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CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Seymour

B y the time the campaign against Alpich is over and the king returns to Hyde, Seymour has perfected her drugging process.

Her brother offers the perfect subject for her tests.

It shocks her how little he notices. Perhaps Edward isn’t as clever as she always believed.

Maybe his aggression isn’t a price she has to pay for his guidance.

Sedating Edward makes life at Hyde enjoyable when he is visiting.

He no longer has the energy to storm around the palace, demanding the impossible, striking Seymour and her servants.

She doesn’t need to lock Haltrasc away for fear that Edward will punish the panther for biting him.

Instead, she spends long mornings in the Selkie’s Pool, sometimes daydreaming, sometimes attempting to swim with Clarice’s guidance.

This is the life she envisioned for herself when the possibility of becoming queen presented itself: cocooned.

But a butterfly cannot stay encased for ever.

When the king visits again, Seymour is ready for him.

She knows, as soon as he leaps from his charger’s back, that something is wrong.

His usually open face is clouded. His kiss is forceful.

It makes Seymour step back inadvertently. He notices, and his mood sours further.

“You’ve no need to be such a blushing maiden with me now,” he says, stomping into Hyde, into Seymour’s haven, reminding her that it is only borrowed, and when he is here it is not truly hers.

She does everything right. Everything her upbringing – long, tedious hours learning how to be the perfectly submissive wife – taught her to do.

She asks him questions about himself. She empathises with him when he talks darkly about Alpich’s refusal to surrender, how he cannot raise enough fighting men to go to Thawodest as planned, how the bordweal is so weak on the north-east coast that a boat carrying soldiers from Pkolack managed to break through and sail up the Mearcdyke.

She tells him that she has no doubt his strength will overcome all.

She strokes his arm and picks out the juiciest morsels of quail from her own plate to feed to him, and when the meal is over she asks him if she may sit in his lap.

And she fills his glass with wine and toasts him.

None of it lifts him out of the sulk. He barely eats anything, and to Seymour’s dismay he only takes a sip of his drugged wine.

Instead, he glowers over the assembled banqueters until the hall falls into hushed whispers and anxious glances.

Before dinner is ended, he stands and announces that he is retiring to his room.

Seymour tarries at the top table, smiling at her courtiers and nibbling at her food.

She knows he didn’t drink enough. He will not be asleep.

He will be waiting for her. She has never seen him in this mood before.

She takes a spoonful of her jelly, and her hand shakes so hard that it falls to the floor. She stares at the mess, immobile.

“I’ll take care of it,” Clarice says, kneeling with a cloth at the ready. As they rise, they grip Seymour’s wrist under the table, stilling the shaking.

“Your glass is empty,” they say. “Shall I fill it for you?”

Clarice unstoppers the wine, the question in their eyes.

Seymour has never outright told Clarice what she has been doing, but Clarice is sharp.

They will have connected the change in Edward’s behaviour with the wine Seymour reserves only for him.

It’s tempting to welcome the loss of control.

To willingly put herself to sleep. She knows what is about to happen.

She does not need to be awake to endure it.

Yet to do so would be to return to the woman she once was.

The woman who accepted but did not strive.

She shakes her head.

In her bedchamber, she allows the maids to undress her, slip a night shift over her head and braid her hair. Almost as soon as the maids leave the room and she clambers into bed, she hears the king’s voice outside the door.

She pretends to be asleep as he enters, although it seems impossible that he should not hear the knock of her heartbeat.

“Are you awake?” he says roughly, his weight landing heavily beside her.

He puts a hand on her waist and pulls her towards him.

She pretends to wake as he kisses her. The very candles seem to flicker in fear of him, and she knows that she must put on the most cunning mask, the most particular lie, for this night.

“Oh, Henry,” she murmurs. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Do you love me?” he asks. Seymour wishes she still had her dinner knife with her. She would happily stab him in this moment. He doesn’t get to be vulnerable. He doesn’t warrant pity.

“Of course, my darling,” she says.

“Do you want me?”

She kisses him hard in reply.

