Read Online Queen's Gambit: A Novel of Katherine Parr by Elizabeth Fremantle - Free Book Online Page B

Neither of us were prepared really. But there was a tutor in the
household, a serious young man, Eustace Ives. He had a beautiful mouth. I remember the
mouth, turned up at the corners in a kind of permanent solemn smile. It was when I saw
how Edward blushed as he talked to Eustace Ives that it began to dawn on
me … How little I knew then.’
    ‘What became of Edward Borough?’
asks Huicke, captivated by this nugget of his friend’s past.
    ‘He was taken by the sweating
sickness. Slipped out of his life in an afternoon. Poor Edward. He was such a gentle
soul.’ She has a faraway look about her as she talks of thepast
as if she has gone back there and left just the ghost of her in the present. ‘Then
I married John Latymer.’ A little shiver seems to bring her back. ‘So tell
me. This person is from Antwerp?’
    ‘No, he is an Englishman. A writer, a
thinker. He is quite remarkable, Kit.’ He feels a little thrill run through him
just talking of Nicholas Udall. ‘And wild …’ He pauses.
‘Excessively wild.’
    ‘Wild …’ she repeats.
‘Sounds dangerous.’
    He laughs. ‘Only in the best kind of
way.’
    ‘And your wife?’ Katherine asks.
‘Is she understanding?’
    ‘We are virtually estranged these
days.’ He is reluctant to talk of his wife, feels too guilty. Instead he changes
the subject. ‘There is much love in the air these days. And much talk of the King
and a certain someone.’
    Her face drops. ‘I suppose that
someone is me.’ They have stopped walking and she turns to him, big-eyed, shot
through with worry. ‘Why me, Huicke? There are plenty of willing beauties at
court. The place is overflowing with them. And I’m not so young any more.
Doesn’t he want more sons?’
    ‘Perhaps it is your very unwillingness
that spurs him on.’ Huicke knows only too well what a spur indifference can be to
desire. All those pretty youths he’s fallen for, who were revolted by his skin.
‘The King is accustomed to getting what he wants. You are different, Kit, in that
respect.’
    ‘Different, pah.’ She heaves out
a sigh. ‘What would you have me do? Throw myself at him? Would that cool his
ardour?’ She marches off down the corridor.
    ‘He talks of your kindness too,
Kit,’ he calls out to her receding back. ‘And how tenderly you cared for
your husband.’
    He couldn’t begin to tell her how the
King has plumbedhim for information. How was she with her husband? Did
she tend him kindly? Did she mix her own physic?
    ‘And how would he know that?’
she spits, turning.
    They walk on in a brooding silence, he
slightly behind her. She swings open the still-room door. A resinous smell envelops them
and at last her frustration seems to abate. She begins to pull out jars, uncorking them,
sniffing at their contents, tipping a few herbs out into a mortar, beginning to crush
them with a pestle. ‘Goldenseal,’ she says; then takes several more pots
from a shelf, arranging them on the bench. She selects one, reading its label, removing
its cork and bringing it to her nose with a small satisfied sigh, holding it up for him
to smell too.
    ‘Myrrh,’ he says. It is pungent
and ecclesiastical, reminding him of a cleric he once had a passion for.
    She grinds a little of it with the
goldenseal, then lights a burner beneath a copper dish, dropping in a hard glob of wax
and leaving it to melt while she continues pounding. She adds some almond oil then drips
in the hot wax, stirring fast until it stiffens.
    ‘There,’ she says eventually,
bringing the mortar to her nose to judge if the smell of it is right. ‘Now, give
me your hands.’
    He removes his gloves, feeling entirely
naked without them, and she massages the salve into his poor angry skin. He is quite
overwhelmed again, to be touched in this way.
    ‘You see, Kit,’ he says after
some time. ‘This is why people think of you as kind.’
    ‘No more than most,’ she says.
‘The goldenseal works like magic.’
    ‘You are gifted with