Chapter Forty-Five Howard
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Howard
It is Culpepper who brings the news. He appears in the entrance of her receiving chamber like a ghost. That’s when she knows for certain that he knows.
They must look a strange sight: Howard sitting on the floor with her ladies, Goldfoot curled up on her throne.
The lacquered walnut is strewn with velvet cushions, the detritus of Susanna’s fine paintwork and, stowed beneath the cushions, religious pamphlets sent to Ursula from across the Swegan Sea.
“There is a reward laid out for the capture of Queens Seymour and Cleves,” he tells them. “A thousand gold coins.”
Susanna whistles. Lady Tylney looks at Howard, eyes wide. How can Seymour and Cleves hope to remain free with such a sum upon their heads? Such wealth would be enough to rival many nobles of the realm.
Culpepper hovers.
“Trot away then, pretty pony,” Legh says, flicking a hand in dismissal. He flinches, looking to Howard, but she focuses on collecting Susanna’s fine brushes, scattered across the floor. By the time she looks up again, he has gone.
“Close the door,” she says, and Lady Tylney hurries to do so.
They drop all pretence of disinterestedness as soon as the lock clicks. Legh sits up; Susanna sets aside her miniature.
“Should you send a message to the other queens?” Ursula asks.
Howard shakes her head. “I dare not risk it. We will all of us be under greater scrutiny now.”
Goldfoot yawns. His teeth are two rows of the thorns she does not have.
“We must help them, though,” she says, more to herself than to her ladies.
The rush of the Kyttle Falls fills the room, as it always does when no one is speaking. It is one of the things she loves about Plythe: the torrent is always a companion.
Perhaps sensing that something is amiss, Goldfoot slithers from the cushioned throne and climbs into Howard’s lap.
“Shall they come to Plythe, do you think?” Legh says, sounding rather thrilled at the prospect.
Howard tries to imagine that she is Cleves or Seymour. “No,” she says. “They will not look to the closest safe place. They will look to the safest.”
“That is Mathmas, then,” Lady Tylney says.
Yes. Mathmas and Parr. There was a time when Howard might have felt such a choice as a slight. Perhaps there is still a pinch of melancholy, but she can recognise that it would be the wisest place for them to go.
“They will pass through Plythe’s territory then,” Ursula says. “I could go searching for them.”
“I think that would be foolish,” Susanna says, echoing Howard’s thoughts. “If Her Majesty is being watched, then we are likely being watched too.”
Howard holds up a hand, and the women fall silent. Goldfoot nibbles the trim of her dress. Howard wishes she could work out a plan thoroughly, then lay it all before her ladies like a feast, but her mind does not work that way. She must speak her thoughts to understand them.
“What will they need to get to Mathmas safely?” she says.
“Food and water, without needing to venture into any village where they might be recognised,” Lady Tylney says.
“Cloths for their courses, too,” Legh adds.
“Weapons,” Ursula says.
“Good.” She stands, holding Goldfoot against her chest, and goes to the door, where she calls for Florin to join them.
“I need you to put together several packages,” she tells him. “You must make sure they are both small and light.”
Once he is gone, Howard turns back to her ladies. “Now we must work out how to convey such items to the queens without raising suspicion.”
“The easiest part of the whole plan, then,” Legh says.
The women exchange ideas, each one as unworkable as the last. Howard hears them all as she walks the length of the chamber, wishing for some strike of knowledge from Boleyn’s spirit. Goldfoot nips at her ear.
“Oh!” Howard says, stopping suddenly.
“You have an idea?” Lady Tylney says.
“I don’t know.” Their expectant expressions almost cow her. “I was only thinking: would it not be wonderful if we could send Goldfoot out to drop the packages upon the queens. But he is far too recognisable. It would not work.”
“But we can disguise Goldfoot,” Susanna says. “Nothing so easy.” She goes to the little chest where she keeps her paints. Howard clutches Goldfoot tighter. She knows it is a foolish worry, but she loves her dragon’s iridescent colouring, born of coal and pearls.
“Will it not hurt him?” she says.
Legh huffs. “Do you want to help your friends or not?”
“I would never harm him,” Susanna says. She selects a small glass jar filled with brown powder, and then another filled with deep green.
Howard brings the lapdragon to Susanna and he sniffs curiously at both jars.
Susanna croons over him, explaining, as if he could understand, how she will mix the powders with gesso and water to create a paste.
