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CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Boleyn

H igh Hall seethes. In the kitchens and servants’ quarters on the lowest floor, the pantries overflow with freshly butchered meat.

The smell of cream in the buttery is intoxicating, and the cellars are nearly emptied of wine and ale.

Every minor nobility from across Elben, the Feorwa Isles and the Archipelago of Idesa congregates each morning in the great banqueting room, having ridden in from the inns and houses of the nearby towns.

They are fed in a constant loop of sittings.

On the third floor, Boleyn’s rooms are festooned with fresh flowers and the tiniest dragon lanterns, imported from the breeding parlours of Perfugi.

Every wall is lined with gifts for Princess Elizabeth.

The other queens vacate their rooms, giving them over to the more important officials and courtiers.

Their ceilings shudder with the footsteps of the advisors and ambassadors meeting on the floor above.

Already, envoys jostle to brook engagements between the royal babe and their king, or their king’s son, and if they cannot secure an engagement, then perhaps an advantageous trade deal.

The sanctuary, near the top of High Hall, and Henry’s chambers at the very apex, offer the only tranquillity in the whole palace. One gives the calm of holy reverence, Cernunnos’s golden antlers decorated in the green of Queen Boleyn’s house. The other, the silence of its occupant’s displeasure.

In the grounds of High Hall, bowers and tents of golden cloth are erected, and the tiltyard’s viewing towers are decked with cushions and blankets to stave off the spring chill.

The royal stables burst with horses, and the managed wilderness that blocks the Tower from the view of Queen Howard’s rooms is given over to their grazing.

Boleyn tries to enjoy it. There has not been a royal blessing for nine years, when the king’s only son, the late Prince Henry, was born.

The celebrations for Elizabeth are nearly as grand, or so Boleyn is told.

She does not think, when she surveys the preparations outside, about the fact that the jousting tournament is only a day instead of the three originally planned.

She does not think, when she examines the gifts, that the hunting dragon Henry promised on the birth of their child is not among them, or that he has not yet come down from his chambers to see their daughter.

She definitely does not think, when night falls and the palace is quiet at last, about Howard or Seymour or what she saw in that cavern, and what it means for her and her daughter.

She has forged, with her will and courage and womb, the perfect life for herself.

A kingly husband she loves, a castle she is mistress of, a baby who is her whole world, an education any scholar would be envious of.

To think on what he did to Seymour, on those sleeping queens, to test whether Henry knows the truth, would mean she might have to destroy her carefully fashioned fantasy.

She is happy. She is complete. As long as she does not think.

“The king is going to come to the blessing, isn’t he?

” Mary says, the night before the celebrations.

Their parents have gone to bed already, and the rest of them are lazing in the parlour in Boleyn’s chambers, shoes discarded and feet pushed towards the fire, Mary and Boleyn on chairs, Rochford and George curled around each other on a long chair.

In the corner of the room, Mark dozes over a book, and Wyatt scribbles furiously, his back to them.

He is another thing Boleyn doesn’t think about.

“Of course he will. He’s been meeting foreign dignitaries.”

“Hasn’t he been back from Thawodest for a week?” George asks her.

“There was infection on his ship. He didn’t want to put Elizabeth at risk,” Boleyn says.

“You mustn’t worry. A boy will follow,” Rochford says.

“I’m not worried.” Boleyn feels her lips narrow to a line.

“Don’t snap at her,” George says.

“Enough,” Mary says loudly, as Boleyn opens her mouth to retort. Mark starts awake, his book dropping to the floor with a slap. Mary looks round at them all. “We are a family. We do not argue.”

“I’m not family,” Wyatt pipes up from the corner.

“You are a stray my sister took pity on,” Mary says. “The rest of us are Boleyns, either by birth or by marriage. We are one. Cynn ae hredsigor , remember?”

George repeats the motto. Boleyn does not. Mark wanders over to them, studying Boleyn.

“You have lost your joy,” he remarks.

“I’m still tired from the pregnancy, that’s all,” Boleyn says with a flick of her wrist.

“No. You’re different since you gave birth,” Rochford says quietly.

