Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (36 page)

‘Hmph!’ Mary Wootten rolls her
eyes up. ‘That is not the point. If those two get the bit between their
teeth …’ She pauses, pursing her lips, ‘All hell could be let
loose.’

Sister Anne leans over with a finger over
her mouth. ‘Keep it down, ladies. I don’t want the maids getting the wind
put up them.’ She looks over to the group of girls lounging listlessly across the
room.

Dot takes the jug into the privy chamber
where Katherine is alone, sitting on a chair, staring out, with a book on her lap.

‘Thank you,’ she murmurs as Dot
fills her cup.

‘Madam …’ Dot is unsure of
how to say it. ‘What … I don’t know …’

Katherine looks at her, waiting.

‘Is there something happening?’
she blurts out finally.

‘Dot, sometimes it is best to be in
the dark.’

She is as impenetrable as a block of
wood.

‘But –’

Katherine puts her hand up to silence her.
‘If anyone gives you something to bring to me, a book, anything, you must refuse
it.’

Dot nods. There is a pressure at her
temples, as if a band is tightening about her head. Katherine smiles, and where she
musters it from is a mystery to Dot, for the atmosphere is so grave.

‘Go about your business, Dot.
Don’t give the appearance of concern. Come, let us see that smile of
yours.’

She forces her mouth up at the corners and
begins to gather a bundle of linens for the laundry.

‘Good girl, Dot.’

The creak of the laundry basket is the only
sound in the watching chamber as she walks through, but as she is about to leave the
doors are flung open and an usher sweeps in with a bow, asking for Sister Anne.

‘Who wants me?’ she says.

Dot can hear a quiver in her voice.

‘The Lord Chancellor wishes a word
with you, my lady.’

‘Wriothesley,’ says Sister Anne
under her breath.

Dot sees the colour disappear from her face
and notices, too, that the other ladies have the look of a herd of terrified deer, big
eyes watching, as Sister Anne follows the usher silently past Dot and out of the
chamber. Wriothesley is the man, Dot has discovered, whom she encountered at the Tower.
She has an image of him crunching on the stick of sugar, all the bits of it stuck in his
beard. The lie she told him festers in her gut like a bad shrimp.

‘Dot,’ says Lizzie Tyrwhitt,
‘what are you doing?’

And Dot realizes her basket has tipped and
there are linens scattered all over the floor. She stands like a halfwit, staring at the
door.

‘Oh, begging your pardon,’ she
says, starting to collect up the laundry.

‘Pull yourself together,
girl.’

Dot, all in a jitter, rushes down to the
laundry, dumping the basket and telling the laundress that it is for the Queen but not
stopping as usual for a chat. She cannot bear to be away from those awful silent
rooms.

Sister Anne returns, white as a corpse, as
if she has been terrified out of her life; she is in a nervous dither and will not sit
or even stand still. She rushes about looking for things, muttering to herself,
‘Where did I put my Bible? Where is my psalter? Where is my sister?’ and
wringing her hands.

When Katherine is fetched to calm her, she
clings to her as if she is drowning.

Then Lizzie Tyrwhitt is called out and the
room gets fugged up with fear, with them all jumping out of their skins each time the
panelling creaks. Katherine sits at the far side of the chamber quietly reading, as if
nothing is going on, but beside her Sister Anne is staring ahead and twisting her
fingers around and around the tassel of her belt as if she’s touched in the head.
Dot doesn’t know where to put herself and pretends to be busy with darning an
invisible hole in a stocking.

Lizzie is not gone long. When she comes back
she says, ‘There is no air in here, I don’t know how any of you can
breathe,’ and begins rummaging about among her things, pulling out her fan.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know,’ she keeps saying.

Anne Stanhope is called next. If she is
frightened she doesn’t show it, walking out behind the usher as if she’s
going for an afternoon stroll. Dot has to hand it to her that whatever kind of two-faced
so-and-so she is, she’s not faint-hearted. Dot pricks her finger on the darning
needle. She feels she will suffocate with fear, that her lie will send Anne Stanhope the
way of Mistress Askew and it will all be her fault. Her head is whirring with it. She
sucks the blood from her finger and tries to rethread her needle, but her hands are
trembling too much. She can’t help thinking of that poor Anne Askew burning,
wonders if the powder sent her off quickly as it was supposed to. No one has spoken of
it, not a whisper. It is as if everything happens somewhere else, and all they can do is
sit in these chambers and wonder about it.

