The Stolen One (14 page)

T
here was a gift for me when we went back to my room. “Nicholas Pigeon brought it earlier,” Anna said as I unwrapped it. It was a fan with a ruby-tipped handle, as beautiful as the ones Dorothy and I had played with in the queen’s store. A note read, “For my Spirit, who heals me. Much love, Elizabeth.”

“It’s from the queen,” I said as I fanned myself.

“Of course,” Anna said. “There’s already been much talk of your sudden closeness with the queen. Where you are from. Who you may be. They say the queen is bewitched by you.” She was annoyed, her words jumpy, and it took me a moment to decipher what she said.

“And where would you hear such talk?” I asked her,
irritated. I put the fan down and picked up the queen’s gown. I sat and studied the lion. “In the laundry?”

“There is talk low and high of you.”

I started stitching. “Oh Anna, people always talk of me.”

“But you always cared before. You act like you’ve no care in the world now.”

“I never cared. You know it. And how about you? With that mop-headed fool Oliver Twiste.” I threaded one of the Spanish needles I’d received from the Wardrobe.

“He looks at me. He makes me laugh. I deserve a little happiness, do I not?”

“His own mother talks ill of him. Have a care, Anna.”

“Do you not think that I deserve love someday?”

“Not in the laundry,” I said.

“It’s those who are high and mighty who have the farthest to fall. You play with a match that burns on both ends, you do.” She straightened my fabric out, kneeling down before me. I rolled my eyes.

“I don’t know what you speak of,” I said. I plunged the needle in the fabric.

“That Nicholas. I don’t trust him, Kat,” she said. “No matter how amiable and gallant he acts. You should be
wary. And Lord Ludmore. Something deep and dark abides in him. If you look into his eyes, there is nothing there.”

I laughed. “Why, Anna, you sound just like Grace.”

“Grace was right. No one can be trusted.”

“The gossips are saying you must be the queen’s long-lost daughter,” Blanche Parry said with a little smile as she handed me a marzipan. Made of sugar, it was sculpted like a perfect miniature pear. I held it up a moment, spinning it with my fingers. I popped it into my mouth, where it quickly melted.

“Why would they say such a thing?” I asked, leaning back. We sat under some filbert trees, near the banks of the Thames.

The queen and Robert Dudley floated nearby on her barge, lounging back on golden silk cushions and laughing loudly. Sir James Melville moped in a smaller barge, Anne Windsour feeding him a sugared plum. Other couriers lounged under little pavilions built for the occasion that were decorated with birch branches and flowers from the surrounding fields—roses, gillyflowers, lavender, and marigold. The queen’s servants strewed fragrant herbs along pathways and circulated
with trays laden with delicacies—jellies in the shapes of fanciful birds and candied comfits. A warm sweet wine from Anjou was being served, and I slowly sipped it from my goblet.

“Because she’s shown you such marked attention. And you do favor each other in many ways, by looks and by temperament.” Blanche wore an underdress of russet silk edged in gold beneath her black livery. I wore my gown of carnation silk, stitched with friars’ knots and roses, grapes, and leaves intertwined in branches of Venice gold.

I laughed as I ate a sweet wafer. “But I’m too old to be her daughter. Aren’t I?”

“A love child can come at any time,” Blanche said, her smile fading. “There were rumors once of a child. When the queen was but fifteen and a princess. Ah, here is the handsome Nicholas Pigeon.”

I shielded my eyes from the glare of the sun and stared at him. I looked away as he sat down next to me on the linen Blanche and I shared.

“How is the cloak coming, my gift for the queen?” Blanche asked him.

“Soon, it will be ready soon,” he said. “Excellent work takes time, does it not, Katherine?” When I did
not reply he continued. “I hear your design has monstrous and exotic creatures you’ve found in a book of evil. Everyone is quite intrigued. The rumors are flying about the Wardrobe. And some say you are a temptress with extraordinary stitching powers bought from the devil. What say you, Blanche Parry, reader of palms? Will the queen like her surprise, or will she be repulsed and have poor Kat thrown in the Tower?”

