Page 68

She feels down the guard’s doublet, finding the keys at his belt. He struggles against Haltrasc as she unclips the ring, three chests heaving in unison. She holds the keys on the ring before him one by one, until the slightest catch in his throat tells her she has the right one.

“Boleyn?” she calls through the door as she unlocks it.

It catches against a discarded plate that clatters as it moves.

A blast of freezing air, so much colder than on the ground, reaches through Seymour’s clothes and grips her skin.

Boleyn is huddled opposite her, shivering beneath the window. Seymour rushes to her.

“You?” Boleyn whispers. Tears have crystallised on her eyelashes.

“Come with me.”

Seymour helps her to her feet. She walks stiffly to the door, her face downcast. The bruises on her neck tell Seymour a little of what she’s been through today. Haltrasc still has the guard pinned down. Seymour kneels to collect his sword and passes it to Boleyn.

“Would you like to say anything, sister?” she asks.

Boleyn takes the sword dazedly, as though she doesn’t know what she’s doing. But when she looks down at the guard, her grip steadies. She kneels beside him and places one hand on his throat.

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he croaks, as she squeezes and squeezes.

“They’re always sorry in the end,” she says, her own voice catching in her crushed neck.

She holds the sword against the guard’s throat, gripping the hilt in one hand and the blade in the other.

Seymour draws Haltrasc back as Boleyn clambers on top of the guard, kneeling on his chest to stop him from moving.

She presses the blade down against the guard’s scream.

His legs flail and struggle wildly, but once his voice has been taken, it isn’t long before his legs grow still too.

Boleyn stays on top of his body for a moment longer, then rises, one hand dripping with her own blood, her face and chest sprayed with his.

The red of her tattered wedding gown is now, truly, the red of slaughter.

“We must go, love,” Seymour tells her, holding out a hand.

She lets Haltrasc lap at the opening in the guard’s neck as she leads Boleyn down the stairs to freedom.

They remain silent, even when Haltrasc catches up with them.

On the ground floor, dozens of rats, who came to sup on the spilled ale and the body of the dead guard, lie, bloated and sleeping.

They pick their way through them all, and round the side of the Tower, towards High Hall.

Keeping to the shadows of the trees, they follow the paths around the border of the palace grounds, until they reach Plythe’s wing.

There, Seymour pulls Boleyn into the shelter of a bush, and they crouch there, Haltrasc between them for warmth, their fingers entwined in his fur.

“Thank you,” Boleyn whispers from time to time.

Seymour inches her fingers over to hers until they are clasping hands, their skin frozen, their hearts warm, through the dregs of the night.

As the sky mellows from black to blue, two figures emerge from a basement door and run at a crouch towards them.

As they get closer, Clarice and Howard’s faces become clear.

“Did anyone see you?” Clarice says.

“No one who can tell anyone now,” Seymour replies.

Howard is embracing Boleyn, whispering her affection into Boleyn’s ear.

Something’s wrong with Boleyn, though, something none of them can voice, not even Boleyn herself.

She returns Howard’s embrace stiffly, silently, her eyes vacantly fixed on something beyond their sight.

Seymour thinks of the marks at her throat, and the smell of the scaffold below her window, and shudders.

“We must move before it gets too light,” Howard says at last, pulling Boleyn towards the service courtyard of her wing.

The smell of the walnut trees and the light rain recedes and is replaced by that of unwashed cobbles and rotting vegetables.

Wooden crates on carts are lined up on one side of the courtyard, each wagon waiting for a horse and driver.

Clarice pulls one crate open, revealing a pile of rich fabrics.

They show Boleyn the spyholes they’ve drilled into the side, the bag of food stowed there, with a knife to cut the apples and cheese, and the secret, sliding door they’ve installed in one side of the crate, facing away from the driver.

“These crates are destined for Garclyffe,” Howard explains.

