Chapter Seven Cleves
CHAPTER SEVEN
Cleves
When the moon is high and full, Cleves pulls a chamber robe over her nightshirt and checks that no one is skulking outside her room. She keeps a lean court, more animals than servants, and her guards accompany her only when she leaves Cnothan. Still, one cannot be too cautious.
Her sunscína is never far from her. She will never know whether she discovered it by accident or by the design of a former monarch of Cnothan.
She had been queen for two years when she spied the loose floorboard in one corner of her bedchamber.
Inside it was a box of no worth or significance, and had it not been in her chamber she would have dismissed it as the worthless treasures of some servant, keen to keep their meagre wealth a secret from their spouse.
But when opened, she found a small bag of silk that would once have been very fine, though now it was worn and the colour faded.
Inside was a brooch far heavier than it should be by its size.
It was a simple piece by Ezzonid’s standards; certainly not of the modern fashion.
Thin gold wire plaited around a large stone of mesmerising depth.
Cleves was not generally one to fawn over material goods, but she had spent many an hour, in those first weeks, staring at the brooch, even stroking it like one of her pet dogs. She grimaces to think of it now.
It was during one such night that she understood the brooch’s true power. The face of Henry’s most favoured queen, Queen Blount, had appeared before her. They had met before, of course, at High Hall, but in the tradition of Elben’s queens had exchanged nothing but empty pleasantries.
Blount had startled and then smiled: “I was wondering whether Cnothan’s sunscína had been lost, like Brynd’s. But here you are.”
Cleves misses Blount, as much as Cleves can miss anyone. She was a harmless woman, but like all the queens of Hyde she possessed many secrets.
Enough. It will not do to dwell on the queens of Hyde too much before she is due to speak to one.
She goes to the window seat and draws her knees up to her chest for warmth. The light of the full moon reflects strangely upon the bruised depths of the brooch, and Cleves has the dizzying feeling of … what? An ending and a beginning, like the snakes of the ancient empires that ate their tails.
Howard is the first to appear. Her beauty always shocks Cleves, even though they have met each other several times.
On closer inspection, though, Howard looks tired.
Her youthful skin does not glow as it usually does, and there are crescent moons beneath her eyes.
But Howard smiles when she realises it is just the two of them.
“Sister!” she says. “I was so hoping it would be you first.”
“Oh? Do you mean to say you do not enjoy Aragon’s scathing insults or Parr’s relentless silence?”
Howard gasps, looks away in delighted shame.
“I find them difficult to talk to. You are always so kind.”
“It is all an act, sister,” Cleves says. “Do you not see my expression whenever Aragon boasts about her nephew as if she birthed him herself?”
Howard is hovering in her music room – Cleves can see the exquisite wood panelling and vibrant tapestries behind her.
They are a far cry from what Howard must be able to see of Cleves’s bedchamber: all cold stone with crumbling plaster and dreary candlesticks.
Cleves cares not what others see: she alone knows that she is warm beneath fine fur blankets, and that her mattress is made of the softest wool, sheared from the wild Imizen sheep of the nameless meadows beyond the Garzac Sea.
Before Howard can reply, Parr and then Aragon appear.
Using the sunscína is akin to dreaming, for Cleves feels that they are in the room with her, those other queens, and that she is in their rooms too – the little closet behind Aragon’s bedchamber, and Parr’s turret study.
It is only right, then, that they choose to meet at night beneath the moon at its brightest and most powerful.
“Have you heard from Seymour?” Howard asks Cleves before the other queens can speak.
“I have not. Have you?” Cleves says. That damned dance at the Moon Ball. Can a queen not take a passing fancy to another woman without people assuming love and other such nothings?
“My nephew’s ambassador tells me she landed in Perfugi a sennight hence,” Aragon says.
“And who is your nephew again, sister? I do not believe you’ve told us,” Cleves says. Howard attempts to suppress a snort of mirth.
