Brazen (26 page)

B
Y
THE
T
IME
I
GET
DRESSED
,
TH
E
SUN
IS
HIGH
AND
TH
E
REST
OF
the court is ahum with more than just the excitement of the joust. It comes in waves, like the throbbing of a bruise, the intensity escalating as everyone pushes out of the donjon and up to the tiltyard.

My entire body is alive with sensation. With the way my skirts brush my thighs and tangle around my ankles. The tightness of my bodice and the caress of my velvet hood on the back of my neck. I have to will myself not to look at Hal’s lodgings as I pass by, knowing that the blotching of my skin will give me away.

“Everything is all askew,” Madge says, catching up to me. “It’s like everyone’s talking, but no one’s saying anything.”

I remember what she said about trust, about telling her everything. I want so badly to express my euphoria, but when I open my mouth, I find I can’t. I want to hold it close. Keep it sacred.

“The king and queen had an argument last night,” I say instead.

I wonder if they once felt about each other as I do about Fitz. Like he and I are connected by some kind of invisible lute string, tuned to a perfect pitch. A vibration that runs through me like a hum.

If they did, what broke that string? Does all love disintegrate eventually? I can’t imagine my parents ever loved each other.

“So what else is new?” Madge grumbles as we take our places in the stands.

The contenders in the joust are all the court favorites, including the queen’s brother, George, and Madge’s betrothed. We watch as Henry Norris rides up and down the lists, his horse skittish at the cheering of the crowds.

“I’m not sure I want to marry him, you know?” she says, tucking a wisp of hair behind her ear.

“Norris?” I crane my neck to look for Fitz, my fingers drumming the rail.

I don’t know if he’ll join the king after last night. Perhaps he’ll come in search of me.

I suddenly wonder if he’ll come at all.

He wouldn’t leave without me. He wouldn’t go to France on his own, never to see me again. We have a life to live together.

“He’s kind of . . . old,” Madge says.

“Norris?” I lean in to whisper to her. “So is the king.”

“Yes,” Madge says slowly. “But the king is
seductive
.”

“The king is scary,” I whisper back. “And dangerous.”

“Exactly.”

I watch the horse turn, one hoof skidding, and Norris compensating quickly by shifting his weight. His body moves naturally. He’s leaner than the king, who no longer competes.

“Besides,” Madge says, “I think Norris is in love with the queen.”

Unlike the king. I’m reminded of Madge’s analogy of the maypole. Frances is married to Hal, who is in love with Madge, who is betrothed to Henry Norris, who is in love with the queen. Or might be. All the men pretend to be—it’s part of being at court. Even her brother flirts with her.

“We can’t all be as lucky as you are,” Madge says.

“That’s exactly what Hal said.”

“Being in love with me didn’t stop him from impregnating his wife.”

“You were the one who told me you don’t have to love someone to go to bed with him,” I say. I haven’t talked to Madge about Hal before, but she has to understand. “You can’t demand celibacy or monogamy from a person you can’t love back.”

“I wish I did,” Madge says in a small voice. “It would be so much easier.”

I put an arm around her shoulders. “And so much harder. He’s married, and you soon will be. Maybe it’s better this way.”

“I just don’t want to be with someone who is in love with someone else.”

“Madge, you were with the king. And Thomas Wyatt. Both of them are in love with the queen.”

“Not anymore,” Madge says darkly as the crowd goes silent and the queen enters the stands. Alone.

Madge watches Norris calm his horse and slowly approach the queen’s box. He bows to her, and nudges his horse into a little dip—kind of a cross between a bow and a curtsy. The crowd roars its approval and the queen smiles. But her face looks strained. Even from where I’m standing.

“You know what my
betrothed
said one day?” Madge says, her eyes narrowed. “In her rooms?”

“The men are always saying something.”

The queen reaches into the top of her bodice and pulls out a yellow silk handkerchief. It flutters vividly in the breeze, catching the sunlight.

“Well, Norris said that he wasn’t sure if he was going to marry me because he may be saving himself for someone else.”

“And from whom did you hear this?” I ask. She couldn’t have been there. Even Norris wouldn’t be so indiscreet.

“I was behind the door,” Madge says bitterly. “And then the queen says, ‘I think that if anything ill were to happen to the king, you would look to have me.’”

“She never did!”

