Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (15 page)

She was talking to her steward about a
boundary dispute, scrawling out a letter and saying to him, ‘Stand firm, Cousins.
We will not be walked over. That land was given me by my husband and I have the
documents to prove it.’ She folded the paper, running her finger and thumb along
the fold, dropped a glob of red wax on to the join, thumping her stamp into it.
‘They are here somewhere,’ she was saying while shuffling through the
papers. ‘Here!’ she said eventually, pulling a document from the pile.
‘Look, Cousins, there it is, clear as day. The Hammerton boundary runs to the west
of the woods, not the east. Those woods are mine, are they not?’

‘They are indeed, my lady,’ he
said.

‘Take this to the notary, and while
you are there have him release some funds for Nun Monkton. They need a new barn. And the
man who died, his widow will need something. A few pounds, I should think – for the
meantime she must have something to live on – and find her a position in
the house, or the laundry, or the pastry kitchen if she can cook.
I’ll leave it to you, Cousins.’

Huicke watched, impressed at her efficient
tone, her sense of calm authority. Once Cousins had taken his leave, they sat together
and she took his hand.

‘I have missed you, Huicke.’

No words could have made him happier and he
felt the closeness surge back, wrap itself around them once more.

‘This poor man,’ she’d
said, ‘he was crushed when a wall collapsed on my land. It pains me, Huicke, that
I have to be here and cannot offer comfort to his widow. I should be there but I am
compelled to stay. Think, Huicke, I could be pickling and bottling in the kitchens,
preserving summer fruits, drying herbs, making remedies, riding out to visit my tenants,
looking after things, but I am here surrounded by all this.’ She spread her arms
out with a pained look. ‘The Queen’s rooms, Huicke.’

‘Kit,’ he had said, using her
pet name tentatively, unsure if he still had the right to it, given the rupture in their
friendship. But she gave his hand a squeeze and he continued. ‘If there is
anything I can do to –’

‘There is, Huicke,’ she’d
said before he had a chance to finish. ‘You must tell me of the King’s
intentions. My brother says he wants this marriage. I don’t want to believe it,
but look where I have been lodged … and apparently Will is to get his earldom.
I have a terrible feeling about this.’ Her hand kept flicking up to her throat as
if to touch something that wasn’t there.

‘I
have
heard him talk of it,
Kit,’ Huicke had said. ‘And Anne Bassett has gone back to Calais.’

Katherine’s face was grey and strained
as she nodded in response. ‘And Huicke,’ she’d said, lowering her
tone. ‘One more thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Did you see Thomas Seymour before he
left? Did he say anything, send a message?’

‘Kit, I wish I could say he did, but
no.’

Her face dropped at this.

‘But he wouldn’t have said
anything. Not to me, not to anyone. It would have been too risky.’ He’d
added that to make her feel better – and it is probably true. Huicke couldn’t
bring himself to tell her what he really thinks about Thomas Seymour, that he is
thankful the man’s gone; it would have been cruel.

So she must be glad to be seated where she
is and not on the dais. The servers have begun to bring in the sweets – jellies and
syllabubs and sweetmeats – parading them down the hall, and finally they produce a vast
platter. Seated on it is a life-size hart, pure white, made of marchpane, so
real-seeming it might have been sculpted by Michelangelo himself, its antlers crafted
from sugar crystals, its breast pierced with an arrow. It is carried between four men,
down the room which has fallen silent save for the gasps of wonder. They stop at the top
of the table and everyone is waiting to see how they will manage to heave the great
thing up on to the dais. But they stay where they are. People rise from their seats to
better see who has been presented with this creature. Huicke leaves his seat and walks
forward, hoping it is not whom he thinks.

But it is, of course it is.

The hart signifies love and the arrow needs
no explaining. The King is declaring himself. Katherine stands, her face beaming with
feigned delight. She glances briefly, shyly, at the King who nods, with a triumphant
smile, and blows her a kiss. The room erupts into applause. Stanhope is unable to hide
her sour look and Huicke cannot help but feel a little
thrill of
satisfaction to see the woman’s nose put out of joint. Katherine manages to
maintain her counterfeit delight but Huicke knows what she is thinking. Of those fat
hands grabbing at her, probably.

‘Pull the arrow,’ cries the
King.

As she does so blood, or a substance that
looks like it – spiced red wine, perhaps – spills out from the white animal, staining
its breast scarlet. A cup is placed beneath, gathering the red liquid, and then it is
served to the King.

He lifts the cup towards Katherine, calling
out, ‘To love!’ before swigging it back in one. He throws the cup away and
the room is silent save for the clatter as it lands.

Then the hall erupts into applause
again.

In that single gesture Katherine’s
fate is publicly sealed.

It is Hertford who comes to fetch
Katherine. She follows him down the long gallery. From behind, the set of his shoulders,
his swinging gait, are so much like his brother’s that it sends a pang of longing
through her. The King is waiting in his privy chamber, standing, thick white-stockinged
legs apart, hands on hips, in a parody of the great Holbein that hangs at Whitehall –
the image of the King. But it is a grotesque parody before her. You’d not think
him the same man except for the jewels and the elaborate gilded clothes.

The sheer mountainous height and girth of
him in the small room make her feel like a doll, in a doll’s house, where some
careless child has tossed a great puppet far too big for the place. He looks at her with
a jowly smile, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger and turning her face up
to his. Hertford backs out of the room and closes the door. Though she doesn’t
much like the man, she wants to shout at him to stay, not to leave her alone with the
King. She has never been alone with
the King before and feels a rising
panic, for she knows what is coming and grasps mentally for some way to stop it.

