Page 72 of Six Wild Crowns

Seymour can’t answer that. She can’t tell Boleyn that she has been asking for help ever since that strange and beautiful night at the font. And Boleyn did help her, in her own way. But the help Seymour needs is beyond Boleyn’s ability to grant.

“We will find a way,” Boleyn whispers.

Seymour cannot say who is leaning more on whom. She finds herself staring, through tears, at the wall behind Boleyn…

She stumbles back, pulling her friend with her.

“It’s…” Seymour can’t breathe. “It’s a person.”

“What?”

Boleyn takes the torch and holds it up to where Seymour is pointing. At first, all they see are the shadows and contours of the crystal, and the sea grime covering it, but when they move the light just so, it appears. A face, perfectly preserved – eyes closed, peaceful, as though standing in water.

“What is this place?” Seymour says, clutching her arms around her torso. Her tears are cold against her cheeks. Boleyn moves the torch along the wall, looking closely.

“There are more of them.”

“I’ll fetch someone,” Seymour says.

“No. Wait.”

Boleyn goes to the entrance of the cave and snatches up one of the tools. She hands Seymour the torch and begins to hammer inexpertly at the wall, chipping away until the crystal begins to thin.

“I need to get out of this gown.”

She pulls at the laces of her bodice. It pools at her feet and she steps out of it in her shift, dragging her embellished sleeves from her arms and leaving them on the floor of the cavern. Seymour thruststhe torch into a patch of sand and joins Boleyn. There is something haunted about the cavern, some strange energy in the air that flits between the women as they work. It fills them, driving the muscles in their arms, wicking away their sweat, calming the torrents inside them.

At last, the bodies are revealed, a layer of crystal still encasing them, now thin enough for all to be seen. Seymour and Boleyn step back, viewing all six side by side.

Blonde and red and chestnut and hair like midnight, some in waves, some in curls, some cropped, some flowing straight to the floor. Narrow and broad, curved and flat, soft and muscular, brown and bronze and beige and pale. Long torsos and long legs, short and tall, wombed and not. Big noses, breasts, eyes; small noses, breasts, eyes. No breasts, crooked limbs, moles and birthmarks and stretch marks and the scars of childbirth and the smoothness of childlessness. Each body so wholly different from its companions. All of them, women.

Seymour realises that she is clutching Boleyn’s hand. She is so filled with awe that she cannot move. She knows, even before Boleyn points out the inscription on the wall beside the women, who they are and why they are here.

Despite the salt of the sea, the carving is as fresh as though it had been chiselled yesterday.

While we lived

The Font of Medren

flowed through Us

“Are they the first queens?” Seymour whispers. She thinks of Howard’s nurse, the Hleaw, and her story about the Medrenkynd. Seymour knew that the Hleaws worshipped old gods. To be precise: they worship a goddess, Medren. Her father had taught her, with ferocious scorn, that of course Medren, a woman, was a false deity.

“It was never about him at all, or Cernunnos,” Boleyn says. “Nimæn.”

“Nimæn?”

“It meansstolen. The king’s power was never channelled through us. It was ours to begin with. He has been taking it fromus.”

She makes a sound, a tortured puff of air. Something wet splatters on Seymour’s stockinged feet. They both look down. Boleyn’s shift is sodden.

The baby is coming.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Boleyn

Boleyn has been ready to meet her child for weeks. Months. But now she is not ready at all. Her thoughts, once so ordered, are too tangled to be fruitful. If she gives birth in this state, her child will be tangled too.

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