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CHAPTER FIVE

Boleyn

B rynd Castle reminds Boleyn of the ancient goddesses, the ones whose wind-worn statues still stand on Elben’s deserted hilltops.

Brynd is built on a precipice, tall, ancient and scarred.

At its apex is a single turret, crowned with lightning rods, that leans out over the storm-ridden sea as though daring the waves to topple it.

Beyond the sea, just visible in the fading light, is the bordweal.

The bruised whorls of light are clearer on the horizon, where wind meets water.

Purple and green flicker into red and turquoise like playful cubs.

Boleyn cranes her neck, following the curve of the dome up, up, up.

In her childhood, she and her siblings would lie on the grass outside Hever at sunset, simply to witness the storm of the island’s protection.

They would imagine themselves as birds, with the ability to fly the full length of the bordweal, from Mathmas in the north-west, all the way to Hyde on the south-east coast.

But today the uppermost reaches of the dome are fainter than Boleyn remembers.

Fainter, thus, frailer. It has been only a matter of months since the last surviving queen of Henry’s father, the Dowager Queen Huntlye died, leaving Brynd un-queened.

Boleyn is certain the bordweal did not used to weaken so quickly.

Perhaps things changed while she was abroad.

They arrive in the castle’s forecourt on the brink of sunset, the carriage hurtling across the drawbridge and coming to a halt before Boleyn’s new stewardess.

Mistress Syndony is an ebony-haired grandmother with light-brown skin.

Her expression is stern but the lines around her eyes suggest she is used to smiling, and often, in the right company.

She welcomes Henry and Boleyn with a bob of a curtsey, very upright, and leads them towards the castle.

“The masters are assembled in the bedchamber already,” she tells them, only a shrewd flick of the eyes telling Boleyn how she feels about the tradition of public consummation.

“She needs to meld with the castle first,” Henry says.

He takes Boleyn to the outer wall, where a gargoyle head erupts from the stone at head height. Its grotesque expression – rolling eyes and distended tongue – is still sharply delineated despite its age.

“The spirit stone,” Boleyn whispers. She finds herself reluctant to touch it after the torture of the binding ceremony, but it must be done.

She places her hand on the gargoyle’s forehead.

“ Gast tebibigenda ,” she says. Bibigenda – an ancient, muddied word, that can mean queen , worshipper or even, in certain contexts, witch .

She prepares for more pain, but no sooner has she said the words, than pleasant coolness rushes through her body.

It’s as though the castle itself is imbuing her with the weathered strength of its stone, and taking in return a piece of her own spirit.

In the bonding with Henry, she had felt weak and alone.

Now, she can sense the many other queens who have been mistress of Brynd, stretching back hundreds and hundreds of years.

The stubborn drudge of the late Queen Huntlye, Boleyn’s immediate predecessor, is dominant, but Boleyn can feel others too – queens who were ruled by their anger, or considered quite mad, or held rebellion in their hearts.

She tastes them all. Behind them, beyond them, is something eternal.

It tastes like rain in summer, like a story told over an invalid, like a dragon on the brink of rage.

That, she thinks, wonder and humility and pride flooding her, must be Cernunnos.

The god whose power protects Elben. These are not emotions she has ever associated with the god, but they inspire an affinity to Him she has never before felt.

“And now for the final ceremony,” Henry says, taking her hand from the stone before she is ready, and leading her into the castle itself. She glances back at the gargoyle as they pass through the entrance.

They don’t have time, that night, to tour her new home properly, but she insists on seeing her antechamber.

It is the glory of Brynd, set inside the lightning turret.

One side of the chamber, facing the sea, is constructed entirely of glass.

She has read about this room, but nothing prepares her for her first sight of it.

“It’s quite something, isn’t it?” Henry says as she rushes to the window and leans against the glass, craning to see the water below.

Waves crash against rocks directly beneath them, the spray coating the window even at this height.

Lightning dissects the sky. The rods above them catch it, and a fork of light shudders down the turret.

The hairs on Boleyn’s neck stand on end.

“It’s me,” Boleyn says, turning to Henry. She wants to cry. “This castle is me.”

Henry smiles, snakes his arms around her waist. “I know, my lightning queen.”

Boleyn returns to the window, looking out now rather than down.

The sea stretches in all directions. To the right, she can just glimpse the port of Garclyffe, and the shipyards where a dozen warships, bigger than any before seen on the known oceans, are being constructed from Holtwode oak.

Not a league out from the coast, the dome of the bordweal flickers, brighter than when they first arrived, already healing from her presence.

Beyond it, the horizon melts into cloud and mist. Her eyes try to give the cloud some definition, creating shadowy mountains.

She knows, because she’s seen it on a map, that Quisto is somewhere ahead of them, many hundreds of miles away.

“On a calm day you can see their shores,” Henry says, close behind her.

“What’s that?” she says, spotting something just beneath the waves.

“It could be a kraken,” Mistress Syndony says from the doorway. “Or a kelpie. There’s an old wives’ tale about these waters.”

“Tell me.”

“They say that when people fall into the water, whether by choice or accident, or murder, they don’t die. Not properly. Some turn into krakens, and some into kelpies.”

Boleyn watches the shape beneath the roiling water. She imagines its tentacles greedy for the human life it was denied.

“I like that,” she says.

“Do you like the view?” Henry says, turning her to face him.

“It’s very handsome,” she says, pulling him towards her.

Syndony closes the door silently as Boleyn leans back against the glass and pushes Henry to his knees before her. Boleyn likes the idea of the sentries of Quisto watching them like this, from their distant turrets.

