Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (47 page)

The King’s ushers and chamberers begin
to gather at the door and a parade of kitchen servants appears with breakfast. The
guards open up and she sees Wriothesley’s ferret face. No one is admitted, not
even the ushers, and the platters are handed to him through the half-open door. It
puzzles her, it being so unlike Wriothesley to perform such a lowly task. One of the
King’s gentlemen passes, seeing her, stopping with a deep bow.

‘Madam,’ he says, kissing her
hand. He makes no comment on the fact that she is sitting alone, virtually hiding, in
the gallery window – not the behaviour of a Queen at all.

‘Why are the ushers not admitted, Sir
John?’

‘No one has been admitted these last
four days, save for the closest councillors and the King’s physicians.’

‘And Huicke?’

‘He is in there.’

‘My brother?’

‘Not he, madam.’ So whatever is
happening in there, the Parrs have been pushed aside.

And Thomas Seymour?
She wants to
ask, though says, ‘Thank you, Sir John,’ as if all this is perfectly normal.
And seeing he is unsure how to behave – when the Queen, who is supposed to be the first
to know everything, knows nothing – she bids him take his leave. She wonders if Huicke
received her letter, hopes to God he did.

In her rooms her ladies have risen and are
preparing to breakfast. She takes her place. They talk of the rain and who will take the
dogs out to the gardens and whether more logs need to be fetched, anything not to talk
of the thing that is on all their minds. As the lids are lifted from the platters the
monkeys begin to squeal. Dot gives them a handful of fruit. Katherine’s mouth is
too dry to eat but she knows she must and forces down a few spoonfuls of rennet.

At mid-morning Will Herbert is announced –
news at last.

Sister Anne rushes to her husband.
‘What’s happening, Will?’

It is the question on all their lips.

‘No news,’ he says, dropping on
his knee before Katherine. ‘But I am asked to tell you, madam, that the King is
indisposed and cannot be visited.’

He keeps his eyes down. Why will he not look
at her?

‘Will?’ she says. ‘Will,
it is I. Get up off the floor and talk to me like the kin you are.’

He gets up and stands awkwardly before her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, picking at the edging on his doublet, still not
meeting her eye.

She hides her bitten nails behind her back.
‘Go on, return to him,’ she says.

As he leaves, Sister Anne holds on to his
arm, pressing him further, but he shakes her off with the words, ‘I can say
nothing.’

Katherine is hollow; she fears the not
knowing will make her lose her mind altogether. After interminable hours she dresses in
her finest gown and, taking her sister and Cat Brandon, goes herself, demanding to be
let in, but the guards refuse her. Wriothesley comes out with a pretend smile, wringing
hands that are dry and veined as dead leaves. He says, ‘I’m
sorry.’

She wants to scream at him, shake him by his
frilled collar, pull the truth out of him.

But all she can do is go back and wait.

Two more days pass, and Katherine can
barely tell if she has lost her mind or not, before Hertford comes to announce that the
King is dead.

‘Good Lord …’ is all she
manages to say.

There are a few quiet gasps among the
ladies. Hertford has a tiny spot of gravy or something on his snow-white doublet. She
fixes her eyes on it.

‘He did not suffer too
greatly.’

She nods. Language has deserted her, all she
can think of is the poisoned poultice, that she may as well have poisoned herself, that
she will never be free of it. Eventually, she pulls the drifting parts of herself back
together. ‘What of the will?’

‘A new one is made,’ Hertford
says formally, as if making a public announcement. ‘A council will
govern …’ He hesitates. ‘I am to be the King’s
protector.’

She is momentarily confused. ‘The
King,’ she says, only
then realizing that he means Prince
Edward, that Henry is no more. ‘Edward.’

‘King Edward the Sixth,’
Hertford says. He looks shifty, his eyes skitting about.

Does he feel guilty that he has taken her
regency for himself? She searches for her feelings, finding nothing but ambivalence.
Hertford stands before her, seeming lost for words too. She wonders if she is supposed
to curtsy to him, the order of things has been turned about so – but she is still
Queen.

