Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (17 page)

She has called for her dear cousin and for
her childhood playmate, Elizabeth Cheyney and bossy Lizzie Tyrwhitt, and for Cousin Maud
and her mother’s old friend Mary Wootten, who is ancient and was at court at a
time before any of them can remember. She has sent for her stepson’s wife, Lucy,
from Snape, if only to give her a break from her husband; Young John is not the kindest
of men. She has offered them each a dress of good black velvet – which disappointed the
King, who called them a flock of crows. She imagines he’d like his Queen’s
ladies to be more like pretty finches that he could have baked in a pie if he so wished.
She keeps dear Huicke close too, has appointed him as her physician. The King is pleased
with this – feels it is his doing – and it is, she supposes. Perhaps he thinks Huicke
will continue his espionage. But Huicke is
her
man; she feels it in her bones
that he will never betray her. And anyway, there is nothing to betray yet, though that
doesn’t necessarily mean anything in this place.

She is becoming used to it: the court
flatterers who all
want something from her; the artists and craftsmen;
the bookbinders, vintners, preachers; the grand ladies and countesses who had barely
given her a thought until now. Huicke has introduced her to his inamorato, Nicholas
Udall, a sharp-eyed academic with a vicious sense of humour and a whiff of scandal about
him. The moment he goggled his eyes and set his mouth in a sneer, in a parody of
Stanhope, she knew she would like him.

He has written plays and philosophies and
directed elaborate masques, but most of all he likes to talk deeply of things. She has
decided that if she can’t have Seymour, and must have this unwanted wedding, then
she will at least enjoy her new position and surround herself with those who inspire.
And, to be useful, she will try to use her status in the right way, not let it get the
better of her.

Lady Mary is announced, swaying in slowly,
dressed head to toe in cloth of gold and an over-elaborate array of jewels about her
throat. Susan Clarencieux is on one arm and her sister Lady Elizabeth on the other.
Elizabeth cannot even be ten, yet she is tall, almost as tall as Mary, and carries
herself in a way that makes her seem older than her years. A cascade of flame-red hair
hangs loose to her waist, framing dark flashing eyes and perfect heart-shaped lips. Her
gown is of dark blue taffeta, its plainness serving to accentuate her striking looks,
and she clutches a book between slim fingers. Hers is the bearing of a Princess – head
high, half smile, inscrutable – and whereas Mary’s bastard status is visible in
the slight crouch of her posture and a suspicion about the eyes, Elizabeth seems
completely untouched by her father’s rejection. Katherine is reminded of the King
as a young man; he inhabits Elizabeth unmistakably and Katherine wonders if this will be
the girl’s saving grace.

The three of them stop before her, to offer
their congratulations.

‘You shall be my stepmother
tomorrow,’ Lady Mary says with a wry smirk, as if the idea of it amuses her,
adding, ‘my previous stepmother was a decade younger than me.’

A little burst of acid laughter spills out
of her. Mary has never mentioned the marriage – or certainly not to Katherine, who
supposes it is a sore point. Mary herself should have been married long ago.

‘At least you are older, if only by
four years …’ She pauses. ‘And we are friends.’

‘We
are
friends,’ says
Katherine.

She takes Mary’s hand, pulling her in
to kiss her cheek. The sour edge seems to drop away from her.

‘And I shall do all I can
to …’ Katherine seeks for the tactful way to tell Mary that she hopes to try
to have the blot of illegitimacy lifted from her, ‘… to forward your
case.’

A rare natural smile breaks like a wave over
Mary’s face and she gives her sister a gentle nudge forward.

Elizabeth steps forward with the words,
‘I shall be proud to call you Mother,’ and begins to recite a poem in Latin,
the words tripping easily off her tongue as if it is the language she most commonly
uses.

The ladies, who seem unable to drag their
eyes away from her, are clearly impressed, but Mary cannot hide the slight sneer that
has fixed itself around her mouth. Katherine is reminded that it was Elizabeth’s
mother who caused the downfall of Mary’s and makes a silent pledge to achieve a
rapprochement not only between the girls and their father, but also between
themselves.

