Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (38 page)

She has no idea of anything. And nothing to
do but pray and wait and try not to think.

It is Sister Anne who unravels first. Her
mouth is a dark hole and a terrible animal howl comes out of it, a crazed hollow noise
that reverberates around the walls of the chamber, out of the door, into the gallery and
beyond. It sounds like a birthing. The women are silenced, and as one – as if
choreographed in some newfangled dance – they bring their hands to their mouths and step
back, watching Anne drop to the floor in a stream of anguished hiccuping sobs. Her
skirts crumple stiffly around her and she looks almost comical, as if she’s in
costume for a masque. But the distress on her face is not pretend. The women begin to
shuffle, their hands fluttering uselessly, uncomfortable at this display, unsure whether
to grab her flailing arms and hold her, or to leave her to writhe and sob.

None of them are looking at Katherine, who
barely registers her sister’s performance. She is half turned away and holds a
paper between the tapered fingers of her left hand, reading what is on it over and over,
hoping each time that it might say something different. Her face is a tired grey and a
collection of tiny droplets gathers on her forehead. She stands like this, absolutely
still, for some time, just her eyes darting over the text, quick as spring flies, until
Anne’s wailing reaches a crescendo.

‘Come, Anne, there’s no need for
this,’ she says, in a voice that’s straight as an arrow. ‘Pull
yourself together.’

She is the big sister back in the nursery,
and Sister Anne the fretting toddler. Katherine turns towards her, crouching to hold her
around the shoulders and Anne tucks her face
into the hollow of
Katherine’s neck, leaving a trail of damp tears there. As she does this, the paper
falls from Katherine’s fingers and slides along the floor, flying like a magic
carpet, on a current of air. It is Stanhope who dives on it, swift as a hawk. She reads
it carefully, pert mouth pursed, eyes widening.

‘Oh God, no!’ she exclaims.

Katherine thinks she can see a tiny upward
tilt in her lips. But she can’t trust what she sees any more; this situation has
rendered her suspicious of everything.

‘This is a warrant for your arrest.
Signed by the King.’

A collective gasp goes up from the group,
each one of them wondering, she supposes, how far they might be implicated in this,
whatever it is – how far they might fall. Katherine can almost see their minds whirring,
working out how they will save themselves. There is a black word that travels around the
room – heresy. There can be no other reason to arrest the Queen, though a few have been
around the court long enough to know that charges don’t necessarily correspond to
anything in particular. Lizzie Tyrwhitt wrings her hands as if trying to wash ink from
them. Mary Wootten threads a ring off and on her finger. Sister Anne, still wailing and
heaving with tears, clutches at her sister’s girdle like a child, as they both
rise from the floor.

‘This has Gardiner’s stench on
it,’ says Cat Brandon and her spaniel jumps up, hearing his name. ‘No, not
you,’ she says, patting the dog’s head. ‘How did it come to you,
Katherine?’ She moves in close, talking quietly so the others can’t
hear.

‘Huicke brought it to me,’
Katherine whispers. ‘He found it in the corridor outside the King’s privy
chamber. It must have been dropped …’

‘Does this not make you think God is on
our side,’ says Cat, ‘that you should have been warned like this?’
They fall into silence.

Katherine wonders why, if God is on their
side, his plan for her has led to this. Is her faith being tested? Or is it punishment
for her sins? All those old sins are catching up with her. How can you be human and be
in this place and not sin?

‘What will you do?’ asks Cat.
‘You know I will do anything –’

Sister Anne’s wails will not let
up.

‘I’m more than a match for those
snakes,’ snaps Katherine. ‘Don’t imagine I will be brought down so
easily.’

Her voice is the only steady thing in the
room, but her mind flits about. How thankful she is that they got rid of all those
books. How thankful that Huicke is returned. She must get word to her brother – God only
knows what he has lying about his rooms – but Will is at the Borders, fighting the
Scots. She would send Dot to check his chambers but Dot is still gone. There are many
ways to disappear a person in London, especially a low-born girl like Dot. She feels as
if her head is in a vice and it’s hard to get her thoughts in a straight line.
There is a torture she has heard of – a knotted rope around the temples, twisted tighter
and tighter with a cudgel. But she
must
get her thoughts straight. She
must
stay calm and hold this whole carnival together. She will not be
brought down. They are all looking at her for direction.

