Brazen (27 page)

G
UILT
HANGS
LIKE
A
DEMON
FROM
MY
HEART
. I
CAN
’
T
SHAKE
IT
. I know the queen cannot be indicted because of my words alone. But I can think of no way to take them back.

There are more rumors than knowledge, more untruths than certainty. We hear that the queen made a deal with the devil, that she slept with half the men at court, that Lady Mary has been poisoned, that Jane Seymour is already pregnant.

I retreat to my room. To my sewing.

One white stitch after another.

If I embroider this sleeve, the rift will be mended.

If I can finish this hem, order will be restored.

If I just finish this stitch, the world will be put to rights.

They will realize their mistake.

She is the queen.

The king returns to Greenwich without her and locks himself in his rooms. The gossip is so thick and convoluted that I don’t know who returns with him—if anyone. Some say Norris has returned. Others say Thomas Wyatt may be imprisoned.

The worst rumor is that Fitz is ill and cannot travel.

The absence of truth makes me feel sick, as if I had eaten too much sugar paste. I sit and I sew and I force myself to believe that I can stitch my life back together.

That night, in the silence of the re-formed court, I think I hear wailing coming from the king’s rooms. Sobs.

I wonder if the king’s grief is because he misses Queen Anne.

Or perhaps he is grieving his cuckolding.

I prick my finger, and a round spot of blood blooms on the linen. I watch as it spreads its corona through the fibers.

And I curse him.

Suddenly, I can’t stop myself. I curse the Seymours and their bland, boring Jane. I curse my father for his ambition and my mother for being right: my marriage to a Tudor has brought me nothing but grief. I curse this ill-starred union when I could have had a nice, quiet marriage to a boring knight like Denny or Knollys.

“Or even Francis bloody Weston,” I say, sucking my finger. “At least he can dance.”

“Dancing isn’t everything, Duchess.”

At the sound of Fitz’s voice, I want to collapse. Instead, I throw my sewing to the floor and run at him. He braces himself, one foot back. Ready for anything. Still, when I throw myself on him, he staggers against the door, a surprised cry escaping his mouth until I cover it with my own.

His face is drawn and he looks older. I feel the ache of eons in his limbs. I want to draw it out of him, stop the bleeding like I did with my finger. He lowers my feet back to the floor and breaks the kiss.

“I just came from the king’s rooms.”

I think of the sobbing I heard. What if it wasn’t the king? What if it was Fitz?

“I went in to say good night,” he continues. “He grabbed me. Hugged me. He started to cry.”

Oh, God. He feels guilty. I feel a wave of relief wash through me.

“He said Queen Anne tried to poison me.”

“What?” All hope vanishes, replaced by a stunned surprise.

“He says that’s why I was ill at Christmas.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Fitz frowns. “I have yet to recover completely. My chest aches when I exert myself.”

I feel the twinges of anger prickling at my fingers and in my chest. Fitz can’t believe any of this. I open my mouth to argue. I want to shout. I remember my mother and change tactics.

“You exerted yourself without any ill effects the other night,” I tease.

I want to kiss him when he blushes. But then he shakes his head.

“He says she tried to kill Mary, too. That Anne wanted all of his children dead so that hers would take the throne.”

“You were never going to . . .”

His face hardens and I stop. He wanted to believe he might be king. He wanted more. He wanted to be able to expect as much as was expected of him.

“Every rumor has a grain of truth,” he says.

The rumor that Fitz will be named as heir. The rumor that the queen is a poisoner.

“What did the king say exactly?”

Fitz turns away, staring at the gilded battens of the ceiling. “He said, ‘Thank God you escaped the hands of that accursed whore.’”

I reel like I’ve been slapped. Like it’s been said about me.

“You don’t believe it. You can’t.”

We look at each other for a moment, both of us caught in thoughts of words and truth and belief.

“Let’s go now.”

I’m not sure I’ve said it until I see his reaction. Surprise. Pain.

