Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (19 page)

Meg isn’t smiling, she’s not
even looking; she is listening intently to something that Elizabeth whispers in her ear.
The two of them sit hand in hand seeming quite enchanted with each other, in the way
girls can be. You wouldn’t think there was such a difference in age between them,
for Meg is a slight little thing and seems barely a day over fourteen whereas Elizabeth
is tall and has a knowing air about her that belies her tender years. It is a warming
sight for Katherine; after all, they are sisters of sorts now and Meg needs someone to
pull her out of her doldrums.

The women cluster around her, simmering with
excitement, congratulating her.

Henry takes her elbow. ‘They will all
want your favour, Kit, now you are Queen.’

It feels like a warning.

The banquet is a whirl of colour and sound.
Acrobats tumble about the hall, bending themselves into impossible contortions; a
fire-eater swallows a ball of flame; a juggler flips on to his hands, tossing three
balls in an unending circle with his feet; and musicians play with unceasing jollity.
The King claps along beside Katherine, feeding her occasional titbits with his
fingers.

Surrey strides up to the dais, standing
before them to recite:

He catches Katherine’s eye. Seeing
Surrey reminds her of the absence of her brother who is back at the Borders. Such irony
that he isn’t here to witness the greatest triumph of the Parrs. He is the only
one of them who would truly appreciate it, but she is partly glad he is not gloating
next to her.

She notices a look on Hertford’s face
as he watches Surrey. It betrays something deeper than dislike. It is easy to forget how
much hatred circulates in this place where everyone takes such pains to appear polite.
The Howards and the Seymours sowed their hatred over the demise of Surrey’s first
cousin Anne Boleyn and the rise of Jane Seymour. They have vied for position for a
decade and Hertford holds the trump in his nephew Prince Edward. But the Howard veins
have royal blood in them and Surrey will one day be the head of them, when he is Duke of
Norfolk after his father. It is a fight that cannot be lost or won.

Henry claps heartily at this. ‘Bravo,
Surrey!’ and turning to Hertford asks, ‘Do you not have a ditty in praise of
your new Queen, Ned?’

Hertford flushes and forces a smile on to
his face before offering a convoluted excuse, but the King has pulled the leg off a
pigeon, is sucking the flesh from it and isn’t listening.

Dish after dish is placed before them, each
one more elaborate and richer than the last. Katherine picks at her food, pushing it
around her trencher, trying not to think about what comes next. She sluices back another
gulp of wine. She is giddy with it already.

Prince Edward is paraded in, followed by a
small entourage. Everyone stands, necks craned, to get a rare glimpse of this small boy
kitted out in a jewelled doublet like his father, whom he will replace one day. The King
puffs up with pride as his son recites a passage from Livy recounting the Sabine
wedding. Katherine wonders whose idea that was and whether anything is meant by it:
whichever way you look at it, the Sabines did not have a smooth path to matrimony.

When he is finished, the King praises his
son. ‘Not even six and fluent in Livy. You are a wonder, my boy.’

Hertford sneers at Surrey, as if to say,
‘An heir to the throne beats a poem hands down.’

‘Come, come, congratulate your new
mother,’ the King commands.

Edward steps forward and bows. He is a stiff
little thing with a pinched mouth that seems incapable of a smile.

Katherine stoops down to his level, taking
both his hands
and saying, ‘I am glad to be your mother, Edward.
I hope to see you more at court if your father permits it.’

‘I will do as I am bid,’ he
replies, in a clipped little voice.

A cheer goes up as a sugar galleon floating
on a sea of mercury is brought in. Edward’s eyes widen but that is the only sign
of anything resembling excitement. A taper is lit and its confectionery cannons are
fired with a series of almighty cracks. Meg jumps at each, blanching in fear. Katherine
overhears Elizabeth tell her she will have to learn to hide her fears if she is to
survive in this place – only nine, and already so perceptive. Edward is clearly not the
only bright Tudor child. The Prince is led away.

