Page 24 of Six Wild Crowns

Boleyn shakes her head, one arm pressed across her stomach, the other frantically wiping away tears. Seymour must be the last person Boleyn wishes to see. And yet Seymour desperately wants to be the one Boleyn confides in – a desperation beyond her desire to spy for Aragon. A memory surfaces of another woman, stopping very still in the galleries of Wulfhall, hands cradling her swollen belly.

“Is it the baby?” Seymour whispers. “Do you need a doctor?”

And there is the memory again.Mother?Mother, do you need a doctor?

“What do you care?” Boleyn says, though her voice heaves with repressed grief. There is nothing that Seymour can say to make Boleyn trust her. Silently, she pulls off Boleyn’s gloves and holds the queen’s hands in her own, thumbs stroking Boleyn’s knuckles. Their knees touch through their gowns, the morning’s rain seeping through the fabric. The wash of the sea mingles with the sound of the wind through fruit trees, though the clearest sound of all, to Seymour’s ear, is her own heartbeat.

“Oh!” Boleyn says, pulling one hand from Seymour’s and clasping her belly. Her expression is radiant, her joy spilling through what had moments ago been despair. “Oh, I felt it!”

Seymour can’t help but smile back. “Is it the first time?”

“Yes. The first kick. There it is again!”

Boleyn laughs through a fresh wave of tears then, impulsively, says, “Would you like to feel?”

Seymour nods. She has no interest in the baby, but she knows she is sharing in something important. Boleyn places Seymour’s hand over the right side of her swell. Their misted breath mingles.After a moment, Seymour feels it – the tiniest pulse, right against her palm.

“I was certain I’d lost it,” Boleyn whispers. Her expression is so open – so sad and hopeful and vulnerable.

“But you haven’t. It is so alive,” Seymour says.Like you, she thinks.

She and Boleyn smile at each other. Boleyn looks down at Seymour’s dress, and her mask falls back into place.

“Why are you not wearing a cloak, Lady Seymour?” she says.

Seymour falters. “I… I don’t really feel the cold. I felt like some fresh air.”

The lie lands between them, obvious and ugly. Boleyn stands and smooths her dress. “I am sorry that you followed me for nothing,” she says, looking down at Seymour. “I’m afraid you will have only good news to send to Queen Aragon.”

She strides back towards the castle, leaving Seymour still kneeling in the damp.

The next day, work begins on digging out an ice chamber.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Boleyn

Boleyn sips her wine. It’s been mulled with nutmeg and citrus and puts her in mind of Mother’s Night celebrations at her family’s ancestral home, where the three Boleyn siblings would commandeer their own cauldron of the stuff and drink it until they were sick.

A rare wave of nausea passes through Boleyn, and she hands her glass to a passing servant and pretends to be watching the entertainment from her throne: a small travelling band of musicians from Capetia, who heard of her fondness for the country and begged to be allowed to play for her. They’re not bad, but they’re not worthy of a court – certainly no Capetian palace would have them. She’ll get the stewardess, Syndony, to dismiss them with some coin after supper.

Her hand plays gently across her stomach, as it always does when she thinks about the pregnancy. Thankfully Lady Seymour is off spying elsewhere – she has made herself largely absent since the day in the orchard. Boleyn grows hot with the shame of letting herself be so vulnerable in front of an imposter. She doesn’t want anyone to know about her moments of panic – the times when she is convinced that the baby is dead in her womb, the moments when she is sure she feels blood trickling down her thigh. All too oftennow, she becomes certain that this thing, not yet a human and yet, in her head, already a child, will come unstuck and abandon her in a rush of blood at any moment. No, no one must know, not even George – who will joke about it to try to make her smile – or Mary, who will be brusque and tell her that miscarriages happen all the time and she’ll conceive again. No one must see her at her weakest. No one must witness the crash of worries.

“Your Majesty, he’s here.”

Syndony is by her side, unsmiling as ever when in the presence of nobility. She nods to the door, where a wiry man with sharp, dancing eyes is waiting, watching. Wyatt, she thinks his name is. A scholar, supposedly. A recommendation from one of the lesser nobility at Brynd to her enquiries about someone who has a stronger grasp of Old Elbenese than she. Wyatt’s gaze slides over Boleyn as though she’s simply one of many people in the room.

“Let’s see what he has to say then,” Boleyn says. She dislikes him already, but if he can tell her more about that circled word –nimæn– in the bishop’s book, she supposes she can tolerate him.

Wyatt bows reluctantly before her. The music peters out as a semicircle forms around them, like an audience at a cockfight. Boleyn knows that she emits a certain energy when she is preparing for a fight. George calls it her executioner energy; a mental baring of her teeth.

“They tell me you’re a poet and a scholar,” Boleyn says. “You don’t look much like either.”

“They tell me you’re a whore,” Wyatt responds.

The whole room goes coldly silent.

“Which goes to show,” he continues, “that people are stupid.”

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