Chapter Fifteen Howard
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Howard
She wakes in Henry’s arms. Usually he would be up far earlier than her, leaving her in a mess of sheets to confer with Cromwell or Wolsey, to make plans for foreign expeditions and foreign treaties and political manoeuvres beyond her ken.
But this morning her head is still upon his chest. She feels small like this, like a cradled child.
But he likes to hold her, and she still wants to please him.
She thinks about Voda Kelaverinn’s suggestion: Tell him what you enjoy.
It is all very easy to say, but to do? She enjoys what her lovers enjoy. Giving them pleasure gives her pleasure. What is wrong with that? Does that not make her the perfect woman?
She shifts in Henry’s arms, and the pain that has throbbed gently in her chest ever since his duel with the dragon glances through her like a needle.
She has tried not to think on it in the days since the dragon-baiting, for what does dwelling help?
She knows what it must mean, of course: he is using her vitality, her youth, her life for his own glory.
She knows what Boleyn and Seymour would say to this.
Perhaps even Cleves, although she does not know the woman well: how dare he use her so?
They are right. And yet – is this not the pledge she made when she married him?
There is a pleasing simplicity in the transaction.
If she’s honest with herself, the facet of that moment that truly hurts is that he would use her up for sport when he used Boleyn and Aragon and Blount for war.
Is her life only worthy of petty conquests?
Goldfoot keens from the adjacent chamber. He never likes to be separated from her but knows well enough now that when the king is at Plythe, he is not permitted to sleep in the same room.
“Your hellfire lapdragon,” Henry mumbles, his eyes still closed.
“Mmm,” Howard says, nestling deeper into the crook of her husband’s arm. Goldfoot keens again, louder this time.
“I’ll throttle it,” Henry says, turning away from her and drawing the blanket up over his head.
She is left, half-naked, half-chilled, on her side of the bed.
I’ll throttle it. Words said by a dozing king are more dangerous than threats shouted by a beggar.
She slips from the bed as quietly as she can, sliding her feet into silk slippers.
She does not mind the freshness of the morning on her naked body, but she never could abide cold feet.
Her chamber and Henry’s are separated by a door concealed within the panelling.
It used to creak, which would inevitably lead to Henry calling her back to bed, but she has had it oiled recently.
Perhaps it is a small rebellion, but perhaps she is only ever meant for small things: petty conquests, little treasons, sweet ditties sung to a handful of people.
Goldfoot is perched upon the windowsill, snarling at something on the other side of the glass. Sparks hit the lead lattice.
“You must be silent,” Howard whispers, closing the partition behind her and holding out her arm for the lapdragon. Goldfoot spreads his wings to their full, not very impressive, width and bares his teeth at the window.
“Are you fighting with your reflection again …?” Howard says.
Her eyes catch upon the even smaller dragon on the other side of the window …
and on the paper secured to its leg. She shoos Goldfoot away and lifts the window latch, offering her wrist to the pyttelwyrm.
It utters a shrill cry of fear at the prospect of being brought within Goldfoot’s range.
Such dragons, crossbred long ago with fairies through dark magic, are too flighty to be kept as companions, but they have a fierce sense of direction.
She has sometimes wondered whether Goldfoot has a little pyttelwyrm blood in him: his iridescent colouring has something of the fairy about it.
“Hush,” she says again, undoing the message as quickly as she can with one hand. As soon as she has it, the pyttelwyrm takes off once more, fleeing the lapdragon. Goldfoot preens his scales, satisfied with his victory.
Howard unfurls the parchment. On it is drawn a complicated cipher.
She hates that this was deemed the most effective way of communicating between queens.
She struggles with letters when they are separated, never mind when they are intertwined.
This one is not so bad: a sun and a moon.
No, not a moon: a C. The sun is easy enough to understand: the rays are fully coloured, indicating the sun at its zenith – midday.
The C must be: “Cleves,” she whispers. Cleves has urgent business with them.
Has something happened to her? Or has she had news of Seymour?
Howard must find a way of ensuring privacy from Henry and his household. She has never spoken to the other queens with the king at Plythe. The thought makes her underarms prickle with sweat.
“Howard?” Henry calls from the other room.
“One moment, my king!” Howard says, staring at the paper.
How is she going to protect herself? Voda Kelaverinn was the only person in her court who knew of her treachery.
He was a safe secret-keeper, his loyalties tied only to her and Boleyn.
The others at Plythe? Their ties to Elben run deep.
Their fortunes, their families, are owed to the king.
Who among them can she ask for help without risking all?
“Howard,” Henry calls again, deeper and sharper.
She goes to the little wooden chest that holds the cloths for her monthly courses, prising up the false bottom beneath the fabric.
A handful of letters are stowed there – most of them love letters from her childhood, some rare missives from her father.
She adds the cipher and replaces the false wood bottom and the cloths, and slips back into Henry’s chamber.
The king is sitting up in bed.
“What were you doing?” he says. His injured leg is bent awkwardly. She must be careful.
“Goldfoot was chasing a bee,” she says. “I had to let the poor thing out of the window before he caught it.”
Henry’s eyes crinkle with mirth. “Of course you would wish to save a bee, my dear. You are very soft-hearted. Especially with that badly behaved pet of yours.”
