No Will But His (2 page)

Now it seemed as though this old lady they'd come to visit was also thinking how pretty George was and considering making much of him. Kathryn stood only a little away from him, with her sister Mary in between, and tried not to look around Mary—who was fifteen—to see the expression on the lady's face. If the lady said George was the most beautiful child she'd ever seen, Kathryn felt that she would likely burst, like an unseasoned log thrown onto a hot fire. Not because she wanted the grand lady's attention, but because the favorite of the family was always George, or else one of the other boys, or else yet Mary who was pretty and marriageable. For all the attention anyone ever paid her, Kathryn might as well have been as clear as water or as immaterial as air.

"Um," the lady said. And that um contained quite a different consideration than the one she'd given Charles. Her stick tapped the floor,
tap, tap, tap
, but she did not move, as though she were involved in some great consideration.

For a while silence reigned, and then her voice rang out, clear and sudden, like the thunder clap from the clear sky. "Look up, boy," she said. "Look at me."

And on the heels of that, she made a sound, not quite a laugh and not full disgust, but something between. "Edmund!" she said, her voice still cracking. "What manner of coward have you bred?"

This time Kathryn dared look around Mary's skirt. She didn't fully need to, because she could smell the acrid odor of urine thick in the air, and sure enough, on the front of George's hose and down his leg, there was a wet mark and a puddle forming beside his slipper.

Again Kathryn's father tried to say something, but the lady paid no more attention to him than she did to George, left standing there in his wet hose. Kathryn heard George sniffle and guessed that shortly he would start to cry, but she was more worried about the lady who now stood close enough to Kathryn for the little Howard daughter to discern the fine lace ornamenting her expensive clothes and to smell the wondrous rich perfume of her garments.

Mary curtseyed deep, in the way she'd been taught, and the lady snorted, looking her up and down. At fifteen, Mary, like Charles, had grown. Unlike Charles, nature had seen fit to fill in her outlines to those of a woman, widening in chest and swelling in hip, but with long legs and a fine, pleasant face. She, of all the children of Edmund Howard, had black hair, with just a little bit of a curl to it, and looked, to her younger sister's eyes, like a full grown woman and just what Kathryn wanted to be, particularly as today she wore a fine velvet kirtle and bodice, with bright peach-colored sleeves of silk, with many bright ribbons hanging from them.

Kathryn thought for certain that the lady would be impressed by Mary, as she hadn't been by any of the others, but she didn't seem so. She responded to Mary's courtesy by raising eyebrows that, this close, looked to be almost nonexistent, and by turning over her shoulder to look at Kathryn's father. "This is your get, Edmund?"

Edmund Howard mumbled. Kathryn could get from his voice nothing but the words "not sure" and the words "believe so" as well as "Leigh." Leigh was the name of her older brothers and sisters, the children of Kathryn's mother's first marriage, before she'd married Father.

The lady snorted. "Just like a fool," she said. "To buy the house without first making sure it was untenanted." And she walked past Mary and stood now in front of Kathryn.

Kathryn stood straight, determined not to cringe and not to slouch and not to wet herself, like George. That morning, when she'd seen the little girl attired in her new clothes—a fine bonnet of satin and a gown of sarcenet, better and newer than anything Kathryn had worn since her mother died—Dame Margaret, Father's new wife, had told Kathryn to be good and behave like a grown maiden and not a child while they visited with the duchess and that if she did not disgrace herself, Dame Margaret would give her oranges. She would not disgrace herself.

Instead, she kept her eyes on the floor, which was a yellow mosaic, and felt the blaze from the great fireplace to her right. Though outside it was warm spring, a sort of damp chill clung to the room so that, with the proximity of the fire, her right side baked while her left froze. She looked at the floor and expected the stick to start tapping again at any moment, as the lady gave some opinion of Kathryn and moved on.

Instead, a hand like a great claw came to take hold of Kathryn's small, pointy chin and pull it up. The hand felt dry as paper and as tough against the little girl's skin, but its grasp was like iron. It tilted Kathryn's face up to look into the face of the old lady. Her nose was just a little hooked, just like the nose of Father's new wife, and her eyes were dark grey and keen, giving the impression of seeing right through people. "What is your name, chit?" she asked.

