Free Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr by Elizabeth Fremantle Page A

cloud; it is
that intense after-rain blue, almost cobalt, and the spring sun flares against it, an
early herald of summer.
    ‘I have had no one but lawyers for a
month and then two dear visitors in one day,’ Katherine is saying.
    ‘I’m sorry to have stayed away
so long, sister,’ says Anne. ‘I was laid low with this miscarriage, was abed
a full fortnight.’ Anne has the light behind her and the tendrils of pale hair
that have escaped from her coif are lit up like a halo.
    The sun catches at the edge of everything,
making the courtyard seem touched by God. The cobbles gleam and the windows shimmer,
winking as they pass. Katherine opens the gate to her physic garden, leading the way
through. The pear trees in the orchard beyond are in full blossom, billows of white
against the blue sky, and the yew hedges around the perimeter are impossibly green.
There is a circular pond atthe centre where silver carp slip and
shimmy just beneath the surface.
    ‘You have made a little Eden
here,’ says Anne. ‘You wouldn’t think the chaos of Smithfield is just
a stone’s throw away.’
    ‘Yes,’ says Katherine.
‘Sometimes I forget altogether that I am in London.’
    Katherine’s herb beds are set around
the pond and have been newly dug, with the earth fresh red, and the hopeful young plants
are carefully labelled with carved rounds of wood set on stakes. The sisters sit on a
shady stone bench but stick their damp feet out into a pool of warm sun to dry.
    ‘Will you stay here?’ asks
Anne.
    ‘I don’t know. I don’t
know what is best. I’m trying to stay away from court. All this business with the
King.’
    ‘He does seem to have a bee in his
bonnet.’
    ‘I don’t understand it, Anne. He
barely knows me and –’
    ‘Knowing has never been a necessity
for marriage,’ interrupts Anne.
    ‘
Marriage!
You don’t
really think it is
marriage
he wants from me?’
    ‘It is common knowledge he seeks a new
Queen. And after the Anne of Cleves debacle he won’t look abroad.’
    The bell of St Bartholomew’s rings out
three times, with echoes of more distant church bells behind it.
    ‘Why not you, Kit?’ Anne
continues. ‘You are perfect. You have never put a foot wrong.’
    ‘Hah,’ puffs Katherine, her
secrets pressing down on her. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure. Huicke thinks the King
only desires me because I am unwilling and he’s used to getting everything he
wants. I am a novelty.’ An acid laugh escapes from her. ‘Think of all those
young maids he could have, their sap rising.’
    ‘Don’t you see, Kit. That is what
he had last time, and look what happened. Your attraction is precisely that you are
not
like Catherine Howard; you are her opposite. The King could not stand
to be cuckolded again.’
    ‘How can I avoid it?’
    ‘I don’t know, sister. If you
stay away, you risk fanning the embers. And besides, Lady Mary will call for you soon.
She wants you there.’
    ‘Oh Anne,’ Katherine murmurs,
resting her forehead on her palm, closing her eyes, imagining taking Pewter and
galloping off, finding another life for herself, another person to be.
    ‘Think how merry Mother would be were
she still alive … you being courted by the King himself.’
    ‘Our ambitious mother! Why can’t
I do as you did, Anne, and marry for love?’
    ‘But to be Queen,
Kit … Would you truly not want that?’
    ‘I would have thought you of all
people would know what it means to be
his
Queen. You were there. You saw what
happened to them all. Catherine of Aragon cast out to meet her end in a damp castle in
the middle of nowhere, estranged even from her daughter. Anne Boleyn – need I even say
it? Jane Seymour not properly tended in her childbed –’
    ‘Many women succumb to childbed fever,
Kit. You can hardly blame the King for that,’ interrupts Anne. It is true; death
stalks pregnant women.
    ‘Well, perhaps not, but then look at
Anne of Cleves, who only escaped with her head because she agreed to an