Howard does not bother to correct him. When he gave Goldfoot to her as a wedding gift, she tried to show him how much trouble she went to to train the creature, but he did and does prefer to joke about Goldfoot’s stupidity.
She climbs back into bed and starts to rest her head upon his shoulder, but he manoeuvres her so that she is straddling him.
“Again, Henry?” she says, laughing.
“How can you expect me to keep my hands off of you when you look so delicious?” he says, grinding against her.
She laughs again, even as her stomach flutters with panic.
She has not been able to conjure the desire, and she is worried that it is starting to show.
That his feelings will be hurt. She does not want to make him feel lesser.
She leans down and kisses him, gently, to indicate that she wants to make love slowly. “This is the longest you’ve ever stayed with me, my king,” she says, her lashes fluttering against his cheeks. “Thank you.”
He twists to look at her. “Is it truly?”
“I think so.”
He strokes her cheek with one hand. The other fondles her breast. “I have not loved you as I should have, Howard. My sweetest of queens. My rose without a thorn.”
He kisses her again. A rose without a thorn, she thinks, as she surrenders to him. That is a sweet thing to say. He can be so very kind to her. But then another thought flits through her head: does that not make her incomplete?
Henry does not tire of her until the rest of the court has broken their fast and the golden bells of the palace tower have chimed the tenth hour.
He dresses languorously, pausing before he must pull his hose over the bandage on his thigh.
Howard is almost out of her mind. She keeps very still in the bed, lest Henry notice how every part of her is desperate to leap from the room.
She has two hours. Two hours to fool a friend or confide in them, and she still cannot decide which is safer.
Henry curses under his breath as the hose snags on the bandage.
Briefly, the fabric rides up. Howard bites her lip to keep from crying out.
The flesh beneath the bandage is grey and seething, a dark reflection of the Kyttle Falls far below.
Is it the play of light in this room that makes the wound appear like a tangle of shadowy maggots?
Or is Henry’s stolen power at war with Boleyn’s prophecy?
Henry glances at her, and she quickly closes her eyes. He would not want her to have seen that.
“Do not pretend with me, Howard,” he says. “I have had enough of that with my wives.”
The little bird in her chest flutters, trying to escape, as she sits up.
She is his rose without a thorn. She must be so very soft and smooth.
She thinks of her father and her aunt towards the end, when they were in one of their moods.
She had to thread honesty through compliments then too, or face their wrath.
“You have not wanted me to ask about it before, my king. I did not know whether you would want me to now,” she says. She focuses on the beading of her blanket, pressing copper and amethyst balls into the pads of her thumbs.
“She was a witch,” Henry says.
Howard is about to reference Boleyn when she remembers that she is not supposed to know that Boleyn caused the wound.
Howard was never there, on that cliff beside the folly at Brynd.
As far as Henry knows, no one witnessed Boleyn’s bow-work, and the path of her arrow, except Henry and Boleyn herself.
No one has publicly acknowledged the injury. Howard almost incriminated herself.
“Who?”
She has never noticed before how small his eyes are. Were they always so, or is this some change in his physique? Or is it that he has never watched her with such suspicion? She is a rose. She opens the petals of her face towards him, as though he is the sun.
“Boleyn, who else?” he spits.
She flutters a hand to her face. “Truly? She did this? So the rumours were true?”
“They usually are.”
The bird inside her squeals to be released.
She has heard the rumours surrounding her.
That she is a whore, loose, a slut, a penny tart, mouth open, legs wide, an easy cunt.
She may have no thorns of her own, but she wears those names, pricked under her skin.
Mostly she is numb to them, but they will nick her from time to time.
In this moment, though, they sear. They usually are. It is another test.
She crawls towards him. There is a draught coming from one of the windows, and goosebumps rise on her arms. She wills them warm: Henry must not suspect that they mean fear.
“What are you doing?” he says.
She kneels beside his leg. Delicately, she takes the hose from his hands and pulls it back down.
“Howard—”
The bandage is covering the injury now, and she truly does not want to look at it again. A thick odour of sour milk and iron emanates from beneath the fabric. But she cannot hold her breath, or he will see. Before she doubts herself, she unties the knots and lets the bandage fall away.
It is worse than she could have imagined. There is no blood, no muscle or bone, only a roiling twist of divine power, as if Henry had consumed the bordweal and robbed it of its bruising colour, turning it so purple it is almost ebony.
“It hurts you, my king,” she says, trying to breathe through her mouth.
“It’s blasted agony.”
She frames the opening in her hands, dips her head and licks it. It coats her tongue in bitter rot.
“Howard,” Henry says again, half wonder, half repulsion.
She stays there, nose and tongue inside him, for as long as she can bear.
It is not so different from when men have held her head over their cocks and pushed them down her throat.
At least this time she is the one doing the penetrating.
She almost smiles: this is savagery. This is a kind of veiled vengeance.
When she can be sure she will not retch, she pulls back and looks up at her husband. The taste of him is still in her mouth, and she wonders whether her face is coated in the deep purple of his flesh as well.
For a while, it feels as though the two of them are frozen like that. The supplicant and the divine, neither knowing which is which.
“It is your god,” Henry says. She hears the true question. It is always the same question. Her father asked it too, with different words. Do you forgive me? Do you still love me? Does the cruelty of my body not repulse you?
“Yes,” she says. Prickle. Prickle.