Cat's Tale: A Fairy Tale Retold Read online

  “Rumor has it she already has.” This, from the lovely chestnut-haired lady sitting beside the door. “They say the king paid a price that would have purchased a dozen whores.”

  “Oh hush, Livith.” The girl beside her laughed. “You are so wicked!”

  I laughed, too, loud and false. “She is not near so wicked as I.” I released the handle on the door and shoved Livith out of it in a single smooth action.

  I looked at the remaining two women. “Let me be clear, ladies. However wicked you think you are, I am worse. Whatever mischief you do me will be returned twentyfold, and whatever kindnesses you pay me I shall take as my proper due.”

  Hildithe raised her hand to her mouth again, as though preparing to laugh. I stopped her with a sharp slap. “Look at my face. You know I can get away with murder.”

  After that we all got along swimmingly. The procession had to stop for an hour to scrape Livith up from the road, but when Galfridus brought her back to our carriage, bruised, bandaged and doped on poppy syrup, all of my ladies were adamant that the foolish girl had leaned against the door handle and fallen from the carriage on accident.

  On my instructions, they held their tongues so that I could enjoy the passing scenery in peace. I had never been further than half a day’s ride from our keep, but I was careful not to let my expression reveal that the lush farmland, tidy villages and imposing stone towns were new to me.

  We crested the hill overlooking the capital near sunset. The city sprawled for miles in all directions, overflowing its tall, gray stone walls like a lake overflowing its banks.

  My view of the city disappeared as we descended into the fertile valley around it. We rode through rolling hills and green pastures. The land was different from the cold and scrubby wilds that surrounded my family’s keep.

  “Oh, my,” Hildithe said, with a hint of a growl in her voice. “Did you want scenery, Lady Catriona? Have a look out of my window.”

  I leaned over, careful to anchor my foot around the support post for the carriage bench so that my new bosom friends could not play me the same trick I had played Livith. Outside the window was a pastoral scene, a wide creek winding serpentine among the rolling hills, and on the near bank, a mill, its wheel turning briskly with the current.

  It was not the mill that had captured Hildithe’s attention, but the man repairing the roof of the mill. He was working bare-chested beneath the setting sun, his muscled abdomen glistening with the sweat of honest work. He ceased his repairs as our procession drove past and watched with a look of hunger on his handsome face.

  Our eyes met, and I knew he wanted me.

  Would that I were my own woman, and not a rich man’s bride! I would have ordered my procession to halt and wait while I went to him and sampled all the pleasures his strong body and hungry eyes had to offer.

  “Wouldn’t it be lovely—” Hildithe’s voice was soothing and sly, “—to know the feel of his firm flesh beneath your hands and lips?” She covered her mouth and gave her silly, girlish giggle. “La! But what am I saying? You’re to marry the king tomorrow. He is a very powerful man, and rich, too. I am certain that will compensate for his wrinkled skin and withered cock.”

  I clenched my fists, biding my time. I had pushed the wrong girl from the carriage and had only myself to blame.

  I will not lie and tell you that the king never touched me. That he was too aged to complete his duties and thus left me a virgin wife. The truth is, I let him touch me a great deal. As often and as thoroughly as he liked. I had married the man, hadn’t I?

  I did, however, lie to the king. I lied a great deal. As often and as thoroughly as I liked. I lied when I claimed to be untouched, and when I sneaked a sponge soaked with chicken’s blood into the bridal bed. I lied when I acted frightened on our wedding night and made maidenly protests that his member was too terribly large to fit inside me as he’d said it would. In later days I lied when I said I enjoyed his attentions, and when I said I loved him.

  I’ve no doubt he spoke the truth when he said he loved me. He made a fool of himself for me, as old men often do with younger wives. Do not think I mock him—he was a sweet old man. He quite endeared himself to me by showering me with jewels and dresses and shoes.

