Chapter Forty-Eight Cleves
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Cleves
Cleves’s plan to throw Henry’s hunters off their trail seems to work. Their disguises – old, wretched garments and road dirt – hold well enough for the common folk of Plythe’s territory, most of whom have never seen them in person.
It is on their sixth day of trekking through woods, skirting villages and scavenging from scrapheaps and the forest floors that they spot the Heahmore mountains, the border between the territories of Plythe and Mathmas.
The hills of Plythe, soft as a woman’s body, covered in heather and grass, will turn harsh and unloved.
“The Palace of Plythe is perhaps a day’s walk behind us,” Seymour says softly, as they stare up at those forbidding mountains. It is a shame that they had been forced to leave their horses behind when they left the roads.
“We would be fools,” Cleves says.
“I know.”
The thought of all the comforts that would be afforded them there is tempting all the same.
Cleves smiles to herself. There had been a time when none of them would willingly have visited Plythe for longer than a few days.
Howard was too much for all of them. Her bright little song in the cage of her brief life was too high and too loud.
None of them saw that it was her way of reconciling herself to her marriage.
None of them even believed her capable of such bargaining.
That is Cleves’s shame to bear. Which of them have not made such pacts with their souls?
Does it follow that their own, quieter, more brutal bargains were more admirable?
Seymour touches her hand. “Are you all right?”
“I am always all right,” Cleves says, taking Seymour’s hand and pulling her along, starting to run.
“Cleves, stop!” Seymour laughs.
“Why? With the breeze in our faces and the sun on our cheeks, what could be more wonderful than this?” Cleves raises her voice above the birdsong.
Lelij joins the romp, cawing as he leaps after them, deer-like.
The muscles in her thighs ache as she pulls Seymour up the hill. They come to a panting stop at the top and look out over Howard’s territory. Hills glide like raindrops down towards the distant sea, where the last of the sun trails a finger across the ocean.
“It is beautiful, though,” she says. Seymour rests her head on Cleves’s shoulder. “If I had to be on the run with anyone, I am glad it is you,” she says.
“Did your Clarice not offer the same scintillating humour?” Cleves asks.
“My Clarice and I spent much of our journey trying to unwind half a lifetime of resentment and inequality,” Seymour says. “It was full of love but not of humour.”
“But you tried to change for those you love,” Cleves says. She massages her breastbone absently.
“Of course. We are not set in stone, any of us, are we? It makes me laugh to think that my brother Thomas probably still thinks of me as a mouse. I cannot imagine how he received the news of what happened at Hyde. He must have wondered whether a changeling took me.”
We are not set in stone. But she is. She has served herself well all her adult life, just as she is. There is nothing wrong with steadiness.
“Thomas, he is not in Elben?” she says, keen to change the subject. Her eyes are drawn to a fleck swooping and soaring across the fields.
“I think he is in Avahuc now. He was sent there as an ambassador several years ago, just after Henry married Parr.”
“Ah,” Cleves says. She shades her eyes, the better to see that fleck.
“Yes. Ah.”
“You did not seek him out after you left Elben?”
“I thought it best not to. He can be hot-headed, and I never could tell which direction his temper would take.”
“And Henry would undoubtedly have people watching him,” Cleves says.
“What is that?” Seymour says, spotting the same shape Cleves is following.
They draw into the safety of the trees. It could be a wild eagle or young dragon on an evening hunt. Those would be the better options. She heard that Wolsey used to employ trained gryphons for the purpose of spying. Could this be one of them?
“Should we run?” Seymour whispers.
There is something about the way the fleck flies that nudges Cleves’s memory. She understands animals and can usually read their movements as she would a letter. This fleck is not moving like a wild animal. It is moving with the purpose of a hunter, but not the guile.
“Get behind me,” she says, pushing Seymour deeper into the cover of the trees. She pulls a little knife from her pocket and, crouching, makes her way down the slope towards the shape.
If it is an animal sent to spy, she must not let it return to High Hall. And if she fails at killing it, perhaps she can at least lead it away from Seymour.
As the shape nears, she sees, even in the dim light of dusk, that it is a dragon.
Despite the murky green-brown of its colouring, it flies with an elegance she has rarely seen in the most expensive of pets.
Its movement is like her favourite dance, the Almain.
It is such a shame to have to kill so beautiful a creature.
She holds the blade between her thumb and index finger, and prepares to heft it towards the dragon.
The creature calls out, a soft, cautious sound that reaches her like crickets on a breeze.
She curses, drops her knife, heart pounding. And something thuds onto the ground in front of her.
In the deepening evening, she cannot see it, but a moment later the lapdragon lands in front of her. It tilts its head, as if asking her a question.
“Cleves?” Seymour says.
“I thought I told you to stay in the trees?” Cleves says, not taking her eyes from the lapdragon’s.
“I grew worried.”
Seymour reaches Cleves and stops.
“Is that …? What has she covered him in?”
Cleves holds out her palm. The dragon sniffs it, then huffs warm air: she is allowed to touch him. She runs a single finger across a few of his scales, and it comes away with green.
“Paint,” Cleves says.
Seymour laughs, crouching to lavish praise on Howard’s pet.
Lelij, hearing adoration for something else, lollops to join them and rolls on his back in front of Seymour so that she can scratch his stomach with one hand and pet Goldfoot with the other.
Watching Seymour so simply happy makes Cleves’s stomach twist.
“Howard has sent us something, I think,” Cleves says.
The lapdragon hops off the parcel he dropped, and they open it.
“Oh, she is wonderful,” Seymour says, snatching one of the hard biscuits and crunching into it like it’s a sweet pear.
“She has thought of everything,” Cleves says, noting not just the thought behind the gifts – sustenance, healing herbs and clean cloths – but also the caution Howard displayed in camouflaging Goldfoot and not including anything identifying in the parcel.
Something inside her relaxes. “You will outwit us all in the end, little songbird,” she whispers.
Reluctantly, they send Goldfoot on his way, back towards Plythe, and stumble back to the cover of the wood and a bed of soft ferns.
It is only later, as Seymour slumbers, head on Cleves’s chest, leg thrown over her own, that Cleves remembers how unthinkingly she pushed Seymour out of potential danger.
Johana told her to keep running, and she did not.
If she carries on in this manner, she will not survive.
She cradles Seymour’s head, kisses her hair.
She had better start running again, but tonight she allows herself to dream.