Gilt (5 page)

I
CROUCHED IN THE HEDGES BEHIND THE BRICK MONSTROSITY THAT
was Norfolk House and disgorged every morsel that had passed my lips that day. I shook like someone with the sweating sickness. If only I had the sweat, which left its victims delusional and babbling, dead within hours. I would prefer anything to the image engraved behind my eyelids, the image of that poor woman, contorted by pain and humiliation. The sound of the man’s voice vibrated beneath my temples.

I sat back and wrapped my arms around my knees to stop the quaking. The moisture from the earth soaked through my skirts, and the night air cooled around me. I should have flown at the men in a rage, frightening them off like a harpy. I should have picked the woman up off the ground, tended her bruises. Offered her bread and wine in the duchess’s kitchen. I should have stopped them.

I had done none of those things. I had done nothing. Fear had swaddled me in cowardice. Too weak, too pathetic to help, I was as much to blame as the man who held her down. As culpable as the boy who stood watch. Who saw me.

Why hadn’t he called out? Why didn’t they give chase and
hunt me down? Why was I not now weeping somewhere on the forest floor like that poor peasant?

I rolled forward onto my knees and retched again. Nothing but bile and self-loathing spilled from my mouth.

The man who had abused her looked prosperous, well fed, sure of himself. The richness of his clothes and the arrogance of his manner characterized someone who expected life to hand him everything he wanted, and if it didn’t, he would take it.

I thought about what he had said. Had she, at some point, wanted him? She hadn’t appeared to anymore, her face screwed up against his words, her arm pinned down by his crony. No one wanted that.

I hoisted myself off of the ground, brushed the soil from my hands and knees, and staggered back to the house. The duchess was right. It was wiser to stay closeted indoors.

I might never leave the house again
.

The twilight filtered into the oak gallery, shadows like bars running the length of the paneling.

My skirt hissed along the floor, carried somehow by my trembling limbs. I reached the corridor to the back stairs, and a creak above me took my balance. I fell back, one foot caught on a stray bit of hem, my left hand grasping wildly for support. Anne Boleyn’s falcon caught me.

“Kitty, if you grow any taller and more awkward, you’ll need your own usher to keep you upright,” Cat laughed, skipping down the last of the stairs and twirling me, stumbling, into the darkened gallery. “Still, as long as he’s handsome . . .”

“Cat,” I interrupted, and stopped the giddy dance, “I have to tell you something.”

“Oh, but Kitty,” she said coyly, “it can’t be nearly as important as what I’ve got to tell you.”

“No,” I said. Meaning, no, don’t tell me. No, don’t speak over me. Don’t tell me your news is more important than this.

“
Exactement,”
she started toward the north wing of the house. “Let’s find Joan and Alice. They have to hear this, too.”

She turned when I didn’t follow and looked at me critically.

“You’re filthy,” she said. “You spend far too much time out in that garden. And you really shouldn’t go out there alone.”

“I’ve done something horrible,” I blurted.

“So have I!” Cat cackled, pulling me through the back stairs corridor and into the servants’ vestibule. I crawled after her, mind ablaze with agony.

“I’ve dumped the contents of every pot in the maidens’ chamber into the one under the duchess’s bed!”

When I didn’t respond, Cat huffed in irritation, waiting in the doorway to the front vestibule.

“It’s Mary Lascelles’s job to empty it!” she cried. “She’ll never get down the stairs without spilling, the silly cow. But she brought it on herself. Fools find their own misery.”

She brought it on herself. She wanted it.

“And I rubbed rancid fat in her pallet while I was there,” Cat whispered as we walked into the main withdrawing room, clustered with girls and women sewing. “Her bed will be full of maggots by week’s end.”

“Cat!” I gasped, one final desperate attempt to get her attention.

Cat’s aunt, the Countess of Bridgewater, looked up. A pale woman, she wore pale clothes and engaged in pale activities. But she observed—and reported—everything.

“Hush!” Cat hissed. “Do you want everyone to know what I’m up to?”

She sauntered to the far corner of the room, swishing her skirts. I watched her go. She seemed so sure the world contained no greater wickedness than the perfidy of Mary Lascelles.

She was right about one thing. I shouldn’t have been out in the forest alone. I should have stayed in the house, cloaked in the drama of stolen keys and sloshing chamber pots.

That night, after the party, Cat sent Francis from the bed early. She curled against me, breath sultry from kisses.

“Now, tell me,” she whispered. “Tell me everything.”

My throat closed with the enormity of it. Cat knew. As if my own thoughts were hers.

“You’re upset,” she said.

I nodded, still unable to speak.

“Over something that happened today.”

I nodded again.

“Something you wished to tell me earlier.”

A sigh escaped and I started to cry.

“It’s the key, isn’t it?” she said.

But I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t tell her she was wrong.

“I had to let them believe it was me,” she whispered. “In case
someone blabs. I can’t let you get thrown out, Kitty. You’re like a sister. Better than my real sisters. You’re a sister of my soul. What would I do without you?”

My head flooded with
ifs
. If she hadn’t taken credit. If she had just stolen the key herself. If she had never opened the coffer to discover it. Terror and anger and blame welled up in me and I caught them in a gossamer bubble before it all escaped and ruined our friendship.

I couldn’t spew it on Cat. Not the vitriol and spite. It wasn’t her fault.

Fools find their own misery.

I certainly had.