“I am a good king. A good husband. It’s all worth it.”

She doesn’t think he’s really talking to her, but she says, “You are the best husband. The best king.”

His hand snakes downwards and she closes her eyes. Think of her. Think of her glorious black hair. Of her long, dextrous fingers.

“Look at me. You never look at me.”

Slowly, Seymour does as he says, locking eyes with him as he goes to work on her. She is the perfect wife, and the perfect wife knows what can happen when a man feels rejected by the woman who’s supposed to love him.

He stays in her bed all night, mounting her when the mood takes him, then rises early to hunt wildfowl in the marshes. When Clarice comes to wake her, Seymour is sitting up in bed already, her knees drawn to her chest.

“I don’t want to go swimming today,” she tells Clarice.

“No,” Clarice says. “I’m here to pour you a bath instead.”

In silence, they pull a tub into the room and fill it with jug after jug of warm water. When it is ready, they produce two vials from their pocket and pour a trail of oil from each into the bath.

“Cloves, for healing,” they explain. “And frankincense, for heartache.”

Clarice helps Seymour into the water. “Would you like me to stay with you?” they ask.

“Yes, but I don’t want to speak,” Seymour says.

So Clarice tells Seymour tales from their homeland.

Of their family, that spends every summer on the high seas, then returns to their island in Feorwa for winter.

Their trade is in knowledge, which – if it is the right knowledge – can be more valuable than any gemstone.

Clarice tells Seymour of the traditions of Feorwa – the hadas ceremony, where those ready to do so choose whether they wish to be man, woman, or neither.

Seymour has heard these tales before. Their familiarity comforts her.

Eventually, Clarice lapses into silence, their tales spent.

“I miss you, Clarice,” Seymour says, her eyes closed. The long years stretch between them – the bright friendship of their childhood, the intimacy of their youthful years and then the cool civility of the last decade. Clarice says nothing.

“What did I do?” Seymour says.

“Nothing, my lady.”

“Please tell me.” Seymour has wracked her memory for the deed that pushed Clarice away. She’s certain that it was something she did, but she’s too dull to understand what it was.

“Would you like one last story?” Clarice asks. Seymour nods.

“There was once a lady, very sweet she was, and very young. Her father got her a servant. He didn’t mean for it to happen, but the young lady and the young servant soon became fast friends, on account of the lady being a lonely type, still grieving her mother’s death, and the servant being sick for their homeland. ”

Seymour opens her eyes. Clarice is watching her.

“The servant thought that nothing could ever come between them. They knew how lucky they were to have happened upon a lady who treated them as an equal. They loved that young lady, as a friend, as a lover, as a spouse. They would do anything for her. But then one summer’s day, something happened.”

Clarice pauses. Seymour touches their hand. “What happened to the lady and the servant, Clarice?”

“Nothing of significance,” Clarice says, turning their hand over so that Seymour’s rests in their palm.

Seymour likes the feel of the calloused skin.

It speaks of purpose. “The two of them were picnicking on the lawn. It was bright outside, and hot, and they kept squinting because of the sun. The lady told the servant to fetch a parasol.”

Seymour cannot remember this moment at all, although she remembers that it was summer when Clarice grew distant and broke off their intimacies.

Doesn’t that illustrate Clarice’s point perfectly?

Her inability to have noticed that she was altering her only friend’s entire perception of their relationship?

Clarice continues. “The servant did as they were told. They went to fetch the lady a parasol, and they smiled and they carried on talking. But inside, they understood.”

“Understood what?”

“That the lady was just that. A lady. And they were a servant. And pretending to be equals from time to time wouldn’t change that. It would only bring them heartache.”

Seymour sits up in the bath. “What could the lady do, to make it all go back to how it was?”

Clarice puffs out a breath, their smile pinched. “This is the way it has to be between them. There is no going back.”

Seymour lies back in the bath. Her tears now are not just for last night. They are for all her prideful mistakes, all the ways she has steered her ship into stormier waters through her refusal to take the wheel, through her own blind acceptance.

Well, her eyes are open now.