Finding Kate

by Maryanne Fantalis

  “If she should chance to prove a scold, her tongue will breed my strife:

  Then I must look to be controlled and curbed by my wife.

  A scold, of women, is the worst; she’ll force a man to wrong her.

  Therefore, I’ll try all humours first, and lie alone no longer.”

  I knew I should flee. Now there could be no question but that he sang about me—who else was a known scold in this town, in this house?—and though I was furious, I was also ashamed, and embarrassed, and… a hundred other feelings I could not name. I had one foot on the landing above, half ready to fly to my bedchamber, and the other foot trembled with the need to run down and out the door, down the street and out of Whitelock forever.

  And still the music would not cease; it went on, winding its way into my veins, wrapping itself around my very bones.

  “Although my wife be none o’ the best, yet I must be content:

  I shall speed as well as the rest which ‘bout this action went.

  I am not first that matched ill, therefore it is no wonder:

  I’ll keep my resolution still and lie alone no longer.

  I trust I shall with one be sped that doth deserve my love:

  If I with such a woman wed, I swear by mighty Jove,

  That ere she any thing should want, I’ll suffer cold and hunger:

  Though she had scant clothes to flaunt, I’d lie alone no longer.”

  I shuddered through the last lines and the amusement that followed. I could hear the scraping of stools and chairs as his fellows got up to pound him on the back and shake his hand. Oh, yes. A triumph for him. Mocking the shrew, who was not there to defend herself.

  A woman “that doth deserve my love.” He’d have to keep looking.

  I turned about to continue on up the stairs. There was no escape for me out the doors. Never had been, and well I knew it. But before I passed fully onto the landing and around the curve of the stairs, I saw a movement down at the bottom. I flinched, wanting and not wanting to look, wanting and not wanting to see who it was.

  I took a step back.

  Sir William stood there, a foot on the first riser, his arms on the walls of the stairwell, not for balance but as though he meant to block my flight, as though he sensed I had wanted to run. I froze, gazing down at him, studying his face. I waited for the coup de grace, the final stroke of arrogant mockery, but it did not come. There was no smirk, no sparkle of teasing wit in his eyes, only patience. Waiting.

  What did he think? That I would laugh, like the others? That I was amused by his song?

  I turned my back on him and raced up the stairs.

  I refused to go to supper that evening. I considered refusing to play along with the entire charade any longer. In the long shadows of the dying light, I went out into the courtyard for the first cool, fresh air I’d breathed all day. Water splashed in the basin, the mere sound refreshing as a drink from a mountain spring.

  Defiance filled me, fueled by anger. I kicked off my slippers, hiked up my skirts, and climbed up on the fountain’s edge as I had not done since I was just past childhood, perhaps eleven or twelve. The gray stone was slick beneath my feet, still retaining much of the day’s heat, while the water that danced and played in the deep bowl was cool, splashing up onto my toes.

  I walked the edge of the fountain once, and then, as my body remembered its balance, I spun and hopped and kicked, a water dance of my own creation.

  “Remarkable,” a man’s voice said, just on the other side of the plume of water. “Very like a dolphin, indeed.”

  I crashed awkwardly onto the granite ledge, wobbling, flailing my arms to keep from falling into the water. Flushed with embarrassment, I turned sideways, in profile to him, keeping the carved dolphin of the fountain spout between us. I could still hear his song throbbing along with my every heartbeat. I wanted nothing more than for him to go away or, if he would not, then to flee myself.

  He did not go away but walked around the fountain, coming toward me. I scurried away, one mincing foot in front of the other, keeping the distance between us, until he stopped.

  “You did not enjoy my performance this afternoon.”

  “No.” I refused to face him since my cheeks were overly warm. “Did you think I would?”

  “It was an amusing song. It was meant to entertain. I’d hoped you might see the humor in it.”

  “I did not.”

  “Ah.”

