Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (33 page)

‘It is Anne Askew. She is taken again,
to the Tower this time. Arraigned for heresy.’

A whole year has gone by since Anne Askew
was last released and Katherine has felt the threats around her recede. The King, in
spite of the box of holy splinters tucked inside his doublet, seems on the fence again,
though it is hard to be sure. Katherine has given up hope of conceiving but has a secret
conception of a different kind: her new book
The Lamentation of a Sinner
is
almost complete. No one knows of it – it is her private repentance to God, her
exploration of justification by faith alone. And though it exists shrouded in secrecy,
she has the sense that she will be remembered for this as the Reformation Queen – a
Queen who stood up for her beliefs. Her own piece of history to herald the new ways,
like the eclipse; it was written in thanks for Anne Askew’s deliverance.

‘She has an instinct for survival,
that woman,’ Katherine says. But her mind keeps wandering back to the secret visit
at Eltham and how Stanhope came to hear about it, wondering who else might know, if it
has reached Udall’s ears yet.

‘It is worse than you think, Kit. I
was sent to question her,’ Will spits out in a whisper. ‘
Me
of all
people. You know what that means? They’re rubbing my face in it. They know where I
stand on reform. They probably know she is a friend of mine, just don’t have the
proof.’

‘I know, I know.’ Katherine
tries to sound soothing. A cold shiver runs through her, as if someone’s walking
on her grave. ‘It is me they’re after, Will. They want rid of the Reform
Queen who hasn’t produced a son in three years of marriage. And
you
are
that Queen’s brother. We will all fall together.’ The realization uproots
her. ‘What did she say?’

‘But Kit …’ Will grabs his
sister’s shoulders and twists her
torso so he can look directly
at her. His eyes are wild like those of an unbroken horse. ‘They racked
her.’

Her world seems to slow, a vertiginous
feeling, an endless falling. ‘They
racked
her? A
woman
?’
It is unthinkable. ‘Who? Wriothesley? Rich?’

‘Wriothesley
and
Rich were
there, but you can be sure Gardiner’s behind it … Paget too, no
doubt.’ His leg is jigging nervously.

She puts out a hand to steady him. ‘A
gentlewoman on the rack? Surely the Constable –’

‘Kinston could do nothing. He left in
disgust.’

‘Will … this is
appalling …’ Katherine grasps for words, unable to arrange her thoughts in
any kind of order, a thousand questions grappling for space. ‘And you,
Will … you were there?’

‘Wriothesley’s twisted mind. He
sent me and John Dudley. I don’t know what he thought
we’d
get out
of her. I suppose he wanted to make it look as if … Oh, I don’t know,
Kit … He’s a maniac … He went into a rage and forced us out
when we got nothing from her. We listened at the door …’ He struggles for
words. ‘Her screams, Kit …’

‘Poor woman … poor, poor
thing …’ She drops her face into her hands, making a momentary dark place
where no one can get at her. Then, lifting her head again, she asks the question
that’s like a growth in her mind, ‘And did she break?’ What she really
means – and Will well knows this – is, did she implicate me, am
I
next, am
I
to burn too?

She can see Anne Askew’s broad face,
the wide-set eyes, their fervent intensity, sees an image of her strapped to the wooden
spokes, can hear the creak and thunk of the machine, iron against oak, can feel the
horrible tug in her own hips and knees and shoulders, like jointing a chicken, the clunk
and
suck as the round end of the bone pops out of its cup of gristle.
She can imagine, too, the resolve in the set of Anne Askew’s jaw. There is a
determination that blazes in that woman, which Katherine has never seen in any man; she
has seen it with her own eyes. If anyone is fit for martyrdom, she thinks, it is Anne
Askew, and Katherine would give up everything for a pinch of her courage.

‘Kit, I have never known a braver
woman,’ says Will, echoing her thoughts. He has got up and is pacing again.
‘Whatever they did to her, she stayed tight … Had them running in
circles.’

It feels like a reprieve, but she is being
hounded out now … and if Anne Askew said nothing it doesn’t mean others
will be so brave. She feels compelled to get herself away from the great stone walls of
Whitehall, to find somewhere she can breathe.

