Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (11 page)

‘Floater,’ calls another.

‘Poor soul,’ says the first,
removing his cap.

‘Don’t look,’ says
Seymour, gently guiding her face away with a light touch to her cheek.

But she had a glimpse of the saturated
corpse, its face mutilated, entrails spilling. Her worries crowd back, filling her head.
What would happen if the King found out about this? They have not been careful enough.
That first time in the garden was reckless – anyone could have seen them. But they have
been so very careful since. She feels screwed down with a sudden fear of the
consequences.

He peels away her glove and kisses each of
her fingers. ‘Is this what love feels like, Kit?’

She tries to ignore the screw of fear that
is burrowing into her. ‘How would I know?’ she says, trying to keep her
voice light, keep the concern out of it.

‘You are the twice-married one,’
he quips.

‘And what has marriage to do with
love?’ She pushes out a
light laugh, but the screw burrows
deeper. ‘It is
you,
Mister Seymour, who has all the experience of love,
if court tittle-tattle is anything to go by.’ She prods him gently. ‘All
those heartbroken maids.’

‘All that,’ he says, now serious
and looking straight at her, looking into her, ‘was youthful folly. And they were
just girls.
You
are a woman. A real woman, Kit.’

‘And why would that make me more
lovable?’ She wants to ask him if he’s not worried too, but can’t bear
to burst the bubble.

‘It is not that you are a woman. It is
that you are you,’ he says. ‘I cannot explain it. Even the poets cannot
explain love. But you, Kit …’ He pauses, seeming embarrassed, dropping his
gaze. ‘You make sense of my world.’

How is that possible, she wonders, when
she
cannot find sense anywhere? She wants the feeling of a few minutes ago,
to glimpse that butterfly once more. She is summoned to court tomorrow into the service
of Lady Mary. A butterfly, she reminds herself, can only be truly looked at when it is
dead, and pinned to a board. She shivers, all of a sudden aware of how far the river
chill has seeped into her.

‘I am ordered to court,’ she
says, hating that she has killed his butterfly too.

His jaw tightens, giving him the look of a
petulant boy, and she wants to take him in her arms and make it perfect for him
again.

‘Did the King command it?’ he
snaps.

Katherine wonders if Thomas has talked about
this with her brother. ‘This is the best opportunity in the history of the
Parrs,’ Will had said. ‘The
royal family
, Kit. We’d have our
place in history.’

‘Your ambition is too much,
Will,’ she’d spat at him.

‘It’s what I was raised to,’
he’d reminded her, ‘we all were.’

It is true. Their class were raised to lift
their families as high as they could – a perpetual game of chess, so complex it is
impossible to know if you are about to win or about to lose.

‘And besides, whoever said anything
about marriage?’ she’d added. ‘The King is likely just toying with me
until he tires of it. His attentions will move on. Just you wait.’

What would her brother think if he knew his
friend Seymour was standing in the way of his shot at the stars?

If she married Seymour she wouldn’t be
free for the King. She reprimands herself for even thinking it – marrying Seymour. But
she thinks of it all the time. It is a wild thought indeed. But why not? Why
shouldn’t she have her love match? There are many reasons why not, the least of
them being that, as brother-in-law to the King, Seymour would need royal permission;
without consent it could be treason. Anything can be construed as treason nowadays,
anything that upsets the order of things. And the King dictates the order of things. The
thought of it is a tangle in her head, impossible to undo, tightening constantly; she
can’t
think of it.

‘No, it is Lady Mary who has asked for
me,’ she says, trying to keep her voice calm as if there isn’t a great
confusion of thoughts clogging her up.

‘I’d wager the King is behind
it,’ he snarls, snatching his hand from hers.

‘Are you sulking, Thomas
Seymour?’

He glowers.

‘You’re jealous,’ she
laughs. Her heart gives a little jump of joy at this proof of love, and all those
thoughts of the King are banished, gone, like magic.

