Gilt (3 page)

“But Francis was right there in the room,” Alice cut in, obviously not wanting the best part of the story to be told without her.

“Behind the duchess’s chair!” Joan brayed, mirth shaking
her coif loose. Her unruly frizz of dark hair flew about her head like bees around a hive.

“Well, obviously what my
step
grandmother doesn’t know can’t hurt her.”

As we talked, the room filled and crowded. The beds fitted together on the floor like a puzzle. A girl could walk between them, but not if another stood in the way. Our roommates climbed up on beds, had mock disagreements and danced aside, giggling and pushing. Gowns came off, hung on wooden pegs hammered into chinks between the stones in the walls. Cedar chests scraped the floors, pulled from beneath the beds and stirring the two-week-old rushes that moldered on the floor—no woven matting for us, just dried marsh-grass and herbs, loosely strewn. Chests opened to accept sleeves, hoods, shifts, and kirtles. Farthingales, their willow cane hoops creaking and clacking together like teeth, were shaken out and piled in the corner. Bedmates brushed and braided each other’s hair in preparation for sleep.

Or not. At this moment, sleep was the last thing on most of the girls’ minds.

“I shall be queen tonight,” Cat said. No one disputed her. No one ever did. Cat ruled the maidens’ chamber.

She sat enthroned on our bed, a coronet fashioned from yellow embroidery silk on her hair. Her nightdress, worn to the point of near transparency, slipped from one shoulder. I sat beside her, reflecting majesty. Elevated by proximity.

After dark, after the duchess and the dusty and decayed
members of the household had gone to bed, the doors of the maidens’ chamber were thrown open and the room was invaded by boys. Each had received a personal invitation. Some were gentleman pensioners, dressed in the livery of the Duke of Norfolk. One, Lord William Howard, was the duchess’s married son. Two were related to the duchess’s steward, who, in turn, was related to the duchess herself. None were anything less patrician than the younger sons of landed gentry, making their way in a world that favored the firstborn.

The room was barely large enough to contain the girls who slept there. When boys entered, mayhem ensued.

“Ah, the Queen of Misrule,” Francis Dereham declared as he strode up to our bed.

“Do you not bow before your sovereign?” Cat asked.

Francis cocked an eyebrow, and then extravagantly lowered his head over his bent knee.

“You may rise,” Cat pronounced.

“My head?” he asked, straightening. “Or my . . .” His voice trailed off and he indicated his codpiece. I stifled a giggle.

“I brought wine.” Francis produced a leather jug with a flourish. “Gascon. I bribed the wine steward.”

The other men followed suit, and each deposited his pilfered offering at the foot of Cat’s bed, like pilgrims at a shrine: marzipan that inspired Joan Bulmer to squeal, new apples from an orchard in Kent, spiced wafers so thin and crisp they dissolved with one snap of the teeth.

Cat bestowed on Francis a benedictory kiss that quickly became more heated. Cat and Francis could kiss forever. Their clandestine meetings in the chapel or unused galleries often concluded with their mouths puffy and red, their hair disheveled and clothing askew. Over Francis’s ear, Cat gave me The Look. I would not rest my head on my own timber pillow that night.

Bedmates swapped and bickered and jostled for occupation. Four in a bed was not uncommon: half sitting, half lying, limbs cast out in the aisles.

The wine moved quickly, everyone taking a drink or two and passing it on. The sweetness overpowered the sharp tang of grape skins and soothed the burn of alcohol in my throat. I gazed hopefully about the room, though I knew none of the boys was there for me.

Joan pulled Edward Waldegrave, bearer of marzipan, to his feet, and hummed an almain, slightly off-key. Another girl giggled, but joined in, her gentleman offering a baritone harmony. They danced between the beds, tripping over feet and discarded clothing.

Alice perched precariously on the edge of her bed, as if ready to bolt the moment Joan and Edward returned for the rest of the evening’s festivities.

“Come, Alice,” I said to her. “Let’s start something a little more lively.”

