Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (35 page)

The King rests his big hand across the bare
skin just below her neck, stroking gently, running his fingers up and down. She leans
over the book to see better in the candlelight and the bones of her spine protrude – a
row of stepping stones in a pool of cream. Other women bulge and billow over their
clothes, but there is nothing superfluous or fleshy about Katherine. A stranger seeing
her would never imagine she was a woman of nearly thirty-four. Her dress is
sapphire-blue damask shot with gold and it falls in folds that catch the light, making
it shimmer. She has removed her hood and only her white linen cap remains, which has
lost its stiffness and droops, framing her face prettily. Her finger follows the lines
of print. He is always surprised by the smallness of her hands; they are like a
child’s and the way they are weighed down with rings makes them seem smaller
still.

She stops and says something, holding the
book up to her husband, pointing a word out to him. They talk quietly so Huicke
can’t quite hear them. The King reaches for his spectacles, lifting them to his
eyes and peering through the thick lenses at the page. They both laugh, prodding
Huicke’s curiosity as to what they could find so amusing in the Book of
John. It is not Katherine’s real laugh, though, which is on the
edge of abandon, a proper infectious chortle; it is a tidy laugh, a chaste titter.

Huicke is impressed at her apparent levity,
for he knows that beneath it she is wrung with grief. Anne Askew burned today – brave
Anne. So many of his friends had, at one time or another, slipped unseen out of the
palace to the secret gatherings where she preached. Earlier, in her chamber, when he had
come to tell her it was done, Katherine had flung her needlework to the floor and in
doing so had knocked over a jar of French pomade; it shattered, oozing an oily mess
across the matting.

‘The King offered her a pardon if she
would recant. But Kit, she was so sure of her path to the heavens … Her faith
was unassailable.’

‘He could have stopped it,’ she
kept repeating. ‘I can’t believe he didn’t stop it.’

Her face was flushed to a high pink and she
brought her hand down so hard against the table that she bruised it. Huicke had never
seen her so incensed, so boiling with rage.

‘I am afraid,’ she whispered to
Huicke when her fury had subsided. ‘For the first time, I am truly afraid. I can
feel them about me, watching, waiting, gathering around, hiding in corners, snapping at
my heels. I know it has ever been thus, but this has changed everything … They
are after my blood, Huicke.’

Another woman might have cried over it, but
not Katherine. Katherine is made of sterner stuff and tonight’s blithe performance
with the King is testimony to that.

One of the King’s men enters, followed
by a page who balances a stack of dishes in his arms. They begin to prepare the table
for supper. It is a rigmarole that always makes
Huicke snigger
inwardly at the absurdity of it, everything being done with the correct hand and nothing
being touched that will eventually make contact with the King’s mouth, requiring a
system of cloths and the deftness of a magician.

Eventually, they are done and the King asks
for wine, inviting Huicke to join them, ‘If the Queen wishes it,’ which, of
course, she does.

And so he, too, participates in the false
levity, glad that at least he can be there for Katherine.

An usher announces the arrival of
Wriothesley, and Katherine asks Huicke for help with her hood. He picks it up; it is
heavy, laden with trinkets and jewels, far too heavy for her girlish neck to support.
Though he has often wished himself a woman, Huicke is unfamiliar with women’s
things and in this moment is suddenly aware of the complication and restriction of their
garb and is glad, for once, to be a man. She scrapes her hair away from her face and he
helps her into the contraption, as if fitting her into a cage, while the King watches in
silence.

‘Did we give you that?’ the King
says.

When she is in it, she turns to him for his
approval, dipping her head to one side and making Huicke wonder how she will be able to
right it again, given the dead weight of the thing.

‘You did, my love, and a fine one it
is.’

‘You see our taste is impeccable. See
the way the colour of it sets off your eyes.’

She smiles in polite agreement, and those
eyes dance and glitter as if they are genuinely merry.

