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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Seymour

S omething’s very wrong. Seymour realises it on the journey to Brynd, as the fenlands of her home morph into woodland and then thick forest. She tells the driver to ride as far and as fast as he can on the remains of a ruined scrind road that once followed the coastal path, so eager is she to reach Boleyn.

They travel through the night, but by midnight, once the old scrind magic has worn out and they are moving more slowly, she realises her mistake.

“Stop the carriage!” Seymour calls out, hammering on the door.

“What’s the matter?” Clarice asks, woken from their doze. Seymour can only shake her head as the groomsman opens the door and she stumbles out into frostbitten dark, finally releasing a torrent of vomit onto the edge of the path.

No one says anything, they just quietly offer their mistress water and bread. Clarice brings a cloth to clean her mouth. They have to make two more stops for Seymour to bring up the remainder of her dinner, and by the third time, they all know what this might mean.

“It must be something I ate,” Seymour explains weakly, but she has no doubt that by the time they reach Brynd, the king will have been informed of her condition, even on his warship heading for the ice-ridden islands of Thawodest. He’ll be thrilled.

A second pregnancy. The possibility of a new heir.

A confirmation of his virility, after only one girl child to show for so many years of trying.

Seymour should be returning her servants’ secret smiles of congratulation.

She should be joking weakly about cravings.

Clarice sits next to Seymour in the carriage, holding a dampened towel against her forehead.

All Seymour sees is her mother, lying clammy on her birthing bed.

All she hears is her shallow, birdlike breaths.

The inevitable, terrible enacting of balance: life produced; life taken.

By the time the carriage trundles past the port of Garclyffe, the sun has risen and the sound of wind-buffeted seagulls echoes clear and shrill across the cliffs.

From Garclyffe, the road curves away from the coast and towards Pilvreen instead of leading directly to Brynd.

A little further on the forest recedes and they come to a crossroads.

Ahead: the road to her old home at Daven.

To the left: Pilvreen. And to the right: Brynd.

“I think someone’s coming this way,” Clarice says, craning their head out of the carriage, one arm still pressing the cloth to Seymour’s forehead.

Seymour pushes Clarice’s arm away and looks out too, relishing the wind’s bite.

Two figures are approaching down the road from Brynd, both on horseback, a silver dragon frisking in the air above them.

There is no mistaking the figure who rides in front, even from this distance.

“Boleyn,” Seymour whispers, smiling for the first time in hours.

Boleyn is wearing a green, feathered cap and velvet riding gown, and uses one hand to guide her mare while the other clasps her stomach. Behind her, the stewardess of Brynd sits astride a palfrey.

“Sister!” Seymour shouts, then must swallow another wave of nausea.

Boleyn doesn’t reply until she reaches them. There is a brittleness to her smile that Seymour can’t read.

“Sister! We did not expect you until later today,” Boleyn says.

“We drove through the night,” Seymour says.

“Then you must go on to Brynd and rest immediately, so that we can celebrate your visit tonight.”

“Where are you going?” Seymour asks her, ignoring the mention of celebrations. Boleyn cannot know it, but Seymour has nothing to celebrate.

“The miners at Pilvreen have broken through to a new cave,” Boleyn says. “The foreman wants me to see what they have discovered.”

“And you must go now?”

“I must.” Boleyn’s gaze is intense, as though she wants to convey some hidden importance. Seymour bites her lip. The thought of a comfortable bed and the heartwood fires of Brynd is tempting, but…

“May I accompany you?” she asks. Boleyn hesitates, deciding whether Seymour is worthy of whatever secret this cave is harbouring.

“Certainly,” Boleyn says at last.

A horse is brought for Seymour from the rear of her retinue; a gelding that is fresher than those who’ve been pulling the carriages. Seymour climbs into the saddle slowly, stiff after the night spent in the carriage.

“Come, then,” Boleyn calls. “Let us see if we can reach the mines before luncheon.”

As they ride, Seymour’s head clears a little, the fresh air whisking away her tiredness and nausea.

Boleyn talks of everything and nothing all the way through Pilvreen: her plans for the Moon Ball, her observations on the Palace of Plythe, the preparations she is making for the baby.

It is only when they reach the other side of the town and the jarring sound of metal on rock greets them, that two things occur to Seymour: Boleyn has neither asked her about herself, nor has she said a single thing of substance.

Seymour supposes she cannot speak freely in front of the stewardess.

