“I think we must stop,” Seymour says, clutching her ribs.
They are on the ascent already, and the path ahead grows rocky. A chill wind blows from the west, up the incline from the sea, and buffets the mountains’ feet. Cleves wants to keep going, to put as much space between them and that crone as possible. She looks back. The wood and its stream are barely visible on the horizon. She tries to reason with her panic: crones are territorial. Even with their scent in its nose, it will not leave the trees.
“Very well,” she says.
They find a divot in the rocks – not quite a cave, but not exposed either – and nestle down there. There at last Cleves tells Seymour what she saw, and what it must signify. Seymour covers her mouth in horror.
“I must have seen this too, near Gnottel Lodge,” she whispers. She tells Cleves of the strange pink mould that she and Cecilia found in the burnt remains of the Hleaw camp.
They stare at each other.
She had always thought the crones were unnatural, but now she knows it. They must be a sickness, a plague. She edges towards knowledge, pondering everything she knows and does not know about the beasts. Why else would the murder of Medren’s worshippers spawn that mould? Why else would crones spread so rampantly during Henry’s reign alone, when Henry alone has used Medren’s power so much more voraciously than any of his forebears.
The truth creeps over her like that unfurling mould. Cleves might not believe it if she did not know something of the strange workings of this island, where slaughter can turn crystal to garnets, and a goddess can break her eye into stones of power. Elben is Medren’s, and it is corrupted. The crones are that corruption, blooming into rotten existence again and again, until it can be cleansed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Cecilia
She hears news of her brother’s return to High Hall from listening in to the servants’ gossip. They whisper of his anger, trade favours to avoid serving him. She remains in her rooms, waiting for him to visit her. Surely –surely– he will come to her with a tired smile, fold her in his arms and welcome her home? She is not merely his beloved little sister, after all. She is the one who, of all his clever spies and their clever masters, found out that Cleves is in league with Seymour. She is the one who captured that same traitor queen and brought her back to Elben. It is not Cecilia’s fault that Seymour bested her. No one knew that Seymour and Cleves had the ability to wield the bordweal.
But Henry does not visit her. He barely leaves his rooms, if what she overhears is correct. Brother and sister, once inseparable, now separated by three floors, eighteen years and many centuries of secrets.
Eventually, she goes to him. Of course, she has forgotten the protocols of Elben, having lived so long in Perfugi. High Hall is his: it would not be appropriate for him to come to her. He has been waiting for her, probably. Probably desperate to see her, but unable to be the one to descend to her rooms. She imagines him starting out on the journey through the passageways and grand staircases of the palace, only to have Cromwell intercede and remind him of the proper way of things.
She must not keep him waiting any longer.
Henry’s rooms, at the apex of High Hall, are empty. A guard hovers in the doorway, too cowed by her to keep her out but not so cowed that they will leave her alone in there without the king.
“Where is he?” she asks, wandering around the space.
“I believe His Majesty is in the sanctuary,” the guard says.
She shivers at the thought of that solemn space just below them.
“I will wait for him to return then,” she says.
The tapestries on the walls here are all religious, featuring the heroic deeds of Cernunnos or Aethelred – she doesn’t know how Henry fucks surrounded by them. It is very different to when she last visited these rooms, the night before she began her voyage to Capetia, for her marriage to the ageing king. Back then, Henry was still a young king, and the rooms were still in large part their father’s. Plain walls and draughty windows. They have been made more comfortable now, but there is still something indefinably familiar about the space.
She cannot put her finger on it until she comes upon a prayer book, very old, left closed on a chest all by itself. She starts back and almost trips over her gown in her haste to get away from it.
“Are you all right, Your Majesty?” the guard says from the door.
She ignores him and, with some effort, makes herself approach the book once more.
With a single outstretched finger, she flips the cover open. Inside there are no pages, or no intact ones at least. Instead of prayers, beautifully illustrated, a little chamber is cut into the parchment. The strength leaches from her body. It is empty.
“I threw them away.” Henry’s voice.
Cecilia keeps her eyes on the book.
“Good,” she says.
As he approaches, she can hear the limp in his gait. Shuffle thud, shuffle thud.
“Did a lioness take a mouthful, brother?”
“Two alley cats, more like,” Henry says. She turns around then. His face is still youthful, but the way he carries himself is so much older than when she last saw him. His doublet makes his shoulders seem broader than they truly are, and his beard is wirier than it once was, even though it holds no flecks of grey.
