Page 120 of Six Wild Crowns

Boleyn refuses to let him hear her sobs, but she cannot stop the tears from coming. She covers her face with her sleeve to muffle the sound. When the worst has subsided, she crawls over to the plate and cup. She drinks the liquid but leaves the food, then returns, neck and head aching, to her position at the window. The lights in the palace have all been lit now, each window a star. She maps their constellations – that configuration belonging to Daven; that one to Hyde. And then the candles in Brynd’s rooms are lit, and her heart clenches. Who is occupying her rooms? Has Henry found another replacement, so soon? Or is this an unknowing servant merely doing their rounds? These questions torture her until renewed movement below catches her attention.

Someone is being brought into the courtyard, their hands tied behind their back. Boleyn strains to see who it is, praying to the goddess, to Cernunnos, to whoever might grant wishes to a doomed woman, that it isn’t either of her siblings. Then the prisoner is thrown onto the scaffold, and the torches illuminate their face.

Wyatt.

The man who would be her lover, the man who silently helped her commit treason without asking her why. Her hands slip on the windowsill, but she will not crumple. She will not look away. This is what she has done. This is where her blind pursuit of justice has led.

One of the guards points up at Boleyn’s window and says something to Wyatt. He looks up. Even from this distance, in the half-light, Boleyn can see that his face is a mess of bruises and cuts. He isn’t holding himself right either, his clothes hiding a litany of other injuries.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, knowing that he will never be able to hear her, even were she to scream it.

And yet, he does seem to hear her. Because he has always heard the beat of her heart, understood it better than the man she was married to. He straightens, slowly, every movement costing him. He tilts his head towards her, as though straining to glimpse themidday sun. His hands are bound in front of him, but he brings them to his chest, where his heart lies. He thumps them there, once, twice.

A salute. A promise. Forgiveness.

He keeps looking at Boleyn as they force him to his knees, refusing to allow them to place his head on the block. There’s some commotion that she cannot understand, and in it she takes the bottom of her dress and tears at the already ragged hem, stripping a piece of the red velvet from the rest of the garment. She thrusts it out of the window, far enough that she hopes he can see it.

He does. He raises his hands once more to his chest, just as someone passes the executioner a sword, and the executioner swings it, and Wyatt looks no more.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Seymour

There is a fine clock in Seymour’s rooms, made of gold filigree. It was given to Queen Blount, and inherited by Seymour when she married the king. Her rooms are full of such trinkets – heirlooms of past queens of Hyde. As she waits in her bedchamber, she feels those queens with her. Every one demure and proper and submissive. They are the reason Hyde is so peaceful. But now, as Seymour runs her hands over her strange clothes – dark trousers, linen blouse and the knife in its belt lent by Clarice, bodice from her own wardrobe – she hears their screams. By the time the clock strikes midnight, she is ready.

“Come, Haltrasc,” Seymour whispers, and the panther that had been snoozing at her feet rises silently.

Together, they slip from her rooms. The guards stationed outside are slumped against the wall, still clutching glasses drained of drugged wine. Seymour clings to the walls as she makes her way through the palace, Haltrasc’s presence beside her a balm. She has never navigated High Hall in the dark. It’s the first time she has seen it so still. The ghosts of long dead kings and courtiers feel present in every step, every curtain she brushes and every draught on the back of her neck. Her only light comes from the crescent moon, making ladders on the floors as she moves from gallery togallery. The only sound is the occasional mournful pip of the songbirds of High Hall, restless in their cages even at midnight.

Down, down she goes, to the servants’ quarters at the base of the palace. There’s a plain, unguarded door in one of the corridors that leads out to the kitchen gardens, right where Clarice told Seymour it would be. She holds it open for Haltrasc and follows him out, propping it open with a stone for her return journey.

She had told Voda Kelaverinn about the concentric circles of the gardens of the royal palace, so familiar to her in daylight. She has never seen them in darkness. Every topiary becomes an armed guard; every whisper of wind through leaves a spy watching her.

