Free The Boleyn King by Laura Andersen Page A

legible.
    Surrounding the vile depiction of a naked woman were words: witch, whore, heretic . Those words could have applied to nearly any woman against whom public opinion had turned. But there was another title as well, one all too specific: the king’s concubine .
    Anne Boleyn.
    These kind of broadsides had plastered parts of London more than twenty years ago, when the populace was furious with the woman who had replaced their beloved Queen Catherine. Why had this one been preserved all this time, and why had Dominic found it in the possession of a woman of the queen’s household? He had been the one last night to carry Alyce’s broken body to a nearby chamber. He had heard the rustle of paper inside her bodice and, with more than a twinge of apology, had worked it free from her tight corset while Minuette was alerting the guards.
    If Alyce de Clare had been spying on the queen … well, that was one thing. Everyone reported on everyone else in this court. But the ancient broadside had a new addition. Scrawled across the bottom in large, angry letters was nothing less than treason: England will not have a Boleyn king .
    He would have to tell William. And Minuette would never let him forget his promise to tell her what he’d deciphered, so he might as well tell them together. And if it was the three of them, then it should definitely be the four of them. Honestly , Dominic thought, Elizabeth will likely be the calmest of us all and with the most practical suggestions .
    And yet, as he wrote the messages that would set in train a private meeting tonight, Dominic knew it was a mistake. He should be reporting even this minute to Lord Rochford, laying out the broadside and the letters and the key. Rochford was the queen’s brother and Lord Protector of England; Dominic was nothing. Only a king’s friend.
    William’s triumph at having brought his oldest sister to heel lasted through only one course. Then he remembered why he was perfectly content to let Mary go her own way—she was a crashing bore. She never laughed, she never let up, and she never stopped pressing her point. Politely, of course. Mary was every inch royal and well bred to a fault. But she had never learnt to use charm as Elizabeth did, and William privately thought that her greatest failing. If she knew how to flatter men, how to lead them on and implicitly promise and inspire … just as well for William that she did not. Mary with the ability to rally men to her personally rather than just to a bloodless cause would be extremely dangerous. As it was, William mostly found her a nuisance. He thought wryly of his mother’s cold anger at being asked to stay secluded in her rooms tonight so as not to upset Mary and wondered how he always seemed to be caught between temperamental women.
    Tonight Mary chose to be temperamental over the French treaty. Proof that secrets were difficult to keep—she seemed to know all the pertinent details.
    “You are reconciled to this marriage?” she demanded of Elizabeth.
    “We all do what we must for England,” Elizabeth said drily. “Marry … or not. As the king wishes.” She raised her glass to William with a mischief that their sister entirely missed.
    “But is this truly your wish?” Mary asked him anxiously. “Or that of your councilors? I fear they do not always look to your interests as much as to their own.”
    “So do all men,” William answered.
    Beneath the irritation and boredom, he filed away every word Mary spoke. As long as she lived, William could never be entirely at ease. Just by breathing, she was a focus for rebellion. In the seven years of his reign, at least a dozen Catholic plots had been uncovered. Several of them had involved little more than a comment made at the wrong time and place. But there had been two or three that could have been disastrous—like the Aylmer plot.
    Even now, the thought of his former tutor was enough to tie William’s stomach in knots. He had liked Edward