I frowned. I wasn’t sure if he was teasing me or if there truly were such wicked rumors of me.

“Well, as to the book you refer to I can say I’ve seen it myself and it bears no evil within. And as to the rest, I do believe only the future will tell. Oh, what could Anne want?” Even though Kat Ashley was “Mother of the Maids,” it was Blanche who the maids sought, one after another it seemed, for all their worries big and small. Blanche stood up, nodded briefly, and walked away.

I had yet to look at Nicholas. “Well, I see you found your gift,” he said softly. He referred to the feathered and jeweled fan, which lay next to me on the linen.

“Yes,” I said as I lifted it to my face. “I thought perhaps it was from you till I learned you are a mere assistant to your father.” I waved the fan back and forth.

“Oh, I am sorry,” he said smoothly, moving closer. “I
guess I was mistaken. For I never took you to be lofty.”

I turned toward him as the sun shone on his black curls. “If you only knew how false your words are.”

He inched closer. “Then tell me. I will listen to your tale of woe.” He smelled of the Anjou wine.

“Not till you tell me why you lied to me.”

He leaned back on his arms and sighed. “I’ll have it someday. My father’s role. I already do most of it. Why, look at my hands,” he held them out, his nails black rimmed and stained with ink. “My father’s getting on in years. He’s never been the same since my mother passed away. I wanted to impress you.” He took my hand. I pulled it away. “What can I do to make it up to you?”

“Hmm. Let’s see.” I smiled. “Perhaps a trip to the Queen’s Wardrobe would appease me.”

“My, you are full of guile, aren’t you?” He smiled. “Father would not be pleased. He doesn’t like women about; it causes distractions. And I have to say I agree with him on that account, for you, Katherine, have me quite distracted. I think of you day and night. I truly do.”

“Hmmph,” I snorted. “Pretty words.” I snuck a glance at him.

“Pretty words for a pretty lady.”

I looked away. “I’ve been called many things, but never pretty.”

The queen had left her barge and was now walking amongst the crowd. She wore the lovely crimson dress Dorothy Broadbelt and I had retrieved for her.

“I cannot believe no man has ever told you you are pretty. Why, every man you’ve known must be dumb and blind.”

“If you are fishing to see if I’ve had a love, you will not hear it from me,” I said.

“Hmmm,” he said as he picked up a marzipan, this one a crimson cherry, and ate it. “Now you have me very curious indeed. Have you ever been kissed?”

His lips were stained with red. I smiled and looked away. He laughed. “I bet you have. Yes, indeed, I bet you have.”

“Ha, you are like the blackbird who chides the dark. For I have heard you have kissed every unattached girl in the whole court.”

He threw his head back and laughed again. “Is that all? Only the unattached? Not some of the married women, too? I’m losing my touch.”

“So it’s true.”

He sighed and leaned closer. So close I thought
perhaps…then he pulled back, but his mesmerizing eyes I could still see very well. Oh, very well indeed. “It’s all rumors,” he said, licking his bottom lip, wiping clean the red stain of the candied cherry, and I found myself licking my own lip. “I’ve only kissed two, well maybe three, and one of them I didn’t particularly care for. I believe it is she who talks of me.”

“And who may that be?” I asked.

“A gentleman never tells.”

A large figure suddenly towered over us, the sun against his back. I cupped my hand over my eyes. It was Rafael, wearing a cerulean blue doublet, its guards cut velvet, roses overstitched in gold thread. It was a piece fit for a king. But he looked none too pleased, and I could not pull away from his stare. Finally, frowning, he stalked off.

It was not long before he was surrounded by ladies.

“He looks at you like a papa with an errant daughter,” Nicholas said, sipping from his goblet.

“Papa. Ha.” I was quick to respond, still staring at Rafael. He was gently stroking a lady’s back. She was beautiful.

