Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (28 page)

And, she thinks bitterly, the rewards are
greater.

The still room is not really a room in this
house, more a cupboard with no window and a curtain for a door, which separates it from
the buttery. To get into it Dot has to squeeze herself past the kegs of beer and wine
that have been brought up from the cellars for the King’s visit. This house is
low-lying and damp. The walls are cold to the touch, like uncooked pastry, and they
crumble away if you brush too hard against them, leaving white smears on your dress,
though the better parts have panelling. But even that is so full of worm it is like lace
in places. In the last year she has trekked around so many houses, having to become
quickly accustomed to the quirks and corridors of each one, and the staff too. Mostly
they leave her alone but some wheedle themselves around her because they imagine she
must have more influence than she does.

As soon as she’s got herself more or
less settled it’s time to move on. She feels she might go completely mad for all
the hefting, the packing up, the unpacking, the always needing to know where to lay her
hands on anything anyone might need. Rolling the Queen’s jewels into their
pouches, layering her good dresses carefully into the trunks, folding the linens and the
stockings and the partlets and the caps and
the hoods, and half of it
damp from the sodden weather and having to be aired at the other end for fear of mildew
setting in, only to be packed and folded again the next day to go to the next manor or
palace. And then there’s all the hunting dress. You wouldn’t believe all the
bits and pieces. And the mud – the mud is the worst, clumped on the boots, spattered on
the riding habits, clinging to the hems of the dresses, dried clods of it all over the
floor.

She wouldn’t mind any of it, except
for the fact that William Savage has not come with them this time. The Queen sent him to
Devon, to look over one of her manors. It must be an honour, because she’d never
seen him quite so excited about anything – well, practically never. Dot has only the
vaguest idea where Devon is, somewhere far off to the west, in the bit of England that
looks like the hind leg of a dog on the map. William had shown her, pointed it out in
the map room at Hampton Court.

She has her treasured memories of him, the
kisses in the grain store, remembering the heat of his breath, his fingers fumbling and
burrowing, and the way he had her panting like a dog, her heart racing so she thought
she might drop dead with the excitement of it all. Each time they came together he
discovered a new part of her, bits of her own body she barely knew existed, and him
grunting with desire at each uncovered mound and furrow. There was the shock of it, too,
when he took hold of her hand and put it to his groin and she could feel his thing
through his hose. The very hardness of it made her lose her breath when she thought of
where it was supposed to end up.

‘Unlace me,’ he breathed.

It burst out, as if it had a mind of its
own, and swelled beneath her fingers – too much, she thought. It was surely
not possible that this thing could get inside her, as Betty had told
her it should. But when he lifted her skirts and directed it to the wet part of her, it
fitted like one of the Queen’s kid gloves. She could never have believed such
pleasure existed. It was the pleasure of sin, that she knew only too well, and she
sluiced herself with stinging vinegar after, which Betty swore was the best way not to
get a baby.

She sometimes imagines he has gone on a
quest or a crusade and that she is his maiden waiting for his return, when he will take
her in his arms and tell her of his adventures. But Devon is hardly the Holy Land, and
there is not much adventure to be had collecting rents or whatever it is he’s
doing there. Anyway, she is too busy with all the moving about, and all the mud, to have
much time for thoughts of William. Even at night she beds down so late, once the Queen
and all the royal children have had enough of the cards and the chess and the poetry and
– most of all – the talking. There is such a lot of talking. Dot wonders how they can
think of so much to say. So by the time she unrolls her bed she can barely keep her eyes
open, and all thoughts of William are lost in her exhausted, dreamless sleep.

It had rained, too, bucketing down for a
good ten days. She thought she would never get dry. It was so cold the Queen had to send
for her furs from London. But now the watery autumn sun is back and it is quite warm
again. She is glad of that, for Meg is leaving Eltham today, to go to some house whose
name she’s forgotten already, with Elizabeth, whom she’s frankly glad to see
the back of, and Prince Edward, who’s a stuck-up little so-and-so, if truth be
told.

