Howard tries to imagine that she is Cleves or Seymour. “No,” she says. “They will not look to the closest safe place. They will look to the safest.”
“That is Mathmas, then,” Lady Tylney says.
Yes. Mathmas and Parr. There was a time when Howard might have felt such a choice as a slight. Perhaps there is still a pinch of melancholy, but she can recognise that it would be the wisest place for them to go.
“They will pass through Plythe’s territory then,” Ursula says. “I could go searching for them.”
“I think that would be foolish,” Susanna says, echoing Howard’s thoughts. “If Her Majesty is being watched, then we are likely being watched too.”
Howard holds up a hand, and the women fall silent. Goldfoot nibbles the trim of her dress. Howard wishes she could work out a plan thoroughly, then lay it all before her ladies like a feast, but her mind does not work that way. She must speak her thoughts to understand them.
“What will they need to get to Mathmas safely?” she says.
“Food and water, without needing to venture into any village where they might be recognised,” Lady Tylney says.
“Cloths for their courses, too,” Legh adds.
“Weapons,” Ursula says.
“Good.” She stands, holding Goldfoot against her chest, and goes to the door, where she calls for Florin to join them.
“I need you to put together several packages,” she tells him. “You must make sure they are both small and light.”
Once he is gone, Howard turns back to her ladies. “Now we must work out how to convey such items to the queens without raising suspicion.”
“The easiest part of the whole plan, then,” Legh says.
The women exchange ideas, each one as unworkable as the last. Howard hears them all as she walks the length of the chamber, wishing for some strike of knowledge from Boleyn’s spirit. Goldfoot nips at her ear.
“Oh!” Howard says, stopping suddenly.
“You have an idea?” Lady Tylney says.
“I don’t know.” Their expectant expressions almost cow her. “I was only thinking: would it not be wonderful if we could send Goldfoot out to drop the packages upon the queens. But he is far too recognisable. It would not work.”
“But we can disguise Goldfoot,” Susanna says. “Nothing so easy.” She goes to the little chest where she keeps her paints. Howard clutches Goldfoot tighter. She knows it is a foolish worry, but she loves her dragon’s iridescent colouring, born of coal and pearls.
“Will it not hurt him?” she says.
Legh huffs. “Do you want to help your friends or not?”
“I would never harm him,” Susanna says. She selects a small glass jar filled with brown powder, and then another filled with deep green. Howard brings the lapdragon to Susanna and he sniffs curiously at both jars. Susanna croons over him, explaining, as if he could understand, how she will mix the powders with gesso and water to create a paste. How she will transform him from one of the most precious pets in Elben to a common, wild hatchling.
Howard leaves Goldfoot with Susanna and goes to her bedchamber, and the nondescript box where the cloths for her monthly courses are kept. She empties the box and unpicks the hidden bottom, revealing beneath the slim pack of correspondence. Among them: the cipher Cleves sent all those moons ago, when she summoned the queens to theirsunscínas.
By the time she returns to her receiving chamber, Goldfoot is barely recognisable. The usual sheen of his scales is muted in browns and greens. Susanna even traces puckered scars across his body. He is no longer a pampered lapdragon but a war-weary wild dragon, a victor even in his youth.
“My, you look very brave, my dear,” Howard tells him. He caws, stretching his neck up to her, delighted with all the attention. She holds Cleves’s cipher to his snout.
“Can you smell her?” she says. He snuffles at the parchment, and for a moment she’s worried he may set it alight. He caws again.
Lady Tylney joins them. “I have sewn a handful of bags,” she tells Howard. “It is not my best work, but they are strong and small and made of a light enough fabric that Goldfoot should be able to carry them.”
“And we have traced their likely journey,” Ursula says, hurrying over with Legh, a map of Plythe’s territory held open between them. She points to several charcoal crosses marked hastily across the parchment.
“They will avoid the scrind roads and the main thoroughfares if they have any sense,” Ursula explains.
“There are dozens of coppices and the like not far from the coast,” Legh says. “They make for excellent hiding places.”
