The King's Sisters

by Sarah Kennedy

  Margaret said, “That is my sister, gentlemen. Catherine, what have you done?”

  “I’ve done nothing. It’s you, isn’t it?” She pointed at the spit-turner, staring down. “I should have known this tale came from you,” said Catherine. “What, have you been spying as you pretended to work?”

  Sebastian was stretching a pair of Catherine’s gloves, trying to get his sooty fingers into them, and Margaret slapped them out of his hand.

  “Do not take her things. Don’t lower yourself.”

  Catherine said, “That purse. He told you of it, did he not? It belongs to me, I say. Those are my monies, the profits of my wools, and you know it. Margaret?”

  “I know nothing of a purse. I thought the wools were not yet sold,” said Margaret.

  “He left me that,” Catherine said. “He said he would take the amount out of the final price.”

  Margaret said, “Who said this?”

  “Benjamin,” said Catherine. “Benjamin is my—”

  “Your what?” asked Martins. “Which lady has the husband? Are you in this with her?”

  “I am a guest in this house,” said Margaret.

  Catherine said, “We must get the man here to answer for himself. And for me.”

  “And where is he?” asked Barts. “Why does he not come when he is called? Why does he not ride to your rescue? I think this man has won you both and has taken himself away.”

  Martin David Martins braceleted Catherine’s wrist once more with his fat hand and squeezed. She would not turn to gaze on his form, darkening the door to the dining gallery. He said, “It seems we may go.” He pulled out the purse Benjamin had given Catherine and hefted it. “This needs counting and measuring. Have you been concealing the coins one at a time or did you take all at once? And this silk—it seems very fine for a lady of your modest duties.”

  “It was given me by Benjamin,” Catherine said. “The purse, I mean to say.”

  “And he will not ever tell a lie on your behalf?” asked Martin Martins.

  Margaret said, “He is my husband.” But no one marked her words.

  Catherine said, “Ask the Lady Anne of Cleves. Here she stands. Ask her if she has ever seen such a purse before.”

  “I never see such a purse,” said Lady Anne. “She speak truth. She has money. It’s none of mine.”

  Martins did not look at the Lady Anne. Here placed the bag and worked his weapon back into its holder. “Such vanities may be bought with stolen money. And there is still the matter of the missing ring.”

  Catherine said, “Get out. All of you. And leave me be.” She wanted to sling her arm from Martins’ grip, but he was strong, and she clutched her skirt with her left hand instead.

  Ann Smith suddenly jerked loose and said, “You will let us both be. We are no criminals and you are no men of the law.”

  “The law is what I say it is.” Martin David Martins dropped Catherine’s wrist and took Ann by the shoulder. She pulled away, and he held on, shaking her until her hood came loose. “No fighting, woman. You will come with me whether you want to or not. Your mistress, too.” He flung her away.

  Now Chandler and Barts moved forward, taking Ann’s elbows. Margaret hooked her arm through Constance’s and pulled her down the stairs. “He is mine,” she said, and Catherine shouted at Chandler, “You will not take Ann! Not Ann. She has done nothing!” But Margaret and Constance blocked her way forward, and Martins held her back. Catherine could not elbow herself around them.

  “Calm yourself, Lady,” said Barts. Ann did not fight him, and he shook her. Still she did not respond. He said, “We will want to ask this woman some questions.” He and Chandler dragged Ann to the dining gallery, leaving Catherine with Martins and Margaret and Constance. Martins placed one hand on his weapon.

  “Catherine,” said Lady Anne. She was ashy-faced. “What do they find in your chambers? What is this purse they speak of? Are you married?”

  “I am not. And it is nothing. Some ready coin brought to me by Benjamin, my own profits from my own wool,” said Catherine.

  “How many times must I say it? Where is he?”

  The Lady Anne turned and beckoned to Oliver, who had come up the back stairs, cup in hand, observing the scene. “I was called,” he said.

  “Where is Benjamin Davies?” asked Lady Anne.

  Oliver bowed and said, “Still in Dover, his gentlemen report.”

