Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (54 page)

There were tears welling in
Elizabeth’s dark eyes, something Dot had not thought possible. She had always
imagined Elizabeth was made of dry, hard resilient things and had not a drop of liquid
in her.

‘I
hate
that man, more than I
hate the Devil.’

‘Seymour?’

‘Yes, him. And I am so filled with
regret I don’t know what to do with myself. She is the only mother I have known. I
am like a boy who pulls the wings off flies to watch them suffer.’ She blinked
back her tears, taking a breath before continuing. ‘You know he made a suit for my
sister Mary, and when she sent him packing he tried it with
me
. He must have
thought me stupid if he imagined I would wed him without the council’s permission
and risk losing my head for it.’ Her voice was hot with anger. ‘Then he
married the Queen.’

‘Seymour tried to marry Lady Mary
and
you? But I thought it was a love match with the Queen, that they had
been in love –’

‘Pah!’ Elizabeth spat, not
letting Jane finish. ‘Love. What is love? Ambition, more like. That man
couldn’t manage to get
himself a Princess of the blood, so the
Queen was the next best thing. What do you think to that, Jane?’

‘I … I don’t know what
to think.’

‘He would have had
you,
Jane
Grey, if he could have. You have a fair dose of royal blood in you.’

Jane wore an expression of horror.

‘Jest, Jane, jest,’ Elizabeth
laughed bitterly. ‘I think at eleven you would have been too young even for
Seymour.’

‘But …’

‘No buts, Jane. I wager you all the
gold in Christendom that if the Queen dropped dead tomorrow, Seymour would be knocking
at
my
door.’

Jane let out a shocked little gasp.

‘If you want one piece of advice from
me,’ Elizabeth went on, ‘do not marry any man …’ She drifted off,
letting her words hang.

Dot supposed she was thinking how empty that
advice was, for those girls would be hitched to someone whether they liked it or
not.

‘And you know what else the Queen said
to me? She said that the things that bring us the greatest shame can also bring us the
greatest lessons …’ She paused, then asked, ‘Do you believe that,
Jane?’

‘If you heed the parables, it is
true,’ Jane answered, her eyes following a bumblebee that dithered from flower to
flower, not wanting to look at Elizabeth.

‘You are quite the good little
God-fearer, aren’t you?’

There was her sting, but Elizabeth is like
that, can’t help herself. Dot thinks she will never understand the girl – but
then, perhaps even Elizabeth herself cannot solve her own puzzle.

Katherine lies in a quiet, shaded chamber
awaiting the birth of her baby. They say the curtains should be drawn and the windows
shut tight for a lying-in, but each time Katherine is left alone with Mary Odell they
draw everything back, opening it all wide, luxuriating in the summer light and the warm
breeze. Spread below the window is the knot garden, intricate as an oriental carpet, and
at its far end lies an ornamental fish pond, which reminds Katherine of her little
nephew Ned who so loved to watch the carp in the pond at Chelsea. This in turn reminds
her, with a sweet longing, of Dot, who could always be seen with him there at the
water’s edge, pointing out the fish. Mary Odell is nice enough and willing, if a
little slow, but she is not Dot who, for all her daydreaming and scattiness, had a way
of knowing what Katherine wanted before even she did herself. Closer than kin, that is
how she will always think of dear Dot. She would welcome a visit from Sister Anne, but
her husband holds a place on the new Privy Council and likes her at court by his side.
Anne will come when the baby is born, though.

Katherine can just see the gold stone
crenellations of St Mary’s chapel, and beyond them the parched park rolling into
the distance, scattered with ancient trees and clusters of deer. Of all the great
palaces and castles Katherine has lived in over the years, this is the one that feels
most like a home, and she itches to be out exploring the place. But she must stay
incarcerated in her tomb-dark chambers until the infant comes.

When Lizzie Tyrwhitt returns, she makes a
great huffing
of complaint as she shuts all the windows up again and
draws the drapes, demanding that Mary Odell help her, which she does, though her
shoulders are heaving with the giggles for she knows the minute Lizzie is gone Katherine
will want them open again. Katherine is fond of Lizzie; she has spent much time with her
over the years. Indeed, they were sisters-in-law from Katherine’s first marriage
to Edward Borough and lived at Gainsborough Hall together for a short while. But Lizzie
can be insufferably truculent when it comes to anything to do with a birth.

