Suzannah Dunn - The Confession of Katherine Howard

One evening at supper, that first spring of ours at the duchess’s, Katherine dipped a fingertip into the residue of sauce on her plate and began a sinuous sliding, rarely broken and then only with precision. She was writing. When finished, she looked momentarily pleased with it - head cocked, appreciative - before paying it no further mind. Quite a display in itself, her abandonment of it, as if this - writing in her sauce - was something she did all the time. And so there it was, the word, the name, staring up at us, staring us down: OTIS, and, framing it, the twin lobes of a heart.

Otis: charcoal-burner and - taking advantage of being out there in the woods - beekeeper. Long eyelashes and cowslick hair, and missing his two front teeth, which - happily - didn’t make him any less ready to smile. Otis was nice enough. But too old - perhaps as old as twenty - and anyway he was a charcoal-burner. Charcoal-burning was a skilled job, and there was the added attraction of his honey, but he’d never have been parcelled out, previously, in our negotiations because he was a labourer, which was a step too far.

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