‘Your jointure is generous,’ he
says. ‘As befits a Dowager Queen,’ and he begins to list off the names of
the manors and estates she is to inherit. The Old Manor at Chelsea is one of them.

‘Chelsea?’ she says.

‘Yes, the King …’ He
hesitates, corrects himself, ‘The old King thought you fond of the
place.’

It is true; Chelsea is a pretty manor on the
river. She can imagine herself there.

‘Lady Elizabeth is to join your
household.’

‘I am glad of that.’ The thought
takes hold in her, of a happy life, with Elizabeth and her own household, away from the
machinations of court. She draws herself up to her full height, saying, ‘You may
leave.’

But her heart is no longer in this game and
her voice lacks authority. Nevertheless, he bows and turns to the door.

But then she stops him. ‘I should like
to see him.’

As she waits for her black damask to be
fetched, Huicke is admitted. She dismisses all but Dot, who continues packing up the
Queen’s jewels to be sent to the Tower for safekeeping. Until things are fixed and
the boy is crowned, no one can be sure what will happen.

‘I have never been so glad to see
you,’ she says, opening her arms to embrace him.

It is good to feel another body close to
hers; no one has touched her in weeks, save for Dot helping her into her clothes. They
have all circled about her at a distance, even her sister.

‘And I you.’ He slips a fold of
paper into her hand. ‘I had no need.’

She looks at the paper, seeing her own
broken seal.

It is her letter.

‘You mean …’

‘I didn’t do as you
asked … the poultice.’

‘Huicke,’ she sighs.
‘Thank God for you, dear Huicke.’

‘I felt you were mad with fear, back
at Nonsuch, and knew not what you were asking of me.’

‘You know me better than I know
myself.’ She begins to laugh. She thought she’d forgotten how.
‘Sometimes I wonder if you are not an angel.’ She hadn’t realized how
great her fear was until this moment, when it drops away and her body feels light as
air. She is giddy with relief. ‘You, at least, will not be damned.’

‘Nor you, Kit. You are good at heart.
God knows it.’

She wishes it were true but she can feel
God’s judgement still; it pricks the back of her neck.

‘It is three days since the King
passed,’ he says, dropping his voice.

‘Good grief,’ she whispers.
‘I have been utterly beside myself.’

‘We were forbidden to leave the
chambers, no one was admitted.’

‘Why?’

‘They wanted time to wrangle over the
new will. Dividing
up the power … Getting things
straight.’ He puts his arm about her shoulders. ‘You know you are not to be
Regent.’

‘I know it, Huicke. Hertford at least
had the decency to tell me himself. And I find I have never been so glad of
anything.’

There is a gentle knock on the door. It is
Lizzie Tyrwhitt with her black gown. She slips it on over her kirtle. Dot and Lizzie
cinch her into it, one on each side of her, pulling tight.

‘Come.’ She takes Huicke’s
gloved hand in hers. ‘Take me to him.’

The chamber is misted with incense and they
all drop to their knees as she enters: Hertford, Denny, Paget, Wriothesley, the
Archbishop. Habit or courtesy, she wonders, unable to stop herself from casting her eyes
about for Thomas. He is not there. She moves to the bed. Henry has been dressed in his
most elaborate outfit, fur-lined purple velvet, stitched with gold thread and jewels.
His swollen face has lost its shape, making him seem unfamiliar, and for an instant she
thinks this is not her husband at all, but an impostor. Then she sees his fat hands
linked together over his vast belly and catches the gangrene stench of his ulcer beneath
the fog of incense. She kneels, shutting her eyes, but she is lost for words,
can’t form a prayer, doesn’t know what to say to God. She beckons the
Archbishop over.

‘I’d like to pray
together,’ she whispers.

A faint smile appears on his face as he
kneels beside her, beginning, ‘Dearest Father –’

She puts up a hand to stop him. ‘In
Latin. He would have liked that …’

As she is about to leave, little King Edward
is brought in. He is decked in ermine and stands with his legs apart, arms
akimbo. So like his father. She sinks to her knees before him.

Hertford makes a nod of approval, like a
puppet master pleased with his show.

‘Your Majesty,’ she says.
‘I give you my heartfelt commiserations.’

‘You may rise, Mother,’ he
says.

