Brazen (9 page)

He raises his eyes to mine.

“Then why . . . ?” I can’t even ask him in words.

A smile tugs at his mouth.

“You surprised me.”

I wait. But he’s not forthcoming.

“You mean you didn’t want me to kiss you first. You mean you think I’m . . . bold. Presumptuous. Immodest.”

He looks back down at my hand. And nods.

My mother’s assessment of me stands.

He takes a step. Closer to me. His knee presses mine through my skirts. He brushes the hair away from my face and runs his fingers down my neck, his forehead to my temple so he can whisper directly into my ear.

“Your kiss surprised me,” he repeats. “But I liked it.”

I can add one quality to the list.

Honesty.

“T
HAT
’
S
THE
PERFECT
WA
Y
TO
LEAVE
IT
,” M
ADGE
SAYS
. F
ITZ
LEFT
in May to preside over a gathering of the Order of the Garter at Windsor. From there he traveled on to his own estates in Dorset.

Now, despite the queen’s growing girth, court has begun the summer progress. Hampton Court to The More to Cheyne to Woking. I start to lose track after a while, one house blurring into another as we pack and unpack, move and stay still.

In Guildford, the queen asks for rest, seeking quiet indoors while the king spends most days out hunting. We don’t stay at the castle that dominates the town’s highest hill. It has begun to decay, the walls crumbling a little. In the past, it was even used as a jail, and I shudder at the thought of prisoners watching us parading by in all our finery, though now the windows stare blankly out over the town.

Instead, some of us stay at Sutton Place—the residence of Francis Weston’s family. It is square and grand and beautiful. My room is small and has a single window that looks over the hills and forests of Surrey. I envy Weston growing up here.

“I’m afraid Fitz will forget about me,” I tell Madge.
Or meet someone else.

“‘Love’s tide flows stronger toward absent lovers.’”

“We’re not lovers.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Madge pauses, her head tilted to one side. “I think I’m going to write that one down. Where’s your book?”

With all the moving involved with the progress, I haven’t been able to find anything in weeks. But I know where the book is.

I pull it out of my smallest traveling chest. I don’t want to admit to Madge that I read our list from time to time. Trying to pin any of the attributes on Fitz. Or anyone else.

She takes it from me and snaps her fingers for a quill and ink.

“I’m not your serving wench.”

She squints up at me. “Oh, that’s right. You’re a
duchess
.” I feel completely wrong-footed as she unlatches my desk and writes the phrase in the book.

“Is that Chaucer?” I ask, hoping to make amends.

“Sextus Propertius.”

I shake my head at the extent of Madge’s knowledge. “Sometimes I think you’re better read than the queen.”

Madge tries to hide a grin, finishing with a flourish. She blows on the ink to dry it, then touches the last word with a finger.

“Mary,” she says, and then stops. I wait, but she doesn’t continue.

“What?”

She turns to face me. “If I knew something—something that could upset someone, but also something that was none of my business—should I tell?”

“I guess it depends on what it is.”

“What if I knew something about the king?”

I begin to feel a real sense of dread. So I repeat, much more slowly, “I guess it depends on what it is.”

She looks down at her hands. “He’s having an affair.”

I think of the queen’s growing belly. The king hasn’t visited her rooms since she had morning sickness. To protect the baby. Perhaps absence does not increase love’s tide after all.

“With whom?”

“Does it matter?”

I shake my head. But it does. The queen will want to know. Is it a friend? A rival? Or just a dalliance?

“So do I tell?”

The king will be furious. But my loyalty is to the queen. And so is Madge’s.

I wonder if I would want to know. If Fitz had run off to Windsor or Dorset and met some other girl. If he kissed her. Bedded her. Would I begrudge him that? Since we are not allowed?

And then I wonder—would he want to know if I did the same?

“We should take this to someone closer to the queen. Someone she trusts,” I say. “Lady Rochford will know whether or not to tell her.” Jane Boleyn—Lady Rochford—is the queen’s sister-in-law and oldest friend.

We make our way to the queen’s rooms. Even her space is limited here, and the size of the room seems to decrease as more people enter. I try to take full and regular breaths.

The queen sits by the fire, despite the warmth outside, and taps her foot in time to Mark Smeaton’s playing, smiling at him lazily.

Then abruptly she stands, and turns to me.

“Cousin,” she says, “dance with me.”

The queen takes me by the hands and we move slowly into a pavane. I feel her belly bump against me and wonder at the life inside it. At what that child will see, growing up. I wonder what kind of king he’ll be. And if he will change the shape of the world as his father did.

I see Madge make her way over to Jane Boleyn. Whisper in her ear. And I see Jane’s face lose all its color. She nods once.

A few steps in, the queen pales and lets go of my left hand to cradle her belly. I reach for her, but she waves me away.

“Continue, Cousin. Dance with Madge there.”

While the queen hoists herself back into her chair, and her ladies scramble to pry her slippers from her swollen feet, Madge and I shuffle through the dance together.

