The suggestion is not as terrifying to Howard as it might once have been – she does love to be seen to be beautiful, after all. But something does not feel right about it.
“What troubles you?” Lady Tylney says.
“I think that is what I might do now,” Howard says slowly.
“Now?” Florin says.
“The wife that Henry believes me to be would not act like that. I fear that in travelling to High Hall, I would only prove that I am not that woman.”
That is when it strikes her: Florin has never known her as the girl she was only a year ago.As only Queen Howard can sparkle.That is his image of her: the queen who breaks into great houses to save a stranger. The queen who tricks her guards and binds her ladies to her.
That is who Howard has become. But it is not who she must be for Henry.
“I know what we must do,” she says. “And it must be all of us. You are going to find me very tiresome.”
“Excellent: I shall not have to lie,” Legh says.
Florin fetches parchment and quills, and Howard and her ladies labour over their correspondence. This group of strays will bark and mewl as they are expected to. The recipients, and those who intercept their letters, will read what they want to read: that Howard is mortified that the rare fabric she bought for Mary’s train turned scarlet; that sheis terrified of being suspected of disliking Mary; that she is irritating her household with her worries. They paint a picture of a fluttering songbird without a voice.
Howard summons the jeweller from Sweillan who made hersunscínachains, and commissions one final gift. Two roses, one soft gold and one red and white, intertwined. The red and white rose is studded with diamonds to signify thorns, and the petals of the yellow rose open to reveal a tiny replica of Holbein’s portrait of Howard. It is gaudy, but clearly expensive. The Tudor rose, and the rose with no thorns, cleaved together. The jeweller affixes the piece to a pin, and once she can be certain that her ladies’ letters will have been read by Cromwell and Wolsey’s spies, Howard sends it to High Hall with a letter in her own laboured hand.
My deerest King,
I am so hapy that you are well. You are my sun. Will you visit me at Plythe the soonest? For I am so desiros of you.
Here is a gift for you, my lord. Will you ware it always?
Your own rose,
Howard
Florin reads it, his lip curled. “But this is not you,” he says.
“It was once,” she replies, and she feels a great rush of pity for the old Howard.
Legh reads it next, and nods. “It is exactly as you speak to him when he is here.”
Her ladies leave her alone, and she reads the letter over and over. Does she show the right amount of improvement in her letter writing? Are these the most perfect words to charm a clever, suspicious king? She is so caught up in her study that she does not realise Florin is still there until he places a hand upon the parchment, covering her writing.
“I have never seen you so doubtful before,” he says.
“You have never seen me around the king.”
Florin nudges her hand. “He is not a king, though, is he? He is an interloper. You are the true monarch.”
Pretty words, but he cannot know that they wound. She scratches the itchy skin on her scalp, pulls at the hair there. A curl feathers to the floor. Without that same interloper, she would have never been queen.
“Have I ever told you about my time in Cecilia’s household?” he says.
“Never.”
He sits on the floor beside her, crossing his legs. “She used to discuss great matters with my sister, then order me to come to her. Every time, I used to think – she is going to trust me with her confidence. This time she will ask my advice. And every time she would greet me with her gown already on the floor.”
Howard traces her handwriting.
“It is so difficult not to feel grateful, when someone like Henry notices you,” she says.
“All my friends told me I was lucky to have captured her interest.”