The boards are moved back and Lady Mary
starts the dancing, partnered by Hertford. They move cautiously about the floor in a
polite pavane. Stanhope is partnered by Wriothesley and cannot hide her disdain for him.
Sister Anne, who has carried a worried look about with her all day, at last drops her
cares to dance with her husband. They coo at each other like newly-weds. Katherine
suppresses a twinge of jealousy.

The tempo lifts. Elizabeth pulls Meg away
from the table and into the throng where they dance together with Meg seeming not to
care that all eyes are on them. A couple of keen mothers hustle their sons forward to
dance with either one of them, causing slant-eyed looks from some of the other maids.
Elizabeth trips coquettishly through the steps while Meg looks a little bewildered and
entirely mesmerized by her new stepsister, unable to drag her eyes away from the girl as
she is spun from one boy to the next, then back to Elizabeth, who each time whispers
something in her ear, before being twirled away again. It occurs to Katherine that Meg
could join Elizabeth in the country at Ashridge. It would get her away from court.

Elizabeth’s maid arrives and hustles her
up to the dais to bid goodnight to her father. The King barely looks at her but
Katherine leans across the table and kisses the girl’s cheek, saying, ‘Your
father wants you to return to Ashridge tomorrow.’

Elizabeth can’t hide the look of
disappointment that flickers over her face.

‘He worries for your health at
court.’

This is a lie; he worries only for Prince
Edward’s health. Elizabeth is barely ever mentioned.

‘I will send Meg to join you there
soon. Would that please you?’

Elizabeth nods with a smile. ‘It would
please me greatly, Mother.’

If nothing else, Katherine thinks, she will
try to be a mother to these lost children.

Katherine nods to the cup-bearer, who
refills her goblet. It is gold and almost the size of the holy chalice. She feels the
future bear down on her. In a minute the King will stand and take his leave and she will
be carried off by her ladies, to be made ready for her marriage bed. A server offers a
plate of fancies. She takes one, biting into it. The sugary taste pervades her mouth,
unpleasantly sweet. She would like to spit it discreetly into her napkin, but she is the
Queen and too many eyes are on her. She will have to get used to that; nothing she does
will go uncommented from now on.

She takes another gulp of wine.

The King stands to leave.

The door to the Queen’s rooms bursts
open and a crowd of excited ladies spills in, chattering and colourful as the birds they
have in the aviary at Whitehall. They flutter around, falling over each other to curry
favour with the new Queen.
Even Stanhope sports a smile as she pours
wine into Katherine’s cup. Countess or not, she’s as two-faced as they come.
Dot wouldn’t trust her as far as she could throw her; earlier she overheard her
say, in a voice bitter as lemon peel, that Katherine was nothing but a jumped-up country
housewife.

Katherine bids them all leave, asking that
just Meg and Sister Anne and Dot should attend her. She lifts her own hood off, catching
a strand of hair in one of the jewels, wincing. It is tangled and has to be cut away
with the embroidery scissors. Dot takes the hood; it is as heavy as a bag of potatoes.
There are red welts above Katherine’s ears where the wires have pinched. She
stands, arms out, while the three of them dismantle the dress, layer by layer: overgown,
sleeves, stomacher, kirtle.

She chats, commenting on the feast.
‘Oh Dot,’ she says, ‘I wish you could have seen the sugar galleon, it
was truly magnificent,’ and doesn’t complain, not about the heat, nor the
blisters where her shoes have rubbed, nor the places where the dress has cut into her
pale skin. All she asks is to be sponged down with cool water.

Dot feels like she’s preparing her for
sacrifice. Katherine has a high colour in her cheeks and seems tipsy from the wine, as
she is laughing and spirited, ribbing them all. It should be them teasing her, given she
is going to her marriage bed, but they can barely muster a laugh between them.

‘What are all these long faces?’
she asks, patting her sister on the backside.

Sister Anne mumbles a reply with a fleeting
smile.

‘To think,’ Katherine continues,
‘I could soon be carrying a royal Prince in my belly.’

