The Light in the Labyrinth_BooksGoSocial Historical Fiction

by Wendy J. Dunn

  “What did I do?” Lady Mary asked. She shifted the baby to her other breast. “I was unwise and spoke my mind about the offer of marriage to … your father.” She paused and stared at Kate. “As if I wished to marry a man I knew only by name. Daughter, I was not much older than you.” Her lips formed an uneven gash in her unhappy face. “My harsh words angered my lord father. He called for his rod and broke me into submission. It was many days before I slept on my back again. I vowed then I would never use the rod on a child of mine.” Lady Mary laughed. “But I had my revenge. The beating inconvenienced your grandfather, and he needed all his skills of diplomacy to smooth out matters before the wedding could take place. Your grandfather doesn’t make a habit of damaging his property, but Anne and I had our ways to rile him.”

  Kate shrugged and stopped really listening. Basking in her own youth, Kate disregarded her mother’s ancient history, thinking it no concern of hers. Mention of her aunt recalled to her the recent letter from court. She shuffled her feet for a second time. “I want to go to court.”

  Startled, her mother looked up, her quick movement dislodging the baby. Deprived of his milk, he yelled in protest. Murmuring, her mother resettled him and gazed again at her daughter. Had she mistaken her mother’s fear? Now her stern expression made Kate blink.

  “Why? For whatever reason would you want to go there?” her mother asked.

  Kate hesitated over her answer, not brave enough to tell her mother how much she wanted to be with her aunt. From her first years, she had always idolised Aunt Nan, desiring to be just like her. She did not want to be weak like her own mother—a woman satisfied with so little. But a kernel of truth offered Kate an easy answer, one her mother would better understand. “I miss Harry. I haven’t seen my brother for so long. Since—” She bit back the rest of the words, but her unsaid accusation thrummed between them.

  Lady Mary did not move. Grief cut into her face: she no longer looked like a young woman. “I miss him, too.” Holding the babe securely in the crook of her arm, she rubbed her eyes with her free hand. “I cannot understand my sister. Does she not realise how my heart aches for my son? Every day, I pray for my summons to court…. I beg her to send for me … only to receive from my sister a gold cup and a bag of angels. She thinks coin and a costly cup, a reminder of the status I reject, recompenses me for Harry, for my son. Then she asks for you to come. Nay, commands you to come.” The pain unhidden on her face, she blinked, her mouth moving silently, as if in prayer. She began to speak. “It was difficult enough before Will. Now I am punished and utterly robbed of Harry because I married for love.” Lady Mary lowered her head, nestling the baby closer. “It seems she now wishes to rob me of you. Methinks Nan is jealous. Mayhap she has reason.”

  Kate almost laughed. “Jealous? Jealous of you?” She lifted her head in pride. “Aunt Nan is Queen of England.”

  Her mother raised her eyes, and a shutter fell down. “You’re too young to understand.”

  Furious, Kate charged towards her mother, stopping but a step or two from her. “Always, you say that. I am near fourteen, Mother. Old enough to wed, old enough to leave this place.”

  Lady Mary’s eyes flashed. “You are old enough when I say so and not before.”

  Before Kate could hurl back an answer, the door opened. Ducking his head under the low lintel, honey brown hair sweeping its curl against his shoulders, her stepfather entered the chamber. Seeing his wife nursing his son, he dimpled his boyish grin. Kate clicked her tongue in annoyance. When her stepfather noticed her, his wide smile all but disappeared. “Our Kate causing trouble again?”

  Kate stiffened, and almost choked. It wasn’t a question, rather a statement. She wanted to spit and snarl at him. How dare you? How dare you? He had no right, no right at all to lay claim to her. Since wedding her mother, he blithely purloined a father’s role and showed his wide-eyed wonder when she took offence at his mummer’s playacting. Was he such a fool, so blind, not to realise she detested him, that he could never replace her lord father?