The first shaft opening of the mines is just inside the forest’s perimeter, set between two natural rocks that look like pillars. The opening is narrow. The only things stopping it from being impossibly claustrophobic are the lamps burning inside the entrance.

“How often do you visit?” Seymour asks Boleyn as they dismount. Boleyn pauses as she reaches the ground, closing her eyes, hinged over. Before anyone can ask her if she’s all right, she replies:

“Not as often as I would like. Shall we go in? My stewardess here will look after the horses.”

Syndony waits in the clearing with the dragon Urial while Boleyn and Seymour pick their way across tree roots and stray rocks. The foreman – Oswyn, Boleyn calls him – looks between them with wide eyes. He had not bargained for two queens.

“Don’t worry about Queen Seymour, she’s perfectly capable,” Boleyn says, smiling back at her. “Shall we?”

She ducks inside the entrance, darting more quickly along the shaft than should be possible for a woman so pregnant.

Seymour follows her rather more cautiously.

Inside, candles set haphazardly into the walls light a slim passageway that leads deep into the rock.

Tree roots emerge like snakes from the compacted soil.

As they move deeper into the mine, Seymour can feel the weight of the earth bearing down on her. The sound of hammers and chisels reverberate around the passageway. Sometimes the rock groans beneath the onslaught of the miners’ tools.

“How much further is it?” Seymour asks.

“This way,” Oswyn says, pointing towards an opening she hadn’t spotted.

The crevice is so narrow Seymour tears her gown getting through it.

She bites back an exclamation – it’s not Oswyn she wants to shout at, it’s Boleyn.

What is she doing? How does she think this is appropriate for a queen?

But Boleyn doesn’t look back. Seymour wonders if she ever has.

At last, when even lamplight can’t penetrate far through the darkness, Oswyn stops at a fissure of freshly tumbled rock and says, “It’s through here, Your Majesties.”

“Thank you, Oswyn, you can give me the torch now,” Boleyn says.

“Are you not coming with us?” Seymour asks.

Oswyn shakes his head. Seymour notices the way his hands jerk upwards and then down again, as though he were about to make a sign – a superstition, or the sign of Cernunnos, perhaps – and then caught himself.

“I… can’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“When my men and I tried to pass through, something stopped us. I don’t think the caves through there are meant for the likes of me,” is all he says.

Intrigued, Seymour peers through the opening. Boleyn is standing in the middle of a cavern. Her torch glances off a craggy, crystal ceiling. She entered without any problem. But then again, Seymour can’t imagine even the most magical of doorways saying no to Boleyn.

“Come, sister.” Her voice echoes strangely in the space.

Seymour squeezes through the fissure, and the sudden smell of fish almost makes her vomit again.

As her eyes adjust to the darkness, she realises that Boleyn’s torch is not the only source of light.

The midnight recedes in the far corner of the cavern – the pall of daylight.

She can’t understand why Oswyn had such trouble entering. It is a cave, as dank as any other.

“We must be beneath Brynd’s estate, by the sea,” Boleyn says.

Seymour nearly slips on the cave floor as she joins Boleyn in the centre. The mine shaft was as dry as a long summer, but here everything is covered in a wet sheen.

Boleyn moves away from Seymour, taking the torch with her towards one of the walls.

“No garnets, as far as I can tell,” she mutters.

Seymour tries to follow her and slips again. “Boleyn, stop, I can’t see.”

Boleyn sighs and returns to Seymour’s side, hooking an arm into Seymour’s elbow.

“That I should be the one supporting you, Seymour,” she says, with a crooked smile. Seymour doesn’t humour her with a laugh. It was a mistake to join Boleyn on this journey. She should have simply met her back at Brynd.

“Ahhh.” Boleyn doubles over, bracing herself against the wall.

Seymour hovers beside her, taking the torch. “What is it? What’s happening?”

“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

Seymour places a hand on top of Boleyn’s, over the marble swell of her stomach, trying to ignore the knowledge that in less than a year her own stomach will be as round, as alien as this. “Look at me, Boleyn.”

For the first time, Boleyn obeys her. “What are we doing here?” Seymour asks.

Boleyn closes her eyes. The torchlight picks out the sweat on her forehead.

“I was going to be such a good queen, Seymour,” she says at last.

“You are a good queen.”

Boleyn shakes her head. “My people despise me. My body is failing.” Her voice grows shakier. “Henry hasn’t visited me in such a long time.”