Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (22 page)

‘I have something for you to give to
the Queen,’ he whispers.

His mouth is so close to her ear that she
can feel the tickle of his breath.

‘You must not breathe a word of this
to anyone,’ he continues, pressing a package into her hand. ‘Conceal it
beneath your skirts.’

‘But what is it?’

‘It is a book.’

‘But what –?’

‘You want to be of service to the
Queen, don’t you?’

She nods.

He hesitates, then says, ‘You know
this could be dangerous, Dorothy Fownten. Will you still do it?’

‘I will do anything for the
Queen,’ she says, thinking, I will do anything for you too, William Savage.

‘I suspected as much.’ He
watches as she lifts her skirts and tucks the book under her kirtle. ‘Good,’
he says. ‘You are a good girl, Dot.’

And that is it.

They are out in the corridor again, he back at
his desk and she heaving the heavy basin off the floor. There has been no kiss, no fond
word. But as she passes by again, having emptied the basin, he gives her a look. And it
is no ordinary look; it is one that comes from having a shared secret.

When they arrive back at Whitehall, there
are more books, several packages and always the same subterfuge. But still there are no
kisses. Somehow, though, the very stealth of it seems more, much more, intimate and
draws an invisible circle around her and her ink-stained, dimpled William Savage.

She wonders why it is that these books need
be so secret. Sometimes at night when the Queen is asleep she lights the nub of a candle
and opens one of them. They are beautiful things with richly decorated covers, embossed
in gold, but it is the words that fascinate her, black, dense and mysterious. She turns
the stiff pages silently, feeling the dryness of them under the tips of her fingers,
holding them to her face to breathe in the scent of them, dust and wood and the leathery
smell of the tack room. It is the smell of home, the cottage next to the tanner’s
yard, and it is William’s smell – a book smell. She finds the letters of her name,
the letters she knows, a little crouched ‘d’ here, a surprised
‘o’ there, a tall ‘t’ elsewhere, trying to fit them together, to
make sense of them.

It is Margaret Douglas’s wedding – a
big dynastic affair, everyone in their state regalia, the clergy out in full, St
James’s Palace buzzing with impressed ambassadors who will all be writing to their
respective potentates of the marvellous marriage that will unite Scotland and England.
It is not the betrothal between Prince Edward and the infant Scottish Queen that Henry
had so desired, but it is the next best thing. The King’s niece is marrying
Matthew Stuart, the Earl of Lennox, who has only the baby Mary and the vacillating
regent Arran between him and the throne of Scotland. There will be some Scottish noses
put out of joint by this, no doubt, particularly since Hertford sacked Edinburgh, burned
it to the ground barely a month ago. Little else has been talked of in England – Arran
on the run – and this wedding is the cherry on Henry’s cake.

The floor clears as the bride and groom
stand to dance and the Bassano brothers, kitted out in lively garb, gather around to
play for them. It was Will who introduced the Bassanos to court; they’ve done all
right for themselves. Everyone around the Parr family has gone up in the world since
Katherine’s marriage, as if they have been filled with yeast and left on a warm
shelf to rise.

Margaret’s smile flashes. She is clearly
quite bedazzled by her new husband. Katherine sees how her hands can barely restrain
themselves, taking any opportunity to touch him, stroking his beardless face, squeezing
his thigh, grabbing his wrist. Margaret is a flighty creature, too fond of romance, but
Katherine has become close to her despite her headstrong ways and is glad to see her
married. She had seen the inside of the Tower for her unsanctioned liaison with one of
the Howards. A girl so close to the throne must mind who she falls for. But this
marriage is a happy match, that is clear, and Katherine is glad her friend is not being
hitched to some rotten frog prince to gain back some lost amity with King François. This
also means Margaret will stay at court.

There is something about Lennox – the
self-assurance, the swagger, the way he consumes his bride with his eyes, the way he
holds his hands on her waist like a pair of falcons perched and ready – that reminds her
of someone else, and though she tries not to think of that person, she cannot help but
put herself in Margaret’s place, feeling those hands clasping her about the
middle. A knot of sadness tightens in her. She looks at her own hands – which, like the
King’s, are heavy with rings – and absently pushes the wedding ring half off and
back on again. It scrapes her knuckle painfully.

She watches her husband sitting, relaxed,
leaning to one side in his throne, ankle resting on his opposite knee, barely able to
hide the smug satisfaction in his demeanour. He waves his hand about as he talks to one
of the ambassadors, his own rings winking as they catch the light. He is in rude health
once more and no longer needs the wheeled contraption that was contrived to get him
about his palaces when he was in too much pain to walk. He had been suffering greatly.
She and Huicke had concocted a poultice for the ulcer on his
leg and
she had tenderly applied it daily, wrapping it in clean bandages, almost gagging at the
reek of it. The King’s ill-health had drained his lust, for which Katherine was
secretly grateful, spreading herself out in her big bed, luxuriating in being alone, or
sharing it with her sister or one of her ladies, whispering into the night.

Now he’s better again, meaning
Katherine’s period of grace has ended, and she is once more subjected to the
nightly marital assaults. But still no child germinates in her, despite all that. The
King continues to dote on her, has barely uttered a sharp word to her in their year of
marriage, except in the bedchamber. But what goes on in there is not bound by ordinary
laws. The reluctance of his elderly body drives him into desperate rages for which he is
pitifully sorry come the morning. Katherine’s resilience is impenetrable; after
all, Henry is not the first vicious man she has had in her bed. She rarely thinks of
Murgatroyd these days, doesn’t allow herself to remember how there were dangerous
things about him that shamefully ignited her desire.