  “Cup belong to me,” said Lady Anne, tapping the metal with her fingernail. The man blushed hard and handed it over.

  “I don’t mean to take nothing that’s not mine,” he said, cutting his eyes at Martins’ wheel-lock.

  “You had better not, boy,” said Martins. He thrust his be-weaponed hip forward and stroked the golden butt. “We have eyes in every corner of Richmond Palace.”

  Oliver bowed and asked to be excused. He was backing away before Lady Anne gave him her consent.

  The two men who’d taken Ann Smith returned, but they’d shut Ann in. Martin Martins called, “What does the woman say?”

  “Nothing,” said Barts, his face aflame with frustration. “She says the bag belongs to her lady and that the money was brought by Master Davies. She is firm.”

  “How much is in the bag?” asked Martins.

  “Precisely the amount the books fall short,” said Barts.

  “That cannot be,” said Catherine. “It’s a lie.”

  “I say it is the same,” said the man. “I will say it to anyone.”

  “Then it is proven,” said Martins.

  “Nothing is proven,” said Catherine. “His word proves nothing at all. He can say that I have taken the very shoes from the Lady Anne’s feet and it does not make the words true.”

  But Martins had turned to Anne of Cleves. “We will take the Lady Catherine and her woman for more questions. They will stand trial for this theft, on my word and the word of the spit-turner. He has heard her speak of theft. He has heard her speak whorishly. She speaks treasons. She writes of a marriage against the king’s law.”

  Margaret said, “She cannot have monies from Benjamin.”

  “You must wait for Master Davies,” cried Catherine.“My daughter! Who will care for my daughter?”

  Jane Dudley now took hold of Catherine’s sleeve. “The little one will stay here safe. We will watch over her.”

  Martins pulled Catherine loose. “The women must go with us.” He dragged her toward the door. Chandler and Barts led Ann Smith out. Ann stared at her feet as she shuffled beside him. The palace was silent as the men bundled the women into the front courtyard. The sun was blurred by clouds, and the wind was whipping the high branches of the trees into submission. Sebastian followed them out, and when the air hit her face, Ann Smith wrenched herself loose and spat at him. “You are that lickspittle’s toady and you disgust me. We are innocent and you know it. God will roast your soul.”

  “Must I bind you?” asked Martins. “I will tie you if you resist me. I will stop your mouth. Come on.”

  A small barge was tied up at the end of the dock, and Ann said, “Let me sit with Lady Catherine. The water makes her sick.”

  “That you will not,” said Martins. You will sit between these men, and your mistress will fit nicely beside me.” He freed the wheel-lock from his side and waved it around. A boy held out a hand to help them aboard. They must have ordered it before they came inside, thought Catherine. They had already known what they would claim to find.

  “Go on,” Martins was saying to Ann. “Get on.”

  “Get on,” said Chandler.

  Ann was surrounded, and she stepped into the barge. The water felt skittish beneath the boards as Catherine put her foot in, but Martins pushed her forward. They slowly moved into the river, Margaret’s thin complaints pursuing until the winds blew them away.

  Catherine closed her eyes and
counted the slaps of the waves to keep herself from weeping. Agnes would be at Richmond and she would be kind to Veronica. The Lady Anne would be kind. Jane Dudley knew the grief of a mother. And she would be redeemed as soon as Benjamin came. If he came. She opened her eyes. “Where will you take us?”

  “To the prison, Lady,” said Martin Martins. “As I have said.”

  “Wherefore?” gasped Catherine. “We have not had a trial.”

  Martins lifted one shoulder. “I have tried to warn you. I have tried to be your friend.” He picked at a knot in his belt. “I might still be your friend, Lady Catherine.”

  Ciaran Barts teetered toward them until he could flop heavily on Catherine’s other side. The sun on his spectacles gave him the look of a large, red grasshopper.

  “Your room will keep you until you know who to count as your friend.”

  “My room? I have no room. How have you known to make a room for me?”

  Barts raised one shoulder and yawned. “We have known what we know.”

