Yeah, Cromwell. Apologize to the—me. I was starting to see why Mary Boleyn got off on playing dim and helpless.
“My most sincere apologies, Lady Joan.” He bowed. “I ask your forgiveness.”
“I just don’t understand why you would be so mean to someone who saved your life.” I thought pitiful thoughts and ostentatiously sniffled, hoping I looked woebegone, not constipated.
“We had heard worrisome things about you from a dear friend and wished to see for ourselves,” Henry admitted. “You must understand, I have a responsibility to my kingdom and to my God, no matter how fond of a comely visitor I might personally be.”
“Oh, well. Comely.” I patted my terrible wig and heavy hood. “I don’t know about that …” Ugh. I’m already sick of this. How does Boleyn do this with a straight face? I made a note to keep in mind that Henry was better at treating women like crap at a distance. Face to face, he chickened out every time.
“But I will tell my friend she need not fear you any longer.”
“I would be happy to speak with the lady,” I said at once. “To set her mind at ease.”
Henry waved that away. “That will not be necessary. I will tend to that myself.”
“As you wish,” I replied. “But Anne’s got nothing to fear from me.” Wasn’t that the truth. Anne should be watching over her shoulder for her husband and uncle, poor doomed lady.
“It is not—” Henry cut himself off at the same moment Cromwell stifled a tiny cough.
Oh.
“Anne isn’t the one pouring poison in your ear?” Like a dolt, I finally put it together. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. You’re cheating on the new wife already and letting some random wench talk crap about me? But I’m the one who has to explain myself?”
“Lady Joan—” the Thomases began in union, but I was too irked to heed them.
“Does Anne even know that you don’t take your marriage vows seriously? Of course she does, because you cheated on Catherine, too.” I was doing the slow you-have-disappointed-me head shake. “What if the angels told me to tell you to keep it in your codpiece? Would you?”
“That is enough! You overreach, even with a fool’s prerogative!”
And here I thought he’d been red-faced before. “Did you ever think that God isn’t punishing you for marrying your brother’s widow, but for constantly breaking your promises?”
I know, I know. Total insanity. The worst thing I could have done. I was almost out. I had him on my side again. But something rose in me that I couldn’t squash, and it wasn’t just Teresa’s stupid sad death. It was the situation, the environment, it was him. He’d go on and on while innocents died, while he legally murdered his wives, while he disinherited and reinstated his children, all of whom would go on to wreak their own havoc with worldwide consequences. He’d make the rules and break the rules and hold everyone accountable while avoiding all responsibility himself and I was so fucking sick of it I couldn’t keep it back one second longer.
“You’re the biggest hypocrite I’ve ever met,” I told him, because I had a previously undiagnosed death wish. “Literally. Who’s the lucky lady?” It was too early for Jane Seymour—she didn’t emerge as a player until 1536. So who knew me, was afraid of me and/or didn’t like me, and was in a position to whisper poison in Henry’s ear oh shit I knew who it was. “It’s Lady Eleanor. The one who loves to talk about what a good friend she is to Anne.”
“She has been a good friend to us—”
I laughed. “Friend!”
“We need not explain ourselves to you!”
“Then why are you?”
“Joan, shut up.” This from Wynter, who’d gone so pale his eyes almost appeared to burn. “Right now.”
“Pass.” To Henry: “Please tell Lady Eleanor that though she slandered me and is betraying a friend, I’m going to do her a good turn. Tell her it’s going to hail tomorrow.”
“I certainly will n—what?”
“Hard. It’ll start before dawn and it’ll go on for hours. I imagine people will find it upsetting. I mean … hail? In July? Maybe London will worry the world is coming to an end. Maybe they’ll think God is punishing them. Or maybe they’ll think God is punishing you for breaking your word again. Or maybe they’ll just gather up the hailstones and make ice cream.”
“What?”
Too early for ice cream. Noted. “Either way, if you decide to go out early tomorrow morning, you should probably buckle on a helmet.”