The rotation schedule of the guards’ patrols, written in Howard’s untidy scrawl, scratches the soft skin beneath Seymour’s bodice as she approaches the first hedge. If Howard’s memory is as remarkable as they think, Seymour should be able to slip through to the second circle without being seen. She finds herself pulling the schedule out and checking it by moonlight, just to be sure. She pushes the metal gate open, cursing its thin creak, then slips through and into the shelter of the fruit trees beyond. She makes her way through the next two gates with ease, but at the fourth, one of the guards is not where they should be. Seymour comes face to face with a young, pale face, not much older than a boy, wearing the guard’s uniform. There’s an instant where the two of them could turn and leave, both unscathed, but then his hand twitches towards his sword and she knows what must be done.

“Haltrasc, hunt,” she says. The boy’s face turns towards the silent creature at her side, and his eyes widen as Haltrasc leaps for his throat.

Seymour had prepared herself for blood, but it’s a clean, swift kill. What shocks Seymour is seeing the precise moment the guard’s soul is extinguished. She used to find comfort in the idea of an afterlife, but at that moment she cannot see how there could be one. There is no passing, no transference from one plane to another. Only life and then, in a snap, death. She can’t honour the moment, or what it has done to her. She must keep moving, or the same will happen to Boleyn and she will be nowhere either in this world or another. Gone, not waiting.

“Come, Haltrasc,” Seymour whispers. The panther laps at the boy’s neck a little longer, then draws back to allow her to pull her knife across the wound, eradicating the panther’s bite marks. She turns away from her mutilation, hurrying onwards, and Haltrasc follows her, the fur around his mouth gleaming with blood in the moonlight. Seymour forces herself to bury her fingers in his fur as they walk. This murder is not his guilt. It is she who is the monster, she who should be feared.

They pass through the final two gates without incident, and at last reach the Tower. There, Seymour settles against the base of one of the dragon statues, ignoring the poor stone creature’s gleaming eyes and leaning in to Haltrasc’s steady warmth to fend against the chill. Her juddering breath makes wisps in the air; fear given form. The scaffold where the poet was executed earlier offers them some cover. Seymour tries not to think about the smell of copper, or the hum of flies cleaning the wood. She distracts herself with thoughts of honeysuckle, diamonds and betrayal.

The bottom floor of the Tower is raucous, the door left open carelessly. There are more guards than normal on night shift, no doubt due to the exalted nature of their prisoner. Seymour can sense their excitement. By rights they should be exhausted, but their conversation is punctuated by barks of laughter. Some of them cannot sit still, springing from their perches to peer outside, or do a jig for the amusement of their colleagues. Seymour spots one of them make an obscene gesture with his hips, and they all look up the stairs and laugh. Her fingers tighten in Haltrasc’s fur.

As the bell in High Hall’s sanctuary chimes the first hour of the morning, a servant dressed in nondescript clothing lugs a handcart across the cobbled courtyard. On the back of the wagon is a large wooden keg.

“What’s this then?” a guard says, squaring up to the servant, towering over them.

“A gift from the king, for your service,” the servant parrots. “Ale from Lothair.”

The guards gather around the keg, laughing and patting each other on the back. It takes six of them to haul the vessel into theTower, while the others swagger around the servant, making crude comments. The servant flees, dragging the empty cart behind them, and the guards jeer as they go. Haltrasc bristles. Seymour strokes his fur.In time, panther, in time.

It takes longer than Seymour would like for the drugs to take effect. It was easy to pluck a handful of the leaves the gardener warned her about so many moons ago, and that she has used so often on Edward. She has become something of an expert in understanding the right dosage for slowing the mind, for inciting a gradual sleep. She accurately measured the right amount for the guards outside her doors in the palace, but she had to guess how much it would take to knock out so many guards speedily. The slighter ones fall first, crumpling to the ground where they stand, their tankards spilling and rolling across the floor.

The rest understand almost immediately what has happened, tossing their tankards away. Not quickly enough, though, for all of them have drunk from the ale, and the drugs are strong. Even as they try to wake up their comrades, they stumble, their words slurring. Only one thinks to try to call for help. He stumbles to the door and opens his mouth. Seymour wishes he wouldn’t.

“Haltrasc,” she says, and the panther springs across the courtyard, silencing the man for ever.

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