  He walked the other way around the fountain, so I was obliged to spin in place and scuttle away from him again. My feet were wet and as the evening was getting on, they were becoming cold, pressed against the hard, cooling stone of the fountain. I bent and curled my toes to try to warm them.

  Still behind me, he spoke again. “How long have you been keeping your father’s records for him?”

  “I don’t know.” I took another step and made a noncommittal gesture. “A few years.” Since I was ten, but he didn’t need to know that. Not precisely.

  He made a noise deep in his throat. “Why are you playing along with this pretense? Why would you tolerate sitting with these tutors when I saw you this morning reading Boethius?”

  I half turned and gave him a stiff smile. “Why do you care what I do?”

  His look was brazen, a challenge. “I’d like to know.”

  “I do what I’m told.”

  “Ha! I don’t even know you and I know that’s not true.”

  I bristled and danced backward a few steps. “Why do you ask so many questions?”

  He moved forward, closing the distance. “Because no one else does. Because your father seems determined to foist you off on one of us—and believe me, the inducement offered is quite tempting—and yet despite being expected to marry you, no one ever talks to you.”

  My hands curled into fists at my side. “Because they know what they will get. A tongue-lashing or a scratched face, if they get too close.”

  He laughed.

  “You mock me?” I growled. “You think I won’t?” My hands twitched, but for all my talk, for all my reputation, I had never struck anyone aside from Blanche.

  “I think you’d try.” His words, so calm, so reasonable, and the sight of him, with that smug smile, were infuriating. But he was right. He was a trained knight, I was a well-brought-up town girl. What could I do against him?

  Still. “Don’t tempt me.”

  “Why so fierce?”

  “I am the shrew, remember?”

  He shook his head. “Nay. You are Kate.”

  My mouth twisted. “I know we are but briefly acquainted, sir, but surely you are aware that my name is Kathryn.”

  “Not so,” he said, shaking his head. “You are plain Kate, though some may call you worse.” Shrew. The epithet lurked underneath, a dark echo of my own words, whispering in the fall of the water, sliding on the evening breeze, shivering over my skin.

  He seemed to sense it.

  “I misspoke,” he said. “Not plain Kate but bonny Kate, the prettiest Kate in all of England, Kate of charm and grace, Kate of all loveliness, Kate the fair, Kate the wise, Kate the great.”

  I stood staring at him like a fool, head cocked to one side. How long could he prattle on, spouting such words? Charm and grace? Fair and lovely? I had lived long enough alongside my sister to know that none of those virtues belonged to me.

  “You don’t know me, sir,” I said stiffly.

  He became serious, the smile gone from his face. “Perhaps not. Perhaps you are right.” I had a strange, unsettling feeling, as though he was trying to say something more. As though by agreeing with me, he was in fact disagreeing entirely. “Perhaps,” he murmured, almost to himself, “this is how it must be.”

  I shook off the moment like an insect that landed on my skin. “Why are you even here?” I asked. “Why didn’t you marry some rich and beautiful court lady in London?”

  He smiled wryly. “That is an excellent question. Perhaps someday you will learn the answer.”

 
With that, he bowed and turned away. I suddenly found I didn’t want him to go. My hand reached out of its own accord and I took a step in his direction. I had to raise my voice over the rushing water to ask my question, a challenge, the only thing I could think of that might bring him back. “Were you not grand enough for them, or were they not grand enough for you?”

  He paused and looked over his shoulder at me, the ghost of a smile on his lips. “I’ll never tell.”

  “Oh, I think you will.”

  He bowed again, a short, mocking little bow. “So you say.”

  I moved quickly around the fountain’s edge. It was suddenly much darker, in the way that summer nights are, and I could hardly make out his shape moving away from me. The sound of the tiny white pebbles of the path crunching under his boots told me he was walking slowly, but walking. Leaving.

  Zounds.

  Why did I care? I didn’t care.

  I kicked at the water, which I could scarcely see beneath me, sending a long sheet of it pelting over the dolphin.