But his voice, when he eventually drags his
eyes away from his appraisal of her, surprises her with its softness. He asks her to sit
with him so he can show her a book of hours that had belonged to his father. It is a
wonder, so fine, its colours so vivid, the gilt work so intricate, she quite forgets
that this tender old man beside her, carefully turning the old vellum pages, pointing
out the details in the text and showing her where someone had once pressed a flower, a
primrose, flat and faded, between the pages, is King Henry himself. He places the flower
ghost on her palm, a weightless fragile thing.

‘It was my mother put that there, when
I was a boy,’ he says, and suddenly the thing feels like a great weight in her
hand, as if the whole of history is dragging her down.

‘Please take it, I am afraid to break
it,’ she whispers, nervous that the slightest breath will blow this fragment of
Tudor heritage away.

He compares
her
to a flower, a
rose, just an empty flattery. He shows her, too, the place where his father had written
in the margin beside an image of Christ crucified, deciphering for her the
spider’s web words:
Arthur, rest in peace
, translating the Latin for her.
Though her Latin is at least as good as his, she finds herself feigning ignorance.

‘That was my brother,’ he
says.

She nods and touches a finger lightly to the
dry words. ‘Prince Arthur.’

‘I know what loss is,’ he
adds.

‘Yes,’ she whispers.

‘Your husband suffered greatly but now
he is with God, and
you
must live.’

She wonders then whether Latymer is indeed
with God, or
in that other place, thinking again about the
circumstances of his death, her part in it. The thought silts her up, makes her
speechless. The King seems to think she is dumb with awe of him and perhaps she is, a
little. She finds it is impossible to know exactly
what
she thinks here and
now, with history bearing down on her and she expected to take her part in it.

‘I have chosen you to be my
Queen,’ he says.

It is not a question in the normal manner of
a proposal, where she might at least feel allowed the pretence of a refusal. She wonders
if the King was ever refused anything, then remembers Anne Boleyn, who, it is said,
refused him for years and drove him quite mad with desire – mad enough to send her to
the block at the end of it. She sits very still. Pieces of Seymour hover in her mind:
his pink mouth, his long fingers, the scent of him, his bright laugh. The thought of
what she will have to do with the King, as his wife, disgusts her. She doesn’t
have to answer him. It is not a question, after all. It is already decided.

‘We shall be wed here at Hampton
Court,’ he continues, squeezing her waist, ‘in July.’ And he goes on
listing the details of it, what they will feast on, what psalms will be sung, who will
attend.

She hears none of it, is imagining his great
paws on her and trying to keep her thoughts on the other things: the jewels, the lands,
the honours, the Parrs soaring. But none of that can erase her disgust.

‘But, Your Majesty …’

‘You shall call me Harry,’ he
says. ‘When we are alone. Now we are betrothed we will have time to know each
other.’

She doesn’t know how, but she manages
a smile.

The King laughs, his doughy cheeks
quivering, saying, ‘Let’s drink to it.’

Hertford appears as if by magic, with a jug of
wine, pouring it into glass goblets, making her wonder if there was a pre-arranged time
for his return. After all, everything else has been pre-arranged, stage-managed like one
of Udall’s masques. She notices Hertford’s hands are like his
brother’s and in that moment she yearns desperately for Thomas. But then she
thinks of Hertford’s poisonous wife, and manages to find a little spirit at the
idea of Stanhope having to stoop and grovel before her when she is Queen. She admonishes
herself for entertaining such pettiness, but knows she is clutching to find reasons to
celebrate.

The glasses are Venetian and beautifully
etched with a pattern of vines. She has never drunk from glass before. It is a good
feeling, the cool of it on her lips, but the wine, which she supposes must be a fine
one, tastes sharp. The King swallows his down and throws his glass into the grate where
it shatters, making her jump.

‘You too, Katherine,’ he says,
taking her arm and flinging it. The glass flies from her fingers, breaking against the
stone chimney piece. ‘Come, Ned, drink with us,’ he booms to Hertford.
‘And Katherine,’ he cries, his raisin eyes glittering, ‘you can tell
your brother he will get his title.’

She wishes that she could muster the guts to
ask for her brother’s divorce too, to milk this for all she can get. Isn’t
that what it is all about? But she remains silent.

She couldn’t speak if she wanted
to.

Dot is in the squillery, pretending to
scour the big copper washbasin, which is cleaner than it’s ever been. In fact, it
was never really dirty in the first place but the swilling and scrubbing means she can
watch William Savage from the corner of her eye. That is the name of the kitchen clerk
who has got inside her head and will not be budged. Betty had gone and asked his name,
straight out just like that; Dot would never have dared, though she might have if the
very sight of him didn’t make her belly feel full of butterflies.

She feigns scrubbing to stay a little longer
in his presence, watching askance as he marks things down in his ledger, though he seems
not to notice her at all. His hair keeps falling forward and he has a way of pushing it
back with his arm. Dot supposes that’s so he doesn’t rub the ink from his
fingers on to his forehead. She imagines running her own fingers through that hair; it
would feel smooth and soft like Katherine’s silk shifts. He would wrap an arm
around her, pulling her towards him so close she could feel his breath on her skin and
say … What would he say? She cannot imagine that he would have anything to say
to
her
. It is a silly dream, and besides, her hands are quite raw with rubbing
at a clean basin, so she gives up and goes into the yard to find Betty, who is skiving
in the hayloft above the stables.

‘Been loitering around William Savage
again?’ asks Betty, nudging Dot as she settles into the straw beside her. ‘I
don’t know why you don’t just offer him a squeeze. That’s what you
want, isn’t it?’

‘I couldn’t,’ replies Dot,
wishing things in her world could be as straightforward as they seem to be in
Betty’s.