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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Seymour

T he tide is out when Seymour returns to Hyde. The palace is displayed like a woman reclining in bed, the blanket of the ocean discarded at her feet. Clarice sits opposite her in the carriage as she leans out of the window to drink in the sight of home.

“It’s more peaceful than Brynd, that’s for certain.”

“Indeed, Clarice. Indeed.”

Seymour’s love for Boleyn remains, but they are on different paths now: Boleyn is a mother, a rebel, a leader.

Seymour is an eternal lost soul, lurching from one reckoning to another.

Boleyn’s pity for Seymour stretches. Seymour’s love for Boleyn bends.

But Seymour fears that there will come a point when the two must snap.

Her household is gathered in the courtyard when the carriage makes its way over the drawbridge and comes to a halt. Three long rows of them, every one wearing the livery of Seymour’s queenship – a yellow sun against a bright blue sky.

“We trust you had a good journey, Your Majesty,” her steward says, helping her down.

“Is everything in order?” she asks.

“Oh yes. Lord Edward has been most easy-going. We are almost run out of his favourite wine, though.”

The steward doesn’t look at Seymour as he speaks. She made sure to drug several bottles before she left for Brynd, giving her household strict instructions that only that wine should be served to her brother.

“We should order more directly,” she says, not glancing at him either, lest their mutual knowledge, never explicitly shared, become apparent.

The steward keeps hold of her hand as they go into the vestibule.

She wonders why he is being so attentive, until she notices the way the rest of the household are acting around her.

No task is too small for them. Their eyes constantly flick to her stomach.

News of a possible heir spreads quicker than fire in Elben.

Even though Boleyn will still be at High Hall for Elizabeth’s blessing, Seymour goes to her room before luncheon anyway. The sunscína is there on her wall, innocuous next to the other glass panes. But even if Boleyn or Queen Howard were waiting to speak to her, she wishes to be alone.

She divests herself of her travelling cloak and boots and sits on the edge of her bed. Affixed to her belt is a little bag next to her pomander. She pulls it open, and stares at the contents.

It was easy enough for her to retrieve the envelope hidden in her old room at Brynd before she left. The leaves inside are brittle now, but just as effective. Imbibed, they are deadly, but they have other uses too. Princess Tudor told her as much, many months ago.

Seymour empties a silver trinket box and breaks the leaves into it, covering them with some ale from the jug left on her table.

She pulls on an old pair of gloves and uses her fingers to mash the leaves into the ale until all that is left in the box is a grey-green paste that has the woody scent of orris root.

“Are you certain?” Boleyn had said. “I can help you get to Capetia. You could have the baby there.”

She was holding Elizabeth when she said it, and Seymour couldn’t tell her how forcefully she did not want this thing inside her. So she only shook her head, tight-lipped, and Boleyn had sighed and nodded.

Seymour pushes a dresser against the door, to prevent any unexpected entrances.

Undressing herself is a pain, but eventually she manages it through a series of contortions.

She sometimes wonders whether the way in which noblewomen are raised is designed to make them too incompetent to ever be able to survive alone.

With her stomacher discarded on the floor, Seymour raises her smock and runs a hand over her stomach.

There’s no bump yet, but the skin is hard instead of its usual yielding softness.

She asks herself one final time if she is ready.

She imagines what it would be like to spend the next eight months sick and encumbered.

She tries to imagine giving the child the same love and care that Boleyn gives to Elizabeth.

She thinks she could do it, but it would cost her.

Even if she did escape Elben and the king’s clutches, what kind of life would she be able to give the child?

They would both be dependent on the kindness of strangers in a foreign land.

Whichever way Seymour turns, she knows that the child would become a political pawn, just as she has been her brothers’ pawn.

And if she left the child behind, to remain with the king – could she live with that guilt?

Her mind cannot touch upon the act of birth itself; the true reason she is doing this.

The memories of what labour did to her mother are too deeply rooted.

She thinks of that painful fever that overtook her mother in her final hours, and she thinks, That would be me .

If she has this child, she will not survive.

She knows it, as sure as she knows the taste of strawberries and the sound of the citole’s plucked strings.

Either the baby grows, or Seymour survives, and she has ever been a survivor.

This is what is right for her, she has no doubt about that. She now only wonders whether she has the courage for everything that will come afterwards.

“It will be worth it,” she mutters to herself. To have this child would mean her death. And her life is important.

Seymour presses a hand to her chest, shocked. That’s the first time she’s ever thought that. Her life. Important. Even if only to her and no one else.

She takes a fingerful of the paste from the trinket box and rubs it across her stomach.

The rash rises almost immediately, a messy patch of hives developing long before she has finished covering the area over her womb.

Disposing of the remaining paste is harder.

She tears one of her stockings, stuffing the foot with the trinket box to try to mask the smell, winding the fabric around and around until it’s a ball.

By the time she has hidden the ball in one of her trunks, the hives are almost as painful as the Queen’s Kiss had been when it flayed her hands.

She paces the room, holding the fabric of her shift away from her stomach so as not to irritate the area further.

She tries to busy her hands with a book, with needlework, but nothing can take her mind off the fire working its way into her stomach.

Eventually, she curls up on her bed and pushes her hands deep beneath her pillows to stop herself from rubbing the hives raw.

In the oblivion that follows, she fixes her eyes on the view outside her window.

Glittering fish flit past in shoals. She has eaten such fish – small and unremarkable on the plate.

But in their natural habitat, and in such great numbers, they are mesmerising.

The shoals give way to small sharks, and then seals that move far more gracefully through the water than they do on the coastal rocks above.

She’s woken from her daze by a knock on the door.

