Page 27

Seymour’s final gift is from Queen Boleyn. She steps forward to hushed muttering from the other ambassadors. Her presence here is a scandal.

The two queens curtsey to each other from a respectable distance.

“Sister,” Boleyn says softly, “I offer you this gift, from one consort to another, wishing you friendship.”

She presents Seymour with a golden locket. It is simple but beautifully worked, matte, and in a shape that Boleyn could only have guessed Seymour would take as one of her emblems – a sun, its beams radiating out from every side. A direct contrast to her storm cloud.

“May I?” she asks, and Seymour nods, trying not to betray her desire as Boleyn steps behind her.

As she clasps the locket beneath the necklace of pearls Seymour is already wearing, Boleyn leans forward to whisper in Seymour’s ear.

“Inside is something for tonight. From a true friend, who wishes only for your happiness.”

Seymour runs a hand over the locket, wondering what it is she’s hidden inside the sun. She understands that she shouldn’t look while other people are present.

“Thank you, sister,” she says as loudly as her quivering voice will allow. “I will for ever treasure it, and your friendship.”

The ceremony itself is a blur. Henry is handsome and smiling, although his expression falters when he spots Boleyn among the guests.

Seymour has come to realise how much he needs to keep his queens in their own little boxes.

Boleyn is the feisty one, the smart one.

Aragon is the regal one. Howard the beauty.

Parr the healer. And Seymour? She has been chosen to be the steadfast queen, boring but pure.

A blank page, yielding, waiting for his words and his words alone to be written across her mind and body.

Her icons have been chosen to be as predictable as possible – the sun, for the easy happiness she promises Henry.

The ermine, for purity. And an iron carving of the feathered plume that forms the centre of her family’s crest. That one had been at Edward’s insistence.

Cernunnos forbid anyone should forget her kin.

Through it all – the melding, the vows, Seymour feels Boleyn’s sun pendant warm against her breastbone.

And her, her, always her, silent and statuesque, in the pews, a physical reminder of Seymour’s betrayal of the king and of herself, because all she wants is to run to Boleyn and bury her face in her gown, where her natural scent would be at its strongest.

“Unsupportable,” Henry says afterwards, when he has helped Seymour into the carriage that will take them on to Hyde. “She should not have been there. She’s gone too far.”

“I did not mind.”

“Well, I minded. Today is for you and me.”

“I’m sure she didn’t have any ill intent. She and I were friends before you and I fell in love.”

He consciously calms himself, although Seymour can tell he’s still fuming at Boleyn from the sharp crackle of the divine magic around his body. He makes an effort to smile at her.

“You look very pretty,” he says, and pats her knee as the carriage joins the scrind road, skirting the Hyfostelle mountains.

“You look… incredible, Henry,” she says, trying to sound breathless, as though she still can’t believe her luck that he’s noticed her, let alone married her.

“Are you nervous about tonight?” he says. “I remember my first time, with Aragon. I was shaking.”

Seymour has tried very hard not to think about what must happen when they arrive at Hyde, after she has bonded with the palace and after they have dined.

It is going to be the hardest and most terrible part of her plan.

Henry can never know that she doesn’t desire him, or he’ll be mortally offended, and she’ll be left vulnerable again.

She must lie as she’s never lied before.

“How could I ever be nervous when I am with you. You make me feel so safe.”

“I’ll be gentle,” he whispers, kissing her on the cheek. That’s something else he must never know – that she has already tasted and tested all kinds of bodies. He is not her first man.

Outside, the landscape changes from the rolling hills of the land around High Hall, to the lakes and marshes that lead to Hyde.

The road leads past endless tracts of water, dozens of hamlets dotted round their edges.

Children collect algae and seaweed, some for the pot, some to be dried and sold at market.

In the distance, Seymour spots the famous fairy farms of this territory.

Certain parts of the marshes are perfect breeding grounds for the rare creatures, but catching them is a fine art, and keeping them alive in captivity more difficult still.

The closer they get to Hyde, the fuller the roads are, and by the time they reach the stone pillars that mark the boundary of the palace estates, the roads are lined with people in their best clothing, all waving flags and shouting for the king and his new queen.

Children balance on their parents’ shoulders.

Hawkers sell crisp sweetbreads and biscuits with the letters “H” and “S” iced on them in rudimentary handwriting.

“This is all for us?” Seymour breaths, waving shyly from the window.

“For you,” Henry says. “They love you already.”

“They don’t know anything about me.”

“They know enough.”

Seymour understands. They are celebrating the blank page. The promise that she will be whatever each of them want her to be. God forbid she disappoints them.

The road winds along a raised trench. On either side, marshland stretches out to the sea.

Seymour leans out of her window, desperate to see the tower of Hyde.

There it is – a marble pillar shining silver in the dying sun.

It reaches straight upwards like the arm of a drowning man, the fire burning at its apex a constant warning to the ships looking for Hyde’s port of Bediglath, further up the coast: steer away, for beneath these waves there lies an entire palace.

The sun has almost set by the time the carriage draws up in the courtyard.

Hyde is, on the surface, less impressive than Daven or Brynd.

It lacks Daven’s warmth or Brynd’s authority.

On land, Hyde looks like any other homestead – rows of simple, tiled buildings that house the estate’s animals and, now, Haltrasc.

The only feature that marks it as a palace is the white marble lighthouse, proud on the skyline.

Beneath the waves, though, it is extraordinary.

The lighthouse has its foundations in a cave-like vestibule that rises out of the sea like an open maw.

Henry helps Seymour down from the carriage and leads her to the right of a door made of winding copper tendrils.

