Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (14 page)

‘Are you sure there has not been some
mistake?’ Katherine asks.

‘No, my lady, it is written in the
book. The Lord Steward’s man showed me himself,’ replies Dot.

Katherine feels a creeping sense of unease,
for she well knows that these have been the Queen’s rooms since Jane
Seymour’s time. She knows what this must mean. She is clogged up with missing
Thomas and sometimes it feels like an impossibility to paint on her smile and go about
as if everything is the same, as if her world has not been tipped on its axis. Dot
leaves and Katherine sits alone a moment on the bed, her hand straying up to her
mother’s cross, which conjures up an image in her mind of the pearl sitting in his
palm. A rap at the door brings her out of her thoughts, and her brother strides in
wearing a smile the width of the Thames.

‘Will,’ she exclaims, running
into his arms. ‘I thought you were keeping the Scots at bay.’

‘I had some business to attend to down
here and thought
to visit my sister, who seems to be going up in the
world.’ He sweeps his arm in an arc, saying, ‘Not bad …’ looking
around with his odd-coloured eyes, taking it all in – pricing it all up, probably.

‘Hmm,’ she mutters,’ I
wonder what this will cost me.’

‘Don’t be like that, Kit. The
Parrs are on the rise thanks to you. And
I
have good news.’

‘Well, spit it out; clearly you are
bursting to tell me.’

‘I am to be made Earl of Essex. I have
not been told officially but I have it from a good source.’

‘Oh Will,’ she says. ‘This
has been a long time coming. I am glad for you.’

She wants to be
truly
glad for him,
but she lost Thomas for this. The thought of it is like a nail hammered into her. But it
is not Will’s fault the King has set his eye on her. Neither is it his fault that
he wants the Parrs to go up in the world; he was bred for that, they all were. Every
last noble swaggering about this court is gazing at the stars.

‘And your divorce?’ she
asks.

They both know that if he doesn’t get
his divorce he will have no heir to pass his long-awaited earldom on to.

‘I thought I should wait before
broaching that again.’

Wait for what? she thinks. Wait for me to
get into the King’s bed and sweeten him up? She has a secret admiration for
Will’s beleaguered wife, who had the spirit to run off with her lover and bite her
thumb at the court, though she would never say it.

‘I suppose the King will be
sympathetic,’ she says. ‘He is no stranger to divorce, after all.’

‘So you might think, Kit, but as that
miserable Bishop Gardiner constantly likes to point out, the King’s marriages were
annulled. He was never divorced. Then Gardiner’s such
a
Catholic
he can barely say the word “divorce” without gagging.
He’s got it in for me, Kit, I’m sure.’

‘I doubt it, Will.’ Katherine
knows her brother is given to melodrama.

‘He doesn’t like any of us
Parrs. We are too reform-minded for him.’

‘I’m sure Gardiner has other
things on his mind than us Parrs and what we believe.’

‘Yes,’ spits Will, ‘like
wiping the King’s arse … 
and
dragging us all back to the old
faith.’

‘Anyway, enough of that. Come and see
the view from this window.’ She leads him to the casement that looks down over
Fountain Court. ‘See how pretty it is. I shall be able to spy on the lovers
stealing kisses in the cloisters,’ she laughs.

But inside she is thinking of Thomas’s
kisses, the press and clutch of him, the gleam of his summer-sky eyes. Another nail is
driven into her. She wishes her sister were here. She could confide in her. But Sister
Anne has had to go to the Herbert estates to interview a new tutor for her son. The
thought of her sister’s fertility, her children, drives yet another nail in. Even
thoughts that seem innocent are treacherous.

‘So,’ says Will. ‘What of
the King?’

‘What do you mean?’ She feigns
ignorance.

‘Has he declared himself?’

‘He has said nothing. Indeed, until I
found myself housed here,’ she opens both arms out, indicating the sumptuous
rooms, ‘I had not a clue of his intentions.’

‘He will say something soon, I’m
sure of it.’ Will’s eyes are glistening.

‘He’ll take me for his mistress
and I shall pretend it is the thing I want most in the world. We will get some lands and
titles bestowed on us and then he will tire of me. That is how it
will go.’