I interrupted the monotonous hum with my own version of a galliard tune and coaxed Alice into a volta. My height put me
in the right position to play the man, but when I tried the first lift, I nearly dropped her.

The boys heckled and jeered, grabbing their girls to demonstrate proper form. Edward clasped Joan around the waist, and despite the fact that they probably weighed the same, lifted her up and buried his face between her unbound breasts, making her giggle uncontrollably. They collapsed together on the nearest bed, a tangle of limbs and laughter.

Suddenly the door banged open and the duchess herself stood framed by torches behind her, looking for all the world like an avenging angel come to hammer the light of righteousness into us.

“Out!” the duchess shrieked. Her long gray hair spilled from her head in wicked wisps. Her fur-trimmed velvet dressing gown churned with wrath. Her dark eyes scoured the room from furrowed sockets.

The men scampered to attention, straightening doublets and hunting for shoes. Girls bolted to their feet, arms held like breastplates over the thin fabric of their nightclothes. Francis looked bewildered as he tried to focus on his patroness.

“Francis Dereham,” she spat at him. “You disappoint me.”

Francis cringed. His chivalrous demeanor had always endeared him to the duchess.

“How dare you abuse my good nature and tarnish my name!” she shouted. She swept into the room, pushing and clouting as she went. The men hastened out the door like whipped dogs, shielding their faces and whimpering apologies.
Francis ducked a blind swipe of her bejeweled hand, but didn’t fail to bow before fleeing down the stairs.

The duchess reached Cat, wrestled her to her feet, and then knocked her to the floor with a backhanded slap.

Cat sprawled in the rushes spitting lavender.

“Where do you think you are?” the duchess ranted. “The court of Henry the Eighth?”

She grabbed Joan, frozen nearby, and slapped her, too, for good measure.

“You think you can dissemble and cozen me? That I won’t notice corruption and debauchery in my own household?”

Cat propped herself up on an elbow and laid a hand on her cheek. A red mark bloomed beneath it, a ring-shaped welt on her jawbone. She turned wide, brimming eyes to the duchess, who stopped screaming.

Joan knelt by Cat’s side, but Cat took no notice. She stared only at the duchess.

A single drop welled in Cat’s eye and spilled out over her fingers.

This was something we practiced together. I acted as Cat’s mirror as she perfected ways to encourage emotional responses in her audience.
Tears bring sympathy,
she told me. Now I found that she was right. Cat’s tears caused the duchess to pause and look about the room like someone who has forgotten her purpose.

“You know I would do nothing to vex you,
grandmère
,” Cat said, her voice high and sweet, as if laced with honey.

The duchess appeared to be considering whether or not the pretty, delicate girl weeping at her feet was really capable of deception.

“And yet you invite men to a room meant for virginal maids,” the duchess countered. I suppressed a snort of laughter. Cat hung her head, a picture of abject remorse.

“Which one came to your bed?” the duchess continued. “Francis Dereham? I’ve treated him as a favorite, but he doesn’t befit you. You are a Howard. You are meant for better things.”

“Yes,
grandmère
.” Cat knew very little French, but exercised it liberally around the duchess. It made an impression.

“I never want to see you with him again,” the duchess said, brushing her skirts as if to remove the detritus of scandal. “If I see the two of you together again, even kneeling in prayer, I will have both of you thrown out of this house so quickly you will never return to polite society.”

Cat’s face was hidden from the duchess by a shower of hair, but I saw it harden, the jaw clench and the eyes kindle and spark. Then it smoothed to an image of gratitude and she looked up at the old woman.

“Yes,
grandmère
.”

“Who let them in?” the duchess said. “Who suggested this bedchamber farce?”

She scanned all of our faces, her own drawn down with age and anger like a melting candle.

“Joan?” she asked. But Joan just gaped at her.

“Alice?” But Alice never parted with information without something in return.

“Kitty?” She turned her trenchant gaze on me, but capitulated immediately. “I should know better,” she scowled. “Loyal to the grave, that one.”

