Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (12 page)

She has been exploring and occasionally,
when everyone is at mass and she is skiving, when the place is empty and echoing, she
takes off her shoes and slides down the long polished corridors, pretending she is
skating on ice. There is a lad who delivers the firewood each morning, Braydon, a
scullion, who has been friendly enough and has shown her the ropes, where to find
kindling, where to empty the chamber pots, where to find herbs for strewing, where she
is to take her meals, and such like. He has even shown her a litter of kittens curled in
a bundle at the back of the wood store, which was nice, and then he tried to kiss her,
which was not, for kind though he may be Braydon is pimply and pink-faced and only after
one thing. He has sulked since then, ignoring her, and he must have said something to
the kitchen lads for they give her funny looks and giggle when she passes.

Occasionally Meg is able to sneak away
unseen or feign a headache and they go and lie in the long grass in the orchard, where
the meadow flowers are out – poppies and cow parsley and little blue forget-me-nots –
and there is barely a sound but the buzz and whirr of insects and the twitter of the
finches that gather in the branches of the fruit trees. If they lie completely flat they
cannot be seen from a distance and they can pretend that they are all alone in the
world. There
they mimic the birdsong and gaze at the clouds, imagining
them into shapes: a galleon, a winged horse, a crown. Meg tells of how it is in Lady
Mary’s chambers, how unkind the girls can be to each other and how no one says
what they really mean. They all twist their words, she says. She doesn’t like it.
But then Meg is not one to slide easily into another life.

‘And Lady Elizabeth, what is she
like?’ Dot had asked once.

‘I’ve never seen her. She lives
somewhere else and she is absolutely never talked about,’ Meg had replied.

‘But why?’ Dot couldn’t
understand why the King’s youngest daughter would not be there.

‘The King doesn’t want to be
reminded of her mother. Or that’s what they say.’ Meg makes a chopping
motion at her neck.

‘Nan Bullen,’ said Dot under her
breath, as if just saying it out loud might turn her to stone.

‘Yes, Anne Boleyn,’ Meg
whispered back, her mouth half covered by her hand.

‘And Prince Edward. Tell me about
him.’

‘I have not seen him either. He is
kept away from London for fear of disease. But he is talked about all the time. Every
scrap of information is passed around, what he has eaten, what he wears, the colour of
his stools, the smell of his farts …’

‘Margaret Neville!’ gasped Dot.
‘What are they teaching you up there?’

‘They are quite foul-mouthed, those
noble girls,’ Meg had giggled, and Dot was secretly pleased that she was showing a
little spirit.

In the evenings after she has supped, Dot
sits on a low
wall from where she can watch the palace windows glowing
yellow and can see the silhouettes of people dancing and carousing upstairs, where she
has never been, and can hear the music that trickles out into the gardens. She tries to
imagine what the King might look like, wondering if he has a halo like in a church
painting.

Not even a month after they have settled in,
Dot learns that the court is to move – all of it – for the summer. If she thought
everyone was busy before, then she couldn’t have imagined how much more so they
would be now. Everything must be prepared for the move: hangings are being taken down to
the yards and beaten, great clouds of dust billowing out from them, before they are
folded into linen bags and packed into chests; dresses are carefully folded in layers of
muslin with camphor to ward off the moths; the plate is stacked into boxes and furniture
is dismantled. Almost everything moveable is to be taken.

They will go by barge, says Lady Latymer, to
a palace even greater than this, called Hampton Court. Dot is to go this afternoon, in a
cart with the luggage and Rig the dog. They will follow the Lord Steward’s men and
their cartloads of equipment, and the yeomen, and the Grooms of the Wardrobe with all
the King’s vestments and hangings and cushions and carpets, and the Master of the
Horse and the stable lads, who will bring the favourite hunters. They say the hunting is
good at Hampton Court and they will eat venison almost every day they are there. The
harbingers left this morning, so things will be prepared and the kitchens set up. When
the King and his household arrive tomorrow there will be a feast prepared. Lady Latymer
and Meg will travel with Lady Mary in one of the royal barges alongside the King. They
will arrive gliding on the water, as if there has been no effort at all to get
them there. Everything must seem to happen as if by magic.