‘He wants a
wife
, not a
mistress.’ His tone is conspiratorial. ‘Think of it, Kit, the Queen of
England. Think of your influence. You could persuade the King to return to the new
faith. Our faith. He is slipping back, Kit, back to the old ways.’ Will is almost
boiling over with fervour. ‘
You
could bring him round.’

‘Huh,’ she huffs. ‘You
think me so persuasive? And what makes you assume he would take me for a
wife?’

‘Hertford has said it.’

‘Oh, Hertford.’ Her voice
cracks. This is not idle gossip then. Thomas was right. Thoughts of her lover crowd back
into her head. She brings a hand to her brow. ‘And Thomas? Have you seen him,
Will?’

‘Thomas has gone. You must forget him,
Kit. As if he is dead.’

This ruthless streak in her brother is new
to her. Ambition has got to him. He is no longer the sulky puppy of their youth. Of
course not, she berates her own stupidity, twenty years have passed since then.

‘But did you see him before he
left?’

‘No, Kit. I have only just arrived
from the Borders. You know that.’

There is not a shred of tenderness in him.
His jaw is gripped tight; he is locked on to his prize and will not be turned. It only
begins to fully dawn on her now that the King will take her for a wife and she will not
have any choice in the matter. All these men – the King, her brother, Hertford – have
sealed her fate. She is no more free than she was as a girl.

‘Kit,’ Will says, taking both
her shoulders and giving her a
shake. ‘It is the King we talk
of. You will be
Queen
. You could not rise higher.’

‘Nor fall further,’ she
murmurs.

There is no escaping. Though, she reasons,
if she can’t be Seymour’s wife, is it such a very poor consolation to be
Queen of England and raise the Parrs higher than they’d ever hoped? But then she
thinks of those great paws prodding at her, and his stench, and the terror he ignites,
and being tied to him for ever by marriage, and the desperate duty of producing an heir
at her age, each month hoping, praying she will not bleed. It is a whore’s job,
this business of being a woman.

She unclasps her mother’s cross,
folding it into a handkerchief, stashing it in her box of keepsakes. She can no longer
bear to feel it against her skin; it reminds her too much of what she has given up.
Those dead Queens cluster about her. How will she survive this? God is punishing her; he
has seen her sins. Was her part in Latymer’s death the Devil’s work? Murder
or mercy or both? She is befuddled by it all, haunted by it, and her soul feels as
brittle and insubstantial as a dead flower.

Huicke is seated at the far reaches of the
Great Hall. The ravaged remains of the banquet clutter the boards. A carved-up hog lies
splayed over the table, reminding Huicke of the dissections he attended as a student. A
large platter of larks has barely been touched, the little carcasses congealing, and a
pot of jellied eels has tipped over, casting its contents floor-wards. Beneath the lip
of a plate, hidden in the shadows, crouches a small quivering frog. A pie was served at
the top table earlier, which the King had sliced with his sword. Anne Stanhope, seated
beside the King, let out a blood-curdling scream, followed by a squeal from Lady Mary
that then became a cacophony of female screeching from all sides.

Huicke, being seated so far down the table,
only realized that the pie was full of live frogs when the poor creatures had started to
leap desperately about the room to escape the hands of the pages who were trying to
gather them. There must have been some kind of reward promised to the one who caught the
most, for they jostled and jumped over each other ruthlessly to get at the things. It
was utter chaos and the King looked on with a satisfied smirk, occasionally hollering
out encouragement to one or other of the pages. The purpose of the pie would have been
the terrified screams of the ladies.

Huicke knows the King well enough; a
physician sees things others don’t. He has seen him toy viciously with people,
even those closest to him, like a boy who kicks an old dog just to hear it yelp, and
he’s seen him reduced to anguished tears when the pain in his leg becomes too much
to bear, seen him pacing the room in shallow-breathed panic on hearing news of an
outbreak of plague nearby. And yet, most see him as fearless, impervious, brimming with
courage.

Huicke had watched the King fawn like a
puppy over that little featherhead Catherine Howard, brought to his knees by her, but
then he watched him sign the paper that sent the girl to the scaffold, barely looking up
from his card game as if he might have been agreeing to his supper menu. And he has seen
the King explode at one of his pages who made some petty mistake, shouting purple-faced
until the poor boy pissed his hose. But he’s seen King Henry comfort a man too, no
one of any consequence, just a bereft man who had lost his son; the King took him in his
arms and cradled him as a mother might an infant. The frog quakes in its hiding place
and Huicke wonders what will become of it.

