Page 115 of Six Wild Crowns

“Of course.”

“I need you to get a message to the other queens.”

Boleyn whispers the message to her. “Quickly, and try not to let anyone see you.”

Syndony slips from the room, and Boleyn looks at herself in the mirror, squaring her shoulders against what is about to happen.

She had been blind to it on her wedding day, but the dress was too much after all. Fifty yards of scarlet fabric, to prove a point to people whose opinion really didn’t matter. Not done for herself, but to set herself apart from women like Seymour, like Cleves and Howard. To what end?

“Ridiculous,” she whispers.

The door feels heavier than normal as she pulls it open, as though it wants to protect her a little longer from what awaits her. But she is ready. She has set in motion the most important matter. Everything else must flow from that.

The banqueting hall is full, but Henry is nowhere to be seen. In fact, there is only one face in the mass of bodies there that Boleyn recognises. Wolsey stands at the head of a group of guards, every one of them impassive in the face of her magnificence.

“Lady Boleyn,” Wolsey says, as soon as she appears, his nasal voice ringing through the hall and into the corridors nearby. “I must arrest you for conspiracy to treason against His Majesty King Henry, and against the kingdom of Elben.”

As the guards step forward to manhandle Boleyn out of her palace, she looks towards the sea. The sun blazes down on her face. The storm has begun, and the lightning has chosen where to strike first.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Seymour

The 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.”

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