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CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Seymour

T he news of Boleyn’s arrest finds Seymour on her way to Hyde, using the quicker scrind roads that flow through High Hall.

Even though it is not a surprise – she knew as soon as she received Boleyn’s message and told Clarice to pack as quickly as possible – she still has to steady herself against the side of the carriage when Edward bellows the news through the window.

He sounds like a man who’s just won at cards.

“This is an opportunity for us,” he says, not bothering to keep his voice down. “The whole Boleyn family is going to be ostracised, if they’re even permitted to live. You must see if you can get Hever for me.”

“Should I request it for you tonight, brother? Or can I wait until the executioner has cleaned his axe?”

“Don’t be impertinent. If the king visits you, you put your ugly little mouth to work to get me that estate, understand?”

“She understands,” Clarice says, and pulls the curtain across to block him from view. The sound of his horse’s footsteps recedes, along with his curses. Seymour stares at Clarice. “You did not need to speak for me.”

“My apologies,” Clarice says. “Usually I do.”

Their back is very straight, their gaze very bold.

“You’re angry,” Seymour says.

“My feelings don’t matter.”

“They matter to me, Clarice.”

Clarice adjusts their corset and crosses their legs, sitting back in the carriage and now refusing to look at her.

“Clarice,” Seymour says, leaning forward. “Are you angry with me for fleeing? Or for not chastising my brother? Or both?”

The silence that follows seems endless. Seymour suddenly remembers with awful clarity that summer’s day, and the one command that changed everything between them.

She remembers the stiffness of Clarice’s bow as they rose to fetch the parasol.

She remembers the way they stopped offering their opinions right after that.

She now sees herself through Clarice’s eyes: as the woman born with so much and married into more, who was too frightened of her own inferiority to wield any of her power as she should have done.

The woman who was ready to befriend a foreigner of a lower class, but lacked the awareness to tear down the system that binds them.

And Clarice can say none of this, because Seymour is their mistress, the person who means they and their family have a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. Of course they could never be totally honest with her.

Seymour examines the rings on her fingers.

Each one covered in jewels and wrought from metals so precious most people in Elben would never have laid eyes on them.

Together, the decoration on one of Seymour’s hands could buy Clarice’s island home.

She pulls every one from her right hand, leaving indentations on her fingers, and tips them into Clarice’s lap.

“What are you doing?” they say.

“These are yours, Clarice. You can speak freely to me now. So do so. Please.”

Slowly, Clarice picks up the rings, as though they were still molten from the forge, and slips them into their pockets. Then Clarice looks at Seymour, new respect in their eyes.

“He is nothing. He has never done a single thing for you, yet you always placate him. Whereas she – she has been a true friend to you, and you repay her by fleeing.”

“She told me to.”

“And you always do as you’re told.”

“No, that’s not…” she begins.

Seymour stretches her hands out to Clarice, pleading.

“What could I do? I’m not clever like her.”

“No? You were clever enough to seduce a king. You were clever enough to drug your brother without him realising. You were clever enough to make a whole kingdom think you hate someone when in truth you love them.”

Clarice snorts.

“You queens. All of you except Boleyn are so anxious that men think you’re not smarter than them that you end up believing it yourselves.”

“So clever she continued to bed him knowing what he did to me.”

Seymour clamps a hand over her mouth, surprised by her anger.

Such thoughts had only fluttered through the darkest parts of her mind before.

Now they are laid bare. Clarice raises an eyebrow.

“She loves him, Seymour. People forget a lot when they’re in love.

But she still moved against him. You don’t think that’s at least in part because of what he did to you? ”

The coachman knocks twice on the roof of the carriage, to let them know that they are in sight of High Hall.

It brings Seymour back to herself, and Clarice seems to follow her thoughts, because they raise a finger to their lips.

They have been indiscreet. Seymour nods, then speaks more quietly.

“I told you to be honest with me, Clarice. Are you certain you couldn’t be a little more excoriating? ”

Clarice jingles their pocket. “You’d need to give me the other hand’s rings for that.”

Seymour laughs, peeking out of the window at the sight of High Hall, rising like a shining beehive from between the Holtwode that borders Brynd’s territory.

