Falling For Henry (21 page)

20
William

IT WAS JUST before dawn on Monday morning when William opened the door of the shed and contemplated its inhabitant. The cub's wail of desperation confirmed his fears. He knew the cub was very hungry and quickly put down a store of food. Yesterday's festivities had gone on for so long with so many people about that he had not been able to safely attend to the poor creature.

“There, there,” William said, stroking its back, then slapping at his arm as a couple of fleas hopped towards him from the spiky gray fur. “You were cooped up all day yesterday and I know it isn't easy.” He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the place. The straw here was rank and there was no way to clean it without drawing attention to the occupant.

“I'd rather be tied to a tree and pelted with hazelnuts than abide in this stinking shed,” muttered William.

Although the cub didn't know what was said, the calm, hopeful tone of William's words was relaxing. It ate quickly, but as soon as the food was gone, another kind of hunger set in, a hunger for fresh air and sunshine. Another desolate wail escaped from its throat. William wondered if he had done the right thing in taking the cub out of the wild. When he'd found it in the marsh, he'd been off on one of his wanders, lonely for his family and trying to think of a plan to help his father. The cub had looked so piteous that William had acted impulsively, scooping it up in his jacket and conducting what he'd envisioned to be a heroic rescue. But now he wondered what he had rescued the cub for. Surely a quick death would have been preferable to an agonizing imprisonment here.

“What we need to do,” he began, softly, “is find you another place to live. Somewhere closer to the forest, so you'll have some opportunity to learn to hunt. Unless you can fend for yourself, life will be terribly difficult for you.”
But finding you another place
, he thought,
will be terribly difficult for me
.

The food was now gone and the cub nosed around half-heartedly in case something had been missed, but only half-heartedly.

“I suppose we have to try,” William said, giving the cub one last pat. An idea rose in his mind that seemed plausible. Not perfect but it had possibilities. “There's another place on the other side of the chapel and it would give you a little more room,” he said. “Plus it's closer to the woods, and we could plan some hunting when you're ready. Better than only bread for a growing animal. Sound all right to you?”

Able to translate the excitement in William's voice, the cub stood in anticipation.

William produced a length of rope that he tied securely about the cub's neck. “You'll need to wear this, for if you got away on me now, the dogs would have you for sure. Stay close, and be as quiet as you can.”

As they left the hut, the young man took a deep breath. How good it was to breathe the apple-scented air, to stand in dawn's first light. He said a quiet prayer of thanks and then led his charge down the path and up the road, steering it away from the water. The animal sniffed, pulling eagerly toward the river where there would be minnows in the shallows and water birds. But William was insistent.

“This way,” he said. “Come on, quickly now, before we're discovered.”

They crossed a great garden, moving stealthily among the rows of fruit trees and old raspberry canes that seemed to shimmer in the early morning mist.

“Almost there, lad,” said William. “Just a little further.”

But it was a long time before they reached their destination, and the cub had to limp a great distance along a wide road with stones that William knew were bruising the tender pads of its feet. It was with relief that they turned through a green meadow where the going was gentler. At last they stood in front of a rickety shed, a door leading from one side to an outdoor area that was fenced from all angles.

“An old chicken coop,” said William, as if the animal could understand, guiding it around to the front where a crooked door hung from rusty hinges. The ancient wood had been punished by rain and sun, and there was little sign of the paint that had once transformed the slats from brown to white. The walls were no doubt standing because the nails had been hammered and then flattened inside to prevent removal, giving them extra strength. His father had taught him all about doornails. He smiled again, thinking of Mary's phrase,
dead as a doornail
, and suddenly understanding the analogy. The nails, bent out of shape, could never be used again, and so were fully and completely dead.

“There used to be a farm here before it burned with the forest,” he explained to the cub. “All that's left is this coop but it'll do for our purposes. You'll have an indoor area for shelter, in case someone comes, and an outdoor spot where you can catch the breeze. When you're stronger, the woods aren't far and, in a few days, perhaps we can try them out. I hope you are in agreement?”

The cub responded to the lilt of William's words and gratefully dragged itself inside the coop and lay down on the straw, a long sigh escaping as William slipped the rope from its neck.

“That's it, make yourself at home!” he said, busying himself with pouring water from his flask into a dish that stood in a length of thin sunlight. The cub wrinkled its nose at the acrid smell of bird flesh that wafted up from long ago, and then closed its eyes.

William stood for a moment, watching the cub sleep. It was a miracle it had survived, and it would be another miracle if it learned to hunt and take care of itself, but William knew that a life in captivity was no life at all for one such as this. Was no life for anyone, really. He thought of his father, curled up on a pallet of straw, or perhaps without comfort on a hard wooden frame, shivering in the damp. A wave of helplessness washed over him.

“I'm trying,” he muttered brokenly to himself. “I'm trying as hard as I can.”

Turning, he went out of the coop and closed the door behind him, locking it from the outside with a wooden latch. Then he started back toward the castle, rubbing at hot tears that burned his cheeks. Crying was no use. If only he were a powerful man with influence. Waiting for Henry to intercede on Father's behalf was like waiting for a miracle.

“But miracles do happen,” William whispered, brushing the sandy hair from his eyes and trying to bolster his courage. “Miracles do happen, and, God willing, they might happen here.”

21
The friendship

DAYS COASTED BY on the ragged October wind whose chill kept Kate indoors much of the time. She was able to steal away after Chapel, on occasion, to see the wolf cub, but a trip to the stables, considerably farther, did not easily materialize. Her thoughts of home seemed windblown as well—and she sank deeper and deeper into the richness of living each day in the moment.

