48

THE ENTIRE COURT TAKES ON A HUE OF UNREALITY: THE WOMEN in their gaudy dresses with their strident voices and overly exaggerated gestures, the men with their dizzying doublets and straight, stuffy gaits. Everything is too clear, too sharp, the movements too jerky.

And it is all so suffocatingly close.

Everything within me pulls in different directions. It’s like I’m a piece of linen, washed, boiled, beaten, stretched. Everything happening at once, and everything fighting against itself, threatening to kill me by degrees.

He lied to me.

He loves me.

Mercifully alone, I writhe in my bed from the pain of it all, like some unmade creature shedding its skin. My life is nothing but a game. I am nothing but a single, low-ranked card. Played and spent. A . . . nothing.

I have been defined by others. By my father and his cold disappointment. By my brother and his wily manipulation. By France. By Thomas Wyatt.

Thomas built me in his image. I want to strip away the paint and gilt and discover what is underneath. If anything.

I slide from my bed and stand on shaky legs, a fawn newly born. A fledgling.

I kneel in my room and make a pledge to myself never again to let anyone tell me what to do. Anyone. Not my fiancé. Not my husband. Not my father or my brother. Not society. I will rule myself.

I pull out my book of hours, the book Mary gave me for Christmas. I am more like Mary than I ever thought possible, pleasing others at the expense of being myself. The book’s beautiful illuminations glow faintly in the candlelight. I turn the page to the miniature of the Last Judgment.

I will no longer be judged by the standards of others. I will judge myself. I will not live by someone else’s rules. I will make my own.

I pick up my quill and write Le temps viendra. The time will come.

I sit back on my heels.

“I am not nothing,” I say to the empty room. “And I refuse to be nothing. I will become someone, Thomas Wyatt. Without you. I will be more than you. You will not shape me. Because I have a shape of my own.”

I pick up the quill again, dip it in the ink. Hesitate. Then I bring it back to the paper.

Je—

I stop.

What am I? I cast my mind into the future. Seeking light. Enlightenment.

I sketch an astrolabe, a tool used predict the movement of the moon and stars. To predict the future. And I know. I want to be heard. I want to be seen. I want to be remembered. As me.

Anne Boleyn.

The ink seeps into the page. Permanent.

I am me.

I own me.

I will not be held to earth by someone else’s tether.

I will let go of the past.

And I will start with Thomas Wyatt.