The Light in the Labyrinth_BooksGoSocial Historical Fiction

by Wendy J. Dunn

  Kate took all the help offered with gratitude. She dared not write on the costly parchment until she was confident that the translation etched on her brother’s hornbook was as perfect as she could make it.

  The mornings spent working diligently and carefully on her aunt’s gift were the only time she put aside her broken heart and was assured of a few hours when she could distract herself from thinking about Francis. But it was hard. So very hard.

  Working through Esther’s story did not prevent her from wondering why he didn’t come to speak to her—or wondering if Madge was right. Did he think less of her because she had asked him to kiss her? Had she shown herself unworthy of his honour? That she had no honour? She lifted her quill and frowned at the mistake she had just made. Her eyes filled with tears. I have no honour. No honour. No honour. She grabbed the tool to scratch out her error and wished she could scratch out that night. She trembled with shame thinking of the way she had kissed him back and melded to his body. No wonder he didn’t speak to her. He probably would never speak to her again. Who could blame him?

  The days of winter seemed to go on forever. It was so cold that the Thames froze over—an ice so thick and hard that the King journeyed between his river palaces by sleigh, while Aunt Nan, caged by the ill health of her pregnancy, fretted about what he did whilst away from her. But the New Year festivities brought the King back and kept him lingering at Greenwich with his wife and little daughter.

  From high to low, all at court exchanged gifts at New Year. Aunt Nan gave the King a gift of a new ornamental clock, and he gifted to her the largest diamond Kate had ever seen. With her royal parents at this time, little Bess did not miss out. Resting in her chamber that afternoon, Aunt Nan gave her daughter a jewelled hornbook with a black alphabet outlined in gold.

  Aunt Nan and Kate sat by the fire as Bess played with it on the floor. Aunt Nan smiled. “Look how she prefers the hornbook to the toys others have given her. She may be a little young for it, but soon I will start teaching my Bess her letters.”

  Bess, hearing her mother’s voice, cast aside the hornbook and pulled herself up. Unbalanced by her heavy dress, she swayed for a moment before waddling over to them. Determination all over her face, every few steps she stopped to regain her footing. At last she reached her mother and collapsed against her, grinning in triumph. She held out her arms. “Kiss Bess,” she commanded.

  Aunt Nan laughed, reaching out her own arms. Thinking her aunt was about to lift Bess, Kate bounded from her chair, picked up the little girl, and placed her onto her mother’s lap. When Kate straightened her little cousin’s gown, Bess grinned up at her.

  “Ma belle.” Aunt Nan held her daughter close. She kissed her again and again. Bess laughed, her small, long-fingered hands, perfect miniatures of Aunt Nan’s, going to either side of her mother’s face.

  “Story, Mama.” Bess nestled sleepily against her mother’s breast.

  Aunt Nan shared a smile with Kate. “What story shall I tell you?”

  “Fine rooster,” the little girl murmured.

  “Fine rooster?” Aunt Nan frowned, her face thoughtful while settling her daughter in her arms. At last, leaning back, she smiled, her eyes full of dreams, and began to recite:

  “A Cock our story tells of, who high on a dunghill stood and crew.

  A Fox, attracted, straight drew nigh,

  And spake soft words of flattery.

  ‘Dear Sir!’ said he. ‘Your look’s divine;

  I never saw a bird so fine!”

  Listening, Kate shut her eyes, relishing the warmth of the fire and the melody of her aunt’s voice. For the first time at court, she welcomed a sense of peace and homecoming.

  The gift giving wasn’t ended that day. Kate gave her brother a new cap adorned with an ostrich feather, and he gave her a girdle book with the psalms of King David. Aunt Nan’s gift to her was a copy of The Consolation of Philosophy.

  “You’ve had mine long enough,” she said with a grin. “When our Duchess of Suffolk comes back, I want you to continue your discussion with her about the book’s teachings.” She then picked up Kate’s gift to her. She turned its pages and smiled. “I shall treasure this, knowing the hours you dedicated to the translation. I hope you will do more in the future. How about The Consolation of Philosophy next time? From the Latin to English—now that would be a worthy task for you.”

