Page 83 of Six Wild Crowns

“Do you think I was right not to bring George and Rochford and Mark?” Boleyn asks.

“I don’t know, dearest,” Mary says.

“I want to tell them. Well, I want to tell George. It’s only that Rochford has been acting strangely of late.”

Mary shrugs. “She’s curious. We all are.”

Boleyn turns to face the front of the barge, calculating how far they still have to go. Now that she has made up her mind to pursue the truth, she is desperate to do it. Immediately after Elizabeth’s birth, the thought of admitting that everything she’d been raised to believe was a lie was insurmountable. But at High Hall, listening to Wolsey treat her daughter like breeding stock and Henry talk of conceiving a son, Boleyn knew she could not ignore it. Not on her own account, but Elizabeth’s. This magic could be her birthright. Who are Wolsey and Henry and Cromwell to seek to strip her of that?

There is no hint, beneath the water’s surface, of the creatures that came to her aid when she was in labour. Boleyn could almost tell herself that everything that happened – the kelpies, the cavern – was a fever dream, born of hysteria, except that Seymour and Syndony saw it as well.

She spies what looks like a waterfall in the distance, flowing out of the forest on the cliffs above. There is something broken about the geography here – as though a giant had clumsily carved away a chunk of land, leaving the trees and stream to simply end.

“Over there,” Boleyn says. They drop anchor as close to the waterfall as they can. So close to Brynd, so easy to reach from the royal jetty: it makes Boleyn wonder whether another queen might have made the same journey, many years ago, in search of answers. Isabet. The traitor queen.

“What now?” Mary asks her.

Boleyn dips a hand in the water and closes her eyes. She has had the strongest sense, since returning to Brynd, that the power she met in the caves is waiting for her. That the right call will summon it. But here, all is empty.

“I’m going into the caves,” Boleyn tells her. “If you want to find out what happened that day, come with me.”

She strips off her gown and dives into the sea. Her body, still more cumbersome than she’d like, welcomes the iciness. It numbs the red, flaking skin on her arm and the cramps that accompany her first course since giving birth. A few moments later, she hears Mary join her. Together they swim beneath the waterfall and emerge inside the cavern. The ghosts of their shared childhood are strong, and were they anywhere else they might have laughed. But the power of the cavern is stronger still, and they shiver silently in that crystal space.

Nothing has changed since Boleyn was last there, except for the cement that blocks the way out through the mines. Even the old miner’s blanket that Seymour had used as a makeshift bed is still spread out, like a beached sea creature. Boleyn had worried that Oswyn might have been tempted to tell the king or the bishop or Cromwell about the cavern, even if he does not know what it contains – for anyone’s loyalty can be bought for a price.

Mary spies the sleeping queens, their upright bodies encased in crystal crypts, and she steps back, her honeysuckle scent enveloping Boleyn as she reads the carved inscription.

While we lived

The Font of Medren

Flowed through Us

“Medren?” Mary says.

“The Hleaws worship her,” Boleyn says. Then, the magic of the cave making her bold: “She saved Elizabeth.”

Mary’s hand goes to the belt clumsily tied around her shift, and the bag attached to it. She pulls a handkerchief from the bag and presses it to her mouth.

“Do you feel it as well?” Boleyn says. She means the energy in the chamber, a glittering, feminine vigour.

Mary grips Boleyn’s arm. “This is dangerous, B. This is blasphemy.”

Boleyn had known that her sister might not wish to accept the truth. Since before they could walk, they have been raised in thereligion of Cernunnos. Their society is founded on the belief that the Kings of Elben are blessed by Cernunnos, the one god, and that his power is channelled through his six queens for the protection of the kingdom. The very notion of a goddess, or of six queens with no need of a sovereign king, is anathema to every truth they have ever learned.

Boleyn takes her sibling’s hand and presses it to the crystal, over the queens’ hearts.

“Listen,” she says. They listen to the ocean supping on rock, the cry of a solitary seagull, the distant blows of the miners’ hammers, felt through their bare feet. And beneath it all, that peculiar silence, pregnant and aware, filling the cavern.

“Are you there?” Boleyn whispers.

We are here, the reply comes. Mary makes the sign of the antlers with the thumb and pointing finger of her free hand.

I need to know the truth, Boleyn thinks.

The cave seems to inhale, the stalactites elongating strangely.

Mary shouts incoherently.

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