It isn’t the thought of the baby in
her belly – which is a good thought, Dot supposes – but the way it would get there.
Dot may not know much about it but she knows enough to imagine that
huge stinking man, huffing and puffing on top of her. And what if there is no Prince?
After two marriages and no babies – save the secret infant that died – and Katherine
thirty-one already … Dot packs away that thought. She is sure that it is on
Sister Anne’s mind too, judging by the miserable face she’s wearing.

‘You seem to like your new
stepsister,’ says Katherine to Meg.

The girl bursts into a blush, trying to hide
her face in the lappets of her hood.

‘I’m glad. She is a sweet girl,
but her father doesn’t favour her. She is to be packed off back to the country
tomorrow.’

Meg seems to shrink a little on hearing
this.

‘I plan to work on him, though. It
would be good for her to be at court with her family. Or perhaps you could pay her a
visit.’

‘I should like that,’ says Meg,
stifling a yawn.

‘Tired?’ Sister Anne asks
her.

She nods, asking, ‘Where am I to sleep
tonight?’

‘The maids’ room with the rest
of the girls, I suppose,’ Sister Anne replies.

‘No,’ says Katherine, brightly.
‘Let her stay here. I shall not be using this bed, after all.’ She forces
out a little laugh.

‘And what of me?’ asks Dot.
‘Where am I to sleep?’

‘You will sleep in the
anteroom,’ replies Sister Anne. ‘It is rather draughty but there is a hearth
there and logs. That way you can hear the Queen if she rings. I will leave this,’
she adds, turning to her sister and picking up a small silver bell, ringing it.

It sounds like the bell they ring in chapel
when the bread is supposed to turn itself into Christ’s flesh. Katherine has
picked up Rig and is cradling him and cooing at him as if he’s
a baby. They drape a black satin robe over her fine silk nightdress. It is the one Meg
had spent days embroidering in a pattern of flowers. Her sister hands her a pomander of
lavender and orange oil.

Katherine brings it to her face, inhaling it
with a sigh, then says, ‘I am ready,’ and makes for the door.

But suddenly she grabs her cup, swigging
back the dregs of her wine and flinging it away. It lands with a loud clatter against
the panelling. Then she marches from the room with Sister Anne and Meg following,
looking miserable as mourners at a funeral, to deliver Katherine to her marriage bed.
Dot had changed the linens on the vast tester bed, sprinkled them with fragrant water
and layered it up with silk covers and cushions all newly embroidered with the entwined
initials of the new King and Queen.

She shivers and starts to tidy the chamber,
picking up the cup from the corner where it was thrown. There is a streak of red wine on
the wall hangings. The cup is badly dented and one of the jewels in it has shattered.
She collects the washing into a basket, stacks the dirty cups and plates, and snuffs out
the candles, breathing in the churchy smell of the beeswax, so much nicer than the
tallow they use downstairs that sputters and smokes and stinks as it burns. She picks up
the ewer of dirty water, balancing the dishes in her other arm, and kicks the door shut
with a foot. One of the King’s pages is passing in the corridor.

‘Begging your pardon,’ she
mumbles, adding, ‘sir,’ because, though he is a good five years younger than
her, he must be the son of a knight at the very least, if he serves the King.

‘What is it?’ He doesn’t
try to hide his impatience and
looks at her as if she’s
something dirty on the sole of his shoe.

‘I don’t know what to do with
this.’ She holds out the dented goblet.

‘Did you do this?’ He snatches
it, inspecting it.

‘No, sir, it was an accident. The
Queen …’

‘So you wish for the Queen to take the
blame for your clumsiness.’ His voice is blunt and he looks beyond her as if he
might catch something nasty just by meeting her eye.

‘No, I didn’t mean –’

‘I’ve heard she’ll protect
you
no matter what. I wonder why.’ He caresses the cup’s sharp
rim with the pad of his thumb. ‘I shall have to take it to the chamberlain and he
won’t be happy.’ At this he walks off, saying over his shoulder,
‘I’ve got my eye on you.’

She makes a mental note to avoid him in
future, she is strong enough – as old boots her father used to say – but people at court
don’t behave in the normal way and she knows that here you can have enemies and
not even know it.