Tarnish (39 page)

She says this in a small voice, unsure.

“I think you have asked enough favors of the king.”

“Or perhaps given too many.”

“I didn’t say that, Mary.” I stop short of actually asking for forgiveness.

“No, you didn’t have to.”

“I’m not bemoaning the lack of a husband. I want to belong to myself.”

“You do already. Don’t you see, Nan? That’s why he wants to possess you.”

Men only want what they can’t have.

Mary knows. We hold the moment, caught tight in the stillness at the center of a storm. I am incapable of apology. And she is incapable of censure. Neither of us is willing to talk about it openly.

“I wish I were more like you.” She says it so simply. A statement of fact.

“No one wants to be like me. At least, no one should.” Lost. Alone. Hunted.

Broken.

“No, you’re wrong, Nan,” Mary says softly. “You’re strong. You’re so sure. You know what you want, and you’re not afraid to make it happen. You don’t let anyone walk on you or take anything from you.”

But I do. I did. Percy took from me.

And Thomas could take everything.

Her eyes slide away from mine. Mary has always had what I wanted. Beauty. Charm. Kindness. The king.

“I’m afraid.”

I don’t realize the words have come from me until I see Mary’s reaction to them. Her eyes widen, and she presses her lips together.

“You?” she asks. “Nan, what are you afraid of?”

This
.

I’m afraid I was wrong. Wrong about Mary, who never wanted to be better than anyone else; she just wanted to be herself. Never meant to mother me, just wanted to be a mother. Wrong about Jane, because she never deserved my pity. Wrong about George, who maybe never was my friend, no matter how I remember it. Wrong about Thomas.

I’m afraid all the things I’ve said and done will hunt me down and haunt me. Because the thing I’m afraid of is the same thing I told the king would make me happy. The thing I’ve been pursuing through the forest of my own life.

“Love.”

57

T
HREE DAYS BEFORE HIS WEDDING,
G
EORGE DISAPPEARS.
J
UST
vanishes from the court.

Someone says he saw George on a horse. Someone else says George has taken a hawk and walked out over the hill behind Duke Humphrey’s Tower. Another says George clambered aboard a dinghy and headed downstream to London.

Most likely to the stews.

That is the rumor the court believes.

Jane doesn’t say a word, and her face betrays no emotion in public.

But when she finally comes to talk to me—trapping me in our little corner of the maids’ chamber—all of her fear and love and desperation show.

“Where is he?” she demands.

“I don’t know.”

I don’t need to make it worse.

“Why isn’t he here?”

She wrings her hands, and I see that every fingertip is bitten to the quick, the cuticles ragged, one finger freely bleeding.

“I don’t know,” I say again, and reach out to put a hand over hers in an effort to still them, but she flinches away from me.

“Of
course
you know!” she screeches. “The two of you are like
this
.” She shows me two fingers intertwined, a dark scab standing out against the white of her twisted knuckle.

“I tried to tell you,” I say. “George and I are not that close.”

“Everyone at court knows that’s not true. That you and George have been inseparable since birth.”

I struggle not to roll my eyes.

“Except for the seven years I spent in France.”

“He
pined
for you, Anne. He told me so himself.” She says this with such intensity I have to believe her. I don’t doubt that Jane remembers with absolute clarity every word she has ever heard George utter.

“What else did he tell you?”

“That he stole apples from the orchard for you when you had a cold.”

He did. And ate half of them himself.

“He said he taught you your first word in Latin.”

“Shame it was a word that earned me punishment”—the dinnertime disappointment from Father.

Jane stops trembling. Sits down on the bed. Gazes out the far window at the clouds scudding across the sky.

“I thought if I got close to you, I’d get close to him. I thought you’d help me win him.”

I feel her confession like a punch in the chest. It knocks me back. The edge of the next bed catches me behind my knees and I collapse onto it.

“You lied to me.” Like Wyatt. Like George. Like Father.

I’m a fool.

Jane hangs her head, letting it nod twice.

“I thought you were my friend,” I whisper. Feeble. “You fought for me. With James Butler.”

She turns to me, her eyes glazed and slightly manic.

“It wasn’t you,” she says. “He said . . .”

She hesitates as if what she has to say is painful to her.

“He said George was in your bedchamber. He implied . . .”

Oh, God. She was defending George. Not me. I got it all wrong from the beginning. I got everything wrong.

I stumble to my feet. I have to get out.

“Anne.” She reaches for me, grabs my hand in hers. I try to shake her off, but her grip is like a vise. I pull again, yank, ready to scream.

“Stop!” she cries. “Wait! That’s the day it all changed!”

I stop. My arms drop to my sides. I don’t look at her.

“I have loved your brother since the moment I set foot in this court.”

I see her hands from the corner of my eye, the nails of the left tearing the skin of the right.

“But the best thing that love brought me is you, Anne. You
are
my friend. It was I who had all the wrong reasons. After what the duchess did to me, perhaps I didn’t know what friendship was.”

She pauses.

“Butler said those things. And I hated him. I thought it was for George. But then I hurt you. And I couldn’t bear it. I realized I . . . I loved you, too. That made me want George even more, so you could be my sister.”

