Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (30 page)

As she fades, the chaplain is called for. He
comes, smelling of incense, and mutters the blessing.

They all sit in silence, and it is as if
time has stopped.

Then she is gone.

The chaplain collects together his things
and leaves quietly. Dot and Katherine just sit there with nothing to say and Meg going
cold on the bed next to them.

‘We shall dress her in her finest
gown,’ says Katherine. ‘Help me, Dot.’

‘But the embalmers –’

‘People will want to say a prayer for
her this evening. I want them to remember her at her best.’

They wash her stiff corpse carefully, as if
afraid to hurt her. Dot pretends she is made of wood, like a church virgin. That is the
only way she can bear it. She picks up the ewer to fill the basin but it slips through
her fingers and shatters on the floor with a crash and a gush of water. Dot bursts into
tears as if
she
has shattered, too, and all the water is spilling out of her.
She drops on to the wet floor, hiccuping up great sobs.

Katherine sits with her, not even noticing
that the water is soaking her Chinese silk gown and that the colours of the embroidery
are running into the yellow fabric. They sit like that in a damp embrace, rocking back
and forth, until a page disturbs them, looking embarrassed by their tears.

‘What’s the racket? It’s
bedlam in here,’ says Katherine, as she enters her privy chamber with Cat
Brandon.

Rig is barking manically at François the
monkey who is crouched just out of reach, balanced on the back of a chair and sucking on
a plum stone, with his long tail carefully curled up out of danger. In his other hairy
little hand he clutches Rig’s favourite toy, a wooden mouse. Katherine
hasn’t warmed to the monkey, he’s a pest, but she hasn’t had the heart
to get rid of him. He has tried to bite her a couple of times, and he has poor Dot
running around cleaning up the chaos he causes. Cat’s dog scampers in, joining Rig
with a high-pitched yapping, and the monkey teases the pair of them by waving the mouse
about.

‘Gardiner, stop that!’ Cat snaps
at her dog.

The two women turn to each other with a
burst of laughter, adding to the hullabaloo. It is the first time Katherine has really
laughed in weeks. Meg’s death has cast a long shadow.

‘I still can’t believe you
called him Gardiner,’ says Sister Anne, following them into the room.
‘I’d never have dared.’

‘The Bishop has lost his sense of
humour over it,’ says Cat.

‘I wasn’t aware he ever had
one,’ chips in Katherine.

‘He has to force himself to find it
when my husband is with me, though it looks more like some kind of convulsion than any
kind of amusement,’ Cat laughs.

One of the ushers, red-faced and flustered,
has Rig by his bejewelled collar and is trying, with his other hand, to catch Gardiner
who’s become so excited he’s relieved himself on
the
matting. Dot wipes up the mess and manages to prise the mouse from the monkey’s
hairy grip. The duchess scoops up her dog and the din subsides.

They settle on the cushions, in a pool of
sun from the window. It’s a relief to see the sun as it has rained and rained for
weeks – or so it seems. It might as well have been April, not June. In spite of the
brightness, the ladies make a sombre group now the silliness is over. They are all still
dressed in black for Meg. It has been the best part of three months. Their rich brocades
and shot silks make Katherine think of the ravens at the Tower, whose plumage, in the
right light, looks iridescent like a slick of oil on water. She offered Dot a new dress
in good black fustian and a hood to go with it, which she is wearing now. She cuts a
fine figure in it, though she has already lost the matching partlet and there is a new
rip in the skirt where she must have caught it on something. There is something about
Dot’s lack of refinement that Katherine finds endearing, especially in this place
where everything is run so very seamlessly and people’s affectations come to
define them. With Meg gone Dot has become all the more precious. Though she would never
divulge it, she thinks of the girl as a daughter even more than she does Elizabeth or
Mary. The past has attached them one to the other very tightly.

Stanhope arrives, making a kerfuffle about
something, shouting at her maid in the corridor. As she enters she throws a backward
glare at the poor cowering girl that would sour milk. Katherine swaps a look with Cat,
who rolls her eyes. Stanhope’s dress is magnificent, peacock blue, woven through
with gold.

‘I see you have abandoned your
mourning dress,’ says Sister Anne, taking the words from Katherine’s
mouth.

