And what cost does it extract from the brother who once saved her?
Would he save her still?
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Cleves
Syndony escorts them into the Palace of Mathmas under the cover of a full moon. They take the narrow alleyways that run parallel to the main street of the town, where only stray dogs, stray wild dragons and rats move at this time of night, foraging through the detritus of the day. Cleves is thankful for the need for silence. Seymour has barely spoken to her since returning with Syndony, arms full of fennel and a pigeon carcass. Cleves had attempted to lighten the thickness in the room as they plucked the bird, but Seymour had not smiled, and Syndony, head bowed over a needle as she mended some of Elizabeth’s clothes, had raised her eyebrows but not her head. Cleves wonders whether they spoke about her at all, or whether Syndony was merely reacting to the mood. She does not mind. If Seymour is going to play childish games, then Cleves has no time for her. It only reinforces Cleves’s knowledge that their relationship was never tenable.
The alleyway dwindles into a dirt track which runs up the mountainside, the kind of steep, uneven ground that goats take, their hooves more suited to navigating the sheer drop on one side than Cleves’s boots. If she had been as starved as she was when she arrived in the town that morning, she might have been tempted to sink to the dirt and refuse to go on, but with smoked pigeon in her stomach, she is almost equal to the trudge.
At the base of Mathmas’s outer walls, the path climbs up over a series of rocky steps, ending at the gatehouse and two forbidding, studded oakdoors. A smaller door is set into them, and on this Syndony knocks four times. Immediately a bolt is drawn back from the other side and the door is opened. Cleves follows Syndony into a square, cobbled courtyard.
Lanterns line the walls. The moonlight already gives the courtyard an ethereal quality, and the soft light from the lanterns adds to it. Honeysuckle climbs the stone, reaching into every nook, its winding branches swelling to a thick trunk on the far side of the space. Despite the season, it is already flowering, and Cleves spies the occasional fairy darting in and out of the blossoms, selecting the finest petals for their nests. Lelij gambols after them, already at home here.
Everywhere else she looks, Cleves sees practicality and function. The centre of the courtyard houses not a fountain or a statue, but a covered well. Great wooden tubs are filled with fruiting trees and herbs rather than roses, and the alcoves house not statues but painted calculations. Cleves examines the closest one: it details the amount of grain the castle holds in storage.
Cleves and Seymour follow Syndony into one of the halls that leads off the courtyard. Queen Parr waits inside, dressed in a simple, deep blue velvet gown with an embroidered hem of silver flowers. She comes towards them, her smile slight, her hands crossed over her stomacher.
Before she addresses the two queens, she turns to Syndony, and bows her head in respect. “Thank you, my lady,” she says. Syndony bobs a curtsey and, with a nod to Cleves and Seymour, takes her leave. As she passes Cleves, Cleves is sure she hears Syndony mutter, “Foolish.” Then she is gone.
Cleves turns to Parr, keen to take control of the situation. This may be Parr’s castle, and she has no intention of superseding her authority within Mathmas’s walls, but Parr needs to understand that just because Cleves is homeless for now, she still deserves respect. She cannot quite articulate why it is so important for her to do this. She has a sense that she has lost Seymour’s goodwill, as well as her home, and she needs to find a sure footing.
“There is much for us to discuss,” she says. “You must have heard news from High Hall? Do they have an inkling of where we are?”
Parr’s smile is a riddle. “You both must be exhausted after your long journey. The Heahmore mountains are unforgiving for those on foot. Permit me to show you to your bedrooms, and we can talk more in the morning. You need not fear my household. I keep few and they are all in my confidence.”
Another queen who has trusted people around her. Cleves only had Johana, for the briefest time.
“I would rather speak now, in the privacy afforded by night,” Cleves says.
“I will be happy to take some rest,” Seymour says, stepping forward. “If you would please show me to my room, sister?”
“Of course.” Parr leads Seymour out. Cleves waits, determined not to follow them. She walks the circumference of the hall, examining the huge paintings whose paint is flaking, injured by the salt of the sea air. She sometimes has the same issues at Cnothan; all the coastal castles do.
Parr returns before long, just as Cleves is examining a portrait of one of the former queens of Mathmas. The most famous one, if Cleves is not mistaken – she knew of her even before her engagement to Henry caused her to study the history of Elben. In her studies, the woman was described as a fierce force, but to Cleves’s eyes this woman looks entirely submissive. The portrait shows her sitting, a small dog in her lap and her hand placed on a pile of religious texts.I am humble, loyal and true to the faith, the portrait is saying. There is nothing fierce about that.
Parr stops just behind her.
“She was a widow, like you, I think,” Cleves says, nodding at the painting.
“She already had three sons from her union with her first husband. I suppose that made her more appealing to the king.”
The unspoken lands between them: unlike Parr, who was widowed twice before becoming queen, and remains childless. Not even a rumour of pregnancy to sustain her reputation. Cleves dares to ask the question she probably should not; if they are to work together, they must understand each other, and Cleves finds it difficult to understand one such as Parr.
“Do you wonder why our husband chose you, then?”
Parr shifts.
“I look the very part of humble, loyal and true, do I not?”
“Yet here you are, plotting rebellion with his least favoured of wives.” Cleves finds the thought amusing. Parr evidently does so too, for she moves forward to stand beside her, still looking up at the portrait.
“Oh, I don’t know. I suspect my other queenly guest could challenge you.”
Cleves barks a laugh.
“I wonder where we rank alongside Boleyn.”