More ladies arrive, including two of the
King’s nieces. Margaret Douglas is the daughter of the King’s elder sister,
who was married to the King of Scotland. She wears a gown of green
brocade shot with gold and carries a small dog in her sleeve. Katherine notices an
impish flash in her eye, which lends some credence to her reputation for waywardness.
Cut of altogether different cloth is her cousin, Frances Brandon, who is great with
child and lumbers rather, though maintains a dignified air, and insists on speaking in
French lest anyone forget that her mother, the King’s younger sister Mary, was
once the Queen of France.

Katherine has a moment of inward amusement
at the idea of these grand ladies, the greatest in the land, paying court to her, plain
old Katherine Parr, who should by rights be far down the pecking order. Stanhope smiles
stiffly, her finery – layers of raspberry damask lined with white satin, and a heavily
jewelled hood – an attempt to outshine them all. Who fits where and who follows whom is
a fixation for Stanhope; even in the schoolroom she used to pull rank on Katherine.
There is some satisfaction watching her fight to keep that smile fixed to her face. With
them, dressed in sky-blue brocade that sets off her dark eyes, is Cat Brandon, who
doesn’t give a fig that she is Duchess of Suffolk or about her supposed place in
the order of things. Meg is hovering, drooping in the July heat, with wisps of damp
brown hair stuck to her forehead and a look of anxious concern etched on her face. Cat
takes her by the hand and draws her forward.

‘What is it, Meg?’ Katherine
asks.

She is not a girl who comes to life when
surrounded by people, and Katherine knows she’d far rather be in the anteroom with
Dot than here.

‘When you are Queen, what shall I call
you? Will it be Your Majesty?’ There is a tremor in her voice; she has been asking
questions such as this for days now.

‘Majesty is for the King alone, Meg. It
is madam, or Highness, I think. We shall ask Sister Anne, for she is a fount of
knowledge on protocol –’

‘It is madam usually, and Highness
formally,’ interrupts Stanhope, who must have been listening from across the room.
‘Though there was one Queen who preferred Highness all the time.’ They all
know she must be talking of Elizabeth’s mother, who is not to be mentioned by name
in public.

‘Anyway, Meg,’ adds Katherine,
‘in private we shall be just as we have always been and I shall still be
Mother
to you.’

A wan smile washes over Meg’s
face.

‘And,’ Katherine continues with
a wink, ‘you may yet marry a marquess and
we
shall all have to call
you
lady.’

Meg’s smile is swallowed up, and
Katherine realizes her mistake.

‘Don’t tease her,’ says
Sister Anne.

‘I shall not marry, Mother, not even a
duke,’ says Meg. ‘I plan to stay with you always.’

‘One day a man will steal your
heart,’ says Cat Brandon.

Katherine cannot help but think, with a
painful squeeze in her breast, of Thomas in some foreign court, dazzling the ladies,
with shards of her heart in his pocket.

‘It will not happen,’ says Meg,
her eyes glazing with tears.

‘I only meant it lightly, Meg,’
says Cat. ‘Come, remember the reading.’ She hands a sheaf of papers to
Meg.

‘What is this?’ asks
Katherine.

‘Oh, it’s something my Lady
Suffolk would have me read to you,’ mumbles Meg. She has managed to pull herself
together.

The women approach like a flock of
ornamental birds in their finery. The King would surely approve, seeing how
splendid they look all together like this. Elizabeth is at the front
of the group and Meg seems quite mesmerized by her, unable to tear her eyes away.

‘She asked,’ continues Meg, a
blush spreading over her breast and up to her cheeks, ‘that I read this in
celebration of your marriage.’

Katherine, seeing Meg’s discomfort,
takes her hand for reassurance and notices that her nails, so viciously bitten down a
few weeks before, have begun to grow again. She feels an inward hope that the girl may
finally be ridding herself of the past.

The women gather around, perching on stools,
the younger ones kneeling on the Turkish carpet, a gift from the Imperial ambassador.
Meg, still standing, takes a deep breath. Cat Brandon is unable to contain a burst of
laughter, and a tittering breaks out among the ranks of women.

‘
Arrêtez
,’ barks
Frances Brandon.

The giggling subsides and Meg clears her
throat. ‘ “The prologue of the tale of the Wife of Bath”,’ she
says.

‘Cat Brandon,’ interjects
Katherine, with a guffaw, ‘you vixen.’

‘It was Udall who put me up to
it,’ Cat says. ‘We thought it appropriate given the Mistress of Bath was
four times widowed and five times married.’

