Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (21 page)

She moves to leave and the whole room shifts
like a wave, each of them lowering as she passes. She wants to tell them not to, for
once to pretend she is not the Queen.

‘Prince Edward will come
tomorrow,’ she says to Sister Anne as they walk out arm in arm. ‘I should
like to take him out with the greyhounds after hares. Will you come? I’ll have to
ask the King.’

‘If you want my opinion,’ Anne
lowers her voice to a whisper, ‘he is far too mollycoddled, that boy, and far too
solemn.’

‘The King fears losing him,’
says Katherine.

It is true; Henry lives in fear that the boy
will fall from his pony or succumb to the plague.

‘He couldn’t bear to leave
England with nothing but two girls in line, and girls he’s deemed bastards at
that.’

‘That is what you are for,
sister.’ Anne nudges her.

‘Not funny, Anne, not
funny.’

Anne squeezes her arm. ‘But is it not
quite something, to be doted on by the King of all England?’

‘Oh Anne, you are too much of a
romantic.’

It is true, Sister Anne inhabits a version
of the world that is polished and gleaming.

‘But he loves you. Everyone can see
–’

‘To a point, Anne …’ She
couldn’t begin to explain the fragile balance between Henry’s moods and how
she must negotiate them like a tightrope walker.

Udall arrives not long after, sending out
ripples as usual. He sits among them at supper entertaining them with mimicry,
playing both parts of a conversation between Gardiner and Wriothesley
that has them falling about with laughter. Huicke seems renewed to be reunited with his
lover. When supper is done Katherine dismisses her ladies excepting her sister, Meg and
Cat Brandon, and they move to the hearth, spreading out on the cushions and taking off
their cumbersome hoods. Udall sits next to the fire with his back resting against the
wall. Huicke leans against him, allowing his hand to drift over his lover’s thigh.
In this company they are safe. Katherine pulls a blanket over her shoulders, feeling the
October chill.

They make a toast.

‘To change,’ Udall says.

‘To the future,’ says Cat.

Katherine clanks her cup against
Huicke’s, swigging back the warm sweet wine.

‘Did you hear of the solar eclipse
this January past in the Low Countries?’ Udall asks.

‘I did hear something of it from my
husband,’ says Anne.

‘I believe it is a sign that the great
changes are crystallizing,’ Udall says, waving his hands about. ‘Why else
would God extinguish the day with such drama, if not to cast a new light on
humanity?’

Udall throws a log on the fire. They sit in
silence for a moment, watching how the flames lick around it, catching the bark.

‘And there is the astronomer from
Poland too, Copernicus,’ Udall continues. ‘Copernicus says the Sun is the
still point around which the universe turns.’

Katherine cannot fully compute such a thing,
it seems too absurd. ‘Why are we all not giddy with turning if the Earth spins
round the Sun?’ she says, provoking laughter.

‘Surely we would all fall off,’
quips Cat.

‘This Copernicus fellow,’
giggles Anne. ‘Is he fond of wine?’ They are all gasping with laughter.

‘Don’t you see what this
means?’ says Udall, cutting through their mirth. ‘You may well think it
nonsense but I see it as a symbol of our quiet revolution. We have been wrong about the
very essence of the universe for centuries and now is the time for change. The heavens
are newly mapped for our reformation.’

Katherine feels a fizz of excitement in her
gut, as if there is a whole new world coming into being and she is attending the
birth.

‘And we must see the word of God
differently,’ Udall continues, ‘as Copernicus has seen the universe. We have
to look more deeply at the interpretations. Rome has muddied the water for centuries for
its own ends. Think of this:
hoc est corpus meum
– this is my body – you have
all heard that countless times. No doubt you accept it is symbolic, but have you
considered the finer points of translation?’

Katherine looks over at Meg, silently
captivated, the glow from the fire playing on her pale face. They are all enthralled,
listening silently.

‘Zwingli interprets
est
as
“signifies” whereas for Luther it means “is”. You must always
look more deeply for meaning.’