‘Have the groom saddle the
horses,’ she says. ‘Let’s ride out and finish this away from here.
I’ll see if Sister Anne can come. Just family, Will, just us.’

Will’s face relaxes a little as if
he’s glad to see his elder sister take control, like she always did when they were
children.

‘Look merry, Will,’ she says.
‘We mustn’t let anyone imagine we are perturbed. Just the three Parrs out
for a canter, that’s all.’

‘Can’t you talk to the
King?’ says Sister Anne.

They have dismounted at a clearing in the
woods at Chelsea. It is a magical place, an almost perfect circle, with soaring trees
ruffled slightly by a whisper of breeze, and a carpet of spongy grass dappled with
blinking spots of late June sun. The horses graze nearby, the occasional clink of their
bridles adding to the chatter of the birds and the hum of insects. It is a little
Eden.

‘Anne,’ Katherine replies,
‘what are you thinking? Do you
not remember the other Queens?
You served them. You know when he changes his mind about … He may appear to
adore me now. Goodness, all the lavish gifts are testimony to that, but
he’s … he’s not –’

‘Constant,’ Anne finishes her
sister’s sentence.

Is she thinking of Catherine Howard? Sister
Anne was there and she has told of the exact tone of the girl’s screams, shrill
and haunted, like a fox caught in a trap. Katherine has only constructed the scene from
hearsay, she never even met the girl, but that doesn’t make it less potent. And
then there was Anne Boleyn … Will inadvertently brings his hand up to his
throat. They are all having the same thought.

‘And I have had three years to produce
an heir and have not delivered. Besides, the King is not one of us. Not
really.’

‘But he broke with the Pope himself,
dissolved the great monasteries.’

‘Don’t be naive, Anne,’
snaps her brother. ‘That had nothing to do with faith.’

‘No, I suppose not.’
Anne’s ever-abundant optimism begins to unravel.

‘But …’ says Katherine,
unfurling her hand, stretching her fingers out. Her wedding ring is on one of them, the
ruby winking at her. The heat has swollen her fingers and the gold bites into her flesh.
‘I will renew my efforts to convince him. I shall present to him the image of a
Reformation King, greater than any he has ever imagined. I know him, know what appeals
to him and how he enjoys our conversations. The more he gets the taste for reform, and
the less he listens to Bishop Gardiner, the better for everyone.’ But as she says
it she doubts herself, for hasn’t she tried to coax her husband to her way of
thinking already? And failed.

‘The better for us,’ says Will.
‘Kit, had you been a man you
would have been greater than us
all, than anyone. You will bring the King back to the faith and sod Gardiner and his
idolizing Catholics.’

‘But what of Anne Askew?’ asks
Sister Anne.

A blackbird flits down to the grass, pecking
at something with its yellow beak, bright as an egg yolk, and a ladybird crawls up
Anne’s sleeve, barely visible, red on red. Katherine’s sharp eye spots it
and thinks of the song … 
fly away home
. Jane the Fool was singing it
earlier.

‘We cannot save her now,’ says
Will.

‘You mean she will burn? Is there
nothing we can do?’

‘No, sister, the machine is rolling
and cannot be stopped,’ says Katherine.

She is stabbed with the fact that her book,
her thanks to God for Anne Askew’s deliverance, was premature – perhaps God is on
the fence, like the King. She pushes that thought away; she must not lose her faith, not
now.

‘But …’ Anne’s face
is an image of horror and her words are swallowed up inside her.

‘She will not recant, Anne. In some
ways it is what she wants, to be with God the sooner. I have sent my girl to bring her
warm clothes and vittles, to make sure her last days are comfortable.’

‘Kit, surely that is
madness …’ It is Will’s turn to wear the horror mask.

‘Be assured Dot knows how to go
unseen. She will hand the things over to the maid anonymously.’

A silence, thick and cold as a slab of wet
clay, enfolds them but Katherine’s thoughts are whirring, flitting between the
stake – the heat of it, the crackle and spit – and the King, formulating her
conversation so subtly he will not even realize the thoughts she plants are not his own.
And
she tries to imagine her husband –
I love that mind of yours,
Kit
– becoming soft in her hands, shaped to her vision of the future. A future
where they are all safe. But safety is an uncommon luxury.

