Chapter Sixteen Howard
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Howard
She emerges from Henry’s chamber like a peacock.
Her gown is the colour of the bordweal, her headdress a fan of diamonds, perched atop her curls.
Goldfoot balances on her shoulder, his claws digging into the stretch of muscle there.
The bird inside her is quiet now. Quiet; not slumbering or cowed as it usually is in such moments, but watchful.
This certainty is a rare and passing gift, and she grasps it tightly.
Her ladies are gathered already. She comes upon them in her receiving chamber, kneeling as if at prayer around the expanse of silk she chose for Mary Boleyn’s wedding gift.
She pauses in the doorway, watching them.
Ursula, quietly stealing pearls from Lady Tylney’s pile, waiting for her to notice the prank.
Her half-sister Legh, the girl she grew up alongside; both chain and anchor.
Lady Tylney, older than the rest of them, yet somehow more fragile than all.
And Susanna Horenbolt, the watchful artist, richer in mind and poorer in upbringing.
The distance between her and them feels almost insurmountable, just as it does between her and the other queens. Do they feel it too, with each other? They do nothing but talk all day, and yet Howard realises, in this moment, that she hardly knows them at all.
Goldfoot takes flight. He arches across the room and lands with a mewl beside Susanna.
Without looking up from her embroidery, she scoops him into her lap and continues her work.
They are an idyll of domesticity. Goldfoot peers at Howard from between Susanna’s arms. He has answered the question Howard had been asking herself.
“Susanna, I must talk with you,” she says. The women look up in unison.
“Me, Your Majesty?”
“Come.”
The silence becomes a living thing as Susanna tidies away her thimble and needle, her thread and her little silver scissors.
The other women go back to their work, studiously not looking at each other.
There will be whispers as soon as Howard and Susanna are out of earshot.
If a king’s whisper is a threat, a queen’s favourite is a hleope, a piece in a game of oferhlep, to be jumped over or, better yet, eliminated.
Goldfoot, twisting in sunstruck dust, leads Howard and Susanna across the gallery and into a courtyard nestled in a horseshoe of rooms at the centre of the palace.
In its middle is an unassuming fountain: a woman in a gown of ancient fashion, standing in the midst of the four famed sounds of Plythe – a whale, a litharbird with its coral feathers and honey song, a selkie and a pyttelwyrm.
From each of them spouts a perfect arc of saltwater, pumped up from the river below.
If she had not been brought to that very spot on her wedding day, she would not have known that this is, in truth, the heart of Plythe, for the woman’s cupped hands are crafted from the spirit stone of the palace.
Four years later and she still finds extraordinary peace from remembering that communion of flesh and rock.
Howard bypasses the fountain and goes to a slender stone balcony, its struts decorated with birds and fish. She leans upon it, inhaling the spray from the Kyttle Falls below. Susanna stands, hands folded upon her kirtle, at a distance.
“I need your help,” Howard says, quietly so that Susanna is forced to come closer.
“Mine?”
Howard takes one of Susanna’s hands in her own.
She draws the lady closer, and despite the rage of the falls whispers in her ear, “At midday I am going to be in the music room. I need you to ensure that no one knows that I am there, and that no one disturbs me. Not even the king himself. Do you understand?”
She hardly dares to look at Susanna’s expression. Her certainty ebbed away with her words, for it’s only now that she truly comprehends what she is asking of her lady.
Susanna’s silence is a mirror to Howard’s unease.
“May I know why?” Susanna says at last.
Howard is prepared for this question. She does not like to lie – for part of her wants to tell her ladies everything, to trust in their loyalty, and maybe one day she will be at liberty to do so – but nor can she risk the safety of Seymour and the other queens by telling the truth.
And while Susanna is the least likely to share a secret, Howard knows only too well the way such morsels of information can be bartered for popularity.
“I wish to study uninterrupted.”
Susanna’s mouth forms a silent “O”. “And you do not want me to tell anyone?” she says.
“If you must, then you must. But I … I do not want everyone to pity me, or to think me ridiculous for attempting to teach myself. They all thought me stupid for employing Voda Kelaverrin. They think me beyond hope and I don’t want them to laugh if they are proved right.”
Goldfoot croons into her ear. She cannot look Susanna in the eye. It is both wrong and a relief, this peeling open of a truth to cover deceit. Susanna’s hand jerks, as though she wants to comfort Howard. Howard cannot remember the last time she was held by another woman.
