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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Seymour

I t’s still dark outside when Clarice wakes Seymour. They are saying something in the gloom, but Seymour can’t hear them above the sound of the thunder and the waves.

“What time is it?” she murmurs.

“Never mind that, my lady,” Clarice says. “They’re evacuating the tower. Quickly, we must get you dressed.”

A fork of lightning illuminates the world outside, and Seymour watches a wave reach up to her window – halfway up the tower – and consume it. Suddenly, she is very awake.

Clarice hurriedly packs a few of Seymour’s more precious belongings in her smallest trunk.

“Are we leaving the castle?” Seymour asks as Clarice bundles her into the first gown they can find.

“No, it’s just this tower the stewardess is worried about. She’s never seen the waves so high and she doesn’t know if the stone will hold. Everyone’s gathering in the banqueting hall.”

The candle Clarice holds aloft does not reach far once they leave the warmth of Seymour’s room, and the stairs remain forbidding as they descend.

The stone echoes strangely every time a wave hits the tower, as if some great beast is sating its rage against Brynd.

By the time Seymour trips into the hall, her heart is thumping.

The space is already half full. The evacuated tower is home to the bedchambers of nearly all the queen’s household, as well as the queen herself.

They sit in quiet groups around the edges of the room, and every time lightning strikes the tower or thunder cracks the sky, they grow silent, waiting for the roar of collapsing stone.

Seymour, though, finds herself happier to be among people rather than alone in that looming tower.

The queen sits in one corner with her sister and the poet Wyatt, who seems to have made himself indispensable since his arrival only a few weeks ago.

She is fully dressed in her jewels and a deep green gown of velvet and satin, but her hair is unadorned, flowing loosely down her shoulders and pooling in her lap.

Her pet dragon, Urial, is curled up on the hem of her dress, panting and heaving, his mistress’s hand on his back doing little to quell his fear.

Seymour finds herself a spot not far from them, and settles herself on a cushion, content to watch them.

She feels a strange kinship with Master Wyatt, perhaps because he has been humiliated at the queen’s hands, like Seymour.

Or perhaps it’s because of the way he and the queen are with each other.

She sees it now: the way Wyatt whispers something to Boleyn, the way she throws her lovely neck back and laughs, like a performance for the whole room.

Wyatt’s habit of pressing his hand to his chest when he’s with her, and the over-mannered way he lifts the hem of the queen’s dress and kisses it.

“Oh, go away, little goat,” Boleyn says to him. “And take my sister with you. You’re both being tiresome.”

“I bleat only for you, Your Majesty,” he says. “But if the Lady Mary will have me, I’ll make another noise for her.”

Mary arches an eyebrow at him. “Maybe you can be my sheep.”

“I’d rather be your horse.”

Boleyn flicks Urial’s leash at them. “Go. Away.”

Seymour finds herself smiling. It is the most perfect display of courtly love she could have imagined. The balance of bawdiness and gentleness. The overwrought performance of sincerity that reassures player and audience that it is all staged. All meaningless. All safe.

“That’s a very singular smile, Lady Seymour,” Boleyn says. “Come over here and confess your secrets to me.”

Seymour does as she’s told, leaving the sanctuary of her corner. She shouldn’t have chosen a spot so close to the queen’s orbit.

“No secrets, Your Majesty,” she says, taking Mary’s place on a cushion at Boleyn’s feet. Urial moves his pitiful head so that it rests on Seymour’s lap. She feels the patch of drool through the fabric almost immediately, and can only hope that he doesn’t follow it up with a flaming cough.

“Nonsense. Everyone has secrets. It’s what makes us human.”

“Do you think so?” Seymour says.

“You don’t agree?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think much about things like that. Only… I suppose I’d be disappointed in us if that were true.”

“Why should you find that disappointing?” Boleyn says, the words a clear challenge. Seymour wonders whether she should pull back from what she wants to say, but she knows by now that the queen only tolerates those willing to disagree with her.

“Well, secrets are sinful, aren’t they?”

Boleyn laughs. “Oh, Lady Seymour, how very dull of you.”

“It’s how I feel.”

Boleyn leans towards Seymour and grips her chin, forcing Seymour to look at her. Seymour holds Boleyn’s gaze. When the queen speaks again, it is very quietly, so that not even the nearby courtiers can hear them.

“You only deal in the truth, then?” the queen says.

“I try to.”

“Very well. Have you been sent to spy on me, Lady Seymour?”

“No,” Seymour says, the word a hot breath between them. She was not sent to spy. That she has tried to do so is incidental.

“Are you happy to be here, in my service?”

“Yes.”

Boleyn pauses, a rare flicker of insecurity on her sharp features. “What do you think of me?”

Seymour’s heart quickens. She is acutely aware of the places where the queen’s fingers pinch her jaw. She knows that she must never mention the only truth she knows for sure – that Boleyn is frightened of losing her baby. She must reassure the queen that that particular secret is safe with her.

“I think you are clever. You grow bored easily. You love the king very much, but sometimes you worry that this castle is not interesting enough to hold you. You need to be worshipped.”

Boleyn drops her hand and looks away, adjusting her skirts, and Seymour knows she has needled her. It reminds her of that moment in the orchards, where all artifice was stripped from the woman. It makes Seymour bold.

“It bothers you when people pay more attention to your sister than you,” she says. “I think it has always bothered you, because you feel that you are better than her. Is that why you married the king? Because it proves that you’re better than her?”

Boleyn rakes her nails across Seymour’s cheek; not a slap but a silencing. Urial whimpers at the movement. Seymour strokes the dragon’s neck, as much to calm her own nerves as his.

“We all have secrets, Lady Seymour,” Boleyn says, sitting upright once again. “Even you. And I will have your secrets from you. After all, I do like to win.”

