Ursula Askew laughs, full-throated. She crawls across the silk and lays her head upon Howard’s lap. “Let us all be very silly, Your Majesty. Let us wreak havoc with our silliness.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Cecilia
She has slept in dungeons before, but never against her will. Her kingly Capetian husband had a penchant for sadism, honed over the many decades of his life, and he taught her all he knew in their brief months together. Oh, the fun they had in the depths of the decadent palace of Aviora. This is entirely different. The cell in the hold of the Feorwan ship smells of rotting fish, and although the crew bring her meals, she has to eat them perched on a hard pallet which affords her only a few hours of sleep. She only knows it is night from the timing of the meals, for she sees no sun.
She is running out of escape schemes. She tries attacking the Feorwans when they open the cell door. She tries pleading with them. She tries bribing them and, even though they are at sea, she tries screaming in the hope that a passing ship will hear her. All that gets her is gagged.
She may well lose her mind down here, with no company to entertain her, and no embroidery to keep her mind from unravelling.
“If you keep me here for ever,” she tells her captors when they next come with her meal, “then I will be so empty I will be worthless.”
She grips their sleeve as she says it, feeling the coarse fabric beneath her fingertips. She rubs a thumb over the thread, and a dozen ways to improve it spring to her mind. Perhaps the way she clings to that sleeve makes her captor understand her sincerity.
“There are plans afoot to take you somewhere where you can see the sunlight,” they say, then lock the door behind them, plunging her back into darkness.
“There is nothing I am afraid of,” she tells the night, pressing herself against the wall. “There is nothing that can overwhelm me.”
Yet despite her fortitude, she rushes to the door when she hears the key in the lock. It is Seymour’s friend, the one who knocked her out with an oar the day the bordweal rose against her. They are holding iron manacles.
“Come,” they say, and she allows her wrists to be chained, struggling only a little so they do not think she’s been cowed. She is Cecilia Tudor. She does not break.
They blindfold her before leading her up to the deck. Cecilia tries not to gulp fresh air. Even through her blindfold she can tell it is night-time. There is a moment where she thinks they are going to throw her overboard, and she cries out.
“Don’t be stupid,” they say, before steering her into a smaller boat that abuts the ship.
“Where are you taking me?” Cecilia says, permitting herself to be guided onto a hard seat.
No one responds, but she can tell from the splash of oars and the motion of the boat that she is being rowed to shore. She makes an attempt at calculating where in Elben they must be – could they have got as far as Seymour’s territory of Hyde while Cecilia was in the ship’s hold? – but soon gives it up as hopeless. Geographical calculations were never her strength.
Her backside is aching with a pain that shoots up her spine and into her neck by the time the boat reaches shore, and she is manhandled up a pebbled beach. She hits her legs against the step of a carriage.
“My apologies,” the Feorwan says, not sounding very apologetic. “Let me help you in.”
“Tell me where I am going first.” If she were them, that carriage’s destination would be over the edge of a steep cliff. They are fools to allow Cecilia to live, but the soft are often foolish. That was Lorena’s weakness, and Florin’s.
“Get in and I will remove your blindfold,” Seymour says from inside the carriage. The temptation of being able to use her eyes once more is too great. Once Cecilia is settled upon a cushioned seat, and the curtains have been drawn across the windows, Seymour pulls her blindfold down.
Cecilia can see little in the shadows of the carriage: only a single lamp is secured to the wall. There is no crest upon the carriage’s innards. She eyes the woman who was once her prisoner and who is now her captor. There is a deeper shadow upon the carriage’s floor, at Seymour’s feet. The panther, asleep.
“What are you going to do with me?” Cecilia says.
“Whatever I do, it will not involve needles,” Seymour replies. “You and I are going to lodge together while I work out how to make use of you.”
The carriage rocks as someone climbs into the driver’s seat and they begin to move.
“Is there nothing your simpering servant cannot do? I hope at least you fuck them in payment since you have no wealth of your own,” she says, loudly enough that she hopes the Feorwan can hear.
“You truly are vile,” Seymour says. From the tiny amount of moonlight seeping through the curtain, Cecilia thinks she has closed her eyes.
“At least I am not dull,” she says. She leans over and pinches the top of Seymour’s hand. Seymour cries out.
“Are you all right, Your Majesty?” the servant calls.
“I am fine,” Seymour replies, glaring at Cecilia. Satisfied, Cecilia leans her own head back against the cushioned seat.
“Don’t ever treat me as though I’m safe again,” she says.