“She’s a mother now,” Mary says, rubbing Boleyn’s arm.

“What happened in those caves?” Rochford asks. The room is very still. Even Wyatt has paused his writing. The firelight flickers across Boleyn’s face, as though she and it are conversing.

“I will tell you. Not here though.”

She is thinking of the ears of High Hall. The way anything spoken here seems to wind its way back to Henry. Besides, Rochford has been a little too curious for her liking of late.

They go to their rooms soon afterwards. Boleyn’s maid helps her out of her gown and into her night shift, looking away from the linen bandage secured around her ribs.

She massages her breasts, which are still swollen with milk that will never be drunk.

The maid brings a pot of cream that Boleyn rubs into her stomach.

She doesn’t look in the mirror. The body she would see there isn’t yet hers.

Her body is taut and light and supple. The puffy sack she inhabits now is someone else’s.

When the maid leaves, Boleyn sits for a while by the window, looking out over the tiltyard, its flags of Boleyn green and royal purple fluttering like dreams in the moonlight.

She takes the cream and, now she’s alone, rubs it into a patch of skin on her arm that has started to itch.

She eases the bandage down over her ribs and examines the exposed grey flesh.

It is spreading. There is so much that she must not think about.

In the next room, Elizabeth stirs. Boleyn drops her shift and goes to the door that separates them, pressing her ear to the wood.

If Elizabeth wakes, she will go in there and quietly feed her.

It would be improper, but no one need know.

Her breasts prickle, making damp patches on her shift. She places a hand on the latch.

Elizabeth lets out a sharp little cry, but before Boleyn can slip into the room, the wet nurse stirs. Boleyn pulls away from the sounds of her daughter feeding. Well. It’s as it should be. Boleyn returns to her window seat, pulls a shawl around her shoulders and closes her eyes against the tears.

In the silence that follows, Boleyn becomes aware of a draught chilling her foot.

She picks up a cushion and moves slowly through her room, feeling for the source.

She finds it at the base of one of the wooden panels.

Frowning, she feels beneath the panel. Instead of brick or stone, there is a cavity.

All worry forgotten, Boleyn feels her way around the panel, until she finds a hidden pressure point.

The panel springs open. She holds a candle up – a narrow staircase, barely wide enough for a slim person, leads up.

Boleyn has heard that High Hall is riddled with such secret passageways, but has never seen one until now.

Boleyn follows it, her bare feet getting colder and colder as she rises.

At the top of the staircase there’s another door that leads out onto a slim space between crenelations and a window of one of the bedrooms. So this is a trysting passage, an old way for lovers to meet at night.

She wonders if her predecessor, Huntlye, used it at all.

She holds less judgement at the idea than she once might have.

The wind blows out her candle almost immediately, but she can still see by moonlight.

Boleyn goes first to the edge of the balcony, holding onto the parapets and leaning right over.

The grounds below seem to be waiting for her alone, the gentle smell of blossom wafting up to her.

She lets her fingers slip a little. A little more.

Someone taps on the window behind her. She scrambles back and whirls around.

Wyatt is standing on the other side of the glass, his arms braced on the window as though he was about to burst through it to catch her should she fall.

He is naked from the waist up, a scattering of dark hair across his chest that tapers down the muscles of his stomach and disappears beneath his hose.

Without thinking, Boleyn takes a step towards him.

Reassured that she is no longer in danger, Wyatt pushes back from the window and stands before her, letting her look her fill.

She looks, and she looks. She tells herself she is dreaming, not fully in control of herself, as she moves across the balcony and places one hand on the windowpane.

If the glass was not there, her hand would be upon his chest. They bear witness to each other for a moment, before Wyatt’s hand moves towards the latch securing the window shut.

It is as if someone has tossed her from a great height, waking her.

She snatches her hand away, then flees back down the staircase, stumbling in the pitch, throwing herself into her bed and pulling the covers over her trembling body.

She waits, half dread, half hope. Will he come to her? What will she do if he does? For a while, she thinks she hears the creak of floorboards above her chamber. But he does not come down, and she does not leave her bed again.