A laugh bubbles up in Cleves’s throat. “Yes, my angry queen. I have set things in motion. Tonight, I want you to join me.”
“To do what exactly, my cautious queen?”
“How would you like to kill the king?”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Cecilia
Cecilia bears her captors no ill will for their deception. They did exactly as she would have done: lied in order to get what she wanted. She rather likes them for it. She rides fast through the forest at first, until she is sure she has left the grounds of the lodge. Then she slows, wary of the moon leading her astray. Shadows can play tricks on a mind, even one as strong as hers.
She finds a river and follows its stream down, down towards the sea. She reaches a town by dawn. The houses are as crooked and ramshackle as the Castle of Cnothan along the coast, but it is only when she sees the bridge in the centre of the settlement that she knows where she is.
The legend says that spirits gather at the Fietherford crossing at every full moon. So it follows that the townspeople would build two bridges, one on top of the other. An ancient one of obsidian and pearl, sitting in crumbling beauty, provides a way across for the spirits. Directly above it, in common stone, is an arched bridge meant for the living.
She has never seen it before: much of her childhood was spent in her mother’s Palace of Plythe, or at High Hall, and she never had cause to venture this far into Cnothan’s territory. She never had the curiosity either, for Cnothan is famously an old and ugly part of the country. It is too rainy to be enjoyable, and its exports of meat and wool and grain never held any interest for her finer tastes. Still, she takes some joyin watching the sun rise over the Fietherford, reaching between the bridges to point up the river, towards the centre of Elben.
She does not venture into the town itself. She is still in Cleves’s territory, and she does not know how many of the people are loyal to their queen. She now knows how to reach High Hall. She rides for the scrind road, stopping only to exchange Cleves’s fine, tired stallion for a rested gelding of lesser quality.
As she canters, she thinks of her childhood. Were Elben’s roads always so ill-maintained? She swears they were smoother when she was younger. But then is it any wonder that Cleves has allowed her roads to fall to ruin?
They do not improve by the time she passes out of Cnothan and into the outer reaches of High Hall’s estates. She breathes more freely now. She has outrun Cleves and Seymour. She has outwitted them both. She laughs, long and loudly, daring her voice to reach them in their love-blind stupor.
The guards at the gates of High Hall do not recognise her, and while there’s no reason they should – she was a girl when she was last here, after all – she gives them short shrift until they let her through. Lord Cromwell, an upstart of a man whom she has heard of in letters but never met, comes to greet her.
“Your Majesty,” he says, bowing deeply over her hand. “We feared you lost at sea. What an unexpected honour to have you here.”
“Where is my brother?” she says, cutting off whatever overblown compliment he was about to deliver.
“He is gone to Cnothan, Your Majesty. There are matters on the south coast he must attend to.”
She laughs again. What a merry dance she and Henry are doing around Elben, while two of his queens are leading a merry dance of their own.
“You will want to call him back. Immediately.”
She has never thought much of Cromwell – More has never been complimentary about him in his correspondence – but to his credit he does not question her. He merely nods briskly, and sends for a scout and a fast horse. When they are brought, he turns to Cecilia expectantly.
“What should my man tell His Majesty when he finds him?” he says.
Cecilia leans in. Henry will not thank her for broadcasting what she must say to the entire courtyard. “Tell him that unless he kills Cleves immediately, he has not one but two traitor queens to conquer. She iswith Seymour now, and once they know I have escaped their clutches, they will have nothing to lose beyond attempting Henry’s life.”
The messenger trembles as he mounts his horse and gallops for the south. Cromwell is watching her, assessing her. Her news does not appear to have surprised him as much as she would like.
“Stare at me much longer and I will have your eyes out, sir.”
He drops his gaze. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. I had heard many tales of your beauty, but fewer of your cleverness. I was merely wondering at the fact.”
She sweeps past him, ignoring the compliment even as she glows from it. Here is family. Here are people who truly understand all that she has to offer. At last, she is home.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Cleves
Cnothan at night is usually a comforting place for Cleves. It lacks the lantern dragons that keep some palaces lit gently through the darkest hours, but because of the castle’s position on the south coast of Elben, exposed to the ocean on three sides, moonlight usually streams through the windows, stretching like a cat along the thick carpets.
Tonight, though, even with Seymour at her side, Cleves does not feel as though her castle is her own. Henry’s household occupies rooms which should lie empty. His guards lounge in inconvenient places, and while they are not plenteous enough to guard every single route to the king’s chamber, they make it difficult. Suddenly, her home is a forbidding maze, every dead end a death sentence.
Seymour and Cleves tread in slippers through winding galleries. The cries of the animals in the courtyards outside lend a mournful quality to their journey. Cleves has never been superstitious, but it is difficult not to take the noises as a portent. She shakes her head to clear it of such thoughts. She is cautious. She has planned this out thoroughly.