I leaned back on my elbows and looked at Nicholas. God, he was handsome, his long dark eyelashes framing
those beautiful green eyes. “You may kiss me if you like,” I said to him.

“What are you up to, Katherine?” he said. “I can’t kiss you here and he wouldn’t notice anyway; he’s quite engaged.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” I said.

“It wouldn’t be wise, to tarry with him.”

My gaze flew to his face. “What do you know of him?”

“Only the talk,” he said. “He’s quite the mystery, having disappeared from London for so long. And now suddenly reappearing after all these years…and with you.”

“I know little of him, even though he’s my cousin,” I said, my eyes wide. “I barely remember him when I was young. He’s been gone for a long time.”

“I believe,” he said, “as do most of them”—he nodded to the ladies and gentlemen of the queen’s court who were strolling by—“that there are no mere coincidences in life.”

My laugh was forced. Grace had always said something similar, that God sent us coincidences to warn us a bigger truth was on its way.

“It’s no laughing matter, Katherine,” Nicholas said,
his eyes twinkling. “If you want me to talk plainly I will. I mean to have you. We’d make quite a formidable pair at court, me with my place in the Wardrobe—you with your knowledge of dress. I’d have to tame you, though; you act like a little child.”

“Oh, so romantic, Nicholas.” I picked up a pastry and threw it at him. It missed its mark. He picked it up and threw it back at me. We both laughed. “And I think you are a mere boy who doesn’t know what he is talking about,” I said haughtily.

He looked wounded. “My, you have a tongue, do you not? That will have to be tamed.”

“Not by you,” I said.

“We shall see,” he responded. “Be careful, Kat,” he continued. “The queen is suspicious of Lord Ludmore, and I hear she has already had a private audience with him.”

“She has?” I asked.

“She’s a shrewd judge of character. If she see’s anything wanting in him, he’ll soon be set packing. Some say you may be her daughter,” he continued, looking for a reaction in my eyes. “That it be strange a girl like you, so like her in appearance and temperament, and talented of the needle, has suddenly appeared.”

I picked up a sweetmeat and popped it in my mouth. God’s me, it left an awful taste, like the sour-tasted, weedy medicines Grace used to sneak in to our food. “I’ve heard that rumor.”

“Some speculate that Lord Ludmore is her long-lost love, and your father.” I choked out the sweetmeat, but caught it in my hand. I continued to cough, the back of my throat burning as though a flame licked up from my stomach.

“And is it true?” he asked, handing me his goblet of wine. I gulped as he continued. “You’d be set for life, you would, being a queen’s daughter, although she’d never be able to recognize you.”

“Nicholas—” I interrupted him, my eyes still watering, my head starting to throb.

He grabbed my hand. “I’m sorry. I’ve spoken too much.”

I broke away and stood up.

“Katherine,” he said, his voice low and urgent. And then I saw her—Anna, dressed in one of my finer gowns, walking my way. Beyond her, the queen motioned to me to come.

I felt dizzy. I was going to faint. Ipollyta stood next to the queen, her lips curved up in a gentle smile. She
nodded to me like the toad king to the fly. I was aware that Rafael, somewhere to my left, was heading in my direction.

“Katherine,” Nicholas called again as I started to walk toward the queen. Anna met me, and I gripped her hand.

“I had a terrible feeling that you were in danger,” she whispered. “What has happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve eaten something rancid, I think.”

“Let me take you back,” Anna said.

“No, no, she’s calling for me,” I said. And now suddenly we were before Elizabeth. Katherine Ashley and Blanche Parry stood behind her. I tried to stand tall, but the world began to spin.

She leaned toward me, a smile on her lips, and then she noticed Anna. The queen’s face fell. Anna was beautiful. Too beautiful.

“And who is this creature?” she asked.

“Anna,” I barely choked out. The world darkened as Rafael caught me in his arms.