Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (43 page)

‘You see, it is I,’ she says
with a disarming smile.

‘Dot?’ he says.

She nods and smiles, whispering,
‘Thank God!’

‘And how did you come to be scampering
the back alleys of this hellish place?’

‘Dr Huicke, it would take me some time
to tell you my story but I am in danger in this place … There is a man who has
set me to beg for him and he will be seeking me out for his takings –’ She stops,
with a sharp intake of breath, and the colour leaves her face, as she appears to notice
something at the entrance of the alley.

He turns to see the outline of a hulking
fellow with a mutt tugging on a string.

‘That is not he,’ she says with
a sigh of relief, ‘but I must get away from here.’

He takes her by the hand and they rush to
the river. The boatman grumbles about the time he has waited, demanding double the
payment. As they step in, Huicke is thinking of Katherine, imagining her delight at
being reunited with this girl. Dot is shivering and Huicke removes his gown to wrap
about her, feeling her body, beneath his hands, as insubstantial as a bird’s.

‘You need a good square meal, Dot
Fownten,’ he says.

‘And a new dress.’

They both laugh at this, and as the little
craft pushes slowly against the tide he presses her to recount what happened during her
time in Southwark.

‘Suffice to say,’ she tells him,
‘I have seen things I never thought to see in this life, and about which my lips
are forever sealed …’ She pauses a moment, the light from the
riverman’s torch flickering over her face. ‘Each of us has a talent, Dr
Huicke,’ she adds. ‘And mine is for keeping a secret.’

Dot is back, worryingly thin and silent as
the grave; beyond a brief mention of Newgate, she will not speak of how she came to
disappear for such a long time. Katherine knows not to press her; she is just glad to
have her returned in one piece and that she is sleeping safely on the truckle bed beside
her own. In the dark, Katherine listens to the even rasp of Dot’s breath, her
heart dilating at the sound of it. She can only imagine the girl has suffered greatly on
her account, and it pains her deeply.

She had so wanted to be useful, to make her
position count for something, to set an example by following God in the simplest and
most pure way and drive the new faith forward. But now she sees how much danger she has
visited on those about her through it, and poor, poor dearest Dot the most innocent of
them all.

She has long rid her chambers of any
incriminating material. The books, the prayers, the papers, all are gone; there are no
more whispered conversations, thrilling interchanges imagining a new world, pinning down
the vagaries of translation, interpreting. She censors every thought that enters her
head, every word that passes her lips. Her household is
taken up with
sewing these days, fingers busy with needles rather than quills, embroidering great
swathes of fabric with intricate stitching, a meaningless text.

The King visits and she listens, attaching
her tongue to the roof of her mouth so it doesn’t betray her by forwarding an
opinion. She simpers, she scrapes, she smiles, she agrees, and she endures the nights
she must spend in that grotesque carved bed, with its mahogany gargoyles gazing down on
her humiliating antics. The King is content with her, even though he ails and cannot
hunt, which is eroding his good humour little by little. Nevertheless, for the moment,
he is happy to see his sweet Katherine behaving, and the gifts continue to arrive daily
with a glorious monotony.

She may be able to hem in her outer self,
but the hidden parts of her are running awry. It is the presence of Seymour, whom she
glimpses constantly. It is as if he is everywhere. When she takes a walk in the long
gallery, he is there. When she strolls in the gardens, he is there. When she rides in
the park, he is there, always at the edge of her vision: the flicker of his feather, the
glimmer of iridescent satin, the chestnut fur of his beard, grown long in their years
apart. And she dare not so much as glance his way, for fear of what might be
unleashed.

Will and he are thick as thieves again and
it is as if they have been duplicated a thousand fold, the pair of them, for they are
there wherever she is, heads together in corners, playing fox and geese in a casement,
meandering about the passages of the castle, making her heart heavy with longing. She
would give anything to exchange places with her brother, to not be the Queen, to not be
a woman, and to be able to sit beside him, thigh against thigh, simply. It would be
enough. It fills her with fear, the strength of feeling she has for this
man. She can’t believe that it is not visible on her, this
untrammelled desire. But she must not think of him, or it, or anything – only benign
things – and she keeps her eyes to the floor, out of trouble, for they will betray her
first.

But Dot is a much welcome distraction.
Katherine has had a West Country manor made over to her, as a way of showing thanks, but
she knows what Dot wants more than anything in the world, and that is William Savage.
She witnessed their reunion, how they rushed into each other’s arms as if no one
were there to see. He had dropped to his knees and asked that he might explain
himself.

‘My own Full Stop,’ he had said.
‘I know you have suffered at my hands and am sorry from my heart for
that.’

‘There is no need for that,’ Dot
had replied. ‘I have long forgiven you, William Savage. I have learned many things
about life these last months.’

‘But you must know, Dot, that though I
am deeply ashamed for it, I didn’t tell you of my wife for fear that you would no
longer allow me near you, and that was a thought I couldn’t bear. We were married
so young and I came straight to court, I barely knew her … I was foolish and
–’

She had pressed a finger over his lips,
whispering, ‘Hush,’ and looked into his eyes. ‘And what of your wife
now?’

‘She passed away a year
since.’

‘I am sorry for that,’ she had
said. ‘I mean … sorry for her.’

Dot now goes about with her old glow, which
brings Katherine more joy than she has had in a long time. And she has a plan: anything
for Dot’s happiness and anything, too, to take her own mind off her thoughts of
Thomas.

She calls William Savage into her privy
chamber, asking him, ‘Have you thought about another marriage?’

A wistful look passes across his face and
through his sad eyes, which seem heavy with resignation.