“Your Majesty?” Clarice says. “The king is here.”

Seymour sits up, her hands flying to her face, her wild hair.

“The king?” she says. She must have misheard them.

“Yes, my lady. He wants to see you.”

Clarice tries to open the door, but the dresser is blocking it.

“Wait,” Seymour calls. “Wait one moment.”

She runs aimlessly around her chamber, unsure what to do. She isn’t yet ready for the performance she must give.

“Is something wrong?” Clarice says, more quietly. “Can I help?”

“No, no.” Seymour stops and presses her hands against the dome of glass. One breath. Two. Think, stupid girl. Think .

She goes to the trunk where she has hidden the leaves and finds a lock to secure it shut. Then she gathers her gown and pulls it roughly around herself, grimacing as it presses against her stomach. At last, she pulls the dresser away from the door and admits Clarice.

“Finish dressing me,” she says. Clarice eyes the moved furniture but does as they’re told.

“Leave the gown a little looser,” she says, and Clarice silently obeys. Seymour closes her eyes, steeling herself for what comes next.

Are you prepared? Boleyn had asked her. He must believe you want this baby so much. When you lose it, he must believe you’re devastated. It’s treason, what you’re going to do, sister.

Seymour knows the blueprints of the Tower at High Hall by heart. She knows exactly what horrors her ancestor designed there. If she has any power in this world, she will never set foot in that cursed place, not for anything, or anyone.

Seymour leaves her room dressed in a demure, simple gown of deepest blue, her square hood pushed forward in the Quistoan style, so that only a hint of her hair is visible. She holds her hands clenched over her stomach.

The king is waiting just along the gallery, in Seymour’s privy chamber.

His hair is mussed and his skin pink from the long, fast horse ride.

He’s been served refreshments, but they remain untouched, and he remains standing.

Seymour girds herself, pastes on a smile even as her nails long to scratch and scratch at her stomach.

“My love! I did not think to have the pleasure of your company so soon,” she says.

He strides over to her, dismissing Clarice and the other servants with a look.

“How are you? Are you well?”

“I am very well,” she says, hoping to convey quiet satisfaction.

He licks his lips, his eyes darting to her stomach.

“I thought you might have come to High Hall on your way back to Hyde,” he says.

“I did not wish to interrupt the blessing. You must be so proud, Henry.”

He flicks his wrist at her and strides to the other side of the room, looking out of one of the windows to the sea beyond. Seymour forces herself to follow him.

“Have I said something to anger you, my lord?”

He looks at her, the light through the water playing over his face, mixing strangely with the divine magic. Her divine magic.

“I love Boleyn, I do. And I love Elizabeth already. She’s a bonnie little thing. But she cannot claim my throne, Seymour. She cannot keep Elben safe. I was so sure Boleyn would give me a son. So sure.”

Seymour rubs his back gently. “It has been very hard for you.”

“But why is it so hard?” he whispers, hands pressed against the glass. “My father was not as deserving as me. He did little to further the glory of Cernunnos. And yet he had two sons.”

He turns and grips Seymour’s arms. “I have heard things about you, though. Tell me, Seymour. Make me happy.”

She beams at him, unclasping his fingers and pulling them down to her belly.

His hand there, pressing into her stomach, nearly makes her cry out in agony.

His tortured expression vanishes in an instant.

“I knew it would be you,” he says. He picks her up as though she were no heavier than a child, spinning and kissing her. She laughs and laughs with him.

“Our son, Henry. Your heir.”

He puts her down and drops to his knees, kissing her stomach.

She wants to take his hair in her hands and tear at it.

She could do it, she could scalp him, shove him through the window into the sea and hold him there until not even he could survive.

Oh, if he could hear her thoughts, he would snap her neck.

“Ah!” she cries.

“What is it?” He’s on his feet again.

“I’m sorry, my love. I… I’m not feeling well.”

“The baby?”

“I don’t know.”

She does know, though. The leaves have, at last, worked their way through the layers of muscle and fat and into her womb. The thing that was growing there has been uprooted.

Henry carries her back to her rooms, whispering reassurances.

She clings to him as though he were her saviour, not her gaoler.

In her chamber, he calls for a physician and demands hot towels be brought for her stomach and a bucket of perfumed water for her feet.

The physician places a poultice on her forehead, and when told that she is pregnant, asks to examine her.

“Of course,” the king says immediately. “Do whatever is necessary.”

And so Seymour is compelled to remove her gown. She insists on keeping her shift – she is after all a modest woman. Her hand is pressed at all times to her stomach, a sign of her concern and maternal nature.

“I’m sure I’ll feel better with a little rest,” she whispers.

The king drapes a hand over hers, and Seymour almost pities him.

What he wants from her is already gone. The physician rises from his examination, his face taut with terror.

Seymour watches him through half-closed eyes.

Will he tell the king, or will he flee and let her give him the news some days later?

Henry does not need to be told. He stares at the physician’s hands, which are coated in blood.

“No,” Seymour whispers, half acting grief, half truly frightened, not by the blood but by her husband’s presence.

She has seen many men overcome by their inadequacies in her time, but never one such as Henry.

She has felt the strength in his arms. She knows what he is capable of, if he were to lose control.

It’s why she came to Hyde to do it – she did not think he would follow her here so soon.

She had hoped to deliver the news by letter, so that he would vent his rage elsewhere.

He turns away from her, rubbing his forehead. Then he spots the holy antlers affixed to the wall, their golden trim fading. He stares up at them, lost.

“What more must I do?” he asks them, and she realises that he’s addressing Cernunnos. “What more can I do?”

If Cernunnos answers, it is to Henry alone.