Manox clasped his head, the way he did when he was distressed. “Mary Lassells was so earnest and so full of herself,” he said. “And I remembered the way she’d slapped you in the church, and I thought only of not getting you in further trouble, Kathryn. I swear on my soul’s damnation that’s all I thought of.”
“I do not care for your soul or its damnation,” she told him. “Only that you stop telling these lies about me. I am only a poor girl, with no dowry and a marriage to get, and your loose tongue could damage my chances forever.”
“It is only the great love I bear you that makes me say things,” he said. “How am I to bear the thought that you are in another’s arms? That there is someone else kissing your dear lips? That you allow a man full of coarse intent to caress your body, which should be mine only?”
He fell to his knees in front of Kathryn, and before she knew what he was about, he had taken hold of the hem of her dress. Kathryn was taken with great fear that he’d repeat his old tricks and kiss her privy parts right here, even as Mary Lassells spied from the shadows. But even as Kathryn took a step back, Manox was kissing the hem of her skirt, as though she had been a saint or a creature of great virtue. “I can’t eat,” he said piteously, looking up. “I can’t sleep. I don’t know what to do but pine for you.”
“Well, then you can go on pining,” she said, pulling her skirt away from his hands and mouth. “Mistress Lassells told you that if you married me, my relatives would put an end to you. I am now telling you that if your talk doesn’t stop—if you insist on broadcasting lies about me from the rooftops and whichever way—I shall myself ensure that my friends destroy you utterly.”
She stepped back farther. Manox hadn’t got up from his knees and was staring at her with a horrified expression, when she said, “I do not want to be angry at you, Master Manox. Only keep your mouth shut, and we shall remain the greatest of friends.” And on those words, she turned her back on him and marched right into the house and half ran up the stairs to the dormitory, where she hoped Dereham would join her.
Chapter Twenty
Dereham did not come up that night, and the next morning, while they were riding, he informed her that he had tried, but it was too likely he’d be seen climbing the trellis and, therefore, he’d felt it would be better not to risk it.
They rode into the forest well ahead of Waldgrave, who did not even make an attempt to follow, and when they were tired, they dismounted and walked their horses while talking. She told him about her meeting with Manox. It seemed natural to do so. As though she should tell him everything always, and it would only make sense that he would understand it and support her. And he seemed to, nodding as she spoke. “An’ if he speak again, we’ll make sure he suffers for it,” he said.
He seemed to completely understand why she’d felt she had to allow Manox such liberties, and he was gentle about it, when he told her the duchess was correct and that men would say the most outrageous things to women to get their love.
Then Kathryn told him about the duchess and the Duke of Norfolk, and what they had said about getting her a husband. This got a serious, worried frown from him. “I wish …” he said.
“Yes?”
“I wish I could offer for you, only right now I may not, as I do not quite have the means. Mind you, I will once my uncle dies. I wish …”
“Yes?”
“I wish you could promise me not to marry anyone for a few years, for it is bound to happen that I shall come into my inheritance, and then I will come to your grandmother and ask her for your hand.”
Kathryn laughed. She hadn’t meant to, but she couldn’t help it, “Only, Master Dereham, I know not if I can do that. You see, I am only a girl and the daughter of a younger son. I cannot delay my marriage, nor do I have any means by which to do so.”
He shook his head, and suddenly he turned, walking backward in front of her, next to his horse, holding the horse’s reign. “Kathryn, pledge troth with me. Say that you will marry me, promise. Make a contract with me, for if you are married to me, then they can’t make you marry anyone else. And if they do, you can tell them there is a prior contract and demand a divorce.”
But Kathryn shook her head, doubtful. “I barely know you, Francis Dereham,” she said.
“But do you not love me?” he asked. “I loved you from the moment I first saw you, your auburn hair, your beautiful eyes.”
