No Will But His by Sarah A. Hoyt

preoccupation seemed to be the running of her vast estate. Tenants and lands and various responsibilities consumed her wholly when she was not taken up with the affairs of her step-granddaughter the queen or with her own advancement in courtly favor. Those of her maids who married did so through the arrangements of their family. And Kathryn, when it came to arrangements, had no family. If her father or brothers were still living—and as much as she'd heard of them, they might be dead—they had forgotten her. She was probably thirteen. Her confusion came from being none too sure, because her father hadn't been sure. Her mother had been sure, but her mother had died before Kathryn had a good idea how old she was. She'd grown up hearing her father give her age as "Six, perhaps seven, or yet she might be eight." And on through the years. She was now thirteen by the highest of those estimations, which was how old she felt when comparing herself to the other girls about her. Alice would be the same age or a little bit more. It wasn't Kathryn's fault that she was by nature small and of little stature so that she would, perforce, seem younger than her mates.
    If she were thirteen . . . Well, then she was more than a year older than her mother had been when she'd married her first husband. And she would be one year short of what was called "the full fire of fourteen," a woman's most desirable age.
    And she was—she paused by a window and tapped the glass pane with her cold finger tips—immured here, in a house in the middle of nowhere, trapped in the heart of a winter that refused to depart, though it already be late May.
    In this mood, forlorn, feeling like the last person in the whole world and all but forgotten by man and fate, too, she walked a long time, taking random turns into little used parts of the house, along the yellow-mosaic floors of the hallway.
    She came, quite without knowing how, to a place where the hallway ended in a sort of rounded alcove where a window seat stood by a large mullioned window. It was a handsome window seat, carved in oak, and a handsome window through which a lot of light came, despite the driving wind that was tapping upon the window like a living thing. Like the fingers, Kathryn thought, of all those who had died out in a storm and had come back seeking the warmth of humanity.
    There was a layer of dust on the seat and it was quite devoid of coverings, so Kathryn thought it hadn't been used in very long. Gingerly, she brushed the dust off with her hand, then sat with one of her legs bent and folded under her body, and her skirts disposed in a wide fan about her. Thus disposed, she turned her attention to the lute.
    She started with the ballad of the king who had found the naked nymph—Melusine—in the forest, and had taken her home to be his own. From Margaret Bennet she'd heard the rest of that story, which, as she had predicted, did not end well. The lady, like many of a supernatural nature, seemed to partake in demon kind and, upon being discovered in her bath—though Kathryn never understood what was shocking about that—had taken her two younger children and flown out a castle window,, leaving behind the fiery marks of her feet upon the stone.
    Of this the ballad spoke, and this Kathryn sang with all her heart, even though she tried not to think about what  Catherine Tilney said, that the child that Melusine had left behind was an ancestor of the kings of England. It seemed very unlikely, for the king didn't seem at all to be in the nature of a nymph. What would half-demon kind have to do in the world, much less on the throne.
    She played, satisfying herself with the chilly notes of the ballad and its chillier conclusion. And then she wound into the next one, almost without thinking—a ballad the king had written for Queen Anne when he was still courting her, called "Greensleeves."
    Though it was a courting song and it could be merry, there was something about it that spoke of