To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn Page 2

  “He’s the ambassador to France. Mayhap he wants England to be well represented,” she answered evenly.

  “Mayhap,” I said. “Are you nervous?”

  She nodded. “They have such big expectations for me and for Mary. And if we don’t meet them, they’ll set us aside. It’s family advancement first…. and last.”

  I nodded, wishing I could contradict her, but our friendship had been built on honesty and I wasn’t about to belittle it now with a soothing lie.

  “I believe in you,” I said. “And I’ll pray for you every day.”

  She squeezed my arm. “I know you will. I am glad one of us has faith.”

  “You have faith!” I contradicted her.

  “Not like yours.”

  After leaving her things for her maidservant to repack, we went down to the gardens outside.

  The chairs and table were set up in neat little quartets on the Hever property, and Master Ridley, our music teacher, had recruited friends to play lutes. The notes wafted over the field, the sweetest of aural perfumes. The mood was one of love, of friendship, of pledge. We’d all been forged together and though circumstances might separate us for a time, we were somehow inextricably bound for life. I sat down alone at a table near the edge of the garden, a private spot, and wished it to remain so but for the company of one.

  My wish was granted.

  “May I join you?” Will approached. I remained seated, as a lady should.

  “Of course.” I gestured to the seat next to me with grace and dignity that would have made my father proud. I caught Anne out of the corner of my eye gently steering the others to different tables so Will and I might have some time alone.

  “What’s this?” He touched the wreath of daisies I’d woven whilst waiting for the day to begin.

  “A wreath of the last flowers clinging to summer,” I said. “Something to both pass and mark the time.”

  “There is no flower here to contend with you. You believe they’re dying off because it’s the end of summer? Methinks they saw the competition and realized they must capitulate.”

  “Will Ogilvy, are you practicing courtly manners on me?” I teased.

  “No,” he said. “I mean it. May I have this wreath as a keepsake?” I wound it around his fingers and I wished it were my hand I was placing in his instead of that which my hand had created.

  I nodded my agreement and kept my eyes lowered. For once, overcome by the moment, I had no smart retort.

  We sat for a little while, intensely aware at the adult turn in our relationship. Will cheerfully turned the topic back to mathematics, and then horses, and finally Latin, which we both loved. We sparred over the rendering of a certain word, and in the end I believe I won.

  “Succumbo,” he admitted. “A rare victory, and one you will not soon duplicate.”

  “Is that a challenge?” I teased. But then his look turned somber. “Why not?” I asked, more subdued as I sipped from the goblet in front of me and tapped at the light sheen on my forehead with my kerchief.

  “My father is sending me to Cambridge.”

  “Ah.” I nodded. So now I knew why my brother Thomas was going to Cambridge. Not that my father couldn’t have thought of it on his own, but he admired the Ogilvys and Boleyns as his betters in many ways. Feeling unsure of himself, he often imitated their choices. If only he would send me to France!

  “I’ll surely see you at pageants now and again,” Will said. “And at the Christmas celebration at court.”

  “Surely,” I agreed, knowing that those pageants and jousts would be infrequent, that my mother was often ill and required my companionship, and that the studies at Cambridge were demanding and could take up to eight years to complete.

  “There are so many different teachers there.” His voice rose with excitement. “I hope to learn more about our Lord too. What we have here is so….” He shrugged his shoulders. “Limited.”

  I nodded, happy for him but envious of his opportunity. Anne and I had many rigorous debates about holy things, too, which would have horrified my father and even Will, had they known. “You’ll do well. I’m glad for you.” I echoed the sentiment I’d given Anne just an hour before, and the words, whilst well-intentioned, felt as dry in my mouth as my oft-prattled apologies to my father.

