Chapter Thirty-Three Cleves
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Cleves
The journey to High Hall takes longer than Cleves had expected, even travelling the scrind road with its strange, ancient magic that never fails to make her heart race.
The mismatch of her horse’s steady gait with the speed of the trees and fields whipping past them is vertiginous.
Yet, the journey is more full than usual.
Minor nobility, keen to gain favour as much as money, pack the road with their entourages.
Nearly all of them drag cages and crates.
Crones, skin loose from long hunger, bare their teeth through iron bars.
The sound of tusks scraping along the inside of crates underlines the keening cries of the captive beasts.
“These people took no issue with endangering their servants,” Johana says, as they watch a nobleman wearing the marsh-ready boots of Hyde shout at his entourage to quieten their crone.
“And their servants will remember that, Johana. As ours did.”
When they finally reach High Hall, the palace is rife with activity.
At the centre of Elben, the island’s beating heart, High Hall stands unmoving as people from across the known world, and from all ranks, flurry through the passages and courtyards and sanctuaries and kitchens, the gardens and greenhouses, the courts and banqueting halls.
It is, and always has been, too much for Cleves.
It is not the busyness that she dislikes so much as the secrets.
Intrigue rests in High Hall’s shadows like fog.
And that is precisely why she has come here now: because intrigue and secrets are what she requires.
Her wing of High Hall is the oldest part of the palace, the rest having been demolished and rebuilt over the years.
Where the other wings are rounded or hexagonal, hers is angular and made of the hard, grey stone favoured by the ancient rulers of Elben.
She imagines the queens of old, supreme in their rule, not subservient to any man, striding across the flagstones.
She wonders whether they were the ones who instructed the design of the cupboards hidden within the walls, for the keeping of useful cutlery and linen; whether they thought of the lowered daises around the fireplaces to create cosy seating areas.
She wonders whether the rest of the palace used to be like this, or whether it was only ever Cnothan’s wing that was, and remains, so practical.
Johana follows her through her chambers, and behind them trail her animals, Lelij strutting at the head of the procession.
“Does your household not mind you bringing so many animals into the palace?” Johana says.
“Perhaps they did at first. Until they realised that my animals smell no worse than many of the courtiers, and are housetrained a good deal better.”
Johana laughs as he follows Cleves deeper into her rooms. She must freshen herself after the long journey. Even though it was several days ago, she cannot shake the thought that Seymour’s peppery scent is still upon her after their dance.
A copy of Holbein’s portrait of her has been hung on the wall of her antechamber, though she has no memory of ordering it.
A gift from Henry, she supposes, intended as a further humiliation.
She glances at it as she splashes her face in fragranced water.
She and Holbein are cut from the same cloth: able to tread their own winding path while giving the impression of following the more direct route. He truly is a remarkable artist.
“I must show my face briefly in the public spaces, or questions will be asked as to why I have come here,” she tells Johana. “But I need to get to the gardens before dusk.”
“Am I to be your guard?” Johana asks.
“It is more likely that I could protect you, cousin. No, you are here to distract anyone who might wish to speak to me while I run my little errand.”
“And am I permitted to know the nature of this errand?”
She dries her face on padded linen. “That rather depends: are you willing to keep a secret in the face of torture, should you be found out?”
Johana considers this. “Since I have no phoenix feather to protect me from such horrors, I shall not be greedy. You may keep your treasures in different chests.”
“Now you begin to understand why I was reluctant to tell you everything, cousin,” she says. “It was for your protection as much as my own. Come, Lelij.”
The gargoyle lollops over, and she picks him up. He is really too large to be carried much, but she knows that where she is taking him, he will be ridiculed. If he is in her arms, courtiers will be less likely to laugh openly, for to do so would be to openly laugh at a queen.
With Lelij chirruping happily in her grasp, Cleves leads Johana through the double doors which mark the boundary between her rooms and the public galleries of High Hall.
On the surface, everything is the same as it ever has been.
The songbirds in their cages hang from every windowsill, singing in a way that has always, to Cleves, sounded like a plea.
The courtiers dart between groups in a complicated dance of superiority that only those practised in the art of politics can interpret.
The changes since her last visit are less obvious, but profound.
Usually each courtier would wear a favour – a handkerchief, a doublet – the colour of their chosen queen.
When Cleves had last been here, a few had worn orange to show their loyalty to her; many more had worn white or copper for Parr and Howard.
Now, no one bears any queenly colour on their chest. This is not a matter of one queen being out of favour.
After Boleyn and Seymour’s betrayals, after Henry’s public humiliation at the Moon Ball, the only fealty that can be exhibited is to the king himself.
They take the wide staircase which leads to the upper floors of the palace, closer to Henry’s quarters.
It is busier here. Courtiers begin to take notice of her – it is unusual for Cleves to come to the public chambers of High Hall, after all.
They bow, but few approach, and her smile becomes more affable, her body language more approachable.
No one would possibly think boring, ugly Queen Cleves capable of treason; the only thing she cares about is her animals.
Cleves has traded on her eccentricity for so many years, using it as a disguise.
But when people look for a threat, sometimes it is the eccentric ones they turn on first.