  Kate fought back her desire to shout, “He’s not my father.” Time after time, her lady mother forgot the man of true nobility who lay cold these last nine years in the grave. Kate did not forget. Her father lived in her memory bathed in golden light, a laughing, gentle giant who came home bearing gifts. He taught her to ride, to sing and make music. At night, he sat her on his lap, telling her stories about England’s kings and queens. Sometimes he pretended Kate was a princess, making her giggle when he fell to his knees and begged for her boon, her mercy. Safe in his arms, she fell asleep listening to the croon of his lullaby. He still sang in her dreams—dreams in which she ran and ran towards the sound of his song, searching for him, calling for him, but never finding him. She awoke, weeping, her heart broken anew.

  Even dead, her lord father, William Carey, was worth ten of Stafford—and more.

  Bent over the baby, Lady Mary drew a deep breath. “She desires to go to court, Will.”

  Her stepfather frowned and looked towards Kate, then back at his wife. He smiled like a lovelorn country bumpkin and strode across the room, his stepdaughter all forgotten. He kissed her mother, next kissing the top of his son’s head. Kate clutched the sides of her gown, once more wanting to hit something. Every day was the same, watching her mother and her husband at their love games. She might as well not exist; utterly engrossed in each other and their little daughter and baby son, their world left no room for her.

  Her stepfather stirred. “Why not let her go?”

  “You know why.” Her mother spoke so quietly, so distressed, Kate stared at her, confused.

  Her husband touched her cheek and dropped the hand to her shoulder. “You cannot protect Kate all her life.”

  Her mother shook her head and gazed at the sleeping baby before pulling firmer his swaddling cloth. His stomach full for a time and his mouth open, her half-brother reminded Kate of an ugly, dead fish.

  “'Tis too soon,” her mother said. “I do not forget what happened to me. I never will.” Glancing Kate’s way again, her stepfather kissed her mother. “Mary, tell her.”

  Kate’s mother stared up, her face ashen and her eyes large and panicked. “I cannot. I vowed to William.”

  “Carey’s long dead.” He softened his tone and took her hand. “Sweetheart, no one expects you to keep a vow to a dead man. Think you. The vow was only important while he lived.”

  Lady Mary shook her head and lowered her face to smell the baby; she often did this since his birth. A faraway look transformed her face.

  Where is this conversation leading? Sadder stories about Mother’s youth? Kate wanted none of it. Her mother’s past didn’t concern her—even her lady mother’s vow to her lord father. As long as it didn’t prevent Kate from going to court, her mother was welcome to her secrets.

  Audibly sighing, Mary Stafford dropped her husband’s hand. “I swore to William, on my immortal soul, I would never speak of it. I cannot break a vow such as that. I will not.” She turned. “Leave us, Kate.”

  “But—”

  Her mother’s eyes sparked in warning, her hand gesturing towards the door. “Leave us, I say.”

  “Do as your mother asks of you,” her stepfather said. He touched his son’s cheek, not even bothering to glance her way.

  “You cannot tell me what to do,” Kate snapped.

  “Kate.” Babe in arms, her mother rose, her eyes blue fire in a white, furious face. “Leave now, or I will find that rod and you’ll rue the day you were born.”

  Kate opened her mouth, but her mother’s burning gaze sizzled her protest into unspoken ash. She licked her dry lips. She had never seen her mother so angry, or so hard.

  Her beloved lord Father had died from the Sweat when she was only five. One day laughing and singing, teaching her to play the lute, the next day, in the grave. William Carey was no more. She wished he had never died; that he was here to protect her, care for her. Guide her. Love her. Life would have been so different. S
he would have grown up with her brother, rather than grieve again two years later when her grandfather forced her mother to relinquish Harry. But her brother was the heir, the all-important male; he had to be raised at court to learn his proper position. From that time, Kate could wrap her lady mother around her little finger and get her own way. Her mother’s unspoken terror that her daughter, too, could be stolen from her made Kate feel the most precious thing in the world.

  She glared at her stepfather’s lean, broad-shouldered back, wishing she could dagger him with a look. Taking the sleeping babe from her mother, he carefully and tenderly placed him back into his deep cradle, watched on by his wife with a beatific smile on her face. Jesu’, she looks like the chapel’s holy Madonna. Her mother was such a fool. Both of them, seemingly no longer aware of her, were fools. Especially him.

