Chapter Seventeen Cecilia
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cecilia
The ship is a glorious vessel, a true Perfugian galleon with a hull crafted from dragon bone.
No wooden ships can dock in Perfugi’s harbour: the lava and the mountain’s natural heat would melt the tar and set fire to the wood.
The secret to making the old dragon bone vessels is closely guarded by the people of Perfugi; not all the spies in the known world have been able to gain the knowledge, for to do so would be to open the city to foreign invasion, the only other way of entering it being across a slim strip of land, easily defended.
Cecilia knows something of the paranoia of small kingdoms. She grew up in one, after all.
As Cecilia’s galleon passes the harbour designated for foreign ships – a man-made island a league away from Perfugi itself – she rifles through her letters.
More has sent another missive since his one warning of Seymour’s arrival.
She has not told anyone of her return to Elben.
Oh, to see their faces when she steps foot on those shores with their traitor queen shackled and her murderous beast cowed.
But there is something odd about More’s words this time that she cannot quite fathom.
I do not always agree with them, but the king surrounds himself with men of impressive mind and spirit.
There is a blight, a plague come upon this land, my dear.
I am glad you are not here to witness its spread.
We may yet prevail, however. Cromwell has discovered something in my vast library at Pilvreen that may save us all, and the soul of this dear island of ours.
It will require courage and strength that I do not know if I possess, but for Elben, for your good brother and for our great God, I am willing to make the attempt.
Cecilia frowns. The plague must refer to Seymour and her notions about the goddess Medren, but what can he mean about the test of strength?
There is something portentous about the letter that she does not like.
When she looks up from the parchment, the waves are jostling for room between her ship and a lone sail from the Feorwan Isles, which – even as she watches – overtakes them.
Those mercenaries of knowledge move swiftly upon the oceans.
On the other side of the ship, they pass a trail of smaller bone boats which carry goods between the foreign harbour and the city.
Rich silks and velvets, strange spices and jewels with the light of stars within them.
Cecilia moves around the deck, wanting to keep the city in view for as long as possible before she faces the unknown of a homeland she has not set foot upon in more than a decade.
The tempestuous mountain upon which Perfugi sits is a flower rusting from the earth, petals of fierce orange breaking through the softer reflection of the sunset on the grey rock that crackles between the lava flows.
The city spreads in alabaster tears down its slopes.
Cecilia can spy her own palace nestled near the base in the safer, wealthier district.
She dashes errant dampness from her cheek.
She recognises Florin’s light footsteps, even above the ocean winds. “Her Majesty is weeping,” he says. He stands beside her, his eyes downcast. He has been appropriately attentive since the day he ruined her pleasure-taking.
“Do you think me silly?” she says.
“Never, nes mihohle,” he says. My ruler-of-the-heart. She likes the irony that for a country superficially preoccupied with equality, Perfugi’s language has so many words denoting authority. She likes, too, these moments of softness between them.
“I will miss its deadly beauty,” she says.
“If you were a city,” he says, as she knows he will, as he knows he must.
She pats the balustrade next to her, permitting him to lean on it at her side.
“Your palace was the first thing you owned that was entirely yours, was it not?” he says.
“Do not pretend to know me,” she says. She is no common lady. She has always owned her own wealth.
“I sometimes think I shall die trying to know you,” he says.
She brushes a strand of hair, buffeted by the wind, from her face, and arches her head in a way that she knows shows off her jaw and neck. Florin is watching her worshipfully. She is rather fond of him. She turns her back on Perfugi and pulls him closer, strokes his smooth cheek.
“I am sorry for what happened to Lorena,” she says.
His face tightens, but then he nods. Good.
She will suffer no more theatrics, and he has learned the lesson.
Now that he is more conciliatory, she is beginning to see a way to solve her other problem, for she knows that Seymour is still hiding something from her, and the knowledge itches.
“Besides, it was not I who killed her. I gave the Lady Seymour a choice. It was her and her creature who chose to deliver the final blow.”
Florin looses a great breath, then nods. His fist is clenched. She almost has him. Perhaps just one more little tip. She kisses him full on the mouth, long and slow as he prefers. When they part, she whispers into his ear, “I miss her also. I wish only that her death will not be in vain.”
She walks away. As she goes, she flicks a hand to the nearest servant. “Make sure that our prisoner is fed, do you understand?”
Once out of sight, she trips down the stairs which lead into the ship’s bowels.
She takes one of the servants’ passages, narrow and gloomy, all the way down.
The Lady Seymour is being kept in a windowless cabin in the hold.
Her room abuts a space reserved for the provisions they will need for the voyage.
Cecilia climbs in among the barrels of grain and pushes aside cured meats hanging from the ceiling.
She sits on a sack of flour and finds the whorl in the wall that affords her a limited view of the space within; something she had made sure of before requisitioning the ship.
Seymour sits upright on her pallet bed, dressed in the simple green gown in which she was captured. Her eyes are closed, and her hands are holding onto the hem of her gown. Cecilia frowns. It seems as though the hem is solid beneath her fingers.
Before Cecilia can ponder this, heavy footsteps on the main stairs indicate that someone is coming. They pass by Cecilia’s hiding place. Florin is carrying a tray of bread and cheese. The boy is so very obliging. So very predictable.
He enters the room without ceremony, barely looking at Seymour. She opens her eyes as he places the tray in front of her on the rush-covered floor.