  To Kate’s great astonishment, Francis also gave her a gift. Entering the Queen’s chamber, he came to her smiling and bearing a lute, and held it out.

  “For you,” he said, sitting on the stool beside her.

  She took it, and looked at him in confusion. “A lute?” she blurted out. “'Tis too costly a gift.” She held it to her like a shield. “And I have nothing to offer you in return. Nothing.”

  He beamed a wider smile. “As for the cost, it is the lute I had as a boy—I play another now. As for you offering something in return, I would not call your friendship nothing, Kat. I crave pardon for not coming to you sooner and asking for forgiveness. I did not mean for you to suffer at my hand. I acted a villain forgetful of your youth.” He leaned closer. “Are we friends again?”

  Kate averted her face. She wanted to weep. He spoke as if she was a child. A child? But wasn’t that better than him thinking her wanton?

  She met his gaze and tried to smile. “Aye, friends.”

  Emotion grabbed her by the throat and rendered her unable to say anything more. She turned to the burning fire, hoping she wouldn’t do or say anything foolish. Hoping she hid from him her real feelings. The days of separation had only increased her love of him. With a deep breath, she faced him with another smile—a false smile plastered upon a mask likely to slip at any moment.

  He took the lute from her and strummed a few notes of a familiar song.

  Kate winkled her brow in thought and the lyrics came to mind:

  Pastime with good company

  I love and shall unto I die;

  Grudge who list, but none deny,

  So God be pleased thus live will I.

  “'Tis the King’s song?” she offered hesitantly.

  Francis grinned. “Aye, the King’s. I’m glad you recognised it. It will please my father to learn that his coin was well spent with my lute master.” He cocked his head towards her. “Is it true you do not play?”

  Kate locked her eyes with his, then, as quickly, lowered them. She swallowed hard before she dared to speak again. She couldn’t even look at him. “Who told you that?”

  “Your brother. I asked him what I should give you as a gift, and he suggested a lute.” Francis brushed his fingers against the strings. “He says you spend too much time either reading or writing.”

  Kate sat straighter in annoyance. “Did he? Did he really say that?”

  Francis laughed. “Pray, do not tell him I told you so; he may never speak to me again.” He twisted towards Aunt Nan. “I saw the gift you made for the Queen. I don’t think your brother has ever pleased the Queen as you did today, even with the jewels he gave to her this morning.” Francis grinned. “It is good you are like your aunt and enjoy learning for its own sake. So, I take it that your brother is right and you do not know how to play the lute?”

  Kate nodded in confusion.

  “That brings me to my next question. Would you like me to teach you?”

  Hope flared in her heart. “Would you?”

  He nodded. “Aye.” He scrutinised her with great seriousness. “For friendship sake—only that.”

  “For friendship sake,” she repeated. Understanding his meaning Kate bowed her head. Could she bear being alone with him as just his friend? Could she bear not seeing him at all? She swallowed. Her whole world seemed to revolve around this man. “For friendship sake,” she echoed, praying she hid her tears.

  Francis was good as his word. Arranging it with the Queen, he came every day when Kate was with her brother. But Francis also arranged that he would teach Harry. He put her in her place—a child that needed
schooling. Francis taught her to play the lute all the while she fought a hard battle with her emotions. When memories surfaced of how he kissed her, it was almost impossible.

  Francis never mentioned that night to her. It was as if he wished for her to forget it and remain a child. The only way she could do that was to concentrate on her lessons, ignoring what his closeness did to her insides. Her heart beat faster every time he had reason to touch her hands to show her how to hold the lute or pluck a note.

  Almost daily, Kate learnt under Francis’s careful hour of tutorage through that long, cold, dark winter. Forced to hide her true feelings from him, he could not know that his efforts to keep her a child made her into a woman.

  Not many days after the exchange of gifts, Kate sat sewing next to her aunt’s bedchamber, far enough away from the rest of the women for them not to observe her work, but close enough to still savour the sweet, piping voice of the woman singing as they sewed.