  She blamed her mother for turning her life upside down, but shouldn’t she lay the true blame at her stepfather’s feet? Yes, all of it was his fault. Despite missing her brother, Harry, she and her mother were happy together. She had gloried in her mother’s love and needed no one else but her.

  She was ten when Stafford came to court her mother, and he had swept her away from Kate with his smiles, his sweet talk, his caresses.

  Before her jealous eyes, her mother blossomed, became a young woman again. Marrying him she acted the bride, wed for the first time. Kate could not understand why her mother surrendered to him with joy and a bewildering relief. She could not understand her mother at all. Like a flower in full bloom these past years, her mother stood straight and tall, and astonishingly strong. A flower with petals opening to the sun; the sun of her husband’s love. It was Kate who wilted now.

  “Katherine Carey,” said her mother, standing next to her husband. “Why are you still here?” She scowled at Kate, fisted a hand and enclosed it in the other.

  Kate decided it was time to flee. About to shut the door, she heard her stepfather say, “You’ve no choice; send the girl to court.”

  Astounded to hear him champion her, she paused outside the chamber. She cocked her head, full of disbelief as she listened to Stafford. Soft words, soothing voice and no doubt gentle hands—the thought flaming her anger again—at last coaxed from her mother the permission Kate needed. Kate shook her head in bemusement. He had patiently used the same tactics with her mother as he did with a nervous, man-shy horse.

  My mother a horse? A ray of knowledge pierced the ugly laughter bubbling in her throat and prevented its escape. Man-shy? Her twice-wed, beautiful mother—man-shy? All Kate’s life, her mother allowed few into her circle of trust and rarely ever a man. One year it took of Will’s well planned wooing before her mother completely gave her heart to him. Most women, even her mother and sister, she viewed with suspicion; she put up a barrier of protection between her and the world. Even with her mother and sister? Why? Kate carefully shut the door. Something, or someone, must have hurt her. And not a little hurt. A hurt she could not forget. A hurt that still bled.

  From the chamber came the sound of her mother weeping. Surely her going to court was no reason for her mother to sob like this, like her heart broke—or as if she had just learnt someone had died. Kate wiped her clammy hands on her gown and walked away, unable to shake away her sense of foreboding.

  2

  OUTSIDE THE WINDOW, a lark broke into a ripple of morning song, joyfully adoring the new day. Finishing plaiting her hair, Kate fidgeted while her mother bolted down the lid of her clothes coffer.

  “You truly wish this, Kate?” Mary Stafford half-sat on the coffer, hands planted on either side, her slim, long fingers curled over the carved wood’s edge. “Am I wise to let you go…?”

  Kate digested the question, and her mother’s unfinished thought. She glanced at her again. Head bowed, strands of blond hair escaped from her untied linen cap and curled against her cheek. Despite her great age of two and thirty, her mother many times seemed to Kate younger than herself, untouched by time. Now she seemed a maid caught in transgression.

  The drawstrings still undone, Kate’s shift slipped off her shoulder. In the morning’s cold breath, she shivered.

  Her mother frowned and stepped towards Kate, pushing loose hair back underneath her cap. She tugged at Kate’s shift, and tied and secured it. “Pray, child, remember your modesty.”

  Pacing to the bed, her mother, shoulders slumped, stroked the velvet of the new bodice waiting to be packed. She and two of her maids had spent weeks sewing, re-making old court gowns to fit Kate’s measurements. In this instant, she seemed to be grieving. Surely Mother isn’t grieving for her old dresses?

  Kate’s mouth trembled as she blinked away the memory of the once-beautiful gown she had worn for Aunt Nan’s coronation two years ago. Now that she was taller and closer to womanhood, it no longer fitted her and her mother had cut the fabric to fashion two new bodices with matching sleeves. Kate punched her fists against her thighs, angry that not one garment in her clothes chest hadn’t been made up from old gowns. Surely the niece of the Queen of England should go to court with at least one, new fashionable dress? It was hard enough to deal with her mother and stepfather’s lack of wealth, but now she fretted that she would shame her aunt, the Queen.

