Gilt (38 page)

“I know you don’t trust me,” she added.

“You’ve never given me reason to.”

“Except that I never said a word about your connection,” she said. “Or Joan’s.”

“You told on Cat, but not on the rest of us? Bully for you.”

“Only after they found her out.”

“So who told, Alice?” I asked. “I’ve had plenty of time to think about this and I can figure no one else. None of us but you escaped.” I wanted so badly for her to confess. I wanted someone to blame.

“You really think that of me?”

“Who else could it be?”

“Mary Lascelles,” Alice said, and waited for it to sink in.

Mary Lascelles. The girl who slept in the corner of the maidens’ chamber. The one who suffered when Cat raged over being cut off from Francis. The one who hated us from the beginning.

“How?”

“She told her brother. He told his reformist friends. Friends who resented the Howards. They took the information to Archbishop Cranmer.”

Cranmer, who always acted on his conscience.

“Lord Maltravers made sure my husband told me every detail. About how the archbishop left a note for the king in his prayer book. About the investigations that took place before we even knew what was happening.”

“But you knew,” I challenged her. “Because of the duke. Because of William.”

“They sent me away before I could warn you.”

“I see,” I said, and then turned the full weight of my accusing, judgmental eyes on Alice Restwold. “But Mary Lascelles didn’t know about Culpepper.”

“It was impossible to hide, Kitty,” Alice said. “I knew. You and Joan and Jane Boleyn knew. Francis knew. The true miracle was that no one said a word beforehand. Even Cat knew she was living on borrowed time.”

Borrowed time. Isn’t that what we all lived on? Every moment
we breathed was borrowed from the person who took the fall.

“They knew that they would be found guilty. We all did. They had no escape when the rumors got out.”

“But Jane . . .”

“Will always be blamed.”

She hid behind madness and made it that much easier for them. After that, no one would believe a word she said.

I nodded. There was no escape. They were dead.

Alice took a deep breath.

“Kitty, the king wants to forget the past. He wants the whole episode with Cat put from memory. He wants all the prisoners gone, and for no one to remind him of what once was.”

“So I’m not even wanted in prison,” I said bitterly.

As bad as prison was, the thought of getting out was even more frightening. I had nowhere to go. No one to go to. I could step out of the gates of the Tower onto the London streets and into a life of squalor and pain and premature death. No one in my class wanted me and no one else knew me. A woman alone was a woman fallen. And there was only one thing for a fallen woman to do.

“You’re released, Kitty,” Alice said, smiling tentatively. “You’re free.”

I could see that she wanted me to be happy, but all I felt was the cold clench of fear. Fear that turned quickly into anger.

“So you’ve come here to gloat?” I asked. “You have a position with some household somewhere, you have an understanding
with William Gibbon, you have it all. And you’ve come to let me know I have nothing?”

“No, Kitty,” she said, stepping away from my vitriol. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just that Joan has decided to cut us off completely. And with Cat gone . . .”

“What?” I raged. “You think we can be friends? Why would you want that? I can’t give you anything. All I can do is bring you down.”

I turned away from her. Avoided looking out the window. The cell grew so silent I wondered if she had left.

“You’re lucky, you know.”

Alice’s voice came from the far side of the room. I wheeled on her.

“Lucky? Oh yes, being friendless, without family or money, trained for nothing and proficient at little is really an enviable position.”

“Yes,” Alice said, the word a finality. “You are lucky. You have no ties. I’m stuck. Dependent. My husband was questioned. They thought he knew about my involvement. And now . . . he keeps very tight reins. We are both indebted to Lord Maltravers. I cannot leave. I have nowhere to go. I’m nineteen years old and I am little better than a slave.

“You, Kitty, have freedom. You can walk out of this room and disappear into London. No one will admonish you for being part of Cat’s household. No one will tell you every day that you are
nothing
because of who you knew. You could change your name. You could live a real life.”

“But Alice, all I’m fit for is life in a whorehouse.” I nearly wept at how little she understood. “The streets of the city are dangerous. I have nowhere to live and nowhere to go. At least you have a roof over your head.”

“I would trade with you in an instant.”

I snorted bitter laughter.