Stanhope returns, about half an hour later,
looking down that nose of hers, as if nothing is different – and maybe nothing is. She
goes straight over to Katherine and whispers something to her. Every single person in
the chamber is watching for Katherine’s reaction, but she just nods and continues
with her reading. Anne Stanhope, seeming not agitated in the slightest, takes a seat in
a window embrasure and begins to play patience. Dot watches her flick the cards out on
to the table with her quick fingers; she looks for a trace of anxiety but cannot see
one. Her own fear recedes a little. Surely if there was to be trouble over the lie it
would show on Stanhope’s face or in her hands. But if Wriothesley was angered with
her for sending vittles to the Tower there is no sign of it. In the meantime, another
lady is called, and then another and another, each returning looking ruffled and
perturbed but Anne Stanhope continues flicking her cards out and barely looks up.

Katherine calls Stanhope over, saying
something to her,
and she begins to collect the few books still in the
room. She hands them to the ladies who, in a silent commotion, secrete them about their
persons, stuffed under kirtles, in hoods, wrapped into linens.

‘Even this?’ exclaims Lizzie
Tyrwhitt, when Stanhope hands her a sheaf of papers. ‘Wyatt’s
poetry?’

‘Something might have been scribbled
in a margin … You never know.’

Lizzie nods as she tucks it down her
stomacher.

One by one they leave with their secret
cargo. Dot is not given a book to smuggle out and she wonders if anyone but Katherine
knows of all those books she brought into these rooms. She feels like a child with no
understanding of the adult world.

The days go by and there is not a break in
the weather. Now the books are gone, the ladies are lost for something to do and they
sit about like ghosts. Even the needlework mostly lies untouched; they say little and do
nothing, dragging themselves out to the hall for meals and back, but not much else.
There are still no visits. Huicke has been sent to Ashridge to tend Elizabeth – she is
ailing, they say. Most of the husbands and relatives, who normally drop in from time to
time for cards and music, are gone – Hertford and Lisle to France; the Queen’s
brother, Essex, to the Borders. Dot has made it her business to listen to all the
whispered conversations. She will not be kept in the dark.

William Savage is still at court; he has new
duties, though, and is never in the squillery any more – and good riddance to bad
rubbish, thinks Dot. She
has
seen glimpses of him in the corridors, and has
hidden so as not to be seen by him in turn, but he doesn’t come to play the
virginals any more. Dot
thanks God for that. No one is in the mood for
music, though on most evenings the Bassano brothers can be heard from the King’s
rooms, their singing and fiddling blaring from the open windows on to the courtyard.
Katherine, cool as a cup of chilled wine, is usually commanded to join the King and
takes Cat Brandon to accompany her, or Stanhope. They are the ones who are holding
themselves together as they wait – wait to see what will happen next.

The Queen may be cool and calm and going
about as if everything is normal, but Dot knows better and sees how she forces her mouth
into an uncomfortable smile before admitting anyone to her privy chamber, and how she is
at prayer more often than ever. She has a new bruise glowering beneath her ear and Dot
dresses her in high-necked gowns to cover it. Katherine insists on wearing her finest
things, the most bejewelled of her dresses, her heaviest hoods, in spite of the cloying
heat.

‘I must look like the Queen,’
she says, when Dot asks her if she wouldn’t be more comfortable in just her kirtle
like the other ladies.

Katherine takes her mother’s cross out
of the coffer, where it has lain untouched for years, and sits holding it, stroking the
pearls between the tip of her index finger and thumb, her lips moving as if she’s
saying the rosary, before wrapping it in a fold of velvet and tucking it beneath her
pillows. It is never worn. Her neck is heavy with the Queen’s jewels, monster
stones that seem bigger still on her fine frame.

‘I would give up all this,’ she
says to Dot, holding up a ruby necklace. ‘It means nothing.’ But still she
insists on wearing them.

