Page 38 of Six Wild Crowns

BOLEYN.

Boleyn’s first instinct is to laugh. It’s preposterous. Absolutely preposterous. But the more she thinks on it, she also sees how very clever it is. Her allegiance to Capetia and dislike of Quisto is well known, she has done nothing to conceal it. Shedidwear red, to celebrate Henry’s victory over Lothair, not the Queen of Hyde’s illness. And, now she recollects, Henrydidsay that she had bewitched him – on their first night together. It was a love murmur, nothing more. By seasoning lies with a little truth, the authors of this pamphlet have rendered their accusations credible.

Boleyn turns to the wind and screams, the pamphlet crumpled in her fist. It is not merely the injustice of it, and the fact it undermines all the work she has been doing to win over her citizens. The only people who would have seen her red gown are her household at Brynd. The only ones who could have heard Henry’s words –you have bewitched me, my queen– are the few nobility, family and servants who were present at her public consummation.

There is a spy in her ranks, beyond the upstart Lady Seymour. That or someone very high up is working against her – Cromwell or Wolsey, she wagers. Someone who poses a true threat.

She screams again, but this time she screams at the folly, that broken, useless mass of ivy and stone. She beats her fists against its walls, relishing the smack of pain. Then, in the absence of a person to humiliate, she tears at the ivy instead, pulling and pulling at the knotted vines until a great mass of them comes away, making her stumble and trip backwards.

When she sits up, she is no longer focused on the ivy. For beneath the leaves is not a stone wall, but a brass one. Its mottled patina glints here and there, as though blinking in unwelcome sunlight.

One became a looking glass,

One in a tower made of brass…

Her maid’s old mining song comes back to her now. Cernunnos knows she’s heard it enough times that it’s embedded in her brain. What was it about, though? An orb. An orb, cut by women, three by three. It doesn’t make sense to her yet, but what are the odds that a tower made of brass should be here, on Brynd, one of six castles –three by three, or threeandthree?

In an instant, Boleyn is back on her feet, the pamphlet forgotten. She pulls away more of the ivy, tugging at roots and stems that have grown and strengthened over centuries, until her hands are almost as flayed as Lady Seymour’s. With every tug, she reveals more brass, and she realises that the folly must, once, have been very beautiful. She is on the brink of giving up when she finds it, tucked away at one side, facing towards the sea. She can feel the edge of something new beneath the remaining ivy – a ridge. Even though her stomach is twinging, even though she knows she should ride back to Brynd and call for a workman, she pulls one last time. The ivy comes away.

There, no bigger than her head, is a six-sided shape, convex, as if hewn from a larger sphere. If she had not heard her maid’s song, she might mistake it for a mirror, or glass. The surface is impossibly smooth, almost liquid, and warm despite the wind. The depths of the piece glitter strangely with the green–purple–gold of divinemagic. She presses her hands against it again, and then her ear. Her body prickles, as though the thing is feeding from her.

“She is dying.” A voice, coming from the stone and echoing through her head at the same time. A voice that she recognises: Wolsey’s nasal tone.

Boleyn pulls away from the stone, and almost screams in shock.

She is looking through the glass upon a chamber, not too dissimilar to her own. Simple fabrics cover a bed that sits beneath a glass dome. On the bed lies a withered woman, all limbs, like a mangled spider. Her eyes are glassy, but she looks directly at Boleyn.

Around her bed stand Wolsey and a handful of other men. Boleyn’s jaw tightens. She feels the invasion of the woman’s privacy keenly. Someone should cover her.

A doctor enters and sees the way she is lying. “Did you let her move?” he asks the men. Boleyn hears his voice both through the shape and inside her head. There is a dreamlike quality to it all, except that Boleyn has the strangest feeling that she is in the room with the dying woman, standing at the foot of her bed, even as she is also standing outside the folly at Brynd.

“Your Majesty? Can you hear me?” the doctor says. Boleyn realises with a shock that this must be Queen Blount, the consort of the Palace of Hyde, whose illness she has been accused of celebrating.

“She insisted,” one of the men replies. “Said she wanted to look outside one last time.”

Blount is staring directly at Boleyn, her eyes tired but intense. Then Wolsey turns around to see what Blount is looking at… and doesn’t react at all. He moves towards Boleyn, looks straight through her, as though he were peering through a perfectly normal window.

But the queen can see Boleyn, she’s sure of it. Boleyn sees her take one final, laboured breath. She sees Blount close her eyes. She sees the doctor take her pulse and shake his head at the other men. As they each make the sign of the antlered god, the vision fades, the stone becomes clear once more. Boleyn sinks to the ground as she pieces together what just happened.

This is no mere glass. It’s one of thesunscína– the far-sighted mirrors of ancient lore, and it works for the Queens of Elben alone.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Seymour

The day she hears of Queen Blount’s death, Seymour finds a parcel on her bed. Mindful of the Queen’s Kiss, she dons thick gloves and a veil before opening it. Inside is a length of blue silk and a white ermine fur and, laid on top of both, two pieces of jewellery. The first is a brooch depicting a damsel clutching a heart-shaped ruby. The second is a necklace with a mother-of-pearl pendant shaped like a crown. The meaning is clear, even to someone as simple as her: blue is the colour of royalty, so she knows it is a gift from the king. Ermines symbolise purity, like the purity Seymour showed in telling the king about Queen Aragon’s plot against Boleyn. And she is meant to be the damsel, offering her heart in exchange for a queenship.

Even though this isn’t love, Seymour thrills all the same. It is the perfect, courtly flirtation that she has spent so long admiring, never imagining she would experience it for herself. She must respond in kind – a symbolic gesture that honours the king’s generosity and tells him something of her own mindset. If only she were clever enough to know what that might be.

Before she can work out what to do, there’s a knock on Seymour’s door and without waiting for an answer, Mary Boleyn flounces in, her honeysuckle perfume filling the room, jewels – her trademarkdiamonds – glittering at her wrist and neck against the midnight of her mourning dress. Seymour rushes to cover up the gifts, but Mary spots them immediately.

“What did you get?” she asks, pulling the bedcovers back to reveal the cloth and jewels.

“Oh, you clever girl. No one saw you coming, did they? Boleyn told me we were underestimating you.”

“I’m sending them back,” Seymour says, blushing, wondering when Boleyn said such a thing. She bundles the gifts together and calls for Clarice. She hadn’t intended to send them back at all, but what else can she do in Mary’s presence?

“Wait.”

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