She knows why he leaves hastily, of course. It is because of what she did to the bordweal. And now that she has done it, she can never be the same.
She is used to subjugating her body. It is what a body is for, after all, is it not? To be pressured and pushed and thrown and bruised and used. It is this that made her struggle to understand exactly why Seymour and Boleyn were so outraged by Henry’s actions. Why she barely felt any surprise when Seymour told her that their husband was draining them. That is the nature of humanity: to use each other, body and soul, until one or the other is worn out. She saw it with her aunt, with her father. Why should she be any different?
And yet …
When the divine power flowed through her yesterday, she felt, for the briefest of moments, what it might be like to have true power. Not the borrowed fineries of her queendom, but real, unassailable control.
It frightens her. She wants it again. She does not know what she would do with it.
In the immediate aftermath of her joining with Plythe’s spirit stone, she felt weak, and might have fainted right away if Ursula had not caught her and plied her with sweetbreads and bitter wine. But once the weakness had passed, she could not sit still. She had not needed to, for Master Culpepper came to her not an hour later to inform her that Henry would be leaving within a matter of days.
She did that. She and the other queens. She can still barely believe it.
The king and his closest advisors had been – and are still – like ants without a nest. Their movements are sharper, quicker. Even Henry, who normally has the languor of a man who knows his superiority. But ants without a nest are more prone to biting. She must remember that.
Henry leaps onto his horse’s back, athletic still despite the festering leg wound. He holds out his hand, and she kisses it automatically. His mind is on other matters, and so is hers.
The king’s train takes hours to trail out of her gatehouse – it is only seeing them in a long line that she realises just how many people follow Henry everywhere. Courtiers and guards and advisors and cooks and comfit-makers and grooms and masters of hound and masters of dragon and masters of falconry and stewards and physicians and cleaners and the boys who clear his shit. It is supposed to be a mark of status, but if oneneedsso many people, then does one have true power, or only the trapperies of it?
She stands there until the king’s brilliant white horse can no longer be seen. As she is about to return to the palace, she senses someone approaching.
“His Majesty is concerned about the bordweal.” It is Culpepper’s voice.
“You are not leaving with the king?” she says. She does not dare look at him. She can feel the warmth from his body on her bare shoulder.
“I thought I could be of more use at Plythe, and His Majesty agreed,” he says.
She riddles this. He must be spying for Henry, then, must he not? Yet there is a softness to his voice that does not speak to suspicion.
“Well, I will have my steward find you work, Master Culpepper,” she says.
“Anything, my queen.”
He is taller than her by some way, with a broad chest and shoulders. Her first thought is that there is something insolent about the way he is standing so close, but that is uncharitable. Her second thought is that he looks as Henry might have once looked, were Henry still twenty or so. An undeniably handsome man, with the wiry vitality of someone who hunts and fights and hawks but does not labour.
“I must go in,” she says, darting past him, her eyes on the ground.
She runs into the palace, all the way to the other end of the long gallery to her private rooms. Goldfoot caws from his perch as she slips past him and into her innermost bedchamber. The servants have been here already, cleansing the space of Henry’s presence (she had never thought of it that way before, but that’s what it is). The remnant of incense hangs in the room – floral sandalwood and comforting sage. The tangled sheets have been replaced with fresh linen and the quilt that is her only heirloom from her much-mourned mother.
She goes to the mirror.
She is feverish.
She unpins her sleeves and frontlet, and pulls the crown from her curls. The strings that secure her gown are trickier to handle by herself, but eventually she manages to loosen them and wriggle from the bodice, before pulling the shift over her head.
There she stands, naked, umber skin turned to deep bronze in the sunlight. She has always known she was beautiful because so many have told her. It has been whispered, moaned, groaned. Sometimes the word has even been used as a weapon. She runs a hand along her collarbone and tries to see what they all see. And she does: she is a trinket of beauty, to be used like a fine instrument or fragile clock. And like an instrument or a clock, she understands her purpose: to delight.
Howard sinks to the floor, sitting upon her discarded finery. She opens her legs, so that she can see her quim.
Tell him whatyouenjoy. That’s what Voda Kelaverinn had said before he left. Does a lute feel joy? Does a spoon when it is put in a mouth?
She closes her eyes, thinks of Culpepper and lets her hands roam. She finds a spot along the rim of her ear that makes her sigh; a way of pinching her nipples – more gently than she’s used to – that feels exquisite. She touches parts of her body that have only ever been the realm of her lovers, and discovers bliss.
Afterwards, she stares at the ceiling, laughing and raging. Six years of pleasuring men, and not once has she been pleasured in the way she now knows is possible. It calls for revenge, does it not?
The silk chosen for Mary Boleyn’s wedding gift is nearly ready. Howard’s ladies have been working it for weeks, using the most fragile of threads – the silvery webs of the eadwela spider, which is said to grant happiness. They hunch over the fabric in her receiving chamber, but their conversation is very different from what it was a few days ago.
“I can hardly credit that the king does not suspect us,” Legh says.