“We can’t. Now, more than ever, he wants me close. He won’t let me leave his side. I’m surprised he didn’t make me share his bed. I can’t stay tonight. I barely got away to tell you.”

“Maybe he does love you.”

“I don’t think it’s love, Mary. I think it’s survival.”

His words echo the queen’s so closely. She was talking about jealousy. About fighting for her place, her voice. And, it turns out, her life. Fitz is talking about something else.

“Survival of what?” I ask. “What does he need to protect?”

“The succession.”

We look at each other steadily. The king is keeping Fitz close in order to protect the possibility of a Tudor heir. Lady Mary has been made illegitimate. Princess Elizabeth will be, too. With three bastard children, which one will take the throne?

The boy.

One day, you will be queen
,
my father said.

“I can use this,” Fitz whispers fervently. “I’ll be seventeen next month. I can ask for a place of our own. For Baynard’s Castle. I have leverage. It’s an opportunity.”

It’s an opportunity for us to be together. For him to prove himself. And if we make a baby—a boy—it will bring Fitz that much closer to the throne.

The guilt swings heavier. Gaining from someone else’s collapse. Taking the queen’s palace when she’s dead. The word
sin
burns like vinegar.

“I don’t think it’s right,” I say. “It seems disloyal. To her.”

“You don’t want to be with me.” He says it flatly. His eyes have gone flat, too.

“I do.” I want to shout the words, but they come out as a whisper.

“Just not enough.” Fitz’s jaw twitches. “You’re just like me. Doing everything you’re told. Doing everything because you think it’s
right.
Really, you’re a doll, being pushed and molded and set down in this situation or the next. A plaything. Waiting. Always waiting.”

Everything he says needles holes in my heart, fraying them at the edges.

“Do you think the king or the Duke of Norfolk think that way?” Fitz’s voice is raised, and the effort to quiet it strangles the words into a growl. “That they care what’s right for everyone else? Do you think they try to be everything to everyone? No!”

He slams his fist on the wall and I flinch.

“They only do what’s right for them. Fuck everyone else. The king doesn’t wait for anything.”

I don’t realize I’m crying until a tear slides between my lips—salty and bleak. Fitz returns to me and raises his hands, palms out.

“Don’t you see, Mary? I want this for us. So we can be what we’re supposed to be.”

Together?
I don’t have the strength to ask.
Or king and queen?

“I don’t
want
to wait.” His voice is more harsh than I’ve ever heard it. “I’ve
been
waiting. I want this now. Because I love you.”

“Is it love?” I finally croak. “Or is it mercenary?”

He takes my face in his hands and runs his thumbs along my cheekbones. My eyes never leave his. I see no cruelty there, but I can’t stop the fear that curdles in my stomach. The fear that he might be just like his father. Willing to step on the downtrodden and ignore injustice in order to get what he wants.

He lowers his mouth to mine and kisses me roughly, his hands never leaving my face.

“It’s love,” he murmurs into my mouth, each word followed by a kiss. “Love. Love. Love.”

I mimic his gesture, putting my hands on his face, and push him gently.

“Is it worth it?”

He drops his hands and steps away from me.

“I think it is.”

I don’t want to argue with him. I want everything to be perfect. I want us always to agree.

I just want to be in his arms.

But there is an arm’s length between us when I say, “I’m not so sure.”

“I am sure,” he says. “I am more than sure. Because what if he decides that it doesn’t suit him anymore for us to be married? What will happen then? We will no longer be married. And we will never see each other again.”

“But we are married. We’ve consummated it.”

“Against his wishes. And we have no proof.”

The damnable bloodstained sheets.
The signature at the bottom of the contract.

“But if we live together,” he says, pleading, “there can be no argument.”

“You can’t take what isn’t yours.” The words rasp against my throat. “Don’t be like him.”

Fitz’s head snaps back like I’ve punched him. In a way I have. I am just like my mother, lashing out in an argument. Striking the softest parts to provoke the most pain.