How she will transform him from one of the most precious pets in Elben to a common, wild hatchling.
Howard leaves Goldfoot with Susanna and goes to her bedchamber, and the nondescript box where the cloths for her monthly courses are kept.
She empties the box and unpicks the hidden bottom, revealing beneath the slim pack of correspondence.
Among them: the cipher Cleves sent all those moons ago, when she summoned the queens to their sunscínas.
By the time she returns to her receiving chamber, Goldfoot is barely recognisable. The usual sheen of his scales is muted in browns and greens. Susanna even traces puckered scars across his body. He is no longer a pampered lapdragon but a war-weary wild dragon, a victor even in his youth.
“My, you look very brave, my dear,” Howard tells him. He caws, stretching his neck up to her, delighted with all the attention. She holds Cleves’s cipher to his snout.
“Can you smell her?” she says. He snuffles at the parchment, and for a moment she’s worried he may set it alight. He caws again.
Lady Tylney joins them. “I have sewn a handful of bags,” she tells Howard. “It is not my best work, but they are strong and small and made of a light enough fabric that Goldfoot should be able to carry them.”
“And we have traced their likely journey,” Ursula says, hurrying over with Legh, a map of Plythe’s territory held open between them. She points to several charcoal crosses marked hastily across the parchment.
“They will avoid the scrind roads and the main thoroughfares if they have any sense,” Ursula explains.
“There are dozens of coppices and the like not far from the coast,” Legh says. “They make for excellent hiding places.”
“And we can all guess how you know this,” Howard says, raising an eyebrow at her half-sister.
Legh shrugs. “Well, ever since Boleyn turned you into a proper queen you told me to stop having my assignations in the palace. What was I supposed to do?”
There’s a knock on the door, and Florin enters to their silence.
Howard had imagined him pouring necessities into a sack for them, but he has been far cleverer.
He holds a tray, the kind that any servant might bring to their queen.
Upon it are several silver domes which, when uncovered, reveal plates of dried meat and fruits, hard biscuits, clean cloth and healing herbs.
They set about dividing everything between Lady Tylney’s bags.
“Should you leave a cipher inside them, so that they know they’re from you?” Susanna says.
“It doesn’t matter if they know that we sent them,” Howard replies. “Better to do without and be safe.”
Legh pauses, watching her, frowning.
“What?” Howard says.
“Nothing.”
When all the bags are ready, they open the windows and let the sound of the falls join their excitement. Howard feeds Goldfoot a strip of dried meat from her pocket and sets her nose to his snout. She dare not coddle him for fear of ruining Susanna’s painted disguise.
“Fly swift and strong, my dear,” she tells him. “And come back to me safely.”
At first, she worries that they have loaded him too heavily. He tumbles out of the window, the bags he clutches pulling him down. The next moment, he rises, his little wings beating powerfully. He emits a final caw, then rises above them, above Plythe, heading west towards the coast.
Hand pressed to her chest, Howard runs out of her receiving chamber and across the gallery to the windows on the other side, searching the skies for a glimpse of her companion. Her friends follow her.
“There he is,” Florin says, pointing to a distant flicker.
“There he is,” she whispers.
Florin takes one of her hands. Ursula takes the other.
“He is a brave boy,” Susanna says, placing a hand on Howard’s shoulder.
“He’ll find them if they’re to be found,” Legh agrees.
Warmth spreads through Howard. She is surrounded, cocooned. She thinks, This is what it is to be a queen. She has never felt her royalty so strongly as she does now, when she has worked as one with her friends, and they as one with her.
A whisper of jasmine floats through the gallery, though no jasmine grows in the grounds of Plythe. Her heart quickens.
“Your Majesty,” Ursula says.
Howard follows Ursula’s gaze. Across her hands, entwined in her fingers like ribbon, is the bordweal light.
Howard starts back, as though she might be able to throw off the power tingling across her hands and up her arms. Then she begins to laugh.
“You are a goddess,” Ursula says.
Her friends crowd around her. All but Legh, who stands apart from them. Howard doesn’t care. She revels in their wonder. She is so thrilled that she almost does not hear the applause. Low and strong as a church bell.
Gradually, the group falls silent. They turn, searching for the source. And there, from around the corner, steps Culpepper. His face is bright and open and gleeful. He pushes through her companions, kneels before her, takes her glimmering hands in his and kisses them.