  Unfortunately, the king’s kindnesses to me did not go unnoticed, and before long the people began to grumble. The old queen had not changed her clothes three times a day, nor ordered a special closet constructed simply to hold her shoes. The old queen had not thrown so many parties, nor kept so many handsome young courtiers about to amuse her. In short, the old queen had been a far better breed of lady than the king’s new consort ever was or would be.

  Poor me. It made me sad to hear the commoners speak cruelly of me. It made me so sad that I would rush to my chambers and cry into the arms of my latest handsome lover until my melancholy lifted. And if that didn’t help, I might count my jewels, catalog my dresses or go to my special closet and try on any of my many lovely pairs of slippers and boots.

  Why should I care for the opinion of tradesmen and commoners when I lived in a palace surrounded by beauty and wealth? I could think of no reason at all. But then, I wasn’t as clever as I thought. Nor was my position so stable.

  Does it warm your heart to know I was headed for a fall?

  One day, in the midst of rather heated conjugal relations, the king’s little death turned into something a bit larger.

  Apoplexy, the physician said.

  Fatal.

  In short order, I found myself a consort without a king. Though I have always looked particularly fine in black, I did not enjoy my widowhood. I could host no salons nor festive events, nor could I entertain any of my favorite courtiers in public or in private. Everyone expected me to wander the halls weeping and wringing my hands, but mourning is so very dull.

  To alleviate the boredom, I turned my ear to political gossip above and beyond my usual diet of petty palace love affairs and enmities. And the topic on the lips of every political animal within and without the palace walls was the king’s daughter, Etheldred.

  Etheldred was of age (she was, in fact, some two or three years my elder) but had not yet been allowed to take the throne. For reasons none could fathom, the king’s council had resurrected an archaic law that forbade unmarried women to rule. A queen must have a consort, it seemed, else she would be no queen at all.

  To me it seemed obvious that someone on the council had his eye on the throne, but Etheldred’s problems were of only glancing interest. Not content with the task of finding the princess a husband, the council dared decide my future, as well. They wanted to pension me off—send me to some distant holding where I might while away my days in bucolic boredom, waiting to die. Such a fate was anathema to me. I had worked too hard—plotted too cleverly—to be sent back to the country simply because my husband had been so inconsiderate as to die.

  The morning after I heard of the council’s plans, I woke myself up bright and early, not five hours after sunrise, and ordered a light breakfast. I had myself clothed in one of my more modest silk twill gowns and very demure black walking boots of lambskin slink. When all was in readiness, I walked to the other end of the castle and found the king’s daughter relaxing in her gardens with some of her ladies-in-waiting.

  Etheldred was a plain girl, but it had never seemed to bother her. She made no special effort to alleviate her plainness with jewels or lovely clothing. She did not seem to mind her looks at all.

  Needless to say, the princess and I had never been friends, but that day I made a great effort to greet her as such.

  “My darling stepdaughter!”

  “Lady Catriona.”

  “Please, dearest Etheldred,” I said. “Call me Cat.”

  “Please, Cat—” the princess’s warm smile lit up her plain face, “—call me ‘Your Highness.’”

  “Erm. Very well, Your Highness.”

  “Now, Cat, do be a dear and tell me what you want. We both know you did not come here for my compan
y.”

  I was never one to carry pretense too far. I knew when to employ it and was clever enough to recognize that it would be useless in my dealings with my stepdaughter.

  “I was wondering when you planned to take up the throne. The council seems to have started without you.”

  Etheldred smiled again—that same warm smile that made her plain face seem extraordinary. One of her ladies refilled her goblet. She regarded me in silence for a moment. “I suppose I understand what he saw in you. You’re lovely.”

  Her words were devoid of any hint of feminine envy, but the frank appreciation in her tone brought a blush to my cheeks.

  “Oh-ho.” She laughed. “I have shocked you.”

  I quelled the unruly blush and straightened my spine. “Not at all, Your Highness. Your appreciation is merely…unexpected.”

