Gilt (14 page)

“The new girls always spot him right away,” she said.

He was tall and lithe. The blue of his doublet matched the silk that winked from his slashed yellow sleeves. He had chiseled cheekbones and a straight, jutting jaw. His dark eyes
danced, assessing those around him. Handsome. But repulsive. I knew him well, because he haunted my nightmares.

This was the rapist from the woods.

I struggled to remain composed, my muscles poised for flight, my heart pounding to escape.

“That, my dear, is the king’s usher, Thomas Culpepper. A bit of a gallant, if you ask me, playing fast and loose with the affections of a dozen girls at once.”

Thomas Culpepper. He had once been the object of Cat’s affections. He was still at court, free and whole and unscarred.

“And never far from his company is Edmund Standebanke,” she added. “One of the yeomen of the chamber.”

A lion’s mane of hair inclined as its bearer whispered into Culpepper’s ear.

“Kitty!” A girlish cry nearly dropped me to my knees. “Joan! Alice! I’m so glad you’re here!”

We turned to see Cat scampering the length of the great hall, dukes, duchesses, and courtiers scattering, bowing, and curtseying in her wake. Everyone watched her progress to see whom she considered important enough to greet with such ecstasy. The sleeves of her crimson gown billowed, tucked in at the wrists by gold-embroidered cuffs. A series of pearl-and-ruby ropes hung around her neck, anchored by a gold pendant enameled with a brilliant crowned rose.

Jane pinched my sleeve and I followed her into a curtsey of my own. It felt so strange making obeisance to my best friend.

“Oh, stand up for pity’s sake,” she cried, and threw her arms around me.

“Kitty,” she said, and then whispered in my ear, “finally, someone I can talk to!”

She hugged Joan and Alice in turn. Around us, the murmur of whispers sounded like the hiss of disturbed geese.

“Joan, thank you for the kind note you sent,” Cat said, a slim, cold edge to her voice.

“Your Majesty,” Joan said, a blush turning the entire top half of her body pink.

“And Alice, always a pleasure.” Cat gave a tight smile. “How fares my uncle?”

“I do not know, Your Majesty,” Alice said, her eyes darting in confusion. “Lady Rochford says he is in Kenninghall.”

“I swear you’ve grown,” Cat said, ignoring her and turning back to me. “Soon you’ll be too tall for any man save the king, and I’m afraid he’s already taken.”

The women around us tittered behind their hands, and I smiled weakly, accepting the butt end of the joke. I kept my eyes on her. I had the protection of the queen. No one could harm me. Cat would be my shield. From the laughter. From Culpepper.

“Come meet my husband.” Cat giggled. She dragged me by the hand to the dais at the front of the room. The king sat in a velvet-laden chair beneath a cloth-of-gold canopy. Cat ran up the shallow steps to him, and he shifted his weight gracelessly to look at us.

“Who are your acquaintances, my love?” he asked. He must have seen us a hundred times at Norfolk House, and yet he hadn’t noticed us once. Now, with Cat’s introduction, I felt overly conspicuous and uncomfortable.

Not to mention the fact that he had his arm around her, his huge, meaty hand resting precariously close to her breast.

“Your Majesty,” Cat replied. “This is no mere acquaintance, but my best friend, Mistress Katherine Tylney. We are more like sisters than my own sisters, for we grew up together.”

“Ahh, Mistress Tylney,” the king said. “A pleasure to meet you.”

Since he had spoken to me, I was allowed to rise, but found that I couldn’t.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” I said, curtseying to the floor again, my voice barely a whisper. Cat laughed.

“This is Kitty’s first royal audience,” she said. “I think you intimidate her.”

“Ah, no,” the king said, and I looked up to see him smiling in mock horror. “Surely I inspire awe and not fear?”

“No, Your Majesty,” I said. He looked shocked and I realized my mistake. “I mean, yes, Your Majesty.”

Cat laughed, and the king chuckled. He moved his arm around her waist and stroked her hip, a smile flickering across his face. He looked besotted. Smitten. Lustful. I gagged on my embarrassment.

“I shall go to my apartments,” Cat told him, gently extricating herself from his grasp.

“Much to catch up on with your friends,” the king said, and smiled again. Like an indulgent grandfather. Cat flashed him a grin and slipped through the hall, pulling me behind her, beckoning Alice and Joan to follow.

“Your Majesty.” A short, stocky woman with a rather masculine face approached Cat and curtseyed.

“I don’t need you, Lady Howard,” Cat said, airily. So this was Cat’s stepmother.

“As you wish,” the woman said, seeing that Cat held fast to my hand. Her face twisted out of a grimace that I could read clearly. A Howard, passed over in favor of the prosaic, the homely, the minion?

Cat turned to the other women who had hastened to her side. The dowager duchess, resplendent and ravenesque in silver and black. The Countess of Bridgewater, drab as a sparrow, bland brown eyes receding into the shadow of her bland brown hair. And Lady Baynton, Cat’s half-sister Isabel, pinched features and disapproving lips making a mockery of her swanlike neck and graceful bearing.

“I don’t need any of you.”

A look of venomous jealousy crossed the face of Lady Baynton. The others were shocked rigid by the dismissal. No one had pretended interest in Cat when she lived in Lambeth but everyone seemed keen on her company at court. The ladies quickly smoothed their faces to compliant smiles for the queen. But Lady Howard couldn’t rid
herself of the expression that suggested she smelled something repugnant when she looked at the rest of us.

“Ignore the Coven,” Cat whispered to me and proceeded out the door. “They bark, but they don’t bite.”