‘I have sent a bag of saltpetre
too.’

She had thought of that afterwards,
remembering an elaborate firework display which had been part of one of Udall’s
masques and had the whole court jumping out of their skins. He had shown her how the
fireworks were made, the scoop of black powder, how it exploded on contact with a flame.
He had put a tiny pinch of it on the floor and touched it with a taper. They had watched
it fizzle and flare and then explode with a deafening bang. The room had billowed with
the smell of sulphur; she’d thought of it as the smell of power.

She had gone to the stores this afternoon
with Dot, before riding out, found the powder stash and tipped a generous quantity of
the stuff into a purse that she had hidden among the contents of the basket, explaining
to Dot what was to be done with it.

‘She can wear it on her girdle. It
will curtail the agony at least.’

‘She will soon be in Heaven,’
says Sister Anne, always seeking to find the happy ending.

‘If anyone deserves to be in Heaven,
it is she,’ adds Will.

But none of them can shake off the image of
the fire, the heat of it, the terror.

‘I need you to do something for me,
Will,’ Katherine says. ‘There are some papers that need to be hidden, well
hidden.’

‘What kind of papers?’

‘Some of my scribblings, personal
ones … there are things in them that I fear would –’

‘It is done, sister. Tell me where they
can be found and I will remove them. Not even you will know where.’

She cannot quite bring herself to ask him to
burn them.

Dot slips out of the palace by the kitchen
gates. As she is leaving she passes William Savage, who tries to stop her. Her heart
jolts but she ignores it. It has been some months since she’s seen him; he was
away from court again. He is changed, she notices – hollow-seeming, dark about the
eyes.

‘My Dot,’ he calls out to her.
‘My full stop, my speck. Speak to me … Please.’

Her heart teeters and her mind reveals old
images and sensations – the way his hair curls at his nape, the inky leathery scent of
him – but she bats away those thoughts as she has done now for months.
He
is
the speck, the spot on her horizon. She walks by him, like he’s nothing to
her.

She has more important things to do. She is
on a secret mission for the Queen. In her hand is a basket covered with a clean square
of linen; in it is a blanket and vittles, including a pie. But it is no ordinary pie,
for buried beneath the pastry lid is a pouch of gunpowder. It is Dot’s mission to
deliver Anne Askew from suffering. This pouch of powder will send her to the next world
in an instant. Dot must go incognito, Katherine said, and had to explain the meaning of
that word. She must not be herself and, above all, must not be linked in any way to
Katherine. She has thought of the name she will give if she’s asked. ‘I am
Nelly Dent,’ she has said out loud to herself, practising, trying the name on for
size. ‘And I come out of Christian charity.’ Katherine says that there are
people who feel sorry for the prisoners and bring them small comforts, that it is quite
usual, and probably no one will even ask her who she is.

She stops and turns to face him.
‘William, I am not your full stop. A full stop is a nothing and that is not me,
for I may be low born but that doesn’t mean I am nobody.’

Why is it her heart feels like a guttering
candle?

‘Dot,’ he pleads, grabbing for
her free hand.

She snatches it back brusquely.

‘Let me explain.’

‘No, William, I have important matters
to attend to.’ She pushes past him towards the gates, and his face is so miserable
she almost founders, but she finds her resolve and moves beyond him, saying,
‘Goodbye, William,’ even as she feels the wrench of it.

She scurries down to the river steps and
calls to a boatman who is waiting for trade. He holds out his hand to help her into his
wherry, which pitches and sways as she steps into it and seats herself on the bench. She
smoothes out her skirts and places the basket at her feet, still clutching its handle so
tightly her knuckles are white.

‘Where to?’ he asks.

‘The Tower,’ she says.

This provokes a sound from him, an intake of
breath through pursed lips, like a back-to-front whistle. ‘That’s where
they’ve been stretching that poor woman,’ he says.

She supposes that everyone in the whole of
London is whispering about the brave Anne Askew who was put to the rack and who will not
name names and will never recant. Dot cannot imagine being as brave as that.

‘I believe so,’ she says.

‘What do you want, going to a place
like that?’

The boatmen are all prone to conversation,
even when it is unwanted.

‘I am delivering sweetmeats for the
Constable’s wife.’