Brazen (25 page)

“You forget yourself.”

The tone in the king’s voice sends a sliver of ice through me. I can’t move. I want to grab Fitz and take him far away.

“I am the queen of England,” she says in a voice equally cold and brutal. “Like you, I wore the crown of Saint Edward at my coronation. I forget nothing.”

Silence breaks over the room like a wave until Elizabeth starts to whimper. I look over my shoulder to see the queen holding the baby outstretched again.

The king does not hesitate.

He walks away.

“Neither do I.”

The queen remains by the window, gently kissing Elizabeth’s fingers. She has retreated somewhere within herself. Somewhere untouchable.

The king stops at the door and turns slowly until he is toe to toe with Fitz. At almost seventeen, Fitz is now nearly as tall as his father, but the king still seems to tower over him like a colossus. Fitz looks him in the eye and doesn’t back down.

“
Never
do that again,” the king says.

Fitz turns away—like he’s been slapped.

F
ITZ
IS
ABSOLUTELY
SILENT
AS
WE
WALK
B
ACK
THROUGH
THE
empty chambers that surround the queen. He is half a pace ahead of me, his emotions enveloping him like a frigid shroud that I can’t begin to penetrate.

We thread our way through knots and tangles of courtiers still waiting for the Privy Council. We pass through the Middle Court, now deep in shadow and smelling of a late spring frost, the sky above us turning from silk to velvet, deep and lightless.

I finally catch him. His hand is icy. And when I look up at him, his eyes cannot see me. He takes a deep breath, and the cold air makes him cough, the mist coiling about him like smoke.

“He doesn’t care about me.” Fitz’s voice is bitter. Sullen, even. He sounds like a different person. Nothing like the confident boy who climbed into bed with me the night we were married. “I’m nothing to him. Worthless. He’s ready to make Elizabeth worthless, too. That has to be what they’re discussing. Divorce. The queen knows it. The court knows it. Divorce and bastardy. Then
he
will move on to the next victim.”

“He’s just going to pretend they were never married? On what grounds? She was never married before. She was a virgin when she came to the king’s bed. She’s done nothing
wrong
!”

“Right or wrong doesn’t matter,” Fitz says. “The only thing that matters is what people believe. He’s ridding himself of her. So he can have a real heir. A real son.”

“Are you upset because of Elizabeth?” I ask quietly. “Or because of you?”

“Me, Mary!” he shouts. “It’s about me. I do everything he says, follow every rule, wait forever for what I want, and I only get it if he wants to give it. I want to live
my
life, not the one he’s chosen for me.”

“But you’re his son.”

“Didn’t you hear him?” Fitz’s voice breaks. “I’m not even that. He doesn’t have a son.”

I let him walk away. He crosses the courtyard and enters the next, his figure blending with the shadows.

L
ATE
THAT
NIGH
T
,
AFTER
THE
CANDLES
HAVE
BURNED
DOWN
and been replaced, the Privy Council adjourns and the crowds disperse.

The result of seventeen hours of discussion and deliberation?

The king’s trip to Calais has been canceled. Nothing more.

And later, after the servants have gone to bed, and the candles have been snuffed, and even after the gossips have stopped spreading rumors, there is a knock at my bedroom door that is more like the scratch of a mouse.

I know it’s him. I’ve stayed awake for him. I’ve sent my servants away, hoping he’ll come to me.

But when I open the door, Hal is there, mussed and ruffled with dark shadows under his eyes. I draw my furred robe closer.

“Hal?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Fitz.”

My ribs contract, and I have to put one numb hand on the doorframe to keep myself upright. “What is it? Is he all right?”

Heartache can make you sick; we all know this. They say Katherine of Aragon died of it.

“He’s in my room,” Hal says, and looks up at me. “He wants you.”

Without another word or question, I put on my slippers and follow him. Through the frigid courtyards to the lodgings at the far end of the palace, where they run toward the orchards. The air smells of woodsmoke, and the stars overhead are like chips of frozen jewels.

Hal pauses at his door, one hand on the catch.

“He’s alone.”

“I know.” I can’t imagine how it would feel to lose my father. For it to be proven that I am nothing to him.

“I shouldn’t let you in there.”

