If you’ve been following along with the Clawthide Castle series— this is for you. If you haven’t— you’re missing out but it’s easy to catch up. Who is Cassandra and how did she come to live in Clawthide Castle? Find out below.
England, 1604
She tousled her long red hair and paced to and from her bedroom window. There was no point in trying to sleep and embroidery by the light of one candle felt futile. She couldn’t focus on anything at that moment; she was waiting for him.
After suspenseful hours with what felt like a thousand tiny knives in her chest, the agony came to an end. For a brief moment, all breath in her body ceased as she heard the tiny stones patter against the lattice window. The rush of blood to her skin caused her face to glisten with life and lust as she approached the glass. At any moment, someone could pass her bedroom door or worse– knock on it. The thrill was ecstasy, pushing her heart into the back of her throat; she needn’t have worried– the door was locked– she checked several times. All but seventeen-year-old Lady Cassandra Hawthorn of Atherley and her lover were sleeping.
She opened the casement of the window silently and peered out. Her heart stopped. It was Robert, waiting outside the kitchen window. She gestured for him to come up, quickly. With gloved hands, he climbed the ivy and nimbly secured his footing onto the trellis. She tried to steady her breathing as he slunk into the room like a black cat. There was no cause for either of them to break the silence with speech.
She ran her long white fingers through his dark hair and showered him in tender kisses as their limbs lay entwined on the bed. “I love you,” she whispered, listening to his heart beat through his bare, sweat-laced chest.
“And I love you,” he whispered back, lifting himself out of the bed to dress. “Lady Harrington.”
“I cannot bear to wait any longer,” she said, rolling on to her front.
“It will not be much longer.” He smiled, gently patting her bare bottom. “Soon, you will be my wife. Soon, we can go to France. We’ll get away from here,” he promised, kissing the top of her head. “One month from now.”
“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” she sighed, likening herself to a heroine she saw in a play that year.
He wrapped an arm around her and kissed her once more. “One month.” Like nature’s sentry, the blackbird chimed and Robert Harrington was gone just as the blue haze of dawn approached to catch him.
The following morning, the young lady joined her parents at their oak breakfast table as she did so every morning that Henry Hawthorn, Earl of Atherley, wasn’t away on business. The Countess of Atherley, fully dressed for the day, was opening the post. “Oh,” she said, her face turning as pale as the makeup she wore for court.
“What is it?” asked the earl as he carved up some rump for his plate. His lithe hunting dogs panted and wagged their tails around his elbows, waiting for him to throw some their way.
“The king has consented to the marriage.”
The girl’s heart leapt as she looked at her mother. “Marriage?” she asked.
“Yes. Next week, you will marry the Duke of Rutland.”
Shock strangled her, clenching her throat with all its might. She shook her head. “The Duke of Rutland?” she asked in disbelief. “But, I—”
“The Harringtons are recusants,” her mother snapped. “They lose land week on week, Cassandra. You are to marry the Duke of Rutland,” she said matter of factly, cutting chunks off her apple with a knife. “This is an excellent offer for our family.”
Cassandra, watching her mother toss the core of the apple to the dogs, clutched her chest as though someone was sitting on it. She thought about the lock of Robert’s hair that sat in a hidden pocket in her bosom.
The maids of Atherley Hall had done a spectacular job. The fiery-haired bride possessed all the beauty of youth combined with the finest lace and pearls that her parents could bestow on her.
She turned around to see her reflection in the floor-length mirror of her bedroom.
A tear shaped as exquisitely as the pearl she wore in her headdress fell from her eyes, formlessly vanishing somewhere on the floor. She blinked with long, sweeping lashes and swallowed the pain once more. No matter how diligently they had worked, Cassandra felt that the maids had dressed an ivory vase devoid of flowers.
The maids pulled and tugged: fastening, powdering and puffing her out as best they could. As the last bracelet was secured onto her wrist, her mother arrived to help place the veil.