His voice has not yet broken and that makes
her sad, to think of this solemn little boy and the colossal weight of his future. She
stands, smiling. But his pinched face remains set. He nods, moving on, Hertford at his
side.

She realizes he is lost to her.

Katherine watches the swaying bier bedecked
with tapers and swathed in blue and cloth of gold, the mourners shuffling beside it. The
King’s effigy, clad in red, crowned in gold, lies at its top, so like him
sleeping, more like him even than his own corpse. The sight of it forces her heart into
her throat. She feels like a perched bird where she sits in the gallery, the
Queen’s gallery, glad that her dry eyes cannot be seen, except by her sister who
sits beside her. She cannot muster up a shred of sorrow and when she kneels to pray she
doesn’t pray for her husband’s soul but her own, begging God to forgive her
– all those sins accumulated around her like a bank of cloud.

She smoothes the dark blue velvet of her
dress and leans forward to watch. She can see Thomas below, his velvet gown so very
black, more deeply black than even his brother’s, and lined in inky sable. Even
darkly clad as he is, he manages to resonate with a brilliance as if he’s haloed,
like
one of the saints. He glances briefly up towards her; a glimmer
of a smile passes over his face and he ruffles his fingers in a wave so discreet he
could be brushing away a fly. She feels the grip of anticipation.

She thinks about the manor house at Chelsea
being prepared for her – her own haven. It seems strange, foreign, to have an
opportunity at last, after all those husbands, to be her own woman, to answer to no one.
The thought percolates in her.

The choir start a Te Deum, the sound of it
soaring up, but it is not quite as it should be; the boy soprano is only almost making
the highest notes and there is something a little off in the timing of it, a dissonance.
She wonders if it is only she who can hear it, wonders if the state of her soul has
rendered her incapable of appreciating something truly holy. Her necklace sits heavily
at her throat. It is the ugliest of them, the gems crowded on to it, vying for space,
though it is probably the most valuable of the lot. It will join the rest of the jewels
at the Tower after the service.

She absently feels for the pouch at her
girdle, forgetting her mother’s cross had mistakenly found its way, in the
aftermath of the distress, into the casket of jewels that had gone to the Tower for
safekeeping. Her fingers are lost without it. She
is
still the Queen – or the
Dowager Queen, at least – until little Edward finds a wife, so by rights all those
jewels are hers. But since Hertford has grabbed the reins of England – calls himself the
Lord Protector and has taken the title Duke of Somerset – it may be difficult to prise
anything out of him. Stanhope will like being a duchess, wife of the Lord Protector of
England, near enough Queen – it will make her insufferable.
She’d
love to
get her hands on some of those monstrous gems.

Titles are being handed out like sweetmeats at
Christmas. Thomas will be Baron Sudeley and Lord High Admiral. She wonders if he is
peeved that his brother will be a duke and he a mere baron. Probably! She glances back
down at Thomas, only able to see the top of his cap. His feather is black today but as
ebullient as ever. Will is close by. He wears dark blue like her and glances up
occasionally to where his sisters sit above. He had been shaken by Surrey’s death,
was distraught at having to officiate at the trial. He was angry, too, about the
King’s will, the fact that there was no position for him on the council. She
imagines he’d got above himself, fantasizing about his sister becoming Regent and
wielding all the power. It is said that he will be made Marquess of Northampton, which
must be a consolation. He will be one of only two marquesses in the land – and that
should mean something to him, at least.

Will has never really thought of her
happiness
; not because he is unkind, it has just never occurred to him that
happiness could ever come through anything other than influence. She watches him whisper
something to Thomas, who taps his shoulder with a slender hand. She wonders if
Will’s ambition will be his downfall, if he is an Icarus. The court is full of
them. But for now, anyway, he must be content with his long-awaited divorce. That will
be done, now the King is not standing in the way, she assumes. And he has his new
title.

Katherine has the sense that of all the
finery she has amassed, the dresses, the plate, the linens, the gems, all the things
that have shored up her position, there is little that means anything to her. She will
be happy, she fancies, at Chelsea with a few good dresses, her books and her
mother’s cross. More than that, it is only people who are precious.