Cat's Tale

by Bettie Sharpe

  I woke several hours later. The fire had died and there was no light but the moon and the stars. I was human again. And naked. And curled in Julian’s arms.

  Chapter Five: The Friends

  Though I have never believed in a power higher than myself, nor in gods who inhabit a heaven above the stars, that night—that moment—I prayed. I prayed that Julian would not wake as I moved against him, dragging my lips across his jaw, easing my hands beneath his tunic. Awake there would be questions and explanations. Asleep, it was just we two. Two bodies moving together, finding solace in the darkness. Taking refuge from the cold.

  His hands moved on my skin, clumsy and unknowing. He found my cheek. I leaned in to his somnolent caress. I turned my head to place a kiss in his open palm before taking his hand in two of mine and pressing it over my pounding heart.

  His hand moved lower, caressing my breast, skimming my ribs to clutch at my hips and draw me firmly against him. His hardened sex pressed against my belly. I silenced a moan, imagining the feel of that prodigious member stretching me, filling me until there was no room left for lust or longing. Just him.

  I held down laughter at the memory of my night with Galfridus. Of how he had transformed himself into so poor an imitation of this lovely, longed-for form. And what a fool I had been to fall for it.

  Between our bodies, my hands found him, freed him. Teased him. Took him. I stroked him to release, and he never woke though his eyes moved about beneath his lids. I wondered what dreams he entertained in the darkness of his mind. What seductive sprites of imagination touched his body in my stead?

  I hated them, almost, my incorporeal rivals. I should have enjoyed the power my hands had to rouse his flesh, but instead I wondered if he dreamt of me. I wanted him to speak my name but he did not make a sound. Not even a moan.

  Disgusted with myself, my soft headedness—my soft heartedness—I rolled from beneath the blanket and went to bathe in the cold, clear stream beyond our camp. As I washed, the sun began to rise. Dawn drowned out the stars and replaced the moonlight, birthing day from night.

  And in that instant of transformation, I felt myself changing, bending and bowing into my feline form. Within moments, I was a cat again, up to my eyebrows in ice-cold water.

  I yowled as I leapt out of the stream to stand on the bank—wet, pathetic and shaking. The cold air closed on my shivering body like a vise. I had to get warm. I ran down the trail and burrowed under Julian’s blanket, pressing my cold little body against the warm wall of his chest.

  “Yow!” Julian lurched awake, shoving me away. I went tumbling through the dirt.

  “Cat!” he shouted, but the anger fell from his face when he saw me sitting before the ashes of last night’s fire—spindly, pathetic and soaked to the skin.

  He swooped me up in the blanket and held me against his chest. “What happened to you?” he said.

  “I fell in the stream.”

  “Really?” He laughed once, and I fought the urge to claw him. “I thought cats were supposed to be graceful.”

  “And I thought grown men weren’t supposed to moan in their sleep,” I lied.

  He blushed, no doubt remembering the nature of his dreams.

  “Let us bargain. I won’t mention your little embarrassment if you don’t mention mine.”

  “Deal,” he said.

  He put me down in front of the fire pit, and set about rekindling the embers. Soon enough, he had the fire burning merrily, and I had the unenviable task of licking the dirt, mud and leaves from my beautiful coat as it dried.

  While I groomed, Julian made us a breakfast of sausages, bread and cheese. We shared it in uncomfortable silence, not quite looking at each other.

  “I-uh, I’m sorry I laughed about you falling into the creek.”

  “And I—” The apology stuck in my throat. I don’t think I’d ever uttered one before. “I’m sorry I mocked you for your dream last night. It was none of my business.”

  “No,” he said. “And please consider it none of your business should it happen again.”

  “You expect it to happen again?”

  He looked away. “This was not the first time I’ve had that dream—though it has never been so vivid before.”

  “You have the same dream often?” I was curious now. “About the same woman?” Then an uncomfortable possibility presented itself. “It is a woman, isn’t it?”