“What am I going to do, Clarice?” she says softly.

“What do you want to do?”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“That’s your brother’s thinking, and your father and the king and Wolsey and Cromwell getting into your head. What do you want to do?”

The carriage bumps and grates over the scrind road. The trees thin and, suddenly, they are in the light, a thin ray of sun illuminating the way ahead.

She stops at High Hall instead of going directly to Hyde.

From her suites, Seymour sets one of her guards at the doorway, to keep Edward at bay.

She changes into the most demure gown she owns – a black linen overgown, with cut sleeves revealing deep purple beneath and a matching hood.

She forces her shoulders back as she studies herself in the mirror.

“You are clever. You are a liar. You can do this.” Haltrasc raises his head from the long chair beside her, and purrs in approval. From the bag secured to her belt, she pulls Boleyn’s message, relayed through her stewardess: Sunscína, at noon tomorrow. Run.

Outside the sanctuary of her rooms, the court is in disarray.

Capetian ambassadors haunt Queen Parr’s rooms, attempting to curry favour with a potential ally who has not been arrested for treason.

The courtiers who had once proudly worn Boleyn’s green token have hastily torn it off their clothes, leaving a shadow of the fabric’s shape as a reminder of their fickleness.

Everywhere, the news whisks past her like an ill wind:

“… her pregnancy was a lie…”

“… some kind of witchcraft on the other queens…”

“… this will show her father – no good comes of educating a woman…”

“… is it true, do you think? About the bordweal…”

“… Shh. Are you mad? Don’t talk about it here…”

“… the brother’s gone back to Hever, tail between his legs…”

“… the king went directly to his rooms. Won’t see anyone apparently.”

As Seymour makes her way through the palace, she hears the light patter of a child’s footsteps coming closer. A moment later, Howard appears, her face taut and her movements even more fluttering than usual.

“Sister!” she calls. Seymour resists the urge to shush her in public, because they are being watched by half the court.

“I am pleased to see you, sister,” Seymour says, surreptitiously squeezing Howard’s arm to warn her to be careful. “I feel so disappointed in the treachery of one of our own. I was on my way to console our dear husband.”

“Oh. Oh yes,” Howard stumbles. “Disappointed.”

Seymour draws Howard as casually as she can into a quieter gallery, where the songbirds in their cages at the windows chirrup loudly enough to mask a conversation.

Usually, this place would be populated by the king’s most important advisors, like Wolsey and Cromwell, but they must be in more official meetings, deciding exactly how to deal with Boleyn and her conspirators.

In this moment, they have the room almost entirely to themselves, save for two guards at the other end of the space.

Nevertheless, Seymour steers Howard to the opposite end of the gallery, where they pretend to be examining a portrait of one of the king’s ancestors.

“Did you get Boleyn’s message?” Seymour asks her quietly.

“Yes. I left Brynd immediately. I only stopped here to change the horses on my way to Plythe, but then I wondered if I should show my face at court as well.”

They stroll to the next painting. This one is of a distant cousin of the king’s – a sullen-looking girl carrying her lap dragon. The guards remain impassive, but Seymour drops her voice even further.

“Have you heard anything about what they’re doing with her?”

Howard shakes her head. “I saw her being put in one of the royal carriages as I was leaving. I tried to find out what was happening, but the guards told me to go away.”

“My friend is trying to find out what’s happening now.”

“We’re going to help her, aren’t we?” They drift to the other side of the gallery.

Seymour wants to ask her so many things: why she wants to help Boleyn – is it out of love, or fear?

She wants to test whether this is quick courage, the kind of courage she was so slow to find in herself, or whether it’s something built on a firmer foundation.

“We need information,” Seymour says. “But then, yes, of course we’re going to help her.”

“Well, if you need someone to act being a silly little girl, I can do that,” she says.

Seymour smiles. “Actually, that’s exactly what I think we need, sister. That, and your remarkable memory.”

They part ways shortly afterwards – Howard to repair to her rooms and be loudly vocal about her denunciation of Boleyn, and Seymour to talk to the king, if he will admit her.