“I will do my best for you, Your Majesty,” Susanna says.
“You can pick any of my gowns,” Howard says. It is the smallest of thanks for what Susanna is doing, though she does not know it.
Susanna colours and looks away. “I serve you without expectation of gifts.”
There is an unspoken end to her words. Howard is certain that she wants to say more.
“Is there something else you would wish for?”
The blush deepens. Below them, a shout goes up from a boat that has missed its mooring.
“I only wonder … might you stop the other ladies from teasing me?” Susanna says. “I know that I am awkward compared to all of you. I know that my love of painting is not womanly, but I …”
She trails off, her eyes flickering between Howard and the stones upon which they stand.
The little bird inside Howard’s chest flutters.
Susanna seeks a protector, but that has never been Howard’s role.
How could it be? No one looks at Howard and sees a guardian.
They see only the thornless rose, the frightened songbird.
She is so small: how could she possibly protect Susanna?
Howard envisions scolding her half-sister Legh, or her elder, Lady Tylney. She cannot imagine either of them accepting a rebuke from their young queen.
But she needs Susanna’s help. She is out of time.
“I will try,” Howard says, hoping that she does not sound too faltering. She expects a smile, words of gratitude. She does not expect Susanna to burst into tears.
“Hush, Susanna,” Howard says, appalled.
“I am sorry,” Susanna sobs.
Goldfoot croons from Howard’s shoulder. He wants her to comfort the woman, but Howard is utterly unequipped for this display of weakness.
When she was a child and sharing a chamber with her aunt’s other wards, to cry was to invite cruelty.
She is about to say as much, when Susanna presses the heels of her hands into her eyes and says, “I have just been so very lonely.”
The bird in Howard’s chest emits a single cry, and is still.
Has she not thought the same after every encounter with the other queens? Has she not felt lonely, in a way, her entire life?
Maybe solitude in the midst of company is not simply the way of things, as she had thought.
She embraces Susanna, holding the other woman’s head to her shoulder. If the position is awkward for Susanna, who is after all taller than Howard by nearly a head, then she shows no sign of it. She clings to her queen, her hands clawing at her back.
“You are not alone,” Howard whispers. The waterfall below them might know whether she speaks to herself or her lady: she does not.
In her music room, she lays cushions at the foot of the door and stuffs scraps of fabric inside the keyhole. Susanna may be keeping watch outside, but Howard cannot risk her overhearing talking through the sunscína.
The sun is directly opposite this room at midday, so that when the harpsichord is open, the curved glass of the sunscína reflects the light onto the walls and ceiling, turning the mahogany to rainbow.
On the other side of the window, she can hear the sleep-inducing trickle of water from the fountain in the courtyard.
When she presses the sunscína, Cleves, Parr and Aragon are already there, and in the middle of a heated discussion.
“How can we be certain she has not betrayed us?” Aragon is saying. “She has done so before to secure her future.”
“And you have never betrayed anyone yourself?” Cleves replies. Usually she clouds her insults in jest and smiles, but not this time. Her hair, usually a little wild, is now positively unkempt. Howard tries to interrupt, to ask what has happened. Only Parr notices.
“Queen Seymour has been taken,” she says, and even she is louder than usual – normally Howard has to lean in to hear her. Parr tells Howard what Cleves has already told them, while the other two queens glare at each other.
“We must rescue her,” Howard says, as soon as Parr has finished.
“I have an idea—” Cleves begins, but Aragon interrupts her.
“It seems to me that we must first ascertain how much Henry knows,” she says. She turns her gaze to Howard. “He has been staying with you for some time, has he not? Is this because he is waiting for his sister’s arrival, or for another reason?”
Howard bites her lip. “Cromwell and Wolsey are here as well. He is with them now, but I did not hear them talk of the Dowager Queen Cecilia.”
“When did he arrive?” Cleves asks.
“A fortnight ago, shortly after we last spoke,” Howard says.
“There has been enough time for her to send a message to Henry telling him of her conquest,” Parr says.
Howard says, “I did wonder why he has stayed so long at Plythe. He has never done so before. It would be like him to not confide in me on such matters.”
An awkward silence falls upon the group. Eventually Parr says, “Since the Moon Ball, he has only stayed with two women for any length of time. You and Mary Boleyn.”