Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (32 page)

They are a sombre group, sitting for supper
in the watching chamber.

‘Cranmer will hold a service for the
dead.’

Katherine picks at some unidentifiable
viands on her trencher. They are dry, almost inedible and have been sliced from a
monstrous creature: the tail of a peacock, the body of a pig, the head of a swan, the
wings of what, she’s not quite sure, and in it, various other unidentifiable
creatures, stuffed one inside the other. It is truly macabre when she thinks about it,
but this is what they serve to Queens, no matter what. The small group had clapped
politely when Cook came up himself, sweating and beetroot-faced from the kitchen,
struggling under the weight of the monster he’d created. He’d placed it
before her and wiped his hands on his apron.

Katherine smiled and told him he had a
unique talent and that she’d never before seen anything quite so … she
struggled for a word and came up with ‘wondrous’. He seemed satisfied with
that.

Susan Clarencieux slips into the room. She
has a way of gliding as if there are wheels beneath her dress rather than feet. She is
in yellow, as ever, from head to toe, which draws the colour from her. Her eyes move
over the table, with the look of a bookkeeper counting up how much everything on
it has cost, and she sinks into a deep curtsy. A stickler for correct
protocol, she waits, looking down at the floor, until Katherine bids her stand. And
though clearly she is here to convey a message from Lady Mary – why else would she be
here? – she doesn’t speak until Katherine asks her to. Katherine hasn’t
forgotten how off-hand Susan used to be with her before she was Queen.

‘Madam,’ Susan says, enunciating
clearly in the way an actor might. ‘The Lady Mary is indisposed.’

Katherine wants to say, for goodness’
sake relax. ‘Is it one of her headaches?’ she says instead.

‘It is, madam.’

‘Oh dear, poor Mary. Will you send her
my fond wishes?’

‘I will, madam.’ She seems to be
totting up the number of rings on Katherine’s fingers now, assessing their value.
‘And …’ she hesitates.

‘Yes?’

‘My lady asks that you forgive her for
not having completed her translation.’

‘Please tell her I
understand.’

Mary has proved reluctant about the
translation of St John. Her initial enthusiasm had led Katherine to hope that her
stepdaughter was coming round to the idea of the gospel in English, but if anything it
has done the opposite and she has, since the time at Eltham, descended into a routine of
headaches and prayer and little else. Katherine thinks now that she will never be
turned, that the memory of her poor mother is indelibly etched on her. Meanwhile, the
reforms are coming to nothing. The idea of a treaty with the Lutheran Princes has turned
to dust. The Catholics are on the rise, and with the King’s blessing. Katherine
feels the shift of power in the corridors of the court, the eyes on her, watching – and
Mary’s snub just adds to it all. But they couldn’t
find a way to be rid of Anne Askew; that is a small triumph and makes Katherine believe
in the possibility that she may be forgiven for the sins which have clogged her up for
so long.

No one is really eating – aside from Udall,
who seems unaffected by the loss of the
Mary Rose
and all those drowned
sailors, even George Carew whom he knew quite well. He is quaffing back wine and
refilling his trencher, piling it up, chatting, laughing between mouthfuls. His
callousness appals her. She cannot help but think of the five hundred souls lost, and
for what? It all seems so futile. French troops pressing at the south coast; the Scots
and their border raids to the north; treaties made and broken with seeming ease; nations
stitched together as ugly as the monstrous cockatrice on the table, to join forces and
kill each other. And for what? To prise another few leagues of blighted land back from
someone. And this is civilization.

It is nothing but a struggle over territory,
and to what ends? She can’t see how, at the core of it, this killing in the name
of God has anything to do with faith. It is about power. She sees what her husband has
had to become in order to keep the threats at bay, from outside, and worse, from inside.
He has had to set his humanity aside. But each death is a tragedy; each lost life leaves
a weeping parent, spouse, sisters, brothers, little ones perhaps.

She thinks of Meg, trying to find a way to
give her life meaning – nineteen pitiable years, the slow loss of her mind, and a body
that turned on her in the end. She can’t order it in her head; wonders if there is
meaning in anything. The world is only comprehensible when everything is done in
obedience to God, but her faith is being chipped away at.

But then obedience is a habit deeply woven
into the fabric of her, the pattern of it informing everything. If it were taken
away, the design of her life would lose all coherence. To be a woman
is to know obedience. She sometimes feels she has used up all her wifely sympathy. The
King will be back from the coast soon. She lists in her head the things he will be angry
about: the loss of his ship; the failure to make a treaty with the Germans; the Emperor
who is angry and feels betrayed.

She will be blamed, no doubt, for the
sinking of his ship, the pain in his leg, the fact that there is no Duke of York in her
belly, even the weather. She wonders if she has sufficient patience, though she knows,
too, that she has no choice but to find it. And in order to do so, she must draw God
closer. The only way she will make sense of things is through him, through his word.
In the beginning was the Word … and the Word was God
. She must
focus her mind. Think of Anne Askew – mercifully released. Think of Copernicus’s
new map of the universe and the eclipse, there is sense in that, heralding the great
changes, and she at the vanguard of that. That is her duty.
In the beginning was the
Word
. And when people can read the words for themselves, they will discover
that God is no tyrant, but a forgiving and benevolent father. That when he takes lives
like that, in their prime, he takes them to a better place. He cuts short their
suffering. She must believe this, otherwise – what?

She goes through the motions, her smooth
veneer covering the rumble of thoughts in her head. She converses lightly, sips at her
ale, makes appreciative noises over the almond jellies and the sweet wine and the
crystal glasses, politely listens to Mary Dudley stumble through one of Surrey’s
beautiful poems, rendering it ugly, watches some acrobats fling themselves about, all
with a smile on her face – and when she can, she takes her leave.

