“I fear I shall not be able to attend,” my mother answered. “This day I am too weak to sit aright in bed, much less dress to be seen.”

I tried not to show my alarm. My sister was in London, her ninth baby due to arrive any day. Thomas would escort his intended, and if my mother didn’t go, my father wouldn’t, either.

Which would leave me at home with the loathsome Edmund, who would amuse himself, I was sure, by lowering his boot on live insects to hear them crunch and then see them squirm and die.

“Are you certain?” I looked into her face, which, over the past months, had gone from mothlike white to a slowly hardening mask of wax gray.

“I am certain,” she said. “But I will ask your father if he will allow Thomas and his wife to escort you to the wedding. I know you want to see your friends.” She reached out and took my hand in hers; it was papery and dry, the skin pulling into folds that did not recover to smoothness. “I have a gift for you, Meg. Call Flora.”

I kissed her hand before letting go of it and then rang the bell to indicate that we required a servant. When her servant came my mother sent her for the seamstress, who soon returned with a large dress box.

“Bring it here,” my mother whispered, and then indicated for me to lift the lid. I did, and pulled out the most amazing gown of russet silk, the perfect color to set off my hair and eyes. It was trimmed in cord that I knew to be copper but glinted dangerously close to the gold only allowed to royalty. The kirtle underneath was ivory, as were the ruffs. It was cut in a French style but not a copy of one of Anne’s.

“Oh, Madam!” I said. “This is too beautiful for me, for a simple country celebration. Thank you, thank you.” I reached forward and hugged her, her skeletal frame somewhat cushioned by the layers of bedclothes.

“’Tis no simple country affair when the king will attend,” my mother replied, smiling. The first real joy I’d seen in her eyes for quite some time then dimmed. “I fear I shall not be here to see you wed and have that dress made.” She coughed and I saw the brown phlegm though she tried to quickly fold the kerchief in half to hide it.

“Father wants me to marry soon.”

“It will take time to arrange, but he will find someone highly placed and who owns vast properties,” my mother said. “And who knows? Your husband may end up being kind.”

“But Father is not!” I said, keeping a care not to let my voice rise too much but not tempering my frustration, either. “He beats me senseless and then, when I’m of some profit use to him, he marries me off to the highest bidder.”

My mother flinched at that most impolite word, “profit.” “Do you know why your father suffers so?”

We never discussed my father—any of us. “I’m unsure.”

“As a young man, your father joined in a revolt against that pretender and murderer King Richard. They captured your father and put him in the Tower and tortured him, night and day, for two years. When Henry Tudor, father of our good king, came to the throne, he released your father and rewarded him with lands and titles for his loyalty. But the demons beat into your father never left.”

I said nothing. I was sorry for his torture but failed to see how that left him free to beat me. If it were me, I’d have shied away from torture for having suffered it. Just then I caught the sound of my brother Edmund idling in the hallway, waiting to wish our rarely awake mother, whom he worshipped, a good eve.

It occurred to me that Edmund, like my father, responded to his torment by tormenting others. Only whereas my father’s fits of anger seemed like an ill-restrained impulse, Edmund’s seemed a well-rehearsed pleasure.

My mother’s feeble grasp on my wrist grew weaker. “Mayhap your father wants to marry you quickly for your own good.”

“Mayhap by marrying I advance the Wyatt name.”

My mother nodded. Pain had not clouded her vision. “It would be best for you to remain often with Alice until the time that you are married.”

In other words, after her death, I should get away from my father. I kissed her cheek and a short time later she fell back into the laudanum of sleep. I left, taking my prized dress box back to my own chamber and thankful not to have met Edmund still skulking in some dark corner.

My servant, Edithe, made a show of smoothing my bed over and over, and just as I was about to remark on her odd behavior I saw the scroll. “Thank you, that will be all,” I said softly, and she grinned at me as she left.

Meg was tenderly etched along the side, above the smooth wax that I knew had been sealed by Will. I slid my finger underneath, relishing the knowledge that his finger had touched this very same paper.

THREE

Year of Our Lord 1520

Hever Castle, Kent, England

My father had purchased a fine new litter, so even if he wasn’t attending Mary’s wedding party we arrived in style. Lord Cobham’s sister—I must learn to speak of her as Elizabeth—sat close to Thomas. He recoiled slightly, as someone does when sitting near a sweating sickness victim, though she was perfectly healthy and hale. I understood. I kept a distance from my brother Edmund, who pressed his leg into mine in a menacing manner, taking two-thirds of the bench to my third. I dug my foot into the floor to brace myself from sliding into him.

We pulled in front of the castle and one of the Boleyns’ men let us out. I held up the hem of my new dress so I wouldn’t soil it in the mud and horse muck, both of which steamed into the cool evening air. We four navigated the crowd, quickly making our way on the cobblestone path. The yard was alight with torches and music escaped from the new upstairs great hall, which was very great indeed. Anne’s father prided himself on his entertainment and it was justified.

The minute we got in the door Edmund headed for the mead as he often, and noticeably, did. I scanned till I found Anne, busy acting the part of co-hostess with her mother. I stood to the side and observed her for a while. Her manners and conversation were now those of a French woman: smooth, subtle, wry, sophisticated. She made her way to me.

“Meg! I must attend to the guests with my mother, as Mary is the guest of honor and unable to assist.”

“Of course,” I reassured her. “We’ll have the evening to talk after the party; our serving men are instructed to bring us home in the morning. Your father has kindly offered his hospitality.”

“Marvelous!” She squeezed my arm.

“You look beautiful,” I told her, and it was an understatement. She wore her hair long and free, as an unmarried woman is allowed to do, an overflow of black silk with teal string threaded through it to match the teal green of her gown. Her skin shone in the candlelight and when I looked more closely I could see she had powdered herself with something that glimmered.

“You look beautiful,” she said. “I’ve never seen a gown that color before nor a cut quite so enticing and modest at the same time.” She turned her head and I followed her gaze. “Rose Ogilvy has arrived. Why don’t you go and talk with her?”

Then she slipped into the crowd effortlessly, like a swan floating on the Thames, moving yet seeming not to move, her long neck and graceful beauty drawing the eye of both men and women as she walked.