Each afternoon Jane Grey comes, and Levina
Teerlinc too, who arrived recently to paint a likeness of Jane for the King. She often
sits sketching them all going about their quiet business, with her hound, Hero, beside
her, his head resting on her lap, the rasp of charcoal on vellum lulling them. Levina
has a gift for capturing things: the way Mary Odell swipes back her hair with the back
of her hand; Lizzie’s bustling demeanour; the serious crease on Jane’s brow
as she reads out loud from
Paraphrases
. Jane has an appetite for learning and
often likes to compare the Latin and English versions of Erasmus. Katherine still feels
a bristle of pride at her part in the translating of Erasmus and is reminded, too, of
the husbands she has read that book to – not Thomas, though. Thomas can barely sit still
long enough to pray for the safe delivery of his infant.

Now that Thomas has returned from London to
await the birth, no man is allowed in these rooms, save for Huicke and Parkhurst the
chaplain. And he only allows those two because he cannot refuse her her physician, nor
her cleric, but he always remains, glowering over them, when they are here: his jealousy
has reached excessive proportions. So the gardener no longer comes daily with fresh
flowers from the gardens,
nor even her chamberlain or clerk, for
Thomas will not have it. Katherine remembers how, not so long ago, she saw his jealousy
as proof of his love. How wrong she was.

Seymour is like the boy in the Greek myth
doomed to look ceaselessly at his own reflection. What is it he is called? She seems not
to be able to remember anything these days. Lizzie Tyrwhitt says it is because she is
with child. She hopes that is the case, because she can barely get to the end of a
sentence and remember the beginning of it.

Thomas is more attentive than ever, though,
charming the maids into fetching and carrying, bringing fresh fruit from the garden,
tonic wines from the cellar, sweetmeats from the kitchens, and he himself brings gifts
daily, a jewelled fan, a book of poems, a posy of violets, sitting beside her for hours,
reading aloud and sharing gossip from London, still adamant that he will negotiate
Jane’s marriage to the King. He is even more hopeful now the little five-year-old
Scottish Queen Mary is out of the running. She is betrothed to the Dauphin and will
travel to France soon, to live with the French royal family. One day she will be Queen
of France as well as Scotland, poor child. Meanwhile, Thomas continues to vent his anger
at his brother about Katherine’s jewels. The situation between them deteriorates
and he scribbles angry letters that are ignored.

But all that has ceased to interest
Katherine, who lets it all drift over her, only half listening, disengaged. Her feelings
for Thomas altered irretrievably on that day at Chelsea; her love disappeared like water
down a hole. Exploring her heart now, she finds Elizabeth is forgiven and the letters
she has sent, tentative and apologetic, sorrowful, are touching. Katherine is sure that
her mistake will have been the making of her and can only think tenderly of that lost
girl. And as for
her own marriage: she thinks of it as nothing more
than an arrangement, the kind most have, and tries to think of it more as just another
episode than a mistake. After all, he has given her this child.

She thinks incessantly of her baby and
imagines herself forgiven by God – for this blessing, after all those years of
emptiness, is surely a gift from him. She has picked up her
Lamentation
and is
revisiting her own writings, surprised by the passion and fervour she had once felt –
when everything was different. She thinks of it as the ‘before’ period; like
Eve before the fall. Since then, she has changed irrevocably, has lost her certainty
about things, about faith – but with this miraculous gift forming inside her she can
feel herself drawn on the current of it to a better place. So she writes to Elizabeth,
her dear black sheep, encouraging her to read the book, to learn from it how to set
aside her frailty and vanity.

‘Katherine,’ says Thomas,
‘are you listening to me?’

‘I was drifting,’ she replies.
‘Thinking.’

They are alone and she is lying on the bed
in just a loose gown, flushed with the heat and breathless. She is so very huge now,
there is little space for air in her lungs and she feels the constant press of something
– a tiny foot or hand, she supposes – under her ribs. Comfort is elusive, her feet are
numb and her back aches; she lies on her side, propped with pillows, for if she lies on
her back she passes out.

‘What were you thinking?’

