Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr (60 page)

‘It was the Queen offered me this
dress,’ Dot had said.

‘Did she now?’ had been
Peggy’s reply. Dot is becoming used to those raised eyebrows of hers.

Peggy has given her an attic room all to
herself – save for her cell at Newgate (and that hardly counts), Dot has not bedded down
in a room of her own for the night; though there was that one time when she first
arrived at Hampton Court a day before Katherine, before they ever imagined she would be
Queen. She remembers spreading her arms and legs out in that big bed, wonders if
Katherine is in it now. Out of the gable she has a view of the river; it is close enough
that she can hear the cries of the watermen and she watches the torches on the boats
moving back and forth like fireflies on the dark water, wondering how long it will be
before the Queen’s flotilla makes its way back to Whitehall.

The room is crossed by two great rafters,
between which sits a truckle with a real feather plummet and a pillow. She can’t
remember when she last lay on a proper bed and as she drops down on to it, sinking her
head into the downy cushion, she imagines she is floating on a cloud as an angel might.
The sloping ceiling reminds her of the cottage back in Stanstead Abbots – home, she
would have called it once – the room under the eves she shared with her brother and
sister, and she tucks her pillow in to pretend it is Little Min’s warm body
snuggled up to her. Drifting off, she thinks of the comforting dusty scent of the wheat
thatch but cannot quite manage to fully imagine up the smell as her thoughts keep
wandering back to Katherine – how thankful Dot is that she is not in the Tower. Dot
remembers her once saying that things can turn out in life the way you least expect
them; and when she thinks about the unfolding of her own life and all its unexpected
turns, she could never have invented the half of it.

It has been a full week since Dot arrived
at this place – a week of watching the Thames for signs of the court’s return.
Peggy, for all her strange ways, has turned out to be not such bad company and kind
enough. There are visitors coming and Dot is to join them for supper – she’d
rather not but fears offending. Peggy has found her a dress. It is not at all what she
would have chosen, for it is so very low cut, but Peggy says it is all she has and that
it will have to do. Peggy had combed out her hair. It was the first time anyone had done
that since Ma used to do it when she was no more than a tot, which gave her a sad
longing for her old life, her life before she left for Snape.

‘Do you have a coif to lend me,
Peggy?’ she asks.

‘There is not even a plain coif clean
in the house, dear,’ replies Peggy. ‘You shall have to go without. Never
mind, you have such pretty hair, shame to cover it. Besides, we shall not be leaving the
house.’

But Dot feel half-naked with nothing on her
head.

Truth is, she’d rather sup in her room
and not have to meet anyone; particularly not in this embarrassing gown that rustles
when she walks and is so embroidered it would make you dizzy if you looked too long at
it, not to mention the amount of flesh she has on show. And no, Peggy doesn’t have
a spare partlet either to lend her for modesty’s sake. It is true that Peggy
herself goes about most of the time with great pillows of breast on display and Dot has
decided that it must be the way with women in this part of town. She had even thought at
first that perhaps Peggy was a wet nurse, but the absence of babies in the house had put
paid to that idea. Peggy
has
lent her a pair of fine satin dancing slippers,
cream with a red silk rose and never worn by the looks of the soles. She puts them on;
they are a little tight but so pretty she can’t take her eyes off them, keeps
stretching her legs out, one after the other, and turning her ankles to admire them
better. It takes her mind off the dreadfulness of the dress.

When there is a rap at the door Peggy calls
out, ‘Go on, Dot, see who it is.’

She finds an elderly gentleman on the stoop,
with a stick in one hand and the other gripped for dear life on to the doorframe. His
glazed old-man eyes run her up and down in the much same way a mutt would gaze lovingly
at a lamb chop. He dodders into the room, leaning heavily on his stick, calling her
‘poppet’ and introducing himself as ‘Mister Dymmock’. Just as
she is closing the door, another man appears from nowhere, bounding on to the step,
breathless and flustered as if he might have just run from a bear escaped from the pits.
This one is young, or youngish, and a bit of a wagtail, by the looks of his gaudy get-up
and the pungent flowery stench that emanates from him.

