Finding Kate

by Maryanne Fantalis

  Blanche and Dame Horton were staring at me, gape-mouthed when I entered the room.

  “Well?” I said. “Are you coming, or do I have to beat you until you relent?”

  Blanche scuttled across the room.

  Dame Horton narrowed her already squinty eyes at me. “You wouldn’t dare….”

  I charged toward her, my hand reaching for her ear. “I’ll drag you, woman, don’t think I won’t.”

  “Don’t think she won’t,” the Mountain rumbled.

  Her hands up to protect her ears, Dame Horton yelped, ran forward, and hurried out the door. Blanche followed after her. I went behind, a sheepdog with my little flock.

  It is hard to describe the shock on the faces of the men when we returned to the courtyard. There was a nervous, uncomfortable edge to their laughter, unsure as they were whether this was just some elaborate joke William and I were playing at their expense. Blanche and Dame Horton were sullen and pouty, Blanche much more attractively of course, and they moved apart, as far from me as they could while still avoiding their husbands. Dame Horton crossed her arms and glared at me.

  I dipped a pretty curtsy toward the table, to my husband, and waited.

  William took a few strutting steps, looking me over. “Kathryn,” he said, tilting his head to the side. “That headdress you are wearing becomes you not. Off with it, throw it underfoot.”

  Oh, a blow to my heart! But I let none of that show. We were partners now. I reached up and loosened the pins, letting it drop as though it were a leaf or a bit of thread, a thing of no consequence.

  The gathered guests gasped as one.

  “Lord, I pray I never be brought to such a silly pass,” Dame Horton said to my left. I did not spare her a glance, keeping my attention on William.

  “Kathryn!” Blanche said, running forward to snatch up the headdress, waving it under my nose. “What foolish duty do you call this?”

  Matthew Lawry stood up. “I would that your duty were as foolish, too, my dear wife! The wisdom of your duty has cost me a hundred crowns since dinnertime.”

  All the men roared with laughter. So they had wagered on our obedience.

  Blanche stamped her foot and shook the headdress at him. Inwardly, I cringed. The damage to my beautiful ornament! “The more fool you for wagering on my obedience!” she retorted.

  “Kathryn,” William said. Whenever he said that name, it caught at me like a knife on my skin. “I command you, tell these headstrong women what duty they owe to their lords and husbands.”

  Dame Horton snorted in derision. “Come, come, you are mocking. We will hear no such thing.”

  “Oh yes, I say, and first begin with her,” he said, pointing to Dame Horton.

  “She shall not,” Dame Horton said, frowning.

  “I say she shall,” William said, moving toward her, towering over her, suddenly the man who had killed brigands without hesitation.

  Dame Horton subsided.

  I took a breath, looking around. Everyone waited to hear what I would say.

  And then I realized, they weren’t waiting to hear what I would say. They thought they knew what I would say. They were leaning forward in expectation, waiting for the shrew to emerge, to say harsh, devastating things. To show Sir William how very wrong he was to trust in my appearance of obedience, to believe in me. They knew me, you see. They knew Kathryn Mulleyn since she was born, and Kathryn Mulleyn was a bitter, angry shrew.

  They wanted Kathryn. I gave them Kate.

  As directed, I focused on Dame Horton with a smile. “Smooth your brow, and do not glare with scornful glances to wound your lord, your king, your governor.” I took a step toward her, letting my hand sweep back toward the table where our husbands sat. “It harms your beauty”—I thought I heard a snicker or two—“as frosts do bite meadows, and is in no sense good or amiable. Your husband is your lord, your life, your keeper….” What more could I add? This was fun, now that I was deep in it. “He is your sovereign. The one who cares for you and for your maintenance. He commits his body to painful labor, both by sea and land. To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, while you remain safe at home, warm and secure.” I could sense the men, merchants all, nodding at this description of their labors. Meanwhile, I knew a timid wife sitting at home was the furthest thing from what my husband wanted. He wanted a woman brave enough to take risks at his side. The glow of that knowledge filled me as I continued.