His periwinkle eyes flash in that way that
she used to find irresistible but no longer does; she sees them now for the counterfeit
gems they are. She wants to say she was thinking what a disappointment he has been to
her, but she doesn’t. ‘I was thinking about our child.’

‘Our boy. We will call him Edward,
after the King. He will
do great things, our boy. Son of a Queen,
cousin of a King, he will inhabit the highest places.’

‘Yes,’ she murmurs, ‘the
highest places.’ Secretly she longs for a daughter but she can barely admit it
even to herself, for everyone is supposed to want a son.

Huicke enters, slipping into the room
quietly, waiting for Seymour’s nod of permission, saying, ‘I have brought a
tonic for the Queen.’

‘What is in it?’ demands her
husband.

‘Oh, some health-giving herbs.’
He pours out a measure from a jar, handing it to her.

But Thomas stops him, taking hold of his
arm, asking brusquely, ‘What exactly?’ and brings the cup to his nose to
smell its contents. ‘I want to know what you are giving my wife.’ He is
being overbearing, as usual.

Although Seymour only does it to feel a
measure of control, thinks Huicke. ‘It is an infusion of raspberry leaf,
meadowsweet and nettle,’ he replies.

‘And they are for?’ Seymour
asks, adding pressure to his grip around Huicke’s arm.

‘The raspberry leaf aids an easy
delivery and the meadowsweet relieves heartburn.’

‘And the other, what was
it …?’ he snaps.

‘The nettle, my lord, promotes
strength.’

Seymour drops his arm with a tut and passes
the cup to Katherine, who drinks it down. ‘From now on
I
shall give the
Queen her tonic, Huicke. Understood?’

Huicke imagines slapping the man clean
across his face, punching him even, or sticking him with a blade and watching the blood
drain from him.

‘Huicke,’ Katherine says,
handing back the empty vessel. ‘My feet feel completely numb.’

‘I will massage them for you.’ He
sits at the base of the bed, taking her small feet on to his lap, rubbing them between
his gloved palms.

‘I will do that, Huicke,’ barks
Seymour, standing. ‘Shift yourself!’

‘As you wish, Lord Admiral.’
Huicke moves aside, watching as Seymour handles his wife’s feet gingerly, as if
holding a brace of dead pheasant that needs plucking and gutting.

‘A little more firmly, my dear,’
says Katherine, meeting Huicke’s glance and rolling her eyes upwards with a wry
smile.

That’s my Katherine, he thinks, still
not lost her sense of humour.

‘That will be all,’ trumpets
Seymour, waving an arm to dismiss him.

But Katherine cries out then, a low kind of
animal sound, and her waters break with a slosh. Seymour jumps up, flapping his arms,
his face etched with a kind of fearful disgust.

‘I will fetch the midwife,’ says
Huicke, laughing inwardly at Seymour, known for his bravery, panicking so.

The waters drip, drip, drip on to the
floor.

‘No, no,’ Seymour is almost
shouting. ‘I will go. You stay with her, Huicke.’ And he runs from the
room.

When the door slams, Katherine and Huicke
both burst out laughing.

Huicke says, ‘Men!’ busying
himself with straightening her cushions and making her comfortable.

‘Huicke,’ she says in a small
voice. ‘I am afraid of this birth. I am not young …’

He places a finger over her lips.
‘Shhhh, many women are safely delivered at your age. Thirty-six is not so old,
Kit, and you are strong. Submit to it, let the birth take its course.’

Lizzie Tyrwhitt bustles in and with her a
small army of ladies including the midwife, apronned and armed with towels and sheets
and basins of water.

‘If you please, Doctor, no men in here
for now.’

He kisses Katherine on the top of her head,
breathing in her dried-violet scent, before leaving.

Jane Grey is outside the door, her face the
image of concern. She is too young to attend a birthing. He leads her to a bench by the
window and they talk for a while, listening to Seymour pacing up and down the hall
below, his feet clicking on the stone flags. The moans from within the chamber become
more frequent and insistent, and with each one Jane winces quietly.

‘You are fond of the Queen, are you
not?’ he says.

‘Oh yes, I have grown to love her
dearly.’

‘I too, Jane, I too. She is one of
those rare creatures that no one can help but love.’