Page 122 of Six Wild Crowns

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 youhadto 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.

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