She can’t stop thinking about
something Stanhope said to her the previous day. It niggles at her.

‘When you met Anne Askew,’
she’d said.

They had been talking of the scriptures.
Stanhope is as fervent a reformer as Katherine, and her husband even more so. But
Katherine doesn’t trust her. How does she know about Anne Askew’s visit? It
was so very secret. Who could have told? How many others know? Who?

‘I have never met the woman,’
Katherine had said, looking straight into Stanhope’s reptilian eyes.

Another lie, another rupture to her
bedraggled soul. She has become quite accustomed to lying these days.

Dot rubs lavender oil into
Katherine’s scalp, the smell of it spreading into the room, and then begins the
lengthy process of dividing her long hair into sections and drawing the fine comb
through it.

They do this in silence for some time, with
Dot occasionally interrupting her rhythmic strokes to untangle a knot of hair or to pick
a stray louse out of the comb. It is a weekly ritual and one both women enjoy for its
simplicity and intimacy. But Katherine has never stopped, until now, to wonder whether
Dot has someone to comb the lice out of her hair.

Occasionally she has envied the simplicity
of Dot’s life, would have changed places with her gladly, but when she really
thinks about it, she can see that hers must be a lonely existence between two worlds.
She owes Dot so much. Sweet dishevelled Dot, head in the clouds, always unperturbed,
optimistic, but there is something subdued about her today as if she has been dipped in
a vat of sadness.

‘How is it, Dot,’ she asks,
‘are you content, do you have friends at the palace?’

‘Not here, madam, but at Hampton Court
there is Betty in the kitchens. She is a friend of sorts, though –’

‘I have never thought of that,’
interrupts Katherine. ‘When we travel we all go together but many of the lower
staff do not.’

‘That is true, madam. But when
Meg …’

A silence drops into the room like a stone
and Dot continues dividing and combing and untangling. Meg’s absence hangs over
them. But there is something else.

Katherine had noticed a look between Dot and
William Savage earlier, during the fiasco with that damned monkey. It was not a look
really, more the opposite of it, the way they had
not
looked at each other, not
at all, not even a glance, and she had felt a kind of thickening of the air between the
two of them, which made her wonder if there was more to Dot and William Savage than
simply the conveying of books to her.

‘What do you think, Dot,’ says
Katherine, breaking the silence, ‘of William Savage?’

She cannot see Dot’s face and
doesn’t want to turn for fear the girl will think it an inquisition. But she hears
a trembling intake of breath that tells her more than any words could.

‘William Savage, madam?’

‘Yes, him.’

‘He is a fine musician. When he plays
I find myself …’ She hesitates, as if seeking the word she wants,
‘… in another place.’

‘It is true. He has the fingers of an
angel.’

Again, the intake of breath, like a shiver.
And a break in the rhythm of the comb. There is more laughter outside and a soft knock
at the door. Sister Anne cranes her neck into the room to bid Katherine goodbye. She
will return to Baynard’s, she says, for her husband is back.

Dot bobs her a curtsy and continues combing,
finding her rhythm again.

‘Do you ever think of marriage,
Dot?’ asks Katherine after some time.

‘No madam, I do not.’

‘I could find you a good husband.
Someone in the professions. You would be comfortable, have a house of your own,
children.’ As she says it she knows it is the right thing for the girl, but she
feels suddenly, and intensely, what a loss it would be to her.

Dot tries to imagine a husband doing the
things to her that William Savage did. The idea of it makes her feel that the world has
turned on its head, dragging the bottom of her upwards sickeningly. She must not think
of William. But another man? She thinks of the cooks in the kitchens, reeking of sweat,
and their big beefy hands. Or the cloth merchant, whom she went to for fabrics for the
Queen yesterday, and the way he laid them out, throwing the rolls over the table, his
fingers stroking the cloth as if it were a woman’s skin. A shiver of disgust rises
up her spine. If not William Savage, she thinks, then nobody.

And if she married, it would mean leaving
the Queen. But the Queen needs her. She can’t imagine another girl combing out
Katherine’s hair as she does, dressing her, tweezing her, rubbing witch hazel on
her bruises and telling no one. The Queen needs Dot to hold her secrets. She is the only
one to know them all; even Sister Anne is oblivious to some things. Dot is the only one
who can keep them safely.

‘I would prefer, if it pleases you, to
continue with things as they are,’ she says.

‘Then that is how it will be,’
says Katherine.

And they settle back into a comfortable
hush.

Will Parr is incandescent with rage. His
mismatched eyes flash. He paces back and forth on the oak boards of her privy chamber,
unusually dishevelled, stockings smeared with dirt, linen shirt unlaced and askew, and
he is missing his cap – a faux pas that would, were he not the Queen’s brother and
so terrifyingly seething with anger, have barred his admittance from her presence.

‘Brother,’ barks Katherine.
‘Calm down.’ They are back in the nursery and she is the elder sister
dealing with an angry small boy, indignant over some unjust beating or other – but they
are not children any more, and this is clearly not about some trivial event.
‘Stand still.’

He stops, feet apart, arms folded over his
chest. His face is crimson and his forehead beaded with sweat.

Katherine stands and takes his arm.
‘Come,’ she coos, ‘come and sit by the window.’

She leads him to the bench by the casement
and they sit, she with an arm around his shoulders. He is folded up tightly and
hunched.

‘Tell me, Will. Tell me what is going
on.’

‘Gardiner,’ he barks, then takes
a deep breath and bangs a fist on his knee.

Katherine grabs his arm. ‘Talk to me,
Will.