“Leave us,” the Countess said quietly to the maids. They curtseyed and scurried out in silence, closing the door behind them. “You are a vision to behold, dear girl,” she said, handing a lace-trimmed handkerchief to her daughter. It had been embroidered with a collection of white and red roses with gold stems and green leaves: the colours of her house. The girl held it up to inspect it further. Embroidered into the corner were her new initials, C.M. She stared at it for a moment, rounding her mouth into a shape only to then say nothing. “My daughter, a Duchess,” the countess said, smiling proudly.
“Thank you, ma’ma,” the girl finally said, and laid it in her trousseau with care.
“Clawthide castle is a fine place to call home.”
“It is.”
“You will be happy there, I am sure.”
The girl broke into a sob, covering her face with her hands. Her mother looked at her sternly. “None of that, my girl.”
“I can’t marry a man I don’t know,” she wailed. The sharp, eye watering sting of a slap erupted on her powdered cheek.
“Stop that! You’ve seen him at church,” her mother hissed. “You can and you have to.” She took a deep breath and pulled her daughter to her body, embracing her fiercely. “You are not the first to serve the will of others before your own.” She twirled a ringlet of her daughter’s hair. “If you thought you were– more fool you. That was a dalliance… a weak match. It won’t do.” She let go of her daughter and looked into her open, blue eyes that were not too dissimilar from her own. “I have stood where you have stood, and I have felt the same pain. This is what it is to be a woman in a man’s world,” she sighed, tilting her head. “This country seems to change by the day but we are on the right side and that’s what matters, girl.”
Cassandra slumped into a chair and watched her mother close the trousseau. “Love holds no titles. Love has no lands to bestow. Your survival and the survival of your house cannot thrive on the love of one man.” Her bejewelled hand caressed her daughter’s cheek. “Do not fret though; your heart shall not freeze over. The love you are no longer able to bear for a lover will give way to a new love. I did not love your father when I married him. I learned to love him in time.” She smiled sympathetically. “My children, on the other hand– you will love your children with a fire you didn’t know burned inside of you. And you will do anything for them.” The countess turned and walked to the window, looking out onto the lawn. “This match is the best we can hope for. A catholic union will not do.”
“But, they–”
“No,” she turned and raised a hand to silence the girl. “They are still catholics. They lie about their loyalties and we cannot risk a union with them. God only knows how riddled they are with debt from missing church. It’s a mess over there.” She turned to gaze out of the window again. “You do this, or it is poverty by association— or worse— all of our heads on the block.”
“Ma’ma, I–”
“Cassandra, please. We don’t talk about this. Promise me that you will never speak his name. It makes no matter how you feel, my love. Your life depends on burying it deep inside you and forgetting about it,” she said, looking at her daughter again. “Your brother’s life depends on it. We have had no dealings with that family. We are protestants now and we must remain so… do you understand?”
They exchanged a look.
“I do,” Cassandra said firmly.
“Good.” Her mother smiled warmly and after looking over her shoulder, “The duke is a wealthy, handsome young man and the Malorys continue to earn the king’s favour. This is the best we could have ever hoped for.”
The carriage rolled out of Atherley Hall to the small whitewashed chapel on the border of Rutland. There, the black-haired duke waited in gold and silver brocade. He wore a magnificent, gold feathered cap and a white cape that provided a stark contrast to his fine, trimmed beard. “I daresay the duke looks marvellous this morning,” her mother remarked, looking out of the carriage window. Cassandra stared at her silver slippers, swallowing back tears.
He bowed dutifully when her father brought her out of the carriage and for a moment, Cassandra saw Robert’s face in place of the duke’s. She blinked again. Despite her sadness, she did appreciate that she had been lucky in her circumstances. He was as handsome as her mother had said. Cassandra drew in a deep breath and looked around at the guests. With a smile of relief, she saw her brother smiling back. Behind him, she shot a glance at another man who looked like Robert. She stiffened. “Dear lord, are you trying to amputate me?” her father whispered. She lessened her grip on his arm and they followed the vicar and the groom into the chapel. The perfume of the posies in her hand overwhelmed her. She thought she might be sick with nerves. Her groom strode ahead, a single pearl dangling from one of his ears. He smelled of incense and lavender.