To everything there is a season,
she thought one day as she picked at her sewing—or were these Katherine's thoughts?
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven
. She remembered with sudden clarity her father saying these lines, the rich timbre of his voice, his smiling eyes.
Dad
, she thought, with a longing that she'd nearly forgotten, a surge of memories threatening to break free. And then, as one might close a book, she stopped the tide, turned her back on the ocean of thoughts in which she knew she'd drown. Reaching for the sewing basket, she deliberated:
Which red would be best
…

Henry was compulsively busy, hawking, hunting, or working on various activities within the palace with which he insisted Kate assist him. It was clear that everyone admired the Prince, and, wherever he went, praise for his accomplishments rang loud and long.
No wonder,
thought Kate, in one of her few quiet moments,
that he thought so much of himself. Everyone else so obviously does, or has to say so.

Yet, indeed, there was much for Henry to be proud of. He did have a bit of a temper, but if Kate were careful, she could manage to let sleeping dogs lie. Henry was creative and inventive, and while Kate doubted his experiments with mechanics would lead to the motor car, she was sure his designs for innovative plumbing were quite functional. He had plans for new weapons, and his passion for astronomy was admirable, along with elaborate maps he had devised of heaven and earth. The Prince confided one day to Kate that even though Martin Waldseemuller had recently published a new world map, naming in honor of Amerigo Vespucci the continent of America, his own maps would one day grace the world stage.

Kate wondered at her own lack of skills. What had she been doing all these years? Skipping school came first to mind, but she concluded that her whole life had seemed bent on avoidance. Had she really been pushing life away, as Willow had accused, securing herself where she imagined nothing could touch her? There seemed to be so much to learn, and time, as Henry said, waited for no one.

The desire to see Willow again had diminished into a faint hope that was easy to set aside. Kate wondered occasionally about how things were back home, but her memories had become as thin as the winter sunlight that left faint warmth on her skin. Indeed, it was truly as if this had always been her real life, and that other life the dream.

She was aware of time passing, but complacent. In the few stolen moments when she encountered William at the side of the wolf cub, she enjoyed hearing his stories of rural life, piecing together information about life outside the palace, the details of which even Katherine was ignorant. William knew a great deal about sheep farming and Kate asked many questions. In the spring, it was he who had cared for any orphan lambs on the family farm. He would at first tempt them with a moistened cloth, then slowly lower the cloth to the surface of a pail of milk so that they would learn how to drink. When the lambs were ten days old, he would introduce them to tender grains.

“You should see them jump,” he laughed one day, speaking of the young lambs. “They run forward, then leap into the air with such lightness of being. At times I used to think them airborne creatures, just waiting for the right wind to set them on their course. Would that we all had such joy in motion.”

“Don't you find it hard to butcher them, when the time comes?” asked Kate.

“No,” said William, without a moment's hesitation. “They have had what is, for them, a good life. No matter how long it lasts. That is the best any of us can wish for—to make use of the time we have. To fill our place. To create joy for others. That is our calling.”

Kate, at the time, disregarded his words, but later they returned to her again and again.
To create joy for others
. A different take on life than the idea of simply reaching for joy. Perhaps a richer take, she thought, but more difficult. How could she create something for others when she had known so little of it herself?

Yet Henry seemed to be working hard to even the score. He brought her poems and many little notes expressing his delight with her, each visit seeming even more pleasant than the last. Days passed, then weeks. Occasionally Kate recollected how Henry had cuffed the young page, and she soon had other similar incidents to compare, but these thoughts were not entertained for long. Henry did have a bad temper but you just had to stay on his good side, and Kate got quite competent at doing just that.

Kate wondered vaguely one Saturday, if it was still Saturday at 2 PM back home, or if it was already into November, as it was here. Whenever she asked exactly what day it was, Doña Elvira snapped that it was the day after yesterday and that Kate should start paying attention. She knew with some certainty that she had been here over a month, that the year was 1507, and that fall had shifted fully into winter with weather dark and depressing. The passage of time was less important, somehow, when one was living each day for its best moments.

Her constant comfort was the hours she spent in the library on the Queen's side, a room unused by most of the palace but which contained a long shelf of books—more books in one place than Kate had seen anywhere else here in Tudor times. Many of the books contained religious content written in an English she found difficult to comprehend, but the inscriptions were fascinating.
To my Little Jewel, from Grandmother Neville
;
This book I give to my Treasured Daughter; To my Little Niece, Ever yours, Uncle Richard.
In contrast to the latter note, she found a book of love poems inscribed
To my Own Dear Darling, Your Richard
. Were these Richards one and the same? Had King Richard ever been romantically inclined toward his youthful niece? Yuck, thought Kate. That's not even legal! Then there were other books that read,
To an Intelligent Reader, Your Faithful Servant, Sanctorius
;
To my own dear Wife; To my Dear Daughter-In-Law, with kind regards, Lady Margaret
. This latter was a glossy collection of Bible verses in Latin alongside their English translations. Another title given to Elizabeth from her mother-in-law and lavishly illustrated was a
Book of Hours
, published in 1494. Like many of the books on the shelf, it contained tiny annotations along the inside margins—the sign of a studious reader, thought Kate. Henry's mother was more than just a pretty face. She'd clearly had an intellect to be reckoned with.

Kate's favorite titles turned out to be a series of stories about Robin Hood, whom she gathered must have been a real fellow and a hero even in this century. These were boldly illustrated with crude black-and-white prints, although some included very complicated cross-hatching, where sections were shaded in with numerous fine lines. The stories were refreshing, taking her out of the day-to-day world, if only temporarily.

“I hope Mother is working with Charlotte on her sums,” William said one evening as they shared a companionable hour in the library. He had begun to join Kate there when the days began to shorten, and Kate sensed in him a loneliness that grew with each passing week.