Page 67 of Six Wild Crowns

Seymour sits up in the bath. “What could the lady do, to make it all go back to how it was?”

Clarice puffs out a breath, their smile pinched. “This is the way it has to be between them. There is no going back.”

Seymour lies back in the bath. Her tears now are not just for last night. They are for all her prideful mistakes, all the ways she has steered her ship into stormier waters through her refusal to take the wheel, through her own blind acceptance.

Well, her eyes are open now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Boleyn

The patch of skin on her ribs is itching again, so badly she cannot stand it. It has been tormenting Boleyn, making it difficult to concentrate on anything else. She sits on her throne, listening to an orator, hired at considerable expense, give an account of Henry’s victory in Lothair, and all she wants to do is scratch.

“The captain was gravely injured, and all seemed lost,” the orator says, sweeping an arm wide to illustrate the scale of the peril. “But even in the chaos and despair, our king took hold of the wheel, navigating the ship with a single hand against the Lothairian warships and the might of the storm. He stood on that prow: proud and solitary at the ship’s helm, Cernunnos’s magic lighting him up and reaching for the lightning – two unbreakable powers clashing in a single, divine bolt.”

Boleyn tries to look rapt. At any other time she would be. The orator is excellent. Even Mark, usually so cynical when it comes to the Elbenese’s admiration for their monarch, is staring up at the man, mouth open. Boleyn tugs on her bodice, hoping the friction of the fabric will ease the itching somewhat. The orator continues.

“Henry was the first of his men to leap from the ships. He strode through the shallows, his broadsword held aloft. The enemy waswaiting on the shore with spears and swords and bows. A flurry of arrows were aimed at him, every Lothairian soldier desperate to claim the Elbenese king’s life. Unafraid, our monarch pushed onwards. Some arrows he swiped away with his sword. Some landed on his armour. And some found their mark, burying themselves in the joints of the iron plates at his elbows or legs. These he pulled from his body as though they were no more troublesome than a leech, the torn flesh mending in seconds, knit together by Cernunnos himself.

“‘Victory for Elben! Glory for Elben!’ the king roared above the waves, and the roar came back from his men, good and loyal and true: ‘Victory for Elben! Victory for our king!’”

The whole chamber erupts into applause. Even stoic Rochford turns away to wipe her eyes.

“Wonderful,” Boleyn says, rising as gracefully as she can manage. She tells Syndony to pay the man well, then escapes down the stairs to her private room. There, she manages, with some difficulty, to wriggle out of her gown, and pulls up her shift to give the area a good scratch. The release is blissful, even though she knows she’s only making the skin red-raw. Then her nails hitch on something, and she stops abruptly.

She moves to her mirror and examines the skin. Her nails have caught on a piece of flaking skin. Delicately, she peels the flake away, expecting it to be a little scab. But the skin keeps peeling.

Boleyn drops her hand and shift, stepping back in horror. But the flap of peeled skin makes the linen shape oddly. And it itches so, so badly.

With trembling fingers, Boleyn lifts her shift once more and examines the place where the skin has gone. Beneath it is a thin mask of greying flesh, through which the white ridges of her ribs can be seen. Her chest heaving, her breath unsteady, Boleyn touches the area. She feels… nothing. The flesh is utterly dead.

Boleyn considers calling for Syndony or the physician, but she doesn’t want anyone to see her like this. This… rot, infection, whatever it is, will be used as proof of her witchcraft, as proof that shedoeshave something to do with the failing bordweal. Maybeeven Syndony will desert her. Henry will hear of it and then he won’t want her any more.

After all, Boleyn reasons, maybe this is something that happens when one is pregnant. There is so much that she was never told to expect – the bloating, the gas, the bone aches. The strange way a woman’s body works when growing another being is something that cannot be spoken of, even to a physician. It wouldn’t be tasteful.

Boleyn pulls again at the skin, trying not to retch as the flap peels away entirely, leaving a patch of grey flesh as big as her hand. She opens her window and tosses the peeled skin into the sea below, then rifles through her closet for the linen used for her courses. She presses one pad to the flesh, gingerly even though she feels nothing, then ties a greater swathe of fabric around her ribs, keeping the pad in place and concealing the wound. There. All better. At least the itching has stopped. The flesh will heal. It must.

Once she is dressed, she stumbles out of her room, desperate for company and solitude at once. Boleyn’s family is making a nuisance of themselves in the vestibule, getting in the way of the servants trying to reach the kitchens. As Boleyn approaches, she sees that they’re tormenting Wyatt.

“How is your mummer’s play for the Moon Ball coming along?” Mary is asking him. Boleyn asked Wyatt to write something for the celebration some weeks ago to keep him occupied. She tells herself it is because she wishes to tie histalentto Brynd, not him.

“Writing for a troupe of actors is very different to writing poetry,” Wyatt says. “It takes time. I must take into account the different strengths…”

“Which is to say, you haven’t started writing it yet.” George grins, twirling a lock of Mark’s hair around his fingers and nuzzling into him.

“I’ve started. I’ve just not finished.”

“Don’t do what you usually do,” Rochford warns.

“What do I usually do, oh observant one?” Wyatt says.

“Leave it to the night before, then write with too much wine in your stomach.”

George, Mark and Mary guffaw.

“I am going to the nursery,” Boleyn announces as she passes, thecommand for them to follow implicit. She senses their concern, even though they continue their inane chatter out into the courtyard, all of it focused on the Moon Ball.

“Father told me about an alchemist who makes wonderful fireworks,” George says. “Do you think we can ship him over from Gkontai?”

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