While her chamber is prepared for the consummation, Boleyn and Henry are taken to separate rooms to wash the sweat and musk of the journey from their bodies.

Maids run scented flannels over Boleyn’s skin, leaving her smelling of cedarwood and thyme, while others braid green ribbons through her hair.

When the sun is a sliver of red varnishing the sea, they cover Boleyn’s body with a loose-fitting gown for the walk to her chamber.

Boleyn has done all she can to prepare for this moment.

She has written to the Capetian princesses she once served, asking them delicately for advice.

She has talked about it with Mary; about how to balance the intimacy of her wedding night with its public performance.

Still, her heart races as she climbs the steps.

She has an intensely philosophical sense of the passing of herself through time, as she always does when she is nervous.

Her bedchamber is so full of bodies that she cannot get an idea of its true size.

She can smell that there is a fire somewhere in it, and she can glimpse a window, almost as large as the one in the antechamber directly above.

Mostly, all she sees is the bed, sitting in the centre of the room, its drapes tied back for now.

Woollen blankets and furs are arranged neatly on the mattress.

Boleyn nods at the men crowded into the chamber, and they bow in return.

She recognises a handful: Lord Wolsey, who carries himself with the benevolence of a pale snake; Henry’s younger advisor Cromwell, Black, jowly and sharp-eyed; and a few cousins who have wrangled an invitation to see the king at his most vulnerable on the basis of their distant relation to her.

The thought makes her protective of her husband.

It is him and her against these scavengers.

“My queen,” Henry says from behind her. As their audience bows, Boleyn turns to greet him. Like her, he’s wearing a long gown over his nakedness, and his hair is still damp from the bath.

“My king,” she says and holds out her hand, her chin high, her smile modest but warm.

She must look relaxed, but not eager. Henry kisses her hand, then leads her to the bed where servants are waiting to close the drapes.

As they are cocooned, Boleyn almost laughs.

The fabric is semi-transparent by design – what point is there in a public consummation if the public cannot witness the act itself?

She began her wedding day an artefact in a chamber full of spectators, and she will end it the same way.

Henry shoos away the maids and runs his hands down Boleyn’s arms, slipping her robe from her shoulders.

“Are you all right?” he whispers into her hair, his breath hot on her neck, and suddenly: she is. She straightens in her nakedness. Give them a good silhouette , Mary had said. They cannot see details through the drapes, but they will see nerves and awkwardness. You must appear queenly.

Henry shrugs off his robe and takes her in his arms, his shimmering magic stretching and contracting from his body to hers, wanting them to be joined.

It might not have been planned, but she’s glad she’s already seen him naked, and has already discovered how if she nips his shoulder or his ear lobe, she can make him even harder – she wants the spectators to be in no doubt that their king desires her.

From beyond the cocoon of the curtains, Wolsey mutters, “My own chamber at Aspideas is a good deal larger than this.” Boleyn loses her focus. Even when Henry lifts her onto the bed, she cannot help but dwell on Wolsey’s insult.

Henry pauses in his worship. She’s going to lose him. She must do something – something that will bring them back to each other and, more importantly, rivet the men beyond the drapes. Boleyn kisses Henry deeply, then whispers, “Shall we cause a scandal?”

Henry bites her lip. “What did you have in mind?”

Their lovemaking in the Holtwode had been too intimate for much noise – any screaming would have broken the spell between them. But there can be no hope of intimacy here.

“You have caught me, my king. What are you now going to do with me?” she says, loud enough for the room to hear. She rakes her nails down Henry’s back as she pulls him on top of her. She’s still wet from his earlier ministrations.

“You have bewitched me, my queen,” Henry says, as he goes very slowly, very deeply, inside her.

They are languid and loud in their tussle.

Other brides might shrink in the face of spectators.

Boleyn is not like other brides. She fills the chamber with her presence, because Henry is hers and she is his and together they are unstoppable.

When she is close to ecstasy, he finds the spot to send her over the edge and sends a pulse of magic through her, making her scream and writhe, overwhelmed.

No one can doubt his potency, or her desire.

“You did not need to do that, last night,” she remarks the next day as Henry shows her the rest of Brynd, his hands and lips never far from her waist and hips and neck.

“Do what?”

“You know what. I was close anyway. You did not need your magic.”

She lets him lead her through stone hall after stone hall, her new dragon, the gift from Cleves, playing with Henry’s dogs at their feet.

“I wanted to make sure you were satisfied, my love,” he says.

A suspicion flicks through Boleyn’s mind: if a woman is satisfied, she is more likely to conceive.

Perhaps their lovemaking last night was not about them but about the heir that Elben needs.

She doesn’t know why the thought shakes her.

She intends to be the queen to give Henry his son.

She was more than satisfied. Why is she being mulish?

Perhaps it’s because she’s disappointed at how stark Brynd is.

Last night she had felt attuned to the castle and the savage glory of its lightning turret, but in daylight she can see how neglected the building has been under the Dowager Queen’s management.

As the strongest fortress on Elben, the only one built for attack rather than defence or beauty, it is stubbornly thick-walled and austere.

The household – the servants and gardeners and cooks that she’s inherited – are clothed in grey wool, with faces to match.

When Mary and George arrive, she decides, they will begin the transformation.

The castle will be unrecognisable by the following autumn, when she will take her place as host of the Moon Ball.

She will make it a ball to remember, a ball to make all others jealous.

She may have proved herself a queen worthy of Henry’s love.

Now, she must prove herself worthy of her people, and her country.