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CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Boleyn

W hen she was a girl, the village close to the Boleyn family’s estate fell victim to the howling sickness.

It was ravaging Elben. People would lock themselves in their homes and choose to starve rather than fall ill with such a disease.

But it invaded even the most well protected of homes, and so it was with the village.

One sick woman, with the tell-tale froth at her mouth and the pink rings across her skin, infected her cousin, who infected their family and the village healer, who infected all of her patrons.

Boleyn’s parents tried to limit their visitors, but most of their household came from the village.

Infection was inevitable. Within a month, George and Boleyn fell sick, and for many days it was thought that Boleyn wouldn’t survive.

She spent days slumbering fitfully, and nights suffering terrible seizures, her wrists secured to the posts of her bed with steel chains to prevent her from running wild.

Thick, white hair sprouted from the rings on her skin.

Her parents sat next to her through it all.

Gradually, she improved. But half of the household did not recover, and a new pack of wolves now roamed the mountains near the estate. From time to time, something reminds Boleyn of those days, and the weeks when they knew the plague was coming but could do little to stop it.

The memories come back now, in the wake of the miners’ funerals.

This time it is not the howling sickness that is spreading.

It is a different kind of sickness. It infects the townspeople of Pilvreen, who talk openly of the ancient massacre and the accident at the mines and look to Brynd with growing suspicion.

Boleyn’s trip to the oracle has not dulled her people’s memories.

Many of them wear the insignia of Cernunnos – the branching antlers – either as badges sewn on their jackets, or as pendants on makeshift chains.

Babies clutch pieces of antler for protection, gnawing on them toothlessly like old dogs.

The sickness spreads to the merchants who pass through the kingdom, bearing tales of the famed misfortune of Brynd and the curse of the queens who rule it.

At last it comes for Boleyn’s own servants – the gardeners who smirk and talk of her ways , and the kitchen staff who leave her service in such numbers that she cannot replace them.

Yes, the rumours are an infection, spreading through Boleyn’s territory, but the only life at stake is hers.

“I think you must leave,” Boleyn tells Wyatt. They are alone in the orchard, beneath the canopy of a crab apple tree. Boleyn and Wyatt stand in the snowstorm of its blossom.

Wyatt shakes his head. He takes Boleyn’s left hand, his fingers playing with the poesy ring Henry gave her on their wedding day. “Would he swear his all on this?” he asks. “Would he prove his love by invoking the fairy inside? Because I would.”

Boleyn pulls her hand free. Wyatt has no right to question Henry. He does not know what she does.

“It doesn’t matter what he would or would not do.”

“Doesn’t it?” Wyatt says. He is challenging her to step away from him. He should be the one to move away, not her. She is a queen. That he thinks he can take such liberties only proves to her that she is right to tell him to go.

“I am still married to him, Thomas. That means something to me,” she says.

Her plan, before or after the cave, before or after the oracle, had never included being unfaithful.

Certainly not unfaithful with this man. She still doesn’t truly know how she feels about him.

There is lust there, certainly, and appreciation for his wit.

But love? That’s an impossible question to answer, tangled as it is with the other impossible questions of her love for Henry, and Henry’s love for her.

“I don’t mind sharing your heart, Boleyn,” he says softly. “I don’t mind being your secret, either. I can be very discreet.”

The sordidness of his words wakens her to fury. She throws the jibe that rises to the back of her mind whenever she looks at Wyatt: “I am no whore.”

Wyatt frowns, confused, taking a moment to remember what he said at their very first meeting.

He opens his mouth, a thousand excuses flooding to be uttered.

It was months ago I called you that. I never meant it.

I was nervous. I said it in jest… He swallows them, as understanding lands. And, at last, he nods.

“No one knows better than I that words can wound and fester. I will leave, Your Majesty. Please know, that if I could spool back the thread of time and redo that day all over again, I would simply throw myself at your feet and pledge you my paltry little life in exchange for the honour of being near you.”

As Wyatt rides out of Brynd, Henry rides in, on his way to Garclyffe to inspect the warships being built there.

Boleyn wonders whether they crossed on the road, and if so whether her husband recognised her would-be lover.

