Page 93 of Six Wild Crowns

“Boleyn? How did you hear that?”

Cleves hands Seymour the tooth and strides back to her saddle, undoing one of the bags strapped to it. Seymour follows her back into the sunlight, away from the darkness and stench of the trees. As Cleves removes vittles – cheeses, bread and fruit paste – Seymour turns the tooth over in her hand. One side of it is smooth, like a common knife. The other is jagged and stained yellow. The side used for killing, or for sawing up its meat. It must have been sharpening its teeth on the bark.

“Tell me about Queen Boleyn then,” Cleves says, as Seymour settles on the grass next to her and accepts a truncheon of bread smeared liberally with butter and soft, salty goats’ cheese.

“You seem to know enough about her already,” Seymour says. It feels wrong to talk about Boleyn with this woman, although Seymour can’t place why.

“I know that people seem to either love her or despise her. I think you are in the love camp, no?” Cleves says. She lies on her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows. A flush spreads up Seymour’s chest and neck.

“You don’t know her or me,” she says.

“So enlighten me. Is she wonderful? Is she as wild and beautiful and clever as she likes to appear?” Cleves grins again, kicking her feet up behind her.

“You can judge for yourself at the Moon Ball.”

Cleves laughs. “You are exactly right. I will make my own mind up. That is always my way. I never do anything just because my friends want me to.”

Seymour puts down her untouched bread. “Do you know why I’m here?”

“Your letter said you were touring. Is that not the case?” Cleves says, her eyes telling Seymour that she knows perfectly well Seymour has an ulterior motive. Seymour kneels, and indicates that Cleves should do so too – what she has to tell her is not fit to be heard lying on a blanket.

Seymour’s visit to Cnothan and, afterwards, Plythe, was only arranged with a few days’ notice. Boleyn had returned from the oracle with a fire in her eyes that Seymour could decipher even through thesunscína. It had all been arranged in an instant – Seymour would visit the two castles closest to her, while Boleyn would travel to Daven to reason with Queen Aragon and, through her, her ally Queen Parr. Boleyn believes that they need five queens to rebel against the king, to wrestle Elben from his and Cernunnos’s control. Three queens to persuade with something as strange and simple as the truth. The thought of uniting five queens of Elben, queens who have been guided to enmity throughout their rules, seems impossible to Seymour. But, as always, Boleyn persuaded her that this was their only chance at true freedom.

“And so Queen Boleyn wants my alliance,” Cleves says when Seymour has finished telling her of the cave, and the lie of the bordweal.

“We both do.”

Cleves smirks. “Is that so? I do not follow blindly, either the king or anyone else.”

“I am not blind,” Seymour says.

“No? Then why are you doing it? Your friend seeks power for her daughter. You do not strike me as ambitious, though.”

“I…” How can Seymour explain, to this woman who seems to have found so much peace and happiness in her lot, the silent howl that consumes her? How she might be able to smile and curtsey and sayyeson the outside, when inside she wants to take her brother and husband and rip them apart in the same frenzy that the crone used to kill the mother of those lambs? How could Cleves possibly understand?

Cleves reaches for Seymour’s hand in a rare moment of seriousness. “It is hard for you when he visits. Yes?”

Seymour nods.

“I never had to undertake it,” she says. “Or I too would have lost myself.”

Seymour is slow to understand what she means, it seems so outlandish. “You mean, you and the king, have never…?”

“No, but he does not know that. There. I have given you one of my secrets, so you can trust me with yours.”

The fact that the king doesn’t currently sleep with Queen Cleves is well broadcast across the country, but to find out that it was by her design?

“How?”

Cleves looks towards the castle. The sun is at its zenith, and the sky is clear. In the far reaches of the horizon, Seymour can make out the isles of Feorwa, Clarice’s homeland, lying in the crook between Elben, Quisto and Capetia.

“I never desired the attentions of men, but I spent my childhood at their mercy. I wanted freedom. When I arrived at Cnothan, I knew it was going to be my home. It was as if it had been built just for me.”

“I feel the same way about Hyde.”

Cleves nods. “But I also knew that I could not live with myself being visited by the king, or any man. I had a week to settle at the palace before the wedding. I spent that week getting to know my household and getting to know Henry. And on the day before our wedding, I put my new-found knowledge to use.

“Henry has mistresses. You know this, yes? One such mistress was very much in love with him, and she was about my size and shape and age. She agreed to my plan, and I paid her handsomely. Then for the second part of my deception. I paid three men of my territory – minor nobility wishing to rise through the ranks, you know the like – to speak of me in the king’s hearing.”

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