  “There are fine days ahead for you, too, Meg.” Will rested his hand on the table near mine, not able to take mine in his while others were around but showing me what was in his heart by his gesture. “I know it. Omnino scire.” He used the Latin word that meant “to know something without doubt, to be certain.” Strangely enough, I believed he was right. I’d had the feeling that their ships were setting sail, leaving port perhaps a year or two afore my own, but that my ship would set sail, too, and it would be in the same direction. I looked at Will, suffused with happiness, and Anne, an already court-worthy hostess. Then I looked toward the sky, where the heavy gray clouds of late summer were already beginning to clot.

  Lady Boleyn, ever the chaperone, made her way toward our table. As reluctant as I was to see her come, I understood she had my good name and Will’s in mind.

  “I’ll send you a note sometimes through my sister, Rose,” Will said, and I nodded.

  “Tui meminero,” I said. I will remember you.

  Perhaps because he was leaving and felt free to be candid, he answered me back more strongly. “Te somniabo.” I will dream of you.

  Later in the afternoon, when the others had mostly returned home, I stayed to say my final good-bye to Anne. We walked in the garden and sat on a bench, carved gargoyles expressing silent horror over her departure. “I’ll miss you,” I said. “Our constant companionship. Studying together.”

  “I’ll be home soon. If Mary or George gets married or if someone dies….”

  “Don’t say that!” I told her, aghast. Even my jesting wouldn’t go that far.

  “No, no,” she reassured me. “And then, soon, I’ll be home to stay.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And things will be as they ever were between us. We’ll marry rich, titled, wonderful men, and have renowned parties and beautiful children.” I looked at the gathering storm clouds and knew that if what I sensed was true then I was a liar and, worse, was breaking our friendship pledge of honesty. And yet I wasn’t sure my impressions were true. They were wobbly things, jellies to roll out from under my thumb as soon as I tried to pin them down.

  To make things even, I offered another oath. “You know how the boys, ah, relieve themselves together when they make a promise?”

  Anne, mannered and discreet, looked at me, shocked. “Surely you can’t be suggesting….”

  I blushed. “No, no, I speak too fast.” Oh my, what would my father think if he could overhear me now? “I just meant we could plight an oath too. Afore you leave.”

  She nodded and turned toward me on the bench before speaking. “A friendship oath. So you won’t choose Rose Ogilvy as your dearest friend in my absence.”

  “As much as I like Rose, she’s not the Ogilvy I desire to pledge an oath with,” I teased, and we laughed. It was one of our friendship’s better qualities, the ability to laugh together in the most difficult moments. “And make sure you don’t find a French friend to replace me,” I said.

  “Never.” She reached up and plucked one of the roses. She pricked her finger with its thorn till a little drop of blood oozed out. “It didn’t hurt much….”

  I looked at her hard, reminding her of the difficulties I faced with my father. “A poke to the finger is not going to harm me,” I said, grinning. I pierced my finger too.

  We held our fingers together and commingled our blood, friends to the end, never leaving one another’s side, loyalty firmly pledged, come what may.

  TWO

  Year of Our Lord 1520

  Allington Castle, Kent, England

  Two years had passed since my brother Thomas and Will had been sent to Cambridge to master rhetoric and Anne back to France to master the ways of their court.<
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  But some things never change.

  It began as it always did, Thomas begging me to do something against my better judgment, me wavering between my love for him and my misgivings toward the deed itself.

  “Please, Meg.” He dipped to bended knee, the incongruity of which made me laugh out loud. “I’ll not ask you for anything else!”

  Once again his charm pushed me toward an action I did not really want to take, though I teasingly waved him away like an errant bee.

  “Just hand it to her privately. I cannot do so without drawing attention.” He held out the parchment scroll. I took it in my hand and turned it over. Mistress Anne was carefully inked along the other side in his long, poetic hand and it was sealed with wax.

  “What about her?” I asked, glancing toward our new marble terrace where his future wife held court. My father had arranged for Thomas to marry Baron Cobham’s daughter, who, at twenty-one, was two years older than I. It was a great move forward for our family but would shackle Thomas to a woman he loathed. He’d already caught her in the arms of another man, and yet here she was, ready to celebrate Mary Boleyn’s hasty wedding with us as if she were already family. No matter. She pushed us Wyatts forward and that’s all that counted where my father was concerned.

