Chapter Twenty-Four Cecilia
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Cecilia
She has slept in dungeons before, but never against her will.
Her kingly Capetian husband had a penchant for sadism, honed over the many decades of his life, and he taught her all he knew in their brief months together.
Oh, the fun they had in the depths of the decadent palace of Aviora.
This is entirely different. The cell in the hold of the Feorwan ship smells of rotting fish, and although the crew bring her meals, she has to eat them perched on a hard pallet which affords her only a few hours of sleep.
She only knows it is night from the timing of the meals, for she sees no sun.
She is running out of escape schemes. She tries attacking the Feorwans when they open the cell door. She tries pleading with them. She tries bribing them and, even though they are at sea, she tries screaming in the hope that a passing ship will hear her. All that gets her is gagged.
She may well lose her mind down here, with no company to entertain her, and no embroidery to keep her mind from unravelling.
“If you keep me here for ever,” she tells her captors when they next come with her meal, “then I will be so empty I will be worthless.”
She grips their sleeve as she says it, feeling the coarse fabric beneath her fingertips. She rubs a thumb over the thread, and a dozen ways to improve it spring to her mind. Perhaps the way she clings to that sleeve makes her captor understand her sincerity.
“There are plans afoot to take you somewhere where you can see the sunlight,” they say, then lock the door behind them, plunging her back into darkness.
“There is nothing I am afraid of,” she tells the night, pressing herself against the wall. “There is nothing that can overwhelm me.”
Yet despite her fortitude, she rushes to the door when she hears the key in the lock. It is Seymour’s friend, the one who knocked her out with an oar the day the bordweal rose against her. They are holding iron manacles.
“Come,” they say, and she allows her wrists to be chained, struggling only a little so they do not think she’s been cowed. She is Cecilia Tudor. She does not break.
They blindfold her before leading her up to the deck. Cecilia tries not to gulp fresh air. Even through her blindfold she can tell it is night-time. There is a moment where she thinks they are going to throw her overboard, and she cries out.
“Don’t be stupid,” they say, before steering her into a smaller boat that abuts the ship.
“Where are you taking me?” Cecilia says, permitting herself to be guided onto a hard seat.
No one responds, but she can tell from the splash of oars and the motion of the boat that she is being rowed to shore.
She makes an attempt at calculating where in Elben they must be – could they have got as far as Seymour’s territory of Hyde while Cecilia was in the ship’s hold?
– but soon gives it up as hopeless. Geographical calculations were never her strength.
Her backside is aching with a pain that shoots up her spine and into her neck by the time the boat reaches shore, and she is manhandled up a pebbled beach. She hits her legs against the step of a carriage.
“My apologies,” the Feorwan says, not sounding very apologetic. “Let me help you in.”
“Tell me where I am going first.” If she were them, that carriage’s destination would be over the edge of a steep cliff. They are fools to allow Cecilia to live, but the soft are often foolish. That was Lorena’s weakness, and Florin’s.
“Get in and I will remove your blindfold,” Seymour says from inside the carriage. The temptation of being able to use her eyes once more is too great. Once Cecilia is settled upon a cushioned seat, and the curtains have been drawn across the windows, Seymour pulls her blindfold down.
Cecilia can see little in the shadows of the carriage: only a single lamp is secured to the wall.
There is no crest upon the carriage’s innards.
She eyes the woman who was once her prisoner and who is now her captor.
There is a deeper shadow upon the carriage’s floor, at Seymour’s feet. The panther, asleep.
“What are you going to do with me?” Cecilia says.
“Whatever I do, it will not involve needles,” Seymour replies. “You and I are going to lodge together while I work out how to make use of you.”
The carriage rocks as someone climbs into the driver’s seat and they begin to move.
“Is there nothing your simpering servant cannot do? I hope at least you fuck them in payment since you have no wealth of your own,” she says, loudly enough that she hopes the Feorwan can hear.
“You truly are vile,” Seymour says. From the tiny amount of moonlight seeping through the curtain, Cecilia thinks she has closed her eyes.
“At least I am not dull,” she says. She leans over and pinches the top of Seymour’s hand. Seymour cries out.
“Are you all right, Your Majesty?” the servant calls.
“I am fine,” Seymour replies, glaring at Cecilia. Satisfied, Cecilia leans her own head back against the cushioned seat.
“Don’t ever treat me as though I’m safe again,” she says.
She can feel Seymour’s eyes on her for the rest of the journey.
She tries to gauge which direction they’re going.
She thinks they are on the south side of the island, perhaps not too far from Cnothan.
The road is jarring, and soon the ache in her lower back cannot be relieved even by moving.
When she shifts again, Seymour says, “You are not used to the slightest discomfort, are you?”
“Why should I feel ashamed of that? I dare say neither were you before you ran away from my brother.”
That shuts her up. Cecilia decides to have some fun.
“Why did you run away from Henry? If you’d been clever enough, you could have kept your dull little palace and worked against him without him realising.”
“I would not expect you to understand.”
Cecilia laughs, then kicks her shoes off and curls her feet underneath herself. “It is as I thought. You were too stupid to be able to enact a clever plan.”
“If you wish to think so,” Seymour says. Cecilia leans forward, meaning to pinch her again. Quick as her panther, Seymour slaps Cecilia’s hands away and almost topples her from her seat. She manages to catch herself, although it causes the manacles to cut into her wrists unpleasantly.
She laughs. “You are fascinating, Lady Seymour. How can a woman be such a pin poppet one moment and such a needle the next?”
Cecilia has never truly been attracted to women, although she’s dallied with a few just to see what it felt like, and she’s tempted to try with Seymour. It would certainly pass the time while she works out how to escape.