“When you get close to the town, you can slip out and make your way to Brynd. Take Elizabeth and a horse and get to the royal jetty. Clarice here has sent word to their cousins on that side of the island to have a ship ready to transport you to Capetia.”

Boleyn shakes Clarice’s hand. “I’m for ever in your debt,” she says. Clarice, impulsively, leans forward and kisses her on the cheek.

Boleyn turns to Seymour. “What about you? Will you be safe?”

“I’m returning to Hyde now, and Howard is going to Plythe. We should arrive in time for the meeting you arranged.”

It feels like an age since she received Boleyn’s hastily scribbled message: Sunscína, at noon tomorrow . The one message Boleyn sent to every queen before her arrest.

“I think Aragon is beyond hope,” she tells Seymour. “But see if you can get Parr. Once I reach Capetia, I’ll find a way to communicate with you. Hope is not lost.”

“I know. Now go,” Seymour says. Clarice and Howard step back, keeping watchful eyes on the windows and doors that lead onto the courtyard.

Boleyn clambers onto the cart, but before she gets into the crate, she turns and cups Seymour’s upturned face. Gently, she kisses Seymour on the lips. It’s a thanks, a blessing, a goodbye, entirely chaste and the most precious gift she could have given.

Howard, Clarice and Seymour slip back into the palace.

Howard heads upstairs to her bedchamber, to feign sleep.

Clarice peels off through the servants’ floor to ready Seymour’s carriage, taking Haltrasc with them.

And Seymour pulls a skirt over her hose and slips upstairs – she will be able to explain her presence in the courtiers’ halls far more easily than in the servants’, even at this early hour.

The palace is beginning to stir, servants coaching embers into fires and carrying freshly laundered linen to the nobility staying here.

Seymour takes every back passageway she can to avoid the guards at the main doors, slipping up and down narrow staircases and pushing through bookcases to reach passages between walls.

She should be going to her own quarters.

It is the wise thing to do. But she has one final task in High Hall.

She nestles herself in a bay window near the core of the palace and waits there, opposite a plain oak panel.

The caged bird above her flutters from side to side but makes no other sound.

The sun is almost up when the wooden panel slides back and Seymour spies her, slipping out of a hidden staircase that must lead directly to the king’s chambers.

She’s wearing a veil over her face, but Seymour recognises her gait.

Seymour was right: she remembered in that long wait outside the Tower where she had smelled that honeysuckle scent before.

Where she had spotted that diamond bracelet before she saw it on the king’s table.

The figure is halfway down the gallery when Seymour steps into her path. She jolts to a stop, her whole body tensing.

“How long?” Seymour whispers through the murky darkness.

Ever so slowly, Mary lifts her veil. She has deep circles beneath her eyes. She has always been deemed the beauty of the Boleyn family, the lovely, pliable younger sister, but in this moment she looks older than Boleyn. Seymour supposes betrayal will do that to a person.

“Three months,” she says.

“You were the one who arranged for the mine explosion,” Seymour says, remembering that Mary had accompanied Boleyn on the day of the explosion. She could have set it herself, before fleeing the cave with Boleyn.

“I had to,” Mary says. “I may not have known exactly what was in that cave before she took me there, but I know my sister. I knew she had discovered something dangerous. Master Cromwell once told me about gunpowder. I obtained some and took it with me, just in case.”

“You had to.” Seymour’s fingers close involuntarily, seeking the comfort of Haltrasc’s fur, thinking already of the command, but of course he’s not there. He’s safely with Clarice on the other side of the palace.

“She would have been found out eventually. Henry has so many spies. If I didn’t tell him, then someone else would have and our whole family would have been doomed.

It was the only way to save George and Rochford and Mark from being executed for treason too.

The only way to save my family’s name. My father would be broken if all of us were taken from him. ”

“But Boleyn is expendable.”

Mary’s hard smile is so similar to Boleyn’s that it hurts.

“We have all been forced to make sacrifices.”

