Finding Kate

by Maryanne Fantalis

  “When she is gone,” Blanche repeated breezily. “Why, then Father will have to buy me clothes for my own wedding!” The two of them cackled like a pair of geese.

  Dame Hutton’s lips tightened around the pins and spots of red flared on her cheeks. Her hands flew around my body, pulling the chemise snug. Blanche was both taller and more voluptuous than I, so this borrowed undergown needed quite a bit of tailoring to fit me.

  I am getting married. On Sunday, I will be a bride.

  But after so many years of thinking it would never happen—indeed, of being told by everyone around me that I would live and die a maid, and for good reason—the thought was feeble as a shout in the face of a storm’s gale. I could not make myself believe it.

  “Now, Mistress Kathryn,” Dame Hutton said, pulling me out of my reverie. Blinking, I forced my eyes to focus on the shimmer of green fabric before me. Margaret gave me a wink as she draped the kirtle in front of her body with a saucy swoosh. “Let us talk about this dress.”

  The seamstress’s words acted as a summons, for Blanche floated into the room, a vision in sky blue. Her cornflower eyes swept over me as she draped herself across the bed, tucking her feet under her skirts. Absently, with a half-smile on her face as she looked at me, she smoothed the gossamer veil covering hair that tumbled over her shoulders and down to her waist like Rumpelstiltskin’s bounty.

  The Mountain heaved her enormous body through the door one step at a time, panting with effort. She eyed the bed longingly, but when Blanche showed no inclination to rise, she forced her legs to carry her to my room’s one chair. It gave a wretched groan when she dumped her body on it.

  “Well,” she puffed. “I can’t think that I’ve been out of my bed so much in ten years as I’ve been this week. All this fuss over Kathryn’s wedding.”

  “Yes, who’d have thought?” Blanche said. “All this fuss for Kathryn.” She smiled at Dame Hutton. “So. The dress?”

  We all turned critical eyes upon it. The bodice was a pale green, the color of new spring leaves, while the skirt and sleeves were a darker green, reflecting summer’s richness. My first thought was that the sleeves could be removed and changed, and of course Blanche’s blush-pink chemise would provide interesting contrast.

  I could see the Mountain contemplating the same thing. “New sleeves,” she muttered, breathing heavily through her nose. “In the latest style. I’ll not let it be said that we shirked you, Kathryn. And a hem for decoration, and a train of the same color as the sleeves….” Her hand wove in the air. “What say you to yellow?”

  “More of a gold,” I said, then remembered to give her the respect she was entitled to as my father’s wife. “Mother.”

  “What, would you bankrupt us? Think of your sister, still to be married.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I did not say cloth of gold, Mother. I meant a golden hue, like a goldenrod flower.”

  Dame Hutton jumped in. “I have just the thing in my shop, Mistress Kathryn. And, Dame Mulleyn, I can make angel sleeves for the kirtle; I have heard they are the very latest fashion from the royal court.”

  “Angel sleeves?”

  She gestured with her hands. “Very long, and very wide at the wrist, so that they almost touch the floor even when you hold your hands straight out in front of you. Like the gown of an angel.”

  Blanche cooed, and I could tell she was already imagining angel sleeves on a dress of her own.

  “Also,” Dame Hutton went on, “I have some very pretty brocade borders in my shop shot through with gold thread.” At the Mountain’s frown, she hurried on. “Not too expensive, but very impressive. We could decorate the cuffs of the sleeves, and the neckline, and perhaps accent the waist? Perhaps also the hemline and the train, if you will permit? It will make the dress look entirely new.”

  The Mountain was still frowning, her heavy brows pulled down over her dark eyes. “I will not be bankrupted by this wedding. Still, we must make her presentable. A worthy bride for a knight.” There was the tiniest of tremors in her voice, but I couldn’t place it. It might have been true emotion, but it might just as easily have been annoyance at the expense, or concern over how Sir William would view me, as the family’s offering.

  “And…” My voice was rough, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “And beads. For the bodice.”

