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virtual prisoners, hostages to the political machinations that keep their fathers in line. There are no women in Wolsey’s household. The boys come to the king’s court to learn the rules of flirtation while their master changes the rules that govern us all.
    The cavalcade disappears from view, but I continue to watch the place just vacated. So much power in a butcher’s son. The rain returns, and the flat, cloudy light hammers the river into pewter and erases the shadows from the wall. It is as if Wolsey’s very passing has caused the sun to cease shining.
    The door rattles, and I turn to see the duchess and her confederacy enter. She carries herself imperially, looking left and right to make sure that everyone is watching—and that everyone is bowing.
    “Little Boleyn.” The duchess’s voice resonates high in her mouth, giving it a nasal quality. An ever-present sharpness.
    “Your Grace.” I keep my eyes on my hands. Deferential. Sheepish.
    “Like a little sparrow, aren’t you?” she asks. “Drab. And rather . . . disheveled.”
    Her confederacy titters, the sound rippling away into the room.
    I bite my lip and think of George’s words: Be quiet. Be the same. Be accepted.
    I look up. The duchess’s head is tipped to one side, her expression one of schooled amusement.
    “Many creatures are not as they first appear, Your Grace.” I cannot stop the words. “A falcon at rest may be drab and disheveled. And a cuckoo hides its ignobility by insinuating its offspring into a superior bird’s nest.”
    As insults go, mine is thinly veiled, casting aspersions on the duchess’s children—the cuckoos in the royal nest, placed there by Charles Brandon, whose ancestry is even more questionable than my own.
    Her expression freezes. She turns without speaking, followed by a tide of skirts and gabled hoods. Jane Parker glances back at me—the last girl to follow—but quickly scuttles after.
    I’ve done it again. I stand alone in the center of the room, wrap my misshapen finger in a pleat of my skirt, and twist the pearl ring with my thumb. The duchess and all her followers whisper together. The room begins to feel like one gigantic eye—staring, but not seeing. They will never accept me. I need to get out.
    I move to the door just as it opens again.
    “We have come to entertain the ladies,” Henry Norris says as he enters. His gaze slides across my brow and finds the duchess and her confederacy behind me. He is followed by George, who studiously ignores my existence, and Wolsey’s men, who crowd up behind him, eager and wriggling like puppies.
    I stand to one side, barely observed and highly invisible, as more seductive prey is spotted within the room.
    Finally, I can no longer stand it and push my way through the door, running nose first into a russet doublet. I look up into the face of a boy my age. His eyes are strange. Like chalcedony—more blue than gray but almost colorless. His hair is the color of fox fur, and just as thick, a swatch at the back of his head giving the impression of a feather in a cap. His face is cut at angles like stone, creating broad planes, sharp edges, and deep shadows. But when he smiles, the shadows melt away and I feel something warm and delicate rising within me.
    He’s looking at me. He sees me.
    The man behind him gives him a push, and he stumbles forward into the room, breaking our gaze, but my eyes follow him. Until someone grabs my hand and yanks me from the room.
    “You flirt with Henry Percy?” James Butler’s voice is all rough edges like uncut granite.
    “I’m doing no such thing.” I wrench my hand from his and turn, but he’s whip quick and his grip bites into my elbow.
    “Good. His fate is decided. Like ours.”
    He manages to hide all but a hint of brogue by clipping his sentences and swallowing words. But he can’t disguise his coarseness. His shirt is rumpled and his hair cropped roughly, as though trimmed with a scythe.
    “Our fates are not decided,