Page 88 of Six Wild Crowns

Visiting the oracle isn’t without its dangers. Soothsayers are tricky, everyone knows that. Theirs is a difficult balancing act: they must use their powers truthfully, lest their veracity be called into question, and they must also keep the powers that pay them in awe of them without offending them. Then there’s the question of who fuels the oracle, for everyone knows that witches are aligned with the gods. To whom does she answer? To Cernunnos, perhaps? Or to the goddess who spoke to Boleyn in the cavern? Or to another deity, one worshipped in a different kingdom? Boleyn will need to ascertain this before she can trust the oracle. She has not forgotten her misgivings over the prophecy given to Princess Tudor.

Elizabeth affords her the excuse. It is tradition for newborn princes and princesses to be taken before the oracle. Henry cannot tell Boleyn not to go without seeming petty. What he does do is send Wolsey to accompany her. The man confines himself to his cabin, to suffer his seasickness in solitude, as the ship raises anchor from Brynd’s jetty and points its prow towards the icy deserts of Pkolack. The journey will take only one night with a strong wind behind them, and the wind is always strong on the eastern side of the island. Their route will take them around the coast of Elben, skirting Queen Aragon’s territories at Daven, and then breaking away from the mainland and towards the archipelago of Evenesis.

Still, Boleyn cannot be as open with her companions as she would like. Wolsey’s servants roam the ship, ready to scurry back to his vomit-stinking room with anything they hear. Boleyn spends the day bouncing Elizabeth on her knee under a canopy set up on the deck, telling children’s tales, petting Urial who would not be left behind, and listening to the sea pounding the sails. Once the sun has set, they lapse into silence beneath the constellations.

“The stag star is very bright,” Rochford says, drawing her cloak more tightly.

“In Capetia they call it the Maiden star,” Boleyn tells her. “They say she’s a young woman whose lover went off to war, and she has held a lantern in the hope of guiding him home ever since.”

Mary takes Elizabeth from Boleyn and points the child’s pudgylittle finger to a different part of the sky, where an oblong set of stars is arranged, three of them redder than the rest. “And there he is, see? The Lost Warrior, holding his bloody sword, searching for home.”

Mark puts his arms around Rochford, and George puts his arms around them both, and the three of them stand like that for a long time, staring up at the separated lovers. Boleyn catches Mary watching them, and knows that she is thinking of her husband, taken too soon. Boleyn feels strangely jealous of her. Mary has nothing to fear from her love, lost though it is.

They reach the first of the islands of Evenesis at dawn – a rough, deserted patch of land housing only a few herds of sheep and their shepherds. It is gone midday when the oracle’s island comes into view, by which time the temperature has dropped. Boleyn is thankful that Syndony thought to bundle an extra trunkful of cloaks into the ship.

Wolsey emerges, green and wobbly, as they drop anchor.

“Have you been here before, my lord?” Boleyn asks him.

“Only once,” he says. “To accompany Queen Aragon and the Princess Tudor. I was a much younger man then. It is a handsome sight, is it not?”

She cannot disagree with him. The island itself is small – little more than a large hill erupting from the sea like the shell of some great hermit crab. But it is garlanded with trees all the colours of thoughtfulness: deep scarlet, royal violet, gentle ochre. A narrow path leads up from the jetty, winding between blankets of wildflowers. At the top of the island, sprouting between the trees, is the oracle itself. A tall, domed building that reminds Boleyn in its shape of High Hall, with columns framing doors wrought from silver that glint and flash in the icy sun.

Wolsey, Elizabeth, Boleyn and Urial are rowed to the jetty in the first boat, with her family in the second. The air here smells not of fish or seawater, but of the flowers draped everywhere, evensprouting from the tree trunks and the birds’ nests, smelling as soporific as they look.

Boleyn mounts the path, wondering how she can get rid of Wolsey if she decides it’s safe to be open with the oracle. He will not willingly help her when he has so clearly been sent to spy on her by Henry. But his goals are not perfectly aligned with the king’s. He has his own power base and his own ambitions. He is more disposed to peace, and the opportunities for international advancement that affords him.

“How would you like to consult with the oracle, my lord?” Boleyn asks him.

Wolsey stops dead on the path. “But I am not royalty.”

“Come, you are closer to my husband than a father. Surely he would not resent you this privilege?”

Wolsey looks up at the oracle’s building. His face is all shadow and want.

“But if you are concerned,” Boleyn continues, “we can keep silent on the matter. A secret, between two of the king’s most beloved persons.”

Wolsey’s resolve wavers. “It would be the greatest of gifts,” he whispers. She can almost see the pride at work in him. For a merchant’s son to be permitted an audience with the oracle of royalty is beyond anything he could have imagined.

“Go,” she says, shifting Elizabeth to one hip and guiding Wolsey up the steps.

He pushes open the doors as in a dream. They close behind him with the softest of clicks.

Mary, Rochford, George and Mark join Boleyn as she waits outside.

“Are you sure about this, Boleyn?” Mary says, plucking one of the purple flowers for Elizabeth to bat at.

“Sure about what?”

Mary looks at her with hard eyes. They still have not told George or his spouses about the truth of Medren and the bordweal, or that revolution has seeded in Boleyn’s heart. “Don’t make me say it. For all we know the oracle could have enchanted the very trees to listen to us.”

“Nowthatwould be a spell worth learning,” Boleyn says. Urial, seeing that Elizabeth likes the flowers, flies into the trees and returns with a mouthful of them.

“Just when I thought you two could not be more mysterious,” George says lightly. Neither he nor his spouses will look at the sisters. Boleyn knows he is hurt that she is keeping something from him, but he is careless and free with his words, and she worries that he would let something slip.

“Whatever you’re hiding, would it not be better to concentrate on Elizabeth?” Rochford says. Boleyn sneers at her. Part of her wonders whether Rochford already knows the truth.

I am concentrating on Elizabeth, Boleyn wants to shout. What she has discovered affects Elizabeth the most. If there was never any need of a male heir, if the six queens once ruled Elben equally, then to maintain Henry’s lie deprives Elizabeth of her birthright.

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