  “He craves no other tribute from you but love, kindness, and obedience. Too little payment for so great a debt.” It struck me at this moment that, having been married for only a few days—in reality, less than a few hours—I had absolutely no authority on which to base these statements. Yet the men approved as though I were reading from scripture, and the women looked sufficiently guilty that they were not protesting. I allowed myself to look at William, standing under the low-hanging branches of the apple tree. He was biting his lower lip to keep from smiling and nodded, just once, to let me know I was doing well.

  Looking straight at him, I said, “Such duty as the subject owes the prince, a woman owes to her husband, and when she is peevish, sullen, sour, and disobedient to his honest will, what is she but a foul contending rebel, and a graceless traitor to her loving lord?” I paused. We had, that very day, solemnly discussed rebellion against our anointed king. He knew exactly how much weight to give my words.

  He nodded again, just once.

  Warming to my theme, I dropped to my knees, the sharp gravel of the path grinding into the many scrapes and sores there. But I refused to flinch. “I am ashamed that women are so unwise as to offer war where they should kneel for peace…” Here I looked toward Dame Horton again, “…Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway when they are bound to serve, love, and obey.”

  I looked down at my hands, and brought them together on my belly as I had seen women with child do. “Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth, unmade to toil and trouble in the world, except that our temperaments and our hearts should match them?” What folly my words are, I thought, as though childbirth were not more painful labor than any of these men had ever known. As though women did not have to be strong in that labor, as though they did not give their own lives to bring forth new life. As my own mother had. I swallowed hard. This was becoming more difficult.

  I stood and turned away from the table, facing Blanche directly for the first time. Her face was full of dismay and a kind of horror, seeing me transformed into something unrecognizable. I reached my hands toward her, and she shrank away.

  “Come, come,” I said. “I have been as arrogant as you, as willful, as determined to bandy word for word and frown for frown, but now I see that our lances are but straws. I see it now. The more we fight, the more we fail. Swallow your pride. There is no help for it.”

  I knelt again, more carefully this time, and placed my hands, palms up, flat on the ground. “Put your hands beneath your husband’s foot, as I do, in token of your duty. My hand is ready, if it please him, to do him ease.”

  The silence in the courtyard was complete. Not a breeze ruffled the bushes along the walk. No one breathed or scraped a plate or cleared a throat. Finally, William walked forward and stood before me, but I kept my eyes on the toes of his boots. This felt uncomfortably, almost painfully, familiar. How many times had I been in this posture of surrender in the past few days?

  I did not move, did not look up until he said, so softly that only I heard him, “Kate.”

  His eyes sparkled. He leaned down and took my hands and very slowly raised me up, just as a sovereign raises a subject. I stood tall, holding his hands tightly, aware of all eyes on us. I smiled, just a little.

  William went down on one knee, still holding my hands. I heard a gasp. Blanche, I thought. “Now, that’s my girl,” he said, to me alone. “Come on and kiss me, Kate.”

  Stone by stone, the courtyard fell away. The wedding party disappeared. Sunlight, shadow, music, the scent of spices and sugar, all faded as I took a dreaml
ike step toward him. He pulled me down to sit upon his knee. Quivering, I recalled the day he’d proposed, when I’d called him no better than a stool, easily overlooked. How wrong I’d been. My fingers traced the line of his jaw, his cheek, his neck, discovering the feel of his skin. So warm, so alive, just a hint of roughness where Gregory’s blade had missed in shaving him. Had I truly never touched his face before? Nay, only to strike him.

  I bent my head, touched my lips to his, and my heart ignited. Something hard, stone and steel, as unmovable as armor around it, cracked, slipped, and fell away. My hand found its way into his hair—at last!—and discovered thick, silky, luxuriant bliss. I forgot entirely where I was.

  His fingers touching my chin, William pulled away. “We… should go.”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.