  “Oh yes.” Dame Hutton tipped her head to the side and pulled a stick of charcoal from some hidden recess in her apron. “A few lines of sparkle, here…” Pressing the dress flat against Margaret, she drew a line down the bodice. “And here…” She sketched the places where the beads would go and nodded. “A lovely accent. Excellent idea. And inexpensive,” she added, with a glance at my father’s wife, who grunted. “If you will do the needlework, Mistress Kathryn, it will not add any time to altering the dress.” She put away her charcoal and reached for the laces on the kirtle’s sleeves. “If you come to the shop again this afternoon, you can pick out a border then.”

  Her shop again. All the eyes of the village on me. I shook my head. “That’s all right, Dame Hutton. I trust your judgment.”

  We were talking about my wedding. Making a wedding dress. For Sunday.

  On my little dressing table, a plain, clay cup held a posy of pale blue and lavender star-shaped flowers. They were half-crushed and none too fresh from their rough journey the night before, but they still had the power to smile at me. To taunt me from across the room.

  Sweet William.

  If nothing else, the man had a sense of humor.

  Together, Dame Hutton and Margaret reached for me to extricate me from the chemise full of pins, carefully lifting it off my body and over my head. I slipped back into a chemise of my own. Plain undyed linen, only marginally finer than what Margaret herself wore and a far cry from the whisper of silk. Dame Hutton settled on the edge of the bed with the green kirtle in her lap, pointedly sitting close to Blanche to make her move aside. With a little sniff, Blanche slid to the other side of the bed and then off, exiting the room with a rustle of disapproving skirts. Dame Hutton paid her no heed but got to work ripping the seam holding the bodice and skirt of my dress together. Margaret helped the Mountain return to the comfort of her room. The stairs complained nearly as much as Blanche’s mother all the way down.

  The seamstress left the bodice on the bed and carefully folded the skirt and sleeves into a bag to carry back to her shop where she could work on them in peace. Just as carefully, she avoided looking at me.

  Margaret returned, shaking out her arms from the strain of supporting the Mountain. She glanced from me to Dame Hutton and back, then went to help with packing up.

  Dame Hutton straightened, lifting her basket. “I will choose some beads and send them over this morning, Mistress Kathryn, so you can get to work today.”

  “Thank you,” I said, my voice squeaking out like a rusty hinge.

  “And I’ll make my choices based on what we’ve discussed here today, and what you and I looked at yesterday in my shop. Bearing in mind the restrictions your mother has put on price, and of course the limited time we have to work with.”

  I nodded, no longer trusting myself to speak.

  Margaret handed Dame Hutton the bag holding the pieces of my wedding clothes and came to help me into my kirtle. My head was hidden inside the blue damask when I heard the seamstress address me again. “So that’s how it is?”

  Popping my head and arms out through the waist of the kirtle, I gestured Margaret to wait. Dame Hutton had paused in the doorway and was looking back at me, a curious mixture of anger and pity on her face. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “Your sister. Her mother. This is what it’s like for you?”

  Margaret looked down, away, a sleeve dangling limply in her grasp. I shot Dame Hutton a tight smile. “How else should it be, Dame Hutton? Everyone knows I am the shrew.”

  A few hours later, the bodice of the green kirtle lay on my lap. Morning sunlight streaming through the solar window illuminated it
, catching in the weave so it gleamed softly as I moved it, looking over Dame Hutton’s pattern for the beadwork. I reached over to the little table beside my chair and opened the bags of beads Dame Hutton had sent over—tiny bits of glass in round and tube shapes, clear and gold and dark green—and ran my finger through them, rolling them like seeds over my skin. I thought about where each shape and color should go, and tried very hard not to think about Sunday.

  When I could avoid it no longer, I threaded a fine needle with delicate thread and reached for the bag of dark green beads.

  Blanche burst into the solar. “So.”

  I kept my eyes on the beads, counting four of them onto the thread. I would have liked to set each bead individually, but there was simply no time. Two more days. What the Mountain had said was right. It was outrageous.

  Standing over me, fists on her lovely, ample hips, Blanche said, “I suppose you’re very proud of yourself.”

