Brazen (19 page)

T
HE
PROGRESS
I
S
SLUGGISH
AND
SOMBE
R
. W
E
MOVE
FROM
Gloucester to Thornbury, Acton Court to Bromham. The queen hardly speaks, and when she does, it’s to her chaplains. The king spends all his free time hunting or hawking, barely acknowledging his subjects when they come for justice or sanction or to receive his touch for some horrifying disease.

In September, we stop at the Seymour manor of Wulfhall in Wiltshire. It is just on the edge of the Savernake Forest, an ancestral woodland of oak and beech, the great, saddle-backed ancients sheltered by the sprawling coppices of spidery saplings. The chalk plateau is patched and pocked with flint that strikes sparks from the horses’ hooves as we thread our way through the trees to the wide valley where the manor stands.

When we reach the manor, I remain on my horse, on a slight rise overlooking the barely controlled chaos of our arrival.

The house is timber framed, with a single stone tower dominating the corner of one of the courtyards. The horses and carts and courtiers spill around the house like multicolored grain tipped from a silo. Everyone pushes in, trying to be seen, trying to be helpful, trying to be
necessary.
Old man Seymour nods and smiles and sends the servants hither and yon while his daughter Jane stands beside him, pretending to be the lady of the house.

I suddenly want to turn around and abandon it all. Ride my horse all the way to Sheffield. To wherever Fitz is. To find another moment with him like that morning in the boat—quiet, tranquil, and golden.

“Marvelous, isn’t it?”

I turn to see Thomas Seymour beside me. He rode out to meet us four miles away, trotting up and down the cavalcade and welcoming each person in order of precedence. I should be offended that he has come to me so late, but I was rather relieved to avoid conversation with him.

The contrast between Jane and Thomas is like night and day. Jane is small and a little round, her face so average that it is nearly featureless. Whereas Thomas has presence. Sinewy and swift, like a greyhound. His features are sharp and dark, and when he directs his gaze at something, it’s as if there’s nothing else in the world. His hair falls in waves over his ears and his chin is clean-shaven. No spade-like facial hair for him.

The girls fall all over him. It’s as if he breathes carnality from his pores, and they swarm to it like ants to honey.

He sees me assessing him and leans forward over his pommel with a rapacious grin.

“I could give you a tour,” he says. “I know Wulfhall’s most . . .
intimate
secrets and hiding places.”

He tips his head to the side. It’s as if he’s waiting for me to look away first.

I don’t.

“Thank you,” I say with more graciousness than I feel. “My duty is to the queen.”

“And mine is to make sure the
desires
of all of my guests are met.”

We ride together, no longer speaking, to the melee of the stable yard, and when he hands me down from my horse, he holds on to me a little too long.

“Remember, just come to me if you need any . . . privacy while you are here.”

When I don’t answer, he blows me a kiss.

That’s when I turn away. I don’t look at him again.

I don’t need to experiment anymore. Certainly not with the likes of Thomas Seymour.

Something alters while we are in Wiltshire. When we leave to travel back toward Windsor, through Winchester and Farnham and Easthampstead, the king is more jovial. It’s as if the Seymours with their exuberant hospitality have somehow made everyone happier, more content, more fulfilled.

We make our slow way winding through countryside set to harvest.

What little there is. The weather has turned against the farmers, and they stand, still and stonelike beside their plows, watching the parade go by with little acclaim and less revelry.

Rumors abound that they blame the queen. That they think this is the result of the break with Rome. That it is all her fault.

She seems to shrink into herself, the closer we get to Windsor. She is no longer the mythical Helen, beautiful enough to incite men to war. She no longer calls her own to her, like the light to which moths fly. She looks lost.

And when we arrive at Windsor, the most astute members of the court begin to pay suit to Jane Seymour.

I
N
N
OVEMBER
, F
ATHE
R
AND
F
ITZ
TRAVELED
TOGETHER
TO
THE
Welsh Marches, despite the impending winter, to assert English authority. I worry they won’t be back before Christmas. I worry about what Father might be suggesting Fitz do with me.

The court moves to Richmond, slogging on roads choked with mud and detritus. The weather has been horrific—sheets of rain sliding from the sky and threatening to drown the unwary for simply stepping outside.

Everyone is pressed into closed rooms and narrow galleries—it’s impossible to move without rubbing shoulders and stepping on toes. And when I’m alone, I carry in my nostrils the stink of wet and mold and the must of unwashed bodies.

I am surprised when my maid opens the door for a visitor late one evening. There are no parties planned. The queen chose to dine in her privy chambers, the king in his. Everyone separated.

I look up to see Madge standing in my doorway.

She is thinner. And probably more beautiful. But some of the shine has left her, as if the rain has washed it away.

I stand and we face each other.

“So,” she says. That is all.

“So.”

The maid stands helplessly behind Madge, obviously unsure of whether to go or stay. I finally put her out of her misery by asking for bread and cheese.

“And maybe some wine,” Madge adds, with a flicker of her old bravado. But it disappears in an instant and she turns to me, forlorn. “If that’s all right.”

“Of course,” I say. “Come in. Mistress Shelton.”