“The grass is always greener, I suppose.” I replied.

“I wish you all the best,” said Alice quietly. She stepped forward and grabbed my hand, tightly enough that I couldn’t pull away, though I tried. She glanced once over her shoulder to the firmly closed door.

“I saved this for you,” she whispered. She pulled something out of her pocket and pressed it into my hand. I tried to drop it, but she wrapped my fingers around it and held firm. I felt the soft nubbins of embroidered cutwork.

“Lace?” I asked her, my hand still in hers. “Do you mock me, Alice?”

“No,” she said, looking a little shocked.

“Lace is where this all started,” I reminded her. “The lace wrapped around the key to the dormitory.”

“The lace
you made
.”

“So?” I asked. “It means nothing.”

“No, Kitty,” she said, letting go of me, “it means everything.”

She walked back to the door, and turned.

“I’m still married, Kitty,” she said, almost as an afterthought. “My husband doesn’t love me. But I am still married. I have no understanding. Definitely not with William Gibbon.”

“Alice,” I began, but didn’t know where my words would lead. I didn’t want her to continue. And I wanted to hear everything.

“He was ordered by the duke to keep company with me, so I could send messages. He would have lost his job, his reputation, if he didn’t. I hate to admit that I enjoyed it, even though it wasn’t real. Even though it hurt you. William Gibbon is kind and generous, even to a talebearer like me. In the end, he couldn’t take the duke’s orders anymore, and he left. I believe he’s somewhere in London. He had eyes for only one of the queen’s ladies. He always spoke only of you.”

She knocked and when the door opened, she turned.

“Good-bye, Kitty.”

“Word just came,” the guard said, allowing her just enough room to pass. “You’ve received the king’s pardon. You’re to be released.”

Alice always had the news before anyone else.

The guard opened the door wider and it yawned significantly. I could step through. I could go.

“Give me a moment,” I said, turning away to hide the panic on my face.

The guard nodded and allowed the door to close, giving me the privacy I might need to use the chamber pot or straighten my skirts.

I opened my hand and looked at the roll of lace. I wondered if I could sell it, make enough money to afford something to eat and drink. It was worn, browned with age and use. It could have been the same piece used to wrap that fateful key,
three years before. Alice was like a squirrel, hiding things away after they’d been discarded. Giving them significance. Keeping things as well as secrets. It felt heavy. Full of memory. Too heavy to be just lace.

I unrolled it slowly, half expecting the key to fall out. I wanted to cry, because Alice had done this to spite me after all. She had a place and a marriage and I had nothing. All because of a foolish childhood friendship and the stupid need to belong. And that bloody, wretched key.

The lace began to spin and an object fell from it, into my left hand. It glowed dully.

The emerald. Set in gold. The one given to me by the king after the game of hide-and-seek, when he asked me to remain her friend. At the very least I had managed to keep that promise.

Alice had rescued the jewel before the men came to take Cat’s. I hadn’t even looked for it, knowing that my claim to anything precious would come to naught. But Alice, with her forethought and understanding of the importance of objects, had saved it.

And given it back. A river of forgiveness swept through me.

“Alice!” I cried, running through the door, clinging to the stone, the piece of lace trailing behind me like a banner. I passed the stunned guard, stumbled down the spiral staircase and slipped out the door to the forecourt, but Alice was nowhere to be found.

I ran around the tower in which I had been housed, avoiding
the sight of the green. I barreled down the small slope to the gate that opened onto the Water Lane and out to Traitor’s Gate, now closed to the river by the heavy portcullis.

“Stop!” One of the king’s yeomen stepped in front of me.

“You’re a prisoner, aren’t you?” he said gruffly, gripping my shoulders.

“I’ve been released,” I panted, the short sprint having taken my breath away. I had not moved more than five feet at a time for four months. My words came out as tiny clouds in the cold air.

He looked over my shoulder. I glanced back in time to see the guard from my cell nod.

“Very well,” the yeoman said, letting go of me and standing aside. “But a little more dignity, if you please. There’s no rush. You have your whole life ahead of you still.”

I looked at him. He was shorter than I, though his hat gave the appearance of height. He was old, maybe as old as the king, the gray hair curling on his temples, wrinkles cornering his eyes. He had seen many prisoners in his time.

