Gilt (9 page)

F
RANCIS DEPARTED AND THE RAIN RETURNED
. C
AT SENT NO WORD
from court. I began to suspect that she couldn’t wield the influence to get me there, and her promises were for naught. Doubt nibbled at the back of my mind that perhaps, to a certain extent, Mary Lascelles was right. I wondered if I was actually beneath Cat, or at least beneath her notice.

I turned sixteen in the middle of Lent. Joan wished me the best and Alice smirked and we had no meat or cheese and the day swirled away like effluent in the river.

I spent that afternoon outside, alone. I felt that the water of the Thames itself flowed in my veins, toilsome and murky. The colors of the river and the sky melded perfectly, running together on the far side and seeming to drip across Westminster like an unfinished painting. I stared at the palace, lost in imagining the riot of color and intrigue behind those dreary gray walls.

“Much more beautiful up close.”

I startled, slipping on the slick clay of the riverbank, and fell headlong into the mud. My heart beat an erratic rhythm of fear
until I looked up and it nearly stopped at the sight of William Gibbon.

“Let me help you,” he said, extending a hand. Amusement lit the one blue eye that remained unhidden by his sandy hair.

“I can manage,” I said, ignoring the hand. And the eye. And the freckles. And the enticingly crooked smile.

I hauled myself from the mire. “You know, you really must stop sneaking up on a person.” I tried to give him a withering glare. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. He looked at my dress and burst out laughing.

The entire front of my bodice and skirt had changed from blue to a saddle brown. The thick clay coated the fabric so thoroughly that the piping and embroidery didn’t show.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” I said, my embarrassment making me pettish.

“My apologies,” he said, his sincerity marred by a twitching at the corners of his mouth.

I wiped at the mud ineffectively. William coughed. If he started laughing again, I thought I might smack him.

“It’s a lovely color on you, Kitty,” he said.

Lovely color
. It was a horrible color. Reminiscent of bodily functions. In spite of myself, laughter burbled in my chest.

“I look frightful,” I admonished him. “Mud is a color flattering to no one.” I caught a smile creeping across my own lips.

“Monks’ habits are often that very brown.”

“We don’t see many monks around here, anymore,” I
reminded him. Not since King Henry had shut down all the religious houses. “Besides, I don’t think I’d be accepted into a monastery.”

“Oh, really?” he asked with a grin. “Skeletons in your cupboard?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Actually,” he said, “I find secrets get in the way.” And suddenly his expression opened. Vulnerable. I could read everything he was thinking. He looked shy. And hopeful.

“That’s good,” I said. “Because I have none.” None of my own, anyway. I looked away to hide the hope my own face reflected.

Westminster Palace stared back at me from its empty eye sockets. I remembered what William had said before I fell into the mud.

“Is it really more beautiful up close?” I asked. From Lambeth, it didn’t look beautiful at all.

“I didn’t mean Westminster,” he said quietly. I felt his gaze on my face and couldn’t move. Could hardly think. “I meant you.”

I turned so quickly I nearly fell again, but William caught me with an arm around my waist, turning my insides liquid. His touch warmed my entire body and made me feel I could run the joust against the king himself. And yet I hesitated even to carry my own weight for fear he would let go.

“Watch your step,” he breathed into me.

My thoughts spun like leaves on the wind, whisked high
and giddy with no direction or destination. I nodded, struggling not to laugh out loud at the joy of it. I looked up to see the laughter mirrored on his face. But he wasn’t laughing
at
me. I bit my lip to stop myself from kissing him right there. The movement drew his eyes to my mouth. To the rest of me. I felt the flush return to my face when he looked me in the eyes again.

“Perhaps the monks will take me,” he whispered.

“What?” I gasped. I took a step backward, onto the dry, rocky path. “One moment with me and you’re ready to join a monastery?”

“I believe I already wear the color of their robes.” He indicated a line of mud that ran up the length of his body. Were we really that close? I quavered at the thought. Deliciously.

“The duke will have my ear for this,” he said with a laugh. As though he didn’t really care.

“The duchess will have our hides if she sees us both and jumps to conclusions,” I added. Because even she would be forced to ask about two bodies coated in mud.

“Then she shouldn’t see us together.”

My heart sank. He couldn’t go yet.

But instead of leaving me and going to the house alone, he offered me his arm and led me in the opposite direction.

We walked past Lambeth Palace, the residence of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. Just ahead of us, the landscape opened and fell away, the path rising above it, almost like a bridge. The river stretched to our left, gray-green and rippled.
Lambeth marsh lay flooded to our right. I could see forever. No strangers lurking behind trees.

East, down the river, London town splayed on the horizon. It looked black and grimy, choked and swarming.

“Is the city very frightening?” I asked.

“My father used to take me when I was younger,” William said. “We still have a little house there. Near Cheapside. I remember watching a tournament from the window.”

“You
are
a gentleman, then,” I said. Surely good enough for my parents.

“The tenants give us a little money,” he said, the crooked grin growing sad. “But personally, I’d rather be here. Outside, with the sky and the river.”

“And the mud.”

“That, too.”

“Not at court?” I asked.

“I suppose I prefer a quieter life.” He made a face. “At court, there is so little time, so little room to move. Everything is dictated by someone else’s desires, telling you what to do, what to think, what to want.”

My elation flickered for a moment, caught like a fly against glass. Could I choose a man who wouldn’t be at court—who would take me far away from everything I’d ever dreamt about? Away from Cat?

“I can see you’re not convinced,” he said with a wry smile.