  “She’s mine in name only,” Thomas replied.

  I nodded a grim agreement.

  “I need my friends to keep my spirits up.” He clasped my hands, smiling winsomely. Anne, polished to high shine during her years at the French court, had come home to celebrate her sister safely wed to Sir William Carey, a rich and obedient privy companion of King Henry.

  “If you simply wanted to be the kind of friend to Anne that she is to me, I’d have had no qualms. But I know better.”

  “See, she likes me!”

  “Her father has plans for her, Thomas, and now that her sister, Mary, has disgraced herself at the French court he’s pinned all of his hopes on Anne. He’s not likely to let her marry—nor dally—with the likes of you.”

  “It’s only an innocent poem, Meg,” he said, “I promise.” He looked back over his shoulder at the grating sound of his future wife’s laugh. “And besides, mayhap we can arrange a trade of sorts.”

  I spun around. “What do you mean?”

  “You deliver a note from me to a girl I cannot have and I’ll deliver a note to you from a man you cannot have.”

  “You have a note to me from Will?”

  He nodded.

  “Then what do you mean, ‘a man I cannot have’?” I asked. My father would be thrilled if something could be arranged with Earl Ogilvy. He’d pay a huge dowry if need be.

  “Oh, nothing.” Thomas turned quiet.

  “All right,” I begrudgingly agreed, tucking Thomas’s letter away. He pulled me close and danced a little jig right there in the ripe stable and I grinned along with him. Keep his spirits up indeed.

  “You’re my dearest sister, Meg.” He kissed my cheek lightly. “The most affectionate. The kindest heart. Truly beautiful.” And he meant it. For a woman who is often a highborn companion rather than the center of the swirl, the setting rather than the stone, this compliment was not held lightly. He knew it and used it to his advantage.

  Our father called to us from the edge of his expensive new portico and we went to join him and our guests in the drawing room.

  Mistress Cobham sat in a corner, demurely playing the virginals, looking for all the world like an angelic being, though, I thought to myself, an angel who dwelled in which realm I could not say. Her brother George, the future Baron Cobham, sat nearby and drank spirits. Where he got them I knew not, as most houses did not keep them. As the fathers withdrew from the room young Sir George patted the seat next to him proprietarily.

  “Have a seat, Mistress Wyatt.” He tried to keep his voice inviting but it sounded of a man speaking to his dogs. Nonetheless, trained well, I did as I was told.

  “I hear you’ve been at court with your sister, Alice.”

  “Yes, though I can hardly call it at court. I stayed at her manor house in the city and attended to her children whilst she attended to the queen. Nevertheless, we did get to spend some days together and for that I am grateful.”

  “Did you like court?”

  “I did,” I said. “I much prefer it to…. country life. Which one might equate with a slow death.”

  He snorted. “I will agree with you there. Country life holds impossible challenges, the largest of which is the management of the animals, and by that, I do not mean the beasts of the field. I mean the hands hired to tend them but who rather spend their days drinking ale at my expense. If they poorly manage the field and the barns I have no recourse but to reprimand them. For if they cannot be held to account for that which is given them to steward, why, then, who is to blame?”

  Used to reasoning with my brother Thomas and with Will, I answered with the first thing that came to mind. “The same might be said of those who steward the field hands themselves, is that not so?”

  He slowly drained his glass of its amber liquid and quietly set it down. “Good day, Mistress Wyatt,” he said, and then he stood, curtly bowed, and left the room. I remained seated till his sister finished her ethereal song.

  I didn’t have to wait long to have the echo from my observation return to me in full force. My father called me into his library shortly after a stiff and uneasy dinner with our guests. Edmund was already there, smirking in the background. Thomas idled by the window out of habit, well out of arm’s reach of my father.