Wriothesley enters in a ridiculous ocelot
collar, though it is high summer, making a meal out of his bow, bending so deeply from
his waist that his beard almost sweeps the floor.
Katherine and Huicke
exchange a brief amused look. Gardiner follows shortly, in his Bishop’s togs. He
manages to make the plain black and white robes seem quite out of the ordinary –
sumptuous swathes of black satin so voluminous they might be bed hangings – and the
overgarment is plain lawn cotton but intricately stitched and smocked to luxurious
effect. His hat is lustrous velvet and there is a starched white ruffle at his throat
beneath his numerous chins and that downturned mouth of his. His skin is the texture of
tallow and there is that one drooping eye – quite hideous. He wears a cross that is so
encrusted with rubies and garnets as to make the gold of it barely visible. The pair of
them seem puffed up, exhilarated, smug. It is doubtless the burning that fuels their
elation – though it is not mentioned, not once, during the whole nine courses. But they
are reverential to the Queen to the point of absurdity and Huicke wonders about that,
senses there is something up, but can’t quite put his finger on it.

Surrey arrives, striding in. He looks, with
his elongated limbs and black brocade, like a daddy-long-legs. Will Parr, with him, is
without his usual swagger, wearing a forced smile and exchanging a brief look of concern
with his sister as they greet each other – an acknowledgement of Anne Askew’s
death, no doubt. Nobody else notices and the smile is painted back on in an instant.
Surrey has written a poem for the King and fawns a little. He is in and out of favour so
often it’s hard to stay apace. But as he is top of the Howard pile and heir to the
greatest dukedom in England, the King doesn’t stay angry with him for long.
Anyway, a great fuss is made of the poem, which Huicke judges unremarkable if engaging.
But Surrey has charm coming out of his hose and the King is delighted with the
interlude.

When the puddings are served, great towering
wobbling things in colours that look quite inedible, the King demands the monkey be
brought in and the fools, both of them, if they can be found, for the Fool Jane has a
tendency to wander and lose herself.

The monkey, having amused the King by
devouring most of a blancmange, struts about the table laying waste to the remains of
the meal, then takes its monkey genitals in its monkey hand and begins to pleasure
itself to guffaws of laughter from the King, who makes a deal about covering his
wife’s eyes. Surrey and Will Parr laugh heartily, making lewd comments. They are
used to producing just the right mood for the King. Wriothesley sniggers politely with
them, but Gardiner looks horrified and cannot muster anything approaching a laugh for
the King, who prods him saying, ‘Where’s your sense of fun, Bishop? Never
seen a stiff member before?’

The Bishop looks as if he’d like to
sink into the floor.

The two fools make the most of it by staging
a mock wedding, marrying Jane to the hapless monkey, who has desisted from its sinful
antics. Will Sommers presides –
Do you take this ape?
– draping himself in the
tablecloth, in mimicry of Gardiner, ratcheting up the mirth. Gardiner eventually manages
a curt half smile but his face looks as if it might break with the effort.

The mayhem dies down at last, the monkey is
removed, the cards are brought for piquet and the conversation turns to more serious
matters. They discuss the peace treaty with the French that will be ratified soon, which
must be a good thing – for France will be in hock to England for a hundred years –
though it puts paid to any hopes of England joining the German Princes in a Protestant
league. Huicke doesn’t
say as much, but he thinks it, and he
assumes Katherine has it on her mind too. Anyway, the Emperor is preparing to do battle
with the German Princes, so the dream of an evangelical Europe is further away than
ever.

‘Admiral d’Annebaut will come to
ratify the treaty,’ says the King. ‘And Essex,’ he turns to Will Parr,
‘you will greet him. Demonstrate to him that we English can put on a good show. We
will flatter him into submission and have him running back to François with news of our
magnificent hospitality.’

It’s a good sign, thinks Huicke, for
it suggests that the King is still favouring the Parrs, but the look Wriothesley
exchanges with Gardiner tells another story. A lute player is brought in, to strum in
the corner, and Surrey and Will Parr take their leave.

‘Your brother continues to petition
for his divorce, I see,’ says Gardiner when Will Parr is barely out of earshot,
turning his sagging eye to Katherine. He knows this is a sore point with the Parrs.
‘He will never get it, you know.’