She took one more look over her shoulder as they walked down the aisle to the altar. She did not see her lover again. She scrunched her eyes shut and took a deep breath. “What is it?” her father asked through a wide smile.
“Nothing,” she said meekly.
As she slept beside her new husband, Cassandra, Duchess of Rutland, dreamed. One particular night, she heard the same patter of tiny stones on the glass of her bedroom window. She went to it without a second thought, for her heart still ached for him.
At first, in the gloom of the summer night sky, she couldn’t see him. The gardens at Clawthide castle were different from those at Atherley Hall. A great elm tree rustled right outside her window. She looked down and with the help of the now cloudless, naked moon; she thought she could make out the outline of a man standing there in the shadow of the tree as the branches parted and groaned in the wind.
The ivy rustled beneath her window, whispering soft, inviting breaths into her room. The flame of her bedside candle fluttered slightly with the change in the air. He's here.
“Robert?” she whispered, looking back at her husband asleep in the bed. The guilt punched her in the stomach but she looked out again regardless. “Robert, is that you?” she asked with a mixture of hope, anguish and bile in the back of her throat. The figure of the man didn’t move. Perhaps– she fancied– he had stayed silent for fear of discovery. She decided to come down to him.
She slid into her shoes and threw on her robe. She unlocked her door with a gentle click and cautiously descended down the stairs, barely knowing where to step to avoid the creaks of betrayal.
She crept out through the kitchen door. It was the smallest and quietest of the doors and it was nowhere near the servants’ quarters. Setting the tongues loose was the last thing she wanted to do.
In the moonlight, she glided to the elm tree, the hems of her skirts sweeping through the dewy, silken grass.
“Robert?” she asked, her voice breaking.
From beneath the shadows of the tree emerged a man. A headless man.
She opened her mouth to scream. Only the deafening thud of emptiness came from her lungs. The blood in her veins curdled, chilling her limbs into a state of temporary paralysis. The body approached her with arms out in front of it; the fingertips of its dead hands desperately searching for hers.
With a power she didn't realise she possessed, she managed to lift a foot and stepped backwards, stumbling over something. She lost her balance and twisted before tumbling to the ground. She wasn't sure if it had been a rock or—
Their eyes met. It was the contorted head. It stared up at her with its black, empty mouth agape, releasing guttural groans from the back of its bloodied throat. The hole in its face that had once been a mouth attempted to babble with blood gurgling behind its cold, dead lips.
She screamed, clambered up to her feet and ran as fast as she could. Despite herself, she turned to look back for a moment. The headless man was coming for her swiftly, passing the head as he did so. She felt her knees weakening and stumbled to the side of the castle where the kitchen door was waiting for her, still ajar. Why had she not thought to close it? She threw herself in and pushed her body against the door, bolting it with a bang.
She stepped back, stifling another scream as the headless man pushed himself into the door repeatedly. One of his purple hands reached for the handle and tried it. He eventually stopped and pulled a lock of long, red hair from his pocket. She screamed.
The following morning, she sat down at the breakfast table and greeted her husband. He was reading a letter intently, raising a beautifully formed eyebrow.
“Well, it looks like my estate has grown considerably overnight,” he remarked.
“Oh? Why is that?” she asked, buttering a slice of bread.
“The Harringtons… um, there was an uprising.” He cleared his throat and sipped some water. “They have been executed.”
The clatter of her knife onto the stone floor caused him to jump out of his skin. He looked across the table. Like a blossom gracefully falling from its tree, Cassandra collapsed.
As he lifted her into his arms, he noticed a lock of red hair on the floor. Thinking nothing of it, he called for smelling salts and tea, and carried his wife back to her chambers.
You can read more from this series here:
I love Cassandra! How sad her tale is…but she has a strong spirit.
Ooh I loved this!