Page 75 of Six Wild Crowns

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Seymour

Seymour has no desire to return to the cavern of queens, but she must make sure that no one else can stumble upon it.

“Are you certain?” Oswyn asks, ready with his trowel and a bucket of cement beside the opening that he and his men had pushed through with such effort.

“We’re certain,” she says. Afterwards, she hands him a purse of gold coins for his silence, and tells her driver that she plans to walk back to Brynd, to stretch her panther’s legs.

As the carriage trundles back towards Pilvreen, Seymour strokes Haltrasc’s head. Her guards wait for her to set off. She likes that no one questions her any more when she decides to do something unqueenly. Maybe Boleyn is having an influence on her after all.

She’s glad to have a brief respite from the music and laughter of Boleyn’s household. She misses the peace of Hyde. Every moment spent in the company of Boleyn and the new princess is a reminder to her of the being growing inside her. Walking through the forest allows Seymour to avoid Pilvreen, too, with all its bustle and doffing of caps. It has only been a few days since Elizabeth’s birth and already the road in and out of town is strewn with makeshift stalls selling straw dolls and copper coins commemorating the princess.God knows what furore would have occurred if she had been the longed-for prince. The boy child to make the bordweal strong. Seymour’s mouth twists into a smile. If only they knew, with all their pamphlets, how irrelevant a prince truly is to their fates.

Ferns encroach on the forest path. Fallen logs flank it, burgeoning with mushrooms. Haltrasc trots ahead of Seymour, lolloping after squirrels and sniffing out rabbits in the undergrowth. The trees are heaving with nests and the sound of birdsong, which strikes up in alarm as one bird then another spots the panther.

A herd of honeydragons, broader and bigger than cows and with only the barest suggestion of wings, grumble steam as they pass. One of the dragons is hunched over a dozen fledglings that pull viciously at her teats. Back at Hyde it is lambing season. All of nature is having babies, it seems, and for once Seymour is in accord with the rest of the kingdom. She can understand, of course, how the birth of a child could be greeted with so much joy. She takes pleasure in Boleyn’s expression when she takes Elizabeth from her wet nurse. But motherhood was never something Seymour aspired to. She has spent the last few months trying to rid herself of shackles, and having a child is, to her, the thickest chain of all.

Seymour’s mother, Cernunnos rest her soul, became a slave to her children, her pregnancies, even with all the wet nurses and tutors Lord Seymour bestowed upon her. Seymour, six years old, witnessed her mother’s stomach swelling and the way her father turned his attention elsewhere when she grew too large to please him. Seymour was by her mother’s side when she wept with the sickness and the headaches. She would throw things when the servants couldn’t bring her oranges in summer, then in the regret that followed she would cling to Seymour and Seymour would sing her lullabies, and neither of them would mention the parasite turning her from mother to monster.

Seymour remembers the first time her mother miscarried. They were playing in the gallery, a rare scene of familial joy – three children racing from end to end of the long hall, and their mother in the middle, laughingly trying to catch them. Two women and two men – equal in theory, but it didn’t feel that way, even then.The gallery was lined with portraits, every one of them men, bearded and sour-eyed, judging Seymour and her mother.

Seymour remembers how her mother stopped, suddenly, in the middle of the gallery and let out a little cry.

“Why have you stopped? I want to keep playing,” Thomas had said.

Edward had eyed her suspiciously. “What’s wrong with you now?”

Seymour had said nothing. All three of them had watched, and the sour-eyed Seymour ancestors had watched, as Mother weaved her way in silence towards her rooms. They never played that game again.

Lady Seymour remained in her bed for several days, refusing to see anyone. A second miscarriage followed a few months later, and then there was a period of peace, when Lord Seymour sated himself with girls pushed forward by local parents eager for this or that position on the family estates.

The forest closes in on Seymour, and she’s glad for the guards’ steady presence behind her. Suddenly, the rumours of a crone being spotted on this part of the coast don’t feel so improbable. She passes a bush laden with berries and stops to pick some. The fruit is small and sweet and leaves bloody stains on her fingers. In the distance, she can hear the sound of the sea, ever present, ever irascible, like time.

Then the final pregnancy. Seymour had known this one was different. Her mother’s body had expelled the others, but this one ate her up from the inside. Her face grew sallow, her cheekbones pronounced. Her arms, which had once been muscular, became bony. And as her stomach grew and grew, the rest of her shrank. The thing inside her was ravenous and merciless.

Too early, she gave birth to twins. One had the cord wrapped around its neck when it came out. The other screamed loud enough to compensate for its brother’s silence. Seymour’s mother held them both in her frail arms for a while, although she could barely keep her eyes open. That night, Seymour crawled into bed beside her and lay her head on her mother’s shoulder. She was hot as dragon’s breath, even though it was midwinter.

“Mother?” Seymour had whispered, knowing something was wrong even at eight years old.

“I do wish…” Lady Seymour had murmured, then moaned in pain and clutched at her stomach.

Seymour never did find out what she wished. Those were the last words her mother ever spoke. Seymour had fetched the steward, knowing her father wouldn’t like to be disturbed at this time of night, and the steward called for a physician, and the physician arrived and asked the steward what the problem was, as if Lady Seymour was simply livestock.

She died that afternoon. The child died the next day. So it was all for nothing anyway.

Seymour emerges from the forest into an orchard of pear trees. Gardeners are clearing the last of the winter detritus from the ground, and they doff their caps to her as she passes. She wonders what stories they tell of her stay at Brynd. Have they accepted the rumour that Boleyn and Seymour spread; that headstrong Boleyn wants to show off her new baby to submissive little Seymour?

Laughter rises from the new nursery wing, just beyond the trees. The sharp, contagious laughter of the Boleyn siblings.

Boleyn is in the largest room of the nursery, sitting beside the fireplace and rocking the cradle Queen Howard gave her. Her dragon, Urial, has clambered into the cradle’s side and is nuzzling the sleeping baby, crooning as though he were Elizabeth’s parent. Rochford is helping Syndony to arrange gifts around the space – toys, cushions and blankets from royalty and ambassadors and nobility from Elben and beyond.

“Queen Seymour,” Rochford says. “When Boleyn told us you were running errands, I scolded her. She should have allowed me to help, if a servant could not.”

“I was glad to do it,” Seymour says.

“Whatwereyou doing, exactly?” Rochford asks, busying herself with arranging a vase of lilies.

“Nothing of importance,” Seymour says. Rochford’s eyes flick to hers, and Seymour knows that she doesn’t believe her.

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