The room is too noisy and his stomach hurts
with
overeating. Udall, who had been seated somewhere near the middle
of the room, stands to leave. He must make preparations for the masque he has devised
for midsummer night, which will be performed later, if anyone can stay awake after all
this food. Five or six of his performers rise too, young girls, who will be draped in
the diaphanous costumes that have been designed to cover, and yet reveal, their
up-tilted girls’ breasts. Huicke had been at the fitting. Breasts do little for
him, but a glance from Udall can send him into a state of bedazzled arousal so, as his
lover passes to leave the room, he keeps his eyes firmly glued to the table and that
plate of massacred larks. Udall runs a scalding finger by-mistake-on-purpose across his
back and Huicke can barely contain himself. The woman sitting opposite him blathers on,
something about the Scottish Queen Mary … whether she will be betrothed to
Prince Edward … the King’s ‘rough wooing’ … but he
can’t hear her properly over the hubbub, so he smiles and nods and she seems
satisfied. He can’t help thinking that the infant Queen will be shoved about like
a chess piece in the name of Scotland.

Katherine sits far up the room, just visible
if he leans back. She wears her serene smile, the one that fools everyone but him; he
knows of the turmoil that roils behind that facade. She talks animatedly with her
brother’s mistress, Lizzie Brooke, who though considered a beauty doesn’t
manage to eclipse Katherine. Those flashing hazel eyes and ebullient laugh could draw
the moon from the sky. Her brother Will, who sits close to them, has something of his
sister about him, the oddly female upturned nose, the shock of copper hair, almost
exactly the shade of hers, but where Katherine has a softness about her, Will Parr is
sharp-edged and his eyes – one fiery hazel like Katherine’s but the other pale as
water – give him the look of a wall-eyed dog. He is making a
point, stabbing at the air in staccato movements. Katherine throws him a stern look and
his arms drop. Huicke has seen Katherine put her arrogant brother in his place more than
once. There is no doubt who holds sway in the Parr family.

He had watched her when the chaos broke out
over the frogs, the women squealing like pigs and leaping on benches. Katherine had
appeared entirely unperturbed and when one had landed right beside her she picked it up
as if to kiss it, causing a great billow of laughter from the King, then called over one
of the pages, handing the amphibian to him and saying something Huicke couldn’t
hear.

‘What did she say?’ the woman
opposite him called up the table.

‘She asked that it be repatriated to
the pond in the knot garden,’ someone called back.

On seeing the King’s smug satisfaction
as he watched that little event unfold, it dawned on Huicke that just by being herself,
her sanguine, light-hearted self, Katherine was playing right into the King’s
hands. Had she screeched and fussed like all the others, his attentions may have drifted
elsewhere. That test was for her and she had passed it with aplomb. Huicke had felt a
little knot of fear tighten in his belly on behalf of his friend.

At least she is not on the dais at the
King’s table; she will be pleased about that. The servers begin to clear away;
someone offers a bowl of water for Huicke to rinse his hands, mumbling an apology and
stepping back on seeing that he has not removed his gloves. The lad is clearly
embarrassed by the improperness of gloves at supper. Huicke would like to see his
reaction were he to rip them off and let him see what
lies beneath.
He’d likely run screaming. He has used Katherine’s balm daily, but it has
had little effect save for soothing the itch, which is a blessing in itself.

Katherine had called for him that afternoon,
had sent her stepdaughter to seek him out. It was the first time, since their
conversation in the still room at Charterhouse, that she had asked to see him alone. At
Whitehall their paths had crossed often, but the easy intimacy that had previously
characterized their friendship was absent. She wasn’t unfriendly, perhaps just a
little cool with him and a little too polite. He had had to face the fact that her trust
was lost, and he felt it deeply; it was as if a hole had opened up in him and even
Udall’s unstinting amorous attentions didn’t entirely fill the void. He
arrived in her rooms – the Queen’s rooms, no less – to find her surrounded by
papers.