Page 32 of Six Wild Crowns

Boleyn laughs. The notion that any book could be dangerous is preposterous to her. People are dangerous. Swords and cannons are dangerous. Books can only ever be sustenance.

“You wouldn’t laugh if you could see what I can.”

“What do you see then, oh great one?” she asks.

Henry points at the faded lettering. “This book was written for a particular person. A queen. It belonged to Isabet.”

He may as well have punched Boleyn. She feels faint, and then she feels sick, and then she is coated in her own foolishness.

“I didn’t realise.”

The queen that exists only in cautionary tales of what happens when a consort betrays her country, king and god. The queen whose name for ever hangs over Brynd like storm clouds.

Henry lifts her onto his lap. “You weren’t to know, Boleyn. You’reonly trying to help me. But you won’t find help in this book, you understand?”

“Of course.”

“More should never have let you take it. I didn’t think he would.”

Boleyn doesn’t mention that she didn’t give More much choice in the matter.

“Besides, I don’t think we should be looking to the past for answers,” he says. “Let us think of the future instead.”

He splays a hand over her stomach again.

Boleyn forces herself to smile. She has made his life more difficult at a time when he should be celebrating his victory over Lothair. “I was looking in the wrong books. I’ll find something of use to you, Henry. I promise.”

“My darling,” he says. “You’re not going to let this pregnancy slow you down, are you?”

“Why should it?” she lies, collecting the book. “I’ll return this to the bishop.”

“No.”

Henry takes it from her. He makes a fist, and the book, thick though it is, folds and crumples as though it were tin.

“What are you doing?” she whispers.

“This should never have survived so long.”

He opens his hand. A pitiful ball of paper and leather sits on his palm. Even if she had been allowed to, Boleyn knows that the pages would only tear if she tried to rescue them. Henry goes to the fire and tosses the ball into it, stoking the embers until they catch on the paper. The flame runs along the edge of a page and then rises, like a flag unfurling.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Seymour

When the king carries Boleyn past her, Seymour can’t help herself. She makes her way silently through the muttered gossip and embarrassed laughter in the vestibule and slips up the back stairway towards the queen’s chamber. The king’s guards haven’t yet arrived, or they would be stationed outside already. As it is, the door is unguarded. Seymour hesitates only momentarily before pressing her ear guiltily to the wood, craving the sounds of Boleyn’s pleasure. There is no artifice in the moans she hears. On the contrary, Boleyn sounds almost… shy. Eager to be pleased. She cannot hear the king, and she’s thankful for it – he would have ruined the illusion.

Seymour imagines pleasing the queen, the way she has pleased Clarice; the way she pleased the earl’s son she took as a lover a few years ago. She imagines Boleyn winding her hair around Seymour’s neck, her eyes dancing, her kisses deep, and pulling gently until Seymour teeters on the edge of danger, the way she and Clarice used to do before everything went wrong.

Seymour closes her eyes, letting the pressure grow inside her. When the heat becomes too much, she darts back to her own room and locks the door, hastily pulling her gown up so that she can find her own release, ignoring the pain in her flayed fingers for those moments of pulsating bliss.

Seymour haunts the king and queen over the following days, watching how they still court each other, even though the prize has been won. She makes a study of their love, supping on their sensuality. Seymour’s brothers talk a lot about the campaigns of seduction waged upon them and their friends by multitudes of scheming women. Edward speaks of his wife as though she were a merciless conqueror and he a surrendered castle, brought down at last by an insurmountable force of guile. Seymour is not sure that’s how it happened. Nothing about her brother’s wife gives Seymour the impression that she is thrilled to be married to him.

Watching Boleyn and the king, Seymour comes to realise that her brothers are mistaken. In a true Elbenese courtship, woman and man are both conqueror and conquered in equal measure. It is a dance of power: every promenade is a surrender, every set a foray. Maybe that is what makes her remember Boleyn’s moans when she is alone at night – the idyll of a partnership so ferociously equal.

She finds the solution in that idyll. Even the most uncaring of husbands would kill a thousand crones to protect a potential son. This king would do more than that to keep Boleyn safe. Perhaps even be willing to extend that protection, if the recipient proves themselves worthy. Seymour knows she must act before the bandages are removed from her hands and, more importantly, before the king leaves Brynd. Clarice is an attentive nurse, and with their ministrations, the blisters start to heal, leaving a moist layer of puckered skin that weeps pus and blood. For now, Seymour is still a victim.

Every afternoon, while Queen Boleyn rests, the king climbs the narrowing stairs to the top of Brynd’s tallest turret, where lightning crackles around the turret’s apex even on days where there is no storm. The castle gossip has invented several reasons for these daily trips, depending on who one asks and how loyal they are to the queen. Some say he goes to permit Boleyn to rest, away from his attentions. Some say he is fleeing her insatiable sexual appetite. Those who fear invasion say he goes to watch the bordweal and ensure Quisto’s navy is not sailing over the horizon. Seymour wonders whether he simply wishes for some respite from the fawning.

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