Parr runs a hand down the side of the doorway, as if wishing she could reach through time to counsel her younger self. When she looks back at Cleves, that small, sad smile has returned. “It did not bring me happiness or comfort to run away, Queen Cleves. And I have been running for so very long, certain that duty would heal this pit in my soul where he should be. You ask my reason for joining Boleyn’s cause? That is my reason, meagre though it may be. I join for my twenty-year-old self, and the hope she voluntarily extinguished. If I could speak to her, I would say …” She stops, throat clogged.
Cleves finishes the sentence: “That sometimes it is better to fall off a cliff edge than to remain inside the castle?”
They stare at each other, the threads between them forming knots of understanding.
“Exactly,” Parr breathes. Then she is gone, and Cleves is all alone.
PART THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
My Lord Cromwell,
As you directed, I have been paying close attention to the correspondence between our queens. I am happy to say that there has been nothing to report of late. Queen Howard seems isolated. Her letters are all to her degenerate father stationed abroad and the great-aunt who was her guardian, as well as some missives to old friends. She mentions a fear that the traitor of Cnothan will make an attempt upon her, and asks her relatives for advice on how to comfort our king, but that is all.
The Queens Aragon and Parr appear to have had some disagreement, the cause of which I cannot fathom, but their usual manner of writing to each other regularly has become more stilted. I trust that this will be welcome news to Your Grace.
Your faithful servant,
Nicholas of Mearreth
Nicholas,
Provide me with a comprehensive overview of the letters and items sent to the queens from other parties, if you please. And continue to monitor any letters containing mention of the heretical religion.
Cromwell
My Lord Cromwell,
The number of gifts sent to the remaining queens of Elben is negligible, having been in decline for the past several moons. Undoubtedly, all wish to demonstrate their loyalty to our beloved king. Queen Aragon continues to receive small trinkets from her nephew in Quisto: an assortment of spices, very beautifully packaged in gilt silver pots; a guirnalda made with fairy pearls; a roll of fine blue damask set about with bright sapphires.
The only other gifts of note were three embroidered cushions sent to Queens Aragon, Parr and Howard from a lesser noble in Gkontai. The cushions bear the same motif: a songbird picked out entirely in silver silk in the centre, with a border of alternating pomegranates and roses. My men examined these gifts at the dock in Brinhafn but I can find no record of a ship from Gkontai that arrived that day. I have enclosed a faithful rendition of the motif, but my men could see nothing else untoward and therefore no reason not to permit them to be delivered.
You faithful servant,
Nicholas of Mearreth
Nicholas,
I see no need to trouble me with intelligence of crafted items featuring birds and flowers. Exercise better judgement in the future.
Cromwell
His Majesty Henry, eighth of his name, Ruler of the Eternal and Divine Kingdom of Elben and Defender of Cernunnos, hereby invites you to the five-hundredth
MOON BALL
To be held at the great palace of High Hall
A celebration of our great god and our queens, humble, loyal and true, who wield the bordweal by the grace of His Majesty and god.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Howard
When a songbird first flies, it is stuttering. Howard has watched the fledglings perched on the edge of the nest they were born in, their mother nearby, tweeting impatiently for them to fall. Howard once spent a full morning watching those nesting on the windowsill outside her room pluck up the courage to take their first flights. There were six of them in total, the shells from which they hatched long since eaten, their nest filled with white faeces. First one, then another, took flight, their little wings unused to catching the currents. The third took longer, and when it jumped, for a brief moment Howard thought it wasn’t going to survive, as it plummeted out of view. But there, a second later, she spied it fluttering up to the branch where its siblings and mother sat. She thought, by the time the sixth leapt, that they would all make it. That there was something in a bird’s memory, perhaps from its ancestors, that told it exactly how to make that first leap.
The little body lay at the base of the house for days as rats and wasps made a feast of its bones.
