“Are you all right?” he says, starting to move. She cannot see him through the folds of her gown.
“Yes,” she says, hoping that he will understand her reluctance from the tone of her voice. He keeps thrusting until it is no longer uncomfortable.
“You feel so good, my darling. You feel so good,” he says, again and again.
Howard closes her eyes and tries to lose herself. He desires her, and that is enough. That is enough.
“You are very quiet,” he says afterwards, his arms around her, her head on his chest. She likes to feel it rise and fall beneath her.
“I am worried about you. Your leg,” she says.
“It is an irritant,” he replies. “Nothing more.”
“How did—?”
“It need not concern you,” he says more firmly. Howard falls silent. He isn’t holding her now. She must do something before his mood turns entirely. She sits up, wriggling her gown into place, and grins down at him.
“Where are you going, wife?” he says as she stalks across the room.
“You will see, husband,” she shoots back over her shoulder. She is going to order oysters to be brought to the room. Oysters in sharp sauce are one of their shared favourites.
She flings open the door, and comes to a halt.
“Oh,” she says, staring up at a stranger. He is leaning against the wall on the other side of the passage, somehow both bored and watchful, like a cat.
“Your Majesty,” he says, bowing. His eyes are bright, his dark hair tousled. He cannot be much older than her. There is something familiar about him, and yet she is certain they have never been introduced – she would remember his name if they had. He stirs up strange emotions within her. A flitting feeling of power and dread. A sense of imminent danger, and Boleyn’s scent.
Henry comes to stand beside her, still naked, supremely confident in his physique and the size of his cock. The bordweal power glistens in his sweat.
“Ah, Culpepper,” Henry says. “Did you get what I was looking for?”
Culpepper makes a show of bringing something slowly from behind his back. Howard’s fingers work the fabric of her gown. Where has she seen him before?
On his open palm sits a brooch. The setting is filigreed gold, and in its centre sits a golden topaz the size of a coin. It has been fashioned into the shape of a rose by craftsmen far more skilled than any that still work on Elben.
“It’s beautiful,” Howard says. Henry plucks the brooch from Culpepper’s palm, and wraps his arms around her to pin the jewellery to her gown.
“A rose for my own rose without a thorn,” he says. “Doesn’t it suit her well?”
“I think it would suit any woman well.” Culpepper’s look pierces her then. She feels as she used to feel when attempting to read: that look is like the letters that would jumble on the page.
“I remembered my father’s old queen wearing it,” Henry says. “And it struck me that it wasn’t accounted for in her will. I thought it must be hidden somewhere at Plythe and instructed Culpepper here to find it.”
“I see,” Howard says. “Where did you find it? I thought I’d discovered everything there was to discover about my palace.”
Culpepper steps back and glances out of the window as though her question is a nothing.
“Oh, I found it in a box.”
“A box?”
“Yes. A box full of fabrics, destined for Perfugi.”
Howard stills. A box of fabrics, destined for Perfugi, was where she and Seymour had hidden Boleyn. And suddenly, she places him. The man who tried to stop the cart where Boleyn was concealed. The one whose position she threatened in order to ensure Boleyn’s escape.
“Is that so?” she manages to say. Henry presses into her again, kissing her neck.
“Isn’t it surprising what kind of things can be found in such places?”