  “Kathryn!” My father’s outraged voice boomed from the door of the house.

  I froze midkick, my leg in the air, teetering on one foot. My damp skirts pulled at me, yanking me off my balance, and my kicking foot slammed down on the granite. But the edge was slick with water, and my toes were numb and wouldn’t grip, wouldn’t hold. I found myself falling backward.

  Not far.

  One of Sir William’s arms wrapped around my waist while the other scooped up my legs, and he swung me away from the fountain. His face was inches from mine, those rainwater eyes, that unruly hair. He held me for a moment, and another. I could count my heartbeats under my skin. Then, ever so slowly, he set me down, my feet touching the rough gravel path. He kept his arm on my waist to steady me, and then he waited, watching, as I collected my slippers from beside the fountain.

  “Kathryn!” my father bellowed again, and I fled into the house.

  Chapter 5

  Wednesday

  The next morning, the locusts descended on my father’s house again, swarming around the sideboard for food and talking much too loudly. This time, I elbowed my way through to the board, reaching between them for a slice of bread, a chunk of hard cheese and a handful of ripe berries before retreating. Andrew handed me a cup of small beer, and I looked around for a quiet corner in which to eat.

  The knight had settled in the same spot I had taken yesterday, the quiet bench alongside the hearth, the dark copy of Boethius on his lap. After yesterday, I had no desire to be sociable, but after all, he was in my spot.

  I slipped onto the bench not quite next to him. He did not look up. I noticed he did not trace the lines of text with his finger, or form the words silently with his lips, as my father did. No, reading for him was easy, even in Latin, and clearly enjoyable, since he did it now when he could be doing other things. Talking. Laughing.

  “Are you going to sit there staring at me, or are you going to say ‘good morrow’?”

  I jumped at the sound of his voice though it was neither loud nor sharp. “Good morrow,” I sputtered. I looked at the book, searching for something to say. “Have you not read this before? When it belonged to you?”

  He glanced down, running a careful finger along the crease between the pages of the book. “These books were given to me by the king. I barely had a chance to look at them before I handed them off to your father as a gift. An offering, if you will.”

  “You would have done better to save them for yourself. My father will put them on a shelf in his study and never open them.”

  “But you will, I think,” he said, looking directly at me.

  The blue of those eyes. My stomach did its little leap and fall again, a diver from a cliff.

  I shook my head slightly to collect myself, and in response to his confused look, I said, “I shall, for certes. I am the only one who will.”

  He nodded, as though I had confirmed something for him, and turned his attention back to the text. I wanted to turn his attention back to me, make him look, make him speak again. It was altogether an unfamiliar, unwelcome feeling. I’d spent my life deflecting the attention of others. “The king,” I began, faltering over words to express what I was thinking, which was, indeed, formless.

  He looked up, patient but perhaps annoyed at the interruption.

  I nearly fled with my questions unanswered, but managed, “You have been at court. You have seen the king.”

  “Yes,” he replied drily, “but I am afraid I am ill-suited to report on the latest fashions.”

  “That is not—” I bit off the words in my mouth, restarted with more polite ones. “My father does not believe his daughters should concern themselves with such subjects as the current state of the kingdom or what is occurring in Parliament.”

  His eyes slid away, searching the room for my father. “I gather he does not wish his daughters to worry about things that are beyond their ken and control.”

  I squeezed my lips together, deciding not to say exactly what was and was not beyond my ken, knowing that if I argued with him, I was not likely to get any information. Instead, I said as calmly as I could, “You mentioned there is talk of the king marrying again. Surely that is not an inappropriate topic for young women.”

  He picked an infinitesimal speck of fluff from his doublet and flicked it away, watching it fall. “Rumors, nothing but rumors and gossip. It feels… dishonest to repeat them.”