‘If I commanded you to marry, what
would you think of it?’

He mumbles, stalling, making sounds that
don’t fully form themselves into words, his face flushing, finally stringing
something together. ‘If you commanded …’ And then it is as if he is
gripped with a desire to speak his mind. ‘I would not wish to marry again,
madam.’

‘Is that so, William?’ Katherine
does not mean to tease but cannot quite help it, for she knows when she says what it is
she plans to say, the moment will be all the more sweet for it.

‘I love someone,’ he says, quite
clearly now. ‘But it is not possible … We come from –’

‘Hush, William.’ She places a
hand on his sleeve. ‘The one I want you to wed is Dorothy Fownten.’

He is suddenly animated, his skin glowing, a
broad smile invades his face and his eyes are dewy. ‘My Dot … You would
allow … I don’t know what to say.’

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I
would
allow it. Indeed, I can think of nothing I would rather
allow.’

‘Madam, I … I …’
He drops to his knee and takes her hand, kissing it with a fervour that suggests he is
already thinking of Dot.

‘But you
must
do as I
say,’ Katherine says.

‘Anything, anything at all.’

‘Firstly, if I ever discover that Dot
has suffered on your account I will string you up, William Savage, and feed your heart
to my hounds. She is never to be hurt.’

He nods with a solemnity usually reserved
for God.

‘You will go to her and ask her
yourself, quietly. Let it just be a thing between the two of you; I don’t want all
my ladies
sticking their noses in, for some will not approve.
I
shall write to your family. They will surely not mind if it is the
Queen’s wish.’

Dot no longer sleeps on a truckle bed in
the Queen’s rooms, nor in the draughty anterooms outside the chamber that
Katherine shares, less and less often, with the King. There are others to do that, for
now she is a married woman. She sometimes has to pinch herself to believe that she,
plain Dot Fownten, is wed to a man who can write poems and play the virginals and that
she wears a ring from the Queen on her finger – her very own happy ending.

It was the Queen’s doing, William had
said, when he had come to her at Windsor, not long after her return. He had taken her
hand and they had gazed into each other’s eyes like daft lovers in one of the old
stories.

He had fumbled in a pocket, patting down his
doublet, and looking like he’d lost something important. Eventually, he had
produced the ring. She recognized it immediately; it was Katherine’s water ring
(Dot had always called it that, as she didn’t know the name of the stone) and he
slipped it on to her finger.

‘What are you doing, William Savage?
That is the Queen’s ring,’ she had said.

‘No, my love, it is yours. It is your
wedding ring.’

It was as if her heart were a flower opening
up in her breast.

Later Katherine had called them into her
chamber, where
her chaplain was waiting, and Cat Brandon, who was to
be the other witness.

‘Imagine,’ she had nudged
William, ‘to have the Queen of England and the Duchess of Suffolk to witness our
wedding.’

William had gripped her hand all the while
as the chaplain spoke the service. When called to make her vows, she felt almost too
breathless to speak. It was as if every event of her life had brought her to that moment
and she thought she might explode with joy like one of Udall’s fireworks.

They have lodgings now, near Whitehall
Palace. It is just a single room the size of a cupboard, squeezed in by the under-croft.
But the size of the room is of no consequence, nor even is the fact of the room, for she
has her William Savage, and they can spend whole nights in each other’s arms, not
talking about the past, but being in their perfect now, and only occasionally imagining
an indistinct future and the children they will have.

Finally, Dot feels safe and contained after
all she has gone through. She tries not to think of all that and when William seeks to
draw her out about it, she says, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie, husband,’ rolling
the ‘husband’ around her mouth as if it were one of the Queen’s
delicious sugar confections.

The Earl of Surrey is in the Tower. Henry
means to be rid of him. Everyone is reeling with shock at how quickly and how absolutely
he has fallen – there was no warning. Katherine is distraught. Impetuous Surrey,
Will’s great friend, has been in and out of favour for years, but this time it is
different. She thinks of him scribbling desperate poems in his prison, but dares not
write to him with support for fear of toppling with him. Rumour has it that
Surrey’s father, Norfolk, is detained too – or shall be soon. The Queen’s
ladies talk of little else, for Surrey’s wife is popular with them. There are
Howard girls, cousins and daughters, scurrying about with that hunted look a family gets
when the King is in the mood for killing, and it is one of theirs at bay.

Katherine can feel the court shifting,
everyone vying for position. Anne Bassett has returned from Calais, her family pushing
her forward again – hoping for what? Katherine prefers not to ponder on that. But when
things are in flux opportunities open up. Nothing is safe. She is not safe – but then
she never has been. And there have been rumours circulating that the King seeks a new
Queen. But there are always rumours. Even Cat Brandon has been named, for she
is recently widowed. Cat had breezed about and made a joke of it,
although Katherine couldn’t even find a sliver of mirth in the whole wretched
business. They all know, if it comes to it, the King will have what he wants and who he
wants and will get rid of anything and anyone who stands in his way. To make matters
worse, Henry is in an almost permanent ill temper from the excruciating pain in his leg.
He barely leaves his chambers, barking commands to his councillors who creep around him,
trying to be invisible – for when he snaps at them it is truly terrifying.

Katherine gently applies a poultice that she
had made with Huicke. It is a new concoction of bee pollen and calendula to draw out the
infection. The King will not have the maggots any more, says they wriggle too much and
irritate him. She barely even notices the reek of his ulcer any more, so accustomed has
she become to it. She makes soothing noises and hums a favourite tune of his, but he is
sullen and wordless and she tries to think of other things.