I look at my brother. At the hesitation in his face. He thinks we’re breaking the rules. He thinks Fitz
wants
me. He doesn’t realize that Fitz
needs
me. We need each other.

“Please, Hal.” I would get down on my knees if I have to.

“Keep him safe.” Hal throws the catch and I realize he loves Fitz, too. Fitz may feel like he doesn’t have a father, but surely he knows he has a brother.

I kiss Hal on the cheek before he opens the door and I slip through.

Fitz greets me with a kiss so deep and penetrating, I feel like we are one person instead of two. My hands are on his back and in his hair, and his are on my throat and beneath the collar of my robe. My heart thrums so loudly in my ears that I barely hear the latch click when Hal closes the door.

“Leave with me,” Fitz whispers, his words bare and unfettered on my ear. “Let’s leave here. Tonight.” He kisses my collarbone, my shoulder, following the fur of my robe where it opens.

“Where will we go?” I ask, smoothing the hair at the nape of his neck so I can kiss him there. He shudders and straightens.

“France.” He takes both of my hands in his and looks at me seriously. “I’ve always wanted to go back to France.”

This isn’t a game or a dream. He means to leave. Leave England. Leave the king. Leave tonight.

He wants me to go with him.

This is why Hal said,
Keep him safe.

“For how long?” I ask. But I know the answer.

“We’d be together. With no one telling us what to do.”

“We would never see our families again. Nor Madge, nor Margaret. Nor Hal.”

“He’d come to visit us. You know he would.”

“He’d be in danger.” I step away and close my robe against the chill. “Everyone would think he was helping us plan to overthrow the king.”

“Might not be such a bad idea.”

“Stop, Fitz. Just stop.”

I walk away from him. I have to. It’s one thing to go against the king’s wishes by consummating our marriage. Or to aid a lady of royal blood to marry without permission.

It’s another thing entirely to plot treason.

“I can’t bear to stay!”

I turn and look at him. His arms are stiff at his sides, hands in fists as tight as his expression.

“You
are
the king’s son,” I tell him. I walk back and put my hands on his arms, but they do not relax. “If you go to France and claim asylum everyone will assume you’re planning a coup. That you have pretensions to the throne. Just like your grandfather.”

The seventh King Henry lived for years in France until he had the funds and support needed to raise an army. He knocked the crown from Richard III’s head and took his place.

“Our lives wouldn’t be worth living,” I say. “We’d have assassins and spies after us all the time. We would never be safe.”

“So we stay? Imprisoned? Married, but unable to be together. In love, but kept apart. Lapdogs, kept for show, but always at the bottom of the pack.”

I think of Urian, showing the other dogs who’s in charge. And I want to leave. Escape. Believe in the dream of a palace in exile on the Loire.

I can’t change the world, so I kiss him. Softly. Slowly. Like a lazy afternoon alone.

“Be with me, Mary,” he whispers.

I remember what the queen said just a few hours ago. How what she fears most is regret for things she hasn’t done. I press myself closer to him.

“I love you,” I say, my words tangled in his kiss. I hold his face between my palms and force him to look at me. “I love you.
I
love you.”

“Even if I’m nothing?”

I kiss his eyes closed so I don’t see the despair so ripe in them.

“You are not nothing,” I tell him. “To me, you are everything.”

He slides his hands inside my robe and I wrap it around him. Every point where our bodies touch feels stung by fire. He strokes my back and presses one hand to my hip, nothing but my shift between his skin and mine.

I check back over my shoulder. The door is closed. He looks up, his eyes a little drunk. He lets me go and strides over to the door. Locks it without seeing who might be on the other side. Turns around and looks at me, a question in his eyes.

I nod.

Without speaking, he returns to me and slides the robe from my shoulders. I feel the chill of the air around me, but I am so warm, it cannot touch me. I move to unfasten his doublet, but he stops me. Steps back. And stares.

My back is to the fire, so he can see my shape silhouetted through my shift. I try to imagine what he sees. The curves where breast meets rib and the arc between rib and hip. I should be embarrassed. Nervous. Worry that I’m too buxom or that my belly is too round or my hips too flat.

But I’m not. Because beneath his gaze, I feel delicious.

“You are so beautiful,” he says.