The sun is beginning to set. Shadows elongate across the floorboards and rugs, making sundials of people. She is on the northern side of the palace now, and nearly at the right entrance to reach her mark. She has been seen and noted. Perhaps she did not need Johana after all.
“Your Majesty. What an unexpected pleasure to see you at High Hall.”
A shiver runs up her spine. She turns to face a broad-shouldered man whose skin is darker than hers. He has a strong brow and an easy, laconic smile.
“Lord Brandon,” she says, shifting Lelij’s weight into one arm and offering her hand for him to kiss. “You are looking as tall as ever.”
There is mirth in his eyes. “I hardly recognised you without your entourage.”
He twirls around the room theatrically. “Only one gargoyle? No cows? No cats or pigs to accompany you this time?” Then his eyes rest on Johana. “Ah, my mistake. You have brought a foreign dog after all.”
Johana bristles at her side, but smiles at Brandon pleasantly. “And yet you are doing all the barking, my lord.”
As Brandon laughs merrily, Cleves remembers why she has always avoided him.
He is cruelly charming, the cruelty mellowed by the fact that he is just as content to receive an insult as to deliver one.
Still, if he weren’t so lazily handsome, he wouldn’t get away with half of the japes he pulls.
She makes a formal introduction between Brandon and Johana, and the two men bow to each other.
“Lord Brandon is my husband’s favourite person in the entire world,” Cleves tells her cousin.
“After his beloved queens, of course,” Brandon says. “Present company excepted.”
Cleves puts a placating hand on Johana’s arm. If he tries to protect her, she will not be able to escape this unwelcome interaction. Thankfully, Johana understands her. “Actually, my sources tell me that cousin Cleves ranks at least fourth now,” he says.
Cleves considers this. “My, my. That is quite a promotion.”
Brandon laughs again. “You are a good sport, Your Majesty. A very good sport.”
“It’s one of my many talents,” she says. “Another is knowing when to leave before the insults become too much for even me to bear. Excuse me, my lords.”
Cleves slips away. She has other matters to attend to, out in the gardens of High Hall. Cromwell and Wolsey may lead Henry’s spy network, but theirs has nothing on hers.
“Good morrow, Edith,” she says, as she approaches the woman labouring in a flower bed on the north side of High Hall’s gardens.
The woman stands from where she’s been kneeling over some pots, adding soil to them before planting them up.
She has a bairn tied to her chest with a swaddling cloth.
Cleves stumbles for an instant, wondering, and then realises that the babe is too young to be who she thought it might be.
“Your Majesty,” Edith says, bobbing a curtsey.
“How are you finding my fertiliser?”
“Very well indeed. It is making our plants prosper,” Edith replies. Neither woman looks the other in the eye. Perhaps they both fear that if they do, someone will realise that they are communicating more than they appear to be.
“And your family? They are well?”
“They are. My mother-in-law is kept busy with my niece.”
“She is nearly one now.”
“Just turned. And already running my mother-in-law in circles.”
“Very good.”
Cleves has only had sight of the Princess Elizabeth once, briefly, in the days before the Moon Ball, so she does not know why she is so relieved at this news.
She cannot, of course, talk freely of the princess or the old stewardess of Brynd, Mistress Syndony, in this place, but Syndony’s secret network of family agents was in place long before Boleyn’s fall, and has remained strong even with Syndony in hiding with her young charge.
Cleves peers at the plants Edith is potting up. “Roses. Are these for the royal wedding then?”
“The new queen favours them, so His Majesty has ordered the sanctuary full of them.”
“Quite an undertaking.”
Edith casually looks around to be sure they are not being overheard. She returns to her work, and Cleves makes a show of smelling some jasmine climbing up a nearby wall.
“To the king’s face, Mary Boleyn is shown all due deference,” Edith says.
“And in his absence?”
“Despite the general dislike of Queen Boleyn, no one favours the match. Those who despised Boleyn fear that the whole family is tainted with treachery. Those who loved her despise Mary for her betrayal.”
“And yet he is set upon it,” Cleves says.
“Perhaps he truly loves her.”
“Or perhaps if she has no friends, she will be easier for him to control,” Cleves says, raising an eyebrow.
“There is more.” Edith draws closer to Cleves under the pretence of inspecting the petals of the nearest rose bush. “Bishop More has come to stay at High Hall. He spends much of his time in his rooms. When he does come out, he is not himself. Some say he is dying.”
“And what do you say?” Cleves asks.
Edith shakes her head. “There’s something strange going on here. I cannot put my finger on it, nor find out anything more. Only a few servants are permitted into the bishop’s rooms and they are all loyal to Cromwell. I can get nothing from them.”
“Cromwell?” Cleves says. She had not been particularly interested in this news before – what is an ailing Bishop to her?
– but now she is. Cromwell and More have never been allies.
Has that changed? The thought makes her uneasy.
When a wolf like Cromwell takes an interest in someone like More, it can only be for one reason: he is hungry for a kill and senses weakness.
But what is the manner of More’s weakness?
she wonders. Captive crones and a dying bishop.
What is Cromwell brewing in the secret parts of this palace?