A gargoyle’s head protrudes from the stonework, its mouth open and its eyes suspicious, just like its sister in Brynd. The spirit stone of Hyde.

The king shows Seymour how to place her hand just so on the gargoyle’s head, and she welcomes the rush of companionship that fills her body, so different from the pain of her binding to the king in High Hall’s sanctuary.

As Seymour’s new household unpacks her belongings, she is shown around Hyde itself.

The palace has long been regarded as one of the marvels of the known world, the old magic that keeps its vast underwater rooms watertight unfathomable, even to Elben’s kings, who wield the power that made it.

Seymour has grown up proud to be part of a nation that contains such wonders, but to see it with her own eyes – more than that, to now live here as the mistress and keeper of such a place – is dizzying.

It is the kind of soul-lurching feeling she had when she first saw the bordweal, or when she felt her mother’s fever and understood she was going to die.

The upper vestibule, the only part of the palace that lies above sea level, is lit by hundreds of candles, even during the daytime, for the space only has a few windows on the courtyard side.

Leading from the vestibule are dozens of staircases that plunge into the rest of the palace, built against and beneath the might of the ocean.

It is a rabbit warren, but made of glass so that it never feels claustrophobic.

One staircase leads to the glass dome of Seymour’s private chambers – a gathering of smaller rooms set around her bedchamber; one leads to a modest banqueting hall hewn from the remnants of an underwater crater; a natural cylinder of rock with a man-made glass roof set over it to keep it watertight.

The remaining wings house guest suites, offices and rooms of state.

Every room has wide walls of glass that look out to the ocean – even the kitchen’s ovens watch over shoals of herring, while long pipes whisk the smoke into the open air, high above them.

Seymour knows that once she is alone, she will happily wander the corridors for days, simply watching the play of light through sea and glass, or the play of fish and seaweed just beyond her reach.

“It is nearly sunset,” Seymour’s steward says, once they have completed their tour.

Like the rest of Seymour’s household, he’s softly spoken, and moves like waves on a summer’s day.

His tanned skin speaks either of many a year spent on a ship, or a Quistoan or Uuvek heritage.

She cannot imagine how he or anyone here gets anything done.

Surely it is impossible to grow accustomed to the flickering strangeness of this palace.

“We should go to my chamber then,” Seymour says, hoping she sounds more even-keeled than she feels. She only has to endure a sennight, and then Henry must return to war and she will be blissfully alone.

They take a hurried dinner in Seymour’s receiving chambers, which are in a low-ceilinged room with a view of a crumbling, underwater wall – presumably the remnants of an older part of Hyde, or of a village lost to the sea.

A series of mirrors and crystals fractures candle and firelight across the walls and their faces.

Then Henry leads Seymour down into her bedchamber.

She can’t help herself – she stops at the doorway, her body screaming at her to run.

The chamber is full of people, nearly all of them men.

She recognises some of them – Wolsey, More, Cromwell.

Her brother is there too, so eager not to miss a moment of his family’s ascension that he galloped his horse ahead of the carriage.

“It’s all right,” Henry says gently, easily, like a trainer calming a horse. Seymour steps over the threshold.

This room is full of windows, all of them submerged.

Like most of Hyde, they look out onto shoals of small, darting fish and the eels that are a common cuisine in this part of Elben.

She focuses on the fish as she steps towards the four-poster bed.

Two maids, the only other women in the room, draw the curtains to hide her modesty.

Silently, they undress her shaking body.

Through the curtains, Seymour listens to Henry getting undressed, joking with his courtiers, with her brother.

She wonders how Aragon bore this kind of humiliation, but then she remembers that Henry was much younger when she and he were married.

According to him, he was as nervous as Aragon was.

Then her thoughts slip to Boleyn, and how she stomached it.

She probably got undressed outside the bed and made as many jokes as the men.

Seymour supposes she must at least be thankful that Henry’s advisors checked when her monthly course was due before arranging a wedding date.

The additional mortification of bleeding over her kingly husband in front of all these men would have been too humiliating to bear.

“Wait,” Seymour says, as one of the maids tries to unclasp the locket. “Would you mind giving me a moment?”

The maid steps away, and a moment later the other girl goes too, taking Seymour’s wedding gown with her. She is entirely naked now, except for the sun locket. Checking that no one’s watching, she unlocks it, careful not to spill the contents. Inside are three little pink pills, and a tiny note.

For enjoyment , the handwriting on the note reads. It’s Boleyn’s writing.

Without thinking, Seymour puts one of the pills on her tongue and downs it with a swig of the wine left on a table beside the bed. Then she unclasps the necklace and hides it beneath one of the pillows. She can’t risk Henry seeing it.

The effect is instantaneous. A pleasant fog fills her brain. Her shaking calms and her heartbeat slows. She is at the doorway to dreaming when Henry parts the curtains and climbs onto the bed. Through her fog, she admires his muscled stomach, the hair across his chest.

“Very pretty,” he says, running a hand down her body.

The divine magic flickers from his skin to hers, a cool balm.

She closes her eyes. He is not using her.

She is using him. It’s strange that it only occurs to her now, when Boleyn’s drug is coursing through her veins, but she is the one who’s been in control of this courtship, this wedding, all along.

She has been steering it. And she’s not going to secede control now, not tonight.

With a strength surprising to both Henry and her, Seymour pushes him back on the bed and climbs on top of him, to jeers and hoots.

She leans down and kisses him hard, slipping her hand beneath the pillow to retrieve Boleyn’s gift.

Then she rears back and closes her eyes again, the necklace hidden in her fist. She lowers herself onto him, and she thinks of her, her, her, her, her .