Chapter Nineteen #2
Bessie hides her smirk in Richard’s shoulder as the room continues to laugh and drink.
One of the courtiers stands up, taking a big gulp from his cup.
“Someone else go now. And no more talk of getting your jollies off in the great hall. It was fun the first three times, but now it’s just repetitive. ”
A half hour later, our group is well on our way to Tipsyville, if they’re not residents there already. We’re gearing up for a round of hide-and-spy, which is apparently what they call hide-and-seek here.
Lady Wessex rolls her eyes. “We are in a palace. This game could take hours, if not days.”
“Don’t go too far, then,” I suggest. “And if you want to hide in pairs, you can.” I give Bessie a pointed look. She nods in anticipation and grabs Richard’s hand, pulling him off to “hide.”
“The saltiest person is the one to count. That’s you, Lady Wessex.”
She half smiles, half hisses at me as she covers her eyes and starts to count.
Everyone goes running from the room in opposite directions, most stumbling and laughing along the way.
I take my time, walking down a hall as I look for a decent spot when a door I never noticed before opens beside me.
I carefully steal a glance inside. The second I do, I’m pulled in all the way and the door shuts behind me.
I’m about to start swinging when my abductor turns to lean back on the closed door—Simon.
“Barely any effort and you already happened upon my hiding space.” His voice is playful, his eyes are smiling, but he looks tired, too.
I move closer to him and touch my cheek to his hand. “Hello,” I say, feeling the beginning of scruff beneath my fingers.
“Hello,” he answers softly.
I let my hand drop from his face and look behind me, seeing that we’re actually at the top of a stairwell and not in a closet, as I assumed. It’s a jarring realization. “Where are we?” I ask.
Simon walks up behind me, and I lean my head back on his shoulder as he wraps his arms around my waist. “It’s a stairwell that leads to a lower room that has a hall leading to the kitchens. It’s how the servants get up and down to deliver your meals without walking through the entire palace.”
I slip out of his grip, moving to the top of the landing to peek down. It’s quiet and dark. Probably out of bounds from hide-and-spy. I doubt anyone would be brave enough to look for us if we ventured down.
“Should we stay or go?” I ask.
Simon only pauses for a moment. “We should go.”
I smile, awash with a pleasant kind of nerves as I head into the darkness and down the steps.
I hear Simon behind me as we move farther and farther away from the party, until finally we’re in an empty room with a long wooden table.
The door is shut, and only faint moonlight is dripping in through the windows.
I walk around the rectangular table, moving my fingers along the surface, when Simon suddenly speaks.
“I’m to leave court. Tonight.” My stomach drops, but I keep my features neutral as he goes on. “The king is sending me on an urgent errand to London. It shouldn’t take more than a few days. I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye first.”
I nod at the news. The table is between us, with Simon standing on the other side.
“That’s too bad,” I tell him. “I promised Bessie a party every night to celebrate her coming into womanhood. It’s going to be fun.”
“I’ll be sorry to miss it.” He starts to walk around the table, and I stay where I am.
“You should be. I’m going to introduce the court to the finer points of game called beer pong, and it’s a crowd favorite. It would have appealed to your competitive nature.”
He’s on my side of the table, taking slow but steady steps closer.
“It’s not the games that I’ll miss,” he says.
We’re only a couple of feet apart, and he takes my hand to interlock our fingers together.
My stomach swirls, and I don’t want to let go.
I also don’t want him to know how scared I am for him to leave.
I give his hand a reassuring squeeze. “At least we get to see each other now. For a while.”
Simon nods. “It feels unfair. That all we have is a while.” He looks down before going on. “I want you for longer than that.”
His words strike a chord deep in my chest. “A while” might be all we’ll ever have. Whether I stay or I get back home, he’ll be out of reach for me, and the thought forms a painful lump in my throat.
I let go of his hand and turn to sit on the table, my feet dangling a foot above the stone floor. I turn to face him, catching his stormy, quiet eyes. “Tell me something about you that no one else knows.”
He sits beside me and looks ahead. The room is deep in silence when he eventually says, “I’m a very good liar.”
Something sinks in my middle at his words. His face is totally calm.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
His smile is soft as he gazes at me. “I’ve just always been good at lying.
” I don’t know what to think, and he shakes his head at my nervousness.
“The trick of it is, I never, ever lie unless it’s massively important.
I know people think that the more you lie, the better you get at it, but I find it to be the opposite. ”
My breathing levels at his lightened tone. My paranoid brain was ready to shoot me through the roof, but I should have known better. “And what have you ever lied about?”
Simon takes a dramatic breath. “I told my older sister that no man would marry her because she couldn’t cook a meal.
That wasn’t the lie. She really hadn’t cooked before.
But then she tried to do it, so she could prove me wrong.
And when I tasted the raspberry tart she made, I told her it was good, which was the biggest lie of my life. ”
It’s annoying. And adorable.
“That’s what was so massively important that you had to lie?”
“Well, she worked rather hard on it. I was only sick for a few days after, not that anyone was worried. Neville was still alive, so I was very much replaceable at that point.”
“Hey,” I tell him, stealing his hand back. “You’re not replaceable.”
He holds my hand tighter. “Now you tell me something that no one else knows about you.”
If only he was aware of just how loaded that question is.
He’s probably expecting a silly answer. Some mischievous little thing that I did and never told him or anyone about. But what I really want to tell him, what I’m tempted beyond all reason to tell him, is the truth. I want to tell him who I am.
But I can’t.
Can I?
If I tell him the truth, that I’m not Catherine, what will he think? He’ll think that I’ve had too much to drink. That I’m making things up for attention. Or he might believe me.