‘Sister, hush!’ she says, more
sharply than she intends. ‘If any of you still have books, pamphlets –’ she
begins.

But a noise in the corridor stops her. They
all turn. Fear hangs like static in the air before a storm. The door is flung open with
a squeal of hinges to reveal Henry, flanked by a couple of his guards.

The women drop into deep curtsies, eyes glued
to the floor. He heaves himself into the room and stands in his ermine and his armour of
intricately embellished robes, the quilting and gilding and embroidery, and the
embarrassingly large codpiece peeking out from the folds of his gown like some monstrous
pet.

‘What’s all this?’ he
booms, the flesh of his cheeks quivering like aspic. ‘Wife?’

‘Your Majesty,’ she says to his
white slippers, reaching out to take his hand and kiss the ring.

Her own hand is as still as stone. If she is
afraid – and how could she not be? – she will not show it, not to the King, not to
anyone, barely even to herself. The ruby is a blob of blood. Her lips touch it. She
imagines she is floating high in the beams of the ceiling, looking down on herself
stooped before her husband, in her scarlet gown.

‘Up, up,’ he says, lifting his
hand, palm up.

She rises, as if on a string. The others
remain crouched.

‘Explain to us what has been going on
in here. This dreadful commotion. Are you ill?’

‘No, Your Majesty, not I –’

‘Look at us,’ he snarls,
showering her with spit.

‘It is Sister Anne who is
unwell.’

She looks up into his pebble eyes, which
seem to have sunk further than ever into the folds of his lids.

‘Ah,’ he says, ‘not you
then. We had thought it was our wife baying like a stuck pig.’ He looks towards
the red-eyed Anne, rolling his eyes to the roof, and slaps Katherine firmly on her
behind.

She forces out a friendly giggle.

‘Go on.’ He gestures towards the
women, inducing a scuffle of brocade as they unfold themselves. ‘Be
gone.’

They disappear like extinguished flames.

It is only then that Katherine is aware of
Gardiner lurking behind the King, his waxy face hardly able to conceal the air of
triumph. An excited twitch starts up at the corner of his drooping eye. He clears his
throat to say something.

The King, seeming to have forgotten he was
there, turns and hisses, ‘You too, Bishop … Shoo! I have no need of you
here.’

Gardiner moves backwards slowly,
black-capped head bobbing up and down like a moorhen’s. The King gives him a
little push in the chest with the palm of his hand before slamming the doors shut.

‘So, wife,’ he says, drawing her
over to the settle by the fire. ‘What ails you?’

‘Your Majesty,’ she replies,
stroking the back of his swollen hand, ‘I fear I have displeased you.’ She
looks up, widening her eyes briefly, sufficiently, before hooding them, casting them
down.

‘You fear you have displeased
us?’ He seems on the brink of laughter.

He is toying with her. She has seen him do
this to others. A wasp buzzes frantically in the casement, colliding repeatedly against
the glass. Tap, tap, tap.

‘I want to be a good wife,’ she
says, her voice smooth and sweet as syllabub.

He shifts, uncrossing his legs, heaving one
off the other and wincing as he does so.

‘Your leg pains you?’

‘What do you think?’ he
spits.

‘Can I do something to take your mind
off it?’

‘Now that’s more like it.’
He grabs at her partlet, pulling it open and shoving a paw in, as a bear might look for
honey in
a hole in a tree, kneading her breast, half tugging it out,
so it is painfully trapped by the tight edge of her bodice like a squelch of white clay.
‘Not the paps of a bitch in whelp are they, wife?’

She shakes her head.

Her mind teems with thoughts of survival.
She has survived before. She will manage this, like the best of Udall’s actors,
for she will not burn, neither will she lose her head like those other Queens, even if
it means playing the part of a harlot. She draws her hands towards the oversized
codpiece, noticing it is embroidered in red silk thread with the words
H
ENRICUS
R
EX
. In case anyone might forget to whom it
belongs.