"Kathryn, madam," Kathryn said, her voice coming out all shy and piping, sounding much younger than she was, much younger than she liked to sound. And then because she remembered her remarks about Mary, "Kathryn Howard, madam."

A dry chuckle answered. "Aye, Kathryn Howard, indeed," she said. And then turning to her father, "How old is she, Edmund?"

"Ten," Her father said, in a tone of great assurance. Then cleared his throat and hesitated. "Or maybe eleven." There was a short pause. "She might be twelve at that. You see, I was away from my family so much, because of debtors laying wait for me at the home of my wife and children that I—"

"That you have no idea how old your children are," the lady said. And snorted. "Ten is full young to go in service, Edmund."

"I am sure she's not that young," he said. "And she is sharp, is Kathryn. Anything whatsoever that you teach her she can learn and in no time at all. Bright and capable is Kathryn and—"

"A grace she must get from her mother," the lady said, cutting whatever else Kathryn's father might have wished to say in the girl's favor.

Kathryn's mind was turning on the words into service, very much at doubt as to what they meant. The Howards had servants, of course. More when her mother was alive or when her father's last wife, Dame Dorothy had been alive, because their money sustained—her father said—more people to attend them. But even on Father's money before he married Dame Margaret, they had attendants. People who cooked and tended to their clothes and emptied the slops. Was Kathryn, then, to be one of these? Every sense revolted.

The servants at the Howard home were village boys and girls, whose fathers were farmers or servants themselves. And if there was a thing she knew, and knew well from her childhood—many times repeated to her by her late mother—it was that her name was Howard, and she was the granddaughter of a duke.

The lady stepped back once, twice, regarding Kathryn from beneath her almost-not-there eyebrows, and Edmund Howard cleared his throat. "Only one of them you must take, madam, if you please, because though Anne has got me the post of comptroller at Calais, it is not enough for a man of my birth to keep himself and all my children, and I–"

"And you have not been granted full access to your new wife's fortune, she being no fool," the lady said and snorted. "Very well. I will take one of your sorry brood."

She looked away from Kathryn and toward the beginning of the line and Charles again, and Kathryn could hear her stick go tap tap tap tap tap on the floor as she considered each of the Howard siblings in turn. Charles—tap—Henry—tap—George—taptap in annoyance, followed by a loud sniffle from the despised boy—and Mary, whose renewed curtsey only earned her a taptaptap. And then to Kathryn. And her stick stopped.

A great sigh escaped the lady's lips, as if she'd done all to keep it still, but it would not do. "Oh, very well," she said at last. "She looks not the fool nor the wanton, and the thing about too little age is that you grow out of it. I will take Kathryn."

Kathryn almost yelped then. What could the lady mean by taking her? But then she remembered that her new stepmother, Dame Margaret, had promised her oranges, and she stayed still. Her father had come to her side, standing between her and the great fireplace, which meant that his back must be roasting. He laid his warm hand upon her shoulder. "What an honor, Kathryn. Curtsey and thank the duchess!"

Kathryn curtseyed automatically and heard her voice pipe up, "I thank you, Your Grace, most heartily."

"Yes, yes," she said impatiently, even as she looked toward a distant side of the room and said, "Tell them to fetch me Mary Tilney, and quickly."

Kathryn's father pulled her aside and toward the fireplace, and there, a little apart from the others, and from the lady who had walked away to sit upon a chair a little way off and survey her family with renewed distaste, he whispered, "Mind your manners, Kathryn. Remember to obey God above all else, and the duchess as you would God, and all will be well."

Kathryn felt her hands clench into fists. "But the oranges—" she said.

"Heh?" her father said.

And at that moment a girl maybe Mary's age came in and curtseyed to the old lady, who told her, "Take my granddaughter Kathryn and show her to the maids' hall and put her in the way of being useful. She may share your bed."

More quickly than Kathryn could think, the girl had her by the hand and was pulling her along.Kathryn never saw her father again. And she never did get the promised oranges.

