Brazen (14 page)

“T
HAT
MAN
HAS
MORE
AMBITIO
N
THAN
THE
ENTIRE
H
O
WARD
family put together,” I say, watching Seymour lead a reluctant Margaret toward the crush of dancers.

Fitz laughs, and instead of taking me to join them, he sits in the place she just vacated.

“You aren’t going to dance with me?” I ask.

“I figure we’re safer here.”

Out in the middle of the room, Jane Seymour almost looks happy, but as I watch I see the king sneak a glance at Madge. She’s dancing with Hal, their movements methodical. Almost mechanical. Poor Margaret looks like she’s suffering.

“I don’t think all of Thomas Seymour’s matchmaking efforts are effective,” Fitz says.

“I think Margaret would prefer to dance with my uncle.”

I’m ready to bite my tongue off as soon as the words escape. Margaret is so private, she would hate to know I’m telling anyone. Especially the king’s son.

“Which one?” Fitz asks with a sly smile.

“The Howards
are
notoriously fertile,” I respond. And then wish to bite my tongue again. I’ve just told him I can potentially provide him with lots of babies. How can someone who loves words so much misuse them so blatantly?

“Shall I guess?”

I nod, mutely, not trusting myself to speak.

“Your uncle Edmund.”

“Ed
mund
or Ed
ward
?”

“You choose.”

“Well, uncle Edmund is a bit of a reprobate. And he’s older than your father. Married three times already and can’t even take care of his own children.” I’m thinking of my cousin Catherine, dumped on the doorstep of my step-grandmother the dowager duchess.

“And Edward?”

“Is dead.”

“Which takes him out of the running.”

“True.”

“So that leaves?”

“John. Henry. Charles. Richard. William.” I neglect to mention Thomas. Or the fact that half of them are dead, too.

“I relent!” he cries, putting his hands up over his head in mock surrender.

I smile and pretend to watch the dancers again, but I’m really watching Fitz. He leans forward on the table, resting his elbows on it, his chin on one hand, eyes following the movements of the dance. After a moment, his smile fades.

“His heart is broken.”

I know immediately he’s talking about Hal. Little stabs of guilt pelt me.

“I haven’t spoken with him.”

“I know.”

I groan and drop my forehead to the table.
So ungracious a daughter and so unnatural
, my mother called me. I can add that to my sisterly traits, as well.

I think I hear Fitz chuckle. “He’s been avoiding you.”

I turn my head so I can squint at him through my right eye.

“He’s afraid you’ll take Madge’s side.”

“I’m not in any position to take sides,” I say. “‘He that has a head of glass should not cast stones.’”

Fitz tips his head to the side and grins at me. “Chaucer?”

I find I can actually laugh. “Of course. From
Troilus and Criseyde
. Madge has been quoting him to me since we met. It was bound to sink in eventually.”

He pauses, watching me. “And why do you feel you’re made of glass?”

Guilt.

Suddenly, I am far too aware of the press of other people around me. Most have left the table and are now standing near it. Behind us. Talking. Drinking. Laughing. There is little room between the table and the wall. Not enough room. The edge of a doublet brushes my shoulder. I look up to a tower of bodies surrounding us, and my throat constricts.

“Mary?” Fitz’s voice reaches me through the tunnel—echoey and warped.

I try to breathe and manage to gasp in a tiny bubble of air. All I hear is the roar of waves—carrying with them a bark of laughter, the bang of a plate on the table, the hollow sound of swallowing.

Something seizes me by the armpits and hefts me from my seat. An arm wraps around my waist and my feet barely touch the ground on the way to the door. Percussive laughter like fireworks follows us and I think I catch a lewd remark, but don’t have the capacity to interpret it.

The courtyard outside the great hall is nearly as crowded but much cooler, and I am able to get almost an entire lungful of air. But Fitz doesn’t let go. And he doesn’t stop moving. His arm stays around my waist—almost carrying me—until we are through the lodging gate and almost at the river.

The frigid air suppresses the usual riverside stink, and the water is black and glassy. On the surface of it, the stars seem to move and swirl, as if the sky were a whirl of activity. When I look up, they are still and peaceful.

I can breathe again.

“Was it something I said?”

I can see Fitz clearly, despite the darkness at the water’s edge. There is a narrow V pinched between his eyebrows.

“The crowd,” I manage to say. I can’t explain. I don’t even understand it myself.

“Too many people?”

I nod.

“So
that’s
what makes you vulnerable.”

His question. About why I said I couldn’t take sides. Not because it’s between Hal and Madge. But because I have no right to judge.

Change the subject.

“Do you know which is Perseus?” I ask, looking back up at the stars.

