The Stolen One (22 page)

I
knew where the chapel at Sudeley was, indeed I did, even though I’d never been inside. Tucked behind the castle, with a turret and spikes and stained-glass windows that glowed at night like jewels, it was a miniature version of the big castle. Many a time I’d spent at Belas Knap wondering what it would be like to live there.

I’d come here first after walking all the way from Gloucester, one bag in hand. I couldn’t go straightaway to Nutmeg Farm. Not yet. Grace always did say that despite my high spirit, a scared little girl resided in me. And I knew now, beyond a doubt, who I was. My mother lay in there somewhere. I stood at the entrance to the chapel, my heart racing. I pushed
open the heavy wooden door and crept in.

I slowly made my way up the center aisle. Wooden pews lined the chapel. The altar was elaborately carved, and behind it a magnificent alabaster wall lit with candles eerily cast a glint of white gloom about the room. I peered around, looking for any sign of a tomb. But I saw none. I made my way to the alabaster wall, gingerly running my hands over the smooth marble. She was here somewhere in this chapel, but where?

I took one of the lit tapers and knelt before the alabaster, shining the light into the dark shadows. Behind me, I heard the chapel door creak open. I looked back over my shoulder. A small, stooped man, with a long white beard that nearly touched his belly, was walking up the aisle.

“And who be you?” he asked. “One of the Winchcombe rats come to plague me?”

I sat still, for I had long heard tales of this man who scared away miscreants in the night. I slowly stood. “I’m not a rat, sir. I’m a lass. And I’ve come looking for my mother.”

“Your mother be not here,” he said. “Go home now before I fetch my—”

“My mother, sir,” I interrupted him. “She died after giving birth to me. Here at Sudeley.”

He was silent a good full minute before walking to me. He came within a foot of me, and I had to hold my breath, so foul-smelling and goatish he was. He turned his head this way and that, giving me a good study. He settled on my eyes. Then nodded his head.

He shuffled to the candles. “And how old are you, lass?” he asked as he slowly started to extinguish them one by one with a long silver snuffer.

“Nearly seventeen,” I answered. “This August.”

“August thirtieth,” he said.

I blinked. “You know of my mother? Queen Katherine Parr?” I asked him.

He moved to another set of candles. “Of course I knew of her. I came shortly after her death. I’ve looked for her myself the best I could without digging all the stone up. She’s waiting. She’ll show herself to us someday when she be ready.” The old man extinguished more candles, leaving but two. Then he tottered back out the chapel without saying a word.

I felt the lingering, a hush of air like a ghost’s whisper circling me. Aye, she was here. I could feel her. I knelt back down and ran my hand across the alabaster in the far left corner, till I felt a place of warmth. I laid down on top of it, hugging my knees, letting the heat run
through my body like a long embrace. I lay there for a long time feeling at peace, like I could sleep forever, and when I opened my eyes I saw an elegant figure in crimson float down the aisle and through the wooden doors.

One of Christian’s lambs, loose from his enclosure, followed me up the path to Cowslip Cottage, his bell sweetly tinkling. Did I imagine that he frowned at me? What would his master do? When I reached the door, I found I could not go in, my heart beat so. Instead I sat under one of the pear trees watching birds go by, butterflies swim in the wind, insects circle the sky. It was late afternoon, the sun sinking like a great gold coin. When I was young, Agnes would cook an early dinner for Uncle Godfrey and Christian when they came in from the orchard. But everything was different. I had no idea what they’d be doing now.

Finally the door of Cowslip Cottage opened. I sat up. God’s me, but it was Bartolome. He was heading somewhere, but he stopped when he saw me under the tree.

“It is you,” he said shyly, with little expression.

“Yes, it is me,” I told him. “Is Christian at home?” I asked, a tingling rushing up my spine as I spoke his name.

“Yes.”

“Can you tell him I’m here waiting for him under the tree?” I asked.

He grinned wide, turned, and ran inside. An eternity later, the door opened again. I stood and brushed off my dress. But when I looked up shyly, it was only Bartolome running back to me.

“Well, what did he say?” I asked, my heart falling down to my feet. I leaned back into the tree.

“Nothing at first. Old Nan told him to stay where he was, that you should come to him, with all you’ve put him through, and so he just be sitting there. And then Uncle Godfrey said, ‘Go,’ and still he be sitting there, his face white as linen, and Nan Love had to fetch him some ale and he drank the whole cup down in one gulp.” Bartolome laughed.

God’s death, he didn’t want me. Of course he didn’t want me. I looked up at the pear tree, my eyes filling with tears. I was too late. I leaned down to kiss Bartolome and pick up my bag to go, but just as I did the cottage door opened. It was Christian. Christian standing tall, proud, unsmiling in the doorway.

I started to walk to him, and then to run, and finally he began to walk toward me till we met in front of
Agnes’s old herb garden. I threw my arms around him, tears running down my face.

“I love you, Christian,” I said, my face buried in his chest. “I just didn’t know how much.” He still hadn’t said anything. He lifted my chin and ran his thumb over my face, his eyes full of something I couldn’t identify.

Then he picked me up, and carried me across the field, away from the cottage. I nuzzled my face on his shoulder, taking in the deep aroma of wool and sandalwood. I didn’t care where we were going. I was with him and he hadn’t turned me away.