Henry wants another son in the nursery; that
is the source of his rage. When he fixes his pebble gaze on her, asking, ‘So,
wife, what news?’ and all she can do is lower her eyes and shake her head, a band
of fear clamps itself around her empty belly.

The King is sharing a joke with Suffolk, who
squats uncomfortably beside him. They watch the ladies dancing, pointing out little Mary
Dudley who is thirteen and new at court. She is light as air on her feet, and slinks
through the dull steps of the pavane, charming and knowing as a cat. Suffolk whispers
something. They laugh and Suffolk makes a lewd pumping gesture with his right hand,
which seems all the more grotesque in a man as old as he is.

Katherine pulls her sleeves over her wrists
to cover the
purple bruises that are flowering there beneath the heavy
bracelets, where the King held her down last night, one fat hand over her mouth, as he
spat ‘whore, bitch’ at her and tried to find some life in his flaccid cock.
She had shut her eyes tightly and thought of God, begged him for a son this time, as
Henry finally managed it. But when he was done, he had rolled off her and softly and
slowly kissed each bruise, whispering, ‘Katherine, you are my own love.’

They lit a candle afterwards and talked of
faith, comparing Augustine’s doctrines with Luther’s, dissecting ideas. As
ever, she carefully avoided any mention of Calvin and his notion of self-knowledge and
knowledge of God being inseparable – something that has been on her mind much of late.
When they talk in this way she can feel Henry’s fascination on her; it is quite
something to have all the attention of such a man, and the grip of fear in her empty
belly recedes. It is a blessing and a curse, this marriage of hers. She sometimes senses
a readiness in him to turn away from the old faith, back to the new. But she must be
canny as a magician, and last night she had misjudged it.

‘Do you think, Harry, to perhaps relax
the laws on English Bibles?’ she had suggested, while he stroked her hair.
‘Your subjects would surely benefit from reading the scriptures in their own
tongue …’

He pulled his hand back abruptly, shifted
away from her, his fascination dissipating in an instant. She knew instantly she had
gone too far, silently admonishing herself for her lack of caution.

‘And risk them falling into heresy?
Katherine, you get above yourself. You are a woman; you could not possibly understand
these things. What do you know of my subjects or their need for spiritual
guidance?’

But of course she understands these things,
though she wouldn’t dare say it. She understands the King’s fear – fear of
following his heart with reform – understands that the Emperor and the French have been
biting at his heels since he broke with Rome, are fighting a holy war to bring England
back to the Pope. The King cannot bring himself to go that far, but he cannot embrace
the new faith fully either, so England sits on the fence and people hustle in dark
corners to push things one way or another.

They say that it was Cromwell alone who
drove the reformation, and that since the King sent Cromwell to the block he’s
lost the fire in his belly for reform. He seems tired of it all, wants to please
everyone. And now Henry has joined forces with the Emperor to fight the French. They are
planning a twofold invasion: England from the north, the Emperor from the south. Henry
has wanted a war for some time, fancies the idea of martial glory. What will
that
mean for the new religion?

She has read Calvin over and over again; his
book
Psychopannychia
came to her by the usual way of illegal books. Udall had
set it up. His friend William Savage, who is in charge of the kitchen accounts, has them
delivered to the squillery, well wrapped and concealed. Savage passes them on to Dot and
so to Katherine. She feels Gardiner and his crowd watching her forensically but she is
too careful for them. And besides, they can’t touch her while she basks in her
husband’s favour.

It is known that a few in her household have
reform sympathies – a clutch of her ladies caught up in the newness of it all, throwing
down their needles in favour of books. There is a good deal of this fervour about the
wider court too, so much so that it is quite unremarkable. Even Prince Edward has
staunchly Lutheran tutors, sanctioned by the King. Cat
Brandon is the
most reckless of the ladies, wandering the corridors of the palace with an open book.
Once she even stopped Wriothesley to ask if he would be kind enough to translate
something from Latin for her, making him read a passage from Calvin out loud.

‘Where did you get this?’

She described how his face turned from red
to purple to grey, and how his voice went up an octave like a choirboy’s.

‘I found it in a window alcove,’
she simpered in mock innocence. ‘And my Latin is so lacking I know not what it
is.’

Everybody knows that, after Katherine and
Lady Mary, Cat Brandon has better Latin than all the ladies in the court. She described,
laughing, how he fumbled and stuttered.

‘This book is … it is a
wicked thing … it will infect your mind like the pox … I must take
it … it is only good for burning.’

Her mimicry of the desiccated Wriothesley
stumbling over his words made them all laugh until their sides ached. But for all the
fun of it, Katherine admires Cat’s fearlessness. She has called her puppy Gardiner
too, and admonishes him loudly in public. ‘Gardiner, behave, bad, bad dog,’
she cries, causing gusts of laughter among the ladies. Katherine cultivates a public
ambiguity about her own beliefs, though, and is careful to give positions in her
household to Catholics also.

Lady Mary continues to go about clutching
her rosary as if her life depended on it. But she is gathered into Katherine’s
thrall like the others. And besides, Katherine has persuaded the King to reinstate his
daughters to the succession. Mary is next in line after little Edward, and Elizabeth
after her, though her father will still not declare his daughters legitimate or allow
them to be called Princess. This is Katherine’s triumph; she had wheedled and
worked on Henry for
months, appealing to his pride, subtly reminding
him of the Tudor blood running in their veins, his own Tudor blood, and that though they
are mere women, they have his sharpness of wit, his splendid charisma. No one believes
either of them will ever come to the throne, least of all Henry, for it will be Prince
Edward and his heirs who will continue the Tudor line for centuries. But Katherine has
the satisfaction of having done what even the adored Jane Seymour was incapable of, and
Mary has begun to blossom cautiously.