He begins to help her unlace the thing with
clumsy fingers. ‘Down,’ he rasps. ‘On your knees. We can silence you,
woman. We want a quiet wife.’

Tap, tap, tap, goes the wasp.

Dot sits at a bare wooden table with both
palms down on it, as she was told to with a rap over her knuckles. The papers she found
under the Queen’s mattress are lying face down in front of her. She wants to turn
them over, read what is written on them, but there is a guard watching her and she
doesn’t dare even so much as move a muscle. The dead weight in her belly, the
prickle of fear up her spine, the jump at every sound, have become so familiar now as to
be quite normal. She is caught in a thicket of brambles and each movement tangles her
deeper. This room at least does not have the foul
stench of the other.
The bell tolls one o’clock. The guard scratches at his neck. A fly buzzes about
the room. Outside she hears voices, comings and goings. They must be close to the
entrance because she hears the regular creak and slam of a heavy wooden door and a guard
asking questions. From this room she can’t hear the voices of the other inmates,
which have kept her from her uneasy sleep these last few nights. She lost count of the
hours long ago and has no idea if she’s been here a week or a month.

Someone arrives; she hears a guard outside
ask his business.

‘I come from the palace,’ says
the voice.

It is a voice she could never forget; the
sound of it is scored into her secret places. It is William Savage. Her heart lifts. She
wills him to open this door and find her, watches the latch for signs of movement,
listens for the soft shuffle of his footsteps nearing.

‘Are you the Lord Chancellor’s
man?’ says the guard.

‘No, no,’ says his dear, dear
voice. ‘I’m looking for Dorothy Fownten, lately gone missing from Whitehall
Palace.’

He has come for her.

Her heart knocks at her ribs like a mallet.
She imagines the guard, or whoever it is that mans the door, opening a ledger and
looking down a list of names. Her hands are trembling now, not with fear but with
anticipation. She presses them into the table to hide the shake. William will save her
from this place – dear, dear William Savage. The guard makes a sudden fist in the air,
with a snap. He has caught the fly and lets it drop to the straw.

‘There is no one of that name
here,’ comes the voice beyond the door.

It hits her like a slug in the gut that she
is not Dorothy
Fownten. She is Nelly Dent. She can feel him slipping
away, can feel herself slipping away, wants to rush to the door, bang on it till her
hands are raw, shout to him that she is here. But she sits, still as stone, petrified –
she cannot betray the Queen. But neither can she help herself willing him to fling the
door open, to see her for himself.

Open the door, open the door, find me, find me. It is I, your Full Stop.

She hears the doors outside squeal shut.
William is gone.

Her breath is shallow, barely reaches her
lungs and she feels the prick of tears at the back of her eyes. But she will not give
any of these people, these brutes, the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

It seems an age that she waits. She tries to
herd her thoughts away from despair but those papers sit in front of her and her mind
keeps turning to the word Wriothesley had used – ‘heresy’. With that word
comes the heat and the flames and the screams of martyrs. But she is no martyr. She can
hardly think of what to say to God when she prays. Prayer has never been much more than
the usual routine of things, and she has barely given a thought to the state of her
soul. But now she thinks of it, thinks of her lack of prayer, stretching back for years
and years, all that unbelief. She feels the tangle of thorns tighten around her still
further.

The door swings open and Wriothesley stands
there holding a pomander to his nose. His clothes are a chaos of different colours and
textures and layers. A page follows him in, carrying a large bag and yet another gown
over his arm, which she supposes Wriothesley has just taken off.

‘Get out,’ snaps Wriothesley to
the guard, who flashes him an insolent look that only Dot notices.

The page puts the bag on the table and pulls
a chair out
for his master to sit on, which he does with a lot of
creaking.

‘So,’ says Wriothesley, inhaling
on his pomander with a loud sniff. ‘Nelly Dent. Let’s get this over and done
with. I’m a busy man.’

He picks up the papers and thrusts them
towards her. Sniff. She flinches minutely, which provokes a small smile in him.

‘Whose are these?’