“Perhaps she cannot find the privacy to use her sunscína,” Parr says. Cleves agrees, although she cannot stop a seed of disquiet lodging in her stomach. If Aragon’s spies can find out that she has landed, perhaps Cleves’s can discover whether she is safe. Still, it will not do to admit her concern.
“We are well able to discuss our plans without her,” Cleves says, forcing herself to smile.
“Indeed. I cannot talk for long tonight,” Aragon says. “Wolsey is staying at Daven and you know how he is prone to working late into the night.”
“We should talk first of the king,’ Parr says. His plans will affect our own.”
“Did you receive his summons to Gem?res?” Howard asks Cleves.
“Yes,” Cleves replies. In truth, she had forgotten about the letter from Cromwell in the flurry of entertaining Johana. She must remember to respond.
“I received no invitation,” Aragon says. “Did you, Parr?”
Cleves stops herself from rolling her eyes. “Do not feel left out,” she says. “It is merely to unveil new portraits of myself and Queen Howard at the border of our territories. The king wishes to demonstrate how beautiful our youngest sister is compared to myself.”
“That is not true, I’m sure,” Howard says.
“Do not worry for my feelings; I have born his humiliations for six years now. I can bear another in the knowledge that I shall have the final laugh.”
Parr stirs – she talks so sparingly that Cleves is never quite sure whether she is half asleep in their meetings.
“He is a fool,” she says. “If you are present at the unveiling, it will be obvious that you are not the woman he seeks to portray you as. People may once have convinced themselves to his way of thinking, but his power is waning.”
Cleves shifts in her seat. She is comfortable playing the fool. Parr may be paying her a compliment, but she does not like the thought of people knowing the truth of her. “It matters not either way,” she says. “Tell us – what happened in Capetia?”
Parr smiles grimly. “He signed a new treaty with them. The Capetian king was a most attentive host to us all.”
She emphasises that all, so that they know that she means Mary Boleyn, the woman who will shortly take her sister’s place as Queen of Brynd.
So much for Capetia’s supposed loyalty to Boleyn.
Cleves is not surprised – kings and courtiers will always serve their own interests above anyone else’s – but Howard flinches.
“Surely he made some reference to Boleyn?” Howard says.
Parr shakes her head, not unkindly, as Aragon says, “Of course he did not. Do you wish Capetia to start a war with Elben for the sake of your dead friend?”
Howard stammers. “I’m sure I did not mean …”
“It is merely good foreign policy,” Cleves says. “If it makes you feel better, sister, he’d have behaved the same way if any of us were in Boleyn’s place.”
Howard tugs at her hair, mortified. Cleves tries to imagine what it must be like to be raised from minor nobility to the queen of a nation.
Not merely a queen, but one who must also hold her own alongside women such as herself and Aragon, who were born into royalty, and alongside Parr and Boleyn, who spent their formative years in royal courts.
Poor girl. It is a wonder she strings two words together at all in their presence.
Aragon alone is intimidating enough to silence all but the boldest of women.
“So Henry is fearful,” Aragon says. “A few years ago he would never have sought an alliance with Capetia. He fears that Quisto will come down on our side – and perhaps Ezzonid too – and seeks to bolster his own defences.”
Cleves considers this. To her chagrin, it makes sense. She remembers the men who came to Elben on Johana’s boat. “He and Cromwell are brewing something, I am sure of it,” she says. “He has summoned foreign religious men to High Hall.”
Parr rubs her forehead. “He is likely doing as we are doing: searching for information. If I were him, I would be looking for ways to separate Medren’s power from us queens entirely.”
“But you are speaking as though Henry knows we are working against him,” Howard says, her voice high.
Aragon rolls her eyes and says something rude in Quistoan.
“He does not know,” Parr says. “At least, I had no indication that he knows. But he would be a fool not to put precautions in place.”
“Indeed. Why do you think he has suddenly commissioned Master Holbein to paint us?” Cleves says. Aragon opens her mouth, ready to answer, but Cleves holds up a hand. Let the girl have a moment to think. Howard frowns, lines appearing on her smooth forehead.
