Chapter Twenty-Seven Cleves
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Cleves
Is there anything more comfortable, and comforting, than a well-kept stable?
Cleves does not think so. She has spent many hours in the stables that are housed in the outermost ring of the Castle of Cnothan.
Many hours improving the building, with its low, sloping roof of mossed tiles.
Inside, the bays progress in rows, each one with its own manger and hay drop.
There is something warming about the gentle energy of the horses.
She likes to think that they appreciate the calm she has provided, for she has insulated the building against the clang of church bells and the bustle of the square outside. In here, all is peace.
“I resent it,” Johana says, following her as she attends to each horse.
“You shock me,” she replies. She crouches to examine a canker. The horse nuzzles her head. This is why she only bothers to tame her hair on special occasions.
“I am not a guard, or a gaoler. I am not a trainer of servants, cousin.”
“And yet you appear to have done all three perfectly well.”
“I am a man of action.”
She stands, looks at him over the top of her glasses. He is dressed in a doublet of finest cloth of silver in accordance with Ezzonid’s sumptuary laws. His hose is crafted from honeydragon leather, and upon his head is perched the most ridiculous feathered hat she has ever seen.
“I see no sword or dagger, cousin,” she says.
“That is beside the point.”
The door at the end of the stables opens, revealing Fergus, Cleves’s master of horse.
He is a stocky man, and his calloused hands speak of a life of labour.
Those who attended the Moon Ball would likely not recognise him as her original dance partner before she asked Seymour for her hand and embroiled herself in all this mess.
“Is everything all right in here, Your Majesty?” Fergus says, wandering up the aisle towards them. Cleves pats the horse next to her. “This one seems tender on her left hind.”
“Aye. She turned it in a rabbit hole. I’ll be wrapping it in warm muslin later today.”
Johana snorts. Fergus eyes him mildly. “You don’t agree with the treatment, my lord?”
Johana stutters a little, then says, “I can offer no comment on the treatment, sir.”
Oh, Cleves is going to enjoy this. She has rarely seen her cousin struggle for a witty retort, but then men who are good with their hands were ever his preference. She turns to Fergus: “I have tasked Lord Johana with the care of a very difficult creature. A fact he likes to complain about.”
“Two difficult creatures, some might say,” Johana mutters.
Fergus sticks his hands in his pockets. “Oh? What kind of animal are we talking about? I’m best with horses but I can usually turn a tricky beast good in the end.”
Cleves tilts her head at Johana, smiling benignly, waiting to see how he will reply. Her clear challenge seems to rouse him.
“You might well call them hybrid creatures,” he says. “They defy description.”
“Mm,” Fergus says. “How did you come across them then?”
Cleves shrugs. “I found them in some wreckage, looking very sorry for themselves.”
Fergus shakes his head, and turns to Cleves. “Ah, that’s bad then, Your Majesty. People meddle, don’t they, with nature? It’s not right, and it’s the beasts that bear the brunt of it, poor things.”
“Very true, Fergus,” she says. “Very true.”
“What would you do, then, to tame such beasts?” Johana asks Fergus.
Fergus eyes Johana’s clothes; his unblemished skin and the smooth finish of his nails. “You have grooms, I presume, my lord?”
“I do.” Johana instructed his own servants in Cecilia’s care. The ones Cleves assigned to him from her own household were severely lacking in the niceties of attending upon an Ezzonidian lord, apparently.
“And they treat the creatures with patience? Kindness? Violence begets violence, you know.”
Johana blushes. Though Fergus cannot know it, he has accused him of a sin that Johana, at least, regards as worse than violence upon an animal.
“I am no brute, sir,” Johana says. “And nor are my servants.”
Fergus shrugs. “Brute or no, there’s some brutish practices in this world.”
He wanders over to the lame horse and throws one arm around the animal’s neck, feeding it a morsel of carrot with the other.
“But with time, and reasoning, and understanding of what brought them to you, you’ll find a way,” he says. The horse whickers in agreement.
Cleves and Johana say their farewells to Fergus.
In the courtyard outside, Cleves leans against the stables and inhales the scent of the gethlewe flowers that drop like lilac stars from branches that embrace the building’s white brick.
Johana crosses his arms. “Well, I have reasoning, but I do not understand the Dowager Queen and I fear we do not have time. What do you make of my chances?”
Cleves pats his arm. “Were I a gambling woman, I would bet on you all day, cousin.”
The truth is, she does not need Johana to tame Cecilia, or persuade her to their side.
She merely needs him to keep her imprisoned long enough for Cleves to work out how to use her to her advantage.
She knows this much about Henry’s younger sister: there is no accord that can be made safely with Cecilia Tudor.
“I wish you would ask something else of me, cousin,” he says.
“This is what I need from you, Johana. I am sorry it does not involve courting handsome masters of horse.”
Johana peers inside the stables, seeing whether Fergus is still there. “He is very handsome. I think I might marry him.”
“He is already married to a far better man than you.”
In fact, Cleves was the one to make the match.
“You leach my visit to Elben of all possible excitement,” Johana says. Cleves pushes off the wall and hooks her arm into his as they walk back towards the castle.
“Do not say such things,” she says. “With any luck, I will author an uprising, and then you shall have more excitement than you could ever desire.”
“Violence begets violence, as your man said,” Johana says.
It is as though he has slapped her. She looks up at him but sees no cruelty in his expression.
He squeezes her arm, and sighs. “Sometimes we all have to do things we would rather not, when necessity wills it. For now, I will be your gaoler. I will keep the king’s sister so secure that we will have no need of chains. ”
Cleves stops, gripping Johana’s arm.
“That’s it,” she says.
Johana prises her hand away. “Have you finally gone mad?”
“Chains,” she says. “What is the one tradition that all queens of Elben must undertake?”
Johana frowns. “Your strange clasping of the castle stone?”
“No!” She bounces on her toes. “That is different for each castle, and the king does not partake. But we all are bound to him during our wedding ceremony.”
Johana’s expression clears. “The silly cloths.”
“The silly cloths.”
She had almost laughed out loud when Bishop More had bound her and Henry together with the purple velvet.
But then the pain had begun; something so visceral and unlike anything she had experienced before.
She has never forgotten it. And now she understands why: it was granting her power, the power she was about to receive from the goddess, to another.
“It is so simple, though,” Johana says.
“The best tricks always are. And that makes the remedy simple also.”
“Destroy the silly cloths?”
She beams at him. “Oh cousin, your mind is as one with mine. It is quite beautiful.”