  They bore down on the city, and Catherine watched Ann ahead of her. Her friend rode slumped, and she winced when Chandler, on her left,drew her closer to him. Ann looked thin. She tried to glance once over her shoulder, but the man flipped a scarf into her face, and she startled back to her original position.

  Catherine shouted, “Do not strike her! Don’t dare to strike her! Ann, are you injured?”

  Martins shook her, hard. “Keep your mouth shut, Lady. We will be heard. You do not want a crowd gathering to watch your shame, do you?”

  A door had opened in a flat-faced, narrow house along the bank, and a woman stared from the threshold, clutching a crooked broom, as they skimmed by. Catherine’s skin prickled and burned, as though a thousand tiny candles had been lit under her muscles. Her face flushed and she bent her head, pulling the hood tight.

  Do they know?” she said softly. “Are there notices that we are accused as thieves?”

  “They will know you’re a criminal if you shout like one,” said Martins. “They will think you a common whore.”

  Catherine’s throat closed up. Shame heated her, God’s face burning down on her. Thief. Thief. Thieves hung upon crosses with Jesus, she thought, and no one showed them mercy but Christ himself. No one mourned them. Their bodies might have hung on those evil trees until the birds pecked them to bones.

  Soon, the pikes at the end of London Bridge shadowed them. Silhouetted against the sky, the skulls drying upon them. Traitors and murderers. Thieves. She hung her head again and seemed to feel a hundred glowering eyes on her.

  25

  The lanes running past Southgate Cathedral were dark as tunnels, the buildings leaning their heads so close together that Catherine ducked as they passed through. A woman opened shutters and flung a pail of slop out before them, and Catherine smelt old fish splash against her skirt. She would not weep. She clutched her own hands to create a distracting pain in her palms. Her heart skidded and flipped, and her arms were alight with something like small flames. Sunlight speared the cramped way here and there and made her eyelids ache. A great wall rose on their left, and she felt that a city existed somewhere beyond it, beyond the stink of the river’s rot and filth.“Where are we?” she whispered.

  “Madam, you will step inside here,” said a man’s voice.

  Catherine strained to see into the gloom. She was wedged into a black corner, and her breath stuck in her throat. “Where? Where do I go? Where is this?”

  “Here.” The man offered his hand.

  Catherine stepped forward without assistance and found her face against a cold wall. Ann fell against her. Catherine groped for her friend’s hand.

  “Come on,” Ann said, pushing past and pulling Catherine after her. “We will go where we must.” She stepped over the grimy threshold, and when Catherine stumbled over a flat stone, Ann caught her. “Be strong now.”

  Catherine crumbled to her knees. “I will be sick.” She placed her forehead on the damp ground, but even the smell of moldy straw and rat dung would not bring up her food. She’d had no food. Her stomach heaved but would not disgorge. The mud itself seemed to hold the scent of blood. Someone was pounding metal upon metal. Clink clink clink.

  Ann’s hands slid firm under her arms and Catherine was lifted to her feet. They were facing a guard, his eyes fixed over their heads. “This way,” he said, turning.

  Catherine’s feet went forward, over the slick pavers and down a few steps to a short unlit hall. One high, grated window was smeared with sunlight, and the yellow square seemed to tilt toward them. They passed through a spiked door. It would surely fall shut and crush them. The place surely had a name. It surely had held innocents before, as the Tower had held its queens. Queens now dead and rotting in their tombs. Queens with no heads. While the king went on, searching for another woman to warm his bed. Too slow. Everything too slow for a woman carrying a child. And now the Lady Anne would need another woman to mind her kitchens. Catherine’s hand clamped itself against her throat. “What?” she said to no one in particular.

  “This way,” the guard repeated.

  He entered a narrow, dark doorway, and Ann Smith stepped back. Catherine put her hands upon the stones on either side and hesitated. They were slimy and frigid. She pushed. Ann breathed fast behind her. “Samson would bring this down upon their heads,” Catherine said. She pushed again and a muscle in her arm cramped. She gripped and her forefinger’s nail slipped against the oily surface and cracked.

  “This way,” said the guard once again. Catherine dropped her hands and followed.