The women all laugh at this, even Stanhope
who is not much given to mirth. It is unlikely many of them have read Chaucer; Cat must
have given them the gist of the story.

‘Nicholas Udall,’ says
Katherine, still laughing. ‘He’s a sly one … and where did you get
hold of it? Him, I suppose?’

‘Actually,’ says Cat, ‘I
borrowed it from my husband’s library, if you know what I mean.’

‘Well, mind he doesn’t find out,
or he may think of you as
corrupted,’ says Katherine, ‘and
try to divorce you. And anyway,’ she continues with mock hauteur, ‘you know
well that I have only buried two husbands and am merely on my third.’

The congregation explodes into laughter at
this, dying down eventually into titters, which expire altogether at a rumpus from the
courtyard below.

‘My Lady Latymer,’ comes the
cry, then once more, louder, ‘My Lady Latymer!’

It is accompanied by the bustle and rattle
of a number of liveried horses and the unmistakable chink of arms. The smile drops
momentarily from Katherine’s face. She cannot hear that sound without thinking of
Snape. Meg, beside her, pales visibly and begins to gnaw at the nail of her thumb.

‘It is the King,’ cries Margaret
Douglas. Even
she
seems excited, though the King is her uncle.

Katherine stands and glides towards the open
casement, painting on a perfect demeanour, agreeable, docile, joyful, as if she is
playing Queen in one of Udall’s masques, but she feels far from any of these
things.

‘Your Majesty,’ she calls.
‘To what do I owe this honour?’

The King sits astride a great foaming roan
mare whose girth matches his own. He is draped in acres of gilded mud-spattered cloth
and surrounded by at least a dozen men, most of them husbands of the women around her.
Suffolk is beside him, looking grizzled and, for all the world, old enough to be
Cat’s grandfather. Stanhope’s husband, Hertford, is at the King’s
other side, trying to control his skittish mount. Her brother Will is not there; he is
back at the Borders, keeping the Scots in check, and won’t be there to gloat at
her wedding. His friend Surrey is among the riders, though, and gives her a friendly
smile.

Six black greyhounds have dropped to the
ground, their
puce tongues lolling in the brutal heat. A rabbit
skitters across the verge nearby and only one of the hounds bothers to rise and lope
after it half-heartedly, giving up when the rabbit hops into the undergrowth. The dog
rolls on to its back in the long cool grass, writhing about comically.

‘We are come from the hunt,’
calls the King, ‘and wanted a sight of our beautiful wife on the eve of her
wedding.’

Katherine bobs in a curtsy and waves,
wondering if the royal ‘we’ means himself and God, or him and his other
self, for he is known, after all, for having two sides. Will he use it even in the
bedchamber? The idea of the bedchamber makes her feel queasy. She has confided her fear
to Huicke, who suggested burning sweet-smelling oils to at least mask the stench,
keeping her eyes firmly shut and thinking of someone else. They had laughed together at
this but it becomes less of a laughing matter as the time draws near.

It is my duty, she reminds herself inwardly,
repeating it over and over, like a prayer. ‘I am honoured, Your
Majesty.’

Two men stride into the yard, bearing
between them a small freckled deer strung on to a pole, its head drooping pathetically,
its big eyes staring. Katherine, who is not usually squeamish, can’t bear to look,
for its very deadness.

‘Have her brought to the Queen’s
privy kitchens,’ shouts the King. ‘She is a gift for our wife to
be.’

There is no need for words as Katherine
lifts each arm in turn to slip it into the sleeve of her robe. These two women have
performed this ritual, almost daily, for some time, and though there are now four new
maids of the chamber to help her dress, Katherine sticks to Dot.

Dot knows every crevice of her mistress. She
has plucked the wayward tendrils from her hairline; cut her nails and
scraped away the dirt from under them; trimmed her coarse nether hair, surprising as a
winter orange; washed the bloody cloths from her courses; rubbed the hard skin off her
feet with a rough stone; slathered her skin in unguents; brushed her hair, a hundred
strokes morning and night, combed the lice from it, oiled it with lavender, plaited it,
pinned it; cleaned the sleep from her eyes; applied a compress to her blisters; bathed
her feet in cool water to combat the summer heat; and tied her into her kirtles and
hoods, laced the ribbons on her slippers and nightgowns. She knows Katherine’s
body as well as she knows her own.