No Will But His (7 page)

She was closing on that song, doubtfully, with much hesitation, when she heard a tap upon the floor. The tap was almost imperceptible, just a touch of a walking stick, but it was recognizable enough that Kathryn jumped up and was making a curtsey before she was fully aware what she was about. "Your Grace," she said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—" She stopped because she wasn't fully aware what she might be apologizing for.

While the maids of honor had assigned duties and things they must do—at least in theory—they were light enough that the young ladies often had much time on their hands. And though the duchess's decree was that when they found themselves with time on their hands, the girls were to improve either their skills or their souls, by sewing or praying or learning some other art that would be useful to them as married matrons, she never checked to make sure they were thus occupied. Of course, it was the policy of the maidens to stay away from Her Grace if not required to be near, and to never give her a chance to wonder what they were about.

In Kathryn's mind was some vague notion that she shouldn't be here, she shouldn't be doing this. But, to her surprise, the duchess's hand came down quite softly upon her inclined head, and she said, yet more softly, "Stand up, girl, I want to look at you."

Kathryn rose and stood, uncomfortably, while the duchess's sharp eyes looked her up and down, then concentrated on her face for what seemed like an eternity. "There's something in you," she said at last. "Of your cousin Anne. Though I'll be cursed if I can say what. Your hair is auburn while her black hair is her greatest glory. And your eyes are not quite the same shape. You have the Howard nose, straight and fine, as does she, but your mouth and chin and the whole of it are quite different, and yet, when I saw you sitting there, playing, I vow for a moment I thought it was Anne herself when she was young . . ." She sat down beside Kathryn and rested her hands on her walking stick and her chin on her juxtaposed hands. "For a moment, I thought it was her—her soul . . . her spirit."

The duchess's words were so chilly, so distant, that Kathryn crossed herself hastily. "Your Grace!" she said. "The queen has not died."

The duchess lifted her head enough to shake it. "Not that I know, no. Though word is that she's with child once more, and you know . . . It is the destiny of women to suffer the danger of the childbed. I only had one son, and that easy, but . . ." She rested her chin again and said, "How old are you, Kathryn?"

"An' it please your Grace, I think I am thirteen."

"Ah, yes . . ." the duchess said. "Your father seemed none too sure of the ages of his children or even which children were his. He was odd that way. Between that and the gaming tables . . . No wonder he could never capture royal favor. Do you game, Kathryn?"

"I never have," Kathryn said, wondering at the odd conversation, and considering in her mind whether the duchess's wits had gone wondering. For how could Kathryn gamble when she'd never had any money or anything worth gambling? Even her clothes were hand-me-downs, now supplemented at the hem with yet another panel of fabric, since she was growing once more.

"Good. Don't you. It consumes the soul." A silence fell and for just a moment Kathryn wondered if the duchess had fallen asleep, till the words came, "Only there's perhaps another kind of gambling. Stand again, girl."

Kathryn stood.

"Turn around," the duchess said, and Kathryn obeyed, and obeyed once more when the duchess said, "Again."

The duchess sighed. "Of course, Thomas Boleyn made sure his daughter had teaching and preparation, which you came to me without, and you must have got very little since you came to me as well . . ." She sighed. "I confess that I took you only because Edmund would have me take one of his brats, and I had no high hopes of you. Why should I? None of your sisters . . . Not even your Leigh sisters, displays any promise. Your mother was a worthy woman, but . . . not what anyone would call a beauty and certainly not one to shine by her looks or demeanor." She tapped her walking stick slowly, and Kathryn, looking at the floor, didn't dare look up to see what was in duchess's face. "Do you speak French, Kathryn?"

"No, Your Grace."

"German?"

"No, Your Grace."

"Um . . ." Tap tap tap. "But you play. What instruments do you play?"

"The lute, only, your Grace."

"Um . . ."

"And only because you've been so generous as to provide me with masters that—"

"Don't be foolish, I provide all of my maids of honor with masters. Not very good ones, but in most cases suiting the interests and inclinations of the young wretches. But you have something special in the way of voice, and your handling of the lute quite reminds me of Anne." She was silent a moment, then said, "Do you ride?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Do you ride horses, hunt . . . those pursuits."