I
N THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED
, I
STUMBLED THROUGH THE HOUSE IN A
swamp of wretchedness. I did my chores, followed orders, smiled when it was expected. I couldn’t enjoy the midnight parties anymore. The presence of men made me want to creep out of my very bones. Even when the men didn’t come, I couldn’t sleep, and when I did, nightmares bruised me. I thrashed so much, Cat threatened to move to another bed.

But time acted as a purge, and as the days grew cold and frost crept across the grass, I slowly came back to myself. Thinner, paler, bitter and inadequate, but extant.

As the winter drew on, the rains came. The walls of disused rooms ran with damp, and the rushes on the floors turned black within a week. The bed curtains hung limp and took on the vinegar smell of mold. The fire in the maidens’ chamber wasn’t lit, so at night we drew warmth from each other and sought out other rooms during the day.

When boredom overcame us, we went to what we called the tapestry room. The walls were lined with detailed hangings, bought at a discount from the estates of traitors,
their coats of arms carefully picked out and covered with the Howard crest. The cold and colorless Countess of Bridgewater held court by the fireplace, but the bright designs and heavy fabrics gave the illusion of warmth, no matter where we sat.

Joan and Cat claimed a corner as far from the countess as possible. Joan sewed ribbons of silver tissue onto the duchess’s blue velvet bodice. And Cat was repairing the hem of the duchess’s widest farthingale—endless tiny stitches of eye-straining sameness.

“Damn the desperate canes on this thing,” she muttered. I grinned. I had a reprieve from mending. The duchess had requisitioned another piece of lace from me, and I worked knots of white by the feeble light from the window.

“Shut up, Kitty Tylney,” Cat muttered.

Alice slipped through the door and dipped a curtsey to the older ladies. None of them acknowledged her. Alice smiled.

“Alice,” I said when she pulled a stool closer to us, “they didn’t even see you.”

“Exactly,” Alice said. And smiled again.

Cat turned to me and raised an eyebrow. I knew what it meant. Cat would have thrown a fit if she’d walked into a room unnoticed. But Alice? Alice seemed pleased.

“What news do you have today, Alice?” Joan asked, sucking the end of a piece of silk to a point in order to thread her needle.

Alice leaned forward and we all leaned with her.

“The Lady of Cleves is on her way.”

The Lady of Cleves was the king’s wife-to-be. A German princess from an unknown duchy, she’d been chosen by Thomas Cromwell, the king’s chief councilor. Not by the king himself, this time.

As one, we all sat back.

“Is she bringing her own household?” Cat asked, poking at the fabric with her needle, but not making any stitches.

“She travels with German ladies, but I believe the king wants to fill her apartments with English nobility.”

We took a moment of silence to digest this.

“Imagine,” Joan crooned. “All those gorgeous dresses. Velvets and brocades and delicious silks.” She ran her hand down her thigh as though stroking a well-clad lover.

“Think of the parties,” I said. “Masques and banquets and dancing.” So much more than the midnight feasts in the maidens’ chamber.

“Think of all the gossip,” Alice said.

“Think of all the
men
.” Cat’s eyes shone. “There must be ten of them to every woman in the court. All with money. And power.”

“Is that what you’re looking for in a man?” I asked. “What about poor Francis?”

“He does possess many qualities I admire,” Cat said. “High cheekbones. A chin dimple. An air of rakish danger.”

“But no wealth or power.”

“And to tell you the truth,” Cat whispered, “his codpiece gives no indication of his actual anatomy. The sword is no match for the scabbard, if you catch my meaning.”

“So you want to go to court to find a rich duke or earl with a big pizzle!” Joan laughed.

“And for the dresses and the gossip and the parties,” Cat said. “I want it
all
.”

“Do you think there’s really a possibility we’ll ever to get to court?” I asked. Our dream of going to court seemed just that—a dream. The only way to get a position was by petition from a patron or family member. A man. My father was unlikely to come through for me. But all our games couldn’t have been practice for nothing.

“I have to. Or my life will be wasted.” Cat echoed my own thoughts.

“If anyone gets there, you will, Cat,” Joan sighed. “The rest of us have no connections.”

Cat was a Howard. It was the appellation of the richest, most ambitious and pugnacious family in the kingdom. Unfortunately, it was all Cat got from her father, a negligent wastrel who had died virtually unmourned in March, leaving his third wife and ten children without a penny. Cat might have come from the gauche side of the family, but in our world, a name could be worth more than currency. The rest of us had nothing but our dreams.

“Speak for yourself, Joan,” Alice said. “My husband has a position with Lord Maltravers.”

I caught Joan’s eye and then rolled my gaze to the ceiling. If Alice’s husband didn’t care that she existed, I doubted Lord Maltravers would. I also suspected that his opinion held little sway. Joan giggled.

“But there’s more,” Alice said, ignoring us. “The Duke of Norfolk is coming to visit.”

The dowager duchess’s stepson.

The most powerful and influential nobleman in the country.

“He’s looking for girls to place in the new queen’s household as maids of honor.” Alice paused to let her words sink in. “He’s looking for girls from here.”

“
S
O IS HE GOING TO CHECK OUR TEETH AND TEST OUR SURE-FOOTEDNESS
like hunting horses?” I asked as we hurried down the stairs for dinner with the duke. A masterful cleaning campaign by the duchess had brightened even the darkest corners of the stairwell.

“No, but he might give us all a good ride to break us in,” Cat said, waggling her eyebrows and leering at me.