  We stood, somehow not parting. I looked around at the company. Blanche was staring at me. I could not read her expression.

  “We must away,” William announced. “Thank you, Father, for your hospitality, and blessings upon you other happy couples. I am taking my wife home.”

  Father hurried over. Blanche called out, “But there’s the dancing. You must dance at my wedding. You must!”

  Ah, Blanche. Poor Blanche. To be so outdone.

  Father shook William’s hand and embraced him, whispering in his ear. He did not mean for me to hear him, but I did. “Another dowry for another daughter. I’m giving you another twenty thousand crowns, my boy. I don’t know what you’ve done, but you’ve changed her. By God, she’s a new woman.”

  William shook his head and tried to demur, but Father would hear none of it. I looked away—anywhere but at my father who was selling me yet again—and my eye caught a movement at the door. Margaret hovered there, and when she saw me looking at her, she fluttered a hand at me in a hesitant wave. I stepped away from William, sliding into the shade of the apple tree and beckoning to her. She came out to meet me, looking distressed and even a little frightened.

  “Margaret?”

  “Please, Mistress Kathryn, milady.” She grabbed my hands and curtsied so rapidly I was afraid she’d fall. “Please take me away with you.”

  Looking at her troubled face, I realized I had not considered how this house might have changed in my absence. I would have thought that serving two women instead of three would be easier, but perhaps not if those two women were Blanche and her mother. Poor Margaret.

  I squeezed her hands. “Of course. Of course. Get your things. Quickly.”

  She ran off. William was walking toward me, so I went to him.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “My maid.”

  “Your maid?”

  “Yes. If you recall, my husband did not provide me with one, so I have remedied that failure.”

  “And with no trouble at all to your husband. Excellent.”

  “I thought you’d agree.” I glanced at my father, who had rejoined his guests. “Where do we stand on my dowry?”

  William jingled a purse at his belt. “I have collected my wagers from this day’s entertainment,” he said, a laugh in his voice. “The rest, on the morrow. We’ll need to hire a mule or two, perhaps a wagon and some of Master Lawry’s guards. Now that the dowry amount is double, you clever girl.”

  I made a face. I had not done what I had done for money. Would my father ever understand anything in terms other than gold?

  I sensed Margaret behind me, eager to go.

  “The inn?” William prompted. Yes. He had promised we would not stay in this house. But it did not feel right just to walk away. Some last thing needed to be….

  I caught sight of Blanche, embroiled in a quarrel with her new husband. In her hand, she still held my headdress.

  “One moment,” I said.

  As I approached them, Matthew Lawry fell silent. Blanche, sensing victory, berated him a moment longer. I heard an ominous warning about who would be obedient to whom before she, too, noticed me and stopped talking.

  We looked each other over for a long moment.

  “My headdress, if you please.”

  She considered, then handed it to me as if it were a dirty rag. She shook her head. “I do not understand you, Kathryn. You have completely surrendered yourself. I would never have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes. The Kathryn I know—”

  I cut her off. “You do not know me. You never did.”

  Her eyes widened. “But this submission. This isn’t you.”

  I wanted to look at William, but I knew she would see it as weakness rather than the gathering of strength that it was. She could only see love in her own terms, what she could get from someone, how she could control him. She would never understand. It was pointless to try.

  And yet, years of pain cried out to be expressed.

  “All my life, I’ve had to show the world a false face to make my life bearable. Why do you think that what you saw today was any more real?” I turned to leave, then realized there was one last thing I wanted to say.

  “You once asked me which of your suitors I wanted. None of them. I envy you nothing. I don’t envy you your suitors or your husband, handsome as he is. I don’t envy you having to live in your father-in-law’s house at his sufferance, obliged to justify every penny to him.”

  I looked at Matthew. “And I don’t envy you, finding out who you really married. Good luck to you both.”

  “Kate?” William called from across the courtyard. In his voice, I heard his concern for me.

  “I am ready,” I said, and I walked away forever from Blanche, from my father, and from that house.

