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CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Seymour

S eymour presses the sunscína and waits for Boleyn to appear. When she does she is wet through from one of Brynd’s wretched storms. Seymour can spy lightning prickling the clouds behind Boleyn’s face.

“I must be quick,” Boleyn says. There is no ceremony between them any more.

“They say no,” Seymour replies.

Boleyn whirls away from the stone with a cry of frustration.

“I tried,” Seymour says, “I truly tried.”

“Aragon says no as well,” Boleyn says. Seymour cannot help a small amount of satisfaction. It would have been terrible if she was the only one to fail. Then she feels guilty for her satisfaction.

“I think Cleves could be persuaded. Howard too,” she says. “Everything hinges on the Moon Ball. I think we must convince them there.”

Boleyn nods. “Aragon isn’t coming, but Parr is. Perhaps with them separated, Parr could be convinced. Then with Cleves and Howard we would have our five.”

Seymour hesitates. “Boleyn, do you think… are you certain you can trust the oracle? Are we even sure that it means we need five? Prophecies can be unreliable.”

Boleyn laughs unhappily. “I’m being rash. I do know that. But you weren’t there, Seymour. If you had been in the oracle’s presence and heard the way she said those words you wouldn’t doubt it.”

Seymour wishes she could take Boleyn in her arms, not to inhale her scent or feel the glory of her hair, but to comfort her.

Instead, she tries to be practical. “We must be careful. The ball – it’s very public.”

“And we’ll use that to our advantage,” Boleyn says. “Even if we cannot immediately bring the other queens to our way of thinking, perhaps showing others the truth will help to sway them.”

Seymour presses her hand to the glass. “Boleyn, no. Let us simply try to talk to the other queens in private…”

“I don’t have time, Seymour!” Boleyn says, her eyes wild. She tears off her sleeve, ripping the fine fabric tethering it to her gown. Beneath, her once alabaster skin is grey and withered, like cured meat gone rotten.

“Boleyn…” Seymour whispers. She puts a hand over her mouth, trying to mask her disgust and horror. And at the same time, her mind flies to the patch of flaking skin that she had taken as a resurgence of the Queen’s Kiss poison.

“I am dying,” Boleyn says. “I am dying, Seymour, as Blount died. As Queen Aragon is dying. Henry is leaching us of our lives as well as our power.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Seymour asks.

Boleyn’s mouth twists. Seymour can hardly hear her over the storm. “I didn’t want you to think me ugly.”

“Oh, my love,” Seymour says, pressing her hand to the sunscína .

All the many truths they have shared with each other, and this smallest one is the one Boleyn felt she had to keep secret.

Seymour realises that she would do the same.

Her body must be smooth, supple, taut but not too taut, soft but not too soft.

It must never, ever, betray the secrets of the life it has lived, the hardships or joys it has endured.

Boleyn pulls the sleeve over her withered arm. “I have no more time for polite conversations and secret bargaining. I must move against Henry soon, or it will be too late for me. Do you understand?”

Seymour does. Boleyn has no choice but to stake everything on a grand show of truth – a performance, a revelation that may persuade some to their cause, but will certainly doom them if they are unsuccessful.

Seymour still has her vitality, for now.

For Boleyn it is different: if she cannot persuade the queens then she is going to die anyway, and might it not be better to have a quick death by the axe?

Being damned as a traitor is a more lasting legacy than simply fading into withered nothingness.

“We will manage it, dearest,” Seymour tells Boleyn. “We will win them over.”

Goddess help them if they do not.