“You told?” I whisper.

Madge looks worried. “I hope it was the right thing.”

We spin once, our skirts flaring, and I grin at her. “You’re a much better dancer than Fitz.”

“And you’re not nearly as good as Hal.”

I stick my tongue out at her.

“He’s very light on his feet. He seems to have some kind of inner sense of how to move. Almost . . . instinctual. Like an animal.”

“Ma-adge,” I whine. “He’s my brother. I don’t need to know that sort of thing.”

“What are you two whispering about?”

The queen is sitting up against a dozen pillows, peering at us. Her eyes are puffy.

“Nothing, Your Majesty.”

“Not nothing, Your Majesty,” Madge corrects me. “We were talking of . . . Francis Weston. And his innate ability to find the music in his feet.”

“Weston?” the queen asks. “He’s a good dancer, is he?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Madge sends a sly smile my way. “It makes me wonder if he’s as good at other physical endeavors.”

I look up to see the queen’s eyebrow arch.

“You know,” Madge continues. “Like . . . archery. Or tennis.”

“Of course,” the queen says. “Perhaps one day we should invite Master Weston to display his skills.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Madge says.

“For your sake only, Mistress Shelton.” The queen leans back against her pillows, her belly rising with the shift of the down. She looks up into the stars embroidered on the canopy over her head and strokes the underside of her belly.

“I have all I want.”

I feel guilty because I know she doesn’t.

T
WO
DAYS
LATER
, I
HEAR
THEM
FIGHTING
.

I’ve escaped the crowded hall for the wide stretch of wilderness beside it. Madge refused to come with me—Francis Weston had agreed to show her some of the secrets of the manor. So I go alone.

The forest is all beech and oak, the sun dappling through the leaves, so I head in that direction. The summer sun is warm on the back of my neck, and the snood of my hood weighs heavy. I look around me, wondering if I dare remove it.

The more formal gardens are dotted with a scattering of courtiers, intent on catching the ladies out for a stroll. But no one else is nearby.

Swiftly, I reach up to unpin my hood, quickening my steps so I can hide myself in the trees. I’ve just managed to shake my hair free, still in a thick twist, when I hear a shout.

Close.

Mother always said my timing was impeccable. That no matter how I broke the rules, I always chose the perfect moment to do so.

The moment I would be caught.

I try to stuff my hair back into its snood, but it uncoils like a snake and sticks to my already sweating fingers. Someone will see the Duchess of Richmond looking like a drab.

“You know nothing!”

I’d recognize the king’s voice in my sleep. Full and resonant, but not as deep as one would expect. I freeze against the trunk of a copper beech, my loose hair plastering itself to the sweat of my neck.

“Then enlighten me. Prove me wrong. Prove Jane wrong. Or prove her right.”

The queen.
Her voice strong and steady.

“There is nothing you need to know.”

“There is, Henry. I deserve the truth.”

I slide down the tree trunk, fingers digging into the leaves beneath it, and bury my face in my skirts. I don’t want to hear this. But I cannot move, or they will see me.

“You deserve?” The king is quieter. Even more dangerous.

“I am your
wife
. You pledged your troth. Your
body.
Forsaking all others. Or have you forgotten?”

When my mother found out about Father’s mistress—Bess Holland—she said exactly the same thing. Using much the same language. She called Bess nothing but a whore.

It was the first time Father left us without having an excuse—court, diplomacy, war.

She came to me, her hair tangled about her, and told me to choose sides. She said Father was a savage.

I chose him anyway.

The king’s voice softens. The forest is so quiet—not even the sound of a bird—I think I can hear them breathing. “I remember where you have come from,” he says “The daughter of a knight. Of no one.”

“I am related to royalty.”

“In your very distant dreams.” His tone has not altered. It’s the kind someone would use on a skittish horse. “You should be content with what I’ve done for you. And remember I made you what you are.”

“I am myself!” The queen’s voice is becoming desperate. “I am Anne Boleyn. You have not made me!”

The stillness that descends over the wood is as cold and thick and immovable as stone.

Until the king breaks it.

“I can make you nothing.”

I don’t know how long I sit against that tree. I hear the king leave, but I do not hear the queen weeping. Mother always cried. Every time Father left us.

That night, there’s a flurry very late—one barely seen or recognized by those of us who don’t sleep in the queen’s chambers. She spends all the next day in bed—pale and wan, the hair hanging around her face like curtains.

No one says a word. But no secret at court is very well kept, so surely the news that the queen miscarried can’t stay locked within these walls for long.

The king doesn’t speak to her. He goes hunting, and comes back late.

But the next day, they sit beside each other at dinner, fingers touching.

And when we move to Woodstock, with its cramped cluster of towers, their reconciliation is made painfully public when he visits her bedchamber.

The queen doesn’t argue when her sister-in-law, Jane Boleyn, is exiled from court for her part in the debacle. And Madge doesn’t say a word.