‘My best black was filthy.’

‘Was it indeed,’ Katherine says.
She would love to command her to leave but she must hold her tongue and not make an
enemy of her.

Stanhope joins the three ladies on the
cushions, all smiles, beginning to tell of a great storm in Derbyshire. ‘There
were hailstones,’ she is saying, ‘as large as boulders –’

A page enters, interrupting her.
‘Madam,’ the boy says, ‘this is from Berthelet the printer, just
arrived.’ He hands a packet to her with a deep bow.

Katherine feels a grip of excitement as she
takes it, ripping the paper wrapping, flinging it to one side. What she holds is the
first copy of her very own book –
Prayers or Meditations
. François seizes the
discarded wrapping in his monkey hand, beginning to tear it into small pieces. Katherine
holds up the book, turning it over, inspecting it from every angle. It is white
calfskin, soft as an infant’s skin, embossed in gold. She opens it carefully,
turning the pages slowly, not reading – every word of it is written indelibly into her
mind – just admiring it.

‘Let me see,’ says Cat.

Katherine hands the book to her.

She turns the pages with a look of wonder on
her face. ‘This is important, Kit.’

Sister Anne has taken it now, and begins to
read a passage.

Now I often mourn and complain of the
miseries of this life, and with sorrow and great heaviness suffer them. For many
things happen daily to me which oftentimes trouble me, making me heavy, and darken
mine understanding. They hinder me greatly, and put my mind from Thee and so
encumber me many ways, that I cannot freely and clearly desire Thee.

‘Oh Kit,’ says Sister Anne,
‘this is beautiful.’

‘You are the first,’ adds Cat.
‘The first Queen to publish your own words in English. This makes history,
Kit.’

Katherine’s head spins with it: her
own words printed there in black ink. As she listens to Sister Anne reading out another
passage she, too, feels indelible, as if in some small way she has evaded earthly
annihilation. She mourns Meg’s loss as deeply as if she had birthed the girl
herself, but this book is a salve. When she thinks about it, it is like a birth, though
gestated in her mind rather than her belly. It is something that will live beyond her.
She asks God daily why, after two years of marriage, he doesn’t bless her with a
child, why it is that they all – Stanhope, Sister Anne, that insufferable Jane
Wriothesley – all of them, pop children out one after the other, but not her.

Jane Wriothesley had lost a boy not so long
ago and was beside herself with grief, wept for weeks, wouldn’t eat. Katherine was
assaulted with memories of her own dead boy and how her grief had to be buried so deeply
it could never be retrieved. She tried to sympathize with Jane. Jane had others, was
almost permanently with child. Katherine had written to her, reminding her that her boy
was blessed to be taken by the Lord and that she should try to be grateful, that he
would not have to suffer an earthly existence. She regretted the letter had gone too
far, been too hard-hearted, and Wriothesley had complained to the King.

‘God has chosen that child for Heaven,
is that not a blessing?’ she had said curtly, when the King had brought it up.

‘You are right, Katherine, always
right, but you have upset Wriothesley. He is our Lord Chancellor and we will
not
have him upset. Apologize to the woman.’

She had swallowed her words and
couldn’t quite bring
herself to properly apologize, but she had
grudgingly invited Jane Wriothesley to sit beside her one evening to watch a masque.
Jane had been overflowing with delight about it, fidgeting with excitement to be seated
next to the Queen. But in spite of this favour, Katherine increasingly feels
Wriothesley’s eyes on her, unpicking her. Henry has made him Lord Chancellor and
he seems now to think himself invincible, seems to forget that Cromwell was Lord
Chancellor, Thomas More too – and look what became of them.

Wriothesley’s dislike of her, of what
she stands for, is palpable, though he tries to hide it. She feels his circle closing
in, waiting, watching for her to slip up. She has no son – there is one chink in her
armour. She has no powerful blood relatives to speak of – another chink. The King has
begun to carry a small silver box tucked in his doublet, containing a few splinters of
wood from the cross, he told her. But they could as well be from a broken gate. It is a
sure sign he is turning back to the old faith – a further chink. It will not be long
before they are thrusting some pretty thing under her husband’s nose and
suggesting he will get a son that way.

