Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (49 page)

‘Write and ask the King’s favour
for our marriage,’ she says. ‘Visit the King, Thomas, tease him into it.
You
are his favourite uncle, make him play Cupid for us.’

‘That is a plan indeed; my brother
will be stuck with it if it is
the King’s
wish to see us wed,’ he
replies.

Thomas opens the door but she beckons him
back, wanting to feel his skin beneath her fingers one more time. ‘Remember,
Thomas, the King is still a boy; your brother has all the power. Better have him with
you, than against.’

‘I would be lost without your good
counsel, my love.’

‘Tell your brother,’ she says as
he’s almost out of the door, ‘I want my mother’s cross back. It is all
I want. Stanhope can keep the rest, if it means so much to her to have the Queen’s
gewgaws. I had my turn with them.’

He catches her eye and she sees a flash of
something – anger, ambition, she’s not sure what – but it gives her a pang of
unease.

‘Not just the cross, Katherine. Those
jewels are worth a fortune and they are yours.’

Then he is gone. What he meant by that, she
realizes, is that he will get his hands on those jewels. Everything will be his when
they marry.

She doesn’t care, has never really
cared about
things
, but she wants him more than anything.

‘Dot, bring your husband and follow
me,’ Katherine says.

‘Let me fetch him, madam. He is in the
music room.’

‘Hurry, and not a word.’

When she returns with William, Seymour is
there.

He hustles them into his barge, saying,
‘You didn’t tell anyone?’

‘Not a soul, my lord,’ says
William.

‘Not “my lord”,
Savage,’ he snaps. ‘It is “Lord Admiral”, and don’t you
forget it.’

‘Begging your pardon, Lord
Admiral,’ says William, only just managing to hide the resentment in his
voice.

But Seymour wouldn’t notice; William
Savage is too far beneath him. Dot knows what her husband thinks of the man – that
he’s an arrogant so-and-so. But he is Katherine’s arrogant so-and-so and
that is enough for Dot to think he must have some good in him, even though he has a
shiftiness that puts the creeps up her, something hollow about him, as if he’s all
shining surface but there is nothing beneath.

The barge slinks downriver. Dot watches
Katherine, snuggling up to Seymour like a love-struck maid. Dot has never seen her so
besotted and carefree, as if a great weight has been lifted from her. And if any woman
in this world can handle a tricky fellow, it is Katherine Parr. He
is
handsome,
she’ll give him that. She remembers him back at Charterhouse, making waves with
all the girls when he visited, and poor Meg petrified she would have to marry him. And
that time in the garden – how could she forget? He has a way of sizing up the lasses
that makes them swoon. Not Dot, though; she’d got the measure of those types back
when she’d had a hankering for Harry Dent. Harry Dent was a handsome one too, with
the same kind of twinkle in his eye, making a girl think she’s better than the
Queen of Sheba. But when it came to it, Harry Dent was only interested in Harry Dent.
And this one’s not so different, Dot would wager her last penny on it.

She’d seen Harry Dent when she visited
Stanstead Abbotts, just the other week, to see her ma. He’d run to fat and lost
his hair and his looks with it, which made Dot chuckle inside for the merry dance
he’d led her all that time ago. It was over ten years since she’d left, and
everything was changed, not just Harry’s girth.

She found her ma in the laundry at Rye
House. Standing beside her, even in her plain gown and not the taffeta one the Queen had
offered her for her wedding, Dot felt distant from her, as if she were a foreigner and a
great ocean separated them. Her ma wore a country russet dress that was clean but
patched at the elbows, and her skirts were hitched up and tucked into her pinny; her
coif was a plain one in coarse Holland, just like Dot used to wear when she was a
girl.

She had brought a gift – three yards of fine
satin – but handing it over felt silly, for what would her ma do with a stretch of satin
the colour of apricots? Ma’s hands were red raw and rough from all the washing and
Dot hid her own hands in her sleeves, as they had become soft and white of late – a
lady’s hands – and adorned with the Queen’s aquamarine so big she would have
had her finger cut off for it in Southwark. Their greeting was stilted and Dot’s
voice sounded all wrong.

‘Look at you,’ Ma had said.
‘My own little Dotty grown up and wed, and quite the lady you’ve
become.’ She stood back to admire her daughter.

