Page 5

There is one final piece of the ceremony left to complete, though, and it must take place tonight, while the magic from the binding ceremony is still strong. It’s why Henry and Boleyn must leave immediately for her new palace of Brynd.

She clasps George and Mary to her. “Come directly in the morning,” she whispers to them, inexplicably sad.

“Have fun tonight,” Mary says. “Enjoy him all you can.”

George, who for all his ribaldry is sometimes more insightful than their sister, whispers in her ear as he hugs her farewell, “Remember this is for you and the king. Try to forget about everyone else.”

Boleyn quickly changes into her travelling clothes – a kirtle and petticoat beneath a fur gown, split at the front to reveal the silk.

“Pack my wedding gown away to be brought on to Brynd,” she tells the maids. They eye the material enviously. A single yard of it costs their yearly wage. Boleyn had better check the gown’s still intact when it arrives in her retinue tomorrow.

Henry helps her into the royal carriage, and the horses – six dappled chargers – spring away as soon as the door has closed.

They must reach Brynd before nightfall, and as such they take the scrind road – the most direct route between High Hall and Boleyn’s new home, and one of six charmed, long ago, to convey those who travel upon them more swiftly than other paths.

Henry settles himself opposite her, and for a moment Boleyn feels unaccountably nervous.

They are here, husband and wife, at last. The performance can drop away – she doesn’t need to play the queen. He has chosen her above all others.

“Alone, my love,” he says.

“Alone,” she echoes.

The carriage jolts against a stone, and she braces herself against the wall.

Outside the window, High Hall recedes. From this distance, the palace looks squat, ugly.

Wooden houses, punctuated by the occasional inn, are strung out along the road like garlands.

It is lined with subjects. Her subjects, now.

They should all be cheering the passing of the newest consort, but these people are quiet.

It’s only the occasional child, overcome by the ceremony and the grandness of the carriage, who shouts out happily.

Boleyn permits them some grace: the people of her territory have been suspicious of their consorts ever since Queen Isabet. She will need to earn their joy.

Gradually, the houses ebb into countryside – fields of wheat and corn and livestock. In the distance, the Holtwode clouds the horizon.

“Are you nervous about tonight?” Henry asks her.

“No,” she says. “But I do wish we could consummate our love a different way.”

“Not with an audience, you mean?”

Cernunnos’s protection isn’t complete until a marriage is consummated, so tradition has it that a group of courtiers and religious men must bear witness, to make sure that the bordweal will hold. It’s necessary, but not what she wants for her first time. She explains this to Henry.

“The bordweal only requires us to make love in Brynd on the first night. It doesn’t require it to be our first time.”

“You mean, we could…?” she says. The knot in her stomach tightens, as it always does when she thinks about Henry’s body pressing against hers.

The fields are giving way now, melting into the Holtwode.

Woods like the one they fell in love in.

Henry’s eyes meet hers, and she knows – like always – that they are thinking the same thing.

Henry knocks on the carriage wall. The driver pulls the chargers to a halt.

“Your Highness?” a groom says, peering into the window.

Henry gestures for him to open the door, then lifts Boleyn down onto the path as though she were no heavier than one of the leaves coating the ground.

“Give the horses a rest,” Henry says.

“But Your Highness – nightfall…” the groom stutters. “And there’s been talk of a crone in…”

Henry strikes the groom with the back of one hand, a clap of a movement that drives the boy into a nearby tree trunk.

He lies at the tree’s base. Simply unconscious, Boleyn thinks, looking away from the smear of blood on the bark, and the uncanny jut of the groom’s jaw.

There is a certain thrill in Henry’s demonstration of strength. Her desire twists.

“Give them a rest,” Henry repeats.

The driver bows deeply. Henry leads Boleyn away from the scrind road – a slight tug behind her navel the only sign she is leaving its magic – and towards a bed of bluebells.

Her heart is hammering, even though she’s dreamed of this moment for months.

One hears stories of first times. Mary’s very free with her tales.

But then they reach the bluebells, where they can no longer see or hear the carriage.

In the distance, something barks. He kisses her everywhere, tenderly stripping her of clothes and guile.

Her hands skate over the linen shirt beneath his doublet, feeling muscles toned from years of hunting, jousting and battle.

They have both waited far too long for this moment, and Boleyn had feared that the anticipation would be more delicious than the reality.

She need not have worried. Henry is uxorious. He kisses his way down her neck, her breasts, her stomach. When he’s on his knees, he pulls her to the ground, and a moment later she understands why – her legs would not have held beneath the intensity of the pleasure.

“What can I do for you?” she says between gasps. She dimly has some notion of unfairness. Henry presses her hand, and she understands: this is for you. She takes his gift and lets it bloom inside her, tendrils of rapture threading up her spine.

“Let me see you,” she says.

Her husband, her king, removes his shirt.

She runs her hands down his chest. The magic whirling across his skin seems to reach for her.

Then he is naked, and she understands how the power of a god could flow through such a man without destroying him.

She pulls him down on top of her, wrapping her legs around his waist. His desire presses against her most intimate part, but he holds himself back, his mouth on her neck and lips, his hands in her hair.

Unbidden, the image of the groom, his jaw twisted, springs to Boleyn’s mind.

There is so much power in Henry, so much rage and destruction, but for her he is gentle. She has tamed him. She almost laughs.

“I’m ready,” she says.

He pushes inside her, joining their bodies at last, as their minds and hearts joined so many months ago. A mere pinch, and then she relaxes.

“My queen, my love, my strength and my future,” he says. “I would do anything for you, Boleyn.”

“And I you.”

As she rocks her hips in time with his, Boleyn cradles his head to her shoulder and smiles up at the canopy above. The trees whisper to each other of secrets and wild magic.