“We must be certain it isn’t a trap,” she had told Seymour again and again.
“I know,” Seymour had said. “I know you think of me as impulsive but I do actually have a brain and a sense of self-preservation.”
Cleves had put her hand over Seymour’s. “Do not think I underestimate you. But nor should you underestimate how this is going to feel.All that anger bottled up inside you may come brimming forth when you are close to him. Do not allow it to cloud your judgement.”
“No angry queen?”
Cleves had slipped a hand around Seymour’s waist then pulled her close for a kiss. “Save the anger for later, when you and I can unbottle it together.”
Every so often, they come across a guard, or one of Cleves’s servants, doing last-minute preparations for the morning. Little do they know that if all goes well, their king will never see the dawn. At these moments, they retrace their steps, Seymour following Cleves as she finds an alternative route. The journey from stables to king’s chambers would normally only take a matter of minutes, a quick line west and up through the castle, but tonight it is an hour before they come close, and the moon is high.
She removes a hand mirror from her pocket and angles it around the corner to the passage at the end of which Henry’s door lies. A man, tall and muscular, one of Henry’s strongest and most loyal bodyguards, stands straight and wide awake, sword sheathed at his belt. The sight should inspire fear, but Cleves can only feel relief.
Henry has the kind of pride that permits him to believe he is impervious to trickery, but he has had some knocks of late. Boleyn’s betrayal, even if he did not understand her intent to unite the queens, must have made him doubt everything. There is a reason he is visiting all his remaining queens, even her: he is trying to gauge their true loyalties, trying to sniff out their lies. Yet he has brought the same number of guards as normal. If he did not have a guard at the door of his chamber, she would have known thathewas trying to trickher.
She nods to Seymour and they retrace their steps for the last time until they come to an aged stone pillar bearing the bust and head of a former Queen of Cnothan – Swynford, if she recalls correctly. The woman had a delicate face but, from what Cleves has fathomed from her study of the castle’s history, an iron grasp of Cnothan’s finances and an unorthodox insistency on maintaining her lover in her rooms, with the king’s full knowledge, despite public condemnation. Cleves thinks she might have rather liked Swynford.
She heaves on the bust, and a mechanism concealed in the base of the statue clicks into place. Behind the pillar, a wooden panel slides open to reveal a narrow passageway. The women slip into it sideways, edging their way along until the outline of a doorway, similarly narrow and etched in moonlight, reveals itself.
They are very close now. Cleves takes Seymour’s hand and squeezes, once, and Seymour squeezes back. Ready. Calm. Focused.
Cleves flicks up the catch that keeps the door to the king’s chamber locked from the passageway, opens it silently and slips into the darkness of the room. She emerges behind a tapestry. Seymour waits in the passageway, ensuring that they are not taken by surprise that way. Cleves uses her mirror to make sure that Henry is, as he’d implied, alone in his chamber. The space is round and sparse, and the king is visible in the bed – his auburn hair, so like Cecilia’s, splayed out upon the pillow and lit up in the moonlight like an effigy. Cleves examines every shadow. All is still. All is as it should be. She fingers the knife in her belt.
With a cat’s grace, she ducks out from behind the tapestry and darts to the door, behind which Henry’s guard is keeping watch. She produces a wooden wedge from her pocket and slips it beneath the door. It will not stop the guard entirely, but it will buy her a few moments, and a few moments is all she needs. If all goes to plan, the guard will not even realise the door has been wedged shut until the sun rises and the king does not.
That done, Cleves turns to the bed. She draws the knife from her belt, feeling the heft of the stone hilt.
One step, two. Henry stirs, and Cleves freezes, but his eyes remain closed. She inches closer to the bed, calculating which angle she should approach from. She cannot get close enough to him to give herself enough thrust to be sure of killing him without getting on the mattress itself, and that means waking him.
Seymour, crouched so as to not be seen, makes her way to the other side of the bed.
When Cleves is certain that Seymour is in place, she hides the knife behind her back, and sits. Henry does not open his eyes, but says, “Is that you, my Queen of Cnothan?” His voice is low, purring. It reminds her in a strange way of Queen Boleyn. Cleves only met her once, but was immediately struck by her sensuality.
She inches closer to him, across the mattress, until she is kneeling next to him. She has the advantage now. His eyes are still closed. She produces the knife and holds it above his chest.
“Yes, my lord. It is I.”
She wants to add something likeThe last person you will ever see, but that would be foolish. With all her strength, she brings the knife down over his heart.
It should be enough. And yet she is prevented. For a moment, she thinks that whatever prophetic magic prevented Boleyn from killing him on that clifftop at Brynd is at work again now; that they do not have five queens after all, that one of them is secretly working against them. Then she realises that it is the divine power –her power– working against her. And that means …
“Thank you, my lady,” Henry says, his eyes open now, that calm smile playing upon his lips. “I did not know how I would justify executing a Princess of Ezzonid, but I think this will give me reason enough.”
He sits up, and the knife meets his chest. Cleves steels her wrist. She is strong enough, both in will and muscle, to drive the blade home, yet Henry’s stolen power is stronger still. As he rises, Cleves’s wrist is pushed back, back, back.
“You are clever, my Lady Cleves, but I am cleverer still. Did you truly think I would not have guessed your ploy? Did you think I would underestimate you as you have done me?”
Cleves cannot bring herself to drop her hand, even though she knows it is futile. All she can do now is hope to distract him for long enough to allow Seymour to make an attempt. So she shrugs. “I did wonder, but you had so many guards, I thought it was worth a try.”
Only now does Henry grip her wrist with such inhuman strength that she is forced to open her hand. Her bones crack, a jolt of pain so excruciating she cannot help but make a little, plaintive cry. The knife drops, and Henry swipes it off the bed.
“I do not make the same mistake twice, my lady,” he says, his voice low and pleasant. “But I am not a monster. I wished to believe all my remaining queens loyal, but I knew as soon as I saw you this morning that you are no true Queen of Elben.”
“On the contrary, sir, I am a truer monarch of this island than you and your family of usurpers have ever been,” she spits through the agony.
Henry’s grin widens. “You have been talking with my Lady Seymour. You had better show yourself, Mistress Bitch. I know you are behind me.”
Seymour rises like an avenging shadow. She has her own knife, and she uses it now, plunging it deep into Henry’s back. His breath puffs upon Cleves’s face. It smells of the cloved swan he ate at supper. He coughs, blood spraying across her. She should be glorying in this moment. It is done. She – they all – are free. Cnothan is hers.