“Shall I accompany you to the gate?” he asked, as if concerned that I would bolt before someone announced that a mistake had been made.

I nodded, still breathless.

“A friend visited me,” I gasped. “I’m looking for her. Did she pass this way?”

He looked at me sideways, walking down the Water Lane. The battlement walls rose on either side of us, creating a canyon
of shadow, though the sun brightened the octagonal Bell Tower ahead of us.

“A girl?” he asked.

“Yes. Short, blonde, quite thin. She wore . . .” I couldn’t think of what Alice wore. All I could picture was the russet gown Cat had given her.

“I have seen few ladies in the Water Lane today,” the yeoman told me. Alice, with her ability to slip in and out of a place unnoticed, had disappeared. “Could she be in the household of someone who resides here?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She didn’t say. May I look for her?”

“I should think you’d want to be out of the Tower quickly,” he said with a grin. “I thought that was why you were running.”

“I want to find Alice,” I said, stopping to look back over my shoulder. We stood on the bridge that crossed the stagnant moat, the water gleaming and oily around us. Could I have passed her? But there were no ladies to be seen. A milkmaid. A laundry maid. And men. Crowding the bridge, the gates, the Water Lane.

“You won’t find her,” he said. “The Tower is the size of a village. More people come in and out of these gates than I could count. Visitors. Victuallers. And if you don’t know who she’s with, the chances are slim.”

“The Duke of Norfolk, perhaps?” I tried.

“Not likely,” the yeoman laughed. “He hasn’t set foot in the Tower. Afraid he’ll be forced to stay.”

True. The duke wouldn’t come near the Tower ever again.

A roar interrupted my thoughts. We passed the animal dens in the Lion Tower, where the road turned sharply to the right to cross the moat one last time. I was leaving. I was walking out. I faced Tower Hill, outside the Tower proper, where George Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell and dozens of others who didn’t merit a “private” execution had been put to death. The posts of the scaffold were clearly visible. London lay beyond them.

I stopped walking. “I can’t.”

“You must,” the yeoman said. He must have seen it all before. Prisoners who tried to escape. Prisoners who were executed on Tower Hill. Prisoners released after thirty-five years. Prisoners who had nowhere to go.

He walked me across the bridge. Past the lions’ cages where the animals paced in cells smaller than mine, looking balefully through the bars. The lions would never be set free. They would die in the Tower.

I didn’t want to do that. Die in the Tower. Even though the thought of being alone on the streets of London terrified me, the thought of dying slowly in that tiny room frightened me more.

“That’s the girl,” the yeoman murmured.

“Pardon?” I asked.

“You’re ready,” he said as we came to the Bulwark Gate, the portal to the chaos of the city. “It shows in the tilt of the head, the set of the shoulders. I can see it in your eyes.”

He smiled at me again.

“That’s a lovely bit of lace,” he said, indicating the piece that still fluttered from my hand. “If you cleaned it up, it might fetch a price.”

“Thank you,” I said. He was being nice. Trying to help me. Giving me possibilities.

“I think the embroiderer’s guild makes its home in Cheapside.”

Cheapside. William’s family once owned a house there.

“My cousin is there. They’ll know where to send you. But keep to this side of the river and stay away from Southwark,” he added. “Someone might get the wrong impression.”

Someone might think me a whore.

“Thank you,” I said again, and stepped away from the bridge.

“Good luck,” he said. “Keep the spire of St. Paul’s in sight, and you’ll make your way.”

The cathedral jabbed at the sky, clearly visible. Not far. I smiled at him and dipped a tiny curtsey. That made him blush. Though I was no better than he. And thankfully, no worse. No longer a prisoner, I could hold my head a little higher.

He turned and walked back across the bridge. He didn’t look back.

I gripped the emerald in my hand and said one more thank you to Alice. She had not only given me a gift, she had given me a push. I didn’t need to sell the lace. That I would keep, and I would keep it with me always. It would remind me of who I
used to be. But the emerald I didn’t need. I could sell it with no remorse. And for much more money. It represented the secrets I had been forced to keep. The silence.