Tarnish (28 page)

When all is ready, I have the maid bank up the fire and send her away. I sit alone, embroidering a falcon on my yellow bodice. The light fades from the window, gray and lackluster.

As all grows dark outside, the steward enters. Smirking.

“Wine and supper for one, mistress?”

I nod. Wyatt is not coming. The steward has one more piece of news to report to my father.

I take a goblet of the wine to the fire and drink it quickly. The sour tang of it reminds me of George. I drink it all. And then another.

A brisk knock, and the steward reenters. Scowling.

“I’m not finished yet,” I say to my goblet. “Go away.”

“But I just got here.”

“Wyatt.” I turn. I want to wrap my arms around him. Keep him here forever. “You’re late.”

He nods. Cagey. Doesn’t leave the doorway.

“You must stay the night.”

The steward sucks a breath through his teeth.

“It is far too
dark
to return to Allington on icy roads,” I say more loudly, and then turn to speak to the steward. “Food for Master Wyatt, please. And more wine.”

He slides past Wyatt, who still stands at the door.

“Come in!” I say finally. “Get warm. Sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

I pour more wine as he enters. Drink as he sits on the edge of a stool.

The steward brings the food, and when I excuse him for the evening he leaves grudgingly. My father will hear all about this, and I find I don’t care.

“Your note said you have something to tell me.”

He takes a deep breath.

“I’ve left Elizabeth.”

His wife.

“It’s hardly news, Wyatt.”

“No. I’ve said so. It’s known in the court. I’m afraid I’ve upset everyone.”

“Well, you didn’t have to announce it publicly! You could just go on as you have been.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“So you chose to live outside the norm. Risk being exiled.” Like me.

“The king will forgive me.”

“Why?” I ask.

“He always does. He finds me charming.”

“More fool him,” I tease, and realize it’s something else the king and I have in common. “However, my question is, why are you leaving her?”

“We are nothing alike.”

Like me and Percy.

“But you have a son.” I find the words difficult to say. “Surely that means you must have . . . wanted her. Once.”

I take another gulp of wine.

Wyatt clears his throat and crumbles his bread between his fingers. The silence in the room rises like heat, stifling.

“Never mind,” I say, my words brittle as fallen leaves. More wine.

“No,” Wyatt says. “There was a time. I wanted . . .” Again the grinding in his throat. “Everyone. Anyone. I tried hard to be faithful. Elizabeth, she . . . she threw it back at me. Laughed at me. She would get all painted up, like a doll . . . and go and sleep with someone else.”

“And you were . . . jealous?”

“No. Humiliated. I never loved her. I think that made her hate me. So we both just . . . lived without regard. Ignored each other. Slept with whomever we wished.” He looks away. “Last week she used my bed. With the steward.”

I finish another goblet. The room is so warm. Wyatt stares into the fire and his eyes seem consumed by it.

“And when I . . . when the duchess painted me in her ceruse, it reminded you of that humiliation?” I don’t want to say it, remembering his anger. But my tongue—which is never tame at the best of times—has been loosened by the wine.

“I reacted badly.”

A single statement. No explanation.

“You did,” I say lightly. “But our friendship survived.”

Wyatt looks at me. Looks like he wants to say more, say something important, but remains mute. I take another gulp of wine.

“You know”—I break the silence—“George says men and women can’t be friends.”

“You know,” Wyatt replies in the same tone, “George doesn’t always tell the truth.”

I laugh, and Wyatt raises his goblet to me in a toast. I watch him over the rim of mine as I drink, and he does the same. I pause, holding the goblet just level with my lips; the feral creature deep behind my ribs expands and stretches, bringing me to the verge of tears. And laughter.

Wyatt lowers his goblet, leans toward me, ready to speak.

But I jump forward. Spill my wine. Ignore it.

“I need a friend, Wyatt,” I say, perching on the edge of my stool. “A true friend. I think so many people wish me ill. So many want me gone.”

“We’ll stay away from them,” Wyatt says quietly. “It will just be you and me. We don’t need the court. We don’t need your brother or your family or the king. We’ll conquer them all. Just the two of us. Together.”

“If I see only you”—my voice cracks—“I’ll never be married, Wyatt.”

“Maybe marriage isn’t the pinnacle of success.”

I think of Percy in that tiny, dark back room. And I think of Wyatt. Here. Now.

“I’m inclined to believe you’re right.”

He looks at me for a moment. We are on the verge of something. I feel it like a precipice before me in the dark.

“Why?” Wyatt’s voice comes from the other side of that crevasse. I know that if I bridge it, our friendship will never be the same.

I cannot make that leap.

“Well, let me tell you,” I say, pulling back from the brink, and begin counting on my fingers. “It makes a woman boring and unattainable, to begin with. No one really flirts with a married woman. Especially one married to a powerful man. Not fun at all.”

Wyatt laughs and sits back. His eyes are half closed.

“It’s far too much work.” I take a swig of wine. I’m beginning to see why George drinks so much. It makes life easier. It makes talking easier. “Not only must a wife run the household and raise the children, but she must also tend to all the needs of her husband.”

“Such as?”

Wyatt’s eyes are now almost fully closed. But I sense he is watching me.

“Planning his favorite meals, enduring his odious friends.” John Melton comes to mind. “Sewing endless hems on endless shirts.”

“Don’t forget nightly entertainment,” Wyatt adds lazily.

I ignore the implication.

“Not only all of that, but marriage completely destroys the equilibrium in the court, taking away all the eligible and interesting men.”

“Oh?” His eyes are open now. Guarded. Thinking of Percy. I take another drink and crash on, trying to be humorous.

“Francis Bryan,” I begin my list.

“Your cousin from hell,” Wyatt snorts.