Silence envelops us, gently loosening the iron bands around my heart.

“You know, before I told my father about George, he was talking about marrying me to someone else. Some old, fat man with bad breath and a worse temper. Someone who isn’t even at court.”

“Really?” I ask. “You didn’t tell me.”

“You didn’t give me a chance! You started saying all those bad things about George, trying to make me hate him. But I couldn’t face the alternative. I was the one who mentioned George to my father. I was the one who suggested it. Before he could promise me to . . . to . . .” She shudders.

“You changed your own destiny.”

“I’m sorry.” She winces and puts a finger in her mouth.

I unwind the string of pearls from around my neck and place it over her head. I take her hand and put it to her throat, to feel the rolling beads. They clack gently like the distant chatter of gossips.

“Whenever you want to bite your nails,” I tell her. “Whenever you want to hurt yourself, hold on to these. Like rosary beads. Listen to their music, Jane, and let it calm you.”

“I can’t take these,” Jane says. She strokes them with the ragged fingers of one hand. The other hand is still, for once.

“Yes, you can.” I press my hand again onto hers. “George will come back. He’ll come back to court. He’ll come back to you. And then you’ll be a Boleyn, and the Boleyns always stick together.”

She hugs me.

“I’ll be a good Boleyn, Anne.”

“I know you will.” I hug her back. “Better than the rest of us.”

“When I first loved him, Anne, I thought it would just be another infatuation, like all the others that go on here. Something that might be passed along as gossip and then just disappear. Like yours with the king or Norris or Thomas Wyatt.”

I flinch at the mention of his name.

Jane stops her soliloquy to study me. And I remember what George once said about her. That she sees everything.

“You love him,” she says slowly. “Thomas Wyatt.”

I don’t have to tell her it’s true. She knows.

58

I
T’S NOT UNUSUAL FOR THE KING TO ATTEND THE WEDDING OF
one of his courtiers. George is a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and Father is treasurer of the household.

But I don’t believe the king is here for George, or for Father.

I believe he is here to see me.

And so is Thomas.

My emotions pull taut between them, twanging every time either one moves or speaks. I feel visible, exposed. And thoroughly grateful when Jane appears.

She is elegant in pale pink trimmed with coiled crimson satin. Her father is fluffed and preening in the presence of the king. Mine is stuffed with pride. Mary is beside him, quiet, humbled.

George arrives five minutes late. His hair is a mussy nest of spikes and whorls. He looks younger than his twenty years, like a child just out of bed, being dragged unwilling to church.

Jane is smooth and poised, every hair in place. Her smile, clear and bright, breaks my heart. She’s marrying the man she loves.

The wedding party moves on to a lavish banquet—Father for once not caring about the expense, or trying to appear not to care. There is venison and brawn, pigeon and sparrow, lamb and rabbit. The bridecake is demolished and devoured. I linger over strawberries soaked in wine.

I feel Thomas circling. But he doesn’t approach.

When everyone has had their fill and the men begin to argue over the bones, the king orders the tables to be taken away and requests music.

The lutenist tunes his instrument, humming over the strings. He wears an expression of detached arrogance. I realize, with a shock, that it’s Mark Smeaton, from Wolsey’s household. The king has poached him—or his voice has finally changed.

Smeaton knows he’s good. He knows he can do this. He feels superior. He smiles, gazes about the room to see who is watching, doesn’t watch his own fingers.

And strums.

The noise that vibrates through the room is not the sound he expected. It is discordant and jarring, his fingering all wrong. The look on his face is priceless.

I giggle to myself and then stop. Because the king is looking at me. He is laughing, too. The room is small. He is so very close.

Smeaton recovers himself and dives into a complicated melody that the rest of the musicians do their best to follow. The king and I stare at each other as the music rains down and encapsulates us.

Until Mary brushes by me when she leaves the room, and the king follows her with his eyes. The bubble bursts and I don’t look at him again.

The party goes on until nearly dawn, the musicians almost falling asleep over their instruments. The king regales everyone with war stories; my father competes with tales of his diplomatic missions.

George stays awake and away from his chambers, something noticed by all but remarked on by none, until the musicians finally stop.

“I think it’s time to bed the bride and groom!” Norris cries.

“One more drink.” George’s words are nearly unintelligible already. Jane flushes hot by the fireside, one hand gripping the pearls at her throat.

“Nothing more to drink!” Norris declares. “We will carry you bodily to your chamber and listen through the curtains!”

“And don’t forget we will check the sheets in the morning,” Bryan chimes in.

“It’s already morning,” George mutters, but allows himself to be removed from his wine and pulled into a mob of backslapping and bawdy remarks.

Jane hides behind her veil and I catch her just before she peels the healing skin from her index finger. I squeeze her hand silently and she squeezes back before she allows herself to be swept through the door by the rowdy throng.

“Come with me.” Thomas grabs my hand amid the chaos. He’s pulling me back toward the middle court. Away. I glance at the ebb of activity in the room. The king is looking elsewhere.