  I said nothing. With studied concentration, I stitched the first beads down onto the fabric. I could feel the expectation pouring off my sister. Why didn’t I speak? “I told Father I wouldn’t have him. You must know that. I wouldn’t have him, even if he was a knight.”

  I glanced up, catching myself before I met her eyes or responded to what she was saying. Of course she had to save face in this way. He had not rejected her and chosen me. No, she had not wanted him.

  She strolled to the bed, picked up a pillow and plumped it needlessly into shape.

  “He has a castle, you know—of course you must know that. A small keep with a tower and moat, with several hundred tenants beholden to him.”

  These were details I had not known—I was to marry him, and no one had thought to tell me aught of the place I was to live in besides its name—but I wasn’t going to let her know that. I picked a few more beads onto the thread.

  “But did you know he has no money?”

  My skin bristled, crawling all over the way a dog’s must when it senses a threat. Of course, I thought. As I stitched down the next set of beads, I tried to ignore the squeezing around my heart.

  Blanche tossed the pillow back onto the bed. “How does that feel, Kathryn?” She leaned in close, looking down at my needlework, then tipping her face up into mine. “The only reason he wants your stick-skinny body is for your big, fat dowry.”

  “Blanche.” I stilled my hands, stilled the blood rushing through my veins. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  Blanche stamped her foot. “Ooooh! You can’t even see what’s right before you!”

  “Well, no,” I said mildly. “You’re standing in my light.”

  “That’s not what I—oh, fine.” She stomped away and flounced down on the bed, her skirts belling around her. Even annoyed, she was beautiful, and I couldn’t bear to look at her for long.

  “Do you want to hear me say it?”

  “Say what?”

  She flipped her hands in the air. “It seems you do. Fine. I’ll say it. You won. All right? You won. He chose you over me.”

  A little thrill danced up and down my spine. “Yes. Yes, he did.”

  “Now can you stop lording it over me?”

  I looked up from the beads to gape at her. “Lording—? Blanche, what are you talking about?”

  She got up from the bed and began to pace. “You always act like you’re better than me, than all of us, with your books and your Latin and doing Father’s sums. That’s why no one likes you.”

  “I’m well aware of why no one likes me,” I said, looking down at the needle in my hand, fighting to keep it from trembling.

  “But he likes it!” she protested. “He chose you for your learning, not in spite of it.” She quit her pacing and stood over me. “It was the one thing I had always counted on, that no one would want you the way you are.”

  “Blanche,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Is there a lesson to your sermon, or are you just trying to hurt me?”

  “I thought you’d never get a husband if you weren’t more like me. I thought that one day, you’d be forced to humble yourself and ask for my help, and then I would be gracious and magnamonious—”

  I barely restrained my titter of laughter.

  “You were supposed to need me. All these years, you’ve ignored me and scorned me, and I’ve—” She stopped. “You don’t know what it’s been like.”

  I jumped out of my seat, the bodice tumbling to the floor. “I don’t know what it’s been like? You don’t know what it’s been like! You are Father’s favorite, you get everything you desire—”

  “But he needs you!”

  We stood staring at each other, fists clenched, mouths agape. It was as though I had never seen her before.

  Blanche, jealous of me?

  Impossible.

  Some opaque wall crashed down behind her eyes and she looked away. I retrieved the bodice and found the dangling needle. The moment had passed, scarcely to be credited.

  Father’s voice drifted up through my casement. I was determined to disregard him. Count beads, place stitch.

  Blanche, recovering herself, did not flee the room as I expected, but went to the window to eavesdrop on Father’s conversation. Somehow, watching her listening forced me to listen as well.

  “One hundred milk cows and one hundred twenty head of oxen….”

  Blanche rolled her eyes and fell back against the window frame. “Ugh. It’s old Master Greenwood again. Will he never give up?”

  Another voice rose from the courtyard. “…my father’s only son and heir. The house Master Greenwood keeps here in Whitelock may be very fine, but my father has three such houses, the finest of them in Leicester itself.”