Fitz ends the argument just like my father always did.

By abandoning me to a cold, empty room.

I
SURVIVE
THE
NEXT
FEW
DAYS
BY
CAUTERIZING
ALL
THE
HOLES
IN
my heart. I don’t see Fitz. Most of the men keep to the king’s quarters. No one knows what to do with the women. Without a queen, we are not supposed to be here. Without a queen, women at court are unnecessary.

Jane Seymour is moved to Beddington Park in Surrey—to avoid scandal. The court grows ever more silent.

William Brereton is arrested.

“Brereton?” Madge hisses to me in the quiet of the queen’s rooms. “He’s the king’s man. We never see him in here.” She pauses, frowning. “He must be
fifty
.” As if that is proof enough.

Then Francis Weston is taken to the Tower.

I remember how he looked at the queen. At the king.
Why should he be so lucky?
I remember the way his mustache rubbed my lip when he kissed me. I wonder if the queen had felt it, too. I shake the thought from my mind. Weston said he hoped he always knew when to stop.

Surely he knew when not to start.

Courtiers have begun to move. Gathering up their things in haste. Not sure where to go. What to do. Whom to support. Whom to speak to. So no one says a word.

The king moves to Hampton Court, and the men move with him. Including Fitz. The queen’s ladies remain at Greenwich. With no one to serve.

On the eighth of May, Thomas Wyatt is arrested and taken to the Tower.

“What’s to become of us?” Madge whispers. All the ladies are asking the same question.

“I assume we’ll serve Jane Seymour next.”

I can’t believe Margaret said that.

“I won’t.” Madge is adamant.

“You will if you’re told to,” Margaret says, and turns to me. “And don’t think you won’t, Mary FitzRoy. If you want to stay married, you will go where you’re sent.”

Fitz asked. And I didn’t go with him. Dread and doubt root me where I stand. The sour tang of
regret
burns the roof of my mouth.

“The duchess will stay married,” Madge says, more assuredly than I feel. “The king was at her wedding.”

“The king was at his own wedding, too,” Margaret says. “But he will find a way to contradict that agreement. The accusations claim she’s slept with these men for years. That she has thrown the entire line of succession into question.”

“No one would ever believe Elizabeth is not the king’s daughter,” I say, remembering them both haloed in the window.

“Perhaps not,” Margaret says. “But if they were never married, Elizabeth will be illegitimate, too.”

“Rumors say the queen was married to Northumberland before she married the king,” Madge says.

I gape at her. Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Tall. Gaunt. Nervous. With hair like scrub and eyes like glass.

“Never.” I can’t imagine the two of them together.

“It would give him good reason to divorce her,” Madge says. “That and the rumor that she carried on an affair with Thomas Wyatt at the same time.”

“So why is Wyatt in the Tower and not Percy?” I ask, anger rising. “Why are any of them? The marriage can be annulled. Just like Queen Katherine’s.”

“I think the king learned from that experience,” Margaret says quietly. “He doesn’t want two queens in this country again. No matter how unpopular Anne Boleyn is.”

I start to argue.
She isn’t unpopular.
But the room goes silent when Cromwell enters. He sees the three of us together, and I’m afraid he thinks we’re plotting. Colluding. Three witches brewing discord.

He approaches us and I get that same chilly feeling—that he is dangerous and yet also soothing. Like my father.

“Mary Shelton,” he says. “You are to attend your mistress in the Tower.”

I grab both of Madge’s hands in mine and squeeze.

“Are you arresting me?” Madge’s voice is barely audible.

Cromwell lays a hand over mine. It’s warm, the pads of his fingers soft. Not the rough, chapped skin of a mercenary. The smooth, easy palm of a master secretary.

“I understand your concern,” he says, and his voice is like the rush of a wave on a pebble beach. Throaty. “Your mistress and your betrothed and most of your sexual conquests face the block. You, my dear, do not.”

This statement is not comforting. This man knows everything.

