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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Seymour

W hen the king carries Boleyn past her, Seymour can’t help herself.

She makes her way silently through the muttered gossip and embarrassed laughter in the vestibule and slips up the back stairway towards the queen’s chamber.

The king’s guards haven’t yet arrived, or they would be stationed outside already.

As it is, the door is unguarded. Seymour hesitates only momentarily before pressing her ear guiltily to the wood, craving the sounds of Boleyn’s pleasure.

There is no artifice in the moans she hears.

On the contrary, Boleyn sounds almost… shy.

Eager to be pleased. She cannot hear the king, and she’s thankful for it – he would have ruined the illusion.

Seymour imagines pleasing the queen, the way she has pleased Clarice; the way she pleased the earl’s son she took as a lover a few years ago.

She imagines Boleyn winding her hair around Seymour’s neck, her eyes dancing, her kisses deep, and pulling gently until Seymour teeters on the edge of danger, the way she and Clarice used to do before everything went wrong.

Seymour closes her eyes, letting the pressure grow inside her. When the heat becomes too much, she darts back to her own room and locks the door, hastily pulling her gown up so that she can find her own release, ignoring the pain in her flayed fingers for those moments of pulsating bliss.

Seymour haunts the king and queen over the following days, watching how they still court each other, even though the prize has been won.

She makes a study of their love, supping on their sensuality.

Seymour’s brothers talk a lot about the campaigns of seduction waged upon them and their friends by multitudes of scheming women.

Edward speaks of his wife as though she were a merciless conqueror and he a surrendered castle, brought down at last by an insurmountable force of guile.

Seymour is not sure that’s how it happened.

Nothing about her brother’s wife gives Seymour the impression that she is thrilled to be married to him.

Watching Boleyn and the king, Seymour comes to realise that her brothers are mistaken.

In a true Elbenese courtship, woman and man are both conqueror and conquered in equal measure.

It is a dance of power: every promenade is a surrender, every set a foray.

Maybe that is what makes her remember Boleyn’s moans when she is alone at night – the idyll of a partnership so ferociously equal.

She finds the solution in that idyll. Even the most uncaring of husbands would kill a thousand crones to protect a potential son.

This king would do more than that to keep Boleyn safe.

Perhaps even be willing to extend that protection, if the recipient proves themselves worthy.

Seymour knows she must act before the bandages are removed from her hands and, more importantly, before the king leaves Brynd.

Clarice is an attentive nurse, and with their ministrations, the blisters start to heal, leaving a moist layer of puckered skin that weeps pus and blood. For now, Seymour is still a victim.

Every afternoon, while Queen Boleyn rests, the king climbs the narrowing stairs to the top of Brynd’s tallest turret, where lightning crackles around the turret’s apex even on days where there is no storm.

The castle gossip has invented several reasons for these daily trips, depending on who one asks and how loyal they are to the queen.

Some say he goes to permit Boleyn to rest, away from his attentions.

Some say he is fleeing her insatiable sexual appetite.

Those who fear invasion say he goes to watch the bordweal and ensure Quisto’s navy is not sailing over the horizon.

Seymour wonders whether he simply wishes for some respite from the fawning.

On a cold spring day, Seymour bundles up her courage and follows him.

Guards are posted at the bottom and top of the steps, although they only give her the lightest of interrogations before allowing her to ascend – one of the many benefits of looking as unremarkable as she does.

She couldn’t possibly be a danger. Through the haze of adrenalin and the pain relief of her poultice, Seymour realises that this is probably why Queen Aragon chose her to kill Boleyn. No one thinks her capable of it.

The king is standing at the very edge of the tower, leaning on the crenelations.

He makes a dashing, lonely figure there, his shoulder-length hair billowing behind him.

Her own dress isn’t made for this kind of weather – the wind keeps sneaking beneath her petticoats, so it looks as though the gown is a breathing thing.

Moving across the turret, she feels as though a single strong gust of wind could lift her up and carry her over the wall across the sea, and she’d be lost to the krakens and kelpies below.

Suddenly, she can’t introduce herself. The desire for solitude radiates from him. Seymour has never been attracted to him before – all her attention has been for his wife – but in this moment she can see how one might fall in love with him.

