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CHAPTER ONE

Boleyn

H er wedding dress is the colour of the massacre of Pilvreen.

A scarlet so vivid it had to be dyed three times in the spice of the Wyrtang tree, imported all the way from the distant land of Avahuc.

A red so deep it must be stored in the petals of the Thefor flower, lest its vermillion fade.

The fabric still smells of the blossom now, ambrosial, like a fine wine.

She had the seamstresses cut the bodice low on the shoulders, so it looks as though it could be pulled down her frame with one strong tug.

The tailors avoided each other’s gaze as they pinned the silk and measured the trim, but she didn’t care.

She is determined to make the most of her long neck and the dips above her clavicles, the places the king likes to kiss when they’re alone and, sometimes, scandalously, when they’re not.

They tried to fleece her on the train. “I want it to flow down the aisle,” she had told the seamstress.

The seamstress claimed she had measured the length of High Hall’s sanctuary, and presented her with a receipt for thirty yards of velvet, but she knew, as soon as she saw that figure, that the woman had guessed at the length.

That, or she was deliberately disobeying her.

She had measured it herself, after the king proposed.

The Royal Sanctuary is forty yards long, so she made the seamstress buy an extra twenty.

Let the train flow out of the door, so they have to keep it open.

So anyone passing by can see the two of them, and see how much the king loves her.

Even here, in the queen’s chambers of the largest building in Elben, the train can barely be contained.

Elben’s monarchs are always married at High Hall – the one palace in the kingdom that is the king’s alone, unshared with any of his consorts.

She has been here a handful of times, and even then she was only permitted in the lower levels – the halls and galleries reserved for lesser nobility.

To be here, on the third level, to now have her own wing of the palace, is a sign of how very far she has climbed.

Her sister fusses around her hair.

“Boleyn,” she says, “You must have it up. I’ll fetch my maid – she can braid it very beautifully.”

“No.”

“It’s not right to keep it down.”

“I said no, Mary.”

Henry loves her hair loose. It reminds him of that first hunt, when her hood snagged in a branch and was torn off, and she kept riding anyway. The hunt where she caught not just the finest stag on her father’s estate, but also the king’s eye.

Mary chews her lip but relents, stepping back to let Boleyn’s maid finish brushing the dark locks.

The girl fetches a bottle of oil and rubs a little on her fingers before smoothing them over Boleyn’s hair, paying particular attention to the ends.

The smell fills the chamber – marjoram and something warmer – clove, perhaps.

Sweet with a sting. The scents seep into the ancient beams that arch over her, carved with whorled figurines and roses. They even flavour the fire.

She thinks: this is the smell of my wedding day. I will remember this scent for the rest of my life. Suddenly, Boleyn feels as though she can’t breathe. The room is stuffy, too full of bodies.

“Make them all leave,” she tells Mary, and a moment later the maids fussing around her train and polishing the coronet are shepherded out.

Boleyn goes to the window and inhales the draught.

From here she can see the wild gardens and fishing lakes of High Hall and, beyond them, the distant Holtwode that blankets most of Boleyn’s future territory.

She cannot spy the coast, or the towers of Brynd, but if she looks hard enough she thinks she sees, on the horizon, the bruising flicker of the bordweal: the god-given cocoon that protects the island from its enemies.

Her chest loosens. She is going to be part of that cocoon.

Part of Elben’s saviour, part of its legacy.

Mary returns, gentler.

“Don’t be nervous,” she says. “The king adores you.”

“Of course he does.”

Mary tugs Boleyn’s hair. “Shall I let George and the others in?”

“No. Let it be just us, for a moment longer.”

“All right, Your Majesty.”

“ Berevia, mun ceripucun .”

Thank you, my pretty maid. The allusion to the Capetian queen’s nickname for the sisters when they served under her makes Mary laugh. They both used to bridle at the pejorative implied in maid, for pucun can mean both virgin and servant .

Mary leans over Boleyn, so her head is resting on her sister’s, and they stare into Boleyn’s mirror together. Two pale faces stare back – one full-cheeked and framed with gold; the other all shadows. One all honeysuckle sweetness; the other cedar wood and smoke.

Boleyn runs her hands over the crystals on her bodice, each one worth more than her entire dowry would have been had she married a man who required one.

Silently, Mary fetches the coronet from its pillow and settles it on her head.

It’s heavy for such a slender object, but Boleyn’s dark hair offsets the silver.

Boleyn watches her sister, dressed in her widow’s black, in the mirror, and even though Boleyn is so, so happy and so, so in love, a sadness creeps across her.

Mary has been her companion since childhood.

The sun to her moon. Soon Boleyn will be swept up in her royal duties, and no matter how much favour she bestows upon Mary and her children, a growing distance is inevitable.

“Well, I suppose I’ll never be as beautiful as Queen Howard,” Boleyn says to fill the void.

“You don’t need to be,” Mary replies, smoothing the hair that has rucked up beneath the coronet.

Mary’s right. Boleyn has her hair, her neck, and her mind, and Henry fell in love with all three.

The rest of her – thin lips, thin body, skin that never seems to hold any colour – will never be considered beautiful on this island.

But she doesn’t need to be the most beautiful Queen to hold the king’s attention.

Haven’t the last few months proved that?

A servant peers round the door. “My lady, it’s nearly time.”

“Are the ambassadors waiting?”

“They are all here.”