Madge presses the knuckles of her right hand to her mouth, looking about to cry, and shakes her head.

I wait.

“So,” Madge says again, hesitates, and then tosses her head. She flops down on my bed and speaks to the canopy. “When is the big night?”

“Big night?” I ask. I’m unsettled by her presence. By her attempt to take things back to the way they were. As if the last six months haven’t even happened.

“Yes,” she says. Then more slowly. “To start living.”

I just sit down and pick up my sewing. I don’t want to go back to that discussion.

“Fitz—the Duke of Richmond—is coming back for the Christmas holidays, is he not?” Madge props herself up on her elbows to look at me.

I hope so.
I nod and lift the thread to my mouth to bite it off.

“Oooh.” Madge reaches for the linen. “Very nice work, Duchess. What is this and who might it be for?”

I pull it away from her.

“Never you mind.”

“I reckon it’s a shirt for your husband. And I reckon that you—naughty girl that you are—would rather see him out of it than in.”

I drop the shirt to my lap. It is for Fitz. Of course it is. I have thought of how something I’ve touched—hands, fingers, lips—will soon be touching his skin. And something gnaws deeply inside me when I imagine it. But I’ll be damned if I admit it to Madge right now.

“What do you want?” I ask her.

“I want to see you happy.”

“You mean you want to be happy.”

She climbs down from the bed and kneels in front of me, taking my hands in hers. “Your happiness makes me happy, Duchess.”

I can’t help but smile. Madge is self-serving and indiscreet, but I have been so lonely without her.

“Are you happy, Madge?”

She stands abruptly and brushes off her skirts. She walks to the fire and pokes at it with the iron rod that sits nearby. The coals flare red and then go black. She looks at me over her shoulder.

“I am now that you’re calling me Madge again.”

She lays down the rod, and this time when she walks to me, I stand. She hugs me with a fierceness that brings tears to my eyes.

When I look at her, she wipes her own.

“I don’t know what he sees in her.”

I know who she’s talking about, but I don’t respond.

“Frowsy old Jane Seymour. The simpering sow-faced cow. She has no beauty and no spark. That woman wouldn’t say boo to a goose. And she’d never tell anyone no.”

“Maybe that’s the appeal.” No one would ever say that about Madge. Or the queen.

“There is no chance that woman is a virgin. She’s almost twenty-eight years old. It’s impossible to stay a virgin for so long. Especially at this court. Didn’t she serve Queen Katherine?”

“There are ways to retain virginity, Madge.”

She lowers her head and looks at me from beneath her brow. “And there are ways to lose it, Duchess. I’m sure Fitz wouldn’t mind relieving you of yours.”

I swat at her and she ducks.

“You’re blotching.”

I charge at her and nearly knock over the maid opening the door with her hip, carrying a tray laden with wine and bread. The tray totters precariously and we all watch as the jug slides to the floor with a thump and a shower of red.

Madge throws her head back and howls with laughter while I kneel with the maid, who is attempting to wipe some of it up with her skirts.

“Please, Your Grace,” the maid says.

“Yes, Your Grace,” Madge says in the same tone. “Let’s rectify this situation by going to find wine on our own.”

I thank the maid, who hardly looks at me, and Madge laughs again.

We make our way through the lodgings to the outer court. The royal lodgings are stacked on top of one another, beyond the courtyards and the hall and moat.

Madge loops an arm through mine. “So,” she whispers. “The queen. Is she well?”

“She seems melancholy,” I say slowly.

“I’ve heard she’s ill. But she still won’t let me into her privy chamber.”

I glance at her. “It could be morning sickness.”

Madge wrings her hands. “My mother thinks it’s poisoning. The lady Mary—the king’s daughter—said she
hopes
it’s poisoning. Do you think—would anyone do that?”

The queen has many enemies. I suppose poisoning could be a real possibility. The queen’s face is drawn and colorless. She is so thin. She looks so old. But there is something in her eyes.

Something a little like hope.

“No,” I say firmly. “I think she’s pregnant again.”

“We stopped sleeping together three months ago,” Madge says. “And I don’t think Jane Seymour will sleep with him.”

As if that’s the only reason to sleep with your wife. Because your mistress won’t let you in her bed. Irritation bubbles in my lungs.

“So you care about her now that you are no longer rivals?”

Madge stops short. “I always cared about her.”

I turn, unable to avoid the confrontation. “That’s why you slept with her husband.”

Madge hangs her head, and I can see the droplets of rain peppering the hair exposed by her hood. “I thought he loved me. I thought fate had brought us together. Like Margaret and Thomas.” She looks up. “Like you and Fitz.”

I feel not only guilt but pity. Because what would I do if Fitz were unattainable? What would I feel if he were already married or too old or too young or a priest? What if he were a prisoner, destined to be executed?

Wouldn’t I break the rules?

For love.

But there has to be a line drawn somewhere. A boundary that shouldn’t be crossed.

Or do I just feel superior because I’m married to the man I love?

“I don’t know if I believe in fate,” I say finally.

Madge stops at the courtyard gate. Through it can be seen the inner court and the storied donjon. The rain has stopped and the light from the windows glints on the wet cobblestones.