Katherine feels in that moment that she has
never fully considered what it means to reform religion, to forge new beliefs. The break
with Rome and all its corruption, the gospel in English, this is just a small part, just
one colour of thread in a whole tapestry that tells the story of mankind. Udall is
suggesting more subtle things to her, things that defy straightforwardness, forcing her
to question things she had never thought to doubt. She begins to see
the responsibility that lies behind a desire to read and think for oneself and not be
spoon-fed dogma in a dying language. She imagines humankind growing up. Everything must
be questioned, even the things one easily accepts. It is as if her mind has been opened
to the elusive nature of truth itself.

Huicke stands, suddenly, shaking himself
like a wet dog. ‘Come, it is a cloudless night. Let’s go up to the roof and
look at the stars.’

Katherine is thrilled at the idea of
recapturing the lost spontaneity of her youth, the games of hide-and-seek at Rye House,
discovering unknown passages and doorways leading out on to the forbidden parapets.

They follow Huicke and Udall up a winding
staircase, so narrow her skirts brush against the damp walls. She wonders how Huicke and
Udall know of this place. A low door opens and they duck down to exit on to a wooden
gantry leading to a crenellated turret. The air is sharp and cold. She asks Cat to help
her loosen her stomacher to better breathe it in. The sky is awash with stars and a fat
moon watches them, six miniature figures, below. They all gaze upward, whirring with
their own private thoughts, silenced by the sheer extent of the heavens.

‘Did you see it?’ cries Anne.
‘A shooting star.’

‘I did!’ Meg’s face is the
image of wonder.

Katherine whispers, ‘It is a sign that
good things are coming to you, Meg.’

They point out the different constellations:
Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Orion’s Belt and the Great Bear … Katherine
leaves them, wandering to the other side of the turret. She presses her back against the
cold wall and, shutting her eyes, tries to imagine the Earth turning around the
invisible Sun.
She fancies she can feel the spin of it. Udall has lit
a fuse in her that is firing off ideas in her head.
In principio erat
Verbum … et Deus erat Verbum
: In the beginning was the
Word … and the Word was God. She sees it. Language and meaning are everything;
God resides in interpretation. She thanks her mother for insisting she had a boy’s
education. The relentless ploughing through Lily’s Latin Grammar now has an
application. Her thoughts are full of it, but Thomas seeps through like a ghost at the
edge of things. She imagines him grappling with the same ideas of reform in his faraway
court, but this is fancy, for he is far more likely to be spending his evenings chasing
foreign beauties than pondering ideas of religion. She is clutched with shame at her own
jealousy but the thought of him loving another tears her apart. She forces her mind back
to her theological contortions, resolving to commit him to the past and finding peace in
that.

‘Penny for your thoughts.’ It is
Udall who has left the others to join her.

‘My head is teeming,’ she
replies. ‘I couldn’t begin to say.’

‘There are books that would interest
you, Katherine.’

She likes the way he uses her name
unabashedly, though he ought not to have the right.

‘I can have them sent.’

‘Books?’ she replies, feeling a
grip of fear at the idea of such ideas on paper. Talk creates only hearsay, but words in
ink … well, that is proof. But the tug of the new is irresistible. ‘Do
you not think it too great a risk, Udall?’

‘There are banned books in all corners
of the court. The court is not the wider world. Blind eyes are turned; it is nothing
unusual.’

‘No one must know.’

He nods. ‘Trust me.’

Udall may be wild and always at the edges
of some scandal or other, but Katherine does trust him. He treats her as a woman rather
than the Queen; there is honesty in that.

The very idea of the books Udall has
mentioned fixes itself in her mind; she feels compelled to see them, feel their paper
beneath her fingers, smell their ink, read them for herself. There is that hidden part
of her, so much at odds with the sensible Katherine shown to the world – a recklessness
that clamours for excitement and will not be quelled. It is the woman who might have
thumbed her nose at the court and eloped with Thomas Seymour – though didn’t, all
that emotion quashed.

Besides, she is protected by the
King’s love. And doesn’t he love to hear her talk of things? Isn’t he
fascinated by it all, too, when he says ‘I love this mind of yours, Kit. Tell me
more of what you think’?

