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CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Boleyn

T he explosion that destroyed the cave of queens caused a collapse in the mines beyond. Ancient tunnels, dug centuries ago along the garnet seam, in an instant became a crumpled vein of rock, soil and bodies.

A dozen miners were killed, all of them local men and women.

Their funeral is all that it should be. Boleyn spared no expense, for even though she can’t know for certain that the explosion was linked to her knowledge of the chamber of queens, it is incomprehensible to her that it should not be.

She is responsible for the deaths. Mary can say that mining is dangerous, that it was a coincidence.

Boleyn knows she is right. She thinks Mary knows, too.

Only what that means is too great a danger to face.

It means a spy in their midst, and the possibility that the king knows about the chamber.

Boleyn has seen it before on hunts: a doe will flee from the mere sound of breaking branches, but stare brazenly at the arrow aimed at its forehead.

She is being warned. The arrow has been nocked, the string drawn, and Boleyn is staring at the huntsman, frozen.

The mourners stand on either side of the graves: royalty and nobility on one, commoners on the other.

As Bishop More commits the caskets to the earth, Boleyn catches Oswyn’s eye across the lawn.

She has never seen him smile, but there is something defeated about his frown now.

He is perhaps the person outside her inner circle who knew the most, alongside Syndony.

Yet she cannot resolve in her mind that either of them would have caused the explosions.

They would not have killed so many innocent men and women for Henry’s sake, would they?

Not even for the handsome price Henry or Wolsey would be willing to pay?

Boleyn can see the whispers passing along the mourners opposite. She can tell what they are thinking. Perhaps not even Syndony’s family will be able to stem this flood of suspicion.

After the ceremony, Bishop More stops Boleyn as she makes to return to Brynd.

“Your Majesty, would you permit me to offer some advice?”

She looks at his hand, placed on her arm, the coarse sack shirt of his flagellation just visible beneath his bishop’s robes.

“It is rude to refuse a gift, whether that gift is treasure or advice,” she says.

He inclines his head. “I think it would be politic to leave Brynd for a little while. Perhaps a trip to High Hall, where you and the princess can be made comfortable in your own apartments?”

Boleyn had been expecting him to tell her of some cultural error she had made in the funeral, now too late for her to do anything about. Or perhaps a judgement on Elizabeth’s nursing, the way people seem so apt to offer. This, though, is a surprise.

“Am I not welcome in my own castle now, my lord?”

“Far from it. I only mean that there is such strong feeling in Pilvreen around this terrible loss. It has led to some… unfortunate rumours. Perhaps a tactical retreat will give them space to die out.”

They are calling her a witch again, then.

“I am not a person who retreats,” she tells Bishop More.

“I know you are not. But if you do not retreat, you had better have a good plan of attack. Do you?”

She has no answer for him then. But there is one person who may see her next steps clearly.

Visiting the oracle isn’t without its dangers.

Soothsayers are tricky, everyone knows that.

Theirs is a difficult balancing act: they must use their powers truthfully, lest their veracity be called into question, and they must also keep the powers that pay them in awe of them without offending them.

Then there’s the question of who fuels the oracle, for everyone knows that witches are aligned with the gods.

To whom does she answer? To Cernunnos, perhaps?

Or to the goddess who spoke to Boleyn in the cavern?

Or to another deity, one worshipped in a different kingdom?

Boleyn will need to ascertain this before she can trust the oracle.

She has not forgotten her misgivings over the prophecy given to Princess Tudor.

Elizabeth affords her the excuse. It is tradition for newborn princes and princesses to be taken before the oracle.

Henry cannot tell Boleyn not to go without seeming petty.

What he does do is send Wolsey to accompany her.

The man confines himself to his cabin, to suffer his seasickness in solitude, as the ship raises anchor from Brynd’s jetty and points its prow towards the icy deserts of Pkolack.

The journey will take only one night with a strong wind behind them, and the wind is always strong on the eastern side of the island.

Their route will take them around the coast of Elben, skirting Queen Aragon’s territories at Daven, and then breaking away from the mainland and towards the archipelago of Evenesis.

Still, Boleyn cannot be as open with her companions as she would like.