“Do I know you?”

He doesn’t turn around. His voice is deep but warm, commanding but without accusation. In every movement, every nuance of him, it is evident that he was born to rule a kingdom, and Seymour has the impression that this is an affected stance. For Henry was not born to rule Elben. His brother was.

She curtseys, keeping her head low, subservient. “Your Majesty,” she says.

“That’s not an answer to my question.”

She can hear the smile on his face.

“I was at your wedding.”

He turns around at last and studies her. “Ah yes. You’re the gift.”

The smile is wider now. Like he’s trying not to laugh at the thought of her being a gift as valuable as the lute of rare wood or the silver dragon. A prouder woman than she would baulk at this humiliation, but it doesn’t touch her.

“Yes.”

“And what do you do for my queen here? Do you dance? Sing? Embroider? Entertain?”

“Not well.”

“I see. A gift of little value then?”

Cernunnos, if she’d wanted to be insulted by a man she could have returned to her family’s estate.

“Value can come in many guises.”

She immediately regrets the sharpness in her voice. Back at home, it would earn her a slap. The king just seems amused.

“So you do have teeth, after all.”

He approaches, moving like a cat. Seymour lowers her eyes. Close to, he is like a hidden current, inexorable beneath hypnotic waves. Yes, she can well understand how so many fall in love with him.

“Did you come up here to watch me or to talk to me?” he asks.

“The latter, Your Majesty.”

“Come, then.”

Seymour follows him back to the edge of the turret, and has to hold the wall to steady the onset of dizziness.

Behind them, lightning crackles on the antlered points of the conductor.

The turret leers out over the ocean. Far below, the water is foam and glass.

Beneath the surface, Seymour could swear she glimpses a vast, pale creature, watching her from the depths.

The king, though, points at the horizon, at a shadowy shape veiled by distant mist.

“Do you see that?” he says.

“What is it?”

“The Quistoan navy.”

“Truly?”

Seymour can’t understand why he’s so calm if they’re under attack.

A flare goes up from the mist, and momentarily the shadows recede and she can see clearly the shape of a huge warship.

A moment later, there’s a low boom , and then a wave, greater than any she’s seen before, radiates out from the vessel.

It hits the bruise-coloured barrier that lies between the ship and the coast, and dissipates.

“They cannot reach us. Not yet, anyway,” the king says. “They’re testing the bordweal.”

“Surely they won’t attack Elben while Queen Aragon is your consort?”

He laughs. “Do you really believe that? They said you were simple.”

She wants to ask who said that, but it doesn’t really matter. Besides, to know would only hurt her. Still, the king notices the way she curls in on herself, and turns fully towards her. He places a hand on her arm.

“My apologies. That was ungallant.”

“It is true that I understand little of politics.” She can’t quite bring herself to accept his apology.

“Marrying Queen Aragon offered us a reprieve, for as long as Quisto thought she might bear me a male heir.”

“Because then they would rule Elben through inheritance,” Seymour says.

“Exactly. The world’s trade passes through Elben’s ports.

Quisto, Capetia, even Pkolack, would love nothing more than to make Elben a small but perfect jewel in the crown of their empires.

But now that my first queen is past her childbearing years, and Quisto feels their influence waning at High Hall, they like their chances of invading while the bordweal is weakened. ”

“Will you send your navy out to meet them in battle?”

He shakes his head. “Not while the bordweal holds. If I were to engage them now, they would tell the world that Elben had declared war. We would be perceived as the aggressor.”

“But they’re the ones who are trying to invade.”

“They will say that they were merely passing Elben, and that the cannon fire was a mistake.”

Seymour considers this. She has never been adept at beadulác , the game of war so popular in Elben, but she now sees that politics is less about who has the greater force, and more like the courtship between the king and Boleyn – the perception of surrender or attack.

“What will you do?”

“Fortify Lothair along the border it shares with Quisto. Beyond that, there are many roads I could take. Small bites, to make Quisto nervous. To prepare us for an invasion, if the time comes.”