“My Lord Cromwell.” Speaking of ice cream, Henry’s voice was cold enough to make some. “Escort the Lady Joan back to the Tower. When she remembers how to comport herself like a trueborn lady—”
“A lady like Eleanor?”
“—and apologizes to us for making up spiteful stories—”
“What’s spiteful about a weather report?”
“—perhaps she can be allowed to return home.”
“Someone’s going to apologize,” I predicted, “but it won’t be me.”
“We shall see.”
“I suppose we will.”
So there it was. In five minutes, I had talked myself out of the Tower and then right back into it. My tenth grade Civics teacher, Mr. Polk, said I’d never do anything of note, so the joke was on him.
“I know, I know,” I told Thomas, who looked stricken as Cromwell signaled the guards and I was escorted to the double doors. “You don’t have to say it.” Then, over my shoulder as they hauled me away, “Go home this time!”
The worst part? Now I wanted ice cream.
Chapter Fifty-Five
I mentioned earlier that I don’t make friends easily.
So I was surprised when Mary Boleyn stopped by.
“Tell me everything,” she begged, and I had to laugh. Actually I’d been giggling on and off for the last hour, mostly at my own stupidity and the absurdity of my situation. The man in charge of the Tower, whose name I kept forgetting, kept poking his head in, looking fretful, then leaving, only to return a short while later and peek in again. He seemed more unnerved each time I waved cheerfully at him and called “S’up, dawg?” (I know. Nobody says ‘s’up, dawg’ anymore, but he didn’t know that.)
“There’s not much to tell,” I said as The Other Boleyn Girl bustled around the cell. It was a nice room, but the windows were high, the sturdy door was locked, and I didn’t have a key, so: luxurious prison cell. “I yelled at the king for breaking his marriage vows—again—and suggested that a coming hailstorm might be punishment for him being such a hound.”
“And he took offense?”
“Yes, and I think he revoked my fool’s prerogative.”
“How terribly unlike him.”
I snickered from my vantage point at the writing desk. Last time (or, to put it another way, ‘earlier in the day’) I’d been a prisoner of the state, I’d been too focused on finding Teresa to pay much mind to the Tower’s many differences between now and five hundred years from now. But now I realized it was almost like a tiny town. It had its own armory and treasury and chapel and zoo. (Because sometimes visitors eyeballing the Tower would think, “You know what this fortress needs? Lions.”) It also had a mansion, which is where I was currently detained, and taken as a whole, the Tower of London sprawled over a dozen acres.
So my comfortable cell didn’t need many 16th century upgrades. But Mary Boleyn was here anyway, and she’d brought me two heavy quilts and something called a bolster, which looked like a giant Tootsie Roll if giant Tootsie Rolls were deep green and you could sleep on them. This was extra adorable because the bed was on a platform, and she was a little thing who almost needed a stepladder to clamber up on top of the bed to spread out the quilts.
Then she turned to the bundle she’d set on the table and started taking out all sorts of delicious-looking things: a soft loaf of manchet bread, a small pot of jam, a dish of fly balls, which
were pork meatballs studded with raisins (so they looked like flies on balls—get it?), and something called prymerose, which was rice pudding with honey and almonds. Which was amazing not just because it looked very fine, but because I had no idea the Boleyns had access to rice. I had a vague idea that China and Japan had all the rice until it magically turned up in America in the 20th century.
There were also several small cubes called leeches, which I found out were confections made from milk, sugar, and rosewater, all cooked together and then pressed into square wafers and used to make edible chess boards. Yes! Edible chess boards. How could TudorTime be so horrible and glorious at once? If they had those when I went to school, they would have needed a court order to stop me from joining the chess team.
“This is so nice of you,” I said, “but it’s been a difficult day and I’m just not that oh my God, these leeches are wonderful!”
“Yes, I noted you had a sweet tooth.”
“Several.” I set the remaining leeches aside for later, then nibbled bread and washed it down with the flask of wine she’d also brought. “Mary Boleyn, never think I’m not happy to see you, but why are you here?”