  A sly thought occurred to me. It was not part of my original plan, but right away I knew it was the correct path. “What a shame the council has decided you must marry if you are to be queen,” I said. “They will want a king they can control, and a male heir within two years.”

  “They will get nothing of the sort,” Etheldred grumbled. I’d a notion she was only arguing because she did not want to admit I was right. “I am not subject to the council’s deliberations and do not care to hear of them.”

  “Not even when it concerns your future? Your Highness, let me be frank. You need someone on the inside to watch out for your interests.”

  “In the council?”

  “Or close to it.”

  “And you propose to be this person?”

  “Those old men haven’t a chance against me.” I gave her a conspiratorial grin. “If you will but intercede on the small matter of my future residence.”

  “Oh?” She raised a bushy brow.

  “The council wants to send me off to rusticate, but I am certain that if you insisted your dear stepmama be allowed to retain her clothing allowance and her rooms in the palace…”

  “I see. I shall do as you ask if you will but answer one question.”

  “Anything, Highness. I shall be perfectly candid.”

  “Is it true, as the commoners say, that you own one hundred pairs of shoes?”

  “Of course not,” I said, laughing. I owned two hundred and three but I didn’t see that it was any of her business.

  Chapter Two: The Cat

  In choosing a target for my seduction, I passed over the obvious choice of the king’s brother. Prince Osmont was old and wrinkled, and so physically feeble that I doubted he could raise an interest in me, much less the wherewithal to follow through on it. Instead, I opted for Galfridus, who in addition to having been the king’s all-purpose wizard and wise man, held a seat on the council.

  It did not hurt matters that Galfridus was the handsomest and liveliest of them. He was tall and fit, with sparkling gray eyes and shining silver hair. He may well have been the only man on the council who still had all his teeth.

  Recalling the flash of tension between us when he had bargained on the king’s behalf, first to make me a harlot and then to make me a wife, I made a great show of blushing when our eyes met, and leaving rooms when he entered them.

  I allowed him to catch me in a lonely gallery one day.

  “You’ve been avoiding me,” he said.

  I blushed and looked at my feet as he approached, concentrating on the pointed toes of my red satin slippers. He drew near, and lifted my chin with the tips of his fingers. “Why do you blush when our eyes meet, Lady Catriona? Why do you leave a room when I enter?”

  I let my breath catch, perfectly aware of the way that simple action heightened my color and swelled my chest, calling attention to the low décolletage of my black damask gown. “I know not, my lord,” I said, my voice gone breathy.

  “I shall tell you why, my dear. It is because you desire me—because you have desired me since the day I came to your family’s pathetic little keep five years ago and petitioned you on behalf of the late king.”

  “Oh, no, milord.” Eyes swimming with tears, I shook my head vehemently. Pins scattered and my dark hair tumbled down my back. “I was a good wife to the king.”

  “And now you are a good widow. But a woman has needs, Catriona.” His breathing quickened and he grasped my shoulders. “Especially a woman as young and beautiful as yourself.”

  He kissed me. I was very careful to first stiffen in shock, and then push feebly at his hard chest in a futile attempt to free myself from his embrace. At last I melted into his arms, crushing the embroidered front of his frock coat in a desperate fist as I let his tongue plunder me.

  His mouth was hot and hurried, years of covetous lust forced into a single kiss. The pressure of his lips on mine and the liberties of his hands upon my body told me more clearly than words how it would be between us, hard and punishing. His retribution for all the years I had made him wait, watching me, wanting me.

  Another woman might have been frightened by his ardor. But I was not like other women. I was the most beautiful woman in the land. The daughter of traitors, who had married a king. There were no limits to the power I thought my beauty granted me. No limits to the madness I believed I could raise in the mind of any man who beheld me.

  Thoughts of my power stirred me as surely as his rough caresses and desperate kisses. They roused me to such a state that when he backed me into a quiet antechamber and plunged his hand beneath my skirts he found me wet and wanting, hungry for hard evidence of his desire.