  Already changed in many ways by her brief time at court, Kate found one thing remained the same—she still hated sewing. Just like at home, she either pricked her fingers, soiling the silk in her hands, or distractedly pulled the thread so she needed to thread her needle yet again. Meg Lee had given her such a simple task, too, edging a square of material with blackwork, but already she had spent precious minutes unpicking the mess she made of it to start again. Her fingers were stiff and painful with cold, too, making her sewing even more clumsy and inept.

  She studied the other women and drew a breath of frustration. Serene and unflustered, many chatted quietly together, their needles going in and out with an enviable swiftness and expertise.

  Kate pricked her finger again and despaired. Feeling she would go mad before finishing the blackwork, she tossed her sewing in the basket and sucked her sore finger. She fought down the temptation to go to Aunt Nan. But couldn’t she beg to be excused or to be given another chore to do? Anything but sewing. Her aunt, though, was so engrossed in the creation of her exquisite handiwork that Kate didn’t dare interrupt.

  Coughing, she turned her head to the nearby fireplace. Was it smoking? She coughed again. All seemed well with the fire. Its red heat merrily devoured a huge log. She coughed again and again. Her lungs hurting, she struggled to breathe. Near her feet, smoke escaped from underneath the bedroom door. Coughing another time, Kate bounded up, hopping from foot to foot. “My Queen! My Queen!”

  Her needle and thread held aloft, Aunt Nan glowered at her with annoyance. “Niece, you forget yourself!”

  Kate pointed to the door, at last remembering the right word: “Fire!”

  Everything became madness then. Women screamed and scurried around, running for the door to the gallery. Guards and servants rushed in. Apparently unflustered and without hurry, Aunt Nan folded her sewing and leaned down to put it in her basket. Picking that up, she stood. “Come, niece, do not tarry.”

  Aunt Nan started to follow after her ladies, but then paused at the empty basket by her chair. “Where’s Purkoy?” She hunted the room with her eyes, calling, “Purkoy! Purkoy!”

  Aunt Nan’s bedroom door wide open now, tongues of flames added another red and gold to her bed hangings. A taper carelessly left alight? How could that be? Kate took her aunt’s arm in reassurance. “He likely found a mouse to chase after. Let’s get to the gallery and safety.”

  Her face white and rigid, Aunt Nan did as Kate bid, joining her ladies to watch the fire take hold. Servants beat at the flames, tossing all the water they could find in the room to douse it.

  A loud voice called close by: “The King comes! The King comes!”

  Aunt Nan stood apart from her women and waited to greet him. As he neared her, she fell to her knees and all her ladies followed suit. He helped her up and kissed her cheek. Smoke billowed from her bedchamber. “Are you all right, sweetheart? No hurt to you or the child?”

  Aunt Nan smiled. “We were in the next room. Kate’s quick wits warned us all before there was any true danger. No hurt to me or our strong son.” She turned with concern towards her smoke-filled room. “Harry, have you seen Purkoy?”

  Glancing again into her chambers, the King shook his head, his mouth grim.

  A servant bowed low. “Your Majesties, the fire has been put out. Only the hangings have suffered any damage.”

  Aunt Nan winced. “Only the hangings? You gave them to me, my Lord. They are irreplaceable, and precious to me.” She stepped towards the chambers. “And my dog? My little dog?”

  The King pulled her back. “They will find him. And don’t worry about your hangings. I will get you new ones. Come with me now, come and play a game of chess while they repair your bedchamber.” He smiled. “We haven’t played chess together for many a week. Let’s see if you can still beat me.”

  The next day, Kate wrote in her journal:

  My poor aunt. They found little Purkoy under her state bed, dead in a pool of its own blood. Aunt Nan is inconsolable. She believes someone killed Purkoy as a warning to her—and even to cause harm to her and the child she bears.

  No one knows how the fire started, but the King acts kindly to my aunt. He acts guiltily—like one at fault. Mayhap he is.

  Kate re-dipped her quill. Thinking angrily of the King’s dalliance with Lady Jane, she scored boldly on the parchment:

  Aye—responsibility is not simply for those who do the deed.

  She read back her words. It was a good thing she no longer carried her journal in her pocket. Treason seemed to frame her thoughts and poems. She now kept it in a hiding place in her chamber. She just prayed no one would ever find it.

