Gilt (25 page)

It belonged to Alice Restwold.

“Nothing,” I said. I almost wanted to confide in her. To open the circle again to Joan and Alice and Cat, our friendship like a bulwark against the gossip and the scheming. But Alice had William. And I couldn’t break that wall.

“Is it true she’s pregnant?” she asked.

“Aren’t you the one who’s supposed to know everything? How should I know if she’s pregnant?”

“Or by whom?” Alice asked.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“She’s married,” I said firmly. “She’s the queen of England. Whose child could she possibly have?”

“Whose indeed,” Alice murmured. But she had that sly look about her. The look that carried secrets and used them as currency. Used them as weapons.

“Listen to me, Alice Restwold,” I said, and gripped her by both arms. I topped her by at least a head and carried more weight on me, too. She was thin and pallid like a sickly child, and my fingers reached right around her upper arms and nearly met my thumbs.

“Listen to what, Katherine Tylney?” she said, her chin tilted to look me in the eye.

“You will not go spreading idle gossip in this place,” I hissed. “You are one of the queen’s ladies and as such you should be loyal only to her.”

“Whoever said I wasn’t?”

I itched to clout the smirk off her.

“You and I both know that you are loyal only to yourself,” I said. “But if you breathe one word of gossip about Cat to anyone—
anyone
—I will come down on you like the sword of Damocles. I shall be watching you, the sword held by a hair, waiting to drop.” A sudden anger lent force to my words and my fingers tightened involuntarily. I wanted to squeeze until
the blood stopped running to her hands. Maybe that would stop her mouth.

For a second, her eyes grew wide with fear. Then she shook me off.

“You can’t threaten me, Kitty Tylney,” she said. “I know too much about you. About Cat. About Lambeth.”

“We all do, Alice,” I reminded her.

A ghost of her smirk reappeared, but she leaned back into the shadows and all expression blurred.

“It’s not like Cat was ever particularly discreet when she lived there,” she said. “After all, she used to meet Francis Dereham in the back of the chapel.”

“So we must be discreet for her,” I said, panicked at her indifference to the danger we could all be in.

“For the love of God, Kitty,” she said. “Grow up. I’m not likely to breathe a word, because I’m quite happy where I am. I’m in this for me, as you said. But Kitty, you should know better than anyone that your loyalty will get you nowhere.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, taken off guard. My loyalty to Cat got me everything. It saved me from my parents’ neglect. It bought my way out of Lambeth. It rescued me from Lord Poxy.

“I mean that you’ve been friends with Cat Howard for as long as I’ve known you. She can make all the promises in the world, swear enduring friendship, insist on her virtue and make everyone believe her. But it all comes down to Cat making Cat
happy. Nothing and no one else matters. At the end of the day, your loyalty means little to her, except for what it can make you do. But you’re better than that. You’re worth more than that. Surely by now you’ve begun to think for yourself.”

“I’ve always thought for myself, thank you very much,” I said, but the sharpness of my words couldn’t keep tears of recognition from my eyes.

“Well, you’ve certainly never shown it.”

The words stung. More so because she was right.

I looked over to Cat, staring vacantly out the window, and saw the way the sun played across her face and the blankness in her eyes. The formal garden outside appeared cramped and precise in contrast to the spread of the fields beyond. She didn’t seem to notice any of it.

Then she changed. She stood taller, with her shoulders pulled back, and her bosom heaved like that of a balladeer’s heroine.

I followed Cat’s gaze and caught sight of Culpepper out the window. He sat on his horse, positioned for full view from Cat’s window. He threw a glance over his shoulder and she caught it like a kiss on the wind.

I searched the room to see if anyone else had noticed. The Coven stooped over their endless tapestry silks. The other ladies hovered over a tray of delicacies. Jane Boleyn stood stark and brittle as a frozen sapling, her eyes darting from Cat to Culpepper and finally resting on Joan, who stood at Cat’s elbow, ready with a selection of jewels for her hair, one hand raised in
immobile supplication. She stared at Cat openmouthed, blue-eyed and bewildered.

And the secret spread, held by another keeper.

I looked again out the window and caught sight of Edmund on a gray charger, his hair as flowing as the horse’s mane. He saw me staring and flashed a knowing grin.

“That man could teach a girl a thing or two,” Alice said quietly.

Her eyes were on Edmund. But she could very well have meant Culpepper.

“Maybe there are some things I don’t want to learn,” I said, and walked away. As if she hadn’t already stolen the one man I’d ever wanted. As if Alice Restwold, purveyor of secrets, might not be collecting clues to treason.

I felt the sword myself, hanging by a thread above us all. And only our silence could save us.

R
UMORS OF
C
AT’S PREGNANCY HASTENED AND EXPANDED UNTIL THE
entire court, from the king to the cooks, watched her every move and studied every morsel she ate. She never said a word, did nothing to increase or dispel the rumors.

We moved on to Pontefract, the last days of August turning to autumn in the northern climate. In London, it would still be summer. But here in the northern wilds, the wind whipped across the jagged rocks of the hills and in through the shuttered windows. The timeworn castle stood isolated on a hill, proud and solitary, undulating fields and forests splayed below it.

“They say this was the favorite castle of Richard III,” Alice told me. A king who, stories said, usurped his crown from his brother and murdered his nephews in the Tower of London.

