Tarnish (15 page)

“No, my dear, I absolutely take your problems seriously. Without you here, my life will be nothing but desolation.”

“You’re wasting your poetry, Wyatt.”

“Oh, but it brings me neatly to my next proposition. The one that is sure to save you.”

The intensity of his gaze matches the wintry sky behind him. His sudden seriousness halts my breath.

“It may not be your only choice, Anne. But it may well be your best.”

I wait, chin tilted so I can see his face, the shape of his jaw. I suddenly want to stroke it.

He clears his throat.

“You could become my mistress.”

I feel as if a weight has landed on my shoulders, as if the English sky itself is trying to force me to my knees. I turn and stride back to the palace.

“I don’t know why I bother asking you,” I shout back over my shoulder. “All you do is joke and offer no assistance whatsoever. I thought you were my friend.”

It takes him only a moment to catch up with me—his legs are so much longer. He lays a hand on my shoulder and I spin left to shrug it off and keep walking. He stops, and I leave him behind.

“I am your friend!” he calls. “Which is why I didn’t want to suggest . . .”

I stop and wait, but do not face him. I notice he doesn’t apologize.

“Well?” I clench my jaw.

“You could marry Percy.”

There it is. The idea that has been in the back of my mind. Spoken aloud. I allow myself a vision of a possible future. Me with precedence, a place at court, a name. A position in which someone might come to me for advice. Seek my favor. Ask my opinion. Listen.

The man who might bring me these things is just a shadow in the background.

I turn back to Wyatt, but I can’t see his expression in the gathering dark.

“And why didn’t you want to suggest this?” I ask, stepping closer to him. I want to
see
what he thinks as much as hear it.

“I don’t like him. He’s not the sort of man who can love someone like you.” His face is a complete blank.

I shrug off his doubt—and my own.

“What’s love? I’m not even sure it exists. And if it does, it certainly has no place in my world. The only thing a girl is good for is to give away or sell to the highest bidder. That’s what George says. And I’m ready to sell.”

Wyatt looks pained. “I think you could do better.”

“Better than the Earl of Northumberland? Wyatt, my father is one of the ‘new men.’ Cardinal Wolsey calls him a
minion
. I am related in the interminably dark and murky past to Edward I, but I have no heritage, no title, no status, despite my sister’s position in the king’s bed. The Boleyns may be steadfastly loyal, but they don’t really engender love and friendship in anyone. Status and preferment mean more to them anyway. And in that light, I hardly think I can do better.”

In the silence that follows, I hear the rustle of a thrush in the bushes, and the distant call of boatmen on the Thames.

“Is that really what you care about, Anne? Status and preferment and ambition?”

“That’s what I’ve been taught!” I want to tear his expression of pity straight off his face. “Isn’t that why you brought me under your wing? You took me on as a business proposition.”

“Well, now I consider you more than that.”

“Really, Wyatt? And what do you consider me? What do you want from me?” I want him to say it. Without a joke. Without a tease.

“I want what’s best for you.” Wyatt looks down at his hands. They are not still. “As my business proposition.”

So much for friendship. “You want me to believe that what’s best for me is for everyone to continue to think I spend my spare time in your bed.”

“No,” Wyatt says, his voice a razor edge of controlled calm. “I just don’t want you to tarnish your chances.”

“You just want to keep me where I am. Because you’ve got me right where you want me.”

“Oh, no, Anne, my dear,” he says, the laughter in his voice ringing false. “You’re not where I want you yet.”

“And where is that?”

“On top, Mistress Boleyn.”

My irritation finally burns through me. “Will you just stop with your innuendos, Wyatt!”

He roars his great burbling laugh, throwing me off-balance and bringing me to earth all at once. “Innuendo is all down to the interpretation, Anne.” He sweeps me into the air as if we are dancing the volta
.
“I mean you are destined for great things! You’re destined for the greatest gambles. For the kind of legendary love you only hear about in ballads.”

He sets me down and turns me like a spinning top. I can’t help laughing. The weight has been removed from my shoulders. But an ache is still lodged in my heart.

“Those love affairs end badly, Wyatt,” I say seriously. “I think I had rather be well housed and well connected than alone and miserable after losing the love of my life.”

“But they don’t
all
end badly, Anne.”

His left hand is still at my waist. My shoulder presses into his chest. I smell ink and earth and almonds. I have to pull away.

“Oh, really?” I ask, pretending I don’t see the hurt in his eyes. “Name me one that didn’t.”

He strikes a pose of intense concentration. Frowns. He searches the horizon as if it will give him the answers he seeks. Shakes his head.

“No. You’re right. They all end badly. You’re doomed.”

I swipe playfully at his shoulder. He catches my hand, swiftly as a hawk diving for prey.

“I mean it, Anne.” His hand tightens. As does his expression. He will not let me go.

“You mean I’m doomed?” I tease.

“I mean you’re destined for something better than Henry Percy.”

I pull my hand from his.

“I don’t want you to limit yourself too soon.” He reaches for me again, but I step backward. Away from him.

“It can’t happen soon enough, Wyatt. My father is on his way home. If I don’t make my own choice and make it swiftly, I really will be doomed. I cannot wait for better things, no matter how much you beg it of me. I don’t have time.”

21

B
UT TIME ALL TOO OFTEN COMES SCREECHING TO A HALT AT
court. The king and his councillors go to London to open Parliament, leaving the ladies alone with the old, the young, and the reckless. Leaving a void where once there was a constant intoxicating hum.

Because Wolsey is with the king, his men have no reason to visit. I’m grateful to be out from under Butler’s resentful glare. But Henry Percy’s absence lays waste to all my plans.

