Page 27 of Six Wild Crowns

“I was told that you understand Old Elbenese?” Boleyn asks Wyatt.

“I make a hobby of studying it. I’m no expert, though.”

She opens the book to the page she’s found, and points at the circled word.

“Well, you had better make yourself an expert, because for all your clever poetry, this is the use I have for you. Why has someone marked this, can you think? I do not recognise the word.”

Wyatt frowns as he mouths the word.Nimæn. His lips bridge the two syllables like a dancer. He traces ink-stained fingers across the paper.

“Well, if memory serves me correctly,nimænhas several meanings.”

He hesitates. Boleyn huffs pointedly. “Do not test me, sir.”

“Well, given the context is the nature of the divine power being transferred to Aethelred’s queens, I think the author must mean ‘given’, or ‘channelled’. That’s the only translation that makes sense.”

She wants to jab him, but settles for raising an eyebrow.

“What translation wouldn’t make sense? What does the word truly mean?” she asks. “Do not conceal truths from me, Master Wyatt. I rarely take kindly to it.”

Wyatt makes an odd sort of noise, somewhere between laugh and puff. “The powerful are fond of saying such things, Your Majesty, up until you do their bidding. Then they are fond of threats.”

He catches her eye and relents. “The most common meaning ofnimænis simply: ‘stolen’. So you see why that cannot be the case here.”

Boleyn considers possible explanations. The most likely one is that Wyatt’s memory is faulty, but to say so would be churlish. “You may be right. The word must have different meanings depending on the context,” she says at last. Her finger hovers over the circled word, but this time she does not touch it.

Wyatt turns to her. “If Your Majesty has no objections, may I take some time to study the rest of the book? It will give me more time to shed light on this mistake, and I might be able to see if there are any other anomalies.”

He might simply be buying himself time, with no ability to truly decipher the book, but she no longer has the energy to challenge him. She hands him the book and dismisses him. On his way out of the room, Mary invites him to dance. Usually Boleyn would join them, a magnet to fix all eyes on her. But there is only one man she wants to dance with. She spins her poesy ring, the fairy trapped inside it pulsating with heat through the golden shell, as the longing for Henry’s arms overwhelms her. She’s missed him these last few months, even more so since she realised she was pregnant. She was the one who urged him to war, but now she wants him with her.

Absent-mindedly, she smooths her hand over the bodice where she imagines their baby growing, growing, feeding, leeching.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Seymour

It’s still dark outside when Clarice wakes Seymour. They are saying something in the gloom, but Seymour can’t hear them above the sound of the thunder and the waves.

“What time is it?” she murmurs.

“Never mind that, my lady,” Clarice says. “They’re evacuating the tower. Quickly, we must get you dressed.”

A fork of lightning illuminates the world outside, and Seymour watches a wave reach up to her window – halfway up the tower – and consume it. Suddenly, she is very awake.

Clarice hurriedly packs a few of Seymour’s more precious belongings in her smallest trunk.

“Are we leaving the castle?” Seymour asks as Clarice bundles her into the first gown they can find.

“No, it’s just this tower the stewardess is worried about. She’s never seen the waves so high and she doesn’t know if the stone will hold. Everyone’s gathering in the banqueting hall.”

The candle Clarice holds aloft does not reach far once they leave the warmth of Seymour’s room, and the stairs remain forbidding as they descend. The stone echoes strangely every time a wave hits the tower, as if some great beast is sating its rage against Brynd. By the time Seymour trips into the hall, her heart is thumping.The space is already half full. The evacuated tower is home to the bedchambers of nearly all the queen’s household, as well as the queen herself. They sit in quiet groups around the edges of the room, and every time lightning strikes the tower or thunder cracks the sky, they grow silent, waiting for the roar of collapsing stone. Seymour, though, finds herself happier to be among people rather than alone in that looming tower.

The queen sits in one corner with her sister and the poet Wyatt, who seems to have made himself indispensable since his arrival only a few weeks ago. She is fully dressed in her jewels and a deep green gown of velvet and satin, but her hair is unadorned, flowing loosely down her shoulders and pooling in her lap. Her pet dragon, Urial, is curled up on the hem of her dress, panting and heaving, his mistress’s hand on his back doing little to quell his fear. Seymour finds herself a spot not far from them, and settles herself on a cushion, content to watch them. She feels a strange kinship with Master Wyatt, perhaps because he has been humiliated at the queen’s hands, like Seymour. Or perhaps it’s because of the way he and the queen are with each other. She sees it now: the way Wyatt whispers something to Boleyn, the way she throws her lovely neck back and laughs, like a performance for the whole room. Wyatt’s habit of pressing his hand to his chest when he’s with her, and the over-mannered way he lifts the hem of the queen’s dress and kisses it.

“Oh, go away, little goat,” Boleyn says to him. “And take my sister with you. You’re both being tiresome.”

“I bleat only for you, Your Majesty,” he says. “But if the Lady Mary will have me, I’ll make another noise for her.”

Mary arches an eyebrow at him. “Maybe you can be my sheep.”

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