“Aye …” Kathryn hesitated. A part of her told her that, indeed, she loved Francis Dereham. But something deep within whispered that she could not trust herself to tell him so. She had known him so little. She remembered Manox who, though she’d never loved him, had seemed to be wholly devoted to her and never capable of causing her any harm. And hadn’t Manox been spreading lies all over the length of the countryside. How could she trust anyone now, especially anyone she’d known such a short time.
“We will see by the by, Master Dereham,” she said, and that was the only thing she would abide by, the only answer she would give him.
They returned to the stables, and if she fancied that Dereham looked a little stormy and a little angry over her refusal to pledge herself to him, she could not help but think that such roiling emotions looked good on his countenance, as he frowned and cast her smoldering looks from beneath the half-closed lids of his dark eyes.
It was exactly, she thought, like the knights in the romances of old, who were brought to grief by careless damsels and burned with an interior fire for them, despising themselves and unable to hurt the object of their desires and, yet, feeling that they had been betrayed or, perhaps, only loved insufficiently well.
He kept his silence when she curtseyed to him and left him to go back to the house.
That night she didn’t expect to see him, and while Alice was combing out her brown locks, Kathryn got into bed and covered herself with her sheet and her thin blanket. She had removed her skirt, and had only, upon her body, the shirt that she’d been wearing underneath her bodice and her kirtle. It was long enough, reaching to her knees, that she would be quite decent, should she be forced to get up, and it was the clothing in which she usually slept.
She turned on her side and promptly went to sleep. In the middle of the night, she woke up a little, and it seemed to her that the bed had moved, the mattress shaking. She thought it would be Alice getting out of bed or perhaps in it.
And then she felt cold lips at the back of her neck, while cold fingertips pulled her hair aside, so that the lips may kiss her. “Kathryn, sweetheart. It is I.”
She turned, still half asleep, and looked into Francis Dereham’s dark eyes, barely visible by the light of the moon, which came through the window and bathed the room.
“Oh,” she said, rubbing her eyes.
He smiled at her. “How prettily you sleep,” he said, “like an innocent child, and so beautiful, I thought it would break my heart to wake you.”
He smelled of roses, she thought, which made sense if he had climbed up the trellis that went from the ground to the window of the dormitory, since that trellis this time of year was loaded with fat, open red roses.
He now produced just one of those roses, and caressed her forehead and nose with its velvety petals. “It waylaid me on my way up the trellis,” he said, and smiled. “It asked me where I was going, and I told it that I was going to see one who was far fairer than the moon up in the sky and, force, much brighter than the sun during the day, and then it begged me that I should pick it off it its stem and carry it up to you. And so I did. I had to hold it in my teeth, since both hands and feet were to be used for the climbing, but how could I refuse the wish of a flower that desired but to see true beauty before it wilted and died?”
She giggled, as he kissed the rose, then laid it upon her chest. Looking around she perceived he had opened the bed curtain a little to come in and hadn’t bothered to close it after. Through that opening the moonlight came, and she liked the way it shone upon is face, making him seem very pale, and his eyes and hair d
arker than ever. But she dared not be like this, with him, in bed, and the curtain open. Let the curtain be closed, she thought and provided they speak in whispers, no one would know that he was not Alice.
He objected to the comparison, even as he closed the curtain. “Fie. You cannot think I sound like Alice, even in a whisper. Surely my manly and distinguished voice sends different vibrations through you.”
Kathryn blinked. “Art drunk?”
“Only from your presence,” he said, and grinned disarmingly. “Your eyes have bewitched me, your smile has entranced me, the sound of your voice makes me stumble like one quite out of his senses, and your smell”—he inhaled deeply—“is far sweeter than that of any rose. If I have to die, fair Kathryn, let me die in your presence.”
“I think you are drunk.”
“In truth, I am not. Only happy that after so much waiting I have finally made it here. Alice, who does not treasure the joy of sharing your bed as she should, is off to her secret room with that laggard Edward Waldgrave, and I am here with you for the night, when I am all yours. What do you think we should do, Kathryn?”
