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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Boleyn

T hey’re in bed when Henry tells her the news. “You’re going to be angry with me,” he says, kissing his way down her stomach. “So I’m going to make it up to you.”

She hasn’t been sleeping well – her hips hurt, and there’s a patch of skin on her ribs that won’t stop itching, no matter how much meadowsweet paste she rubs on it.

She sits up – she can no longer lie flat on her back without discomfort – and opens her legs for him.

She lets herself admire the war-toned muscles of his arms. Then she closes her eyes and lets the bliss flow over her.

“Tell me,” she says.

He pauses in his attentions. “Wolsey is brokering a trade deal with Quisto.”

She says nothing. She had expected something like this ever since she saw the pamphlet.

Henry had comforted her, of course, but she knew that he couldn’t possibly ally with Capetia with such rumours circulating.

It hurts that he isn’t willing to stand by her unequivocally, but she must remember that he’s a king, not merely a husband. He must play the game.

And she, after all, is playing her own game. She has not told him about her discovery of the sunscína . She was going to, but when she returned from the folly, she could only remember the way he had looked at Lady Seymour on that turret.

“Will you return to the war in Alpich?” she asks, eyes still closed, trying to enjoy his ministrations but needing to know everything.

“Yes. And I’m going to take an armada up to Thawodest.”

A mostly barren set of islands far north of Elben, the kingdom of Thawodest sits between the independent and insular nation of Pkolack and the far reaches of Quisto’s empire.

She has to admit that second to her plan to pincer Quisto between Lothair and Capetia, this is an excellent move.

As with Lothair, taking Thawodest will expand the Elbenese empire and send a warning to Quisto without allowing them to claim that Henry is being aggressive towards them.

“Does Aragon know yet?”

“I’ve sent Cromwell to inform her.”

Boleyn smiles. So Henry isn’t so disloyal that he’s going to give Aragon the satisfaction of telling her himself. Henry props himself up. “How close are you?” he asks.

She draws him into her arms. “That felt wonderful, but I don’t think it’s going to happen,” she says.

Henry kisses her then grins. “That will never do.”

He slips two fingers inside her and works with concentration until she comes. She feels obliged to return the favour.

“You are blessed, sister,” Mary murmurs, as Boleyn waves Henry off later that day.

He must return to High Hall for the Quisto negotiations, and to prepare for the invasion of Thawodest. Boleyn rests a hand on Mary’s arm.

She cannot tell Mary that she doesn’t feel blessed, because at least Henry is healthier than ever, not festering in a plague-ridden coffin like Mary’s love.

Lady Seymour is part of the retinue that follows them inside.

Boleyn doesn’t think he looked much at her before he left – all his attention was for Boleyn and her swollen stomach.

But she has seen the two of them walking together through the grounds of Brynd, picking the flowers that Boleyn ordered planted.

She has underestimated Seymour. Most women who’ve tried to throw themselves at Henry since he and Boleyn married have flirted and played hard to get and been a little irritable, but none of them can do it the way Boleyn does.

Seymour is using her own strengths. Maybe it’s time Boleyn started treating her like a rival.

Maybe she needs to get to know her better.

“I feel like going to the font,” Boleyn announces, as soon as they reach her antechamber.

Syndony gestures to the servants, who immediately leave the room to prepare a convoy.

The Font of Cernunnos, sometimes known as the Royal Font, is nearly a day’s journey from Brynd, on the border of Hyde’s territory.

It is reputed to contain healing properties.

Only the royal family is permitted to go there, and Boleyn has never been.

“I think I’ll take an attendant,” she says, her eyes skimming those in the room. Rochford and Mary exchange smug glances, believing that one of them will be picked.

“Lady Seymour, perhaps you would be kind enough to join me?”

Seymour, hiding in the corner as usual, can’t conceal her shock.

“Me?”

“Certainly. It’s the least I can do for Queen Aragon’s gift. I hear you’ve been injured lately. Perhaps the waters of the font can help.”

Seymour flinches. “Thank you. I’m honoured.”