  Her mother held out her bodice and skirt. “You’ve sat in your small clothes long enough. Get dressed. Your father waits for you.”

  Kate bit back an angry retort. It made her sick to her stomach how besotted her lady mother was about her living husband, her sweet Will, her Dearest Heart. How she insisted that Kate honour him with a daughter’s proper respect.

  Even so, the last weeks gave Kate reason for thought. She could not forget that it was Stafford who convinced her mother to let her go. Her thoughts a jumble of confusion, she fumbled with her bodice’s cords. Without a word, her mother took over and pulled until the bodice encased and supported her upper body; it took Kate’s breath away.

  Her mother hurried to the other side of the room to pack more clothes into her coffer. Almost dressed, Kate padded over to the unpacked gown, picking up from beside it a book, one of her most treasured possessions. A gift from her mother’s brother and sister for her thirteenth birthday, not only had Aunt Nan painstakingly embroidered its deep red velvet covers with gold thread, but half its pages bore the handwriting of Uncle George. The letter accompanying the gift, written jointly by both her aunt and uncle, told Kate that he had translated from the Greek for her the words of a woman poet from ancient times. Sappho was her name, but little was known of her other than what her beautiful words conveyed.

  In the letter, her uncle and aunt reminded Kate that poetry ran deeply in the blood of the Boleyns. They hoped their gift and Sappho’s example would encourage Kate to write. Indeed, in twelve months they planned to ask to see if she had filled all the blank pages with scribblings and verse.

  Kate sighed. She only learnt to write to please her mother. Now her mother’s brother and sister expected her to write verse. Aunt Nan had written the request like a royal command, even saying she wanted to share Kate’s poetry with her husband, the King. All of them were likely to be very disappointed with any of her efforts. But she liked to read the verses that her uncle had translated for her. She flicked open to the first page:

  Six birthdays of mine had passed

  when the bones of my parent, gathered from the pyre, drank before their time my tears.

  She blinked away tears. Reading that brought to mind her dead father. Slipping the book into the deep pocket of her skirt, Kate turned to the window. Sighing, she wished the thick, crinkled glass allowed her more view of the countryside surrounding their manor house. She was always happiest when her mother allowed her to ride her horse or wander in freedom the meadows surrounding her home. On this grey, misty morning, the only thing she could really make out was the stately tower of Saint Andrews church. Built by her great-grandfather when he took possession of this estate, it had proclaimed to all his lordship of Rochford, a lordship that continued down to her grandfa
ther. It reminded her that she had right to pride—and the right to claim her place with her royal aunt, rather than remain here, hidden away with her too often soft mother who lacked all trace of ambition.

  Kate smiled. She was young—in the beginning of her spring, the golden, glorious time to plant the seeds for her own life. Her mother hurt easily, but her? She had the lion strength of her father’s untainted nobility, his undoubted good blood.

  She wanted to dance, to spin around and revel in the freedom that would soon be hers. The weather promised good travelling and a journey of no more than two days that would take her away from here, a home where she no longer belonged. London, the court and her Aunt Nan, England’s Queen, beckoned.

  A raven cawed and wheeled in the sky above Kate. Now almost at the end of her journey, she followed the raven’s flight to the towering gateway of London Bridge. Along its ugly, overhanging spikes, more ravens returned to roost. Their wings fluttered and flapped in short bursts of flight, and opened the morning to horror. Black wings beat amongst white human skulls. Amongst death.

  Silence fell, heavy like a shroud, before knifed open by a new disharmony. One raven shrieked, its beak gaping wide apart. Bluish-black wings fluttered and opened wide, and thrashed the air with power.

  The bird cawed again, its spread wings catching the wind in the dull sky, before swooping down to claim the fresh dead upon the long spikes. Trembling, Kate found herself unable to take her eyes away as the bird pecked and tugged, tearing at bloody flesh. Dark clots of blood oozed thick and worm-like from ripped skin.