  Chapter 16

  Friday

  William opened the door to the inn and strode in without a thought. I balked at the threshold like a horse at the edge of rickety bridge, quivers of instability running up through its legs.

  When a long moment passed and I did not enter, William stuck his head back out the door. “Kate, what’s the matter?”

  I twisted my hands together. “I know I must go in, but… William, the last time we were here, the things I said, and you….”

  He chuckled at the thought. “Do you think anyone will remember?”

  “Of course they will remember. They always remember. I am the shrew.”

  He walked deliberately down the four steps and stood before me, arms folded. “You are not the shrew,” he said sternly. “You are Kate. My Kate. Have you forgotten your triumph so quickly?”

  I shook my head.

  “Must I sweep you up and carry you within?”

  I gasped a laugh and discovered I was breathing again.

  “Good.” With a reassuring smile, William reached out his hand. I took it, and we went in together.

  The common room of the inn was, thankfully, rather empty that evening. A small cluster of local men gathered around a table at the far side of the room. Several travelers ate or talked over their pints at the tables by the open windows. Master Miller perched on a high stool at the bar, talking Master Brewer’s ear off.

  Master Brewer looked up as we walked in, and he hurried over to greet us. William spoke to him quietly, the innkeeper nodding and agreeing to everything. As we settled onto a pair of stools at the bar near the stairs leading up to the guest rooms, William said, “Now, you see. It’s not so bad. Master Brewer greeted us kindly, and no one else has taken note of you.”

  I gave a little snort. “Master Brewer is only glad to see you return with gold in your purse.”

  “That may be. Nevertheless, all is well, is it not?”

  “Yes,” I had to admit. “For now, all is well.”

  The man who had been posing as Matthew Lawry appeared in the shadows of the stairway beside the bar. He was dressed in the ordinary clothes of a serving man, drab and plain, and they suited him far better than the fine garb he had been wearing when he called at my father’s house. Before, he had been constrained both by their too-small fit and by their improper style for his station. Now, he moved with ease in his loose
shirt, dark blue tunic, hose of nubby, dull fabric, and soft leather shoes. He had piled several trunks in one corner of the common room, and a storm sat on his brow as he went about his work.

  “Do you suppose he is moving his master’s things to my father’s house?” I nodded in his direction.

  William pivoted on one leg to see. “I suppose so, yes. Why?”

  I narrowed my eyes, taking a sip from the mug of Master Brewer’s excellent cider that had appeared before me. “I cannot imagine he is very happy about the way fortune’s wheel has turned. It is all very well for his master, for he has got what he wanted, but what of this fellow? He was put at great risk, and do you suppose he will be greatly rewarded for it? No, for young Matthew Lawry has no money of his own, and his father does not approve of what he did to secure my sister’s hand.”

  William swung back around, a smile quirking his lips. “What are you saying, my dear? I have already given you a horse and a dress and a maid. Am I to hire a man I don’t need away from your sister’s husband on your whim?”

  I leaned closer and whispered in his ear, “It is my will.”

  He groaned, rolling his eyes, and pushed away from the bar. In the dark quiet at the base of the stairs, he stopped the young man as he set a lute case on top of the stack of trunks. I looked into my cup of golden liquid to wipe away the vision of another lute destroyed, made to ring the neck of Master Horton by my own hands. Sighing, I took a deep draught of the cider. I could not regret what I had done, precisely, but I could wish I had shown a bit more restraint. Kate would be more circumspect, I vowed.

  Ellen Brewer emerged from the kitchen and worked her way down the bar, wiping with a rag. Shame colored my skin at the sight of her. Not only had I wrongfully abused her over her suspicion of Master Cameron and Master Lawry, I had treated her badly the last time I was in this inn, expecting—nay, demanding—her sympathy and abandoning her when she didn’t react in the way I wanted her to.

  Kathryn had been a terrible friend.

  Kate, I vowed, would be a better one, even if this was the last time I saw Ellen Brewer.