“And then she says, ‘I would undo you if you tried
.
’”

This rings a bell.

“They’ve said this before, Madge. It’s a personal joke between them. I think it goes back to something that happened long before she married the king.”

“But that doesn’t matter, does it? She shouldn’t be saying that kind of thing.”

No. She shouldn’t. It sounds ominously like imagining the king’s death.

Treason.

The queen ties her kerchief on the end of Norris’s lance. She looks pale. As if she has aged a decade overnight. When she stands upright again, her mouth forms a brittle smile.

“Norris says she’s worried. Worried that the king is looking for ways—for reasons—to divorce her. That that’s why Cromwell was asking questions.”

The argument last night. The endless Privy Council meeting. The king’s declaration that he wants a son.

A cloud drifts over the sun, throwing us all into its shadow, and I shiver, part of me wishing I were on my way to France.

The trumpets blast and the king enters the stands, the crowds cheering. His face looks like a thunderstorm about to break. It carries clouds and demons, and I see every courtier turn away after bowing or curtsying. Avoiding a lightning strike.

He stands beside the queen. Doesn’t touch her. Doesn’t even acknowledge her. She is the only person in the stands to turn and watch him directly. She knows he can feel her gaze on his face. She knows that no one can remain steely forever.

But he does.

Fitz is behind him. He doesn’t look at the king. Keeps his distance. He is thin and troubled, almost like a boy again. When he sees me, he smiles at the same time a shaft of sunlight pierces the clouds. And though we are separated, I feel as if his arms are around me.

I pay little attention to the horses and the crowds, to who wins and who falls. All I see is him.

But I know the joust does not go well.

George Boleyn can’t seem to find his stride. Henry Norris lowers his lance too early and is almost disqualified.

The tournament is a disaster.

The bright moment comes when Norris manages to unseat his opponent. The crowd becomes a riot of color and noise as people shout and applaud, sleeves waving like flags. Norris unties the queen’s kerchief from his lance and kisses it once. For luck.

Then everything goes silent.

I turn just in time to see the king thundering down the steps of the viewing platform. The sound reverberates across the tiltyard. He looks neither left nor right. Acknowledges no one. Most of the crowd is too stunned to bow before he reaches them, only managing it in his passing, so the crowds look like the wake left behind by a swift-sailing ship.

The queen stands alone, her hands gripping the rail in front of her. White in the pale spring sunshine.

“He didn’t even speak to her,” Madge says. “You might expect him not to speak to the others, but he didn’t even speak to her. Not even to tell her he was leaving.”

When the king has stridden away, the murmurs start, following behind him like the murmur of the wake.

“Begin, gentlemen!” the queen calls.

She sits, her back very straight. She watches only the men on the field. She doesn’t reply when her ladies speak to her. She just watches. Unseeing.

Henry Norris fails miserably at the next tilt, and rides off the field defeated. Three men surround him as he dismounts. A pat on the back. A grip on the arm. Manly comfort. They disappear into the crowd.

Madge sighs. “He’s gone off to sulk, I can guarantee you. When we return to the palace, he’ll be nowhere to be found.”

I put a hand on hers. “You do care about him, then.”

Madge rolls her eyes and attempts a wicked grin. “Of course I do. I have to aspire to what you and Fitz have, even if he is in love with the queen.”

The queen sits, still and impassive. Like the maypole around which all the ribbons of love and hope and desire tangle themselves.

Where the king once stood is an empty space. A hole waiting to be filled. And Fitz is in the shadows behind it.

M
ADGE
IS
RIGHT
ABOUT
N
ORRIS
DISAPPEARING
. H
E
CAN
’
T
BE
found anywhere. Not his rooms, not the king’s.

“Sulking,” Madge says. And goes off in a sulk herself.

The king leaves for London before the post-tournament party—which is hardly a party at all—and when the queen retires early, I do, too. I send my servants away and cocoon myself in the counterpane and wait.

I know Fitz will come as surely as I know my own name.

He tries to quiet his footsteps as he crosses the room. I’m not sure why he doesn’t want to wake me, because surely that’s his intention. Surely, he intends to wake me. To climb into bed with me.

But he stops. I feel his gaze on the curve of my cheek, and the hair that has fallen back against my pillow. He must know I’m awake. He can hear me breathing. Or not breathing, because I’m holding my breath.