But the King is in Portsmouth leading the
new campaign against the French, who are pushing at the south coast with their warships.
He sends letters telling of his galleons, greater by far than the French ones, he says.
She isn’t sure if it is better he is away, and can’t be tempted by
marriageable maids at court, or worse because he’s not here standing between her
and the Catholic vultures and at least presenting her with the possibility of conceiving
another Prince.

Anne flicks through the pages, looking for
another passage to read, and Katherine notices that Dot has stopped sweeping the hearth
and stands, half turned towards the women as if to better hear what they are saying.

‘Dot,’ she says. ‘Would you
like to see it?’

Dot nods and bobs in an embarrassed little
curtsy. She wipes her hands on her apron before taking the book, bringing it to her nose
as if to breathe in its scent, holding it carefully as you might a newborn. She opens
the first page, running her fingers over its surface.

‘Prayers or meditations, wherein the
mind is stirred,’ she reads out in a whisper, following the lines down to where it
says, ‘By the most virtuous and gracious Princess Katherine Queen of
England.’

‘Dot,’ says Katherine,
astonished at what she has just witnessed. ‘Since when could you read?’

Dot has an odd look about her and stumbles
over her words. ‘I can’t really …’ She blushes quite red.
‘I’ve just picked up a few words here and there, madam.’

‘You’re a clever girl, Dot.
It’s a shame you were not gently born and given a proper education.’

It strikes her that Dot must miss Meg at
least as much as she does. That she no longer has anyone to read to her.

‘Elizabeth is a finely educated
girl,’ states Cat. ‘How is her new tutor?’

‘Grindal. She likes him,’
Katherine replies. She had chosen Grindal partly for his fine mind and his discreet
reform sympathies but also for his gentleness of spirit. She never was one for beating
facts into children.

‘She’s too clever for her own
good, that girl,’ says Sister Anne.

As she is speaking, Huicke bursts into the
chamber unannounced.

‘Huicke, look,’ calls Katherine,
‘my book, it has arrived.’ She holds out the volume to him but he
doesn’t take it.

His face is grey.

‘What is it, Huicke?’

They are all looking at him now and slowly
rise from the cushions like a bunch of black tulips replenished with water. He makes a
minuscule gesture with his head towards the usher, Percy, who stands by the door.
Katherine returns it with an almost imperceptible nod. François the ape, who has
interpreted the new thick atmosphere as one of danger, begins to shriek, providing her
with a perfect excuse.

‘Percy,’ she says, ‘for
goodness’ sake remove that creature. It is giving me a headache.’

The usher jumps to it, taking the screaming
monkey and leaving the room. Huicke glances towards Dot, who is busy by the hearth.

‘We can trust her,’ says
Katherine.

They gather into a circle to hear what it is
Huicke has to say.

‘Anne Askew has been arrested,’
he whispers.

The colour drains from their faces.

‘It is starting,’ says Sister
Anne.

‘This is Gardiner and
Wriothesley’s doing,’ says Huicke.

‘We must get rid of anything that
links us to her, any books, letters. The Queen’s rooms must be cleared,’
says Cat, ever practical, even in a crisis.

But this is not a crisis yet, thinks
Katherine. Stanhope has her hand over her mouth, goggle eyes wide with fear, and is
silent for once.

‘Shall I call for Udall to help spirit
things away?’ asks Huicke. ‘He is so very ingenious –’

‘No!’ cries Katherine, then
calms herself. ‘I think not, Huicke. Let’s keep him out of it. Anne, you
warn the others.’ But she sees the flash of panic in her sister’s eyes and
notices that Cat has seen it too.

‘
I
shall warn the
others,’ says Cat. ‘You go home to Baynard’s and make sure you burn
anything there, Anne. Can you get word to your husband, discreetly? No one must see that
we’re perturbed.’

Katherine squeezes her sister’s hand
and turns to Stanhope, saying, ‘You should let
your
husband know too.
They are bound to have kept it from him.’ She hasn’t moved and is still
standing with her hand over her mouth. ‘Above all, we must behave as if none of
this is happening.’

They disperse in a rustle of taffeta and
Katherine beckons Dot to her.