58

IT’S NOT UNUSUAL FOR THE KING TO ATTEND THE WEDDING OF one of his courtiers. George is a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and Father is treasurer of the household.

But I don’t believe the king is here for George, or for Father.

I believe he is here to see me.

And so is Thomas.

My emotions pull taut between them, twanging every time either one moves or speaks. I feel visible, exposed. And thoroughly grateful when Jane appears.

She is elegant in pale pink trimmed with coiled crimson satin. Her father is fluffed and preening in the presence of the king. Mine is stuffed with pride. Mary is beside him, quiet, humbled.

George arrives five minutes late. His hair is a mussy nest of spikes and whorls. He looks younger than his twenty years, like a child just out of bed, being dragged unwilling to church.

Jane is smooth and poised, every hair in place. Her smile, clear and bright, breaks my heart. She’s marrying the man she loves.

The wedding party moves on to a lavish banquet—Father for once not caring about the expense, or trying to appear not to care. There is venison and brawn, pigeon and sparrow, lamb and rabbit. The bridecake is demolished and devoured. I linger over strawberries soaked in wine.

I feel Thomas circling. But he doesn’t approach.

When everyone has had their fill and the men begin to argue over the bones, the king orders the tables to be taken away and requests music.

The lutenist tunes his instrument, humming over the strings. He wears an expression of detached arrogance. I realize, with a shock, that it’s Mark Smeaton, from Wolsey’s household. The king has poached him—or his voice has finally changed.

Smeaton knows he’s good. He knows he can do this. He feels superior. He smiles, gazes about the room to see who is watching, doesn’t watch his own fingers.

And strums.

The noise that vibrates through the room is not the sound he expected. It is discordant and jarring, his fingering all wrong. The look on his face is priceless.

I giggle to myself and then stop. Because the king is looking at me. He is laughing, too. The room is small. He is so very close.

Smeaton recovers himself and dives into a complicated melody that the rest of the musicians do their best to follow. The king and I stare at each other as the music rains down and encapsulates us.

Until Mary brushes by me when she leaves the room, and the king follows her with his eyes. The bubble bursts and I don’t look at him again.

The party goes on until nearly dawn, the musicians almost falling asleep over their instruments. The king regales everyone with war stories; my father competes with tales of his diplomatic missions.

George stays awake and away from his chambers, something noticed by all but remarked on by none, until the musicians finally stop.

“I think it’s time to bed the bride and groom!” Norris cries.

“One more drink.” George’s words are nearly unintelligible already. Jane flushes hot by the fireside, one hand gripping the pearls at her throat.

“Nothing more to drink!” Norris declares. “We will carry you bodily to your chamber and listen through the curtains!”

“And don’t forget we will check the sheets in the morning,” Bryan chimes in.

“It’s already morning,” George mutters, but allows himself to be removed from his wine and pulled into a mob of backslapping and bawdy remarks.

Jane hides behind her veil and I catch her just before she peels the healing skin from her index finger. I squeeze her hand silently and she squeezes back before she allows herself to be swept through the door by the rowdy throng.

“Come with me.” Thomas grabs my hand amid the chaos. He’s pulling me back toward the middle court. Away. I glance at the ebb of activity in the room. The king is looking elsewhere.

We cross the court quickly, the May rain saturating us, the castle walls, the chapel and chimneys. Turning the world into a long, wet wash all the way to the Thames.

Thomas plucks at my sleeve and melts into the shadows of a stairwell. I follow him silently, my slippers making no sound on the stone steps.

The clouds hide the moon, and the sun is too afraid to rise.

I kiss him before he speaks. I want to shut it all out. Jane and George. My father. Mary. The rain. The king. I stand on my toes to reach him and twine my fingers in his hair. He tries to hold me back at first. He wants so badly to say what he thinks he needs to say. I silence him with my mouth, steal the words from his tongue.

For a moment, we are lost. His fingers move over the pins and stays in my hood, pulling off the black velvet coronet, dropping the snood to the ground behind me. He tugs my hair from its plait and it falls to my waist. He lifts it with both hands and buries his face in it.

“It smells just like you.” He turns to me, and a shy look steals through his expression. “You must think I’m perverted.”

“No,” I say quickly, thinking again of how Percy treated my hair as a nuisance. And me, too, in the end. “No, it’s quite charming.”

“Quite charming,” he mocks.

“Endearing.”

“Would we say endearing?” he asks. “Try enchanting.”

Thomas smiles wickedly and pushes me back up against the wall, one arm cradling my neck from the rough, cold brick, the other wrapped tight around my waist. He breathes into my ear.

“Tell me I’m enchanting.”

“You’re resplendent,” I tell him. “Heroic. Majestic.”

I tilt my chin for a kiss that doesn’t come.

“Ah. There you’re wrong, my dear.” He takes a step away.

I am unmoored.

“Majestic I am not. And I cannot compete with it, either.”

His expression begs me to disagree.

“There’s no need to compete.”

“Everything at this court is a competition. Especially with the king. Did you think the Castle of Loyalty was just a game?”

Youth versus experience.

Thomas against the king.

He is so far away from me. Watching me. Gauging me. What can I say? My tongue cannot form the three words he needs to hear. No matter how strongly I feel them.

“I am not a prize, Thomas.”

“Don’t I know it.” The tease has a bitter aftertaste. “You are a gamble, Anne Boleyn. One that I won’t risk losing.”

His words rankle and I move away. Just a little.

“We both know which Boleyn girl he prefers,” I argue, the words dusty in my throat.

“We both know that interest is fading.” Thomas reaches out a tentative hand to stroke my hair. “I also think he can’t help himself.”

“From what?”

“From falling in love with you.”

The moment freezes, and I with it.

“I don’t think the king falls in love,” I say finally, awash in the guilty hope that I’m wrong.

“I think he falls in love every day,” Thomas replies. “And that’s what I’m worried about.”