“Partly because you are happy to see me. But foremost to show my gratitude.” She held out her small hand and I saw a dull gold band on her left ring finger. “I am no longer a Boleyn. You must call me Mary Stafford now.” She had been watching me carefully, and when I smiled she added, “You are not surprised.”
“Well. No. But he’s a good man, and you love him, don’t you?”
“I do indeed. I wrote Lord Cromwell—”
“You were in bondage and glad you were to be set at liberty. You would rather beg bread with your husband than be the greatest queen in Christendom.”
“My God, that’s off-putting.” She crossed herself. “I mean no disrespect.”
“None taken.” Mary’s letter was famous, almost as well-known as Catherine of Aragon’s “where have I offended you” speech at Blackfriars. I re-read it a few days ago to refresh my memory. And now that I knew her a little better, I saw it as another example of Mary Boleyn Carey Stafford saying exactly what she pleased—that her life in obscurity was better than her sister’s life in the public eye—and people dismissing it as her being too dim to understand when she was being tactless. “That ‘greatest queen’ line didn’t help your cause, y’know.”
She smirked. “I do know.” The smile dropped away. “I came because I do not forget how kind you were. And how you nudged me toward Stafford. And after, when I found out about the baby—you know about the baby?—he told me you had nudged him toward me. We were two, now we are three, and so we remain in your debt.”
Her life had to have been pretty bleak if she attached such import to a casual conversation with a stranger a year ago. So when I answered I told the full truth: “I was happy to help in my own small way—and it was small, Mary. You two would have gotten together without my help.” This was, of course, cold historical fact, not modesty.
“Well.” She shrugged. “The letter to Cromwell is part of the reason I am here. Although the Queen’s Grace forgave me the sin of my private happiness, Cromwell knew he had made no headway with Anne on my behalf, so he took pity and wrote me a pass to see you.”
I snapped my fingers. “That’s right, you weren’t just quietly rusticating in the country, you were formally banished.”
“Yes, the queen my sister sits high on her dignity. She felt—feels—my marriage was a mésalliance. She never would have granted permission for the match.” She smiled. Well. Bared her teeth. “If Anne Boleyn is unhappy, all must be unhappy.”
“Which is why you didn’t ask. There’s a saying where I come from: better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”
“Yes, we have something much like that saying, too. But as I said, she has relented. Though I will be heading home tomorrow, and glad I will be to be gone.” She patted her flat stomach, and I realized yet another Stafford was on the way.
“That’s great, but why’d she change her mind? From her perspective, nothing’s changed. You’re still married beneath your station. And it can’t be easy for her to see how happy and, um, fertile you are.”
“Indeed.” This time, when Mary Boleyn smiled, she looked exactly like her sister. “But that aside, it is your habit to suddenly disappear for several months or years afterward, but should you choose to remain this once, please keep my most happy news to yourself.”
“Is that my habit?” Leave it to Mary Boleyn to notice and bluntly lay it out there. “No worries, I won’t say anything about your new baby. But if Anne doesn’t know about your pregnancy, why did she change her mind?”
“Not from any charitable impulse you may be sure. She is lonely,” Mary said frankly, “and as poisonous a viper as she can be, I pity her. She is afraid.”
Not as afraid as she should be. “Well, you’re a good sister.” I was scraping the bowl to get the last tasty remnants of the prymerose. God damn but that was good rice pudding.
“I am no such thing, but that is irrelevant. I wanted to see you and lighten your confinement, and so I have, and so I must take my leave. Ah! I nearly forgot.” She extracted a book from the bag and handed it to me. “To pass the time.”
“Thank you.” Utopia. By Thomas More. I looked up. “Did you think Henry would do it? Kill him?”
“Yes.”
“Really? Because my understanding is that everyone else is pretty shocked.” Certainly my guards couldn’t shut up about it.
