She waits for him to open his arms to her, but he does not.
“You grow old, brother,” she says.
“Is it any wonder, with a sister like you?”
She prods him. “I shall remind you that I am not the sister waging war on you.”
His features cloud further. She feels a familiar tightening in her shoulders. He must catch her expression, for he holds up a hand.
“I am weary, not angry, Cecilia. I am glad to find you alive. It was not what we had thought these last few moons.”
He lowers himself onto a long chair, and she joins him, eyeing his left leg, which is extended stiffly. She despises maladies, the sick, the diseased. It is a distaste she always shared with Henry.
“You are wounded, not weary. What did they do?”
“Prised open an old injury.”
She cannot help but smile. She can admire courage and cunning, even in those she detests. She looks back towards the prayer book. “When did you throw it away?”
He laughs joylessly. “That is what she wants to know. That is what she wants to discuss, after all this time.”
“I know why he was the way he was,” she tells Henry.
“You’ve been talking to Seymour. Of course you know.”
He closes his eyes and leans back. Cecilia has never been the type to comfort. Touch, when it is not accompanied by pleasure or pain, is useless to her. But she feels an urge to comfort her brother now. She grips his shoulder.
“I want Cnothan for my own,” she says. “And in return I will give you all you need to crush your errant queens.”
Henry shakes his head. “I cannot give you Cnothan without my people growing suspicious that I do not fill it with a new queen of my own. They will say the bordweal won’t be strong enough.”
“Then get More and the other bishops to spread a new lie. Say that Cernunnos came to you in a vision and permitted anyone of your blood to take one of the palaces.”
She stands and paces to the window. Why is he not more excited at her offer? His queens have just injured him – him, who should be untouchable – and he seems unbothered.
“Cromwell thinks there is another way,” Henry says. “A way that will allow us to keep things as they are.”
“What other way?” she says. She is only half listening to him. After all, if he is denying her her palace, then what use does she have for him or his religion? She may as well have stayed in Perfugi. She may as well have made her bargain with Cleves and Seymour, self-righteous though they are. Henry drones on about something in Bishop More’sbooks and a strain of Cernunnos’s religion adopted in certain spheres on the continent. At any other time, Henry would have considered it blasphemy, but now it suits him, he seems to be listening.
“You tell me of theory but not of practice,” she says. “What exactly is Cromwell brewing?”
Henry shakes his head. “You will see when it is done.”
Cecilia has a notion of starting her own form of religion. After all, everyone seems to be doing it. The nobility of Elben may be more likely to follow a woman of Tudor blood than the foreigners and commoners that are the current queens of Elben. She could do it, only it seems like such a lot of hard work. Why should she have to be the one to do the labouring? Just as she is on the verge of getting very angry indeed, and throwing something at Henry’s head, he says, “But tell me what you know, and if it’s helpful I will give you something better than Cnothan. Better than any of the six castles.”
She scoffs. “Are you going to abdicate and hand me your throne, brother?”
He stands, flexing his hands. The divine power prickles on his knuckles, and her eyes dart once more to the empty book of horrors. Henry approaches her, and she half expects him to throttle her. Instead, he takes her hands in his and smiles properly for the first time. He smiles as she had wanted him to when they first saw each other.
“When Cromwell succeeds, I will be more powerful than ever before. I intend to do more than any of my forbears, Cecilia. Elben is the chosen land of Cernunnos. Yet we are small amidst the empires of Quisto and Capetia. Why should we not equal them, or even take them for our own?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Unless you imagine me picking up a sword, which I guarantee I shall not do, I do not see how this could possibly benefit me.”
Henry’s smile is almost a sneer. “Then you lack imagination, sister. I will need loyal lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses to keep the empire under Elbenese control. Why should not you take an entire country for your own dominion?”
The thought takes root in her heart, a little thorn that bleeds victory. She throws her arms around Henry’s neck and holds him there, rocking back and forth in her excitement. “Oh, brother, I knew you would not disappoint me. I’m going to be a queen again!”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