“Henry Norris.”

“You keep going on about him, but I don’t think you’re really interested.”

“Shows how well you know me then!”

He leans forward, over his empty plate.

“I know you better than I know myself, Anne. Henry Norris is not your type.”

“Well, he is already taken, anyway,” I quip, not ready to give up the banter. “And then there’s George.”

“He’s not married.”

“Yet. But poor Jane Parker is ready and willing.”

Wyatt makes an appropriately concerned face for her.

“The king.”

Wyatt laughs his great burbling roar, more intoxicating than the wine.

“The king belongs to a completely different circle, Anne.”

I almost don’t say it. But it spews out of me. “And you, taken from the flirting pool long before your prime.”

Wyatt coughs on his wine.

“Doesn’t seem to have stopped you.”

“Nothing can stop me, Wyatt,” I say dizzily. “You said it yourself.”

“I did,” he says, entirely too thoughtfully. Too thoughtful by half for the deliriousness of the wine.

“You must stay the night with me.” I stand too quickly and have to grab the table for support. Just one more sip of wine to steady me. I barely taste it. My lips are numb. I press the rim of the goblet to my mouth, awed by the absence of feeling.

Wyatt takes the goblet away. When did he stand, too? He’s so close. So close to me. I can taste the velvet of his doublet. Breathe the blue of his eyes.

“Where?” he asks, his voice rough on the skin of my cheek. His mouth so close to mine.

My lips want to kiss him.

“In the guest room,” I say, the words troubled on my tongue.

He hesitates. Pauses in the spinning of the room.

“But quiet.” I lay one finger on his lips to silence him. Almost like a kiss. “My room is just down the gallery.”

“I won’t breathe a word.” He speaks with a sigh.

“It would ruin your reputation if you did,” I scold, shaking the finger under his nose. And I laugh. I try to step away from the table, but my train and skirts turn against me, and I stumble.

“Come, Anne.” Wyatt puts an arm around my waist. “Time for bed.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

I lean into him, my feet happy to be relieved of weight and responsibility. Up the stairs and down the gallery, my hip bumping his, the length of him against me. We stop just inside the door of my great, empty bedroom, and the numbness rolls down my body in a wave, followed by a crash and thunder of sensation. I can feel every point where our bodies touch.

I lift my face to his, sure that he feels it too.

“Undress me,” I whisper.

I feel his entire body groan as he takes a step backward, catches me by the shoulders before I fall.

“You’re drunk, Anne.”

Is that regret I hear I his voice? Or pity?

“My maid,” I mumble. “I sent her away. I can’t reach my laces.”

I turn around and fumble with the knots to demonstrate. Bow my head to hide my face.

I feel his sigh on the back of my neck, his fingers light and quick, unbinding the leather and buckram that hold me together.

“Thank you,” I say to the floor. I cannot look at him again.

He turns me around, and I clutch the gaping bodice to my chest. Gently, he pulls the pins from my hood and slides it off. He smooths back my hair, running his fingers through the length of it.

And kisses me.

On the forehead.

He steps out into the gallery and closes the door behind him. I am alone. The moment is lost. I step out of my skirt, drop my bodice to the floor, wrenching the laces out of the last few eyelets. I shed all my layers of protection and crawl beneath the soft, worn counterpane. I press my fingers to my lips. Imagining.

Before succumbing to oblivion.

39

I
DREAM OF THE COURT.
I
T CRACKLES WITH COLOR AND LIGHT,
each gown and doublet more vibrant than the last and my head rings with the cacophony of hues. Faces mash and blur and I recognize no one, am recognized by no one. The howl and call of their voices welcome and repulse me.

I dream that the queen has recalled me for a special event. She wants me to play the lute and to sing. I am given a tiny room of my own at the back of the palace, north-facing windows letting in little sunlight but all the smells of the river at low tide. I am told to change my clothes. But I can’t find my green damask gown. I can’t find the white sleeves shot with gold silk. I can’t find my French hood. Everything available for me to wear is red. The color of claret. The color of blood.

Red gown. Red kirtle. Red sleeves. Red hood, gabled so steeply I fear it will block out all light.

And for jewelry, nothing but a string of pearls.

I dress carefully. All in red. Somehow, my fingers manage the laces all on my own. I follow the sounds of laughter and dice down to the queen’s rooms, where the men play at cards and the women whisper gossip.

I pick up the lute and stare at the strings. The lute is like an instrument I’ve never seen before. It feels utterly foreign. I remember the last time I played.
À toi pour toujours
. The look on Percy’s face. The look on Wyatt’s.

I can’t play.

I can’t sing.

I don’t know how. Silence descends as everyone turns to stare. The string of pearls tightens, like a garrote, and I wake with a start to the pale darkness before dawn. Cold, the air heavy with moisture. My chest heavy with tears. The black bars of the window barely visible against the dark sky.

Then a shadow moves across it.

“Who’s there?” I sit up, clutching counterpane and pearls, terror lodged in my throat.

“Anne?”

I recognize his voice. His shape. His weight when he comes to the bed to sit beside me. His breath on the bare skin of my back.

“I had a nightmare.”

“I know.”

“I was lost,” I say. “Dressed in blood. I couldn’t remember how to play. I couldn’t remember how to sing. They watched me. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t even sing.”

“But you can sing, Anne.”

“I wasn’t me. I was someone else. Dressed and silenced.”

I forgot to remove my pearl necklace before I went to sleep. I fumble to unclasp it and feel Wyatt’s warm fingers on mine. Inhale the metallic smell of ink. The pearls cascade from around my neck, and he brushes my hair.

I am painfully aware of my bare skin, like a lute string ready to play music at a single stroke.

“Lie down.”

I do.