“Are those supposed to be breasts?” Johana says quietly, nodding to a pair of rounded shapes beneath the head closest to Cleves.
“I think they may once have been, yes.”
“I may not be an expert, but are they usually so smooth? Do women not possess … how do you say it in Elbenese …?”
“Nipples?”
“Nipples, yes.”
Cleves and Johana tilt their heads in unison, considering the mystery of the nippleless bosoms.
“I cannot speak for all women, but in general, yes, we do. I suspect that these have lost their nipples through centuries of puerile touching.”
A cheer goes up from the other side of the town square.
“My god, what insanity is happening now?” Johana says.
There is laughter and whistles in the distance.
“My sister is here,” Cleves says.
“Sybil?” Johana looks around for a woman who he knows to still be in Ezzonid.
Cleves smacks him gently. “Idiot. I meant my sister-queen.”
And there she is. Howard is radiant in her customary gossamer and silk. Her gown has been embroidered all over with white and red roses – the emblems of the Tudor dynasty. Clever girl, to align herself so symbolically with her husband.
“Well, she was made to be a muse,” Johana says.
“She was made to be herself,” Cleves replies, and strides forwards, circling the fountain to greet Howard.
The women stop when there is still some distance between them – they must be friendly but not familiar. No one can suspect that they do more than exchange pleasantries in brief meetings and perfunctory letters. Cleves almost smiles at what Cromwell would think if he knew that they met magically beneath the new moon to discuss overthrowing the men of their land.
Howard’s eyes are wide, poised between panic and purity, as she dips into a curtsey. Her ladies-in-waiting follow her lead, and Cleves spies Lady Susanna Horenbolt at the back, a little apart from the others. If Cleves could have been persuaded to keep any of the ladies-in-waiting granted to her upon her arrival in Elben, she would have kept Susanna. A sensible, steady woman with an artistic talent to rival Master Holbein.
Cleves curtseys too, although not as deeply, for she is of royal stock.
“Well met, sister,” Cleves says, as Cromwell rejoins them, the gold coin Cleves had given to the boy glinting in his palm.
“It has been some time,” Howard says, stuttering a little. Ever aware of Cromwell’s presence, Cleves smiles. “Let us hope that this meeting is less eventful than the last.”
There is a general silence. The nobility of Gem?res are too lowborn to have attended the Moon Ball, but all of Elben knows by now thatsomething happened there, and that it was followed by Boleyn’s arrest. Cleves would have rather not referenced it at all, but since Howard did so clumsily, she must do so too, and hope that it will offer Howard some protection.
Cromwell steps back. Perhaps he wants to be able to keep both of them in his view to better assess their behaviour. Howard appears to be frozen.
Johana laughs, loud as a horn. He keeps laughing, until slowly the Gem?res nobility join in, and then Cleves, and finally Howard and her ladies and then, at last, Cromwell. Lelij presses against Cleves’s legs, distressed by the noise. Her dragons take flight. And still she laughs.
“Indeed, let us hope so,” Cromwell says, patting his chest as though he is out of breath from so much merriment. He nods to the Mayor of Gem?res, who holds up a hand in some prearranged signal.
Howard’s eyes widen, if possible, even further at something behind Cleves. She swings around to see that a clumsily rigged mechanism attached to the base of the fountain is being cranked by several maidens.
A strange bubbling sound, and then, out of what once must have been the nipples of the stone women, pour thin streams of wine – white on one side, red on the other. Cromwell claps effusively, and the townspeople, clearly proud of their handiwork, applaud and cheer. Cleves joins in, although she hardly knows what she says as she congratulates the engineers. Johana does not clap, only stares in barely disguised horror at the statues. Cleves wants to rebuke him for his disgust of something that is, after all, only mirroring a perfectly normal bodily function. But then why can she herself not look at the statues? Why does she almost gag when someone holds a goblet beneath one of the streams and then passes it to her with a wink?
She and Howard are corralled to another corner of the town square, goblets still in hand. Two easels have been erected and covered with red velvet curtains. Men crowd around them, eager to witness the unveiling of the famous Master Holbein’s portraits. Eager to witness the queens’ reactions to their likenesses.
The sound of laughter rings in Cleves’s ears. It melts into the sound of marching.
“Lelij,heem,” Cleves says to the gargoyle at her feet.Space. Lelij shakes his ruffled neck and arches his scaled back. From his belly comes a guttural wheeze, and as it sounds, his stomach expands, making him seem far bigger than he really is. The pressing crowd backs away, alarmed by the strange creature. Space.