  Their chamber was low-ceilinged and dank, barely three paces across. A granite bench squatted under one grubby window. The air smelt stale and frozen. Martin Martins appeared behind the guard at the open door. “Give them a taper and a flint. Give them something to eat. Today, at least.”The guard nodded and, pulling the door shut after him, departed. A key snicked in a rusty lock. They were alone. The stingy light filtered in on them through one dirty, small pane, and Ann sneezed.

  Catherine’s chest was alive with beating things, and her breath felt ragged and shallow. “I will die,” she gasped. Then the tears came, choking her. She could not get the air into her. “I am branded a thief. I cannot live under it.”

  She collapsed onto the icy muck on the floor, her guts shredded and hot. “I am broken. I am turned the wrong side out. I will die.”

  Ann sat beside her, folding her skirt under her legs. “Quiet, now. We will endure whatever comes.” Her hand found Catherine’s shoulder blade. “Put your head down and sleep. It will heal you.”

  “Nothing will heal me,” said Catherine. The sobbing caught in her throat again and she struggled to get her breath. “Veronica. What will they do with her?”

  “She will be safe at Richmond,” said Ann. “No one will let a hair of her head be pulled loose. Agnes will stand between that child and the devil if she must. The Lady Anne will guard her. Even Jane will do it.”

  “What will she do without a mother?” The wail welled from Catherine’s throat. The animal in her was loose and there was no caging it.

  “Quiet, now,” said Ann. “Catherine. You will unravel yourself.”

  “My daughter. She will be told that her mother is a thief.”

  “She will know nothing of the kind, whatever she is told. She will know her mother for herself as the good woman she is. Rest now.”

  Catherine laid her cheek on the dank stone and let herself cry until she had nothing left but dry coughing inside her. Ann’s hand kneaded the bones of her back, and she felt herself slide into sleep.

  Her dreams were filled with parties of strange animals, a bird she held by the wings that tried to snap at her nose. The specter had hands instead of feathers that grasped at Catherine’s hair and when she threw it into the sky she saw that it held her children in its talons. Catherine cried out, leaping after the depar
ting thing, but then she opened her eyes and found herself in the dark chamber. It was night, and Ann lay beside her, one arm over her shoulder. Her cheek was numb, and her hip ached. Ann slept without moving, breathing through her mouth, and Catherine eased herself from under her friend. She was hollow and shattered. She moved silently to the window and gazed out but saw only an enormous nothing. Another Catherine seemed to float above her, watching the woman she had once been prepare herself for humiliation and death.

  “God help me,” said Catherine to the window, but the darkness had not a word of comfort to say in response. The metal clanking started up again. Clink clink clink. At least they were not manacled. Not yet. Someone walked by outside with a torch in hand, and a dim circle of light moved with him. The grass, tufted in the stones opposite, scorched briefly in the dim flame, and the wall appeared like a dark mountain behind him. Catherine leaned forward, searching the blackness for candles or more people, but the night was faceless.

  “I have taken some love for myself. It is no more sin than any man would have committed if he’d wanted to. What more have I done?” she said to the blankness.

  “Nothing that should have landed us here,” said Ann behind her.

  Catherine turned. “The very appearance of wrongdoing gets a woman’s head chopped off. I should have kept us low and out of sight. I should have made Benjamin write me a receipt. Or take the money with him. I should have fled in the night. Taken you and Veronica and gone while their backs were to us. I should have known that Sebastian was all ears. All of that waiting and it’s come to this.”

  “How could you have known?” said Ann. “Martins lied. He lied as though his soul was already safe in heaven. And Chandler and Barts lied right along with him. Sebastian is as light as a feather, and he simply followed the lead of his betters. They are the arrows that speared him on. Would that they had made him a martyr for some other saint than Henry.” She put her hand on the glass and watched the steaming mark it left behind. “It matters not. Our heads are still upon our shoulders. I will keep mine as long as I’m able. You may have played holiday too loosely. It’s no more than other women have done. They don’t do it without men. It is no treason and I will never say that it is. And it is no thievery to place money that belongs to you among your things.”