“Who was she to you?” she says.
“What?” Florin is taken aback. He steps away from her, as though suspecting witchcraft.
“You have the same forehead as the woman my panther killed. That, and you look as though you would gladly stick that cheese knife in my eye.”
Florin’s mouth twitches.
“She was my sister.”
“I see.”
“Are you not going to apologise to me?”
“Why should I? Your sister was trying to kidnap me.”
“It was her job.”
“Then she should have worked for someone other than Cecilia Tudor. I am sorry for your grief but I will not apologise for something that was not my fault.”
Florin snorts, turns away from her. Cecilia thinks he might actually take the knife and stick it in her eye, and the thought makes her heart race.
“You sound exactly like her.”
“Your sister?”
“Cecie.” There is a strange timbre to his voice, like a creaking oak about to topple. Cecilia doesn’t know how to read it, nor does she like him shortening her name. It’s entirely inappropriate for royalty. Is that how he and Lorena referred to her when not in her hearing? Like an equal, or a pet?
Seymour begins to laugh. She’s such a strange woman – she gives the impression of being a slip of a thing, a waif, until you realise that she is taller than most men. She should be quailing.
“What do you find so amusing?” Florin says.
“I am thinking of my husband, that is all,” Seymour replies, wiping tears from one cheek. Her other hand, Cecilia notes, still rests on the peculiarly stiff part of her gown’s hem.
“What of him?”
“He has a way of charming brilliant women to fall in love with him despite his many glaring faults. I thought it was a quirk of the divine power he stole, but now I see it is simply a family trait.”
Florin and she look at each other for a moment, he standing over her. He breaks the silence. “Are you calling me a brilliant woman, lady?”
“There are worse things to be called, sir,” she says.
“I know that. I was raised by one. The one you killed.”
Cecilia shifts in her seat, pressing her eye closer to the whorl.
This isn’t how she expected their confrontation to play out.
Her calculations had led her to believe that either it would become heated and violent, or that Seymour’s ridiculous morality would lead her to share information with Florin through guilt.
This is unanticipated, but not unwelcome.
Has she not always known that hate and love are the two most persuasive emotions?
And here she has accidentally stumbled upon both. A fascinating concoction.
Florin sits next to Seymour on the pallet and grimaces. “Gods, this is uncomfortable.”
“I have slept on worse.”
“It is driving Cecie mad that she knows so little about you and where you have been.”
Cecilia curses Florin silently. He does not know it, did not even mean it as a question, but it is enough to put Seymour on her guard.
She draws away from him. Too direct, imbecile.
Florin has not noticed, though, for he continues blithely, “This story of magic and gods and palaces. I don’t know what to think. ”
“What religion do you follow?” Seymour asks.
“I follow my mistress,” he says. “She is my god and goddess, my emperor and empress, my king, my home, my heartbeat and breath.”
Cecilia draws away from the whorl, winded. It is good, this adoration he shows her. So why does she squirm on her seat? Just because she does not return his feelings does not mean she deprives him.
“It is excruciating to love so fully, is it not?” Seymour says.
“You have a goddess too?”
“I used to.”
“Would you have died for her?”
Seymour closes her eyes, then breathes out. “I did, and have done, much else for her. But no, I will never die for her. If I die, it will be for me.”
“Then we are not the same.”
Cecilia looks through the whorl again. The wall between her and them is not only physical now.
She wants to pry these two open, to extract the meaning of this impossibly oblique conversation.
They seem to be talking of love, which she understands in a theoretical way, but the weight of their words, the way they do not look at each other and yet sit the same way, suggests there is more to their meaning that she cannot decipher.
“I will never again worship a deity that demands my body and soul,” Seymour says. “I do not think any god has that right.”
“If you knew Cecie—”
“I know her kind. Grasping for a power that does not belong to them because they lack substance within themselves. How old are you?” Seymour says. Cecilia rolls her eyes and Florin bristles.
“Why ask such a question?”
“You put me in mind of someone I met once or twice; that is all.”
“Do they desire your death also?” Florin says. Is he flirting? Cecilia will have his tongue.
“Is she going to kill me on this ship, or let her brother have that pleasure?” Seymour says.
“She wants one of Elben’s castles, that is all. And she will use you to get it in whatever way she deems fit. Don’t we all desire our very own sanctuary?”
Seymour regards him coolly. “I repeat, sir: is she going to kill me on this voyage?”
Florin takes a deep breath. “Cecie has a reputation. She likes having that reputation. And death does not disturb her the way it may a normal person. But she does not kill unless it serves a purpose.”
“So her brother will do it, then,” Seymour says. She leans back against the wall of the cell, closes her eyes and smiles.
“You may leave now,” she tells Florin.
He stands, looking down at her. “You are strange, lady, to smile at the thought of your own death.”
“Yes, I am very strange. Goodbye, my lord.”
Cecilia shifts her angle to study Seymour.
She remains like that, still and smiling, long after Florin has gone, long after the rats emerge from the shadows to sup on the bread and cheese he brought her.
Something about Seymour’s questions niggles at Cecilia.
She had no regard for what might happen to her once they reach Elben.
All her concern was for the voyage. Why?
It hits her then. Seymour is not concerned about their arrival, because she knows that someone – either on the ship or beyond – knows where she is and intends to help her escape. Cecilia sits back on the sack. What an excellent, excellent game.