“My thanks,” she says, stepping over him and tripping down the stairs. Before long she is embracing the chill night air. The stables are on the other side of the courtyard, and it only takes a few lashes with a spare piece of rope to force Cleves’s stallion to accept her.
Then she is away, galloping through the forest along the road that brought her carriage here. She may not know where she is now, but if she keeps to the road, she will surely come upon some landmark, either a scrind road or else the coast, from where she will find a village or town.
She laughs as the breeze tousles her hair and the tree branches whip her face. What a glorious, glorious escape.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Howard
When Howard was a child, her aunt used to tell her that she was far too confident for her own good. Her father, when he visited, which was rarely, used to tell her it suited her. The two voices warred throughout her childhood, one claiming sovereignty due to presence, the other sovereignty due to blood. They have continued their war in her mind ever since she left her aunt’s house and gained the Palace of Plythe. She is, in some ways, aware that it is those two voices who keep her ladies and household on their toes: one moment she is all give, the next all punishment; father and aunt. And Henry. Oh, Henry is both at once, and his voice in her head is the loudest of all.
Plythe, too, is full of questions. They whisper to her as she paces from bedchamber to receiving chamber: will the plan work? What use are you? Did they not give you a role because you have nothing to offer?
The other queens were kind when they spoke in thesunscína. She thought, until the very end, that they were finally forging the kind of alliance she had dreamed of. And then they had said their farewells and Howard had realised that she alone of the queens had been given so little to do. Cleves and Aragon are to use their spy networks and foreign connections to sow the rumours of an answer to Henry’s problem: that if he spills his queens’ lifeblood upon the binding cloths,Medren’s power will be unassailably his. Seymour will ensure that all the components of the plan come together. Parr is the gatherer, using Mathmas’s remote location as a secret store. And Howard?Ensure your lapdragon is well-trained – keep listening for Cromwell and Wolsey in yoursunscína.Small, conciliatory tasks. Scraps of usefulness.
“There is only one way forward,” Lady Tylney says when Howard expresses her sorrow.
“What is that?”
They are in Howard’s receiving chamber, and there is lively chatter from the rest of her ladies and groomsmen on the other side of the room. Musicians play a merry tune to drown out her conversation.
“You must forge your own role, regardless of the other queens.”
“I do not wish to interfere with what we have planned.”
“What they have planned. And you would not be interfering. You would be helping.”
Howard looks up, and inadvertently catches Thomas Culpepper’s eye. She thinks often of the conversation she overheard through hersunscína. She wants to trust him, but she fears that too many people already know her truth. Too many people with loyalty to others.
As if her thoughts have conjured him, Florin enters. He wears the garb of the servants of Plythe, although his manner is quite different to that of the rest of the household. There is something about the way he moves, like a swordsman, nimble, that is inescapably foreign. He carries a copper jug, scented with the sweetness of elderflower wine.
“Are you certain about this plan, Your Majesty?” Ursula says, allowing Florin to fill her bone cup.
“Why do you ask?”
Her mouth twists, and she shifts in her seat. “Are you certain that itisa lie, this idea of spilling your blood upon the binding cloths?”
Howard laughs. “None of us are witches, Ursula. None of us truly understand how the goddess’s power works.”
“Sometimes divine powerdoeswork like that, though, Your Majesty. The spilling of blood upon divinitycanwring change. Think of the origin of the Pilvreen garnets.”
Howard labours to understand. The Pilvreen garnets were created when the blood of innocents was spilled upon the burial site of Elben’s first queens. Is Ursula saying that the lie they fabricated might work?
Legh nudges Ursula with her shoulder. “When did you become a religious scholar, Miss Askew?”
Ursula scowls. Howard pats her hand. “Even if you are right, Ursula, I have no intention of spilling any of my blood. None of us do. It is simply a ruse to reunite us with our binding cloths.”
“Then all rests on you surviving to the Moon Ball,” Ursula says. “You must make him believe you remain humble, loyal and true.”
Howard thinks of Mary Boleyn’s train turning scarlet. She was foolish there. She placed petty vengeance above her own security, and although she cannot bring herself to regret it, she knows it has made her vulnerable.
Goldfoot wakes from his nap on Howard’s lap, stretches, yawns and crawls the short distance to Lady Tylney’s lap, where he curls up and falls asleep once more.
“I must put on a show to prove I am still Henry’s,” she says.
Ursula looks at Florin. “If you were our queen here, what would you do to prove your loyalty?”
Florin considers this. “I would travel to High Hall and sparkle there, as only Queen Howard can sparkle.”