But soon he was carrying me through the village. And soon a gaggle of boys was following us, then others, emerging from their cottages, even the old creatures.

“Christian,” I said, my face aflame in embarrassment. “What are you doing? Put me down! Christian, say something!”

But still he did not speak. We passed the town green, and Winchcombe Abbey, and the churchyard. And the next thing I knew I was in the duck pond dripping wet, from head to toe. And Christian was already walking away as I made my way out of the pond, water pouring from my dress, my hair loose now and soaking wet.

I ran after him, my shoes sloshing and squeaking as
Frances and Piper Pea and Alice Ogilvey laughed. It was a long way back. But he walked all the way to Cowslip Cottage, never acknowledging my calls and pleading.

“Christian!” I called once more as he walked up Cowslip Hill.

And finally he stopped. “Am I good enough for you now, Kat?”

“You were always good enough for me. Yes, Christian,” I said. “I love you. I love you.” He leaned down, his lips hovering just above mine until finally I moved forward. His lips were warm and soft. I thought my heart would burst.

“Well, you have the rest of your life to show me,” he said, turning back toward the cottage. “Come,” he said quietly.

We walked hand in hand up Cowslip Hill over the centurion, the setting sun sending fiery streaks of golden red across our beautiful valley, the last one God made.

I
saw the queen again many, many years later. She came on progress to Sudeley Castle in the year of our lord 1592. Although Christian bade me not to go, as he was much worried for me, I did go with the other villagers. Our son Miles, born like a God’s miracle twenty years into our marriage, came along with me, excited of the day. Bartolome had long left, living the life of an adventurer like his father. Uncle Godfrey had passed and was buried next to Agnes. I tended the graves, all of them—Grace’s, Agnes’s and Anna’s. I had buried Grace’s journal and my necklace back with her, for such secrets belonged under the earth.

We stood with a throng of people lining Sudeley
Lane. I was near the back, only hoping to get but a small glimpse of her, the queen—my sister. “Is it true like Papa says, you knew the queen long ago, Mama?” Miles asked. He pushed himself through the crowd, dragging me along with him.

“Yes, I knew her,” I said. “And it was indeed long ago.”

And then suddenly there she was, high atop a white horse in her procession, her bearing as regal as ever, although there was many a line upon her face. She was wearing it, the gown I’d spent so many months stitching. Even from here, I could see my wolf, its emerald stare boring straight through me.

The queen and I locked eyes, both of us frozen in the moment, her face not changing, unreadable. And then she slowly nodded her head. I returned her acknowledgment; her procession moved on. She never looked back.

There are various accounts of what happened to Queen Katherine Parr’s coffin, and who eventually discovered her. It is generally agreed that she was forgotten for more than two hundred years, until her coffin started to rise to the surface in the decaying chapel at Sudeley. One story has it that a Mr. John Lucas dug up the slender steel coffin and found the former queen completely intact—moist, her face beautiful as though she had just died. Two years later when her coffin was found amidst some rabbit holes by yet more curiosity seekers, her face had turned to bone.

Queen Elizabeth did visit Sudeley on progress in 1592, twenty-eight years after my story ended, ostensibly to celebrate the anniversary of the defeat of the Armada, but also to escape a particularly
bad summer of the plague in London. A three-day celebration included a rich feast and pageant of mummers, bear baiting, and jousting.

Dorothy Broadbelt did indeed get her man—she married John Abington, clerk of the kitchen, in 1567. Nicholas Pigeon, along with his father Edmund Pigeon, Clerks of the Wardrobe, worked tirelessly in the Queen’s Great Wardrobe, keeping extremely detailed records down to the location and price of pins. Among these records are generous gifts of clothing from the queen to Ipollyta the Tarletan, “our woman,” including a velvet hat, a caul of gold and silver, and a clout of Spanish needles. The last time Ipollyta is mentioned in the warrants is 1569.

Family legend says I’m related to Lady Jane Grey, godmother to Mary Seymour and chief mourner at Katherine Parr’s funeral and, later, the tragic queen of nine days. My mother’s ancestor John Gray, a one-armed pensioner of the British navy, came over to America in the seventeenth century. His great-grandson James Gray fought alongside his father and father-in-law during the American Revolution.

On the list of Mary Seymour’s nursery items of rich bedding, “good and stately gear,” and other necessaries
that were to be sent to the Duchess of Suffolk were two milch cows for maids who would soon be marrying, three silver goblets, an embroidered scarlet tester (a bed canopy—likely embroidered by Katherine Parr), and a lute. In an inventory of a jewel chest owned by Katherine Parr, the following items are found: twelve cramp rings (for morning sickness) and two pieces of unicorn horn. Mary Seymour’s governess was indeed a Mrs. Eglionby, and a Mrs. A(E)glionby did replace Kat Ashley after her death at court, but it’s my own conjecture that they are one and the same. The real Mary Seymour disappeared from history on the eve of her second birthday. It is interesting to ask, if she died as a child, as most historians believe, why wasn’t the death of a queen’s child noted somewhere? Perhaps it was, but is lost to us in history. Or perhaps, perhaps…