There on the riverbank, the possibilities seemed so distant, the ultimate choice so remote. That I could go to court. That
I could choose a man I wanted. That William would even ask.

“Convince me.” I smiled back. In the meantime, the least I could do was flirt a little. And put those years of practice with Cat to use.

“It may take time.” He took a step closer. So close we nearly touched again. “And persuasion requires frequent contact.”

“Oh?” my voice barely a whisper. “How frequent?”

“I will be returning often.”

“Is there much news to share between the duke and the dowager duchess?”

“Apparently so,” he said. “I’ll show you spring as it comes. I’ll show you why I’d prefer to be here. With you.”

I smiled, my words lost on lips ready to kiss him.

“When the weather clears,” he added, blushing as if he could read my mind. “And the mud dries.”

We returned to Norfolk House, the narrow path necessitating close proximity. Our knuckles brushed once, sending a flash of sensation up my arm. William spoke of his family home in the country, his face animated with delight. And I listened, bewitched by the cadence of his voice.

When we arrived at the garden, he bowed and turned to the grand entrance at the front of the house. I watched for a moment and then ran around to the kitchen, startling the cooks and scullery maids and setting up a racket amongst the dogs. I literally tripped up the back stairs to the maidens’ chamber, banging my shins and leaving gobbets of mud on
the risers, but I didn’t care. I was too caught up in my own jubilance.

He wants to see me again
. One thought pivoted, so I could see it from all sides.
He wants to see me again.

Happy birthday.

A
ND HE DID
. T
WICE MORE IN
M
ARCH AND ON THE FIRST OF
A
PRIL
, William arrived with messages and walked with me in the gardens. Even in the rain.

I couldn’t sit with him inside because the duchess hectored him until he returned to court. But he wanted to be outdoors, anyway, so he could convince me of its merit, unaware that it was something I already knew. Something I feared. But over the course of his persuasions, I found myself, slowly, becoming comfortable with the world outside the walls.

He always caught me unawares. I never had time to dress up or even tidy my hair. And he liked me anyway. The more he came, the more I wanted to be with him. Not just walking. I yearned to hold his hand, to feel his skin against mine. To have him kiss me.

I remembered how his arms had felt wrapped around me.

I wished we still had the midnight parties, so I could invite him.

I wished more than ever for Cat to be with me. To offer advice and assurance.

Then, after Easter, as if conjured by my inclination, she returned.

On a day we all felt fractious and at odds, she blew into the house in Lambeth like Zephyrus, bringing summer and light. She wore an azure gown, the bodice studded with pearls and edged with satin rosettes. Her sleeves flowed about her arms like a sunset, orange silk slashed with yellow.

She spun once on her own, her skirts belling around her in a rustle of luxury, before we descended on her.

“How did you get here?” I threw my arms around her.

“Where did you get this?” Joan nearly bowled us over onto the hearth as she joined the embrace.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?” Alice sounded vexed that she didn’t know in advance.

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Cat sang, causing the Countess of Bridgewater to grouse and shuffle. “I want all of April—all the rest of our lives!—to be one brilliant surprise after another.”

She flung herself at me in a swirl of skirts that propelled us into the tapestry of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you,” she whispered.

I was about to tell her the same. Tell her I needed her advice. But she leapt from the wall as if pinched and pulled me with her.

“Come!” she said. “All of you.”

She led us up through the gloomy entranceway and into the oak gallery where our voices and footsteps echoed.

“So what’s it really like?” I asked. “Living at court?”

“It’s actually hard work,” Cat said. “I have to help the queen dress and plait her hair. Not to mention sewing for the poor and providing entertainment for the king.”

“They have no servants?” I asked.

“Kitty, we
are
the servants.” She navigated the stairs as if she’d never been gone. “The queen can’t be attended by common peasants. The worst part is when the older ladies think they can order me around. Like my stepmother, even though all she did was marry my scattergoods of a father. She thinks she can play
ma mère
now that we live in the same household. I may just be a maid of honor, and she one of the ‘great ladies,’ but I’m there to serve the queen, by the Mass, not Margaret Jennings.”

“She is a Howard now.”

“Margaret Howard.
Lady
Howard. I don’t care.”

“Do you get along with the other girls our age?” I asked, waiting to hear I’d been replaced.

“Like who?” Cat paused at the top of the stairs. “Mary Fitzroy the Duchess of Richmond? She’s actually a Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. Wouldn’t she be a fine confidante, tattling every word I utter? Then there’s Katherine Carey, Mary Boleyn’s daughter, and possibly the king’s, though he won’t admit to it. I don’t blame him: the whey-faced ninny thinks marrying Francis Knollys is the epitome of courtly delight.”

Cat dropped names and dispensed sentences with such
worldly abandon that I began to feel hopelessly provincial.

“Is it true the king might be her father?” Alice asked.

“Aren’t you always on the lookout for gossip?” Cat said.

“If she was, surely he would claim her, like he did the Duke of Richmond,” Joan said.

“But she’s a
girl
,” Alice argued. “Only boys are worthy of a king’s acknowledgment.”

“There’s no way of knowing for sure,” Cat cut in. “Her mother was Mary Boleyn. I mean, the king of France called Mary his English mare when she served over there because he’d ridden her so many times!”

We dissolved into giggles that silenced when she pushed open the door to the maidens’ chamber. The room had been completely transformed.

Swathes of fabric lay across several of the beds. Yellow damask. Green velvet. Silk an incredibly pale blue like the center of a snowdrift. Four different pinks, from a magenta brocade to a rose-colored satin. The layers of cloth carried the exotic odors of foreign lands and spices from the holds of ships.