Mary is wearing Howard’s wedding gift, as Howard had hoped she would – an inconceivably long cloak that ties around the neck. The ivory silk has been hand-stitched with beads that shimmer under light and shadow. Howard’s fingers still remember the ache of the needlework. Some of her ladies grew blisters from the long days working on it. Howard leans forward, waiting, waiting.
The sanctuary is the only place in High Hall with stained-glass windows. What few remember, though Howard does, ever since Henrymade a passing remark about it, is that the glass has been treated with a particular oil in order to make the colours more vivid. That oil, brewed from the sap of the dreorum tree, does strange things to light. And when it lands upon the beads sewn across Mary’s cloak, they turn from white to deepest scarlet. The cloak becomes a trail of blood that stretches out behind her. All fifty feet of it.
The guests murmur in alarm. Henry blanches. Ursula’s expression, from her place in the pews beside the other ambassadors, is fascinating: it reminds her of Bishop More when he is at his most fanatical. It is Ursula who has understood Howard’s intent better than anyone else. She has invoked Mary’s dead sister, and her wedding dress, like a curse.
“Get it off,” Mary says, her voice high, her fingers fumbling on the fastenings.
The cloak is whisked away, tied back up in its sheaths of taffeta and hidden from view and memory, as if it had never existed. Howard smiles. Mary may never look at the cloak again, but she will remember it. She will know the ache of uncertainty over Howard’s gift: was it a generous but misguided present? For surely Howard is far too eager to please to have intended it as a slight. She is, after all, the rose without a thorn.
Henry murmurs something to Mary, and gradually her shoulders relax. He leads her to the front of the sanctuary, where Bishop More stands before the altar and the great horns of Cernunnos. He has always been a stiff, gentle figure, and on the sickly side of thin on account of his rigorous worship. But now his face is devoid of colour, the skin sagging. He stands oddly, as though one of his legs cannot bear weight. When he speaks, his voice lacks vigour.
As Henry and Mary face each other, there is an air of inevitability about their mannerisms. Not devoid of affection but certainly devoid of joy.
Howard’s eyes stray from the couple to the true object of her interest. At the front of the sanctuary, on the altar, should sit six boxes of different materials: the boxes containing the queens’ binding cloths, long wefts of purple fabric through which each queen unknowingly gave her bordweal power to the King of Elben, permitting him to syphon her very life force. It is these, if they have interpreted the customs right, that the queens must destroy if they are to break Henry’s hold upon them.
Yet as More raises his hands in greeting, Howard realises that only one box is set upon the altar. It is as they feared: of course Henry willnot make the binding cloths readily available, not any more. Yet she finds this fact strangely comforting. It proves that she and Cleves are correct in their reasoning, for if the binding clothes weren’t significant, Henry would not have changed the tradition of displaying all of them.
Howard leans back, out of sight, as More binds Mary and Henry, their pledges of loyalty and love barely registering. She hears the clanking of the ceremonial dragon as it is slaughtered, its inner flame undoubtedly golden, just as hers had been, just as all the other queens’ had been. All pomp and nothingness.
Well, it is time to find her fellow thief.
When Mary’s binding cloth is placed inside its box of beaten copper, Howard rises silently and descends from the cove into the passageways that lead away from the sanctuary.
As she rounds a corner, slipping from shadow to shadow, a hand shoots out from an alcove and grabs her wrist. She almost cries out, until she spies Cleves’s heart-shaped face peeking out from beneath a servant’s cap.
“Well met, sister,” Cleves whispers, holding a finger to her lips. They both look back towards the altar, waiting for the box containing Mary’s cloth to be returned to its hiding place. Cromwell now steps forward. At first, Howard thinks he must be congratulating the new Queen of Brynd, but he barely acknowledges Mary. He bows to Henry, and the king embraces his advisor.
The divine power that always glistens across Henry’s skin seems to spark. And for an instant, Howard thinks that some of that power is transferred to Cromwell.
Howard and Cleves stir.
“There is something new,” Cleves whispers. So she did not imagine it.
Cromwell is the one to collect the box containing the binding cloth. He is the one who conveys it out of the sanctuary. He is the one they must follow.
Without speaking, the women slip along the passageway, giving Cromwell plenty of space, always keeping a corner between him and them. He leads them round and down, round and down, and more than once Howard thinks they have lost him. They are deep in the bowels of High Hall, beneath the ancient dungeons and cellars filled with prisoners and fine wines imported from sunnier climes. Cromwell’s footsteps echo strangely, each one punctuated with dripping water. Howard begins to worry that even she will not be able toremember the route out of this maze, when Cromwell turns a final corner.
Cleves and Howard peer round. Their throats are stripped by the heat emanating from the room beyond. It is almost impossible to see the details of the room clearly through a miasma of smoke. A low growl shakes the stone above and around them. Howard braces herself against the wall, fearing that the tunnel will collapse.
“We must be beneath the Tower,” Cleves whispers.
That would make sense, for the Tower is surrounded by a moat of fire, kept alight by ancient dragons imprisoned beneath.
The queens tuck themselves into a darkened crevice and watch as Cromwell approaches the wall at the far end of the room. He presses his hand against one of the stones. Smoke rises from the point, and something else too: a spark of divine power. Their eyes did not deceive them: somehow, Henry gave part of his own power to Cromwell. Howard is almost breathless, not just from the heat, but from thetrust. For all his talk of love for his queens, he never entrusted even Aragon, his most humble, loyal and true wife, with even the smallest spark of his (their) power.
A deep groan, as if from some tortured giant, emanates from the wall. Its echoes mix with the roars of the Tower dragons, filling Howard’s skull.
A cavity has opened where he touched the wall. In it sit five boxes, and a space for a sixth. Howard knows her own immediately – made of iced silver, it is to her mind the most beautiful of the binding boxes. Cromwell slots Brynd’s neatly between the golden box of Daven and the steel box of Hyde. He makes the sign of Cernunnos before the cavity, and it closes once more.
Howard grips Cleves’s hand, pressing herself back into the crevice, as Cromwell passes from the room and returns to his business on the upper levels. When he is out of hearing, Cleves shakes her head, smiling.
“What amuses you?” Howard says.
“The arrogance of that man,” Cleves says. “If I were him, I would be far more cautious. We are well hidden, certainly, but hardly invisible.”
“Maybe the luck of the goddess is on our side,” Howard says. Surely this only serves to prove that her rescue of Florin, daring though it was, was not overly foolhardy. Certainly not worthy of the scorn Cleves had heaped upon her.
Cleves sighs. “Let us hope that we have not used it all up, then.”