Meg is ailing again; she had seemed to
rally, but it didn’t endure, and in the last few days she’s developed a
terrible racking cough that makes Dot think she’ll bring her guts up.
She is permanently exhausted and drops off to sleep barely an hour
after she’s risen. But, worst of all, she seems hardly to make sense any more,
seeing angels and devils all over the place, raving and talking a lot of gibberish.
Katherine has given her tinctures to draw out her cough but Dot worries for her on the
road. Anyway, Dr Huicke has been sent to her; he will know what to do.

She leaves the still-room curtain open so
she can see what she’s doing without having to light a candle. She doesn’t
know where the candles are kept in this house and can’t be bothered to go looking
for the right person to ask. She places the Queen’s physic box on the table and
opens it. It is divided into small compartments containing different herbs, each
carefully labelled. The Queen has asked that she make up a poultice for the King’s
leg in the way she has shown her, finely crushing one part each of goldenseal, comfrey
and yarrow and adding witch hazel then scooping the mix into a length of cheesecloth and
tying its ends.

Though she knows all the plants just by
smelling them, Dot looks for the letters, the ‘g’ like a meathook, the
‘o’ like the mouth of a choirboy, ‘l’ like a sword,
‘d’ like a mallet, ‘e’ like an ear, ‘n’ like a
church doorway. She sounds them out in groups, forming the words out of them. She never
told William how she remembered the shape of the letters for fear of seeming stupid. But
she doesn’t feel stupid now as she reads out the names of the herbs in the box,
for she is a girl who can read and each word is a secret victory.

She takes a scoop of each and works at them
with the pestle, crushing them into a fine powder, picking out the tough stems and
dribbling in the witch hazel, the smell of it sharp in her nose, making her eyes water,
re-corking the bottle quickly, as Katherine has shown her, to stop it disappearing
into thin air. She lays out a square of cheesecloth, doubling it,
then spoons in the mixture, tying it carefully before putting it in a wooden bowl. She
tidies everything up and squeezes past the kegs, finding her way through the tangle of
corridors, counting the doorways so as not to get lost.

Katherine is in the King’s chambers.
He sits in the window. Dot has never got used to the sheer size of him. He sits with his
legs spread wide and a codpiece so big she’d giggle at it if it weren’t for
the fact of whose it is. Katherine sits on a low stool, looking up at him, making Dot
think of the way Rig looks up at her with his big eyes, when she can’t find a way
to say no to him. The King has brought Katherine a white monkey as a gift. It has an odd
little old man’s face with brown glassy eyes and pink pointed ears that jut out
from either side of its head. Its hands are the strangest things – human, but not – and
it hangs by one of them from the curtain pole, making little tutting noises like the
call of a stonechat. The Queen has named him François, which, she said, amused the King
greatly for that is the name of the defeated King of France.

The King looks older, and bigger than ever,
his face all puffed up like a harvest moon. You wouldn’t have thought Boulogne had
been the great victory everyone is on about, given the slump in his shoulders and the
way he’s ranting on about the Emperor who, Dot gathers, has betrayed him in one
way or another – something to do with King François and a treaty.

Katherine reminds him of his triumph at
Boulogne, says it’s his Agincourt, which is an ages-ago battle against the French
that people still talk about as if it were yesterday. The King seems to sit a little
straighter after that. He calls her ‘my darling’, ‘my
sweetheart’, ‘my dearest Kit’, ‘my own true love’, but the
Queen seems to have shrunk and is not quite right under her poised surface. Next to the
King she is small and stiff.

‘Would you help me with the King’s
poultice, Dot?’ she says. ‘Bring the stool so His Majesty can rest his
leg.’ She begins to unlace his hose.

Dot, embarrassed, looks away, searching for
a cushion to make him comfortable. She can’t help but think of her own fingers
unlacing William’s hose. How different this is, how lacking in passion, as the
King heaves his weight away from the settle and Katherine deftly pulls the garment from
under him. He drops back into the seat with a groan, wrapping his robe about himself for
modesty, and lifts his leg on to the stool. He does all this without once looking at
Dot. It is as if she isn’t there, as usual, and she’s glad of that.

‘My dear, we can have one of our men
deal with this,’ he says.

‘But I am your wife, Harry, and it
pleases me to soothe you.’