“And I suppose the fact that you’re sharing the king’s bed has nothing to do with your reasons?” Seymour parries.

“Do not tell me you’re jealous,” Mary fires back. “I know your feelings lie elsewhere.”

“If you truly thought that, you’d have told him and I’d be up in that Tower too,” Seymour says.

“I only told him what I had to, to save them,” Mary says. “I simply want everything to go back to how it should be, before Boleyn’s meddling.”

“What about the rumours?” Seymour says. “The ones that twisted truths to make her sound like a witch and a whore? Was that you too?”

“Of course not,” Mary says, far too quickly.

“And I suppose you had to do that too,” Seymour says.

“You’re being naive, Seymour. It no longer suits you. You should go now. I’ll never speak a word of your involvement. I will become Queen of Brynd, and we will make things as they should be. Exchanging cold pleasantries, hating each other from afar, performing for the kingdom, protecting it.”

Mary’s eyes dart towards the staircase she came down, the one that leads back to the king’s chambers.

Seymour realises she shouldn’t have confronted her.

It was impulsive. Clarice would be furious with her, and yet she had to hear Mary confirm that she was the one to betray her sister.

She has no weapons on her, nothing except…

The rings on her left hand, the ones she has not yet given to Clarice, are bulky. Bulky enough to put some heft behind a punch.

“I think it’s a little late for that.”

Seymour flies towards Mary and lands a strike on her face.

Mary reels back, landing heavily against a portrait that falls to the tiles with a crash, alerting every guard in the vicinity.

Mary hits Seymour in the stomach and swings away, trying to get back to the staircase and the safety of the king’s chambers.

Seymour grabs her dress from behind, ripping the edging from it as she claws her way up Mary’s body.

Mary’s hood comes next, fluttering to the floor, leaving her with only the white cap perched on her scalp.

Seymour pins her to the wall by her wrists, their faces uncomfortably close.

“Where do we go from here then?” Mary asks.

“I’m going to kill you, you treacherous bitch,” Seymour hisses, her spittle landing on Mary’s cheeks. She hadn’t realised it until this moment, but that’s exactly what she wants to do. It’s what she must do, if she’s to survive.

“You don’t have the stomach for it,” Mary replies, her eyes darting to the door. She’s biding for time, until the guards arrive.

“Tell that to the three men lying dead beyond these doors,” Seymour says. Mary stills, her gaze focusing properly on Seymour at last. Then that smile, the Boleyn smile, returns.

“Good for you,” she whispers, and thrusts her head forward, the women’s skulls cracking against each other.

Seymour falls back, and Mary twists away, throwing herself up the hidden staircase two steps at a time.

At the other end of the gallery, guards appear.

Seymour struggles to her feet and dashes out of the other door, the appearance of a dishevelled queen enough to surprise the guards in the room beyond into a delay.

By the time Seymour bursts out of the building and flies across the courtyard of her own wing, the sun has risen fully.

In the distance, a hue and cry is going up.

Clarice is vibrating as they cling on to the side of the carriage.

Seymour throws herself inside, next to Haltrasc, and Clarice slams shut the door.

“Go!” Clarice instructs the driver, his hands glittering with some of Seymour’s old rings.

He urges the horses forward. They spring off, throwing Clarice and Seymour into the back of their seats.

Seymour peers out of the curtain as they race down the track.

There are soldiers at the end of the road, and they carry spears.

“Don’t you dare stop!” Clarice yells up at the driver. He cracks the horses’ harnesses, pushing them into a gallop.

“Move move move, you fools,” Seymour says, watching the soldiers stand firm in their line, their spears pointed directly towards them. The horses go faster, and faster, and faster…

At the last moment, the line of soldiers breaks. They scatter, throwing themselves out of the way of the careening steeds. Their shouts follow as the carriage swerves onto the scrind road towards Hyde. For now at least, Seymour is free.