“Do you believe in love?” she says. It’s not a question. It’s a challenge. “Even Margaret, the queen of reserve, seems more besotted. Are you in love with the delectable duke?”

My chest gets tight and my first desire is to tell her—not sparing any details—how I feel. How my body is like a divining rod, specially tuned to his presence. How I feel like something’s missing when he isn’t nearby.

Her challenge stops me. If she had asked as a friend, I would bend my head near hers and whisper everything into her ear. As it is now, my confession of love would be a defense. And that seems like a cheap waste of truth.

Madge waits for a moment. Then two. She narrows her eyes, and then her wicked grin starts to tug at her mouth. “Or are you simply in lust?”

My thoughts flash back to that afternoon in Fitz’s room. How my body reacted when Fitz’s lips touched the skin where my throat meets my jaw. How his hand felt pressing me against him. How much it scared me.

“It’s lust.” Madge claps her hands. “I can tell just by looking at you.”

“Aren’t they all part of the same thing?”

“Absolutely not. You can lust after someone and not love him at all.”

“You think you can want to be with someone physically if you don’t like them personally?”

“I didn’t say you could lust after someone you loathe,” Madge corrects me. “Though I think it’s possible. I was just saying that you can want someone’s body and not necessarily be interested in his mind.”

“Or his heart?” I ask. “Because don’t you want to be with someone who at least cares about you?”

“I don’t need to be taken care of.”

“That’s not what I said.” But I wonder if it’s what I want. My mother never took care of me. I’d like to feel protected.

“I think you and I look at the world very differently,” Madge says.

As we stand at the courtyard boundary, each waiting for the other to say the next line, the rain begins to fall again, a veily shimmer between us. Neither of us moves.

“Well,” I say finally, not letting my gaze drift from hers. “That must be why we are friends.”

Madge blinks. Once. Twice. And then rapidly. “True,” she says, lifting her face to the rain. “I guess we’ve made it this far.” She starts to turn, her arms stretched down at her sides, fingers spread wide. “We can’t stop now!”

She whirls once more and then grabs my hands to pull me in a circle around her. We both lean back, faces upward, the walls of the courtyard spinning past, the clouds above like a whirlpool, ready to suck me up and away.

A flash of blue and yellow catches the corner of my eye. The colors of the livery Fitz’s ushers wear. If his servants are here, Fitz will be, too. I stop and Madge twirls into me, knocking our spin out of kilter, and we clutch at each other to keep from falling onto the wet and mucky cobblestones.

Francis Weston comes to our rescue. He is perhaps too careful not to touch me. And perhaps too attentive keeping Madge’s body from coming to any harm.

“Why, thank you, Master Weston.” Madge actually bats her eyelashes, and Weston actually blushes.

“Your Grace,” Weston says to me, and bows. He doesn’t let go of Madge, but greets her with an arm still around her waist. “Mistress Shelton.”

Another married man.

But we have just rediscovered the footing of our friendship, so I hold my tongue and renew my determination to live my
own
life.

I turn to the courtyard gate to look again for the man in his livery, and there stands someone else. Dressed in gaudy black and white, his crimson cloak trimmed in fur, and sporting a new-grown brassy scruff of beard.

My brother.

He’s staring at Madge in Weston’s arms. She hasn’t seen Hal yet. She’s still giggling at Weston, one hand flat on his chest.

“Hal!” I cry. It’s like watching the jug of wine earlier—an accident happening as time slows to a standstill.

Madge’s eyes widen and she falters, Weston’s arms tightening around her even more. Then Madge tosses her head and looks at him again. As if Hal doesn’t exist.

I catch a glimpse of him as he disappears again around the corner of the gate.

“Hal!” I stumble once in my rush across the cobbles, but catch him before he gets too far. I grab his hand from behind and he starts to jerk it out of my grip, but then turns and hugs me ferociously.

“I thought I would be fine,” he says with a bark of a laugh. “I mean, I haven’t seen her in six months. I’ve been living with my wife. I should be fine.”

He looks at me. He is not fine.

“We don’t always do what we should,” I tell him gently.

“Spoken like a true rule breaker,” Hal says, and kisses my cheek.

“And you do like your wife. Don’t you?”

Hal leans in to whisper to me. “I made her pregnant.”

I step back and he tips his head to one side and shrugs minutely. Blushing.

I hug him again. “Congratulations.” I look up into his face. “You must like her a little then.”

Hal looks back over his shoulder to the gateway. All we can see from here is the inside of the stone arch—none of the courtyard at all.

“I like her,” he says. “She’s sweet and pretty, but . . .” He doesn’t finish his thought and turns back to me with an undeniable intensity. “You are so fortunate, Mary. Never forget that. Fitz loves you. He hasn’t stopped talking about you since we left Kenninghall.”

“Fitz is here?” My mouth has gone dry and my fingers flutter against my skirts. “You rode together?”

I look over Hal’s shoulder, as if Fitz might be standing there.

Hal laughs. “He had to present himself to his father first. And then . . .” Something behind me catches his attention, and his smile grows even wider. “Talk of the devil.”