I feel Fitz shift beside me, his shoulder almost touching mine as he tilts his head back to look.

“The king taught me the constellations the year I turned twelve.”

The stars look to me like nothing but a smattering of freckles across the sky. No rhyme or reason to them. Certainly not images of mythological warriors.

“That one.” Fitz wraps an arm around my shoulder and puts his face close to mine so we are looking at the same angle. He points with his other hand. “See the three bright stars in a row?”

I squint a little. “They’re just in a line?”

“Yes. At an angle.”

“That’s Perseus?”

“No, it’s Orion, the Hunter. It’s the only one I can remember.”

I remember everything my father taught me. I shift a little to get a look at Fitz, and he moves slightly away from me.

“Which god was Orion?” I ask.

“He wasn’t a god, he was a hero. Maybe. Some say he was the son of the sea god, and that he could walk on water. Some say he rivaled Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Many say he violated Merope and was blinded because of it.”

He turns to face me. “My favorite story tells that he was the lover of Eos, the golden goddess of the dawn.”

I can’t look away.

“Why is that your favorite story?” I ask.

“Because the dawn is my favorite time of day.”

He says this so simply, so sincerely, that it stops my heart. Then my stupidity kicks in.

“I should think it’s difficult to see, considering the hours the court keeps.” Late nights and even later mornings.

“It’s worth the lack of sleep.” He moves closer to me. “I should like to show it to you. See it with you.” He looks back over the water. “From the river, perhaps.”

I can’t keep it in any longer. The more I hold it back, the harder the truth is to tell. Secrets have a way of festering, becoming septic.

“I kissed Francis Weston,” I blurt.

Fitz doesn’t move, looking out to where the earth meets the sky.

“I have to tell you the truth. I kissed
him
, not the other way around.”

Fitz rests his hands on the stone boundary wall in front of us. I am suddenly numb with cold.

“Why?” he asks, his voice toneless.

Why did I? I hardly remember my reasons now.

“Because I wanted to see what it felt like. To kiss someone.” God, that sounds horrible. Like an accusation.

Fitz finally looks at me. “And what did you think?”

I want to squirm. He’s so calm. So distant. My mother had to be physically restrained when she discovered my father had a mistress.

“It was . . . awkward.”

His eyes rise again to look at the river.

“As awkward as our first kiss?”

“No.”

Fitz nods and looks down at his shoes. “Did he return the favor?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

He turns away from the river and leans back against the barrier, burying his head in his hands.

He hates me. He’s going to go to the king and annul the marriage. We’re incompatible. And we haven’t consummated it. Lord, we haven’t even kissed each other. He can find some French girl, like that one he slept with when he was fourteen. I’m so stupid.

“I’m such a fool.”

Fitz’s words echo my thoughts so precisely, I wonder if I spoke them, the panic from the crowd addling my mind.

He stands up quickly, slapping his palms against the wall, his face raised to the sky, neck arched all the way back.

“I didn’t—” I start to tell him I didn’t enjoy it, but he turns around so swiftly, I don’t have time to breathe before he puts one hand on either side of my face and lowers his mouth to mine.

At first, the kiss isn’t magical. It’s not a great rush of passion or like butterflies and flowers or whatever else the poets say. It’s a little awkward—though not as awkward as the last one.

His lips are soft. Hesitant. Then he puts his arms around me and I move mine to his waist. I tip my head so our noses aren’t pressed against each other and he bends my body backward just a little, the wall and river behind me.

This kiss is an exploration of how we fit together. How far to open our mouths and when our tongues can touch. What the velvet of his doublet feels like beneath my fingers as my hands slide up his back. How close I can press myself to him. And then how much closer when he moves his hand to the base of my spine.

Fitz kisses the corner of my mouth and then moves his lips to my ear, his breath hot on my winter-chilled skin.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

I pull away just a little, so I can look him in the eye.

“For what?”

He smiles. “I’m sorry I didn’t do that before.”

W
E
SEE
EACH
OTHE
R
EVERYWHERE
. I
N
THE
QUEEN
’
S
ROOMS
, where everyone gathers to flirt. In the great hall, where the men stamp and grumble in anticipation of moving back to Whitehall. In the courtyards.

We smile. Once, in passing, we touch. But we don’t manage to speak—or kiss—again. I begin to wonder if I dreamed it.

I long to talk to Madge. To confess how desperate I am to touch him again. I want to ask her what happens next. If this is love. But we’re still not speaking.