They often talk deep into the night,
discussing the Six Articles of Faith, the doctrine that is undoing all the changes, that
insists on transubstantiation, that would burn those who refute it. She never mentions
Calvin or Zwingli but they talk freely of Luther. Henry, equally curious, mines his
knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, applying it to Luther’s thinking. She feels his
beliefs wavering.

‘True meaning lies in the heart, Kit.
It is sure,’ he has said.

She secretly imagines herself as the
catalyst that will firm up the King’s beliefs, the beacon leading him to fully
embrace the new faith. She thinks of it as her penance, the thing that will absolve her
sins.

When she is next alone with the King she
talks of Copernicus and the new map of the universe, the world spinning
about the sun, which makes him laugh in great guffaws, sending out pungent invisible
clouds of foul breath.

‘I have heard of this,’ he says.
‘Newfangled nonsense.’

She is reminded of how old her husband is.
She must sit and smile.

‘You remind me of …’ But he
doesn’t say who it is she reminds him of.

She feels tight with fear as she remembers
Sister Anne once telling her of how the King used to talk of theology deep into the
night with Anne Boleyn. But I am different, she reasons, I do not cast spells or whore
myself as Anne Boleyn did.

But did Anne Boleyn really do all those
things?

She died for it, but Katherine knows as well
as anyone that that does not mean anything. Her thoughts hide in the dark and the fear
burrows into her in spite of her husband’s public adoration, his gifts, his
fondness, his apparent fascination with this mind of hers.

Was he not fascinated by Anne Boleyn
too?

The dead Queens are everywhere.

They are leaving tomorrow for somewhere. It
will be a day’s ride. Meg is not to come with them; she will join Lady Elizabeth
at Ashridge. Dot thinks it a good thing. It will get her away from the court, at least.
She is making a mental note of everything that has to be done: two riding habits to be
brushed of mud; four shifts to be got from the laundry, if they are dry; something to be
done with Katherine’s purple gown, which is smeared with thick white dust that
will not be budged with brushing. She must clean Meg’s garden shoes and find the
missing silk slipper that has probably been chewed and hidden by Rig; stitch the hole in
the Queen’s new kirtle … She tidies and sorts, putting things into
piles. She is getting used to all
this moving about – the packing and
the unpacking, the getting the gist of a new house every few days.

William Savage travels with them; he is part
of the Queen’s retinue now, as is she. It doesn’t mean he talks to her,
though, but he is usually to be found somewhere near the kitchens, counting on his inky
fingers and writing in his ledger. Just thinking of him gives her heart a squeeze. Once
she found him late at night in a music room in some house or other – there have been so
many, she forgets – playing on the virginals. She tucked herself behind the door,
unseen, to listen. Of all the music she had heard at court, and that is a good deal,
from the best musicians too, she had never heard anything like this. She closed her eyes
and imagined she was in Heaven itself and surrounded by angels. She has never heard him
play since, though she sometimes searches late at night for another music room – saying,
if she is stopped by an usher or one of the guards, that she is lost.

Dot picks up the big basin that the Queen
uses for washing, straining under its weight, heaving it down the stairs to empty it in
the squillery, hoping as always to find William down there. She knows he is likely to
be. It is mid-morning and that is the time he does the accounts. She sees him bent over
his desk and her heart gives a little jump.

‘Dot,’ he says quietly, as she
passes.

And she thinks she is imagining it, for he
never says anything to her, not ever. Not since the day the Queen was married, when he
asked her name.

‘Yes,’ she turns, flustered.

He stands, his chair scraping on the flags,
and beckons to her to follow him. She puts the basin down on the floor, walking behind
him into the grain store.

‘Not a word,’ he says.

This is her moment. She can feel the fast tap
of her heart, like a woodpecker. She is not quite sure what to expect, a kiss, a
proposition, a cuddle, anything will do. Her lips tingle at the thought. It is dark in
the grain store, and the smell takes her back to the smell of her pa after a hard
day’s thatching – dry and yeasty and summery. When her eyes become accustomed to
the dim light she can see the grain sacks, like a row of kneeling monks.

William is stooped in the far corner, taking
something out from behind one of them. He stands and grabs her arm, leaning in towards
her. She readies herself for the kisses she has imagined for ever, feeling light-headed
at the thought.