Meg is tetchy and tense about the move.
‘More change, Dot,’ she says. ‘It is too much.’

Dot takes her to the orchard where they lie
side by side, hiding from the world.

‘I miss you, Dot,’ Meg says.
‘They never talk of anything but marriage up there.’

‘Meg,’ Dot says, taking her
wrist, noticing that she is thinner even than she was a month ago and thinking that,
with all the talk of marriage, no one could get a child on her like this anyway, she
wouldn’t be capable, she doesn’t even bleed any more. ‘There are some
things in life that cannot be changed.’

Meg snuggles in so close to her that Dot can
feel the whisper of breath on her cheek. ‘I wish we could share a bed still, Dot,
as we used to.’

There is a bustle about the court as they
make ready to travel. Katherine stands in one of the window alcoves in the western
corridor, watching Lady Mary’s wardrobe – a dozen trunks, which she had overseen
the careful packing of herself – being loaded on to a cart below. It is a fine day and
she is looking forward to leaving the heave and press of the city. A rotten stench is
beginning to emanate from the direction of the jakes, the vegetable gardens are all but
empty and the rumour of plague hangs in the air – it is time to move on. She should be
at mass but she wanted a moment alone and hopes Lady Mary won’t be upset by her
absence, though Lady Mary will doubtless be so intent on her worship she won’t
notice who is or isn’t there. Someone will tell her – hawk-eyed Susan Clarencieux
or vindictive Anne Stanhope probably – but she can always say she wanted to make sure
the trunks were all correctly loaded.

Despite her misgivings Katherine has enjoyed
being at court, where something is always going on, a round of feasts and masques, and
she can forget the past a little. Even the gossip and intrigue has its own fascination.
And there is the pleasure of both being reunited with old friends and under the same
roof as her sister. Cat Brandon has been about the place too, an intimate of hers who
shared the royal schoolroom all those years ago, and is now the Duchess of Suffolk. They
pass books of new ideas around discreetly and talk of the shifting sands of belief, how
the wind seems to be changing again. Reformers are fined for eating meat on fast days;
the English Bible is banned for all but the nobility.

Gardiner is at the bottom of it. He would
have England back in the Pope’s pocket if he had his way but the King, however
much he cleaves to the old ways as he advances in age, would never sanction the loss of
his position as Head of the Church. Gardiner’s presence sits heavily over the
palace but there is little he can do to stem the whispers of reform, for some of those
closest to the King, and with the greatest influence, champion the new religion –
Thomas’s brother, the Earl of Hertford, for one. So the books are passed around
and a blind eye is turned, but you can never for a minute think that people don’t
know your business in this place.

In spite of that, court has been a welcome
respite from the gloom of Charterhouse and being alone with her guilt. Katherine, for
all their differences of faith, likes Lady Mary. They sit in the privy chamber and read
to each other, or embroider together, chatting easily about all manner of things. But
Mary is often beset by excruciating headaches and Katherine has concocted a tincture for
her, a mix of feverfew and butterbur, and administered cabbage compresses to her
forehead. Mary
is a little less crumpled and fragile as a result and
the King seems to like her the more for it; he is a man, it seems, who has no patience
for the ailments of others.

But the greatest attraction the court has to
offer Katherine is Thomas. They have had only the odd snatched moment alone together –
the occasional brief kiss, behind her lodgings – and once in the gardens after dark when
they stood by the river watching it glisten silently in the moonlight, not daring to
touch for fear that they might be seen from one of the palace windows. Once, behind the
stables, they grappled at each other hungrily, leaving her mouth bruised and her head
spinning. They see one another in public, though, countless times a day, pretending they
are no more than acquaintances.

‘Good day to you, my lady,’ he
says to her, doffing his cap and winking almost invisibly.

‘And to you, sir,’ she replies,
with a perfunctory nod, turning away as if she cares nothing.