With a flick of a wrist, Seymour is dismissed. Extracting herself from beneath Urial’s head, she stumbles away, avoiding the interested glances of the others in the room. Clarice approaches her with a tankard of warm milk.

“What happened?” they ask.

Seymour tries to laugh. “The queen was making it very clear that she doesn’t trust me.”

Seymour has to hold the tankard in both hands but cannot lift it to her lips until she’s stopped trembling.

“Can she?” Clarice says lightly.

“What do you mean?”

Clarice looks out of the window, avoiding Seymour’s gaze and question.

“The storm’s dying off. You should be able to go back to your room soon.”

“Are you all right?” Seymour says.

“I always am, my lady.”

There’s a kerfuffle outside the hall, and a messenger strides in, heading straight for Queen Boleyn. He hands her a letter and she reads it quickly, avidly. The muted conversations that had whispered like snakes around the hall fall silent.

Boleyn stands up, flourishing the letter, holding it high.

“Lothair is ours! The king rides to Brynd to celebrate!”

George leads the cheering. No storm can dampen the spirits of those in the hall.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Seymour says to Clarice. The sudden lightness in her chest is overwhelming. For a natural outsider, like her, the joy of patriotism is one of the few ways she can feel connected to others.

“Congratulations, my lady,” Clarice says, unsmiling.

“Come on, Clarice, don’t sulk. This is a victory for all of us.”

“If you say so.” Clarice wanders off to talk to other servants, leaving Seymour to her milk. The Feorwa Isles, where Clarice is from, are part of Elben’s territory now, and have been for decades. This victory is theirs too. Well, Seymour refuses to let her servant’s behaviour affect her mood.

By the time Seymour has finished her milk, the stewardess has proclaimed the worst of the storm over.

“There’s no point going back to bed,” the queen announces. “Let us all have wine and cake in my chambers and make Master Wyatt recite poetry as we watch the storm’s death throes.”

Another cheer goes round the room. Everyone’s anticipating a delicious, lazy, silly day before the king’s arrival.

Seymour stops off in her bedchamber on the way up to the queen’s rooms to freshen up. In one corner of her room there’s an empty copper basin, a flannel and jug of water next to it. Seymour pours a little water into the basin and cradles some in her hands to rub up her wrists.

She can tell something’s wrong almost immediately.

It starts as a prickle on her palms. Soon, it’s a fire.

She watches in horror as the skin grows red, and then blisters.

She grabs a towel and tries to dry her hands – but all that happens is that great discs of skin slough off, leaving bleeding, flayed flesh exposed. Seymour screams, the pain unbearable.

That’s when she sees it, on the mirror above the basin – someone has written, in red ink – or blood: DO YOUR JOB .

Clarice runs into the room and stops in their tracks, fixating on Seymour’s raised hands.

“Get help!” she shouts at them before they can see the writing on the mirror, and once they’re out of the room Seymour scrubs at the words, trying to use her arms and elbows instead of her hands.

By the time Clarice has returned with an apothecary, no trace of the warning remains.

The apothecary sets down his box of tools, tells Clarice to fetch fresh water, then sniffs the liquid in the basin.

“The Queen’s Kiss,” he whispers.

“What?” she says, her teeth gritted against the agony.

“It’s a flower, my lady. A very poisonous flower that grows only in darkness. It smells delightful. The petals are used in royal perfumes, hence the name. But the sap is strongly acidic. Put enough of it in water, and, well…”

He trails off, eyeing Seymour’s injuries with a mixture of disgust and professional interest.

“Can you heal me?” she asks.

“Certainly, but it will take time.”

He takes a pestle and mortar from one part of his toolbox and opens another compartment to reveal rows of glass bottles. He selects several – some herbs, some that look like balms and one that seems to be liquid silver, and measures them out into the mortar.

Seymour stumbles against the wall, dizzy. He rushes over to her.

“My apologies, my lady. I assumed, from your silence, that the pain wasn’t too bad.”

She gapes at him. “How could the pain not be bad?”

“I…” he doesn’t finish his sentence, only fumbles in his box for a vial of amber powder, which he heats in a spoon over the fire and then instructs her to drink. The relief is instantaneous – every part of her body goes numb. She sinks, blissful, to the floor.

When Clarice returns with water, the physician has ground the ingredients into a paste that smells of charcoal and hisses like embers in rain. He tears two lengths of muslin from his stock, plunges them into the water and wrings them out before applying the paste across one side.

“This may sting, despite the opiate,” he warns, before draping the muslin over her poor hands. It does sting a little, but nothing compared to what it was like before. He wraps the muslin with skilled fingers, knotting the ends tightly so that she looks as though she’s wearing mittens.

“We’ll need to change these daily,” he says, placing his vials back in his box. “I will return after lunch tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Seymour says through the fog in her mind. He bows softly and is about to leave when she remembers something. “Sir, may I ask – that you don’t mention this to anyone?”

She fumbles in her pocket for coins, the bandages and the medicine making her clumsy. The physician acknowledges the bribe silently before leaving. Clarice helps Seymour to her bed.

“Who would have done this?” they murmur, eyes flicking to the door, the window, anywhere but Seymour.

“I’ll be all right. It’s not as if I don’t have scars already,” she says.

She doesn’t want Clarice to investigate, or they might uncover the task Seymour was given by Aragon.

Clarice throws her an impenetrable look, and not for the first time Seymour wonders whether they really believe the lies she told them about the scars on her thighs – that they came from Edward.

“I’ll kill them,” Clarice says.

The Queen’s Kiss. DO YOUR JOB.

There can be no doubting that this is Queen Aragon’s work. And that means that she has other spies in the castle. Other spies willing to injure. Perhaps, even, willing to kill.

For the first time in her life, a plan begins to form in Seymour’s slow, stupid head.