“It has become Henry’s pattern; one need only take note of his escalation. And he is never more deadly than when he fears the loss of power. Even power that had heretofore never been his. His Grace the Duke of Buckingham told Henry he could not have a son to inherit the crown; His Grace is dead. Fisher told Henry he could not be master of men’s souls. Fisher is dead. More told Henry he could not have something. More is dead.”
“Escalation”. What an incredibly polite way to put it.
At my expression, Mary got brisk. “As to the book, I do like the concept of men and women doing the same work, but I found More’s views about the incompatibility of politics and philosophy to be utterly nonsensical.”
“… okay.”
“You may wish to keep that,” she added. “I suspect the value will only increase.”
“No doubt.” Not for the first time I was glad she was on my side. “And thanks again.”
“Before I take my leave, do you have a message for Thomas Wynter?”
I blinked. “Why would you—oh, hell, he’s outside, isn’t he? He’s skulking around out there like some comely weirdo!”
“What is ‘weirdo’?”
“I told him to go home! Again.”
“He did not heed; I passed him on my way in.” She was smiling as she packed up the empty dishes. “He begged me to tell you that he will hold a vigil as long as necessary and he is fully prepared for hail, whatever on earth that means.”
“It means it’s going to hail. It also means I’m going to give him a smack when I see him again.” Thomas, you beautiful dumbass, where is your sense of self-preservation?
Then I realized my cheeks hurt, which raised another question: if you’re pissed at him, why are you grinning, idiot?
“Ah, well. Like to like, and the two of you seem, er, strong-willed when the mood strikes you. Or so I have observed.”
“Oh, listen to you, ‘strong-willed’. I’ve got to take that from a Boleyn?”
“Touché,” she giggled. “I must take my leave of you, Lady Joan. I would wish you good luck, but I believe you make yours.” She paused and sobered. “Is there—do you have any, er, information for me before I depart?”
She’s looking for a prediction. A warning. And here’s the thing to ponder—would she and Stafford have hooked up if I’d never come back in time?
I had no i
dea. At all. Mary must have taken my silence for ‘nope, nothing on this end’ because she turned to go, and I stepped forward and caught her by the arm. “Keep clear next spring, d’you understand? Stay home with your babies. No matter what you hear.”
She searched my face with her wide brown eyes, then nodded, extricated herself from my grip, tapped the door, and was out of there in a matter of seconds, leaving me content—and not just because of the food. Mary, I knew, would get the happy ending.
My ending remained to be seen, but I put some leeches under my pillow in case I wanted a midnight snack but didn’t want to get out of bed. My incarceration, my rules.
Chapter Fifty-Six
I came awake just before dawn, wondering where the hell I was and why I’d woken up. After a few bleary seconds, I realized I’d been awakened by hail hammering on the roof, which helped me remember why my bedroom was chilly and why my bed felt weird and smelled weirder.
I chortled like a hyena and munched on leeches while I listened to the storm in the dark. I’d give up sugar for a month just to be a fly on the wall of Henry’s privy chamber this morning.
Well. Maybe a week.
If you’re a holy fool arrested in Henry Tudor’s England, they don’t frisk you. They politely escort you to your room/cell and leave you be.
To that I say: whew!
Since I couldn’t be 100% sure when—or if—I returned to a horrified Lisa (who, since I.T.C.H. time travel ran on San Dimas time, had surely read my note by now), I opened my pomander and ate a Flintstones chewable. Mmmm … iron.
Oh, sorry—a pomander was ball-shaped (like an orange—sometimes they were actual oranges) and was studded with things like cloves. You hung it from your waist so when you walked past a hip-high pile of shit, you could sniff your pomander and smell shit and oranges.
Mine was filled with items other than cloves.
Likewise, the lack of pat-down and/or cavity search meant the things in my fanny pack and up my sleeves hadn’t been discovered. It made for lumpy sleeping since I didn’t dare pile it all on a nearby table—who knew when someone might barge in?—but thanks to Mary’s extra quilts and giant green Tootsie Roll, I was more comfortable than I thought I’d be.
A Contemporary Asshat at the Court of Henry VIII Page 23