“Let them come in.”

The servant opens the door fully to reveal a packed antechamber, full of courtiers who have travelled to the centre of Elben to pay their respects to the newest queen.

Mary busies herself with Boleyn’s train, pulling and heaving at the fabric to show off its length.

Their family is waiting eagerly. Dearest brother George, bouncing on his tiptoes as he talks to his spouses, Rochford and Mark, and their parents, more reserved.

Their mother smooths her dress, which is far finer than the gowns she’s used to wearing back at home, and their father puts an arm on her waist, muttering reassurances.

Boleyn ignores her family for now, instead paying attention to the five veiled women before her.

Each one accompanies a gift – some small and wrapped in finely embroidered silk, and one so large it is carried by four servants.

They curtsey in unison. Boleyn could so easily have been one of them.

Before her engagement, she matched their rank – the almosts, the good but not the best. The ladies-in-waiting. In waiting .

Boleyn has never been good at waiting.

The first lady, dressed in the silver tulle of Queen Howard, offers Boleyn her queen’s gift and steps back, her hands coming to rest over her stomach.

The tulle doesn’t suit this woman, and the poor thing knows it.

She would have been better served in the subtler linen of Queen Parr, whose fashion would flatter this lady’s curves. Howard’s style is unforgiving.

“Oh, queen to be, I bring you a gift from Queen Howard of the Palace of Plythe. She wishes you great joy in your marriage to our king.”

Boleyn has been drilled in the correct reply. “I, Boleyn, soon to be consort of the Castle Brynd, thank Queen Howard for her gift and her wish, and hope to be a proper sister to her hereafter.”

The lady-in-waiting curtseys again and Boleyn passes the gift to Mary, who opens it on her behalf.

Inside is a lute, with strings made from the vocal cords of the whales that patrol the river below the Palace of Plythe.

Boleyn is impressed. Everything she’s heard about Queen Howard is that she’s an unthinking, flighty woman.

The lute is frivolous but far from thoughtless.

The other ladies-in-waiting take their turns to step forward, offer their queen’s good wishes and a gift – a book of healing herbs from Queen Parr, the cover made from iridescent dragon leather; a jewel-encrusted headdress from the ailing Queen Blount of the Palace of Hyde; and, in the crate borne by servants, a dragon with a coat of silver from Queen Cleves.

No annoying little lap dragon, this, but a guard dragon about the size of a greyhound.

Boleyn thanks them all, and reckons she sounds very noble doing so.

Last comes the chosen ambassador of Queen Aragon, the first of Henry’s queens, married mere weeks after his ascension to the throne, twenty-four years ago.

Aragon dresses all her ladies in heavy fabrics, the kind the Boleyns use as curtains.

This lady looks as though she is buckling beneath the weight of her gown.

If she’d only stand straight, she would tower over Boleyn, but her shoulders are curved in a constant apology.

Boleyn can’t get a good look at the face beneath the veil, but when the woman curtseys, one hand resting over the other in her lap, she notices how the pale pink of her fingernails stands out against the tan of her skin. The lady isn’t holding a gift.

“From Queen Aragon I bring you the wish of friendship,” the woman says, her voice barely above a whisper.

Others have noticed her lack of gift too.

No one knows what to do. This is unprecedented.

The Queens of Elben are rarely friends but they do have to observe the customs. Boleyn refuses to show that she’s thrown by this, raising her chin and pasting on a smile as she considers Aragon’s reasons for such a snub.

It can’t be her family’s status – Aragon and Cleves are the only two queens who come from royal blood themselves.

The other three queens were raised from lower-born families than Boleyn’s.

Is it Boleyn’s association with Capetia?

Aragon, a Quistoan princess by birth, is naturally inclined against Capetia, but surely not enough to merit such a publicly hostile declaration.

Boleyn realises, with a glow of triumph, what this must mean – that of all the consorts, Aragon sees her as a true threat, and means to put her in her place. Well, she’s equal to that.

“I thank Queen Aragon for her wish, and desire that you should choose whichever of my gifts here that you think she might enjoy the most. It saddens me that a queen of such rich lineage should be unable to fulfil a tradition. It must hurt her greatly, and I wouldn’t wish to see our oldest and first of sisters brought so low. ”

Boleyn doesn’t need to look to know that her brother, George, is smirking. The other ladies-in-waiting fidget in embarrassment, or excitement.

“Careful, B.,” Mary whispers. Boleyn knows she’s skirting the edge of decency, but this is all part of the game of court – knowing how to turn a phrase so that those listening can construe it in different ways.

She learned the art in Capetia and regards it as the most precious part of her education.

Played well, it can make you feared and admired. It can even make you queen.

“Oh,” the lady says. “My apologies, Your Grace. Queen Aragon did send a gift. She sent me.”

Boleyn stares at the mouse. “You?”

“She says…” The woman pauses, trying to recollect the exact words. “She says that the queens of Daven and Brynd should be the closest of sisters, and in recognition of this she sends you her most loyal attendant.”

“I see.” Boleyn’s theory was correct. Aragon does see her as a threat. “How very thoughtful. A new friend is the best and greatest of gifts. I welcome you into my household…?”

“Seymour,” the woman says, curtseying again.

“Lady Seymour.”

So, she’s going to have a cuckoo in her household. If this Seymour is Aragon’s spy, she must be made of stronger stuff than she looks.