“Am I to be your guard?” Johana asks.
“It is more likely that I could protect you, cousin. No, you are here to distract anyone who might wish to speak to me while I run my little errand.”
“And am I permitted to know the nature of this errand?”
She dries her face on padded linen. “That rather depends: are you willing to keep a secret in the face of torture, should you be found out?”
Johana considers this. “Since I have no phoenix feather to protect me from such horrors, I shall not be greedy. You may keep your treasures in different chests.”
“Now you begin to understand why I was reluctant to tell you everything, cousin,” she says. “It was for your protection as much as my own. Come, Lelij.”
The gargoyle lollops over, and she picks him up. He is really too large to be carried much, but she knows that where she is taking him, he will be ridiculed. If he is in her arms, courtiers will be less likely to laugh openly, for to do so would be to openly laugh at a queen.
With Lelij chirruping happily in her grasp, Cleves leads Johana through the double doors which mark the boundary between her rooms and the public galleries of High Hall. On the surface, everything is the same as it ever has been. The songbirds in their cages hang from every windowsill, singing in a way that has always, to Cleves, sounded like a plea. The courtiers dart between groups in a complicated dance of superiority that only those practised in the art of politics can interpret.
The changes since her last visit are less obvious, but profound. Usually each courtier would wear a favour – a handkerchief, a doublet – the colour of their chosen queen. When Cleves had last been here, a few had worn orange to show their loyalty to her; many more had worn white or copper for Parr and Howard. Now, no one bears any queenly colour on their chest. This is not a matter of one queen being out of favour. After Boleyn and Seymour’s betrayals, after Henry’s public humiliation at the Moon Ball, the only fealty that can be exhibited is to the king himself.
They take the wide staircase which leads to the upper floors of the palace, closer to Henry’s quarters. It is busier here. Courtiers begin to take notice of her – it is unusual for Cleves to come to the public chambers of High Hall, after all. They bow, but few approach, and her smile becomes more affable, her body language more approachable. No one would possibly think boring, ugly Queen Cleves capable of treason; the only thing she cares about is her animals. Cleves has traded on her eccentricity for so many years, using it as a disguise. But when people look for a threat, sometimes it is the eccentric ones they turn on first.
The sun is beginning to set. Shadows elongate across the floorboards and rugs, making sundials of people. She is on the northern side of the palace now, and nearly at the right entrance to reach her mark. She has been seen and noted. Perhaps she did not need Johana after all.
“Your Majesty. What an unexpected pleasure to see you at High Hall.”
A shiver runs up her spine. She turns to face a broad-shouldered man whose skin is darker than hers. He has a strong brow and an easy, laconic smile.
“Lord Brandon,” she says, shifting Lelij’s weight into one arm and offering her hand for him to kiss. “You are looking as tall as ever.”
There is mirth in his eyes. “I hardly recognised you without your entourage.”
He twirls around the room theatrically. “Only one gargoyle? No cows? No cats or pigs to accompany you this time?” Then his eyes rest on Johana. “Ah, my mistake. You have brought a foreign dog after all.”
Johana bristles at her side, but smiles at Brandon pleasantly. “And yet you are doing all the barking, my lord.”
As Brandon laughs merrily, Cleves remembers why she has always avoided him. He is cruelly charming, the cruelty mellowed by the fact that he is just as content to receive an insult as to deliver one. Still, if he weren’t so lazily handsome, he wouldn’t get away with half of the japes he pulls. She makes a formal introduction between Brandon and Johana, and the two men bow to each other.
“Lord Brandon is my husband’s favourite person in the entire world,” Cleves tells her cousin.
“After his beloved queens, of course,” Brandon says. “Present company excepted.”
Cleves puts a placating hand on Johana’s arm. If he tries to protect her, she will not be able to escape this unwelcome interaction. Thankfully, Johana understands her. “Actually, my sources tell me that cousin Cleves ranks at least fourth now,” he says.
Cleves considers this. “My, my. That is quite a promotion.”
Brandon laughs again. “You are a good sport, Your Majesty. A very good sport.”
“It’s one of my many talents,” she says. “Another is knowing when to leave before the insults become too much for even me to bear. Excuse me, my lords.”
Cleves slips away. She has other matters to attend to, out in the gardens of High Hall. Cromwell and Wolsey may lead Henry’s spy network, but theirs has nothing on hers.
“Good morrow, Edith,” she says, as she approaches the woman labouring in a flower bed on the north side of High Hall’s gardens. The woman stands from where she’s been kneeling over some pots, adding soil to them before planting them up. She has a bairn tied to her chest with a swaddling cloth. Cleves stumbles for an instant, wondering, and then realises that the babe is too young to be who she thought it might be.
“Your Majesty,” Edith says, bobbing a curtsey.
“How are you finding my fertiliser?”
“Very well indeed. It is making our plants prosper,” Edith replies. Neither woman looks the other in the eye. Perhaps they both fear that if they do, someone will realise that they are communicating more than they appear to be.
“And your family? They are well?”