“I bet my brother had a lot of fun with you,” she says.
Seymour stiffens. Ah – so there is a chink in her armour.
“Maybe when he finds you, I can convince him to share you with me before he puts you down.”
Cecilia is buoyant once more, trembling with the thrill of the insult.
She has forgotten that the two of them are not alone.
The panther rises like a moving shadow from the floor. It climbs up onto the seat next to her, and then, slowly, climbs into Cecilia’s lap, pinning her hands beneath its bulk.
“My apologies,” she says, as the panther places its front paws on her chest.
“My apologies, what?” Seymour says.
The panther brings its great face close to Cecilia, golden eyes gleaming with the light of barely contained bloodlust. It licks its lips with a flick of pink tongue.
“My apologies, Lady Seymour.”
“No.”
The panther bares his teeth. She feels his growl through her gown, a vibration against her skin. She remembers the way he pulled Lorena’s oesophagus from her throat.
“My apologies, Queen Seymour.”
There is a moment when she thinks it has not been enough. Then the carriage jolts to a stop, and with one swift motion Seymour pulls the curtain back, opens the door and steps down. The panther licks its lips once more, then leaps down after her.
Cecilia waits a moment, forcing her breathing to slow. Then she pushes herself up and peers out of the vehicle.
They are in a clearing in the middle of a manicured wood. Before her stands a house of wooden beams and white plaster that looks like a skeleton in the moonlight.
“Are you going to tell me where we are now?” she asks the Feorwan as they help her down.
“Why would I do that?” they say.
The house is smaller than the lodging she’s used to, but infinitely better than the ship’s cell.
Inside, a large fireplace has been lit and several dogs are spread out on a rug before it, their paws stretched towards the warmth.
Above the fireplace, a lighter patch of paint indicates the absence of a portrait; perhaps one that would have given Cecilia a clue as to her whereabouts.
They go through to a small banqueting hall containing a single long table. There isn’t even a gallery for musicians, only a rood screen behind which they can play.
“I’ve seen finer brothels in Perfugi,” she says as she is shown to her seat.
“And how we all wish you would have stayed in one,” Seymour says, sitting opposite her.
Seymour’s panther pads to Cecilia’s side of the table and sits upright and watchful just beside her left elbow.
“Would you please call off your beast?” she says.
“No.”
A servant enters, bearing a large tray containing a variety of simple dishes: sweet pea soup; hot bread and soft butter scattered with herbs and crisp chicken skin; a cheese encrusted with crushed purple grapes; a dish of aromatic barley scattered with berries and lamb and wine-rich gravy.
Even Cecilia must admit that they have been cooked with skill equal to her own palace chefs.
“Maybe once you’ve been arraigned for treason, I’ll hire your cook,” she tells Seymour.
“You will be needing a replacement, since I drowned the last one,” Seymour replies.
Cecilia laughs.
“I am sorry for my churlishness in the carriage,” she says, feeling as though she is growing as a person for this display of largesse. Seymour stiffens.
“Let us not talk of it,” she says.
“You’re supposed to apologise for nearly getting your panther to kill me.”
“Or perhaps I will tell him to finish the job.”
“Ugh!” Cecilia bangs her fork on the table, making the rest of the cutlery jump. “I am trying to be friends with you!”
“Why should I desire your friendship?” Seymour snaps, pulling her napkin from her shoulder with a crack and tossing it onto the table.
“Prude,” Cecilia says. Seymour’s mouth twitches. Cecilia points at her with her fork. “You are. You judge me because I freely do what you cannot.”
The panther growls behind Cecilia. She lowers the fork.
“You think I have no hunger?” Seymour says very calmly, reaching for a dish of cucumbers stuffed with bread and cheese. “Believe me, Cecilia, I have appetite enough. Your wantonness is nothing to me. But wantonness paired with cruelty? It is that to which I object.”
“That is because you are weak.”
“Only in the eyes of those who deem your brother strong.”
Cecilia wants to insist that Henry is strong: the strongest person she knows beside herself. But she has some notion that this would only prove Seymour’s point. The girl has led her down a trapped path. Clever.
“I never understand it when people talk of fucking as some great intimacy,” she says, spreading her hands on the table.
“To me, it is pleasurable no matter who it is with. It is like eating or sleeping: even if it is not particularly well done, it is necessary to life. Why not find the enjoyment in all of it?”
Seymour is quiet for some time. Eventually she says, “I thought I could feel the same as you about it. But I could not. Perhaps it is because I was not born to royalty.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Cecilia says.
“Even when you married, you were a princess marrying a king. He had to afford you some respect, did he not? Or he risked Henry’s wrath.”
“Henry would not have cared.” But that is not quite true. Henry is a romantic, unlike her or Arthur.
“Your husband did not know that, though,” Seymour says. She rises. “I will bid you goodnight. I hope that we will be able to exist together here for a little while, even if I do not trust you.”
“You would be a fool to. I will still kill you, even if I do rather like you.”
Left alone in the hall, Cecilia thinks of her ship and the way it disintegrated at Seymour’s command.
Such power, just out of her reach. An image of Florin’s face, pale and desperate in the water.
Well. He was very fond of her. She hopes his death was quick.
She shakes herself and reaches for more food.
She must turn her thoughts to the present, and to the future.
The past is rarely helpful. She must turn her thoughts to the mystery of the hard shape in Seymour’s gown, and the question of where she is – and who this house belongs to.
For if they have removed the portraits, then that suggests that this is not one of Seymour’s old properties.
And if that is the case, then Seymour has accomplices beyond the Feorwan servant.
Cecilia is going to find out exactly who they are.