Legh laughs. Lady Tylney laughs.
Susanna’s smile is a wound. “You lied to me the other day, Your Majesty?”
“A little. Not all.” Susanna had asked Howard to protect her from the other women when they turned cruel. And Howard will – she will. But she must be sure of their loyalty first – surely Susanna can understand that?
Ursula is last to speak: “I knew it was the truth. I knew it.”
She had been Howard’s attendant at the Moon Ball. She had seen Medren’s power. She had never commented upon it, so Howard had assumed that she was ignorant to what it signified. She has underestimated them, as she herself has been underestimated.
“You can scold me later for keeping this from you, but in this moment I need your help,” she says. She reaches for them all, touching their hands, their cheeks, gathering them towards her.
“You are our queen,” Ursula says. And that is that.
Lady Tylney keeps watch at the window of Howard’s receiving chamber, which offers a view over the hunting grounds of Plythe. Legh is poised at the palace gates, ready to detain the king and his huntsmen with flirtation. Susanna tarries outside the courtyard where Howard last lied to her. “I will be your last defence,” she proclaims, then slopes off to her post with hunched shoulders. And Ursula cleaves to Howard, insisting on joining her at the spirit stone of Plythe, for “I have been reading all kinds of pamphlets about Medren, and I might be able to help if you have difficulties.”
Howard feels as though she is fighting to keep her seat on a wild horse, without bridle or saddle. Everything has changed between her and her ladies, and nothing has changed at all. They vie with each other for her favour, move to place themselves in the right way, and allshe can think of is Boleyn and her sister who is soon to be queen in her place. What is Legh going to say to the king?
That is a terror for later. She and Ursula pass into the peaceful din of the courtyard, the Kyttle Falls providing comfort and the concealment of noise. Howard steps up to the spirit stone, balancing on a ledge, smooth and slippery with water, provided for such a purpose. The stone woman, her crown almost disappeared, gazes impassively at Howard.
“It is almost midday,” Ursula whispers. She is standing to one side, leaning over the fountain but not daring to touch the woman at its centre.
And there are the bells of Sweillan, marking the height of the sun. Across Elben, the bells in other sanctuaries will toll, and those who heave on their ropes will not know that they provide a signal to four queens about to attempt their greatest feat of rebellion yet.
“Do it,” Ursula says, bouncing on her toes.
Howard takes the stone woman’s hand. The sensation is immediate. She did not understand the strange kinship she experienced that first time, on her wedding day, but she does now. She is communing with the echoes of the queens of Plythe. The fluttering beauty and restless desire of the women who ruled this palace before her.
“Good morrow, friends,” she whispers.
The air around her stills, the bubbling water quietens. At the edge of her mind, a voice seems to call to her. It has no words, or is spoken in a language long forgotten and untranslatable, yet Howard understands it. It is the language of the maid walking alone through a darkened wood. The language of a mother thinking with despair upon her daughter’s future. It is the language of the woman who makes excuses not to be left alone with her friend, lest his attentions turn romantic. It is the language of danger, both known and unknown. It is a melancholy voice, a nightingale’s voice, like wind in starving trees upon a wild mountainside.
Howard does not know what to say or do to make the spirit stone obey her. They are all of them hazarding Seymour’s safety on a hunch, on a power whose rules none of them understand. Medren came to them at the Moon Ball – surely she will come to them now?
“Please?” she says.
Nothing changes. The strange language continues, a lilting fall of it, chattering like the fountain.
“I am Queen Howard of Plythe,” she tries again. The voice grows louder, more insistent. She thinks of the other queens, who have probably already bent their spirit stones to their will. They will be waiting only for her. If she cannot work out what she must do, will their plan fail entirely? Will Seymour be lost, be taken to Henry and have unimaginable, unforgivable things done to her?
“Is it not working?” Ursula says.
“No,” Howard replies. A tear falls, but she does not relinquish her hold on the stone.
“Make it work,” Ursula says, as though she were the queen and Howard her maid.
“I do not know how. Perhaps if Voda Kelaverinn were here—”
“Oh, fuck your Voda Kelaverinn,” Ursula says. She seizes Howard by the upper arms, bracing her from behind. Is Howard a weapon or a shield?
“Try again,” she instructs.
“I need your help,” Howard says to the spirit stone, her eyes closed, willing every part of her that has ever felt like a queen to rise to the stone.
“You are a queen,” Ursula says. “Act like one.”
There they are. The words Boleyn said to her on their first meeting. Howard did not say then, and she will not say now: I am a queen in name alone. I never deserved the title like the rest of you. Another tear falls.
“Ursula,” she says, half speaking, half sobbing.
