household.

I am almost jealous.

She will return to a place where women are not welcome and unmarried women are prey. To a place where her name is vilified either for being associated with a disgraced queen or for being the author of that disgrace.

At least she will not be alone.

“Why do you want to go back?” My voice is throaty. A croak, like that of the frogs down at the pond.

“Why?” Jane turns to me. “Because it’s the only place to be. It is the only place.”

She says this as if it makes sense. As if it will convince me. I wonder if it does.

The word
court
is like the shell of an egg. You don’t know what it will taste like inside until you break it.

“I am nothing here,” Jane finishes simply.

“You’ll be nothing there.”

Her gaze doesn’t waver. Her eyes are odd. Golden like a lion’s. Her deep-brown hair is streaked by the sun coming in from the window. The silver threads glitter like tinsel.

“At least I’ll be there,” she says. “At least I’ll be useful.”

“Useful?”

“I will serve the queen.”

“You’ll serve Jane Seymour. The woman who replaced your sister-in-law. Who replaced your
friend
. I thought the Boleyns stuck together.”

She stands so quickly her stool clatters backward to the floor. The noise startles me, and I look up at her, fast approaching.

“There are no more Boleyns, or haven’t you noticed?” she says. She’s tiny, but she towers over me. “Just me and my father-in-law, who was disappointed in his children when they lived and even more so now they’re dead. He certainly isn’t sticking to anything but his own skin.”

“So you will, too.” I don’t flinch or back down or shrink into myself. She can’t scare me with her fury. I’m beyond caring.

“I
will
stick to my own skin,” she says. She’s shaking, but I can see it’s not from anger anymore. It’s from guilt. I can see it in her eyes.

“No one else will,” she says. “Not Thomas Boleyn. Certainly not the Howards, who will cut you down as soon as look at you. So I have to make something of myself. The only thing I’m good for is service to a queen. I’ve already served two. What’s one more? It’s unlikely anyone will want to marry me.”

I stand so I can look her in the eye. “After what you did to your last husband, I should think not.”

She flinches, but doesn’t shrink away. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“Wasn’t your fault you sent him to the scaffold?”

“Wasn’t my fault I told them,” she whispers.

I remember telling Cromwell that everyone flirts—even the queen. Madge told him everything she knew, thinking she was saving me. I’d like to pretend it wasn’t our fault, either.

I’m afraid it was.

“He wouldn’t stop asking.” Jane’s voice is barely audible. “Always the same questions, a hundred different ways. Until they felt like beatings.”

She pulls a rope of pearls out of the pocket at her waist and clicks them like rosary beads. “Cromwell knew everything. Everything I knew and more.”

“But it wasn’t true,” I say emphatically.

“None of it was true,” she says. “And all of it was true. She said those things. She told Norris that if anything happened to the king, he’d look to have her. She told Smeaton he wasn’t good enough for her. She let Francis Weston believe he was in love with her.”

“But she never slept with her brother, Jane. If you didn’t tell Cromwell that, I don’t know who did.”

Jane is silent for a long while.

“Cromwell knew, somehow,” she says. “He knew about an argument I had with Anne a long time ago. So long ago, I think it was even before the king’s interest. I accused Anne of . . . of that. I accused her of having her brother in her room. I was so jealous. He loved her so much.”

Jane stutters to an inaudible murmur. I step away from her in disgust.

“George Boleyn did not love his sister in that way,” I tell her.

“I know that!” she screams. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I thought it once. In some kind of insane jealousy. Someone overheard! Someone told Cromwell, and he wouldn’t let it go. He asked and asked and asked and asked. He wouldn’t stop asking until I told him what I’d said. That I had accused Anne of loving her brother and not wanting to marry anyone else. And then he stopped.”

Jane stops, too. I almost don’t hear her when she adds, “The silence was blissful. For a while.”

“So now you want to go back to court and ruin someone else’s life?”

“I will only do as I’m asked. I will serve the queen better than anyone. Because I won’t be acting in my own interests, only hers.”

“If you tell yourself that enough times, it might become true.”

“The only thing I’m good for is service to someone else,” Jane says. “It’s the only thing any of us are good for, Mary. Women. A wife, a daughter, a servant. I cannot have thoughts or wishes of my own. I have nothing. I am nothing.”

Is this all that is left for me? Loyal service to a queen I cannot respect in the court of a king I cannot tolerate?

When she turns to walk away, her back is straight. She looks nothing like that woman who has haunted the rooms and gardens of Kenninghall for these weeks. It’s almost like she’s proud to be nothing. To have made the choice to be nothing on her own, and to live only for someone else.

Or perhaps she did that before. She has been nothing but George Boleyn’s wife—Queen Anne’s sister-in-law—for years. Defined by her association with others.

Like me.

The daughter of a duke.

The wife of a duke.

But nothing on my own.

“Jane,” I call out, my voice once again cragged.

I reach into my pocket for the piece of ribbon and the little jewel, the golden
A
swinging from my fingers. I can think of no one better to give it to Princess Elizabeth. I hold it out to Jane, palm up.

“Take this.”

“No.” Jane steps back, a look of horror on her face, the pearls whispering beneath her fingers.

“Please.”

“No.” She shakes her head.

“She wanted it to go to her daughter.” The lie tastes bitter, but it’s the only way I can think to convince her. “Elizabeth may come to court.”

Sooner than I will.

Jane stares at the jewel in my palm. I see her wavering.

“When she’s ready,” she says. There is a hunger in her voice. She wants it for herself. A Boleyn connection. Something to hold on to and crush with the pearls in her pocket.

“It’s hers,” I say, desperate for her to understand. “It’s Elizabeth’s now. It may be the only thing she’ll ever have.”

Like my ridiculous spoons. The ones that I keep beneath my pillow so I can hold them when I sleep. The only tangible things I have to connect me to Fitz.

Jane nods, but she’s not really listening. I let her take the jewel from my hand, watch as she examines the ribbon it hangs on. She strokes the single pearl straight on her palm.

I almost take it back. But her fingers snap closed over it as if she knows what I’m thinking.

“It will be delivered,” she says. “She deserves to be remembered.”

I think, as she leaves the room,
Don’t we all?