I move as silently as he has, and pull the heavy counterpane to the side. Silently, he climbs in beside me, turns me so my back is to him, and kisses me lightly on the shoulder. I fall asleep cocooned in
him.

In the morning he is gone, the rain has started to mizzle, and everyone looks drab and drawn. Few people are speaking, and when they do, it’s in a whisper.

Someone suggests music, but Mark Smeaton can’t be found. No one else seems willing to play. The king has left no word on his return, and the men seem a bit lost without his guidance.

They decide to blow off their nerves with a tennis match, and as the morning wears on, more and more people come to watch. Hal is beating someone roundly when I hear the queen swear quietly under her breath.

I glance at her, and she smiles.

“I should have bet on your brother,” she says. “It might have changed my fortunes.”

“At least you didn’t bet against him,” I tell her. “He has a way of discovering his opponent’s weakest spots and exploiting them.”

“He plays tennis like Cromwell plays politics.”

My laugh sticks in my throat.

“I don’t think for a moment that your brother will let his opponent win.” She shrugs. “Just like Cromwell.”

A man in the king’s livery approaches.

“Your Majesty,” he says to the queen, and bows so slightly as to be insulting. His face is blank, but his eyes bear judgment. “You are summoned by order of the king to present yourself to the Privy Council.”

Everyone in the watching gallery shrinks back, as if from the plague. They stop flirting. Stop gossiping. The only sound is that of the tennis players trying to catch their breath.

The queen takes my hand and will not let me go. Her grip is like death—her fingers cold as ice.

The messenger looks at the queen, at me, at our hands entwined. He raises his head and looks her directly in the eye.

“Alone,” he says.

I watch her walk away, her head held high, her neck elongated, her fingertips just brushing her skirts. I don’t see her again until she returns to her rooms.

Under guard.

We eat dinner in silence. No music. No conversation. No men. Just her ladies. I miss Fitz as one would an absent limb. I almost miss the crowds.

The queen sits beneath the canopy of state, dressed in crimson velvet and cloth of gold. She takes small bites and eats little and then stares at her hands when the tablecloth is removed.

She isn’t startled when my father enters, followed by Cromwell. And the captain of the king’s guard. Father won’t look at me.

But Cromwell smiles.

“Why are you here?” The queen breaks the glass-like silence.

“You are under arrest,” Father says.

All the ladies gasp, but the queen shows no surprise when she looks up at him. Almost lazily. Like she doesn’t really need to hear him. Like she doesn’t need to respond.

Father raises his voice. “We are come by the king’s command to conduct you to the Tower, there to abide at His Highness’s pleasure.”

“If it be His Majesty’s
pleasure
,” the queen says, fixing Father with her penetrating gaze, “I am ready to obey.”

“Father?” I turn to him, hoping he’ll explain. But still he doesn’t look at me. “What’s the charge?”

“Hold your tongue, girl,” he says.

“
Don’t
do that.” The queen stands and hisses in his face. “Don’t say those words and don’t call her that. I may be under arrest, sir, but I hope I still carry some authority. Your daughter deserves respect from you. She’s worth more than that.”

“Certainly worth more than others in this room,” Father mutters. “You are under arrest for treason against the crown and the king’s person.”

I choke on a gasp and one of the other ladies titters, but the queen’s absolute stillness brings us all back to silence.

Father reaches for her arm, and she twitches out of his grip.

“I can walk on my own, thank you.”

No one moves to rescue her, and she takes a deep breath and strides from the room. Her ladies peel away from her path like the skin from an apple. The men follow close behind as if they are hungry for the exposed flesh.

She is taken by barge to the Tower in full daylight. She isn’t given time to change or pack or even say good-bye to her daughter.

We are left a court with no king and no queen. The immediate buzz of gossip sounds more like a roar. Half of the men leave immediately. Half of the queen’s ladies claim they knew it was coming. That she tried to poison the king. That she supported a French invasion. That she seduced him with witchcraft.

The conflicting opinions only prove that we know nothing. So everyone lapses into a silence so vast it is like being underwater.

Without the king, without the queen, we are not a court. We are like one of those globular, wraithlike sea creatures, fragile and transparent. No skin, no skeleton, held together by nothing but habit and hope.

