Page 46

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Seymour

S eymour dreams fitfully of spiders’ webs.

The dew-pricked threads seem so fragile at first. She winds herself inside them, unsure if she’s caught, cradled or cocooned.

It is easy to rest in their hold. To the simple mind, there is nowhere safer than a gaol.

But there is something in the cocoon with her.

A hulking shadow. It makes her remember things: her mother, closing her eyes as her twin babes are taken from her arms; Thomas’s stoic expression when their father beat him.

She finds that the web has tightened around her wrists and ankles, her neck.

Then it is no web at all, but hair, dark and shining as obsidian.

When she wakes from the fever, she thinks at first that she is still in that web. But no – she is swaddled in blankets and furs, and something is pinning her to the mattress. She raises her head and sees that it is Haltrasc, his form a hill straddling her legs.

Clarice dozes on a chair wedged against the door.

The lines of their face are etched in soot.

Their hands are clasped around something in their lap.

Seymour pushes herself up on her elbows.

She’s trying to be quiet, but Clarice wakes immediately.

They spring from the chair and rush to her side, the object from their lap abandoned on the floor.

Seymour recognises it as one of her own childhood dolls, passed down to her from her mother.

One of the dolls she and Clarice played with when Clarice first joined Seymour’s service.

“Drink,” Clarice says, pushing a cup of spiced wine to Seymour’s lips.

“How long have I?” Seymour says when she has swallowed. Her voice grates the back of her throat.

“A few days.”

Clarice takes Seymour’s hand and chews on their lip.

“Clarice,” Seymour says, leaning her forehead to theirs. “It’s all right. I’m alive.”

Clarice nods and turns away, keeping their back to Seymour as they stoke the fire. Haltrasc stretches on the end of the bed and licks the fabric covering her legs.

“He bit through his cage,” Clarice says gruffly. “Pushed his way in here and wouldn’t leave you.”

Seymour scratches Haltrasc’s ears. Her hand finds its way to her stomach. The itching has subsided. She glances at Clarice, wondering whether she can risk raising her shift to examine the skin.

“You’re all better now,” Clarice says, watching Seymour. “ All better.”

Seymour nods. “Where is the king?”

“Not at Hyde.”

That’s all that matters, Seymour supposes.

She doesn’t remember him leaving her chamber, but she can imagine him striding from the palace and climbing onto his charger, the beast still exhausted from the ride east. Has he returned to High Hall, she wonders, or is he even now with another of his queens?

Or maybe he is sating his anger on the people of Thawodest or Alpich.

How he must have raged. How he must have prayed for her not to wake from her fever.

“Are my people unharmed?” she says.

“Don’t worry about that,” Clarice says.

Seymour tries to sit up, but her arms are still weak.

“Lie back down,” Clarice says.

“What has happened to my people? Tell me, Clarice,” Seymour says.

“You’re not strong enough…”

“Do not tell me what I am strong enough to bear.” The tremor in her voice is enough to make Clarice pause. Haltrasc growls, long and low.

“Did the king hurt anyone?” Seymour asks.

“Not the king,” Clarice says.

As if summoned by their thoughts, the latch of her chamber rattles.

“Is she awake yet?” Edward’s voice says. “Let me in, damn you.”

Clarice runs to brace the door, but they’re too slow.

With a heave, Edward pushes the door open, chair and all.

He looks feral. He is clutching a goblet in one hand, and the other rests on the hilt of his sword.

His eyes are bloodshot, and Seymour realises with a lurch that she did not have time to drug more wine before she was taken ill.

It is her fault that her brother has been rampaging through the palace.

“Brother, give me a moment, I beg you,” she says.

“She’s only just woken up,” Clarice says, standing between Edward and the bed.

“You had one job,” Edward says. “Give him an heir. Instead you run off with the whore queen and lose his baby.”

“Don’t call her that.”

He laughs and staggers into the door frame.

“That’s what offends you?”

“What does it matter to you?” Seymour says. “You are a queen’s brother.”

“That’s all I am,” he spits. “If you’d given him a son my fortunes would be made. You could demand the king give me anything. A dukedom. A royal princess for my bride. And instead you’re just… the nothing queen. As boring as this palace.”

“I’m not,” Seymour whispers.

Haltrasc slips from the bed and pads to Clarice’s side, barring Edward’s way. He eyes the panther, then draws his sword.

“Haltrasc, come here,” Seymour says. Haltrasc growls but does not move. Edward points the blade at the panther’s head, swaying.

“ Come ,” Seymour says. Slowly, Haltrasc shifts to one side. Edward moves swiftly, swinging his sword wildly at Clarice to make them duck out of his way.

Seymour is ready for the strike of his fist. The first blow lands on her face, pain glancing through her cheekbone.

The second punches down into her stomach with all the force he can muster.

This time, the discomfort is muted through the many blankets.

Seymour lets herself crumple into the bed for effect – if he thinks he didn’t hurt her enough, he’ll only keep going.

He points a finger at her, so close she could reach out and bite it off.

“Get him back here. Fuck him until you get pregnant again. And don’t lose it next time.”

He thrusts a letter into her chest and stalks back to the door. Clarice crouches by the fireplace, clutching Haltrasc’s growling figure.

Edward whirls round at the door. “Oh, and that whore queen you like to chase across the country?” he says. “Don’t count on the king keeping her around for much longer. You’d do best to distance us from her, understand?”

Seymour stares at the floor.

“I said, do you understand ?”

“Yes, brother.”

When he’s gone, Seymour pulls herself out of bed. As Clarice fetches food for her empty stomach and balm for her bruised face, she opens the letter Edward threw at her. Her other brother Thomas’s handwriting stares up at her.

Tell Seymour she needs to tread carefully with Queen Boleyn. Rumours are spreading that they’re not as at odds with each other as they should be. Boleyn is poison. Forces are moving against her.

Seymour crumples the letter and throws it into the fire. She goes to the glass dome and presses her hands to it, as though she could push the panes out of their frames and flood the whole palace. She has a sudden urge to bang her head against the glass until she loses consciousness again.

Clarice comes back into the room and, seeing her up, stops.

“Is everything all right?” they say.

Usually Seymour is slow to act but perhaps, having made the decision to end her pregnancy, something has unlocked inside her.

She has taken control of one part of her life, and now she wants to take control of all of it.

She can do nothing about the past, but she may be able to shape a little of the future.

She makes a vow, to herself, to her dead mother, to the life she could have had if she had taken a different path.

“I will not merely survive. I will not merely be safe. I will be happy.”

“My lady?” Clarice says, dabbing a cream on Seymour’s face. It smells of the forest after rain.

“I have a task for you, Clarice,” Seymour says, taking the sponge from them and pressing the cream into her own skin. “How do you think your family would like to come to Hyde?”