Dot noticed her mother’s skin had
become wrinkled as crumpled linen – and her eyes were glossy with tears.
‘Ma,’ she had said, ‘William and I have a manor in Devon and I thought
you might want to live there. I am bound to fill it with little ones before
long.’

Ma stroked her daughter’s cheek with a
finger rough as
carpenter’s card. ‘Oh pet, I think
I’m too old to get used to a new place, and wherever is Devon? It sounds far away.
Besides, I couldn’t leave Stanstead Abbotts in case your brother returns. He went
off, see. Got himself into debt and bolted. Left his missus and the little
ones.’

‘But, Ma …’ Dot had tried
to speak, but her mother was determined to say her piece.

‘And I like it here, see.’

‘If you’re sure of that,
Ma,’ Dot had replied, a little knot tightening in her throat, feeling separate
again, as if her mother were slipping into an unreachable place. ‘I thought to ask
Little Min and her husband to come too. He could run the farm.’ She saw her
mother’s eyes droop at this and heard a catch in her breath. ‘But that would
leave you here alone, Ma.’

‘I am happy enough here, Dotty, I have
friends, see. Your brother’s wife has her hands full with a brood of six, and
needs my help more than you do. But Little Min must go with you. See, you can make a
lady out of her and I would not stand in the way of that. They have a couple of little
ones themselves, see, who’d be raised with yours. Imagine, Dotty, my own
grandchildren proper educated.’

Dot felt a surge of love then for her mother
and swallowed away the lump in her throat, saying, ‘Would you like to meet my
William, Ma?’

‘I don’t think so, pet, I
wouldn’t know what to say to him, see, what with him being so well-born and
that.’

‘But, Ma, he’s not like that,
you shall –’

‘No, Dorothy,’ her mother cut in
firmly. ‘You cannot see how much you are changed. I would rather we left it like
this.’

As Dot was leaving, Ma pressed the bundle of
satin back into her hands. ‘Give it to Little Min,’ she said. ‘She
will have more use for it than me, if she’s to go to Devon.’

‘Will you take this then?’ Dot had
fumbled to untie her purse from her girdle.

She held it out, dangling in the air between
them with both sets of eyes fastened on it. Then, simultaneously, they looked at each
other and began to laugh.

‘That I will not refuse,’ said
Ma.

‘There is more where that came
from,’ said Dot. ‘I shall make sure you want for nothing, Ma.’

‘Hoy!’ cries the boatman,
jolting Dot back to the present.

The barge draws up against a small wooden
pier and they bundle out, following Seymour. He strides ahead, pulling Katherine along
by the hand. Soon they arrive at a chapel, sitting alone, away from the gathering of
cottages by the water. Just as Dot is wondering what they are doing here, Seymour
announces that they are to witness Katherine’s wedding to him.

And before Dot has even had the chance to
work out what she feels about this, a chaplain appears as if from nowhere.

‘Ah, the happy couple,’ he says,
smiling broadly, opening his arms, welcoming them into his little church, which smells
more of damp than incense.

He starts up about the sanctity of marriage,
and children raised in the new faith.

But Seymour stops him. ‘Let’s
just get on with it, shall we?’

Katherine barely notices the dankness of the
chapel, nor the bag of coin that Thomas slips the chaplain for his silence, nor the way
the service is rushed through. She remembers her previous wedding – the carefully
selected nobles, the magnificent feast, the entertainment, the dancing – and she is glad
of the simplicity of this one, and glad too that she has her dear Dot and William Savage
to bear witness. She would have liked her brother and sister there, but Thomas had
insisted it was kept quiet. He has not yet asked the permission of
the King, nor the council, nor his own brother. She doesn’t think of that, but
rather looks over at Thomas, drinking in the sight of him as he repeats his vows.

There are swallows nesting somewhere up in
the rafters, occasionally swooping down and out of one of the windows. It amuses her
that she, the Dowager Queen of England, is marrying in a chapel with no glass in its
windows. One of the altar candles sputters in a draught and dies.

‘… in sickness and in
health,’ she says. She cannot help but remember Meg reading from
The Wife of
Bath
, put up to it by Cat Brandon. How they had laughed. She is truly thrice
widowed now, and on to her fourth. She wonders what God thinks of that.

‘Till death us do part.’

