Page 55

“You’re being crude,” Aragon says, looking away. Boleyn moves to the other side of her throne. Like a child, Aragon looks the other way again. Boleyn reaches out, knowing how rude she’s being, and takes hold of her chin, forcing the older woman to look at her.

“I am being truthful,” Boleyn says. “You may be the king’s first wife. Maybe you are his most valued. But that doesn’t mean he will place you or your daughter above the lowliest man when the time comes.”

Aragon jerks her head back. Boleyn wonders suddenly why she hasn’t got up yet. If she were Aragon, as strong and quick to anger, she would have been on her feet a long time ago.

“You’re wrong,” Aragon says. “I have not deserted my homeland and lived on this cold, dreary island for twenty years only to be discarded. I haven’t given up everything for him to turn his back on me and Tudor.”

“You’re sick,” Boleyn says, realisation suddenly dawning.

“No,” Aragon replies.

With a deft movement, Boleyn flicks back the blankets covering Aragon’s legs. Beneath them, her gown lacks the padding of layers Boleyn would expect from a queen. The fabric is soft and light, not the heavy brocade of her ladies’ dresses. A patient’s fabric.

“How dare you,” Aragon says, reaching for the blanket. Boleyn pulls it away and kneels before her.

“Can you not walk?”

“Give it back to me. I am cold.”

Boleyn lifts the hem the smallest amount. She catches a glimpse of wizened skin draped over bone. The skin is grey and lifeless. There is no muscle left to support it.

“Get away from her!” a voice cries. Princess Tudor is running towards them, her skirts balled up in her fists, her mouth snarled.

Boleyn falls back, her hand automatically going to her ribs and arm, where grey flesh over bone is all that is left of her own once vibrant body.

Tudor snatches the blanket from Boleyn and turns to her mother, smoothing the gown out gently over those lifeless legs before arranging the blanket so that it gives the impression of bulk.

“I’m so sorry,” Boleyn whispers. But the two women are murmuring to each other – both soothing the other.

When the princess turns to Boleyn, she is stone once more.

The rage has been caged, for now. But Boleyn doesn’t want it to be caged.

She wants to wield it. Slowly, she unlaces the sleeve of her dress, pulling it down to expose the grey skin now ravaging her arm.

“Don’t you see?” Boleyn says to them both. “ He has done this.”

Princess Tudor looks from Boleyn’s arm to her mother’s legs, her mouth open. “You said it was the holy fire…”

Boleyn purses her lips. Of course Aragon would say it was the holy fire; a disease said to only afflict the virtuous.

“Cernunnos has seen fit to take my strength…” Aragon says.

“ No ,” Boleyn says. “The same thing happened to Queen Blount. I saw her on her death bed.”

Boleyn sees it all so clearly now. It’s not simply that Henry is pretending to be the source of Cernunnos’s power when the power truly belongs to the queens.

He is leaching his consorts of their lives.

Marry him for long enough and all will fall ill and wither away, while he will only grow in power.

She knows that the inhuman strength he possesses is not his at all – it is his wives’. And he is using them up.

Boleyn clutches the back of her chair. The bordweal weakening for the first time in centuries is not because the king is choosing the wrong queens, or for lack of a male heir, as the rumours have it.

It’s because he is the first sovereign in hundreds of years to use the power to do more than protect Elben.

He is using it to wage war, to display his prowess, to make poesy rings.

“When did you begin to waste away?” she asks Aragon.

“It is not your concern.”

“It was after the war with Alpich started,” Princess Tudor says.

Queen Aragon hisses, but Tudor, still kneeling at her mother’s side, gazes up at her, her hands clutching Aragon’s. “I want you to be cured, Mother. I just want you to be well.”

The two of them have another of those silent conversations. Boleyn thinks, longingly, of a time in the future when she and Elizabeth might have such a connection.

“It started soon after I came to Elben,” Aragon finally admits. “But I lost the use of my legs two years ago, yes.”

Boleyn flushes. The war with Alpich started two years ago.

Now she comes to think of it, the rumours of Blount’s illness began then too.

He used them to try to conquer Alpich. And what of Lothair?

Is that why her sickness has spread so quickly?

She was the one who encouraged him to go to war, after all.

She thinks of Howard, scratching her scalp.

They could have worked this out so much sooner if they had only talked to each other.

But none of them were willing to admit that their bodies are wasting away.

The fear of judgement and ridicule was too strong.

Aragon whispers to the princess, and she fetches her more wine.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Boleyn says. Aragon would be more shocked if this was news to her. “You knew all along. Why are you allowing him to kill you?”

Aragon passes her guirnalda , the beads of her religion, from hand to hand, so that her next words become a prayer.

“I am his wife. It is my role to sacrifice for my husband. Humble, loyal and true, that is what your people say, is it not?”

Boleyn shivers. For an instant, she wonders what kind of woman would remain loyal to her husband after such a betrayal. But she, perhaps alone of all the other queens, understands Aragon. Love, combined with faith, makes even the greatest humiliation seem like a noble sacrifice.

“You may go now,” Aragon says, before sipping the wine that Princess Tudor hands her. “I trust you will be comfortable in your rooms before you leave tomorrow.”

“If you speak a word of this to the king…” Boleyn says.

“You will do what?” Aragon replies.

Boleyn casts around for a credible threat. If she and Aragon are more alike than either of them would care to admit, then Aragon will have the same weaknesses.

“My network will inform Elben of your condition,” Boleyn says. She could go on, paint a portrait of the future – Henry’s public disgust, international ridicule, but that is too cruel even for Boleyn.

“I have nothing to hide,” Aragon says, but she pulls at her blankets. She will not tell.

The princess stands in front of her mother, a bodyguard as well as a nurse. Boleyn addresses her next.

“If you want to save your mother…” she begins.

“My mother will save herself, if god wills it. And if he does not, I will mourn and honour her as a true daughter should,” the princess says. Obstinate, destructive loyalty. Boleyn has no patience for it.

At the door, Boleyn tries one last time.

“I think there will come a time when you regret your devotion to our husband, Queen Aragon. Your wedding gift is very beautiful, and very rare. But I wonder – was it a gift, or a bribe? Because you are clever. Too clever to play consort when you could be equal. Why are you settling? Because of some special silver? Is that truly who you are?”

There is a long silence. Boleyn is not going to get an answer. She’s about to open the door when Aragon’s voice halts her.

“Would I be equal, though, Queen Boleyn? Or would I be another consort? A lesser queen to you and your daughter?”

“What do you mean?”

“You are an ambitious woman. Who’s to say that you will not wrestle control of the kingdom away from my husband, only to take control for yourself? Until you can prove to me that you truly work for all the queens, I will gladly die before I join your cause.”