“Because … because he wishes to humiliate you … and in doing so he seeks to ensure we remain divided.”
“Precisely,” Parr says, her voice honey.
“We should not be surprised if he attempts to test our loyalty,” Cleves says.
She shifts in her seat. The cushion is not thick enough; she must tell her steward to arrange for it to be re-stuffed.
Her movement wakes Lelij from his slumber at the bottom of her bed.
He crawls sleepily into her lap, crushing her against the windowpane.
“You are right,” Aragon says. “I should have thought of that myself.”
“Well, you must leave something for the rest of us to do, sister,” Cleves says.
She is suddenly very tired. Seymour’s absence niggles at her, and there is something else – a memory that has been yawning from deep slumber ever since Johana came to Cnothan.
Another time, long ago, when loyalties were tested and blood edged every deed.
The other queens are talking again, of possible tests that Henry might throw at them. It is all immaterial. The tests will come when they come. Why are they guessing when there is so much to be done that does not need to be guessed? Cleves holds up a hand again, and all but Aragon fall silent.
“I am not one of your mongrels to bark on command, Cleves,” Aragon says, eyeing Lelij with disdain.
“Indeed no, Queen Aragon. You are a pedigree if ever I saw one,” Cleves says, smiling sweetly.
Aragon hisses as she leans forward, and if she had free use of her legs Cleves could almost imagine her stamping her way across Elben to whip Cleves herself.
Parr sighs. “Must we exchange such barbs? Sisters, please.”
Cleves catches Howard’s eye, and to her surprise she sees no merriment there.
She had half made the jape to entertain Howard, to make her feel more at home, for she has heard through her old lady-in-waiting how Howard’s household is run on gossip and the trading of petty powers.
But no. Howard’s eyes are bright with tears, her lips pressed together.
Cleves had thought that Howard must be intimidated by them, and the thought had pleased her passingly.
But how can anyone be intimidated by spiteful insults?
How can one hold such queens in esteem? Cleves has played right into Henry’s hands for the sake of an easy joke.
Lelij stirs, nuzzles Cleves to stroke him.
“My apologies,” she says, and after a moment Aragon nods stiffly.
“My own butterflies have been working on our behalf also,” Cleves continues, keen to redeem herself.
“And?” Aragon says.
“And while Cromwell and Wolsey are working hard to conceal the truth of Boleyn and Seymour’s betrayals, word is spreading both in Elben and out. There is scepticism, of course, but people are questioning now. In Brynd most of all. I do not think Mary Boleyn will have a happy reception there.”
Aragon leans back, looking pleased with herself. “And my own spies have been busy also. I revealed the truth to my nephew’s ambassador several moons ago. He will have seen to it that my right as Queen of Elben is known in Quisto.”
“I am shocked, Queen Aragon,” Cleves says.
“Why?”
“You consider it safe to reveal our secrets when you are not certain of the recipient’s loyalty?”
Lelij begins to chew on Cleves’s hair.
“You question that Quisto’s ambassadors are loyal to me over our husband?”
“I question whether a man is loyal to a woman over another man. Has Capetia’s willingness to enter into an alliance not taught us that?”
Aragon raises an eyebrow. “Yes, well your loyalty to women is certainly well known.”
A dozen retorts clamour to be spoken, but Cleves catches Howard’s eye once more and swallows them. “You are more trusting than I, and from a strategist like yourself that surprises me. That is all, sister.”
Aragon softens a little. “In every game there comes a point where the hand must be shown. The trick lies in moving one’s pieces into place in time. I merely see my nephew as one of those pieces.”
Howard coughs. “Besides, is that not what Boleyn died for? To make us trust each other?”
Cleves smiles, swallowing bile. “Trust. Yes. I trust you, sister. I trust that you know what is right.”
But she does not. Trust is such a little word, but to Cleves it heralds death.