Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (45 page)

‘If you don’t mind me saying,
madam, things often have a way of turning out as you least expect them. Look at me, how
I festered in Newgate, sure to be burned, and here I am, right as rain.’

‘Bless you, Dot,’ Katherine
said, but she did not look reassured at all.

‘And there are no books here. All the
books are long gone. There is nothing.’

‘Ah, but there is something, Dot. Not
a book. But I will not tell you, for it is better you do not know. And look, I am as
good as banished …’ She tugged at the pearls until Dot thought she would
break them. ‘This is not good, Dot.’ And then she said something Dot
didn’t understand: ‘When it
comes to it, save yourself.
Save yourself, go to Devon and live a happy life with William.’

Dot dressed her in silence, not knowing what
to say and wondering all the while what it was that happened at the palace during her
time in Newgate, for something happened, there is no doubt about that. What was it Elwyn
had said – that Wriothesley had wronged the Queen? Katherine stood like a puppet,
stepping listlessly into her skirts and lifting one arm and then the other for her
sleeves to be drawn up and tied. Dot chose what she wore. She didn’t even bother
to say which gown or which hood, so lost was she in her own world.

‘What are the ladies saying of
it?’ Katherine asked finally, breaking the silence.

‘Most say the King is unwell and
wishes to be alone.’

‘Most? And the others?’

‘One or two have said that the King is
displeased with you.’

‘And one of those is Stanhope, I
suppose,’ Katherine spat.

‘Not her, no. She left last evening
for Syon.’

‘A rat leaving a sinking ship. Then
who?’

‘It is just your sister and Cat
Brandon, and they only spoke out of concern for you.’

‘Those two I can trust, at
least,’ she had said with a sigh. ‘Go to Devon with William. Promise me
that, Dot …’ She paused before adding, ‘I don’t want anything
more on my conscience.’

Now Katherine is huddled in a corner with
Huicke, murmuring, gesturing with her hands as she speaks and her head slowly turning
from side to side. Huicke is to stay with the King and Katherine is not happy about
that. The rest of them continue to scurry about, packing up; the Fool Jane wanders
around in a flap, getting in the way. She’s never
happy on the
move. Her hood has slipped right back and beneath it she is as bald as a coot – someone
must have shaved her to get the nits off. Dot gives her a pile of dust-sheets and sets
her to covering the furniture. She seems happier having something to do.

Dot can hear the horses being prepared in
the courtyard, the jangle of their bridles and the shouts of the stable lads as they
call out to each other. Some of the younger maids are fidgety with excitement at the
surprise move to Greenwich, but they have not understood that there is something wrong
with this arrangement and do not feel the heaviness in the air.

One by one the trunks are heaved down and
loaded on to the waiting carts. Dot makes a final round, checking for forgotten things,
looking under the beds and behind the doors, finding nothing but clumps of dust. She
does it out of habit, forgetting she is no longer a servant maid. William comes to join
her. They will travel together, riding with the Queen.

He holds her hand as they go down the
painted staircase and whispers to her not to worry, pressing a finger to the knotted
spot on her brow and circling it. ‘Worrying won’t help anything, Dorothy
Savage,’ he says. ‘And things have a way –’

‘That is what I said to
her.’

‘And it is true, Full Stop. I would
never have thought it possible that we could be married, and yet look at us.’

It is bitterly cold in the yard and once Dot
is up on her pony she pulls her gown tightly around her and slips on her fur-lined
mittens.

Katherine is mounted already and they begin
to move away towards the gates, but then she stops, saying, ‘We cannot leave those
poor monkeys,’ calling over one of the boys, telling him to get the creatures.

They all wait for François and Bathsheba to be
fetched from the outhouse where the King had banished them in a temper, some days ago.
The horses get impatient, grunting and shuffling and throwing their heads about. The
cold seeps through Dot’s clothes. Finally, the boy appears with a cage. The
monkeys screech horribly as if they’re facing execution. They are put in with the
little dogs, but the dogs are disturbed by their cries and begin to bark crazily, so
François and Bathsheba are found a place elsewhere. When they do eventually set off,
they move at such a slow pace it seems like a funeral procession. But the group
separates out soon enough with the carts trundling at their own pace behind. They would
normally take the river but parts of it are frozen solid, so they will travel across
country to Richmond and join the river there.