"I had a horse when my mother was alive," Kathryn said. "It wasn't . . . It was old and very gentle, but I quite enjoyed riding. I've never hunted."

"No. Well, the fashion of the court is for women who can do both, so we shall have a riding teacher for you and as for hunting . . . we'll see what offers when there's a chance. Do you dance?"

"A . . . a very little. My sisters used to teach me, you know, and my brothers." She felt animation come into her voice. She had not realized how happy she'd been in those dance sessions with her family, or how much she missed them. "Just a little dance, you know, in the family."

"Of course. So. We shall get you dance masters, too. You have a good lithe body, and should your cousin . . . That is, after the queen delivers herself of a prince, and when you're a little older and more knowledgeable of the ways of the world and the ways of the court, we'll get your cousin to find you a place among her ladies. With your figure and your manner and that voice of yours, I vow you'll marry very creditably."

"But I speak no French," Kathryn protested, remembering how the conversation had started. "And no German. And I don't much like writing."

The duchess smiled. "Ah! All those . . . are vanities of the present age. Women who speak Latin and Greek, who can speak foreign tongues and who are versed in the way of male minds. All foolishness I vow, and that's why they have such addled wombs that can't bring forth proper issue. We'll have none of that with you, Kathryn. If you need to write, I'll find you a secretary among my other maids. I trow, as you are, you already know more than most maids at court when it comes to the arts of the pen. Leave well alone. Anne, with her poems . . ." She sighed. "Well, it might all turn well, yet, if she brings this one to term, and if it is a boy, and why should she not. Princess Elizabeth is a lusty wench, and there's no reason at all that her brothers should not be the same and numerous, too."

The duchess sat a while in silence, as though seeing something in her mind that Kathryn was not privy to, but when she spoke, it was as though she'd been talking to Kathryn all along. "Yes, it will do very well. We'll do that then," she said. "And you'll make a marriage that will quite outshine all the other girls. Howard girls always do. They have a fire in them that is hard for any other family to imitate. You'll do very well. Now sit, girl. And play me something merry," she cast a glance out of the window. "The wind and the rain and the chill are playing havoc with my old body, and I'd fain remember what it was to be young."

Chapter Eight

"It is a Henry, Kathryn, and bless my soul," Alice said, as she peered at the bit of red lace upon the dusty oak floor. "It is a Henry our Kathryn will marry."

It was July, and the heat, long delayed, had arrived with unusual force. The open windows allowed in no more breeze than an oven, and like the exhalation from an oven, the little current of air was tinged with even more warmth than in the penned up dormitory.

Unable to sleep, or even to think of sleeping—at any rate it was just after supper and too early to sleep—the girls had gathered in the center of the room, with two candles purloined from the kitchen. Catherine's friend—who was understood to be male, though his identity was never revealed—had given her a parcel of sweetmeats, which she generously shared with her fellows.

Kathryn would never remember how it started, but the idea that come that they could throw remnants of lace upon the floor and that when the strips fell, they would form letters that would show whom each of them would marry. It was a harmless enough game and had been going on for a while.

Alice had claimed the ability to read the confused twines of lace as being words, and a ritual had developed. The maiden for whom the divination was being done kissed the bit of lace and then the scrap was thrown in a spot of the floor that had been cleared of the customary rushes. Alice squatted next to it, with her candle, peering at the turns and whorls as though she were privy to ancient secrets that could tell her meanings others could not perceive. She'd announced names for each of them. Edward for Catherine, who had blushed prettily; Charles for Mary who had said she would rather die, bringing peels of laughter from all the other girls who clearly had a particular Charles in mind; and other names that Kathryn didn't remember.

Then it had been Kathryn's turn, and she'd kissed the lace, somewhat hesitantly because it was by then quite dusty from its use. Alice had flung it, and Alice was squatting next to it, peering. "It is a Henry, Kathryn! You shall marry a Henry!"