She turned wearily, her shoulders hunched.

“This is best forgotten.” The duchess waved away our stares. “From tonight onward, a curfew will be set, and the door to this chamber will be locked. There will be no repeat performance. Go to bed. All of you.”

She parted the torchbearers like the Red Sea and hauled them down the gallery in her wake. Girls crept to their beds, thankful to have escaped the duchess’s ire. Only Joan, Alice, and I remained standing.

Cat rose from the debris on the floor.

“Forgotten?” she said. “I’m unlikely to forget any of it. I’ll make her life miserable.”

“Cat,” I warned.

“You can wipe that sanctimonious look right off your face, Kitty Tylney.”

I kept silent. When Cat’s anger gathered momentum, it was best to stand back and stay quiet, for fear of getting flayed alive by words or fingernails.

“Besides,” she sneered, “I wasn’t talking about the duchess. I was talking about Mary Lascelles.”

Mary was one of the few girls even less connected than I
was, her only family a bully of a brother who had dumped her unceremoniously in the duchess’s lap when he decided Mary needed “elevating.” I looked at Mary’s bed. Her bedmate sat in the middle of it, shocked by our stares. Mary was nowhere to be seen.

“You mean you didn’t see her? She was right behind the duchess! Smirking away as if she deserved a medal. She’ll be sleeping on the duchess’s floor tonight, not
because she’s favored but because she’s afraid of retaliation. She’d better never set foot in this room again.”

Despite the annoyance I felt toward Mary for informing on us, I felt a little sorry for her, too. The remainder of her life in Norfolk House would be miserable. The punishment for snitching was to be shunned by all the girls. She would be pinched in chapel and thumped at dinner. Mary would be black and blue by the end of the week. And for the rest of her days.

“Did you hear the duchess?” Cat returned to her rant. “
Just where do you think you are, the court of Henry the Eighth
? As if I’d confuse this dreary, boring, hypocritical place with the dazzling circle the king has around him.”

“What do you think she meant?” Joan asked.

Cat sighed and enunciated slowly as if speaking to the village idiot.

“Joan, at court people are always making secret assignations. It’s
de rigueur
. It’s expected. The duchess finds it morally reprehensible.”

“If the king allows it, why doesn’t she?” I wondered.

“Because she’s a
Howard
. Ha! She’s not even that. She’s a
Tylney
.” Cat spat the name as she would a bitter seed.

I willed myself not to react. My side of the family was so far removed from the duchess that our name—Tylney—felt like the only indication we were related at all. If the duchess was inferior, what did that make me?

“She’s not even my real grandmother,” Cat said. “Just some grasper who saw a hole in the Howard family and filled it.”

We waited while Cat’s anger spun itself out.

“One day she’ll be sorry. One day she’ll have to scrape and bow to me.”

I failed to picture a time when the highest noblewoman in the country would fall so low as to look up to Catherine Howard, forgotten daughter of the forgotten third son of the man who had once been Duke of Norfolk. But I said nothing.

“I’ll find a way to see Francis. She can’t keep us apart.”

“We could get them in through the window,” I suggested.

“He tried that, remember?” Cat shot me a withering glare that brought heat surging to my cheeks.

True. The spring before, in a fit of romantic valor, Francis had attempted to scale the outside wall to the second-floor window with a rose between his teeth, but proved unequal to the task.

“Could we bribe one of the servants to unlock the door?” Joan asked, looking for approval.

“I don’t trust any of them,” Cat said.

We lapsed into silence, waiting for her to speak. Cat always thought of a solution.

“We’ll just have to steal the key,” she announced.

“Simple,” I muttered, unsure if I wanted her to hear. Cat didn’t take criticism well.

“It is, actually.” Cat stared hard at me. “The steward has his own set of keys. The duchess’s copy isn’t used. She’ll never know it’s gone.”

“It’s brilliant, Cat,” I said. “But who’s going to do it?”

Whoever it was would have to be very well connected or very brave—or very stupid.

“Why, Kitty,” Cat said. “You are.”