‘Begging your pardon,’ he keeps
saying, when he’s barely over the stoop and done nothing yet to beg pardon for. He
even says it when Dot treads on his toe by mistake with one of her almost-never-worn
satin slippers. Upon which he gets out a kerchief and rubs his white calfskin shoe at
the place she’s trodden on, where there is no discernible mark at all. Finally he
straightens himself, saying, ‘I am Mister St Clare. And to whom do I have the
pleasure of addressing myself?’

Dot supposes this is a roundabout way of
asking her name, which she is about to tell him, when another man barges in without so
much as knocking. This one is rougher than the other two, altogether bigger, and carries
a large clay pitcher in one hand. He looks Dot over as if he’s pricing a cow at
market, then pushes past, plonks the pitcher on the table and goes straight over to
Peggy, putting an arm around her and giving her a smacker on the lips.

‘How’s my Peggy bearing up
then?’ he says, and without waiting for her to reply pulls a trinket from his
pocket, saying, ‘I know how you like the geegaws, Peg, and this one’s all
the way from the East Indies, got it off a fella fresh off of the boats.’ He
fastens it to her gown and stands back. Dot is sure she saw bits and bobs just like that
one being flogged for less than a farthing in the market beside Newgate.

‘Oooh, Nate,’ Peggy simpers,
‘you shouldn’t have.’

They sit about the table and Peggy serves
up. She gives the dish some kind of fancy French name, but it looks to Dot just like
plain ling drowned in a floury sauce. It’s good enough, though; delicious even,
after the Newgate suppers, if that’s what you can call them. Dot is squashed
between the floral bouquet of Mister St Clare and the sharp old-man reek of the decrepit
Mister Dymmock, who, for all his antiquity, is downing the ale like it’s going out
of fashion. It is from Big Nate’s clay pitcher and is a good deal stronger than
Dot is used to, so she’s only taking tiny sips in spite of her thirst.

Peggy’s on a roll, fluffing herself up
like a finch in a puddle every time any of them look her way, but particularly for Big
Nate, who’s got his eyes glued to her pillows and a leer on his mouth. It dawns on
Dot that Peggy Fenny is not so unlike Betty Melcher, though somewhat older, and that is
not a bad thing, for Betty is fun, even if she does have a loud mouth that spouts more
filth than the common jakes at Hampton Court. A few cups of Big Nate’s ale and
Peggy’s mouth isn’t so clean either. Dot picks at her food silently, unable
to think of a thing to say to any of them.

‘See, didn’t I tell you?’
slurs Peggy. ‘A proper little lady, this one.’ They all turn to Dot. She can
feel a blush burn its way up her cheeks. A splodge of white fishy gloop drips on to the
back of her hand. Mister Dymmock dives in and swipes it away with a finger, putting it
into his mouth and sucking at it, making her stomach turn.

‘And a
maid
, you say?’
he growls, with that doggish expression again.

‘Oh yes, indeed,’ Peggy replies.
‘Aren’t you, Dotty, maid through and through.’

Dot nods, hoping she means not married,
thinking if she means the other thing then it is a lie she’s got herself into. She
is beginning to worry that Peggy might be getting up to some kind of marriage-brokering
for her. She will have to put her hostess straight on that later. A silence has fallen
and they all have their eyes on Dot, as if waiting for her to say something; Heaven only
knows what it is they are hoping she’ll come out with.

Next thing she knows, Mister St Clare, who
hasn’t spoken for some time now, except a few ‘begging your pardons’,
has pulled a bag of coin out from somewhere in one of the crannies of his outfit and is
tipping it on to the table. Now it is
Peggy
who’s got the doggish look
about her, on seeing all that coin, and there is quite a pile of it. They have all
stopped leering at Dot and have turned their attentions to what is on the table, when
Mister Dymmock begins to make a kind of creaking snorting sound, something akin to a
laugh, and from nowhere, like when Will Sommers pulls a penny out from under a
lady’s French hood, he’s holding a coin of his own up to the
candlelight.

Peggy gasps and Big Nate makes a sort of
excited rumbling sound. ‘A gold sov,’ he drools, snatching it up and biting
at the edge of it before handing it back with the words ‘True an’
all.’

Dot has seen a good deal of things, jewels
and plate and suchlike – the palaces are full of it – but she’s never seen a real
gold sovereign close up and, for that matter, by the little breathless sounds emanating
from Peggy and the great wide grin on Big Nate’s mug, neither have they.