Chapter Two

Down the hallway, up a flight of stairs, into a long, spacious hall floored in yellow and black tiles, Mary Tilney turned around, half dancing as she did. "Kathryn!" she said. "Thou joinest us just in time to go to London for your cousin's coronation." She giggled a little as she skipped backward, nimbly. "Is that not grand? What luck. Perhaps, being Queen Anne's cousin thou wilt be able to get nearer the pageant or even—" she looked at Kathryn, a spark of curiosity in her eyes. "Maybe be in the pageant yourself?"

Kathryn had no idea what Mary spoke of. She followed haltingly, frowning. She'd heard there was a new queen—or at least she thought that was what the adult conversation around her tended to. Not that anyone explained too clearly, but everyone spoke of Queen Anne and the old Queen Catherine. Kathryn had always felt a little sad for Queen Catherine, because they shared a name. But everyone around her seemed pleased by Queen Anne's rise, and Kathryn assumed they knew best.

But the truth was that none of this had mattered much to Kathryn. Kings and queens and the court had seemed a very distant thing. More important was moving with Father from lodging to less expensive lodging, until Father had married Dame Margaret and they had moved to her house. Shortly after that—perhaps at the same time—Father had been named comptroller of the king's port of Calais and then Dame Margaret had got them clothes and sent them to see the duchess, and told Kathryn she was to behave and she would have oranges.

In Kathryn's mind, it all muddled: The new queen and the change in her family circumstances; her father's new job, and this seemingly disastrous being left behind among strangers. Her hands closed on the stuff of her skirt, which felt much too fine and unaccustomed, and made her let go in one startled movement. "My . . . cousin?"

"Lor!" Mary Tilney had turned away, but now turned back laughing, as they climbed stairs and entered yet another corridor, the beams overhead painted in blue and gold. "You mean you don't know!"

"Queen Catherine?" Kathryn asked.

Mary laughed. "Fancy you not knowing." She had a beauty mark on the corner of her mouth that waggled up and down with suppressed laughter, before she covered her mouth with her dainty hand. "Why! Queen Anne, of course! Her mother was a Howard, who married Thomas Boleyn."

This idea so overwhelmed Kathryn that she kept quiet as they ran past open doors showing rooms decorated in a style that Kathryn had never seen, nor even dreamed of. There had been so many different houses in her life, starting with her mother's comfortable but strictly regulated house, with the nursemaids and the servants and every child—Leigh and Howard alike—set in a proper schedule and constrained to do the proper things. Then there had been various houses and rooming houses, after her mother's death, then the house of Dame Dorothy, till she died, then rooming houses again and now, just for a few weeks, there had been the home of her new stepmother, which was opulent but perhaps not as comfortable as Kathryn's mother's.

But this home was as different from that, as . . . as the tavern where they'd stopped for a bite of food on the way was from any home. This home, so far, had more rooms than any other home she'd ever been in, and each lavishly, invitingly furnished with cushions and painted furniture and . . .

Kathryn stopped at the open door to a large room, forgetting to follow Mary. She was conscious, though she did not devote much thought to it, that Mary had gone ahead, her steps retreating—then come back, steps approaching again. "Fie, what holds you?" Mary asked.

Kathryn was looking at a bright room with a broad window in whose embrasure a spacious window seat nestled, covered in many-colored silk cushions. Disposed around the seats were a harpsichord and lutes, polished and shining. In a corner of the room stood a harp, with a carved wood frame. Against the other wall, stood the pianoforte in polished walnut.

"Aye, come, Kathryn, what look you on so lost?"

"Is it . . ." Kathryn asked. "Is this where musicians come to play?" She couldn't imagine where the duchess would sit, much less anyone else. But in Kathryn's short life, one enjoyment stood out—even more than her love of oranges—and that was her love of music. When she'd been fortunate enough to listen to a good choir at church, she'd felt as if she could stay there forever. One of her maids had told her this was all heaven was—that there was a great choir, singing God's glory forever. It made heaven a very-desired thing.

Mary laughed, amusement and indulgence in her laugh. "Ah, no, Kathryn. Sometimes we have musicians who play for Her Grace, but this is where the musicians come to teach us to play."

"You learn to play?" Kathryn asked with amazement. Her whole life, though her brothers were given masters, there never seemed to be quite enough money to pay for little Kathryn's lessons.