25

MY DREAMS ARE HAUNTED BY GREEN AND GOLD. BUT MY DAYS are haunted by other men.

The palace is full to bursting because Christian II, king of Denmark, is coming to visit. Deposed, he is wandering Europe like a minstrel, singing his song of woe, despite having repressed his subjects to the point of riot.

Jousts and banquets and dances are planned. Everyone forgets Thomas Wyatt’s silvered poetry in the forest. Except me.

He disappears in the tumult, leaving me to navigate the new court demands on my own. Leaving me to Henry Percy.

Wolsey arrives at Greenwich, perched atop a donkey caparisoned with cloth of gold. The gaudiness of the trappings subverts the impression of the unpretentious cleric the donkey is meant to convey, but Wolsey doesn’t acknowledge the irony.

His men come to the queen’s rooms. Percy, straight and studied. Butler, unruly and explosive. And the king’s men, too, savoring the cover of chaos for illicit flirtation. Norris, especially.

He sits beside me. A little too close. But not close enough for comment.

Butler, obvious in his awkwardness, brays at the card table.

“Mistress Boleyn,” Norris says, “I hear you are to marry our friend Butler over there. The match made in York Place.”

“Certainly not in heaven.”

Norris laughs and allows himself to edge a little closer to me.

“And what about Thomas Wyatt?”

“What about him?”

“Rumor has it that you’re his latest conquest.”

I look at him archly.

“The term conquest suggests submission, Sir Henry.”

Norris smiles craftily. “I wonder on which side,” he purrs.

“And pray tell what justifies your interest in such a thing?”

“My dear, if anything bad should happen to him, I would look to have you.”

He holds my gaze for a long moment, daring me to respond. But I retaliate.

“I would undo you if you tried.”

Norris laughs.

“I’m sure you would, Mistress Boleyn.”

He stands and walks away, his movements calculated. Exaggerated. He looks once over his shoulder, and grins.

Percy watches him go and moves to take his place. I sneak a sideways glance at him. Percy’s clothes are almost camouflaged against the background of the courtiers who swarm the ladies of the queen’s chambers like flies on butter. He wears little to distinguish himself—the opposite of Wolsey. Percy doesn’t want to be seen or heard but merely exist, unremarked.

Wyatt’s words come back to me: You were meant for something better. I shake them away. There is nothing better. There is only worse. Sold to James Butler in Ireland. Lodged beneath my father’s shadow. Wasting away as the flirtatious—but unmarriageable—sister of the king’s whore. Or the perceived mistress of the court’s most notorious philanderer. No, my only escape is this man beside me. Bland, perhaps. But grand, as well.

I glance up to see the duchess studying me. Her gray eyes flick to Percy and back to me. I raise an eyebrow. She glares, and I imagine her face when I join the circle of nobility. So I compose my features and nod my head in deference. Let her think I submit to her superiority. For now.

“Are you friends with the duchess?” Percy asks.

His baritone rumbles through me and settles somewhere south of my heart. I’m used to him being silent.

“Actually, I think she wishes me dead.”

“I’m sure you’re witty, Mistress Boleyn. But sometimes you speak and act unwisely.”

“One of my greatest faults.”

“Most faults can be overcome.”

“Do you have any faults, Lord Percy?” I tease.

“I am not as brave nor as adamant as my father.” He has taken my question seriously.

“I’m sure even our fathers can be overcome.” I lay a hand on his.

He twitches it away and I pull mine back into my lap.

“I sincerely hope so,” he says. He turns to me, and for an instant I see something spirited in his gaze. But it disappears quickly.

“I need to tread carefully with my father. Someone so”—he looks to the door through which Norris exited—“flamboyant as yourself might make him draw the wrong conclusions.”

I wonder what conclusions Percy himself has drawn.

“Are you saying you don’t want to be seen with a girl like me?”

“I’m saying I need to ensure my name is not connected to scandal.”

The Château Vert. Mary’s affair with the king. George’s increasingly visible drunkenness. My own flirtatiousness.

“Your name.”

He nods, not hearing or comprehending the coldness of my voice. “The Percys have been nobility for centuries. We are related to the king.”

And have managed to regain lands and titles despite sitting immobile on the wrong side of the battle of Bosworth. The Percys certainly know when to act. And when not to.

“In these days when the king appoints new men to ancient titles,” Percy continues, “the old names must persevere. Unblemished.”

“And yet here you sit. Next to the daughter of a new man.”

Percy suddenly seems to realize my existence.

“Don’t get me wrong, Mistress Boleyn,” he says, and I see the fervency in his eyes once more. “You are related to Norfolk. To the ancient lines. You are . . .”

He stutters to a halt. Looks at my lips, then down at his hands, clasped in his lap. He exudes the scent of old paper.

“. . . extraordinary.”

A bubble rises within me, warm and fine and fragile. I spread my fingers on my skirts.

“I don’t want my father’s choice,” Percy says with a cough. As if he feels he’s said too much. “I want mine.” He looks again into my eyes. “Which is why we must be careful.”

The bubble expands at the sound of the word we. He looks away. I turn, too, and study the smoke climbing the walls up to the ceiling.

“There can be no indication of a relationship here until it is . . .” Another cough. “Consummated.”

I catch his eye just before he looks away again. It is as if we are in the steps of a complicated dance.

“No one can know. Not your brother. Not your sister. Certainly not Thomas Wyatt.”

Wyatt already knows. A little. He doesn’t approve. He would never set himself up to be a spurned lover. He won’t speak of it.

“Not your father.”

I finally find my voice. “But when my father returns, he will push my marriage to Butler.”

Percy sits so still and so silent, I’m not sure he heard me. The little noises of the room fill the vacant space: the whispers of the duchess and her confederacy in the corner, the soft slip of silk beneath the queen’s fingers, the rattle of dice on the table by the door.

Percy turns and looks at me directly. “Then we must find a way to engender a more desirable result.”