I lie awake long into the night, but Fitz doesn’t come. The king has reeled him back, brought him close. When I do fall asleep, I dream of the Tower, of dogs, and of the fall of bodies in the joust.

“Mary.”

Madge startles me so much, I think I’ve awakened on the tiltyard itself.

“Mary,
wake up
,” she whispers urgently. I look at her. Her hair is half stuffed into her hood, her eyes a little wild.

“They’ve arrested him.”

“The king?” If they’ve arrested a queen, why not the king as well?

“No!” she hisses “Norris. My betrothed. Norris has been arrested.”

“What for?” I ask.

“Adultery.”

“But he’s not even married.” I pause. “Is he?”

“Mary, wake up! Norris has been arrested for adultery . . . with the queen.”

Damn.

“Smeaton, too.”

“The musician?” I almost laugh. “No one would believe that. He’s a commoner. He’s
Flemish
. And such an ass.”

“He confessed.”

The laughter corks my throat and my stomach lurches, threatening to dislodge itself and my dinner as well.

“How do you know?” I whisper.

“Carradine. Norris’s servant. He’s been allowed to remain with Norris in the . . . in the Tower. He came out to get some things.”

“And to find you.” Even after all her disparaging remarks about Norris, she was still waiting.

“He said Smeaton was tortured. Racked. A knotted rope twisted around his head until his eyeballs nearly popped out.”

I shudder. “I thought they didn’t torture people anymore.”

“Why else would he confess?”

“Did Norris?” I ask.

“They told her he did. But it was a lie. Carradine said that the king told Norris he would welcome him back if he confessed.”

“And did he?”

“Stupid man,” she says. “He said he would rather die a thousand deaths than confess to a crime he hadn’t committed.”

“Then surely, they will see the absurdity of it all. Any man would lie to save his own skin. None would lie to send themselves to prison.”

“They could arrest anyone. They arrested
George Boleyn
.”

“On what charge?”

“Adultery!”

My stomach heaves. “He’s her brother.”
He flirted with her. He kissed her in front of everyone.

Madge nods. “Disgusting.”

I clear my mind and sit up straight. “It didn’t happen, Madge!” I reach over and shake her. “It’s a lie! Do you understand?”

“How do we know?”

“Because it’s just rumors. Rumors and lies.”
It has to be.

“Norris said he’d be next if she’d have him.”

“Courtly banter, Madge!”

But the banter sounded like the queen was imagining the king’s death. That’s enough to put her on the scaffold right there.

“Smeaton said he aspired to love. . . .”

“And she rebuffed him!”

“I saw George Boleyn, Mary.” She’s hoarse now, the tears scraping at her throat but not appearing in her eyes. “I saw him come out of her bedchamber. Late one night.”

“There are a thousand other explanations, Madge! He’s her
brother
.”

She nods and looks up at the ceiling, her throat stretched tight as she swallows.

“Madge?” I ask. “You didn’t tell anyone else this, did you?”

She looks at me again, and she is no longer behind her eyes. No longer Madge, but a ghost of her.

“Cromwell.” Her voice is nothing but a whisper.

“You have to go back to him, Madge. You have to tell the truth.”

“I
told
the truth! I told him what I saw. What I heard.”

“Didn’t you know it would be misinterpreted? Didn’t you think at all?”

“All I was thinking of was
you,
Duchess!” she cries. “I couldn’t tell them about that morning on the river or how you and Fitz look at each other or seeing you and Margaret leave Whitehall in a hired boat and how you didn’t come back for hours, knowing that Fitz was in London. When Cromwell asked if anyone at court was being indiscreet, I told him what I knew.”

My legs feel weak and my extremities tingle. I sink to the floor, a thick, cold sweat enveloping me. Everything the queen did was nothing but words. It was Margaret and I who acted. Who broke the rules. “It wasn’t true.”

“It doesn’t matter what the truth is,” Madge says harshly. “The only thing that matters is what
he
believes.”

The king. Does he want to believe she’s guilty?

Father said the king wants a divorce.

A quick one.

“Oh, Mary. What have I done?”

Madge sits beside me and we lean on each other, neither of us capable of carrying our own weight.

I think of all the rumors that have ever circulated. And I know that Madge is not the instigator of this tragedy. But she and I are both agents in it. Because I told Cromwell that everyone flirts.

Even the queen.

“No, Madge,” I say. “What have
we
done?”