The Queen rides ahead with her sister, Lady
Mary and her Master of the Horse, and just behind them is a group of her ladies, who
seem to fall naturally into the correct order, though none of that matters today. Dot
worries that nothing will be ready when they arrive. Usually she is sent on a day ahead,
after the harbingers, to prepare things. And they would not normally be travelling in
such a great unwieldy train. But this is all so last minute. The harbingers themselves
only left a couple of hours ago to announce their arrival, and the ushers are travelling
with them now, so Lord only knows what chaos it will be when they get there, with no
rooms assigned and everybody needing to be fed.

They ride up along the hog’s back from
where, on a clear day, it is said you can see the spire of St Paul’s Cathedral –
though Dot has never seen it from here, and certainly won’t today for there is a
dense mist. The sky is thick and white and low and can hardly be separated from the
ground. Everything
is covered in a layer of frost; on the tree trunks
and the barn roofs it is like the bloom on a plum, but where the tall grasses grow
unprotected at the verge they are densely covered, prickling and glistening, as if they
have crystals at their tips.

There is nothing alive to be seen for miles,
not a rabbit, not even a bird; there is only their trudging train that stretches back
now, gathered into groups, further than Dot can see. William rides beside her. He hums
some tune or other, which mingles with the sound of the hooves clopping against the hard
ground. The horses grow warm and the heat rises from them in clouds.

When they pass through the villages – Long
Ditton, Surbiton, Ham – there are people lining the streets, wanting to see the Queen
and Lady Mary. They must have seen the harbingers ride through; news flies fast when it
has to do with the royal family and everyone wants a glimpse of Katherine, who waves and
smiles. She occasionally stops and leans down to take a gift from one or other of them –
a pot of honey, a dried bunch of lavender, an apple – or to kiss the children’s
cheeks when they are held up, shivering, by their mothers. None of them have a clue
about the worry the Queen is harbouring.

These places remind Dot of her own village.
The threads that attach her to that place are worn so thin they wouldn’t hold
anything together. She had wanted to write to Ma to tell her of her marriage but as Ma
cannot read, and few she knows can either, Dot hadn’t written. When Katherine had
heard of it she had sent a letter herself to someone at Rye House, who was to pass on
the news to the Fownten family. News had come back from there that all were well, that
Little Min had married her father’s old apprentice, Hugh Parker, and that her
mother had a position as a laundress at Rye
House. Dot wondered if the
Queen had had a hand in that.

When they get to Richmond Palace, dinner is
served in the Great Hall where they toast themselves by the fire, thawing out their
frozen hands and feet, but they do not stay long for the days are short and they need to
get to Greenwich before it is dark. So as soon as the barges have been loaded, they set
off down the river, passing right through London and past all the royal palaces.
Southwark glowers against the darkening sky on the opposite bank and Dot thinks of the
twists of fate that have brought her to this barge, on this river, in this moment and
wonders what lies in store for them all next.

Katherine sits beside her, pale-faced,
bundled in furs, her fingers agitating at the pouch containing her mother’s cross.
She has never appeared so fragile and Dot is aware that, for all the secrets she holds,
there is much about the Queen and the court that lies beyond her comprehension.

Katherine stands in the window, watching
the rain pitter on to the glass, drops of it trailing down the panes, each chasing the
other, racing to the leaded edges where it trickles along, spilling, re-forming, rolling
down the next diamond of glass, joining others to become a little stream. These last
weeks have been a hell. She has smiled through the Christmas celebrations, twelve days
of forced merriment, until she felt her face paralysed with pretending. The Prince and
his sisters were with her for the festivities, the girls oblivious entirely, so used to
being banished by their father that nothing seemed unusual to them.