Wolsey’s servants roam the ship, ready to scurry back to his vomit-stinking room with anything they hear.

Boleyn spends the day bouncing Elizabeth on her knee under a canopy set up on the deck, telling children’s tales, petting Urial who would not be left behind, and listening to the sea pounding the sails.

Once the sun has set, they lapse into silence beneath the constellations.

“The stag star is very bright,” Rochford says, drawing her cloak more tightly.

“In Capetia they call it the Maiden star,” Boleyn tells her. “They say she’s a young woman whose lover went off to war, and she has held a lantern in the hope of guiding him home ever since.”

Mary takes Elizabeth from Boleyn and points the child’s pudgy little finger to a different part of the sky, where an oblong set of stars is arranged, three of them redder than the rest. “And there he is, see? The Lost Warrior, holding his bloody sword, searching for home.”

Mark puts his arms around Rochford, and George puts his arms around them both, and the three of them stand like that for a long time, staring up at the separated lovers.

Boleyn catches Mary watching them, and knows that she is thinking of her husband, taken too soon.

Boleyn feels strangely jealous of her. Mary has nothing to fear from her love, lost though it is.

They reach the first of the islands of Evenesis at dawn – a rough, deserted patch of land housing only a few herds of sheep and their shepherds.

It is gone midday when the oracle’s island comes into view, by which time the temperature has dropped.

Boleyn is thankful that Syndony thought to bundle an extra trunkful of cloaks into the ship.

Wolsey emerges, green and wobbly, as they drop anchor.

“Have you been here before, my lord?” Boleyn asks him.

“Only once,” he says. “To accompany Queen Aragon and the Princess Tudor. I was a much younger man then. It is a handsome sight, is it not?”

She cannot disagree with him. The island itself is small – little more than a large hill erupting from the sea like the shell of some great hermit crab.

But it is garlanded with trees all the colours of thoughtfulness: deep scarlet, royal violet, gentle ochre.

A narrow path leads up from the jetty, winding between blankets of wildflowers.

At the top of the island, sprouting between the trees, is the oracle itself.

A tall, domed building that reminds Boleyn in its shape of High Hall, with columns framing doors wrought from silver that glint and flash in the icy sun.

Wolsey, Elizabeth, Boleyn and Urial are rowed to the jetty in the first boat, with her family in the second. The air here smells not of fish or seawater, but of the flowers draped everywhere, even sprouting from the tree trunks and the birds’ nests, smelling as soporific as they look.

Boleyn mounts the path, wondering how she can get rid of Wolsey if she decides it’s safe to be open with the oracle.

He will not willingly help her when he has so clearly been sent to spy on her by Henry.

But his goals are not perfectly aligned with the king’s.

He has his own power base and his own ambitions.

He is more disposed to peace, and the opportunities for international advancement that affords him.

“How would you like to consult with the oracle, my lord?” Boleyn asks him.

Wolsey stops dead on the path. “But I am not royalty.”

“Come, you are closer to my husband than a father. Surely he would not resent you this privilege?”

Wolsey looks up at the oracle’s building. His face is all shadow and want.

“But if you are concerned,” Boleyn continues, “we can keep silent on the matter. A secret, between two of the king’s most beloved persons.”

Wolsey’s resolve wavers. “It would be the greatest of gifts,” he whispers. She can almost see the pride at work in him. For a merchant’s son to be permitted an audience with the oracle of royalty is beyond anything he could have imagined.

“Go,” she says, shifting Elizabeth to one hip and guiding Wolsey up the steps.

He pushes open the doors as in a dream. They close behind him with the softest of clicks.

Mary, Rochford, George and Mark join Boleyn as she waits outside.

“Are you sure about this, Boleyn?” Mary says, plucking one of the purple flowers for Elizabeth to bat at.

“Sure about what?”

Mary looks at her with hard eyes. They still have not told George or his spouses about the truth of Medren and the bordweal, or that revolution has seeded in Boleyn’s heart. “Don’t make me say it. For all we know the oracle could have enchanted the very trees to listen to us.”

“Now that would be a spell worth learning,” Boleyn says. Urial, seeing that Elizabeth likes the flowers, flies into the trees and returns with a mouthful of them.