She can be seen each evening, glimpses of
her through the
open windows across the court, smiling and laughing.
Dot wonders how she can manage to muster that merry facade when they all stand on the
edge of such a chasm. The King visits most nights and Dot lies on her pallet outside,
pressing her hands to her ears so as not to hear them.

Meanwhile, they are preparing the summer
move to Hampton Court and everything must be aired while the weather is good. She
dismantles the Queen’s own tester bed, unhooking the hangings which hold a
year’s worth of dust in their folds, to take them to the yard for a beating. She
shakes out the pillows and covers, sending the linens to the laundry, separating what
will go with them and what will stay here. The coverlets must be aired and the mattress
must be turned. She gets one of the lads to help her, as turning a big feather-bed is
more difficult even than lifting a fat man’s corpse – or so Betty always says,
though God only knows how Betty would know what it is like to lift a corpse, fat or not.
Dot is looking forward to returning to Hampton Court and having the company of Betty
again, for though she is foul-mouthed and talks too much, she is not complicated and she
makes Dot laugh. Dot has had enough of this complicated silence.

She and the lad struggle under the weight of
the mattress, heaving it up. As it lifts away from the frame Dot feels something beneath
her fingers. It is a roll of papers tucked away between the slats. She drops her end
with a groan and the lad tuts in annoyance.

‘This is too heavy,’ she says.
‘Why don’t you ask one of the others to come and help us?’

He leaves, shrugging and muttering something
under his breath about feeble upstairs maids. When he is gone she pulls the roll out. It
is a sheaf of coarse paper, marked and rumpled, furled tightly and tied with a length of
frayed red
ribbon. She can see that it is written on, for the ink has
smudged through in places and she supposes it must be some kind of love letter
–
why else would it be hidden under the mattress like that – but she
wonders how it could be, for if the Queen were harbouring a love and exchanging letters
Dot would be the first to notice.

She thinks of that other Queen, Catherine
Howard, who lost her head for cuckolding the King. They say she haunts the Queen’s
corridor at Hampton Court. Just thinking of it gives Dot the shivers. She can hear the
lads climbing the stairs, chatting and ribbing each other, and goes to fling the papers
on the fire but the grate is dead. There is no need for a fire in this weather and to
light one would cause suspicion – and besides, there is no time – so she tucks the roll
beneath her skirts. Katherine will know what to do with it. It is probably something
innocent, anyway – a letter from her mother, kept for decades and read for remembrance,
or a favourite poem or prayer from childhood. But what she fears is that it is a letter
from that Seymour fellow, who has disappeared off the face of the earth.

With the mattress turned, Dot makes her way
to the laundry to see if the Queen’s linens are dry and ready to be packed. As she
is going down the long gallery she is stopped by Jane the Fool.

‘Am I to come to Hampton Court
tomorrow?’ she asks, her wandering eye wheeling in her head.

She asked that very same question only an
hour ago. Dot wonders why everyone listens to her rantings, when she is too stupid even
to remember what she was told so recently. But she was a gift to the Queen from the
King, like the monkey, and must be humoured.

‘Yes, Jane, are you all
prepared?’

‘Diddle, diddle, dumpling …’
sings Jane, making Dot regret her question. A pack of courtiers passes between them, and
Dot has to press herself into the wall, so as not to be bumped into. She can feel the
roll of paper under her kirtle. It has slightly dislodged itself. She pushes her belly
against it to hold it in place. The pack strides by, gowns flapping, feathers
fluttering. Among them is that man Wriothesley with his pointed weasel face. She dips
her head so as not to be seen. They clatter on past and she continues past the
pages’ room towards the door that leads to the kitchen stairs.

But Wriothesley turns back suddenly,
stopping, letting the rest of them get ahead of him, beard thrust in her direction,
holding her with his eyes. ‘You are Lady Hertford’s girl, are you
not?’

She knows she must curtsy. She can feel the
roll of paper slip slightly. But she has no choice. Down she bobs and out it slides,
freeing itself from its ribbon and unfurling on the floor at her feet. Praying her
skirts cover it, she looks down. That is her error.

‘What is that?’ he barks.
‘Step aside.’

She does as he says, exposing the papers,
which sit on the floorboards, written side up. Her head spins. She wants to disappear,
grow so small she can’t be seen, turn to dust, float away. But she is solid, and
here, and speechless with dread.