Kathryn, smelling the rose, looked shyly at him. “Well,” she said. “I would like to kiss you.”
“Well, then kiss me you shall,” he said. “Provided only that I may be allowed to kiss you also.”
She started to protest that he was drunk or mad, but he didn’t give her time, as he leaned in and closed her lips with a kiss.
Kathryn was afraid he would be like Manox and that after kissing her he would want to lift her shirt and look under it at her body and feel her skin and perhaps even kiss more intimate parts than Kathryn had ever thought anyone would want to kiss. But he did not do so. Instead he kissed her and let her kiss him, their lips joining, their bodies pressed against each other, until it seemed that the only breath they could draw was through each other’s mouth.
After a long time, Kathryn, blissful, happy in Dereham’s arms, felt her eyes closed and was kissed, face and forehead, nose and lips, very gently, until presently sleep enveloped her completely in arms as soft and loving as those of any lover. She tumbled, headlong into them and woke up the next morning with Alice asleep next to her.
She would have thought it was all a dream, except that next to her on the floor was a red rose, starting to wilt for lack of water. She reached out a hand and touched the velvety petals with her fingers. She had not dreamed it. Dereham had been here and—oh—how sweet he’d been.
Chapter Twenty-one
“We must do something,” Alice said. They were in their bed, once more, side by side, sitting up with their backs against the log that served them as a head rest.
“Something to make it easier for them to get into the dormitory?” Kathryn asked.
Alice inclined her head to one side, as though agreeing and thinking at the same time. “Yes,” she said.
It had been many days now that Dereham had come up the trellis and that she’d fallen asleep kissing him. And now Alice said, “I can get the key from Her Grace, mind you, it’s only …”
“It’s only?” Kathryn said.
“That key or no key, even when I get it, we must hide and make sure that the rest of the room does not wake. And I think it is no way to conduct an affair, and so I’ve thought, and I’ve thought, and I’ve talked to the other women. All of them have beaus, you know, save only Dorothy Barwick,” she said. “But her I think we can tempt with sweetmeats and other dainties.”
Dorothy was the least attractive of the maidens, and her lack of attraction was due to her love of sweetmeats and other dainties, which had caused her to grow fat and so slow that she could get her wind up climbing two flights of stairs to their dormitory.
“So what do you propose to do?” Kathryn said.
“Only this,” Alice said, her eyes sparkling, if with the joy of intrigue or because she genuinely loved Edward Waldgrave, Kathryn could not say. “Next time I get the key from the duchess, I shall give it to Edward, who says he can make a mold of it from wax and can get a copy made from that mold by a cunning smith he knows.”
“Oh, it would be marvelous if he did that!” Kathryn said.
Alice smiled. “He is quite sure he can,” she said. “And Edward says that he and Francis will be quite happy to bring in dainties—sweetmeats and oranges and all sorts of sweets and wondrous foods, only …”
“Only?” Kathryn said.
“Only you have to talk with Dorothy Barwick, because she likes you far better than she likes me.”
“Oh, no,” Kathryn said. “Dorothy doesn’t like anyone.”
“Not very much, no. And if you looked like her, perhaps you might not also,” Alice said. “But among all the women in our dormitory that Dorothy hates, shall we say she despises you a little less than the rest.”
Kathryn sighed. “I cannot imagine why.”
“Oh, my dear, because you are the granddaughter of the duchess and play music very well and are very pretty. Dorothy is convinced you shall go far and, doubtless, wishes to hitch her star to yours, which, you must admit, is her only chance to get somewhere.”
Kathryn was not all too sure, but after Dereham came and went, the next morning she endeavored to find some way to get close enough to Dorothy to speak to her without anyone else listening in and in such a way that Dorothy might be inclined to grant Kathryn a favor.
She found it by lingering after breakfast, having finished her ale and half of her bread, she sat taking dainty bites of the remaining bread and cheese, while everyone else left the table. Everyone but Dorothy. It was a well-known habit of Dorothy’s to wait till all the others left the table, and to eat any leftover bread and cheese that they had chanced to leave behind.
