Page 35 of Six Wild Crowns

“I don’t mind that. To be Elben’s ruler is the greatest gift our god could have given me.”

“But?” she says.

“I sometimes worry that I am not a good husband.”

It’s not at all the reply Seymour was expecting.

“Queen Boleyn adores you.”

“The Queen of Hyde is sick. You have heard this?”

Seymour nods.

“I haven’t visited her as often as I should have. The wars, my new marriage… I do love all of my queens, Lady Seymour. I truly do. Blount has given so much, and now she’s…”

He closes his eyes. The king should not weep. Seymour places a hand on his arm.

“You are the greatest man this island, this world, has known, Your Majesty, but not even Cernunnos himself can command time. No one – not your queens or your subjects or your worst enemy – doubts your devotion.”

The king’s eyes remain closed, but he’s listening. She imagines the eleven-year-old boy that must still lurk inside the man’s mind – the boy who’s overwhelmed by his responsibilities. It’s that boy she talks to.

“I know a little about the pressures of family. My brothers, they want me to do things for the good of the Seymours. Things I don’t feel equipped to do.”

“Such as?”

They look at each other directly for the first time. Seymour has the dizzying notion that he is looking at her the way he looks at Boleyn, even though that’s impossible. This had never been in Seymour’s plan. She had wished to gain his protection, nothing more. How could there be more? She is so unremarkable that the king would never see her that way. And yet… would it be so bad, to do what Edward has wanted her to do all along? Seymour is neither powerful nor poor enough to pursue anything so abstract as love: her fate is to marry for status, wealth or ideally a combination of the two. Being a queen would secure her something akin to freedom.

When she speaks, she uses the truth like a weapon, because it is the one weapon she knows she can wield.

“Seduce you. Become the next queen.”

Henry’s mouth flickers.

“I know,” she says. “It’s a ridiculous notion, isn’t it? And the queen…”

“Boleyn?”

“No. Queen Aragon.”

“She wants you to spy for her.”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what?”

She unwraps the bandage on her left hand. The king frowns, moving closer.

“She wanted me to do something for her. And I won’t. I will remain loyal to Queen Boleyn for as long as she is my mistress.”

The bandage whips out of her hand and flies over the edge of the wall, lost to the mist. She imagines it landing like a flag on the mast of that distant Quistoan ship.

“My god,” the king says, staring in horror at the flayed remains of her hand.

“You must protect Queen Boleyn,” Seymour says.

The king looks at her in wonder. “I will. And I’ll protect you too, Lady Seymour.”

She curtseys deeply, and turns to go. And sees, there at the top of the stairs, Queen Boleyn, waiting, watching them, hating her. And she realises, seeing that hate, that it is not merely lust she feels for her queen. It is something much more precious, and much more dangerous.

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