Free Cate of the Lost Colony by Lisa Klein Page B

.” She stamped her foot for emphasis. “Do not forget!”
    I left the queen’s chamber in tears and sought out Emme. Finding her at her prayers, I poured out the whole story. She looked at me aghast as her prayerbook slid to the floor.
    “How was I to know she hated Graham so much?” I wailed. “Surely Anne could have warned me.”
    Emme took me by the shoulders. “Don’t you see? The matter has little to do with Graham. Elizabeth was speaking to you as an intimate—do you know how most of us would die for such words from her?—and you replied by thrusting a petition at her.” Emme shook me. “She wanted to give you something, and you abused her generosity.”
    “But I thought it was virtuous of me not to be self-seeking!” Despair washed over me. “Oh, Emme, I should have listened to you and refused Anne. Now I have lost the queen’s regard.”
    She tried to comfort me. “You are still a babe in the ways of this court. If you are lucky, perhaps she will overlook the whole business.”
    But the queen was not inclined to forgive or forget. She dismissed Graham from court, sending him back to Kent, and gave Anne a tongue-lashing that left her red-faced and tearful for days. Anne, in turn, accused me of betraying them and ruining her happiness, but Emme defended me.
    “You should be glad she did not banish you,” she scolded Anne. “She could have put you and Thomas both in the Tower.”
    “At least we would be together!” she wailed. “But now I shall never marry, and you, Catherine,” she threatened, “will live to regret the harm you have done us.”
    “I already regret it,” I said mournfully. “But since I intended no hurt, won’t you forgive me?”
    She would not, and she let everyone know that I could not be trusted. The other ladies shunned us both, fearing that our misfortune, like a disease, would infect them. They sent their own lovers away, and a virginal hush settled over the court, defying the turmoil beneath its surface.
    Loyal Emme remained my friend. Anne found an ally in Frances, who also disliked me for some reason I could never discern. I waited on the queen with a humility so abject it pained me. If she noticed, she gave no sign. I lived in fear that one day her temper would flare up again and that I, like Graham, would be dismissed and disgraced. For I knew that Fortune’s wheel never stops turning.
    Elizabeth’s court, which seemed a golden, glorious place when I arrived, was now like a forged coin—not worth a penny. I even thought about leaving. But where could I go and how would I survive?

Chapter 10
    Shared Ambitions
    D isconsolate, lacking friends and out of favor, I did what I could to alleviate my misery. That is, I dreamed of escape; I fantasized about love. I imagined walking with Sir Walter in Finsbury Fields or meeting him at a playhouse and weeping into his shoulder at the end of a tragedy. I pored over his letters and poems until I had memorized every line. But it only made me sadder that he no longer wrote to me. So I tied the pages up again in the embroidered handkerchief and hid the bundle in my chest. For solace I read the romances that passed among the queen’s ladies, tales of shepherds in love with princesses and knights seeking their damsels. For a time they took me to another world.
    But one night I found something far better, cast aside in the queen’s bedchamber: a manuscript of the first voyage to the island of the Roanoke. I read it at once, devouring Arthur Barlowe’s descriptions of the land so bounteous it was like paradise. I read about the innocent friendliness of the Indians and the chief’s wife in her fur-lined cloak, with pearls hanging from her ears. How I wanted to meet her, to visit her bark house, to smell the air fragrant with unusual flowers and trees!
    While reading I made an additional discovery. With the manuscript was a letter from Sir Walter. I held it to my nose but could smell no trace of his civet. I read the letter and