This time, before she reached for the next abandoned slice of bread, Dorothy cast Kathryn a sidelong glance, and asked, “Do you wish—”
“No, no,” Kathryn said, and pushed her own bread across the table at the other girl. “I only stayed because I wished to speak to you.”
Dorothy took the bread, but her jaws stopped mid chew. “With me? About what?”
“Well, you know … some of us have … That is, there are gentlemen who care a great deal for some of the maids in the dormitory.”
Dorothy looked at her a while with an expression that was somewhere between confusion and disgust. At length, she spoke. “I know Alice and the others have long since allowed men to whom they are not married to break their maidenhead,” she said. “Sinners all. God shall have no mercy for them.”
“Not their maidenheads,” Kathryn said, in an appeasing tone, vowing to pay Alice back for setting her this hopeless task. “Or not all of them. I for one am still a virgin.”
Dorothy looked at her then shrugged. “Not for long. Beauty is a snare that the devil sets to catch men and women in the sin of lust. It is said,” she said, in the tone of one making a deep pronouncement, “that Lilith was beautiful.”
Kathryn bit her tongue. Were she being her natural self, she would tell Dorothy that food was a trap the devil set to catch men and women in the sin of gluttony. But it seemed hardly worth her while, and besides, it was likely to kill any chance she might have to get Dorothy to wink at their own transgressions. “Well,” she said. “And it may be so, but it is no great sin we’re after, but only … only a little amusement in the evening. Music and gentlemen visitors and some … and some food. The gentlemen are willing to bring dainties. Sweetmeats and oranges and other good things to eat.”
Dorothy looked up at her a long time. For a while Kathryn was afraid she would call out or say she was going to the duchess and tell her what was afoot. But instead, Dorothy chewed in silence, eating Kathryn’s slice of bread and another slice of cheese, and then yet another slice of bread and cheese that one of the maids who had left had forgotten behind upon the table.
“And I would have my share of these dainties?” she asked. “Even though I have no lover.”
“Oh, you’ll have your share of the dainties,” she s
aid. “We will let you pick first.”
As the other girl nodded, Kathryn thought that it might be easier to procure a willing man to be Dorothy’s lover than to bring enough dainties to satisfy her.
Chapter Twenty-two
It turned out neither was so difficult, either finding enough sweetmeats to satisfy Dorothy Barwick or finding her a lover, for once word of the maids revelries spread, it became a point of hankering for the other gentlemen in the household to wish to join in the revelry, just to be near that many beautiful women and to partake in the dainties and the feast by candlelight.
Kathryn never knew if the rather heavy young man, the scion of a local squire family, was truly taken with Dorothy or only appeared to be so to be allowed to follow these other, more socially accomplished men, into a place where all of them hankered to be. It could be either, though the young man and Dorothy sat together and kissed a lot, and Dorothy seemed to eat less and smile more than she was used to.
Other than that, the whole thing was very easy. Easier than a dream. Now that they had a key to the maids’ dormitory, the young men would arrive by twos and threes, sneaking up the stairs and getting in through the unlocked door, which was locked only after their number was fully admitted.
They brought, as they had promised, candles and sweetmeats, oranges and wine, and whatever other dainties they could acquire. By candlelight, the dormitory became something of an enchanted realm where no desire was fully forbidden and where they could engage in revels, without fear of censure from their elders.
There weren’t enough beds that each couple might have one, but people didn’t mind sitting by the wall, on the floor, embracing and kissing. In fact, many was the time that Kathryn and Francis did just that, holding each other and kissing, so that Alice and Edward could have the bed that Alice and Kathryn were supposed to share.
Wine was passed back and forth in cups and flagons, sweetmeats were eaten, and jokes and jests enjoyed. Kathryn played the lute sometimes and sang, taking care not to project her voice too high, that she might not wake the maids in the other dormitories or, worse yet, the duchess herself.
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