I turned. The ladies clustered, hissing whispers and angling their necks. The men stood in their knots of color, making negotiations and preparations and telling secrets. And Thomas Culpepper dazzled in his inky wickedness like a beacon. Watching.

T
HAT NIGHT
, C
AT DISMISSED ALL OF HER LADIES—ALL OF THE DUCHESSES
and marchionesses, the daughters and wives of nobility. She even excused Joan and Alice. She abandoned her giant feather tester bed and crept onto my little straw pallet with me, her shoulder pressing against mine.

“Just like old times, Kitty.”

“But now we’re living the dream.”

“I’m glad you came,” Cat said. “I need you here.”

“Where else would I go?” I asked with a laugh, the double meaning hanging in the air. I’d go where Cat asked. No one else wanted me.

“I need loyal friends, Kitty. It’s a nest of vipers out there.”

“The Coven doesn’t seem very friendly,” I agreed.

“They’re all right,” she said. “They’re Howards. Just looking for advancement. But the rest. The Seymours and the Wriothesleys and the Cromwells. All looking for a crack into which they can wedge a fingernail. To chip off the gilt.”

I shivered.

“Cat,” I said. “Even the Howards aren’t trustworthy.”

I told her of the conversation I’d overheard between the duke and dowager duchess.

“You should just forget you ever heard it,” Cat said.

“But how?” I asked. I had fretted over it for weeks, wondering who would betray her. Who would nestle into the duke’s pocket and whisper in his ear.

“I already have the king. That’s all they care about. When I came to court, they hoped I would look pretty and spread my legs in return for family advancement.”

“Cat, that’s so vulgar.”

“Vulgar, but the truth. But I’ve gone beyond their wildest dreams. I don’t just have the king’s interest—I have his
heart
. No one can touch me.”

But I couldn’t shake the anxiety I felt at the duke’s involvement. He frightened me with his sheer feline scheming, his false front of inflated aristocracy hiding a heart of pure unprincipled deviousness.

“They didn’t reckon on me charming the king so much he’d want to leave his wife for me,” Cat continued. “Not just a mistress. More like my cousin Anne Boleyn than her sister Mary.”

“That’s dangerous talk, Cat.” It seemed a jinx.

“All talk is dangerous. Every word you speak can be turned around and turned against you. You can express your love for the king and someone else will say you’ve imagined his death, a hanging offense.”

“Aren’t you afraid?” I asked, thinking of the secrets, the lies, the gossip.

“Afraid?” she echoed. “Afraid of the king? Why, Kitty Tylney, how dare you doubt my husband?”

Cat proved her statement that all words could be turned to
mean something else. Something that implied wrongdoing by the speaker.

“Afraid of the court,” I said, speaking generally but thinking of Thomas Culpepper. Knowing now that the face had a name.

“I am queen,” she said, turning onto her side. “The court should be afraid of me.”

I smiled and turned too, our backs stretched the length of each other like conjoined twins. Cat would protect me.

“You always wanted to be queen,” I murmured.

“The Queen of Misrule,” she replied, her voice almost lost in the luxurious darkness of the room.

W
E QUICKLY FELL INTO THE ROUTINE OF
C
AT’S HOUSEHOLD
. A
LICE
, Joan and I were “chamberers,” a few steps below the ladies, but a step above the common servants. It was our job to check the huge feather tester bed for knives and poison. We made sure the fires kept burning and the rush mats stayed fresh. We slept in Cat’s bedchamber each night on our straw pallets on the floor.

Within the citylike structure that was Windsor Palace, Cat had her own little warren of apartments. An audience chamber, profoundly more grand than the duchess’s, where she held public interviews and where her privy council asked her opinion on state matters, much to her amusement. A withdrawing room, bedizened with gilt and tapestries, where she sewed quietly with the Coven and listened to music. And her bedchamber, with its bulky four-poster bed festooned with heavy curtains.

She even had a garderobe for her own private use—no more chamber pots for Cat. She got to sit on a velvet cushioned bench in a tiny chamber closed off by its own little door. It was quite possibly the only privacy she ever got.

The king had his own suite of rooms above the north wharf overlooking the river. His Groom of the Stool (the man who
accompanied the king to his own garderobe, therefore ensuring the king never had any privacy at all), Sir Thomas Heneage, came to Cat’s rooms with news every evening at six. The king himself visited frequently. I found another place to sleep on those evenings.

Culpepper stayed in the king’s rooms, a royal favorite. He was always surrounded by a gang of young men, Edmund Standebanke among them. Fortunately, the queen’s ladies remained apart, in her apartments. A completely separate household. Most of the time.

When I could stand it no more, I found a quiet moment to ask Cat. Obliquely.

“What of the king’s favorite, Thomas Culpepper?” I asked.

She looked at me sharply. Not forgetting that I had once connected his name to hers. The Coven shifted by the fire.

“What about him?” she asked, focusing again on her sewing.

“He seems . . . dangerous,” I said lamely.

“Oh, Kitty,” she said, her voice pitched low, “he is dangerous.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my limbs tensed as if ready for flight.

“He is as handsome as the day is long and cunning as a fox.”

“I was wondering”—I licked my lips, my mouth suddenly dry—“why he remains in the king’s chambers. If he’s . . . dangerous.”

“Oh, he’s only dangerous to innocent girls,” Cat said with a grin. “He would eat you for breakfast.”

Isabel Baynton tittered.

“Diverting as that may sound,” Cat continued, “I couldn’t let it happen.”

“Oh,” I said, horrified. “I’m not interested.”

“Good,” she said, with a snap of the shirt she sewed for the king. “Because I have my eye on someone else for you, Kitty.”