The remaining men at Bridewell roam ever more restlessly. Near-fights and arguments break out in the gardens and long galleries. Rumors explode into accusations. Men practice archery and swordplay in the yard, but this doesn’t release the lust for blood and war. There is no room for jousts and no park for hunting. Just the quiet regulation of the monasteries that surround us.

George complains of boredom to everyone within hearing distance.

“I feel as if I’ve been conscripted into holy orders myself,” George mumbles after a particularly dull morning spent on backgammon and prayer.

I have to agree with him. With only the queen’s influence—all needlework and hair shirts—we are suffocating on the tarnished piety of an incarcerated court.

My fear is that my time is slipping away and my father slipping nearer. I imagine him on horseback, heading for the Spanish coast. Or already on a boat bound for England.

It finally affects me so deeply, I go in search of George late one afternoon—unsure if Wyatt in his determination to make me “wait” will help.

I corner my brother just outside the queen’s chambers. He is dressed in blue velvet, a gaudy, jeweled cap riding on his undisciplined hair, his boots cleaned and coins jingling in the pocket at his waist. He is far too smartly dressed for an evening playing cards. I forget my purpose in seeking him out as my suspicion overwhelms me.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“When the cat’s away . . . ” he says.

I just stare at him. Force him to finish his thought.

“Bridewell is practically at the very heart of London. We’ve got to take advantage.”

“We?” I ask.

“The usual crowd. Bryan. Norris. Wyatt. And I think we’re going to corrupt young Henry Percy from the cardinal’s household as well.”

“Percy? He’s here?”

“Yes. Wyatt invited him along. God knows why. The boy stalks the galleries of York Place like he’s got a pike stuck up his arse.”

I hardly listen to George’s assessment. Wyatt invited Percy.
Here.
He is helping me. I could kiss him.

“So, what do you plan to do?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, dear sister?”

He begins to move past me, heading for the door. For the water gate.

“Will you take me with you?” The words come out before I can evaluate them. I hate asking George for anything. But surely this is what Wyatt intended.

He stares at me for a long, drawn-out moment. “To London?”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a girl.” George ticks off his reasons on his fingers. “Because you’re in the queen’s household. Because it’s London. And because it’s a boys’ night. We’re going to see if we can lose Percy’s virginity. Not something you want to be around for.”

George doesn’t know that’s the very thing I need to be around for. Only after we’re married. I can’t believe Wyatt intends to take Percy to the brothels. George must have it wrong. George and his limited vision.

I think quickly, forming a plan. “When else can you have the opportunity to show two ladies of the queen’s household the entertainments of the town?”

“Two?” George cries. “Now what are you cooking up?”

“Well, of course Jane would come, too. I can’t go alone with a group of men. It wouldn’t be seemly.”

“It won’t be seemly no matter how you look at it, Anne. And Jane Parker won’t change that.”

“But George, you said yourself how boring it is here.”

“You’re a girl. You’re used to it.”

“I’m from France. I’m not.” I feel the frustration welling up in my throat. My very breath obstructed by the limitations imposed on me by society, by my sex, by George.

We are still standing there, trying to stare each other down, when Wyatt bursts in, talking away, Percy trailing at a cautious distance.

“There you are.” Wyatt strides across the empty room, loose-limbed and confident, the complete opposite of the man who follows him. I smile at Percy, trying to shut out the thought of George’s description of him, then remember Wyatt’s instruction and turn away. Men only want what they think they can’t have. So I turn to my instructor. My savior.

“You came looking for me?” I ask Wyatt. I spy a coiled thread of gold hair on the midnight-blue velvet of his doublet. The sight twists something hot and toothy inside me. I pluck the hair up between my thumb and forefinger and hold it out to him.

He pulls it delicately away, kisses it, and blows it toward the windows and the falling night beyond them.

“Mine,” he says solemnly.

My laughter sounds a little too relieved, even to my own ears. “You do love yourself then, don’t you?”

“More than anyone else,” he says, laying a loud, wet kiss on the corner of my mouth. He turns to my brother. “Let’s go, George.”

“I’ll only be a minute,” I say. “I’ll join you at the water gate.”

Wyatt laughs. George doesn’t.

“Tell her,” he says. “Tell her she can’t come. Tell her men and women can’t be friends.”

Wyatt’s eyes don’t waver from mine, but he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. His easy posture suddenly seems fabricated.

“He’s right.”

I feel like I’ve been struck. Wyatt turns his gaze to the darkened windows and they reflect the gold of his hair back to me. But not his face.

“London is no place for a girl, Anne,” he says blandly, as if he hasn’t just shattered me.

“Especially not where we’re going.” George grins. “Just a certain type of girl, eh, Percy?”

Percy’s face flames, and George punches him in the shoulder.

Wyatt won’t look at me. “Norris and the ferryman are waiting. Time to go.”

George turns and walks away, but pauses at the door.

Percy hesitates, as if faced with a dilemma.

What will he choose? The brothels of London? Or me?

I can feel the sticky wetness of Wyatt’s kiss on my cheek. I wipe it away and rub it on my skirt. I see Wyatt’s eyes linger on my hands, so I clasp both of them together to keep them still. Even silent, he criticizes.

“Surely the court provides better pastime,” Percy says.

I meet his eye. Shyly. I will watch only him. I will not turn my gaze to gauge Wyatt’s reaction.

“The court provides me nothing.” I can hear the contempt dripping from Wyatt’s words like blood. “And any chance I have to get away, I do. The question is, Percy, what about you? Are there such enticements at your castle in Northumberland as there are here? And can anything compare to the City?”

“Alnwick has nothing as compared to here,” Percy says, keeping his eyes steady on my face. “Nor, I imagine, does the City.”