Read Online The Tapestry by Nancy Bilyeau - Free Book Online Page A

plate at a banquet.
    If we’d been the daughters of first sons—such as Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, or my cousin Elizabeth Stafford, Duchess of Norfolk—there would have been marriage by the age of sixteen and wealth and servants and vast homes to run. Failing that, we were still expected to secure noble marriages, but the path was fraught with uncertainty. The best position to be in to find a husband was royal service—maid of honor to a queen or a queen’s daughter. My mother had trained me for years for such a position, but I’d lasted a single day. I was infinitely better suited for the cloister than for the court.
    Now it was Catherine’s turn. I always felt that she could be me . . . but without the benefit of being raised by my particular parents, a vigilant mother and an honorable father. She was raised carelessly, begrudgingly, until her prettiness vaulted her from the ranks of lesser relations to court service. Despite her disadvantages, Catherine was much more agreeable than I, so compliant a girl that I’d warned her at Howard House about the dangers to her virtue from immoral men, while she giggled behind her hands.
    But Catherine could be stubborn, too, as she was earlier—insisting that I share her room during my brief stay at court. She made her case for it while Culpepper listened silently.
    “I have friends who brought me here from Dartford, they are waiting for word from me this minute,” I protested.
    “But the commission from the king, you do not know when he will wish to discuss it with you,” Catherine pointed out. “It might not take place at the dinner tomorrow. Are your friends prepared to wait for days, perhaps a week?”
    This was indeed a problem. How frustrating . If only I knew what King Henry wanted from me, and when and how I should prepare myself, I could make arrangements and notify Agatha and John Gwinn. However, monarchs did not share their plans. It was laughable to suggest that he’d care if a party of commoners from Dartford were inconvenienced by his whim.
    There was also the matter of the threat to my life. How could I wander the galleries and chambers of Whitehall with the page in the same palace, possibly tracking me?
    As if reading my mind, Culpepper made an excuse to speak to me privately about the next day’s dinner. Once we were in the passageway and out of earshot of Catherine, he said, “I wish I could make report to you of the page having been identified and taken into custody, but alas, that’s not the case.”
    “Why not?” My heart started its quick, tight beat.
    “I took your description to the master of pages and he says not one man who was unaccounted for during the time matches your description. There aren’t many pages with beards—many of them are not much more than boys—so it didn’t take him long to ask a few questions. The master of pages said it’s impossible.”
    “Whether or not it’s impossible, it happened,” I said. “This man exists. And what’s to prevent him from trying to hurt me again?”
    Culpepper took a step closer to me, his voice dropping even lower. “Until we have an answer, this is the safest place for you, with Mistress Howard. She has a maidservant with her, and Richard stands guard outside.”
    I wasn’t sure. “The page possesses cunning and strength.”
    Culpepper said reassuringly, “As long as you stay close to me or to her, you are safe.” His lips tightened. “No man would dare disturb Catherine Howard.”
    Something about the way he said that struck me as odd. Yet I had to admit that his proposal made sense. As much as I disliked the idea of sleeping in the palace of Whitehall, it was better than riding back and forth from the Gwinns’ in Southwark, exposing myself—and my friends—to danger.
    This was an intolerable situation. I had to find out who the page was and what guided his violence. Perhaps the problem was that Culpepper had not seen him with his own eyes, and so he shared a