  “Yes! Of course.” I watched the faint pink of his blush spread beneath his tanned skin. “It’s daft. I saw her once—once!—and all these years later, I still dream of her.”

  “She must have been very beautiful.”

  “The most beautiful.” His voice grew soft. “The most beautiful woman in the land.”

  My body began to rumble with a warm purr. “You mean Lady Catriona, the late king’s consort?”

  “None other.” He laughed. “What kind of fool am I? She’s probably cunning and haughty, just as Lady Hildithe said she was.”

  “What?” I jumped to my feet. “You know Hildithe?”

  He blushed harder. “I shouldn’t have said anything. A gentleman does not discuss the ladies of his acquaintance.”

  “A gentleman does not discuss ladies with other people,” I said. “I am a cat. You may confide in me.”

  He looked hesitant.

  “If I am to help you, you should be honest with me. What if I get you a title, and this Lady Hildithe cries fraud because she knows you are a miller’s son?”

  “Oh,” he said. “I had not thought of that. Very well. Lady Hildithe wanted something of me—something I would not give.”

  “Am I correct in guessing she wanted more than your company?”

  “She wanted me to entrap the Lady Catriona into a public liaison. She said the lady was deceitful and vain, that she made a mockery of fidelity and a cuckold of our king.”

  “Yet you refused?”

  “Of course.” He crossed his arms. “I recognize envy when I see it. Though the lady may have extravagant taste in clothing, there has never been so much as a whisper about her virtue. Lady Hildithe said it was because Lady Catriona was careful in her dalliances, but I believe Hildithe saw her mistress as a rival and meant to destroy her.”

  “You never thought it might be true?”

  He shook his head. “Never.”

  Oh, what a pretty pedestal Julian had put me on. He thought I was an honest woman, but had I the chance to be with him, I would have tangled myself in Hildithe’s trap like a hare in a snare. And even if Hildithe hadn’t succeeded in exposing me, I would have made Julian my personal plaything and had him a dozen times a day. I would have made him love me, and then cast him aside when someone better came along.

  I thought of Lyell, of the true heart I’d had and tossed away. Much as it shamed me to admit it, Julian was lucky he hadn’t met me. I would have broken his heart, just as I’d broken Lyell’s—not from coldness or from cruelty, but from carelessness, which was the harshest reason of them all.

  “You should have demanded gifts from Hildithe. Money, jewels.”

  “What!” He sounded shocked. “That would have made me a whore.”

  “I did not say you need sleep with anyone—just let them believe you might be persuaded to do so. Gifts are always nice to have. Certainly it would have given you funds with which to support yourself after your father left the mill to your oafish brothers.”

  He rolled his eyes heavenward. “Do you have any morals? Any at all?”

  “Not that I know of.” Had I been human, I would have softened the statement with a flirtatious smile and he would have thought I was joking. Playing the naughty girl when at heart I was innocent and good.

  As it was, Julian looked rather aghast until understanding dawned. “Oh, but you are a cat. I should not expect human virtues of you.”

  His words were unexpectedly hurtful. What would he think of me when I got my rightful shape back? He would knock me from my pedestal. He would think me a monster.

  I
f I were careful, he never need know that the Cat and Lady Catriona were one in the same. I could play the innocent girl for him, just as I had for the king.

  But I did not want to play the innocent. Not with Julian. I’d rather enjoyed our talks thus far—enjoyed that he confided in me what he had told no one else. And even though many of our conversations consisted of his being shocked at my lack of moral fiber, I had been my true self with him and it felt…good.

  Upon arrival in the city, we went straightaway to the Bookseller’s Alley near the university. The alley is dark and crooked, with a damp, dusty smell present nowhere else in the city. There are no shops there but bookshops. The street vendors do not hawk pasties or prostitutes as they do in the rest of the city, but instead sell pamphlets, lewd woodcuts and sundry other materials set to cheap paper.

  Wanting to look as though I knew what I was doing, I chose a shop at random. “That one,” I said. Dear, trusting Julian walked right to it and opened the door for me.