My mind is racing a million miles a second.
Here in this time—here as Catherine Howard—I keep so much internalized.
A world-changing, life-altering thing happened to me, and Matthias is the only person I can really talk to.
Matthias, who barely lets me through his door.
And then there’s Francis, who would absolutely vampire-stab-me with a wooden stake through the heart if it would resurrect Catherine’s soul.
I know that I have friends here, and I trust them, but I don’t know if I can trust them with this.
When I stop and think of the fact that I may be stuck here for an indefinite amount of time, I’m riddled with questions and plagued with anxiety.
But when I’m with Simon, everything goes quiet.
I can hear myself and I can hear him, and I trust him.
I take a steeling breath. “What if I told you that I’m not who you think I am?”
This is a mistake. I should stop. But I want him to know me. I need him to know me. Simon stays quiet, and I go on.
“You kept telling me that I was different that day I crashed into you in the hallway. That I changed from who I was before. What if there was a reason that I changed?”
His gaze clouds with worry as he inadvertently shifts closer to me. “Did someone hurt you? Did something happen?”
I shake my head and smooth my other hand over his. “Not like that. Something did happen, but I don’t know how to explain it.”
He goes quiet again, until he says, “Try.”
This is it. Heaven help me.
“I’m not Catherine Howard.” I blurt the words out, thinking the planet might explode once I say them.
But nothing happens, and Simon keeps watching me.
So, I go on. “My name is Lily Whitaker, and I was born in the 2000s in Santa Monica, California. That’s in America.
I lived with my mom and my grandma, but now I have my own place.
I’m a PhD candidate in psychology. We have electricity.
I drive a car and have a phone and I’m free to live my life the way I want to because that’s how it is in the future. I’m from the future.”
The words fall out of me in a dizzying tumble. I want to take them back, but I’m also absurdly glad that they’re out. Adrenaline swirls in my gut, and it feels like I’m standing on the edge of a diving board as I wait for Simon to respond.
“You’re from the future?” he asks lightly. He thinks I’m kidding. I still keep talking.
“I was visiting England with my friend Zoe, and we came to Hampton Court Palace. This place is more like a museum in my time. I don’t think anyone even lives in it.
I heard singing, I felt kind of sick, and then I’m pretty sure I fainted.
When I woke up, I was here. In this body.
In Catherine Howard’s body. This isn’t what I really look like.
This isn’t my voice. These aren’t my hands or my face.
None of it is me. And that’s why I’m so different from the Catherine you originally met and remember.
That’s why I was so confused and running and trying to escape the day I bumped into you.
It’s why I asked you to call me Lily. It’s because that’s who I am—Lily. I’m Lily.”
Simon stands up from the table. He’s still looking at me and smiling, but it’s falling little by little. “Is this another drinking game?”
I get up from the table, too. “It’s not a game,” I tell him.
“I know what happens here, in history. I know that Henry will end up having six wives in total. I know that his daughter Elizabeth will be his longest-living heir. And I know that if the old version of history comes true now, then I’m eventually going to be executed for adultery.
That’s what happened when the real Catherine was here.
It might happen to me unless I’m able to change it, but I don’t think I’m doing a very good job. ”
My words sound like an ungraceful prophesy, and I see the shift in Simon’s eyes—the echoes of concern. I don’t know if he believes me, but I do know that he doesn’t fully believe that I’m joking anymore either.
“It’s the truth,” I promise him. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you. Matthias, the king’s astrologer, he knows, and he said I would mess up the timeline if I changed anything drastic. Maybe it was selfish of me to tell you, but I just . . . I want you to know the actual me.”
Silence surrounds us, squeezing tight against our ribs until we hear voices near the door at the top of the stairwell. My heart is hammering at light speed. The air feels static and frail between us, like I could snap it in two if I reached out and grabbed it.
“We can’t be found together,” Simon says, urging me back toward the stairs. “Go up and tell them that you’re alone. Say that you’re tired of hiding and then everyone will follow you.”
I latch onto the edge of his sleeves, unwilling to go. “What about everything I just said? Do you think I’m lying?”
He looks into my eyes, and I can see the chaos behind them, even as they never falter. “I don’t think that you’re lying.”
I’m so stunned, I could fall over. “Why not?” I whisper. I might cry. The tears are there, but I don’t let them loose. I need to focus on whatever it is that Simon is about to say.
“Because the one thing I believe in is you.”
He believes me. The realization is mind-blowing, and I can’t keep in my euphoric laugh as I kiss him. I don’t mean to cry, but my cheeks are wet as I rest my forehead against his. “Thank you,” I murmur. “I’ll see you in a few days. When you get back.”
He kisses me again, and I don’t know how, but I step out of his arms and dash up the stairs. I want to stay with him so desperately that each step up and forward is physically painful. But even so, I feel a strength bursting through me so powerfully that I may come apart at the seams.
When I emerge out the door, I end up face-to-face with Lady Wessex. “Well, it took you long enough,” I tell her with a smile, wiping under my eyes. “I was beginning to think you all went back to the party without me.”
“If only we could,” she says with her affectionate meanness.
We make our way back into my sitting room, where everyone is lounging and drinking once again. “What should we play next?” I ask.
Just then, Bessie and Richard stumble out from a side room, looking deliriously happy with their clothes noticeably off-center. Laughter and claps follow in their wake as they join us, but everything goes quiet when my sitting room doors suddenly burst open.
“His Majesty, the king!”
It’s dead silent as Henry walks in. His limp is more dominant. His eyes are icy. When his gaze finds mine, it feels like the floor has fallen out from beneath me and my breath get lodged in my throat.
“Hello, my love,” he says through a smirk. “Have you missed me?”