“Master Cromwell told me that you could not bring yourself to desire me. So I thought to make our wedding night pleasurable for you. Lady Paston was only too happy to oblige, as you can imagine.”
She makes herself look him up and down, and tries to picture in his place the kind of woman she finds irresistible. Tall, darker-skinned, quiet and fierce. She feels a blush creep up her neck, as Seymour, naked, head thrown back in ecstasy just the night before, springs to mind. It seems to work, because Henry looks suitably pacified. These kings, going through life never being refused and assuming it is because their charm is an irrepressible force.
“You have endangered my country’s defences, my lady. Did you not think on that? I was prepared to do anything to protect Elben—”
“Let us not continue to lie, my lord,” Cleves says. Her heart pounds. This is the most audacious part of her play. He goes very still.
“You dare accuse me of lying?”
“It is an open secret in Ezzonid, the truth of Cernunnos and the woman god. What was her name?”
“Med—” he stops himself, too late. His fist clenches on the table, a spark of divine power lifting from the knuckles and dissipating into the air.
“Medren, that is right. We have always known, my lord. All of the fuss of the binding and the bedding. I knew it did not matter to the bordweal.”
“You knew …” he repeats slowly. “You knew and married me anyway?”
She shrugs. “I am a Queen of Elben. I have my castle. What does it matter if you possess some divine strength? What use have I for such things at Cnothan? It is not as if it affects me.”
She watches some colour return to his face. These white-as-bone people are amusingly transparent, showing their embarrassment and fear so clearly on their skin. With any luck, he believes her ignorant of the fact that his leaching of the divine power also leaches his queens of their lives. If she made it apparent that she knew all, he would not believe that she would not care. A little lie can sometimes be concealed if one covers it with enough truth.
“You danced with the traitor Seymour at the Moon Ball,” Henry says.
She leans her head on her hand, her elbow on the table, quizzical.
“Yes, that was a strange night, was it not? It was rather amusing, watching those two women lose their minds.”
“You thought them insane?”
“I can think of no other reason why they did what they did.”
“Seymour visited you before the ball. She did not mention her and Boleyn’s plans to you then?”
Cleves laughs. “Now you mention it, I think she may have tried. I must admit, my mind was on other matters. There was a crone in the woods, and it was destroying my flocks. I have been breeding a new type of sheep. Would you care to see it while you are staying at Cnothan?”
Henry’s frown deepens, and Cleves wonders whether she has pushed the personality she has carefully cultivated beyond its limit.
She sips her wine, desperate to moisten her mouth.
He is still watching her.
“They make very soft wool,” she adds, as if waving an alluring gem just out of his reach.
“I think I have treated you unfairly, my lady wife,” he says. “You have qualities beyond what most people understand.”
“Thank you,” she says.
He stands. “Shall we have some music?” He claps his hands for the fiddlers in the gallery above to play something more lively than a madrigal. He turns to the man standing behind them. “There will be no need to stay in my chamber tonight. Find yourself somewhere else to sleep.”
The man bows, and Henry flicks a glance towards Cleves. It is an invitation. A test. And she knows just what to do with it.
They drink more wine and exchange pleasantries, and clap as members of Cleves’s household dance for them. Henry laughs when one of Cleves’s pet goats decides to join the frivolity and ends up tangled in the legs of a couple. When she deems it safe to do so, Cleves excuses herself and hurries to the stables, making sure she is not being followed. A storeroom spans the loft space above the stalls, reached by a narrow wooden staircase tucked into one corner of the harness room. Up here, the warm, heavy smell of animal is replaced by the scent of the sky buckthorn garlanded across the beams.
Cleves picks her way between crates and discarded saddles. But she is not stealthy enough, for as she reaches the far end of the room a hand slips around her waist, and another covers her mouth. She recognises the scent of cloves.
“Now I have you,” Seymour says, her breath tickling Cleves’s ear in a most distracting manner. Cleves pulls Seymour’s hand away and twists in her arms. She had intended to kiss her with all the pent-up fear and anger of the day. But now that they are face to face, she cannot. It is not from lack of desire, but because she wants something more – confession. And that realisation frightens her more than anything else that has happened.
“What did Henry do?” Seymour says. “Are you safe?”