Thomas doesn’t laugh with her, though; he
can barely manage a smile.

‘Time, Thomas,’ she soothes.
‘Give it a little time. Once the King has tired of –’

‘I don’t want to talk of the
King,’ he snaps, cutting off her words.

‘But Thomas,’ she coos,
‘you have nothing to worry about. He’ll marry that Bassett girl. Everyone is
saying it. You’ll see.’ But she fails even to convince herself.

‘
I
want you, Kit. I want you
just for me.’

‘A little time. That is all. Be
patient.’

‘Must you go to court?’

‘I must. You know that.’

‘And will you take your
stepdaughter?’

‘She has been requested.’

‘People are talking of her as a match
for me. I don’t want those flames fanned.’ His eyes flit about.

‘Just more nonsense. Meg will not
marry anyone without my word.’

‘But if the King wishes it?’

‘Thomas, the King has more important
things on his mind, I’m sure, than the marriage of Margaret Neville. It was just a
momentary whim that the gossips have got hold of.’

He makes a little huff. His face is
scrumpled and sweet, like a disgruntled puppy. Her heart lurches. His grip on her has
become unassailable.

Dot had tried to imagine what Whitehall
Palace would be like. She has seen the Tower that sits with the Thames lapping at its
skirts, slits for windows, fetid moat, iron grey; it is an ancient place, fortified,
turning in on itself, showing only the hulk of its stone shoulders to the world. People
drop their voices when they talk of that place for it is where traitors are taken and
unspeakable things happen in its dungeons. But Whitehall is nothing like the Tower; its
turrets can be seen for miles, rising up from the higgledy-piggledy streets of
Westminster, white and new and gleaming in the sun, banners rippling in the breeze.
There are no arrow slits, no moat, nothing to make you think of your enemies, even the
yeoman guards standing before the gates seem put there for decoration in their red and
gold liveries that look elaborate enough for the King himself to wear. To Dot it is
nothing less than the Camelot of her imagination.

The place is vast; you could fit a hundred
Snape Castles within its walls. It is like an entire city and busy as the market at
Smithfield, with people rushing to and fro doing whatever it is they do. There is a main
courtyard with wide stone steps up to the Great Hall and the chapel, and in there
somewhere lie the King’s rooms – though those places are forbidden to Dot. Through
an arch are the stables, and beyond lie the
outhouses: the laundry, and
the field behind, where the linens are pegged out to bleach in the sun; the barns; the
stores; the slaughter house; the kennels, where the hounds howl and generally make a
terrible racket, not so different from the hullabaloo that comes from the cockpit of an
evening, or the tennis courts when a lively game is being played. It goes on for ever,
only stopped by the river and the jakes, where on a day without much breeze there hangs
the most hellish stench.

In the other direction towards Scotland Yard
and the courtiers’ dwellings, which is where Lady Latymer’s lodgings are to
be found, there is the tiltyard and the bowling lawn with the gardens beyond as far as
you can see, set out in squares with high yew hedges, each one like a room, and in them
are ornamental ponds and aviaries and all manner of blooms, where the courtiers amble as
if they have nothing better to do than wander about and admire the flowers. There is a
knot garden, and an aromatic lavender garden buzzing with bees, and a maze which Dot has
not dared enter for fear of getting lost; it is not for the use of the servants, anyway.
There are acres of kitchen gardens busy with women weeding and planting and uprooting
vegetables. If you walk through, past the rows of lettuces like courtiers’ caps
and the wispy fronds of fennel and the peas and beans coiling themselves upward, all you
can hear is the chink of trowels tapping at the earth. Sometimes when she is not being
watched, Dot picks a pea pod, sliding her finger along its opening to pluck the peas out
from where they nestle in their damp white velvet pockets, popping them in her mouth,
savouring the sweet crunch.