It is as if the years have collapsed, as if
she was never wed to Henry.

‘I plight thee my troth.’

He squeezes her arm and leans down to kiss
her, pushing his tongue between her teeth, pressing himself up to her. She imagines the
chaplain not knowing where to look, pretending to busy himself with clearing the altar,
but she doesn’t care.

Her eyes are shut. Her head is spinning.

She is hustled out through the hamlet and
into the barge in a blissful daze, and they saunter back upriver against the tide. It is
a fine day, the sun glistening on the surface of the water and a flotilla of swans
gliding by. Her new husband draws her towards him. His eyes catch her with their sparkle
and he kisses her tenderly on her forehead.

‘I am the happiest man alive,’
he whispers.

‘You
will
tell the
King?’ she says.

‘Sweetheart, don’t worry. I will
deal with it all. Nothing
can go wrong. I shall get his permission and
then tell him it is done.’

She wonders how the young King will take it,
to discover that they are already wed. She feels uncomfortable with the deceit and
worried, too, about Thomas’s brother. But her love draws her into the lie.
Besides, it is such a little sin compared to what she might have done to the young
King’s father, were it not for Huicke’s intervention.

‘You are in my hands now,’
Thomas says. ‘You are mine to look after.’

She feels the firmness of his hand on her
shoulder. The young King would never allow them to be charged with treason – not his
favourite uncle and his stepmother, surely.

‘You
will
take care of me,
Thomas, won’t you?’ she finds herself saying.

‘Of course I will, sweetheart, of
course I will. I live to look after you. I will square things with the King and council,
I will get your jewels back and,’ he gives her a squeeze, ‘I will put a baby
in you.’

She breathes out a deep sigh, and her
anxieties dissolve. She has been so used to the dread, she’s forgotten how to be
without it.

Seymour’s new ward, Lady Jane Grey,
arrived yesterday. She is practically a Princess and Elizabeth, who is her cousin,
circles her like a cat getting the measure of a mouse. Jane Grey is a skinny little
thing with a long neck. Definitely not one of those plump-cheeked eleven-year-olds all
rounded with puppy
fat, she is made up of angles, sharp elbows,
jutting shoulders. She reminds Dot of a bird with her fluttering hands and far-apart
eyes so pale they look white in the sunlight. She wouldn’t be surprised if the
girl has feathers beneath her hood instead of hair.

There has been a lot of talk about Jane
making a match with the King. The gossips say that Seymour paid a fortune for her
wardship and that if he can make that marriage happen, he will be the one to reap the
rewards. Whenever the idea of Jane wedding the King is mentioned Elizabeth huffs loudly
like an ancient aunt. The girl is a scholar too, probably a better one than her cousin,
or so Dot had heard Katherine say to Seymour earlier, when Jane had recited a poem in
Greek. (At least, Dot had thought it a poem, as it seemed to have verses. And she had
only known it was Greek because Elizabeth had spat, ‘So she knows Greek, does
she?’ under her breath.)

Now Jane sits beside William at the
virginals, playing the high notes of a tune for him. It is a complicated piece of music
and she tries it several times, stumbling repeatedly at the same spot, but never giving
up. When she does get to the end of it without fault and William says, ‘Yes,
that’s right,’ her whole face breaks into a smile so instant and natural Dot
can’t help smiling too. Dot realizes in that moment, when they are all basking in
Jane’s beam, that Elizabeth rarely ever smiles – and when she does, she is
cautious about it as if smiles are as expensive as gemstones and not to be wasted. Dot
is surprised by the little sprout of sympathy she senses growing in her.

Dot sits across the room with Sister
Anne’s three year old at her feet, sorting wooden beads. She has been charged with
the care of Ned, who has come to live with them for a few months. It is
gentlewoman’s work and that is what she is now,
if she could
ever believe it – a gentlewoman. She is embroidering a partlet for Katherine, stitching
small red flowers in silk thread, each one with a seed pearl at its heart. Bright light
floods in from the window, casting diamonds over the floor and into the grate, which
needs sweeping. Dot resists picking up the brush and giving it a good going-over. She
can’t get used to this new life, to not being the invisible girl who sweeps the
hearth and beats the dust out of the rugs. Sometimes she finds herself not missing it
exactly, but missing the way it made her feel useful, the way she always had something
to do.