Dot is not at all sure what all this is,
with the money, assumes it must be some kind of wager game – a Southwark thing. At the
palace they play cards and dice for money all the time; she even saw a bunch of nobles
lay a wager on the amount of steps the Queen took passing down the Long Gallery once.
But no playing cards appear, nor dice, nor any kind of gaming counters, so when Big Nate
says, ‘You win, Mister Dymmock,’ and the old man’s gap-toothed smile
spreads over his face like a sunset, she expects him to sweep Mister St Clare’s
pile of coin into his own purse. But instead Mister St Clare, who seems quite downcast,
starts scooping up his own coin, with a string of ‘begging your pardons’,
and Mister Dymmock hands the gold piece to Big Nate, while Peggy slavers over it. Dot is
more confused than ever. How is it that Mister Dymmock is the winner, if he’s the
only one who has ended up with nothing?

It is then that Mister Dymmock turns to her
and, stroking her cheek with the back of a gnarled finger, says, ‘Worth every
penny.’

A boiling panic begins to rise in Dot – how
could she have been so daft? Is she to be married off to this ancient creature, old
enough at least to be her great-great-grandfather?

‘Peggy,’ she sputters,
struggling to get the sound of it out of her mouth.

‘Yes, dear?’ replies Peggy.

‘Could I talk with you?’

‘What is it?’ asks Peggy, and
when Dot hesitates, she adds, ‘Spit it out, dearie.’

‘It is a private matter.’

‘Ah,’ says Big Nate.
‘Women’s things. Go on, Peggy, take the lass into the bedchamber and tell
’er the facts of life.’ The whole company explodes into laughter at this,
even Mister St Clare, who’s had a face as long as a wooden leg until now.

‘Peggy, I must tell you this,’
says Dot when the bedchamber door is firmly shut behind them. She speaks very fast, so
as to get it out before her courage deserts her. ‘You have been very good to me,
kinder than kin, but though I am most grateful for all your efforts on my behalf, I am
not in the mind to marry, and certainly not to such a man as Mister Dymmock. Besides, I
serve the Queen and am not at liberty to wed without her permission.’

An acid ‘Ha!’ bursts from
Peggy’s mouth. ‘You stupid girl. It’s not
marriage
we’re on about.’

‘What is it, then, that Mister Dymmock
has bought with his gold sovereign?’

Peggy gives her a funny look, saying,
‘You truly don’t know, do you?’

Dot slowly shakes her head.

‘It is your maidenhead, Dot, that he
has purchased.’

It is as if Dot has been slapped in the
face.

‘How do you think you were going to
pay for your board and lodging?’ continues Peggy. ‘All those stories about
the Queen and having four pounds left to you by some noblewoman, you don’t really
think anyone believes that nonsense, do you?’

‘But it is true.’

‘Do I look like I was born
yesterday?’ With that she slips from the room, leaving Dot alone.

The tester groans as she flops down on to
it, wondering what fate has in store for her now. Is she truly to bed down with that
antique? All she can think of is that she must escape. There is a tiny casement window,
which must give out on to the back alley, but looking down at her dress her heart sinks
– she’d be fair game got up like this, that is sure as day follows night. She
scans the room for a solution, discovering a pile of clothes in the corner, which she
falls on, rummaging through it, finding her own good wool dress, still full of holes but
with the worst of the dirt brushed from it. She rips off the repugnant outfit and
scrambles into her own clothes, hastily tugging the laces tight before heaving herself
on to the sill.

Outside, it is that hour between day and
night, all shadows and gloom. But there’s enough light to see that though it is
quite a way down, it is no higher than the hay loft she and her friends used to jump off
as children. She will beg if she must and will find a dark corner to sleep in.
Mercifully the weather is mild enough that she will not freeze to death. God only knows
what lies in store for her out there, but the uncertainty of that seems infinitely
better than the certainty of Mister Dymmock’s ancient hands poking around her
private places. She lands with a thump on her behind, jarring her tail so sharply it
makes her eyes water, but she is on her feet in an instant and running off as fast as
she can down the street, heart hammering, splashing the almost-never-worn satin slippers
in the muck of the gutter.