George whispers, “Behave, Boleyn. Don’t tease her too much.”

“Why? Do you think she’s too fragile to handle it?”

Mary catches up with her as she changes into her travelling clothes.

“What are you playing at, sister?” she says, throwing herself onto the bed.

“Get off my bed. We’re not children any more,” Boleyn says, throwing her muffler at her and rather undermining her point. Mary flounces over to the window seat instead.

“Well? I know you don’t want to spend time with her.”

“Nonsense. I’m enjoying discovering her hidden depths.”

Mary snorts.

Seymour barely speaks on the journey, barely even looks at Boleyn, although she answers her questions politely enough. Boleyn can’t make her out at all. There must be thoughts happening in that unremarkable head, but what sort?

They stop at the market in Pilvreen to purchase two bone mugs of perry, warm and frothed and sprinkled with nutmeg. As they sip their drinks, Oswyn approaches the carriage.

“Is all well, Master Oswyn?” she asks the top of his bowed head.

“Oh yes,” he replies. He darts a look at Seymour, and Boleyn shakes her head infinitesimally. They cannot speak freely.

“My workers think they’ve found… what you were looking for. They’re trying to break through to it, but the rock’s putting up a fight.”

She passes him a gold coin, aware of Seymour watching the exchange. It would not do for Seymour to catch wind of any hidden chambers in the mines, especially not chambers that may hold the secret to fortifying Henry’s divine magic, if she has deciphered Bishop More’s old book correctly.

“The eternal quest for more garnets,” she tells her companion as the carriage drives on. Seymour nods, pacified.

At some point Boleyn must doze, because a particularly sharp jolt from the carriage flings her from dreams of crystal, eyes wide awake to a landscape of rock and heather.

They must have passed through the Holtwode already and left the scrind road.

This must be the slow, sloping path up into the mountains.

There are shouts from above and the guard outside the window draws his weapon.

“What is it?” she asks Seymour.

Seymour is tense.

“A crone,” she says, and points out a distant silhouette.

Far above them, a tall, spindled figure makes its way across the ridge of the mountainside.

Boleyn shivers, despite her many layers.

There’s something about crones that elicits the same reaction in her as spiders do in others.

The way the front legs are so much longer than the back, the protrusion of the empty udders, just behind the front legs, and the long, lank hair of the beast’s head that is a mockery of a lady’s.

Then she sees that this crone has something in its mouth.

“What is that?” Seymour asks.

The guards don’t answer. A moment later, Boleyn understands why. The creature is holding a human arm, severed at the shoulder.

“Should we kill it, Your Majesty?” the guard says.

Boleyn considers the figure. Either it hasn’t seen them or it is sated for now. Seymour’s knuckles are clenched on the window as she waits for her mistress’s verdict. It’s almost enough for Boleyn to say yes . But to fight a crone would likely end in at least one of their group dying.

“No, leave it alone as long as it doesn’t follow us.”

“Very good, Your Majesty.”

The guard doesn’t try to disguise his relief.

The carriage winds up and up a corkscrew road.

As the hours tick on, the soft heather transforms into ashy soil.

The sun is low in a sky of ombre oranges and pinks when they finally come within sight of the Font of Cernunnos.

It’s uglier than Boleyn had imagined, not in keeping with the other royal estates, which are either elegant or impressive.

The building that houses the font is squat, dwarfed by the mountain it sits atop.

Long fingers of blackened lava streak down the rock, incongruous in the rest of Elben’s landscape.

The air is unnaturally cold here, too, and the road turns icy.

Once or twice the horses slip on the smooth surface, and the carriage topples alarmingly.

They stop for the grooms to attach ice shoes to the horses’ hooves, and then they’re off again, climbing more steadily now to the very top of the mountain.

The font is made of the same ice and lava that runs down the hillside: hewn into bricks and laid in alternating patterns to create zigzags and diagonals of ivory and charcoal.

The path from the carriage is so slippery that the grooms create a makeshift palanquin to carry first Boleyn and then Seymour into the safety of the building, where the floor is rough lava.