“Cleves, stop!” Seymour laughs.
“Why? With the breeze in our faces and the sun on our cheeks, what could be more wonderful than this?” Cleves raises her voice above the birdsong.
Lelij joins the romp, cawing as he leaps after them, deer-like.
The muscles in her thighs ache as she pulls Seymour up the hill. They come to a panting stop at the top and look out over Howard’s territory. Hills glide like raindrops down towards the distant sea, where the last of the sun trails a finger across the ocean.
“It is beautiful, though,” she says. Seymour rests her head on Cleves’s shoulder. “If I had to be on the run with anyone, I am glad it is you,” she says.
“Did your Clarice not offer the same scintillating humour?” Cleves asks.
“My Clarice and I spent much of our journey trying to unwind half a lifetime of resentment and inequality,” Seymour says. “It was full of love but not of humour.”
“But you tried to change for those you love,” Cleves says. She massages her breastbone absently.
“Of course. We are not set in stone, any of us, are we? It makes me laugh to think that my brother Thomas probably still thinks of me as a mouse. I cannot imagine how he received the news of what happened at Hyde. He must have wondered whether a changeling took me.”
We are not set in stone. But she is. She has served herself well all her adult life, just as she is. There is nothing wrong with steadiness.
“Thomas, he is not in Elben?” she says, keen to change the subject. Her eyes are drawn to a fleck swooping and soaring across the fields.
“I think he is in Avahuc now. He was sent there as an ambassador several years ago, just after Henry married Parr.”
“Ah,” Cleves says. She shades her eyes, the better to see that fleck.
“Yes. Ah.”
“You did not seek him out after you left Elben?”
“I thought it best not to. He can be hot-headed, and I never could tell which direction his temper would take.”
“And Henry would undoubtedly have people watching him,” Cleves says.
“What is that?” Seymour says, spotting the same shape Cleves is following.
They draw into the safety of the trees. It could be a wild eagle or young dragon on an evening hunt. Those would be the better options. She heard that Wolsey used to employ trained gryphons for the purpose of spying. Could this be one of them?
“Should we run?” Seymour whispers.
There is something about the way the fleck flies that nudges Cleves’s memory. She understands animals and can usually read their movements as she would a letter. This fleck is not moving like a wild animal. It is moving with the purpose of a hunter, but not the guile.
“Get behind me,” she says, pushing Seymour deeper into the cover of the trees. She pulls a little knife from her pocket and, crouching, makes her way down the slope towards the shape.
If it is an animal sent to spy, she must not let it return to High Hall. And if she fails at killing it, perhaps she can at least lead it away from Seymour.
As the shape nears, she sees, even in the dim light of dusk, that it is a dragon. Despite the murky green-brown of its colouring, it flies with an elegance she has rarely seen in the most expensive of pets. Its movement is like her favourite dance, the Almain. It is such a shame to have to kill so beautiful a creature. She holds the blade between her thumb and index finger, and prepares to heft it towards the dragon.
The creature calls out, a soft, cautious sound that reaches her like crickets on a breeze.
She curses, drops her knife, heart pounding. And something thuds onto the ground in front of her.
In the deepening evening, she cannot see it, but a moment later the lapdragon lands in front of her. It tilts its head, as if asking her a question.
“Cleves?” Seymour says.
“I thought I told you to stay in the trees?” Cleves says, not taking her eyes from the lapdragon’s.
“I grew worried.”
