Chapter Twenty-Three Howard
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Howard
She says, “Do not go, my love,” even as she thinks, “Go, and do not return.”
Henry kisses her, but his mind is elsewhere. “I wish I could stay with you for an eternity,” he says, but she can see that he is thinking, “I have given you more than a sennight; why must you cling?”
She knows why he leaves hastily, of course. It is because of what she did to the bordweal. And now that she has done it, she can never be the same.
She is used to subjugating her body. It is what a body is for, after all, is it not?
To be pressured and pushed and thrown and bruised and used.
It is this that made her struggle to understand exactly why Seymour and Boleyn were so outraged by Henry’s actions.
Why she barely felt any surprise when Seymour told her that their husband was draining them.
That is the nature of humanity: to use each other, body and soul, until one or the other is worn out.
She saw it with her aunt, with her father. Why should she be any different?
And yet …
When the divine power flowed through her yesterday, she felt, for the briefest of moments, what it might be like to have true power. Not the borrowed fineries of her queendom, but real, unassailable control.
It frightens her. She wants it again. She does not know what she would do with it.
In the immediate aftermath of her joining with Plythe’s spirit stone, she felt weak, and might have fainted right away if Ursula had not caught her and plied her with sweetbreads and bitter wine.
But once the weakness had passed, she could not sit still.
She had not needed to, for Master Culpepper came to her not an hour later to inform her that Henry would be leaving within a matter of days.
She did that. She and the other queens. She can still barely believe it.
The king and his closest advisors had been – and are still – like ants without a nest. Their movements are sharper, quicker. Even Henry, who normally has the languor of a man who knows his superiority. But ants without a nest are more prone to biting. She must remember that.
Henry leaps onto his horse’s back, athletic still despite the festering leg wound. He holds out his hand, and she kisses it automatically. His mind is on other matters, and so is hers.
The king’s train takes hours to trail out of her gatehouse – it is only seeing them in a long line that she realises just how many people follow Henry everywhere.
Courtiers and guards and advisors and cooks and comfit-makers and grooms and masters of hound and masters of dragon and masters of falconry and stewards and physicians and cleaners and the boys who clear his shit.
It is supposed to be a mark of status, but if one needs so many people, then does one have true power, or only the trapperies of it?
She stands there until the king’s brilliant white horse can no longer be seen. As she is about to return to the palace, she senses someone approaching.
“His Majesty is concerned about the bordweal.” It is Culpepper’s voice.
“You are not leaving with the king?” she says. She does not dare look at him. She can feel the warmth from his body on her bare shoulder.
“I thought I could be of more use at Plythe, and His Majesty agreed,” he says.
She riddles this. He must be spying for Henry, then, must he not? Yet there is a softness to his voice that does not speak to suspicion.
“Well, I will have my steward find you work, Master Culpepper,” she says.
“Anything, my queen.”
He is taller than her by some way, with a broad chest and shoulders.
Her first thought is that there is something insolent about the way he is standing so close, but that is uncharitable.
Her second thought is that he looks as Henry might have once looked, were Henry still twenty or so.
An undeniably handsome man, with the wiry vitality of someone who hunts and fights and hawks but does not labour.
“I must go in,” she says, darting past him, her eyes on the ground.
She runs into the palace, all the way to the other end of the long gallery to her private rooms. Goldfoot caws from his perch as she slips past him and into her innermost bedchamber.
The servants have been here already, cleansing the space of Henry’s presence (she had never thought of it that way before, but that’s what it is).
The remnant of incense hangs in the room – floral sandalwood and comforting sage.
The tangled sheets have been replaced with fresh linen and the quilt that is her only heirloom from her much-mourned mother.
She goes to the mirror.
She is feverish.
She unpins her sleeves and frontlet, and pulls the crown from her curls. The strings that secure her gown are trickier to handle by herself, but eventually she manages to loosen them and wriggle from the bodice, before pulling the shift over her head.
There she stands, naked, umber skin turned to deep bronze in the sunlight.
She has always known she was beautiful because so many have told her.
It has been whispered, moaned, groaned. Sometimes the word has even been used as a weapon.
She runs a hand along her collarbone and tries to see what they all see.
And she does: she is a trinket of beauty, to be used like a fine instrument or fragile clock.
And like an instrument or a clock, she understands her purpose: to delight.
Howard sinks to the floor, sitting upon her discarded finery. She opens her legs, so that she can see her quim.
Tell him what you enjoy. That’s what Voda Kelaverinn had said before he left. Does a lute feel joy? Does a spoon when it is put in a mouth?
