Theo finally lies down again, and I keep my voice even as I turn back to Francis. “I get that you’re upset, but you need to leave now.”
“I will not go!” he whisper-yells, moving frighteningly close to my face. “I will have the truth! Where is she?”
Something inside me snaps. Maybe it’s his aggression breathing down on me. Or maybe it’s the spiced wine that I drank at the revels. Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m so damn tired of lying that if I do it one more time, I’ll scream and rip my hair out.
I move in closer to Francis’s looming form. I glare back at him, matching his ire with plenty of my own. “I. Don’t. Know.” I emphasize each truthful word with approximately zero fucks.
Francis leans back with a disbelieving tremor. “You admit it, then? You took her?”
I come close to laughing. “I didn’t take her. All I know is that I fell or fainted, and when I woke up, I was Catherine Howard. I’m from the future, and trust me, if I could bring her back and be home again, I’d do it in a second.”
I watch as Francis starts to breathe hard. His eyes are wide. His neck muscles are tense. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s in the early stages of a panic attack. I wait for a telltale verbal cue.
“You’ve gone mad,” he mutters.
And there it is. I should try to soothe him, but I just don’t have it in me. I sit down on the cold stone floor, pulling my knees into my chest. “Maybe we both have,” I tell him.
He stays where he is for several seconds until he slowly joins me on the floor, sitting down across from me. He looks at me for a long time. “What happens to Catherine?” he eventually asks, his voice soft. “If you’re from the future, then what happens to her.”
I take a moment before I answer. “She’s killed. Henry has her executed. He executes you, too.”
His stunned eyes flick open wider at my admission. They stay with me until he turns to stare at the fire in the hearth. “So, in your future... Catherine is dead. Were she and the king married for many years?”
I just told him he was going to be murdered, but he’s still thinking only of Catherine. I hesitate again, wondering if I should cushion this for him. Ultimately, I decide to continue with the truth. “No, they’re not married for long at all. She dies young.”
Francis pushes both hands into his hair. He grips it so tight, I’m worried that he’ll hurt himself. I’m about to stop him when he suddenly stands, pacing the space between us like a horse penned in too tight. “I won’t let this happen. She and I are meant to be together. You need to bring her back. Bring Catherine back, and she and I will run away.”
His tone is frantic. I keep mine steady. “You think Henry and his men wouldn’t find you?”
“I don’t care!” he counters. “What can we do to bring her back?”
I stand up as well, moving deeper into the room to sit in a chair against the back wall. “I wish I knew,” I tell him. “I’ve tried going back to the place where I was transported, but that doesn’t seem to work. I have someone who’s trying to help me, but what he did find is impossible.”
I gesture for Francis to sit in the chair opposite me. He begrudgingly does, and his posture is weighed heavy with defeat. His hands are balled into fists.
“Can you tell me about her?” I decide to ask. I may be trapped inside her body, but I barely know her at all.
Francis shifts up at my question, slowly bringing a hand to rest on the arm of his chair. It takes him a while before he answers.
“The day we first met, I had only just arrived at the Dowager Duchess’s estate to begin employment as her secretary. I was alone in the library, answering a letter regarding a new tax on the Dowager’s land when the door opened and Catherine peered inside. I glanced up, and she was there watching me like I was an unknown creature—some lawless beast she had never yet encountered.
“The room was full of dark tomes and the windows were shut. The curtains were mostly drawn. The airlessness of it was stifling. Then Catherine came in, strode right up to my desk, and asked me to walk with her. ‘We should talk and take in the sun,’ she said. And suddenly, I could breathe again.” His eyes have only now begun to warm since he’s talking about Catherine.
“It must have been nice,” I offer, “to feel a connection like that.”
Francis nods and looks down at his lap. “My first few months there, she was the only one who bothered to speak to me. The others thought I was strange. She was the one person to really see me. And in exchange, I saw no one but her.”
His voice is reverent. Almost pure. Speaking about Catherine is holy for him.
“What did she like to do in her free time?” I ask, trying to lessen the formality.
It takes a moment, but Francis lets a small smile slip—more to himself than to me. “Not many people knew this, but Catherine was an excellent storyteller. She would come up with tales about princesses and bandits, or princesses whowerebandits, and the stories were romantic, butthey had such humor in them, too. I had never heard anything like it. I begged her to write any of them down, but she only ever laughed at me.”
Catherine was a writer—or she could have been. I lean my elbows onto my knees as I wait to hear more.
“Until one day,” Francis continues, “she did it. Her story was... It was beautiful. Her words were so skilled, and fair and true, just like her—it was as if she poured her soul into the paper itself.”
I’m glad that Catherine showed her writing to someone. Art is meant to be shared, and the fact that she decided to share hers fills me with a proud kind of warmth.