  “All this time, you have been playing the dutiful wife,” he said. “You never looked at me when you were his. You never let a trace of your thoughts show on your lovely face.”

  “Don’t,” I said, making a show of denial I didn’t feel because I knew it would enflame him.

  “Yes,” he said, backing me against a shagreen wall hanging.

  “Yes,” he said as he lifted my skirt.

  “Yes,” I whispered when he’d freed his sex from his trousers. “Oh, definitely, yes.”

  He laughed as he entered me and I relaxed around him, letting him sink into me, relishing the size and strength of him. I shifted, wrapping my legs around his hips, and my arms more firmly around his shoulders. He rocked and I gasped, surprised at the sudden intensity of my body’s reaction.

  I suppose I had been too long without a lover—the whole of my mourning thus far. And while I have never been shy with my own hands, there is a certain excitement in the act of penetration, in the feel of a man between one’s thighs. I came so quickly and so easily, he scarce had to work at it.

  Afterward he gave me a smug smile, as though he possessed some great magic, other than being the man with whom I chose to end a long dry spell. Had I not been set to seduce him I would have told him that his was merely the luck of the draw. Next time I would make sure he had to work much more diligently to earn my attentions.

  The wizard came to me again that night in my rooms, appearing in a gaudy puff of purple smoke and sweeping me into his arms. I struggled in his grasp. “Put me down! You cannot simply appear in my rooms like that. There are proprieties to be observed. What if one of my ladies had been present?”

  He laughed. “Had your ladies been present, I would have turned that veritable flock of squawking hens into a literal flock of squawking hens.”

  “You could do that?” I colored my voice with shades of awe.

  “That and many other things. I am a powerful man.”

  “And yet you chose to serve the king rather than become a king, yourself,” I said, slyly.

  The secretive smile he flashed me lent a reptilian cast to his otherwise blandly handsome face. “I am not a king, yet,” he said. “However, I’ve every confidence my position will change in the future.”

  “The princess.” I looked away as though the thought pained me. “You mean to marry her.”

  He sneered. “She will not care, so long as she is allowed to keep her ladies.” His face fell back into a confident smile. “Besides, I am the
largest landholder in the kingdom, after the crown. The council will look favorably on my suit.”

  “And it doesn’t hurt that you are on the council. Ready to sway the naysayers with swift words, large bribes and whatever spells you have at your disposal.”

  “My magic doesn’t work that way, Catriona. I can change a shape as easily as blinking, but I cannot change minds.”

  “What do I care? The fact is, you fucked me this afternoon, and now say you will marry my late husband’s daughter.” I stamped my foot and squeezed a few crocodile tears from my eyes. “Vile seducer! I want nothing more to do with you.”

  He took my chin in his hand and forced my face up for his kiss. I held my mouth closed, but he was insistent. At last, I melted against him, parting my lips as though overtaken by sensation and desire.

  “Never fear,” he whispered. “There is a place for you as my mistress.”

  “Your mistress!” I cried. “The very position I refused to take from the king. What makes you think I will take it now, from you?”

  “Because you will never have another lover like me.” He smiled, but as his lips stretched, his body changed, becoming taller, broader and more muscled. His silver hair darkened to a sun-streaked chestnut, and his gray eyes shaded to the color of newly tilled soil. I recognized that face and that body, though it had been years since I’d seen them—the man at the mill, the one I had longed and lusted for on the eve of my wedding.

  “Did you think I did not see your face pressed up against the carriage window that day? Never have I seen lust writ so clear in a woman’s eyes.”

  “But this…” I said.

  “I can be any man you’ve ever wanted,” he said, his words a slow temptation, for all that the persuasive slither of his voice disgusted me. “Anyone you’ve ever wanted.”

  He began to undo my dress, and I did not stop him. I was too enthralled by the sight of his new body. My fantasies made flesh. In minutes I was naked, but for the embroidered kid slippers I’d worn beneath my black silk evening gown.