  The King was still at Greenwich on the eighth day of January—the day when a messenger knelt before the dais, holding forth his message. The King rose from the throne, took the message, and read. A grim smile tugged at his mouth before he passed the message to the Queen. He stood legs apart, a hand at his dagger, the jewels on his fingers glinting in the light.

  “God be praised!” the King cried out. “We are freed at last of the harridan. Katherine of Aragon is dead. No longer do we have to live in fear of war!”

  A silence fell—heavy like the shroud that wound around a dead woman far away. Kate turned to her aunt. She sat very still, very pale, all her attention on her husband as he went from courtier to courtier to accept their congratulations. Guarded expressions were everywhere. Aunt Nan read the parchment in her hand and grimaced. She lifted eyes that did not share the smile now sketched upon her face.

  “So, I am truly Queen at last,” she murmured, not speaking to anyone in particular.

  Why did her aunt look so unhappy? Kate remembered the recent conversations amongst her women. There was a rumour that Katherine of Aragon, the dowager princess of Wales, had sent a message to her nephew, Charles, the Holy Roman Emperor, and begged him to do whatever was necessary to protect his cousin Mary’s birthright. The spectre of war went hand in hand with a living Katherine. Now she was dead. Surely this should make Aunt Nan happy? But her aunt’s face said otherwise.

  That same night, the King held a banquet to celebrate the death of Katherine of Aragon. Kate and another woman helped the Queen dress in a gown of yellow silk with a matching cap and delicate caul. The last jewel pinned on, Aunt Nan sat in a chair, waiting to be escorted to her husband. She seemed more despondent than earlier that day. When her aunt sent the other woman for her baby daughter, Kate took the opportunity to speak to her.

  “Why so glum, my aunt?”

  Aunt Nan attempted a smile that soon disappeared and left no trace. “Am I? I’d better shake myself out from this doleful mood.” She put her hand on the swell of her belly. “I have much to be thankful for, yet I cannot stop thinking that my child here is the only reason they do not get rid of me as they did Katherine.” She swallowed. “Blame it on my lonely nights, but I find myself beset by ghosts—too many ghosts—and now Katherine of Aragon joins them.”

  She sat there with a knuckle to her mouth. “Fool that I am, I could not sleep last night t
hinking how Thomas More pitied me before his death, saying my head would follow his one day, and dance a like dance. And how the mad Nun of Barton predicted I would meet my death by fire.”

  Kate gasped. “The fire in your bedchamber?” With all the candles placed a safe distance from the bed, it was still a great mystery how the fire had started.

  Aunt Nan nodded. “Aye. I told you, Kate, that I believe it was done deliberately, as was the killing of my little Purkoy. His eyes. I cannot forget them—he died in agony.”

  “Who would do something so terrible?” How trusting Purkoy had been—save for mice and cats, he had welcomed all with friendliness. Kate shivered.

  Aunt Nan lifted her head. “Our uncle Norfolk, Cromwell, one of those who still regard me as the King’s concubine—who knows, Kate?”

  The piping voice of a child drew their attention to the door. Aunt Nan smiled and stood. Anne Shelton, governess to Princess Elizabeth and aunt to both the Queen and Kate, carried the little princess. The Queen held out her arms. “Pray, give my child to me.”

  Lady Shelton considered the Queen so coldly Kate winced. Madge’s mother would not—or could not—forgive the Queen for encouraging Madge’s dalliance with the King. “The Lady Princess is heavy, Your Grace. I beg of you to sit down before taking her.”

  Aunt Nan sighed and returned to her vacated seat. “If I must.” Grimacing, she smoothed down her dress. “Everyone fusses over me too much.” She held out her arms again. “Give my girl to me.”

  The child on her lap, Aunt Nan bent and kissed her. She was dressed in the same yellow silk as her mother, with her golden red hair held up by a silk cap that matched her gown. Bess pointed to her mother’s cap. “Like mine, Mama.” She gestured to her dress and her mother’s. “’Ellow.” She peered behind her mother at the wall tapestry of Amazon women riding into battle. “Sun ’ellow, too.”