  Blanche gasped, peeking out the window as best she could without revealing herself. “Why, it’s Master Lawry!”

  I repeated, “Master Lawry?” before I could stop myself.

  In light of Ellen’s words, I set down my stitching and tilted my chair back against the window. By angling my head just so, I could see Master Lawry where he stood near the fountain. For certes, his clothes did not fit properly, but that did not make him an imposter. He spoke well once he was at ease in company and seemed wise and clever…. Ellen could not possibly be correct.

  Blanche crouched beside the window and whispered, loud enough to be heard in the next house, “They must have heard of your betrothal and now they come to court me!”

  I continued to string beads onto my needle and pin them fiercely onto the bodice of my wedding dress.

  The discussion below moved on to the gentlemen’s prospects in trade: wagons, shops, market stalls, trade routes, ships. Blanche was entranced.

  I worked steadily, listening with half an ear. Master Greenwood appeared to be coming up short in every measure.

  “What of her jointure?” Father asked. “What if she is made a widow?”

  Master Greenwood answered quickly, “I am advanced in years, Master Mulleyn, and have no other heirs. If I were to die before your daughter—if she were my wife—all that I have would be hers.”

  “Ha!” I laughed. “Master Greenwood sees it as an advantage that he is old and soon to die!”

  Blanche made a face. “Well, if I must marry him that would be an advantage.”

  I shook my head, leaning closer over my beadwork. The light was fading; the sun had passed behind some clouds. It seemed likely to rain.

  “You see, Master Lawry,” Father said, and I imagined him turning toward the younger man with an expansive gesture, “I am here on the horns of a dilemma. Master Greenwood offers less, but he offers all. You make the better offer, but all that you offer yet belongs to your father while he lives. You must pardon me, but if you were to die before him, where is her portion? What is to become of my poor daughter?”

  Master Lawry’s tone was cavalier. “It is nothing to worry about. My father is old; I am young.”

  Master Greenwood laughed harshly. “And may not young men die as well as old?”

  They began to quar
rel like a couple of squawking chickens, but Father interrupted them. “Gentlemen,” he said, “here is my resolve. On Sunday, my daughter Kathryn will be married. Then, Master Lawry, if your father will give assurances of her protection, on the following Sunday, you may post the banns for your marriage to my daughter Blanche. Otherwise, Master Greenwood shall do so. Now, farewell, gentlemen.”

  Father went inside. Even from so far above, I could feel his triumph. What a week he was having!

  The other men lingered to continue their argument, their voices fading as they moved away from the window. “Ha!” Master Greenwood rumbled. “Your father is a fool if he gives over everything to you while he still lives, just so you can marry a pretty girl. It’s nonsense. Never happen. We’ll see what will come on the Sunday after Kathryn is finally gone.”

  “Think what you will, old man,” Master Lawry retorted. “We shall indeed see what will come.”

  I kept my head down. I did not want Blanche to see my face. How did she like being bargained for like a suckling pig at the market?

  She turned from the window, her eyes wide. “Did you hear?”

  “What did you expect? Declarations of undying love and devotion?”

  She seemed not to have heard me. “Three houses, he has. Land that produces over 3,000 crowns a year! He is rich!”

  “His father is rich.”

  Blanche waved a hand at me. She had no use for such trifles as facts. “I will be rich!” She looked at me with shining eyes. “You may become a lady, but I will be rich!”

  As Blanche said, I was a great lady now. Betrothed to a man of, if not wealth, at least of status and prospects, in favor at King Richard’s court. I was moving up in the world.

  I did not have to sit for pointless lessons any longer.

  The graying skies of morning had opened up with a gentle rain, keeping Blanche and her tutors indoors. I had hoped they would stay downstairs in the hall, but they, or rather Blanche, decided that the solar, where I sat trying to distract myself with a book of my own, would be more comfortable. The music master and the language master immediately fell to bickering over which of their lessons should commence first. Pretty, young Cameron insisted that music should follow more strenuous work as a respite. Master Horton claimed music took precedence over all else as the promoter of heavenly harmony on earth.