Katherine has watched Mary, unfurling like a
moth from a chrysalis – she likes to believe that it is her doing – and Elizabeth, the
defiant tilt of her head masking the vulnerability that sits invisibly beneath her skin.
Her family feels as fragile as Venetian crystal. Katherine plays the part but is sick to
the core with her own hidden unworthiness. Elizabeth is a bottomless well. Katherine is
the only mother she has had – save her nurse, Mistress Astley, who clucks around her,
unable ever to say no, tending her as if she were a golden egg. She has gone now, to
Hatfield, where Astley can cluck undisturbed. Her brother has gone with her, poor little
boy; it will not be long before the weight of England is sitting on those nine-year-old
shoulders. An armourer came to fit him with a new suit the other day. He was like a toy
soldier in it, a sight that squeezed at her heart with the thought of what lies ahead
for him.

‘Mother,’ he’d said.
‘Will I make a good King?’

‘You will, dearest. You will,’
she had replied, but wondered what would become of him if she were got rid of.

A spider descends from the casement on its
filament, appearing suspended in thin air, legs waving slowly. Katherine feels herself
hanging on an ever-thinning thread too.

She is no longer herself, has done something
that makes her other sins seem like mere trifles. Up the river meanwhile is the Tower,
and Surrey, who will be executed today. She thinks of him there, wonders if he’s
writing poems as he used to do, to distract himself, remembering how he and Wyatt would
compete to impress the ladies with their decorated words. He had been one of
Will’s dearest friends. And Will had been commanded to lead the trial. The
King’s idea of a joke? Or testing Will’s loyalty? She had been fond of
Surrey. She is gripped by the conviction that she will follow
Surrey
to the scaffold, has been since she was expelled from Nonsuch.

The King’s anger, then his refusal to
see her, the rumours of a new wife – what next? They will come and take her jewels, then
remove her to the Tower; they will make a pretence of a trial, based on a single look;
she will watch from a window as poor dear doomed Thomas is dragged to his death; then
she herself will make her own death speech, desperately seeking a droplet of courage so
she doesn’t collapse and disgrace herself on the scaffold. Even little Catherine
Howard had gone to her death with grace. Katherine wonders if she would too. No, not
would, will – if she will. It doesn’t bear scrutiny.

That is why she did what she did.

She is too ashamed even to pray, for she
knows God will not listen to a sinner such as her. Her sin is pitch black, a darkness
that presses up against her. She has made a pact with something ungodly and will be
damned for it. When she thinks of what she did for Latymer she wonders if that was the
beginning of it all, if the Devil had got to her then and has schooled her since,
preparing her, slowly moulding her, teaching her how to rid herself of a husband and
think it an act of mercy. Yet she is glad she had the courage to do that, for to end
Latymer’s suffering was a blessing.

But this now – this latest deed – is not an
act of mercy, whatever prism she inspects it through: an act of fear, yes, but not
mercy. There are ways to kill and not be damned – oh, she has thought of it all, hoping
to find a way to salvage the disparate fragments of her soul. God doesn’t consider
it a sin to kill on the battlefield, to kill or be killed. And she has tried to imagine
herself a warrior, a crusader for the New Religion, but she is not. She has never had
the courage to die
for her beliefs. Yet the brief flames of the stake
would be nothing compared to the eternal condemnation that looms before her. And while
she is no warrior and the court is not a battlefield, the King
has
become her
enemy. And she his, though he won’t know it.

She goes over and over the whispered
conversation she had with Huicke as they were leaving Nonsuch, poor loyal Huicke whom
she has dragged down to Hell with her. She remembers sitting away from her ladies in a
draughty corner, his gloved hand resting lightly on her sleeve, feeling so very choked
with fear she could barely speak.

‘He will have me, Huicke,’ she
had said. ‘For his jealousy is greater by far than his reason – greater than his
faith, even.’

‘No, Kit, no,’ he had replied,
grabbing her hands in his.

She remembers the softness of his kid
gloves, softer by far than a child’s skin, and remembers thinking of the red
raised skin beneath, angry as if his body were attacking itself.