She finds herself running into his arms, inhaling his scent – pine, juniper and the sweat of travel.

She tells herself it is self-preservation.

Until she is sure of her five queens and is ready to move against the crown, she must conceal her plans and her true feelings.

But it frightens her, how easy it is to slip into her role as his adoring consort.

It was a mantle she wore for too long. After all, she used to see him as a cure, as Elben’s saviour.

Now she wonders: was he the one to start the sickness?

“I have a gift for you, my queen,” he says as she leads him into Brynd.

She does love presents. Maybe it’s a sable, or the hunting dragon he promised her on Elizabeth’s birth. Maybe it’s jewels.

“Where is it?” she says.

“My men are preparing it. You shall see what it is after we have eaten,” he says.

She knows, then, that it is not jewels or fine clothes, but she has to pretend. Pretend, and hope. She entertains him over luncheon. She is all sparkle and fever.

“Do you remember when you first fell in love with me?” she asks him.

“I remember the exact moment,” he says, popping a sweetmeat into her mouth.

“Tell me. Let me see if it’s the same moment I fell in love with you.”

It is the same moment. It goes like this:

“Remember, Boleyn, never ride ahead of the king,” her father warns, knowing Boleyn’s tendencies.

“If he’s fast enough I won’t be able to,” she replies.

Had she known even then what she was doing?

She thinks, somewhere, she probably had.

The temptation to prove herself a man’s equal has always been integral to her.

It was driven by the need to set herself apart from Mary with her sweet face and golden hair.

Driven, too, by a desire to prove her parents right when they insisted that all three of their children received the same education.

So when the horn sounds and their horses spring after the hounds, the hunting dragons swirling high above, across the fields surrounding Hever, Boleyn pushes Fauvel further than she’s ever pushed her before.

And the king senses her, right on his heels.

He turns to look at her, and his eyes widen with shock as he realises that he is about to be overtaken.

He grins. Suddenly, hunting the stag isn’t important. What’s important is the race.

“Boleyn!” her father shouts as the two of them gallop ahead of the rest, into the cover of the woods, the hounds all around their horses’ hooves.

A branch snags on Boleyn’s hood and whips it clean off, frontlet and cap together, leaving her black hair to stream out behind her as she bends low over Fauvel’s neck.

Henry is just behind her, close enough that he can reach out and brush a hand across her thigh as they gallop.

By the time they stop, their horses’ sides heaving with exertion, and the rest of the hunt has caught up with them, they are already halfway to marriage.

Lord Boleyn is furious at first, but when he sees the way the pair are looking at each other, his composure changes.

His whole outlook on what is proper shifts.

Maybe Boleyn isn’t just the clever one – because to him, for all his dedication to education, it is impossible that Henry could look at Boleyn like that, and not her sister, unless she is more beautiful than Mary.

“Your Majesty,” Lord Boleyn says, dismounting his horse. “Please allow me to formally introduce my eldest, Lady Boleyn, recently returned from the court of Capetia.”

“Boleyn!” It is the king’s voice this time, and Boleyn’s name is full of laughter and joy in his mouth. “Do you always make men chase after you so hard? You nearly killed my horse.”

“What’s the point of a hunt unless there’s a little death at the end?

” she responds. The hush that follows, as everyone wonders how the king will take such a lewd remark, is the most thrilling of her life.

Then Henry grins, looking at her like he wants to eat her up, and the rest of the hunt laughs, and that is that.

Boleyn and Henry stare at each other, the short distance between them suddenly an ocean. Their perfect love, tainted by a little truth.

Syndony appears, carrying a plate piled with apples, over-sweet and wrinkled from their storage in Brynd’s pantries.

“Here are the apples you’ve been craving, Your Majesty,” she says, placing the plate right in front of Boleyn, carefully not looking at her.

Boleyn feels Henry’s sharp gaze, darting between the apples and her.

Suddenly she realises: Syndony is offering her not food, but armour.

It is unlikely that she could be pregnant again so soon after Elizabeth’s birth. Unlikely, but not impossible.

“At last,” she says. “Thank you. I could eat ten of these at once.”