“You are an excellent student, Your Majesty,” he says, as the driver cracks his whip. “You always learn. Always.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cleves
When the moon is high and full, Cleves pulls a chamber robe over her nightshirt and checks that no one is skulking outside her room. She keeps a lean court, more animals than servants, and her guards accompany her only when she leaves Cnothan. Still, one cannot be too cautious.
Hersunscínais never far from her. She will never know whether she discovered it by accident or by the design of a former monarch of Cnothan. She had been queen for two years when she spied the loose floorboard in one corner of her bedchamber. Inside it was a box of no worth or significance, and had it not been in her chamber she would have dismissed it as the worthless treasures of some servant, keen to keep their meagre wealth a secret from their spouse. But when opened, she found a small bag of silk that would once have been very fine, though now it was worn and the colour faded. Inside was a brooch far heavier than it should be by its size. It was a simple piece by Ezzonid’s standards; certainly not of the modern fashion. Thin gold wire plaited around a large stone of mesmerising depth. Cleves was not generally one to fawn over material goods, but she had spent many an hour, in those first weeks, staring at the brooch, even stroking it like one of her pet dogs. She grimaces to think of it now.
It was during one such night that she understood the brooch’s true power. The face of Henry’s most favoured queen, Queen Blount, hadappeared before her. They had met before, of course, at High Hall, but in the tradition of Elben’s queens had exchanged nothing but empty pleasantries.
Blount had startled and then smiled: “I was wondering whether Cnothan’ssunscínahad been lost, like Brynd’s. But here you are.”
Cleves misses Blount, as much as Cleves can miss anyone. She was a harmless woman, but like all the queens of Hyde she possessed many secrets.
Enough. It will not do to dwell on the queens of Hyde too much before she is due to speak to one.
She goes to the window seat and draws her knees up to her chest for warmth. The light of the full moon reflects strangely upon the bruised depths of the brooch, and Cleves has the dizzying feeling of … what? An ending and a beginning, like the snakes of the ancient empires that ate their tails.
Howard is the first to appear. Her beauty always shocks Cleves, even though they have met each other several times. On closer inspection, though, Howard looks tired. Her youthful skin does not glow as it usually does, and there are crescent moons beneath her eyes. But Howard smiles when she realises it is just the two of them.
“Sister!” she says. “I was so hoping it would be you first.”
“Oh? Do you mean to say you do not enjoy Aragon’s scathing insults or Parr’s relentless silence?”
Howard gasps, looks away in delighted shame.
“I find them difficult to talk to. You are always so kind.”
“It is all an act, sister,” Cleves says. “Do you not see my expression whenever Aragon boasts about her nephew as if she birthed him herself?”
Howard is hovering in her music room – Cleves can see the exquisite wood panelling and vibrant tapestries behind her. They are a far cry from what Howard must be able to see of Cleves’s bedchamber: all cold stone with crumbling plaster and dreary candlesticks. Cleves cares not what others see: she alone knows that she is warm beneath fine fur blankets, and that her mattress is made of the softest wool, sheared from the wild Imizen sheep of the nameless meadows beyond the Garzac Sea.
Before Howard can reply, Parr and then Aragon appear. Using thesunscínais akin to dreaming, for Cleves feels that they are in the room with her, those other queens, and that she is in their rooms too – the little closet behind Aragon’s bedchamber, and Parr’s turret study. It isonly right, then, that they choose to meet at night beneath the moon at its brightest and most powerful.
“Have you heard from Seymour?” Howard asks Cleves before the other queens can speak.
“I have not. Have you?” Cleves says. That damned dance at the Moon Ball. Can a queen not take a passing fancy to another woman without people assuming love and other such nothings?
“My nephew’s ambassador tells me she landed in Perfugi a sennight hence,” Aragon says.
“And who is your nephew again, sister? I do not believe you’ve told us,” Cleves says. Howard attempts to suppress a snort of mirth.
“Perhaps she cannot find the privacy to use hersunscína,” Parr says. Cleves agrees, although she cannot stop a seed of disquiet lodging in her stomach. If Aragon’s spies can find out that she has landed, perhaps Cleves’s can discover whether she is safe. Still, it will not do to admit her concern.
“We are well able to discuss our plans without her,” Cleves says, forcing herself to smile.
“Indeed. I cannot talk for long tonight,” Aragon says. “Wolsey is staying at Daven and you know how he is prone to working late into the night.”
“We should talk first of the king,’ Parr says. His plans will affect our own.”
“Did you receive his summons to Gem?res?” Howard asks Cleves.
“Yes,” Cleves replies. In truth, she had forgotten about the letter from Cromwell in the flurry of entertaining Johana. She must remember to respond.
“I received no invitation,” Aragon says. “Did you, Parr?”
Cleves stops herself from rolling her eyes. “Do not feel left out,” she says. “It is merely to unveil new portraits of myself and Queen Howard at the border of our territories. The king wishes to demonstrate how beautiful our youngest sister is compared to myself.”