She is not naive enough, though, to think
that nobody notices. You can’t scratch an itch around here without everybody
knowing about it one way or another, and Anne Stanhope’s bulbous eyes watch
everybody constantly so she can feed her husband, Hertford, little scraps of
information: who is allied to who, or who has argued with who, which ladies are sporting
new jewels, and such like. Knowledge is power in this place and the Earl of Hertford is
at the top of the pile.

The King has visited Lady Mary’s
chambers daily, sometimes twice a day, but he has not appeared to show Katherine any
kind of special favour. He has only given her the same courtly compliments that he
dishes out to all the women and he has certainly not favoured her with her lodgings. He
picks
her out more often than not for a game of cards or chess, saying
that she is the only one who gives him a proper challenge. ‘The rest are too
scared of me to play well,’ he whispered once, which made her wonder about what it
must be like to have nothing but insincerity all around you constantly. It must have
been ever thus for him, or perhaps not when he was small, for he wasn’t raised to
be King. If his brother Prince Arthur hadn’t died, the world would have been
entirely different. England would surely still be allied to Rome.

Katherine treads carefully, measuring her
behaviour, doing nothing to lead him on. He gave Anne Bassett a pretty pony recently,
which makes her family think she’s in with a chance, and their smugness sits on
them like a layer of polish. They are under the impression that Katherine is an
adversary; they have no idea that she would give her eye teeth for them to win this
race. Katherine has stuck resolutely to her black mourning garb and little jewellery
save for her mother’s cross, which is her only embellishment.

Seymour, though, has said that the black
only serves to make her skin seem all the more lustrous – ‘like alabaster’,
he said, and ‘like moonlight’. ‘Why would you gild a lily?’ he
has said too.

She usually replies with something like,
‘Come, Thomas, you know I am not the type to be moved by those kind of
words.’ But she
is
moved. She can’t help it. He only has to direct
a glance her way and she feels herself tingle and burn. The flatteries don’t seem
empty on his lips where they would on others’.

She hears the click of footsteps in the
corridor, feels a hand on her shoulder, picks up a waft of cedar and musk, his scent.
She closes her eyes.

‘Thomas, not here,’ she
breathes.

‘We are safe; there is no one about.
Everyone is at mass, listen.’

She can hear the rhythmic incantation of the
Eucharist emanating from the chapel below. Out of the window the sun is setting,
colouring the sky with a thousand shades of pink as if the heavens are revealing
themselves. But he turns her round away from the sight of it. His face is blighted, shot
through with something – anger, concern, fear, she is not sure which – and she looks for
the fondness there but cannot find it.

‘My brother tells me the worst,’
he says. His eyes skit about like flies.

She tucks a hand around his warm neck,
drawing his mouth to hers, but he pulls away with a strangled, ‘No.’

‘What is it, Thomas?’

‘The King wishes to take you for a
wife.’ His voice chokes slightly on the final word but his face reveals little. He
is not a man to wear his weakness for all to see, but she notices the shrink in his
demeanour as she meets his eyes. ‘I feared this,’ he adds.

‘It is nothing. The King has barely
given me a second glance this last month. It is nothing but gossip.’

She laughs, but his face is grave and
cold.

‘Gossip.’ He looks forlorn.

‘The King has said nothing to me. He
would have said something. You have no need to worry.’ She is babbling now.

‘No, Kit,’ he growls,
‘it’s not rumour. He has sent me away.’ He will not look at her.

She cannot bear it, longs to grab his arms,
wrap herself about him, sucker herself to him like a limpet. ‘Look at me,
Thomas …’ But he cannot tear his eyes away from the window sill.
‘Sweetheart.’

‘I am to go to the Low Countries
indefinitely.’

‘The Low Countries, what? As
ambassador?’

He nods.

‘But,’ she says, taking his hand
to plant a dry-lipped kiss on it. ‘I don’t understand. Is it not an honour
to represent the King overseas?’

He grabs her own hand in both of his,
squeezing it, his ring digging into her so hard she imagines the Seymour arms being
forever indented on her palm. His hands are warm, hers cool. ‘Away from the court.
Out of sight, out of mind, Kit. He’s getting rid of me.’

‘No …’ She is confused,
can’t quite get her thoughts straight. ‘It is an honour?’