Kathryn tried to remember any Henry that she would be in the least interested in marrying, and said, in a voice that came out more sour than she'd meant it to. "The only Henry I know is my brother, if he still lives. The duchess said he was too fat and ruddy to live."

The girls laughed at this, and Joan said, "There are many Henrys, Kathryn, and perhaps you haven't met the right one, yet. Now you'll be on the alert for one, and know just how to bring him about by your arts and allurements." She gave a little flick of the hip as she spoke, and the other girls laughed.

"No, I vow," Dorothy said. "It is no one important, but only the scullery boy, for only yesterday I heard him called Harry. It is fair Harry who will sweep our Kathryn off her feet."

"I vow he does enough sweeping," Kathryn said. When she had first come to the duchess's household, this sort of teasing would have reduced her to tears, and she still was not very good at doing it to others, but she knew how to take it when aimed at her.

"Oh, yes, and they'll run away with his broom and—" Joan said.

"Sweep our way to the coasts of Ireland, where we shall become pirates," Kathryn said.

"Just so!" Dorothy said, and all the girls broke into peels of laughter.

Their laughter was interrupted by a throat clearing, by the door. "Her Grace," the old retainer said. "Has asked Mistress Kathryn Howard to come to her."

"Kathryn?" Mary asked, at the same time Kathryn said, "Myself?"

"Just so," the servant said.

"Aye, perhaps she's had a marriage application from a Henry and wants to tell Kathryn about it," Joan said. It brought no laughter, all of them being too curious to laugh now. It was too early to help the duchess get ready for bed, and at any rate, the people who normally helped the duchess into bed were her undressers, not her maids of honor. When she called one of them, it was usually to read or write something or else to play to her after she'd gone to bed. She'd never called Kathryn, who at any rate could neither write nor read very well. So it must be for some other purpose she was summoned, and that purpose was usually bad news.

Or at least, Kathryn thought it must be bad news as she walked behind the servant's upright back and grizzled head down the corridors to the duchess's sitting room. That it was to this particular room she'd been summoned worried her yet more, because this was the place where the duchess transacted household business and other official matters relating to her estates and her retainers. When a maid was summoned to it, it was usually to let her know that someone had—indeed—put in an application for her hand; that the family had summoned the maid back for some purpose, usually marriage; or that someone in the maid's family had died.

As she passed through the door the servant held open and curtseyed low in the direction of the duchess's chair, Kathryn wasn't sure which of these would be worst. "You summoned me, your Grace?" she asked.

"Indeed, Kathryn. This is Henry Manox, the son of my neighbor, George Manox, and cousin to my attending gentleman, Edward Waldgrave."

Kathryn, confused by the introduction and the name Henry, raised her head to see the same leonine head devilish green eyes she had seen on coronation night, just before the gentleman in question bent in a low bow and extended his hand, clearly waiting for her to give him her hand to kiss.

But Kathryn, shocked, after the events in the dormitory, could only think that George Manox was not titled and surely her step-grandmother wouldn't do this to her, throwing her away on one such as him.

Not that she had anything against Manox. He was still—as he had been more than a year ago—slim and shapely, with broad shoulders and a small waist delineated by his well-cut doublet. The hose-clad legs beneath that were shapely enough and muscular, and the face, of course, with its shock of fair hair and impish expression could not fail to please. But, by the mass, if Kathryn was going to be bound to a man for life and have to serve him and obey him her lifelong, she hoped he would be more than the son of a country esquire. And probably not, she thought, the first born, or the duchess would have mentioned that he was the heir to George Manox.

She looked from the smiling young man to the duchess who was looking very contented and satisfied and rather like a dog that has just performed a very clever trick. She looked back at Kathryn and smiled. "Well, girl, what say you?"

Kathryn had no idea at all how one replied to an unwanted marriage. She'd heard stories—which girl of her generation hadn't?—of girls wholly cut off by their families, or else turned out onto the street because they refused to marry someone. But it couldn't be possible that they were marrying her off like this, without even asking her opinion—even if they despised it. And the duchess had asked what she said.