She closes her eyes, thinks of Culpepper and lets her hands roam.
She finds a spot along the rim of her ear that makes her sigh; a way of pinching her nipples – more gently than she’s used to – that feels exquisite.
She touches parts of her body that have only ever been the realm of her lovers, and discovers bliss.
Afterwards, she stares at the ceiling, laughing and raging. Six years of pleasuring men, and not once has she been pleasured in the way she now knows is possible. It calls for revenge, does it not?
The silk chosen for Mary Boleyn’s wedding gift is nearly ready.
Howard’s ladies have been working it for weeks, using the most fragile of threads – the silvery webs of the eadwela spider, which is said to grant happiness.
They hunch over the fabric in her receiving chamber, but their conversation is very different from what it was a few days ago.
“I can hardly credit that the king does not suspect us,” Legh says.
“He may have his suspicions, but if we acted our parts right then he will have no cause to accuse us,” Lady Tylney says.
At the other end of the fabric – at the other end of the chamber – Susanna sighs, picks up her little scissors and starts to unpick some of her work. Howard watches the other women as they take note.
“Have you been clumsy again, Susanna?” Legh says.
Susanna ducks her head as the other women laugh.
“She wishes to do good work. I see nothing shameful about that,” Howard says, sweeping into the room. Her women look up, startled.
“Your Majesty, we did not see you,” Ursula says. There is something reverently hungry about the way she watches Howard now, ever since she witnessed her wielding the bordweal. Privately, Howard is not sure why: after all, it was Ursula’s fortitude that allowed Howard to find the right way.
“I did not mean anything cruel,” Legh says.
Howard settles on the floor, halfway between her half-sister and Susanna. “Everyone is cruel from time to time. But perhaps we can save our cruelty for those who deserve it.”
Her ladies stare at her. She is shocked at herself, truth be told.
She does not know where those words came from: they are like something Queen Cleves or Queen Parr might say.
She is not sure they were wise words, though – not to utter at this time, when Legh knows of her betrayal of Henry.
Legh has never taken kindly to correction.
It is as if Mary Boleyn herself is in the chamber with them, not just her wedding gift.
“I enjoy your wit, Legh,” Susanna says. “Only – not when it is directed at me.”
“Who should I direct it at then?”
“How about that new lord the king left behind him?” Ursula says.
Howard tries not to react. “Who? Culpepper?”
Legh smirks. “I would rather direct something else entirely at him.”
The women laugh, and it is as if nothing has changed between them.
They accepted the truth of Medren and the bordweal with far more grace and ease than Howard had expected.
It unsettles her, until she remembers that she, too, understood it as true so very quickly when Seymour explained it.
As if it had merely been veiled beneath taffeta all this time, and they had been willingly playacting.
Howard feels raw and fresh and daring, though, and she does not want them to forget that they are all part of a rebellion now.
“I think Culpepper may be loyal to me actually,” she says.
Ursula leans closer. “Do you mean …?”
Howard tells them of the part she played in Boleyn’s escape from the Tower, and her suspicion that Culpepper knows exactly what she did. “Surely I would be in the Tower myself by now if he was not for our cause?” Howard says.
Lady Tylney breaks the silence. “Do you plan to admit him into your confidence?”
Howard picks up the edge of the swathe of fabric. “Not yet. But I would be grateful if you would all advise me on the matter.”
They resume their needlework, and presently servants come to light the candles around the edge of the chamber.
Susanna’s cheeks are flushed. Legh is unusually silent.
And Ursula and Lady Tylney keep darting looks at her.
All of them know that something has changed, beyond the storm of Howard’s revelation.
It is a change that has taken root in the copse of their company, and only time and tender care will dictate whether all saplings will thrive.
Howard was designed to be a sapling. To be buffeted, staked, pruned and fruited.
Can a tree tug itself free from its loamy chains and walk? Can tree turn to gardener?
“I have another idea for the new queen’s gift,” she announces.
Ursula looks up. “Does this mean I can stop sewing? This thread is giving me a terrible headache.”
Howard fingers the silk.
“There will be more sewing,” she says to general groans. “But the spider’s thread can be set aside for now. And I will sew with you all.”
“Are we going to get in terrible trouble?” Legh says, caught between alarm and intrigue.
“Why would we? I am but a silly little queen with not a bad thought in my silly little head,” Howard says.
Ursula Askew laughs, full-throated. She crawls across the silk and lays her head upon Howard’s lap. “Let us all be very silly, Your Majesty. Let us wreak havoc with our silliness.”