  “Oh,” I said. Rubbing my suddenly clammy hands on my skirts, I began to stand. Clearly, he had no interest in discussing these things with me, and I was cold with embarrassment that I had approached him at all.

  His fingers curled around my wrist, sending a tremor through my whole body. I looked down and he let go, leaving my skin tingling. “Wait,” he said. “Don’t go.”

  I lowered myself back onto the bench, doubting myself even as I did so.

  “What do you want to know?”

  I was silent for a moment, watching my sister move with ease around the room. “The king,” I said finally. “What is he like?”

  “Troubled,” he replied. “Alone at the center of a busy court. He has as many enemies as friends and sees conspiracies everywhere.”

  “Is he right?”

  His eyes darted to me and away. “Perhaps. The attempt to put him off the throne may have failed, but that doesn’t mean another will not be made.”

  I had been born a few years after King Richard’s elder brother, King Edward IV, seized the crown for himself, and throughout my life the throne had been a trophy that changed hands repeatedly. In 1470, when I was young, supporters of the former king, Henry VI, had briefly restored him to the throne, but King Edward, a skilled, resourceful warrior and popular monarch had proved impossible to depose for long; then, at King Edward’s death only two years ago, in 1483, his young son should have been crowned, but within a few short months, the boy’s uncle Richard had suddenly “discovered” that King Edward had been secretly married as a young man and therefore his marriage to the queen was invalid, making the children thereof illegitimate. Richard took the throne for himself, but there were others who wanted to take it from him to restore either the young king or his little brother—both now rumored to be dead—or on behalf of another rival named Henry Tudor, a cousin of the old king Henry VI, who lurked in the shadows on the Continent.

  “If King Richard did indeed kill the princes, he should expect the very angels to rise up against him,” I said.

  “Oh, indeed. And yet it is hard to imagine such a thing of a man, especially after meeting him.”

  “Why? I should think a man might do anything to remain king.”

  “King Richard appears to be a pious man, thoughtful, wise, lawful, and caring of all his people, great and small. The boys were his nephews, his brother’s sons.” He shook his head. “He mourns his wife and his own little boy who died last year. I can’t imagine a man in that state ordering the deaths of two children of his own flesh and blood.”
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  His words were a vital essence, filling an empty place within me. No one ever spoke to me this way, as though I were his equal in understanding, inviting my opinion on the matter.

  “But if they are not dead at his command,” I said, “why does he not bring them forth? Reveal them to the people?”

  “What if they are dead, but not at his command?” the knight countered. “Who would believe the king did not order it? Since they were in his care, he will be held responsible for their deaths even if he did not do it himself.” He raised his hands, a gesture of giving up. “For most people, I fear, this conversation is not worth the trouble. It is easier to assume the king’s guilt and to see his wife’s and son’s deaths as a sign of God’s displeasure than to probe further into what truly happened. Perhaps the king understands that any proof he provided would, at this point, not be believed.”

  “Men are fools,” I growled.

  “Not all men, I hope,” he said over a chuckle.

  “All men in my experience.”

  He served up that knowing smile again, the one that suggested he knew more about me than I did, and I couldn’t help glaring at him.

  “Oh look,” he said. “I believe your tutors are ready to begin,” and then he laughed at the look on my face.

  The gentlemen continued to enjoy each other’s company—did none of them have any useful employment?—and Blanche dragged the handsome language master up the stairs to the solar. The music master took one look at me and cringed, escaping rapidly out the back to the courtyard, apparently indifferent to whether or not I followed.

  Good. Perfect. I headed out to my favorite place in town. The bakery.

  It was always warm, even in the harshest of winters. Every surface of it was covered in a fine layer of white flour dust, no matter how faithfully Mistress Baker cleaned. And the smells! Yeast and grain, salt and pepper, honey and cinnamon, clove and ginger and mint.

  I ate the first of the sweet, sticky rolls before I even left the shop, the bread still warm in my hands. The remaining three I wrapped in a cloth to carry with me.