His hair is neat, his chin freshly-shaven. His nails are trimmed and he smells of rose water. He shows no ill effects of evil. Not like they say in the old wives’ tales: that evil within is proven by deformities without.

Like Richard III, hunchbacked and with a withered arm.

Cromwell is whole. Clean. Almost trustworthy, despite his grizzled hair and pockmarked face.

Madge is squeezing my hand so hard, the blood has stopped running to my fingers.

“She says she trusts you,” Cromwell continues. “And so do we.”

Madge glances at me and licks her lips. I know why they trust her. I wonder if I’m the only one who sees the guilty conscience in her eyes.

“You are to attend her at her trial. And after.”

After.
He doesn’t expect her to be acquitted.

“Please go and collect your things, Mistress Shelton. We will be taking you to the Tower tonight,” he says, his voice velvety and comforting.

“You won’t be there long,” he adds. And smiles.

It is that smile that exposes his evil. I can see it like the hints of a face hidden behind a mask.

I stand to go with Madge. To help her pack. To give her courage. To remind her to keep quiet. Cromwell stops me with a single raised finger.

“A moment, Your Grace. I wish to speak with you.” He looks pointedly at Margaret, who has not risen. “In private.”

As I watch the two of them leave, I feel more alone than I ever have.

“What do you want?”

“Your word.”

“Just one?” My mother would have slapped me for that.

“You’re needed to come to the trial.”

I feel the blood drain from my face.

“No.”

“I need you to repeat for me what you told me a few weeks ago.”

I scramble to make sense of what he’s saying.

“And what is that?” I ask. My voice barely wavers, but I know he hears it.

“That everyone at court flirts”—he pauses for effect—“even the queen.”

I reach behind me for the arm of the chair by the fire. He steps forward, holding out a hand solicitously, but I’m afraid to touch him. Afraid that I will lose sight of who he really is if I do.

I use my own leverage to sit myself down.

“You want me to bear witness against the queen?” I ask.

“Against the men who are accused with her.”

“And therefore against the queen.” I will make him say it.

“You are not one of her ladies. You are not sworn to her service.”

He’s giving me loopholes. Free guilt.

“I would be sworn to tell the truth,” I say.

“And so you will. You will be asked if you said this to me, and you will answer yes. It’s simple. One word, and you will be done.”

Uncannily simple.

“And if I refuse?”

He hesitates. Possibly the first time I’ve seen him do so. There is a flicker of uncertainty behind the mask. Then the smile returns.

“It may not go so well for you, Your Grace.”

“And what can you do to me? I am the Duchess of Richmond.”

“Perhaps not, Your Grace.” He gazes at me steadily. “An unconsummated marriage is easily annulled.”

Everyone keeps telling me this. Lady Mary. Father. Fitz. And now this man who is almost as powerful as the king. Is he willing to ruin my life if I don’t ruin the queen’s? I see in his eyes that he is. He is prepared to do anything.

I think of Fitz. Of his arms around me. Of his body next to mine. That I can be with him if I do this. That perhaps when this is over—when this is all over—we can finally be together. In our own house. Away from court. Away from the lies and deceit and men like Thomas Cromwell.

I think of the queen. Of the Tower of London with its thick, cold stone walls. Of its white tower rising above the Thames, and the guns facing southward, ready to fire when a traitor dies.

She is not a traitor.

“It’s an easy choice, Your Grace,” Cromwell says quietly. “Your past? Or your future? Which one, in the end, is more important?”

This isn’t the difference between love and survival. This is about the survival of love. If I choose not to speak, I will lose my heart. My soul. My life.

If I choose the opposite, others will lose theirs.

One simple word.
Yes
. That’s all it will take to save me. I can do what they say. Be what they want me to be. And be with Fitz.

Surely one word can’t make that much difference.

Yes.

“No.”

“So be it, Your Grace,” Cromwell says, without a trace of comfort in his voice.

But he leaves without a smile.