@margcreys / 𝒄𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒆𝒓.
Hatfield, c. 1552
The eighteen year-old Prince of Wales cut an impressive figure - tall, limber, and coltish - as he darted, covert, into the sunlit garden. He was not so stealthy that the imperious Kat Ashley, observing from the oriel windows, did not observe him skirting around the lush Hatfield arbour, but then, Kat had eyes and ears everywhere. He’d already made the decision to reward her silence when he was king. Panting, and with the august sun baking on his skin, Wills halted. Looking about the maze of hedges, speckled with Tudor roses, he crept inward like a fox after a hare - with eyes slanted, and blood surging.
As swiftly as quicksilver, a scarlet head rose above the bushes and, just as quickly as it appeared, it descended beneath the foliage, skirts rustling in the tall grass. I would have her, he vowed, and make her beg my forgiveness for taunting me. As she watched on from the splendid Hatfield House, Kat pressed her lips into a thin, disapproving grimace and swept away into the manor’s red-brick depths. Wills balled his hands into fist and marched onward, blissfully unaware of the rivulets of reproachful prayers - prayers for patience, for fortitude - that Kat Ashley was now uttering as she waltzed past the royal nursery.
Snatching at the hem of Margery’s bodice, he heaved her toward his chest, and roared with a preemptive victory. Alas. The fabric had instantly given way, shredding from her fine gown, and like water betwixt his fingers, she slipped past him. Nymph-like, she tripped toward the ornate fountain sprouting from the crux of the garden. Wills regarded her with a hard glare. ‘Hadn’t you better be with Bess right now?’ He teased, ‘or did she command you to antagonize me?’
He observes each ripple of her body as she flits about the fountain, so clear in his efforts to catch her and win their silly little game. ‘You do a splendid job of it, Mistress Raleigh.’