Seymour thinks of the Quistoan empire, stretching from the borders of Pkolack in the north, across to the eastern lands and then down to the landmass it shares with Capetia and Ezzonid. She thinks about Thomas and wonders what his next move would be.

“Will you strike a deal with Capetia, Your Majesty?”

He looks at her sharply. “Why do you ask that?”

This isn’t why she wanted to talk to him, and she vaguely thinks that she should get the conversation back on track.

“I remember my brother saying that the border between Capetia and Quisto is one of the hardest to maintain. I thought, given Queen Boleyn’s links to Capetia, that it would make sense to strike an alliance with them. ”

A new idea forms in her head, as though Cernunnos himself had dropped it there, because she’s never before been clever enough for this kind of strategising.

“Then if you had Capetia pushing east from their border, and you pushed south from Lothair, it would be very difficult for Quisto to defend both…”

Henry laughs. “My word, you are intriguing. Have you been eavesdropping on Boleyn?”

Seymour flushes. “I would never…”

“I’m teasing you, Lady Seymour. I only ask because your proposal is almost exactly the same as hers.”

“Perhaps her remarkable mind is rubbing off on me.”

They both look out to the ocean again, but this time the silence is easier, more companionable. Seymour hopes that her unexpected insight has paved the way for her true aim.

“You must be very tired, Your Majesty,” she says.

He looks at her, surprised. “Why do you say that?”

She twists her mittened hands inside her furs. “It is a great burden to bear, ruling this country.”

“I don’t mind that. To be Elben’s ruler is the greatest gift our god could have given me.”

“But?” she says.

“I sometimes worry that I am not a good husband.”

It’s not at all the reply Seymour was expecting.

“Queen Boleyn adores you.”

“The Queen of Hyde is sick. You have heard this?”

Seymour nods.

“I haven’t visited her as often as I should have. The wars, my new marriage… I do love all of my queens, Lady Seymour. I truly do. Blount has given so much, and now she’s…”

He closes his eyes. The king should not weep. Seymour places a hand on his arm.

“You are the greatest man this island, this world, has known, Your Majesty, but not even Cernunnos himself can command time. No one – not your queens or your subjects or your worst enemy – doubts your devotion.”

The king’s eyes remain closed, but he’s listening. She imagines the eleven-year-old boy that must still lurk inside the man’s mind – the boy who’s overwhelmed by his responsibilities. It’s that boy she talks to.

“I know a little about the pressures of family. My brothers, they want me to do things for the good of the Seymours. Things I don’t feel equipped to do.”

“Such as?”

They look at each other directly for the first time.

Seymour has the dizzying notion that he is looking at her the way he looks at Boleyn, even though that’s impossible.

This had never been in Seymour’s plan. She had wished to gain his protection, nothing more.

How could there be more? She is so unremarkable that the king would never see her that way.

And yet… would it be so bad, to do what Edward has wanted her to do all along?

Seymour is neither powerful nor poor enough to pursue anything so abstract as love: her fate is to marry for status, wealth or ideally a combination of the two.

Being a queen would secure her something akin to freedom.

When she speaks, she uses the truth like a weapon, because it is the one weapon she knows she can wield.

“Seduce you. Become the next queen.”

Henry’s mouth flickers.

“I know,” she says. “It’s a ridiculous notion, isn’t it? And the queen…”

“Boleyn?”

“No. Queen Aragon.”

“She wants you to spy for her.”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

She unwraps the bandage on her left hand. The king frowns, moving closer.

“She wanted me to do something for her. And I won’t. I will remain loyal to Queen Boleyn for as long as she is my mistress.”

The bandage whips out of her hand and flies over the edge of the wall, lost to the mist. She imagines it landing like a flag on the mast of that distant Quistoan ship.

“My god,” the king says, staring in horror at the flayed remains of her hand.

“You must protect Queen Boleyn,” Seymour says.

The king looks at her in wonder. “I will. And I’ll protect you too, Lady Seymour.”

She curtseys deeply, and turns to go. And sees, there at the top of the stairs, Queen Boleyn, waiting, watching them, hating her. And she realises, seeing that hate, that it is not merely lust she feels for her queen. It is something much more precious, and much more dangerous.