  I chose well, for the bookseller was a bespectacled old man with a face as crooked as the alley outside, and a clear fondness for cats. The two lounging on old pillows beside his stove puffed up like angry dandelions when I entered. It took nothing more threatening than a stomp on my part to send them fleeing to the far corners of the shop. Thereafter, I settled myself on the warm pillows they had so recently vacated, content to play the mute pet while Julian did the bargaining.

  “Philosophers,” the bookseller said, taking up the book Julian had pushed across the counter. “There isn’t much market for them these days. Histories, though—those will make a pretty profit. Twelve coppers.”

  “Twelve coppers!” Julian sputtered. “Look at the leather binding, the illumination, the gold embossing on the cover.”

  The old man leafed through the parchment pages with age-gnarled fingers. “Right you are. Quite lovely. Fourteen coppers.”

  “Excellent, then.” Julian offered his hand. “Fourteen coppers.”

  “Are you mad!” I leapt onto the counter before the two men could clasp hands and seal the deal.

  “It talks!” The bookseller clutched at his heart.

  “Yes, she does,” I said. “And she knows a bad bargain when she hears one. We’ll take a gold for that book, and not a penny less.”

  The old man recovered. “You may be able to talk, cat, but you are a poor bargainer. Fourteen coppers.”

  “You may be able to bargain, old man, but you are a terrible liar. I saw your eyes widen at the bookplate. The crest is Lord Hrotha’s, and the numbers beneath indicate it is one of a set. The man is an inveterate collector. You know he will pay dearly to have it back.”

  “I—yes.” The old man looked suddenly tired.

  “One gold, then, or we shall go elsewhere.”

  The bookseller offered me his hand and I placed my paw within it. “Well played, Mistress Cat.”

  “Thank you, Master Bookseller.”

  Julian left the bookseller’s with the gold coin clutched in his fist, and a hundred questions in his heart. “How did you know that? About the crest, I mean.”

  “I didn’t,” said I. “I made it up. There is no Lord Hrotha.”

  “So you cheated him.”

  “As he would have cheated us. The book is worth a gold coin on its own. My lie simply convinced him he might get considerably more than that for it.” I paused. “As falsehoods go, I believe mine was particularly well crafted and well acted.”

  “Lying makes me uneasy,” Julian said. “What is to happen when the old man finds out?”

  A young man with a crooked face stepped into our path. “Funny you should ask that, for I have the answer.” Though his clothes were tatty, they had the style of a gentleman’s and he wore a rust-pitted sword at his waist.

  I looked about. The alley had suddenly gone empty. A pair of shutters slammed closed somewhere above.

  “What happens,” the young man said, “is the bookseller sends his nephew round to retrieve his gold coin and the ear of the man who cheated him.”

  I imagined Julian missing an ear. It was too great a tragedy to be borne. I launched myself at the bookseller’s nephew only to be batted away by the back of his hand.

  “Cat!” Julian shouted.

  The blow momentarily shot stars through my vision, but with true feline grace, I managed to twist in midair and land upon my feet in time to see the bookseller’s nephew reach for his rust-pitted sword.

  I slammed my eyes shut, unwilling to see what would happen next.

  A high-pitched scream filled the alley.

  “Julian!” Only one kind of injury could wring so shrill a scream from a man’s throat—an injury Julian had sworn he was too honorable to ever inflict. Pity the bookseller’s nephew hadn’t the same set of scruples. Oh, my poor Julian.

  “Open your eyes, Cat.” Julian’s voice was low and calm. He didn’t sound as though he was in pain.

  I opened one eye. The bookseller’s nephew lay on the ground beside his rust-pitted sword, his hands clutching his privates. Julian stood over him, rubbing his knuckles.

  “You punched low,” I said, proud and slightly dumbstruck.

  “He hit you.” His voice was a protective growl. Before I could spend more than a moment enjoying his concern for me, he turned and pinned me with a glare. “Next time, leave the full-sized opponents to me.”