“And King Richard II died here,” she continued. “Imprisoned and starved to death. The local cook said both Richards might haunt the towers.”

The wind sounded enough like ghosts as it was.

“Shut up, Alice,” I muttered, unwilling to ponder treason and its shades.

Cat swept into the room, a furious bundle of energy, her face pale, hands clenched in fists so tight I could see the white of bone.

“I wish to speak with Mistress Tylney alone,” she said.

The ladies moved gracefully, laying aside embroidery, casting lazy, disgruntled glances my way.

“I wish you all to leave me!” Cat shouted. The ladies jumped and scattered, leaving behind the detritus of court life: needles and thread, paper and chess pieces.

“Joan, Alice!” Cat said. “You stay here, also.”

The Countess narrowed her eyes and stalked out the door, her lips twitching. Jane Boleyn paused, cast a quick look around the room, suddenly stark and colorless without its occupants, and closed the door behind her.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s my grandmother.”

“Is she not well?” I hadn’t seen the duchess that morning, and it seemed a little disingenuous for Cat to be so concerned about her health.

“She wants me to employ a new secretary.”

I failed to see the connection between this piece of information and Cat’s agitated state.

“But you hate writing,” Joan said. “A secretary would be a good thing.”

“She wants me to appoint Francis Dereham.”

“Francis!” I gasped. The duchess must have gone mad. There was no way a logical person would think placing Francis
in Cat’s household would be a good idea. The endless odious possibilities flooded my mind.

“What the hell does she think she’s doing?” Cat demanded.

“What did she say?”

“That he wants to better himself, the little weasel.”

“Maybe he does just want a more advantageous position,” I said lamely.

“He wants to take advantage of
my
position,” Cat said hotly. “Like the rest of you. Even that horrible Mary Lascelles tried to worm her way in. As if I’d ever let her near me again, the miserable tattletale. But you lot I couldn’t keep away.”

A shocked silence overtook us. Rain flung itself against the shutters and sputtered in the fire.

“We just wanted to be with you, Cat,” Joan said.

“So that’s why you wrote me that letter?” Cat sneered. “Because you were in ‘utmost misery’ without me? Because of your love for me? Because of the ‘perfect honesty’ you have always found in me?” She said the words
utmost misery
and
perfect honesty
in a simpering mockery of Joan’s childish lilt.

Joan gaped, open-mouthed.

“It’s true, Cat,” she said. “I
was
in misery without you. You’d promised Kitty. Alice had her family connections. And I had nothing.”

I felt a quick, tight guilt. I would have left Joan behind. Sure as Cat left Francis when the light of something better shone.

“But you didn’t have to resort to blackmail!” Cat wailed.

“I didn’t blackmail you, Cat,” Joan blubbered. “What are you talking about?”

“Perfect honesty?”
Cat said. “What else could it mean? That you know the truth about Francis! That perhaps I am not honest, but your own conscience would behoove you to tell the truth if I didn’t put you out of your misery.”

Joan’s rosebud mouth formed a perfect circle and her eyes brimmed with horrified tears.

“Oh!” she gasped, shook her head. “Oh, no!”

Cat stared at her. Narrowed her eyes. Then her face cleared.

“You mean you actually meant just what you said?” she said, still quick with doubt.

“Yes!” Joan protested. “I was miserable! You had promised Kitty. I just thought if I prompted you, I could be included in the promise. You believe me, don’t you?”

She looked around at all of us, desperately. Wanting reassurance. I certainly couldn’t imagine Joan Bulmer attempting anything so devious.

“Of course, Joan,” I said. I snapped a quick smile at Cat.

“And all this time, you thought I would do that to you?” Joan asked, horrified.

Cat shrugged. Mystery solved. Matter forgotten.

“At least having you here has kept you quiet. It might work with Francis, too.”

“The duchess is discreet,” Alice reasoned. “She knows the
court. She wouldn’t bring him here if it weren’t safe. And the duke is here to keep an eye on things.”

“And you know the duke so well,” Cat snapped.

Alice looked taken aback.

“I suppose Francis is harmless,” Cat said, waving away any concerns with her beringed hand.

I pictured Francis. The jaunty tilt of his cap when he swept into the maidens’ chamber. The hangdog look on his face when Cat had dismissed him. How, when I saw him again at Lambeth, he made a show of appearing more dashing and important than he really was. The spite and jealousy in his voice when he told me about Cat and Culpepper.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Silly Kitty,” she said. “He’s safer here than out there.” She flung her arm to the windows and the world beyond. “God only knows what he would say or who he would say it to out there, especially if I turned away his suit. If he’s here, he’ll know what’s at stake. And stay quiet.”

So I stayed quiet, too. I suppressed my doubts about Francis. And I suppressed my fears that Cat had brought me to court only to keep me quiet, not to keep me close.

F
RANCIS STRUTTED INTO THE QUEEN’S CHAMBERS A FEW DAYS LATER
, flaunting his chin dimple. His shoulders looked broader, his smile more determined.

“Your Majesty,” he said, and bowed low before Cat, just as he had done in the maidens’ dormitory.

“Master Dereham,” Cat said. She clipped her words. They held as little warmth as that wind-chilled room.

“Lovely to see you again,” Francis said, and gazed unflinchingly into her eyes. The Coven, nesting by the fire, rustled and whispered at this flagrant bravado.

“You were in my grandmother’s household, were you not?” Cat asked.