I want to know if she feels the same. If she feels this rush of emotion when she’s with the king. If this is only the beginning—this cramping of my ribs when I think of him, how I feel weightless when I see him—then I can’t imagine what it’s like to be with someone, truly. To be in love. Feeling that way, I, too, might break the rules. I hope I wouldn’t break a heart or betray someone’s loyalty. But I can begin to understand the desire to do so.

I cannot sleep, so I wrap my velvet counterpane and a fur around myself and find the little book that Fitz gave me. I trace the initials on the cover with my finger. M.F.

I am not a Howard. I am a FitzRoy. And there are only two of us in the entire world.

The thought warms me, but also sends a chill down my spine.

Quickly, I light a candle. But when I open the book to write down something—anything—about Fitz, I discover I cannot find the words.

I flip the pages backward, studying Madge’s scrawling hand. Her lists. I want desperately to scratch the king off. To add Hal to the bottom.

To apologize.

To accept an apology.

So instead of writing about Fitz or about love, I copy a remembered poem. One of Thomas Wyatt’s.
I abide and abide and better abide
, I write. It doesn’t say what I want to say. I hope Madge can discern its meaning.

That I’m here. That I’m waiting. That “much were it better for to be plain” as Wyatt wrote, and I hope that she will do the same.

I drop the book into her lap as I walk into the queen’s rooms. I don’t look at her. I don’t watch her reading it. Later that day, the book reappears beneath my pillow.

At first, I think she hasn’t responded. Then I come across four lines scrawled across a random page in the middle of the book.

All I have at other lost

Not as my own I do protest.

But when I have got that I have missed,

I shall rejoice among the rest.

She’s missed me as much as I’ve missed her.

My maid knocks and enters so quickly that I don’t have time to hide the book, and I am relieved to see Margaret enter.

“Reading something good?” she asks when my maid closes the door.

“I sent Madge a sort of peace offering.”

“I know. She told me.”

“You’ve been talking to her?”

“I’ve been talking to both of you, Mary. I told you I wouldn’t take sides.”

I show her Madge’s response and she smiles. She starts to take the book from me and pauses.

“May I?”

I almost laugh. Though it has my initials stamped on it, from the beginning, the book has belonged to all three of us. I hand it to her and she begins to write.

“Do you think he’s told her that he loves her?” I ask. “Madge, I mean.”

Margaret hesitates, pen hovering over the page. She doesn’t want to get involved.

“Yes,” she says finally. “He probably has. It would be the only reason she’d believe him.”

“Do you think he does?”

“No,” she says with assurance. “I don’t believe he loves anyone but himself.”

I allow this to penetrate through the curtains of my presumption that the relationship between the king and queen is the perfect illustration of love.

“He loves the queen,” I manage to whisper.

“You just keep pretending that, Mary.” The contempt in Margaret’s voice is plain.

“Don’t you think love is possible?” I ask. “Don’t you think anyone can aspire to it?”

Her face softens. “I do,” she says.

I feel a gush of relief.

“Then don’t you think we ought to talk to Madge? Convince her that . . . that he doesn’t love her?” That she deserves someone better.

Hal comes to mind. But he’s married, too. He and Madge can never have anything but an illicit romance.

“We’ll never convince her,” Margaret answers. “Because even if he doesn’t love her, I believe she loves him.”

“But she can’t!”

“Maybe we don’t get to choose who we love.”

“Then who chooses?”

“Fate? God? Or maybe just plain physical attraction.”

“Is physical attraction enough?” I think of how that kiss with Fitz makes me feel like my skin wants to wrap itself around him. Is that enough?

“For some.”

“Do you think it is for Madge?” I just manage to keep my lip from curling at the idea of being attracted to the king. His barrel chest. His bald spot. His jowly face.

His eyes. So like Fitz’s.

They have the same eyes. The same eyebrows. The same little mouth. The king’s has learned cruelty over the years.

Could that happen to Fitz, too?

“I think Madge likes the power,” Margaret says. “The conquest.”

“Of him?” I ask, not wanting an answer. “Or of her?”

“She always said no one will ever control her.”

“I imagine the king would say the same thing.”

I think of the ongoing battle between my parents. Neither one will ever give in. Or give way. Neither will admit defeat.

Margaret turns a page and continues writing on the next one, her handwriting getting more hurried and loopy as she curls over it, writing faster.

“I think you have to give up a little when you fall in love,” Margaret says, still scribbling. “There’s a part of everyone that wants to be conquered. That wants to resign responsibility. Let someone else be the master. It’s part of being in love.”

I think of my mother. Never willing to give up anything.

I think of the queen.
I am myself! I am Anne Boleyn. You have not made me!

And the king’s response.
I can make you nothing.

“I don’t want to be conquered,” I tell her. “No matter how badly I want to be loved.”