I look at him. Really look at him. Long limbed and broad chested, with the body of an athlete. Or—if I didn’t know better—a dancer. The blue-gray eyes lined with thick lashes. The shock of red-gold hair lolling over the highly arched eyebrows. The freckle just at the corner of his mouth.

I stand on my tiptoes to kiss it.

“So are you.”

I feel the corner of his mouth curl up beneath my lips just before he plunges his hands into my hair and he kisses me with such tenderness and force that I feel bruised.

Fitz lays me back on the great tester bed, the down pillowing beneath me. I marvel at the stroke of his skin on mine and the softness of his hands. At how we shed our clothes like the skins of snakes. At the way my body seems to know more than I ever guessed. Until a stripe of pain shoots through me and I freeze.

“Does it hurt?” Fitz stops moving. So still.

I remember what he told me. Long ago. Never to lie to him. Not even a little.

“Yes.”

“Do you want to stop?”

I look into his eyes. Feel the heat of his skin against me. Thoughts come in a series of flashes like lightning strikes. Rules. Pain. Pregnancy. Parents.

But all I
feel
is Fitz. His body. His gaze. His love.

“No,” I say. “Don’t stop.”

I
WAKE
BEFORE
DAWN
WITH
HIS
ARM
STI
LL
AROUND
ME
. T
HE
FIR
E
has gone out and the room is chilled. The counterpane slipped to the floor in the middle of the night. But I wake warmer than I ever have in my life.

I lie as still as possible. I barely dare to breathe. I want to hold this moment like a bubble captured in glass. I know I’ll have to go soon. I can’t be seen wandering the palace in nothing but my shift and robe. I’ve taken too many risks as it is.

“Let me show you the sunrise,” Fitz whispers through a kiss on the back of my neck.

I turn to face him, rolling my body beneath his arm. His hand never leaves my skin.

“How did you know I was awake?”

His eyes are half closed and he murmurs lazily, “You stopped snoring.”

I push him, and his hand drifts down to the crook of my hip, igniting little fires along the way.

“I don’t snore.” I can find no trace of offense or teasing in my voice.

“No, you’re right,” he says, closing his eyes fully and nestling closer, his hand sliding to the small of my back. “You purr.”

Like a cat, I arch into him when he kisses me.

A noise outside the door stops us before we can take things any further. Fitz’s eyes widen and I slip out from under his arm, pulling the counterpane around me.

“It’s locked,” he whispers.

“It’s morning,” I whisper back.

Hastily, I pull on my shift and wrap myself in the fur-lined robe. Compared to Fitz, it feels cold. He already has his breeches on, and is drawing a shirt over his head. I stroke his back once before it disappears, and he turns to give me a quick, tight kiss.

“It’s May Day,” he says. “They’ll be preparing for the joust.” His gaze still makes me feel luscious. But also conspicuous. I can’t imagine the state of my hair.

“I don’t know how we’ll get you back to your room like that,” he says, confirming my doubts.

“I didn’t have time to dress last night,” I say. “I was worried.”

The day before comes back to him like a flood across his face and he frowns, but then quickly shakes his head.

“Today is something new,” he says. “Things are going to change. I can feel it.”

“They already have.”
Joy
tastes like a plum—warm and freshly picked.

I unlock the door as quietly as I can. Hal sits just on the other side, his back against the wall and his forehead on his knees. He looks up.

“Mary,” he says, and stands. “Come quickly.” He glances once behind me, and I turn to see Fitz, his throat exposed by his open shirt.

“Jesus wept,” Hal swears, without much force, and takes me by the hand. “I know a secret entrance. Through the maids’ chamber. If we’re very quiet, they’ll never hear us. But you have to come with me
now
.”

He looks more disheveled than I do, his doublet undone and his hair wild from running his hands through it. I feel a spasm of guilt for locking him out of his room all night.

“Hal,” I say, “thank you.”

“No, Mary,” he says, “thank
you
for convincing him not to leave.”

We don’t speak again as he takes me behind his lodgings and into the garden, through a chill of near-frozen dew that wets our feet. The darkness has begun to fade, and just as we come to the wall that separates the garden from the river, a shaft of sunlight spills over it. I look up, and there on the thinnest of possible branches is the kingfisher.

It seems like an omen. A good one.