‘What think you of divorce?’
asks the King, pointing a fat finger at the Fool Jane, who takes up her skirts and
begins to skip back and forth chanting.

‘Ha!’ brays the King, ‘you
are wiser than most of my council, Fool.’

‘What God has joined together may no
man put asunder,’ drones Gardiner.

‘Marriage
is
one of the holy
sacraments,’ adds the King, suddenly serious.

It seems that the two of them have had a
conversation in private about Will Parr’s divorce already, and this is for
Katherine’s benefit, a subtle way to put her in her place. Huicke is thinking
about how hard the King laughed at the monkey marriage … and all those Queens
got rid of. A ‘sacrament’ indeed.

‘Erasmus did not think of marriage as
a sacrament,’ says Katherine, who has not spoken for some time.

They all turn to her and then to the King,
wondering how he will react to being contradicted in such a way. But the King says
nothing, and Katherine seems determined to say her piece, though the atmosphere has
turned thick and dark as molasses.

She continues, ‘Erasmus translated the
original New Testament Greek
musterion
as “mystery”, nowhere did he
find the word “sacrament” concerning –’

‘You think I don’t know
Erasmus?’ bellows the King, heaving himself to his feet and slapping the table
hard with a hand that is surely intended for his wife.

His chair teeters momentarily on two legs
then crashes to the floor behind him and a page scurries to pick it up. His face turns
purple, his flint-shard eyes flash cold. The room recoils.

‘I corresponded with him weekly when I
was a boy, he wrote a book for me, FOR ME, and you presume to suggest that I don’t
know Erasmus.’ He is rattling like a pan on the hearth, stabbing a sausage finger
towards Katherine.

She sits still as stone, her eyes tipped
down, hands folded in her lap.

‘I will not be told by a woman. Get
out of my sight. GO!’

Katherine slides away from the table. Only
Huicke dares stand, tentatively, as she leaves, moving straight-backed towards the
door.

The King collapses into his chair with a
sigh; he is deflating visibly. ‘What is this world coming to?’ he murmurs.
‘To be taught by my wife.’

Huicke sees Gardiner exchange another brief
look with Wriothesley, little more than a minutely raised eyebrow and a barely
perceptible nod in response, but freighted with meaning. They have seen a way in.

‘Huicke,’ says the King,
‘go after her, calm her down. See that she is all right.’

The irony is not lost on Huicke; the Queen
was the least perturbed of them all, or was the best at not showing it at any rate. As
Huicke takes his leave, he hears fragments of Gardiner’s hushed words drift
over.

‘… harbour a
serpent …’

He would like to take the man and push his
poisonous words back down his throat until he chokes on them.

Something is up. Dot can feel the heaviness
hanging over the Queen’s apartments and it is not all to do with the airless
August heat. The life is sapped out of everything, even the little dogs are flat out on
the Turkish rug, tongues hanging, panting for air. Dot opens the windows wide on both
sides of the chamber but cannot even raise the slightest draught. Her scalp is soaked
beneath her coif and she longs to unpeel her dress and go about in just her kirtle like
most of the ladies do
when there are no visitors. And there are no
visitors. Since poor Anne Askew was burned two weeks ago almost no one has come to the
Queen’s chambers and there have been none of the usual evening entertainments, no
musicians or poets, and not even Udall to liven things up – and Huicke, who is almost a
piece of the furniture, is nowhere to be seen either.

Old Mary Wootten and Lizzie Tyrwhitt are in
a huddle talking under their breath, alert to see who might be listening. No one ever
cares if Dot can hear.

‘You know what this reminds me
of?’ says Lizzie Tyrwhitt.

‘The concubine,’ whispers Mary
Wootten.

Dot knows who that is, for it was the name
some people called Nan Bullen when she was Queen. Dot refills their cups from the ewer
of small beer.

‘This is warm. Is there not a drop of
cool ale to be had in the whole palace?’

‘No, my lady, not even for the
King.’

‘I fear for her.’ Lizzie
Tyrwhitt looks as if she might cry.

‘For us all.’

‘But she has done nothing wrong. She
is a paragon.’