“Well, I imagine I know him best since I have been wed to him the longest,” Aragon says. “I can tell you that he believes in marrying for love. That is, I suppose, why he has always been so cold to you, Queen Cleves. He courted me, romanced me, after Arthur’s death. While ours was a marriage of state, it was also a love match, no matter what some may think.”
It is Aragon’s peace offering. Cleves wonders whether she can risk some humour.
“I believe he does love you, sister, but do not pity me. I have witnessed how he treats the wives he loves. I rather think I have had the better marriage.”
“Hmm,” Aragon says.
They trade more thoughts, and gradually a picture builds of the man they all married. Cleves wonders at it, for while she has heard much of Henry’s generous and uxorious nature, she has rarely witnessed his wives talk of it with such warmth. Of his particular ability to make them feel like the only woman he truly loves. It is Seymour’s words that help Cleves see a way forward, though:
“He wants to be seen as a good man. Is that not what connects all of our experiences? I believe that he struggled – perhaps struggles still – with the deceit that forms the foundation of his power. Cecilia has told me a little of their childhood. He once spoke to me of his heartache over Queen Blount’s death. I did not understand it fully then, but I do now. He knew that her untimely death was his fault, and it tortured him.”
“She was devoted to him,” Parr says. She has spoken little thus far, so when she does the other queens fall silent. “Perhaps that is why it plagued him so – because he knew that she was the very embodiment of humble, loyal and true.”
“That is what we can use,” Cleves says, suddenly full of fire. “He may know enough not to produce the binding cloths, but he believes, despite everything, that he is a good ruler, that all he does to us is in the service of his country. If that is the image he wishes to foster, then we use his own hypocrisy against him.”
“How do you suggest we do that?” Aragon says.
Cleves closes her eyes, letting the plans and the plots take hold of her. “We suspect that Cromwell is searching for some ancient magic,some ritual, that will permit Henry to take Medren’s power for himself without needing us. What if we could hand him such a ritual? One that would feed into his need to be viewed as a good king making noble sacrifices?”
“And to show that we are good wives,” Aragon says. “Do not forget that it is that which he seeks above all. That is what all of us, yourself excepted, Queen Cleves, have in common. We have adored him, either truly or through performance.”
There is an ache in the older woman’s voice. Poor fool that Aragon is, she loved the man, perhaps as much as Boleyn loved him. Perhaps more.
“Humble, loyal and true,” Howard says. They each of them pledged to be that wife.
“Sacrifice,” Aragon says suddenly. “We sacrifice our bodies to his glory, his power, every day. And yet he continues to use us up. What if we simply offer him a way to bring the slow sacrifice of his wives to a speedy conclusion?”
Cleves nods, working it all through in her head. “So we feed him a believable lie: that if we die –withthe binding cloths – then our power will be entirely his. It places us in great danger—”
“And that is why he is likely to believe it,” Parr says. “That is why he might be willing to bring the binding cloths to us.”
Aragon coughs. “We can use my network. And Queen Cleves’s also. But nothing must be traced back to us, or Cromwell will grow suspicious.”
“Some of the Feorwans are willing to help us,” Seymour says.
Parr smiles, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Let us sow our seeds, then.”
They plot through the afternoon, honing their lies, going back again and again to the kind of story that Henry is telling of his life, his legacy. For is there anything more powerful than feeding a narrative already underway? Is that not how Cleves has survived her marriage? Because she has fed the story of her unattractiveness with morsels of quirkiness, with sweetmeats of ridicule?
When the sun is low in the sky and the birdsong has quieted, they say their farewells. Thesunscínablank at last, Cleves turns to Seymour beside her.
“I think this could work,” Seymour says. Her smile is radiant, like the brightest star at midnight.
“I think so too,” Cleves replies. Her chest is full of flowers, their petals bursting forth with the scent of victory, heady with her own cleverness. She takes Seymour’s face between her hands, leans forward and kisses her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Cleves
She tastes of marchpane and autumn. Of rain upon an ocean.
Seymour’s hands tangle in Cleves’s hair as their tongues meet.
When they part for breath, Seymour says, “I have been waiting for you to do that for so long.”
“If I could have reached through thesunscínato do so, I would have,” Cleves replies.
She is about to push Seymour back upon the bench so that she can better explore her body when someone coughs nearby. She and Seymour spring apart. It is Johana, his expression caught between mortification and glee.