The kitchens make a whole world in itself.
Servants scurry everywhere invisibly, heaving logs, rolling kegs, sparking up tinder,
strewing floors, turning roasts, plucking fowl, baking bread, chopping and slicing and
mixing and kneading and
scrubbing. Meals for seven hundred appear in
the Great Hall, delivered by an army of unseen staff as if there has been no effort
whatsoever in the making of them. The whole palace seems, on the surface, to run by
itself: fresh linen finds its way to beds in the blink of an eye; mud from the floor
seems to brush itself away; clothes mend themselves; piss pots gleam; dust
disappears.

Dot goes about in a bewildered stupor,
hardly knowing where to put herself in all this. Strictly speaking she shouldn’t
be here at all. Apart from the palace workers only noble servants are allowed, and even
that is apparently frowned upon by the Lord Chamberlain as, despite the size of the
place, there is not the space to lodge everyone. But Lady Latymer had insisted on
bringing her. ‘You are as close as family and I have no intention of leaving you
behind,’ she had said. Dot was relieved, for she’d been worried sick at the
idea of going back to Stanstead Abbotts and squeezing herself back into her old
life.

Their lodgings are among such a tangle of
buildings that for the first three days Dot got lost every time she went out. The room
is quite modest, which surprised Dot who’d imagined a chamber with tall glass
windows and a great bed like the famous one at Ware that can sleep ten men and none of
them touching. Lady Latymer had explained that it is only the dukes and favourites, and
such like, who have the grand chambers in the palace itself, and even some of the earls
and countesses are crammed into a room as small as theirs. They are lucky to have this
room at all, it seems, for many have to find places to sleep outside the gates. In fact,
Lady Latymer appears quite happy with this arrangement. Dot has heard her say to Meg
that it is an indication that the King’s attentions have alighted elsewhere, for
if she were a favourite she would doubtless be lodged in the palace.

But Dot is sure that the main reason Lady
Latymer likes being away from it all is because she can occasionally snatch a secret
moment with Thomas Seymour. Now there is true passion. Dot cannot erase the memory of
seeing the two of them together in the physic garden at Charterhouse. Just thinking of
it makes her feel tingly down there, and she wonders what it must be like to have a man
on you like that. She can’t imagine for the life of her a boy like Harry Dent or
Jethro going at it like a dog on a bitch in the way Thomas Seymour did with Lady
Latymer. She thinks about it though, at night, touching herself until her belly clenches
and she feels the hot liquid flood to her head, not caring that it is a sin. Why would
God make it feel so good, she reasons, if it is so bad? Meg has said nothing of what
they saw in the physic garden and Dot hasn’t dared bring it up for fear of
upsetting her, but at least there has been no more talk of a marriage for Meg.

Meg is supposed to sleep in the maids’
chamber in Lady Mary’s rooms but mostly she sneaks down to her stepmother’s
bed. Dot cannot imagine her in a dormitory with a crowd of other girls who, she
supposes, must talk into the night about boys: which ones they fancy, who they have
kissed, and all that. Meg is most often at prayer these days, or biting her nails, or
sitting at dinner pretending to eat.

Dot has a pallet in an alcove, which is
quite comfortable enough, and has a little curtain she can pull across for privacy. They
are very well like this, the three of them, though it is rather lonely during the long
days when Lady Latymer and Meg are doing whatever it is they do with Lady Mary –
strolling in the gardens and a good deal of embroidery and a lot of going to mass, as
far as she can tell. She misses the jolly atmosphere of the kitchens at Charterhouse
where she
would sit by the hearth and lark around with the others when
she had finished her chores. There is not much to do, save for tidy their small
lodgings, give things a good clean and see to the delicate laundry; the rest goes to the
laundresses, who sit in a steam-fugged room stirring great vats of linens and then hang
it all out to dry on the hedges in the yard, like white flags. She has to see to the
mending too, stitching on hooks and eyes that have come loose or darning any rents. It
doesn’t take her very long.