  I knew Father would not scar my face days before the celebration of Mary Boleyn’s wedding because the king was rumored to be coming. It’s not that hitting your child, or your wife, was unacceptable. It was only unacceptable to leave marks to prove that it had happened because it would cause discomfort to those who must look upon them.

  “My Lord Cobham tells me that you have many opinions on matters which concern you not at all and are not shy about sharing them with your betters.”

  “Father, I…. I was trying to have a conversation with him. That’s all.”

  “Lord Cobham took it as a rebuke, and, as such, says he has no desire to marry a woman who may scold him for the rest of his years.”

  I sat down in the chair next to me afore my knees buckled. “I, marry Lord Cobham?”

  “Not any longer,” my father said, his rage barely contained, the skin on his face taut and red like an infected boil.

  “Perhaps a scold deserves a scold’s punishment,” Edmund offered. I turned around and glared at him, not bothering to conceal the hatred in my eyes. A woman accused of being a scold would be tied to a clucking chair and publicly dunked in a nearby river, soaking her in humiliation to the general amusement of all who came to watch.

  My father barked out a laugh. “Mayhap I should. But….” He came near my chair and towered over me. “You will marry whom I choose. You will be kind and quiet and submissive to the next man I bring to you. You will win him with your gentleness and you will prove your good breeding.”

  “And if not?” I dared whisper.

  “Then you will get you, immediately, to the furthest abbey I can find. And not an abbey of high standing, either, for I’ll not pay a dowry to the Lord when I’ve already paid your keep these many years. You’ll work out your short years in poverty and dirt so far away that it won’t matter what you say to whom. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. He wouldn’t tie me to a clucking chair for the shame it would bring upon him, but he would keep his word and send me to a vermin-ridden abbey, that much I knew. “Yes, sir,” I said demurely, and I meant it this time. I was dismissed, and on my way back to my room I prayed, fervently, that I might speak to Will at Hever Castle and that his father would be in attendance to speak with mine.

  The next day, as there were no stable boys in sight, my brother Thomas held my stirrup for me as I got on. Then he held the brood mare for our manservant so he could accompany me. No lady should travel alone, no matter
how light the initial path, nor how dark it later grew.

  “I expect my letter when I return home,” I said. “Or I’ll tell your intended about this innocent poem.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” Thomas looked at me, shocked, and then relaxed when he saw my smile.

  “Don’t test me,” I teased. Then I pressed my heels into my mount and we headed toward Hever Castle.

  When I arrived, the castle was already in an uproar. They’d just been told to expect the king at the next day’s celebration and Sir Thomas, Anne’s father, was unsure if the entertainment, the wine, or the food was of high enough quality. Lady Boleyn supervised the servants, one of whom let me in. I went upstairs to the girls’ annex and found Anne with her hands on Mary’s shoulders as Mary wept. Anne caught my eye in the mirror to let me know she’d be with me shortly and I withdrew to her chamber to wait.

  Momentarily, she joined me. “Meg! I’m so glad to see you.”

  “Is Mary all right?” I asked.

  She nodded. “You know Mary—always emotional, and on this day, when anyone would be emotional, she’s more like overwrought. She didn’t want to marry Sir William, though he’s a nice enough man. She’d fallen in love with a man in France, at Francis’s court, and won’t put him out of her mind. She just asked me how he fared. I told her he was to be married.”

  “Oh dear,” I said, my heart tender for Mary. “It’s an awful thing to face a lifetime of being married to a man you don’t want. But she can’t chase a man she can’t have,” I pointed out. “It could be worse. At least Carey is handsome.” I paused. “Is Will coming this night?”

  Anne grinned. “Yes, I’ve not heard otherwise. I’m glad for you.” She reached out, took my hand, and squeezed it as old friends do. But there was something more substantive, raised higher, a certain je ne sais quoi about her. She seemed sophisticated, and, well, French.

  “I’d best get back to assisting Mary,” she said. “We’ll have a full week to talk and enjoy one another afore I must return to France to serve the good Queen Claude.”