“Thank you,” she whispers once Cromwell has left them alone. Cleves tucks Howard’s arm into hers as they walk back to their parties. “I am a fixed point now, sister. My paint is dry. But you – you are young. The oil has yet to set. I suggest you think on your self-portrait before it does.”
And think on it soon, sister, or you will drag us all down with you.
CHAPTER TEN
Howard
She is only back from Gem?res for a night before the king comes to Plythe, as though summoned by the scent of her treachery. She and her ladies watch from the window of her receiving chamber as the carriages and carts of the royal train stretch along the riverbank, the Tudor rose embroidered on the canopies and flags. As they watch, one of Henry’s men relieves himself into the river far below. He spots the women and salutes them with one hand, the other holding his member as he thrusts his crotch in their direction. The women look to Howard for how they should react.
“It is a good thing he saluted with his hand. At least it is big enough for us to see,” she says.
Her ladies laugh. She turns away from them as they continue the ribaldry, stumbling towards the door and out into the galleries. She must greet Henry with delight. His ancestors look down upon her as she moves, her shoes tapping on the tiled floor.
Henry did not tell her he was coming. He has been with Mary Boleyn at High Hall since returning from Capetia. She has not seen him since the Moon Ball. His letters have been brief but loving, and under Voda Kelaverinn’s guidance she has responded with longer missives than she used to. She cannot help but wonder, though: he has never come with such a large retinue before. That must mean that he intends to stay for longer than two nights. Why? And why now? Is thisbecause of her fumble at Gem?res? Was she not convincing enough for Cromwell?
She stands at the top of the steps which lead down from the palace, looking out onto the wide, golden cobbles of the courtyard. Henry dismounts his horse and looks up. “My love!” he calls.
Howard pastes on her most brilliant smile and shouts, “Henry!” before racing down the steps and flinging herself into his arms. She must forge the situation to her advantage as Boleyn and Seymour would have done. She must use this time to gain information that will impress the other queens. Maybe then they will like her. Maybe this is what Cleves meant by her paint not yet being dry.
Henry crushes her within his arms. She inhales his musk: charcoal and the faint sweat of travel. This has never failed to excite her before, and she waits for the desire to crawl through her body.
“You grow more beautiful every time I set eyes on you,” Henry murmurs. She curtseys deeply to him, leaning forward so he can get a better view of her breasts. Then she rises, lifting her gown a little too high so that he can spy her bare leg. This is their ritual – a promise from her to him, a lesson taught to her when she was twelve that has stood her in good stead in her marriage.
Henry grabs at her.
“Come then, wife; I am tired after my journey.”
She takes his hand and leads him towards the palace.
“Let me tend to you, my lord.”
This is how it is between them. How it has always been. He is attractive and charming and she has never had trouble desiring him before. She has no doubt she will be able to enjoy herself once again. Sex is the natural way between man and woman, as easy as a conversation. Easier, far easier, than a letter or an argument.
Henry’s rooms are adjacent to hers, sparser but grander. The canopied bed is enormous. When they married, he permitted her to redecorate Plythe to her liking but suggested a particular painter to cover his bedchamber in murals. She had agreed happily, not knowing that Henry had told the artist to paint her, naked, in various poses.
“It is so that I can only see you when we are making love,” he told her when she first saw them. It is romantic. A sign of how much he desires her, and therefore of how much he loves her.
She does not look at the murals now as she leads him to the bed and begins to undo the fastenings of his doublet.
“You have missed me, my dear.”
“Every day,” she says.
“And I you.”
She pushes his doublet back over his shoulders, then runs her hands over the thin shirt he wears beneath. Her hands go to his hose, tugging them down so she can take him in her mouth. He likes it when she does this as soon as he arrives. It shows how passionately she wants him, when his scent is less pleasant after so much travel. Usually if her desire has not come by now, the sound of his pleasure at her tongue is enough to make her wet. She squirms from her position on the floor, wondering why it is not working this time.
“What is it?” he says.
She hesitates. “I’m so happy to see you.”
She pulls his hose down fully, and he winces as it catches on a bandage secured around his thigh.
“Oh,” Howard says. She remembers that day, even though he cannot know she witnessed it: Boleyn shot him with an arrow. But the divine power should have healed him. And even if it did not, the wound should have healed naturally by now. Why has it not?
“It’s nothing,” he says, pulling her onto the bed and flipping her onto her back. She stares up at so many imagined versions of her body, splayed like a stuck deer on the ceiling. He fumbles his hose off and lifts her gown so it is over her face. She can’t breathe, too stuffy on her top half and cold below her waist.
He enters her before she is ready. “Oh,” she says again.
