Seymour’s expression clouds, and Cleves sees that she has been too opaque. She pulls gently at one of the stray locks of brown hair peeking from beneath Seymour’s hood. “I am committed to this cause, if that is what concerns you,” she says. “But we cannot all be so serious all of the time, my angry queen.”
Seymour goes still then, like the eye of a storm. She touches Cleves’s face. A brief touch, like a lapdragon’s kiss. “You speak of my anger as though it is a rare beast, Queen Cleves, but to me you are the strange one. I cannot understand how you are not angry. How do you remain in such good cheer through everything that has happened to you?”
“What has happened to me?” Cleves laughs. “Born to a royal throne. Married to a king. Queen of my own castle, with wealth and lands aplenty. What do I have to be angry about?”
There is a pressure upon her chest. She has never told anyone of that time in her life, and she never, ever will. It is hers to remember; hers and her family’s. No one else shall ever hold that power over her.
Seymour frowns, her hand dropping into her lap. “Ezzonid was a troubled country when you were a child, no?”
“That was a matter for my father and his people. It did not touch me.” Her voice must be colder than she intended. Seymour lets out a little sigh of frustration.
“In any case, I am not always so serious,” Seymour says. She is so charmingly earnest. Cleves takes her hands and pulls her to her feet.
“Prove it then,” she says. “Dance with me.”
“But there is no music,” Seymour says.
“Is there not?”
Cleves likes issuing challenges like this: daring people to play the fool as Cleves has played the fool during her marriage. The reaction she receives shows her the measure of a person more than any conversation. For an instant, she thinks Seymour will fail the test. Then Seymour straightens her shoulders, offers her hand to Cleves and bows.
“May I, my lady?”
Cleves takes the proffered hand, and they draw closer. Cleves leads Seymour slowly across the room, their steps light upon the flagstones. As they move, Cleves tells Seymour of her theory about the binding cloths, and that destroying them might be the key to ending Henry’s theft. Seymour makes little answer. She pulls away and takes the lead, lifting her arm so that Cleves may spin beneath it. They come together once more, palm against palm, chest to chest, and Cleves no longer knows who leads and who follows. There is no flautist, no fiddle, no harpsichord, but – oh yes – there is music.
Seymour brushes her thumb across Cleves’s knuckle. The sensation, gentle though it is, sends shivers across Cleves’s entire body. “I think you are angry too, in your own way,” Seymour says. “I only hope that you do not keep it so bottled up that it eats away at you from the inside.”
Cleves looks up at her. “You are mistaken. There is no anger in me. You have enough for the both of us.”
Seymour hesitates, then bends down to whisper in Cleves’s ear, “Well, if you ever wish to scream, I will willingly listen to you.”
Cleves is on a precipice, the wind all around her. The ocean looks so very inviting. Seymour’s hand strokes little circles on her back that she can feel through her bodice. Her breath on Cleves’s earlobe conjures long nights and warm skin.
She steps back from the edge. “I must go,” she says. She cannot quite bring laughter to her voice. Seymour drops her hands. “Now?” she says. “I thought you … I thought you might stay the night. That is – is it not dangerous to travel in the darkness?”
“Not in my territory,” Cleves says. She is on more certain ground now. “Besides, I wish to reach High Hall in plenty of time. We would not wish Mary Boleyn to receive an unsettled wedding gift now, would we?”
Seymour does not return Cleves’s smile, but turns towards the fire.
“Go well,” she says, her back to Cleves.
“I will return with news of the binding cloths,” Cleves says, the words a plea. Seymour does not reply.
As Cleves mounts her horse, Johana silent on his beside her, she does not look back at Gnottel Lodge. Safer by far to look ahead. Only ever ahead.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Howard
Susanna knows a jeweller in Sweillan, a young man keener to curry favour with her than with his queen. Howard has never before employed craftsmen in her territory, usually commissioning the fashionable jewellers of Capetia and Perfugi, or some of the royal craftsmen at High Hall, but she is pleasantly surprised by the quality of the Sweillan boy’s work. Within a few days, he has fashioned a dozen brooches and chains, each one artfully concealing a piece of Plythe’ssunscína, wrapped in a lock of Howard’s hair. She only hopes that the other queens will not use theirsunscínabefore Howard has a chance to tell them what she has done, or they will wonder at being able to hear the recipients of Howard’s gifts.
One goes to Lord Cromwell and one to Wolsey. She thinks of sending one to Henry himself, but baulks at the last moment. She cannot shake the thought that he understands her better than anyone and that he will see through her ruse. In any case, she worries that he would not like her choice of setting for the brooch.
The success of her plan relies on Cromwell and Wolsey wearing the jewellery as much as possible, or having intimate conversations in the same room as the pieces. For several days after her gifts are delivered, she hears nothing through hersunscínaand almost gives up hope. Perhaps her chosen design is too gaudy for the lords? Or perhaps she is simply listening at the wrong times. But then, almost by chance, she presses hersunscínaon a whim and hears a voice.
“Does Wolsey know?”
Howard starts, swinging round to see who else is in her bedchamber with her. It is empty.