He gives a little grunt of satisfaction in
reply and pats her behind as she bends to unwind the bandage, leaving the ulcer bare.
The wound seems to writhe and as Dot kneels to clear away the piles of dirty bandages
she sees it is teeming with maggots like a side of rotten meat. She gags, and the monkey
begins to screech, swinging about, then jumps down to inspect the King’s leg for
himself with more shrieking. One of the pages comes rushing over and makes quite a meal
of catching the little fellow, chasing him around the room, diving for him and bashing
his head.

This raises a laugh from His Majesty, who
cries out, ‘Come on, Robin! That monkey’s getting the better of
you.’

Robin becomes red-faced and frustrated but
eventually manages to get a hold of it by the tail and bundles the squealing creature
into the hands of one of the guards outside the door. Dot’s attention returns to
the fact of the King’s maggot-ridden wound.

‘The grubs seem to have cleaned this up
beautifully,’ says Katherine. ‘Pass me an empty bowl, Dot.’

Dot doesn’t respond. She is quite
paralysed with disgust, but can’t tear her eyes away from the writhing, maggoty
mass.

‘Dot,’ Katherine repeats, taking
her shoulder and leaning over her to pick up the bowl for herself. ‘Would you tear
some fresh muslin for bandages?’

The muslin is across the room on a side
table and Dot is sure the Queen has given her this job deliberately. She walks away,
relieved, but can’t help glancing back at Katherine, who is wiping the grubs from
the wound and into the bowl. Dot wonders how she can be so sanguine, and wishes she
could be more like that herself.

The King winces and sucks in his breath
through his teeth, shifting in his seat.

‘Was it Doctor Buttes’s idea to
use the maggots?’ she asks.

‘It was,’ he replies.

‘A good idea indeed. Look, Harry, at
the thorough job they’ve done. I’ve never seen them used before, only heard
of it.’

They both look at his leg as if looking over
a piece of French silverware.

‘What wonders God has created,’
she adds, then takes the poultice, inspecting it, holding it up to sniff it. ‘You
have done a good job with this, Dot,’ she says as she gently presses it against
the wound.

Dot swells warmly with the Queen’s
approval. The King watches his wife in silence, head tipped to one side, and a tender
expression that Dot has never seen on him before spreads over his face.

‘Robin, would you kindly remove these
dirty things,’ Katherine continues, nodding her head in the direction of the
maggoty bowl and the dirty muslins.

He collects it all together and leaves. Dot
knows it should have been her job to clear up, and that her mistress has spared her the
grubs. When the page has left Katherine asks, with that dewy-eyed look that is not hers
at all, ‘Shall I send for the musicians, Harry? I think they would lift your
spirits.’

‘We are too angry with that fiendish
Emperor for enjoyment,’ he growls.

‘Oh Harry,’ she says, stroking
his fat face, ‘the Emperor could never be trusted. His word means
nothing.’

‘But he was my ally. He went behind
me, made a treaty with France.’ He has the sound of a sulking boy. ‘We were
supposed to conquer all France together. I would have been covered in glory, Kit. I
would have been remembered like the fifth Henry.’

‘What do you think you can do, Harry,
to put the Emperor in his place?’

‘We could join forces elsewhere, I
suppose, but who with?’ he says.

‘Who else is there?’ she asks.
‘Now France is in the Emperor’s pocket and the Pope is with them, that
leaves …’ She stops, seeming to wait for him to finish her sentence, but he
looks deep in thought and says nothing. ‘If you looked further east,
perhaps?’

‘Turkey? That is an infernal
idea,’ he snaps, putting her in her place.

But she will not be blown off her course.
‘Not so far east as Turkey.’

‘The German Princes!’ he blasts
out. ‘We could make an agreement with Holstein and Hesse. They have a vast army.
And Denmark too. All the Lutheran Princes. The Emperor … Ha! I’d like to
see his face then.’

‘Yes,’ cries Katherine, like a
tutor finally squeezing the right answer out of a student.

‘We can throw in one of the girls to
boot.’

‘But Elizabeth is so young,’
says Katherine. Her fist is furled like a tight new bud that would break if you prised
it open. Dot hasn’t seen that for months. ‘And Mary, her
faith …’