She looked up. “No, that’s where we disagree. You blame God for the deeds of men, I blame the men themselves. Mark me, this will return to Cardinal Wolsey. He’s a gluttonous climber who has become a wolf in shepherd’s cloth of gold. As a man sows, so shall he reap.”

I was not sure if she was vowing revenge on Wolsey herself or quoting Scripture to remind God what should next follow.

“How can anyone truly respect a weak man?” she asked. I had no answer, because the truth was, you couldn’t, and we both knew she didn’t mean Wolsey.

“I do know this,” Anne said after some miles of silence. “I will never again pledge myself to a weak man.”

I remained silent, pretending not to hear the word “pledge” in relation to Henry Percy. It was a dangerous, even perilous, word.

SIX

Year of Our Lord 1526

Allington Castle, Kent, England

I was an educated woman, not susceptible to superstition, so when old ladies waggled that bad things happened in sets of three I’d dismissed it as easily as one dismisses a gossipy servant. You can always look back on events past and find patterns in them, like seeing a tapestry after it’s woven. And sometimes, by happenstance, bad did come in threes. Of course some events seemed bounteous at first sight but upon later reflection were clearly catastrophic.

“Mother is not well and will not be joining us for dinner,” I announced to my father one evening as the whole family gathered for the evening meal. “I will remain with her, if it’s agreeable to you.”

He nodded, solemn. We all knew her time drew near and were reluctant to leave her alone. I had forgone joining my sister, Alice, for much of the past year, and my father had delayed my marriage negotiations so that my mother might have what comfort could be afforded her last days. I left Father, Thomas and his wife, and Edmund to the meal whilst I rejoined my mother.

“Flora, that will be all for now. I shall call upon you if the need arises.” I dismissed my mother’s servant and approached my mother in her bed. I brushed back her hair. “’Tis unbound, as a bride’s,” I teased her lightly.

“I am a bride, the bride of Christ, shortly to join mine husband,” she said. Her voice was lighter than it had sounded for some time, which concerned me.

“And you shall shortly be a bride too,” she continued. “Your father will complete your negotiations with Lord Blackston, for certes, when I am gone.”

“Hush, now,” I said, not wanting the conversation to turn down that narrow path. We’d avoided it thus far and I feared that we would not find our way back once it was taken.

“In that trunk”—she pointed—“there is a portrait. I would have you bring it to me.” I walked over to my mother’s marriage trunk and opened the lid. There were folds of cloth and some of her fine gowns. I wondered if it had been with joy or trepidation that she had packed this as a girl, and unpacked it as a young woman come to Allington to take the bed of a dead woman. It was a fate that now, seemingly, was my own.

I lifted out what seemed to be a small wrapped portrait and my mother nodded her approval ere coughing into her linen. I brought the portrait to her bed and handed it to her.

She unwrapped it and handed it back to me. “’Tis me!” I exclaimed.

She laughed, a beautiful sound, and I thanked God reflexively, begrudgingly, for the small gift of it, because I knew it would echo in my heart long after my mother had taken His hand. “’Tis not you, darling, ’tis me.”

Now that I looked harder at it, I could see there were some differences. She had not the dimple cleft in her chin as I did, and her brows were thicker than mine. But it was close.

“My father had this painted for me just before I left home to marry Sir Henry. He wanted me to remember my home and you can see, it’s my girlhood chamber in the background.”

I nodded.

“There I kept my treasures. My few jewels, my book of hours, hairpins my mother had given me. And my butterfly jar.”

I looked up at her. “A butterfly jar? What is that, Madam?”

“Oh, I was a free-willed girl, the only girl in my family, as you know, indulged and overloved, perhaps, and I think your father would agree. I had very little responsibility so I ran among the fields—to the distress of my nurses and my lady mother, I fear. One favorite pastime was to catch butterflies in a netting, then let them go. I got an idea—I would catch the butterfly in a net and keep him in one of the physic jars in which leeches had been brought to help my ailing father. I waited till I caught the one I wanted most to keep—he would live with me, we would share secrets. He was beautiful and would adorn my chamber and fly out when I commanded and then return in like manner.”

She took a moment and coughed so that I thought she might not be able to stop. After some minutes she regained her breath.

“Alas, one morning shortly after bringing him to my chamber I awoke to find that he was dead. He was not meant to live in a glass jar, even a beautiful, expensive glass jar. Instead of flying freely about he beat his wings against the jar, and try as he might he could not adapt. Thus trapped, he sickened and died. I think he gave up, because there were holes aplenty to let him breathe.”

I had not taken my eyes off my mother. She now looked full into mine. “Do you understand, Meg?”

I nodded.

“Thomas is a dreamer, and Edmund is your father’s son. But you, dear Meg, you are mine.”

“I will not let you down, Madam. I promise you that.” I leaned over and kissed her wan cheek.

Exhausted with the effort, she fell back in her pillow and I stayed by her till her shallow breathing grew regular. I then took the portrait with me and slipped back into my own chamber.

In the springtime, we buried my lady mother at the priory near Allington. I spent days going through her belongings, folding her linens, reading her letters, dabbing on her scented water, crying silently into her gowns after I folded them and before I laid them away. One afternoon I found Edmund sobbing behind the gatehouse. It reminded me of how, as a boy, he’d held on to my skirts to steady himself, how he and I had sat in the long hallway and rolled balls to one another. As we’d grown older, we’d grown apart. “Edmund,” I said. He looked up, startled to see me and clearly not happy at having been caught at grief.

“I am sorry for, well, for whatever has driven us apart. Mayhap it was my fault as I spent more time with Thomas. I don’t wish us to be distant any longer.”

He brushed his riding gloves across his face and stared at me with not one scrap of warmth. “I have no use of, nor desire for, your affection or interest, now or at any time.”

I looked into his flint-blue eyes. The boy Edmund was gone. The man Edmund was no one I cared to know, dangerous and ugly.

* * *

Some months later I was going over the kitchen accounts with the chamberlain when a messenger arrived from Hever Castle. As the lady of the house now, I took the correspondence and opened it. It was an invitation to a feast being held in the king’s honor a fortnight hence. The whole family was invited, and Sir Thomas took special care to inform my father that my nephew John Rogers would attend along with some of the other fellows from Cambridge in advance of their priestly ordination.