  “But I thought—”

  “That I am too pretty to hold my own in a fight?”

  That was it exactly, but there was no graceful way to tell him. I had not thought he could fight. Nor that he was even aware of his own good looks. He did not seem the least bit vain of them.

  “I thought you were too honorable,” I lied.

  Julian looked away, embarrassed. “He had a sword. I was unarmed. It was hardly a fair fight.”

  “Of course.” I laughed. “You punched low. Next I will teach you to tell a convincing lie. The trick is to make sure your countenance reflects the truth you wish to convey.”

  “But if you’re lying, it isn’t the truth.”

  I winked. “If you are a good enough liar, the truth is whatever you say it is.”

  “Cat.” He shook his head. “Come on.” He picked me up. “Let’s go get your stupid boots.”

  At my instruction, Julian walked to the finest cordwainer on Clothier’s Lane. The bell jingled above the door as we entered, calling forth a thin, tidy man from the curtained hall at the back of the shop.

  He looked us over from tip to toe and delivered the customary “Good afternoon. May I help you?” in decidedly chill tones.

  “Yes.” Julian produced the bookseller’s gold coin from inside his tunic. The boot maker’s expression warmed considerably. “I’d like a pair of boots,” Julian said.

  “Certainly, sir—”

  “For my cat.”

  The cordwainer covered his mouth with a nicked, knob-fingered hand. “Oh, my. One of those.”

  In the end, I had my boots. The boot maker found a pair in soft red leather that had been commissioned to fit a doll belonging to the cosseted daughter of a local lord. The improvident parent had spent himself into the poorhouse before the craftsman could be paid, leaving the tiny shoes to sit in the shop’s window these many months, an example, in miniature, of the cordwainer’s noble craft.

  It took only a few alterations and a brisk polishing to fit the boots to my satisfaction. When I stood upon two legs and thanked the man for his service, he wavered on his feet, gone pale from the shock.

  “What now, Cat?” Julian said after we had left the shop. “How will you use those boots of yours to make my fortune?”

  “First, we must find an inn,” I said. “Then you shall go to sleep whilst I go about my business.”

  “What manner of business?”

  “Secret cat business.”

  “You mean you shall lie, cheat or steal.”

  “Perhaps all three. Does it bother you?”

  “A little.” He straightened and steeled
his expression into something hard and hungry, and completely unlike him. “But where has honesty gotten me? I want what you promised me, a title and respect. I want the Lady Catriona.”

  His words warmed my wicked heart. Had I worn my human face, I might have betrayed myself with a sly, closemouthed smile. Fortunately, I was a cat. Such a smile was my most natural affect. “You are still thinking of your dream last night.”

  “I am thinking I am a madman to lust for a woman I cannot have and to listen to a talking cat.”

  “I should like to think,” I said, “that I am something more to you than just a talking cat. I listened to your confidences. I saved you from your brothers.”

  “I saved you from the bookseller’s nephew.”

  “We have faced adversity together. Perhaps that makes us friends?”

  Julian’s handsome face grew serious, his dark, straight brows drawing together, his square jaw growing tense with thought. And then the tension gave way to a smile. “I suppose it does, Cat. Why else should I put up with you?”

  “Greed? Ambition? Admiration?”

  “No.” He shook his head, still smiling. “Definitely friendship.”

  Would you believe his words made my heart beat fast? Had I my human cheeks, they would have been fetchingly pink. I’d never had a friend before—not one I could trust to watch out for me. Not one who would not stab me when my back was turned. It made me feel as warmed as Julian’s strong arms around me, and as pleased as if an army of kings had fallen, love-struck, at my dainty feet.

  Chapter Six: The Princess

  That night I went to the palace and lurked about the grounds. The place had got on just fine in my absence. No one wept or moaned that they missed me, or even wondered where I had gone. It appeared that Galfridus had told them I’d moved to the country to continue my mourning in peace, and none had bothered to disbelieve him.