Chapter Fifty Howard
CHAPTER FIFTY
Howard
Culpepper teeters, touches the back of his head. His fingers come away bloody. She does not wait for him to counter her attack. She is Goldfoot, descending upon her prey. She throws herself at him before he can recover, and they fall in a tangle of limbs and gown to the floor.
“You’re insane,” he pants, grappling with her as she, straddling him, reaches for the bust. He pulls at her hair, and a clump comes away in his hand, grey and rotting skin entangled in its roots.
He gags and flicks it away. She almost laughs that in such a moment he is so preoccupied with her body.
It gives Howard the space she needs to seize the bust once more.
He wrests her off him, rolling her over so that she is beneath him. All the feigned adoration that he tried to charm her with is vanished. All that remains is his truth: flared nostrils and a hand upon her throat, squeezing, squeezing.
“Stupid bitch,” he says.
Through the desperate thump of blood in her ears, Howard thinks she hears a shout. Perhaps it is her own. This is not her end: she will not be brought low by this grasping boy. Never again will someone call her stupid and live.
Though the arm clutching the bust feels so, so heavy, she brings it up as hard as she can against his jaw.
He falls off her with a curse. She does not think on her burning chest, nor the pain in her throat.
She brings the bust down, again and again, upon his head.
Warmth sprays across her face like kisses.
“Your Majesty, stop!”
Arms wrap around her, drawing her away from the bloodied lump. It is her ladies and Florin, brought to her side by the noise of the fight.
“What did you do?” Lady Tylney whispers.
“He was not worth risking my life for,” Howard says. She lets the bust drop to the floor and heaves, needing to fill her bruised body with fresh air.
Florin sways. Legh cannot look at Culpepper’s prone body, or the blood that is pooling on the floor beside the mess that was once his head.
Susanna is even paler than normal, her lips a thin line. “What do you need us to do?”
Florin, Susanna and Legh roll Culpepper’s body up in one of the throws from Howard’s bed; Lady Tylney fetches water and vinegar; Howard and Ursula set to scrubbing at the blood.
As they work in silence, Howard begins to shake.
Dreadful, body-wracking tremors that make her drop her brush.
Lady Tylney folds her in her arms. This time, Howard does not resent the maternal gesture.
“I should not have …” Howard stutters. “He was going to …”
She wants to say trap me, but that is not quite right. He wasn’t bad. He wasn’t evil. He did not deserve to be killed. And yet she had to kill him. Because he was going to own her, as Henry has owned her.
“Do you despise me?” she says. There is a lull in the room, as every one of them pauses.
Legh breaks the silence. “I dislike you much of the time, sister. But this is not one of those times.”
“You are our queen,” Ursula says fiercely, continuing her scrubbing. “We will do whatever you ask of us.”
Lady Tylney tuts. “Well, I most certainly shall not do anything you ask of me, but you have not yet asked something that I would not give.”
Howard wipes her eyes. “I have no wish to own your souls. I am not Henry.”
“No, you are not,” Florin says. “You have shown me, in the brief time I have lived in your palace, what true royalty looks like.”
She does not know how to answer such a statement.
“What a time to grow sentimental,” Legh says. She is right.
“We must get him out of the palace,” Howard tells them.
“The river would take him out to sea,” Susanna says.
Florin shudders. That would have been his fate, if he had not washed ashore.
“There are too many boats. Someone would see him,” Howard says.
“We could bury him in the woods,” Florin suggests.
“No,” she says. “Poachers frequent those woods.”
She goes to the window and looks out over her grounds. If not the woods, then where? Do they have the means to leave the grounds of the palace? For nowhere else is sheltered. It is all lawns and herb gardens and jousting arenas …
She thumps the windowsill.
“The dragon that was used for the baiting – is it still kept on the estate?”
Lady Tylney’s eyes widen as she nods.
Howard doesn’t know how she is so clear-headed. Is this how Seymour felt, that night she rescued Boleyn from the Tower? She will collapse later, but for now her mind must work the hardest it has ever worked.
They roll the blanket, with its body inside, to the window.
Below them is a little rose garden with a low hedge.
With much effort and a little swearing, they heave Culpepper over the balcony.
He drops onto a hedge below, one side of the throw unrolling to reveal his bloodied arm.
Howard and her friends look at each other.
It is awful and it is ridiculous. A chuckle bubbles up Howard’s throat, and soon they are all hunched over with mirthless laughter.
“It is too much,” Howard says. She feels feverish. “It is not even supper and I have killed a man.”
Ursula doubles over. Florin shakes his head and mutters something in Perfugian.
They collect themselves and make their way down to the rose garden, attempting a ladylike stroll with Florin following behind, as a servant should. When they reach the rose garden, they hunch over the body, debating how to move him without anyone spying them.
She directs some of them to ensuring that the rest of the household does not approach the east side of the palace, while the rest of them manhandle Culpepper’s body towards the trees, past the stables, to the stone cave where the poor scarred dragon is tethered, the bones of goats and sheep and unwanted puppy litters scattered around it like a hoard.
The dragon rears its head when it sees them, its cracked lips peeling back to reveal rows of teeth. The others pause, unwilling to come within the creature’s reach.
Howard holds out one hand, panting with the effort of dragging the body.
“You recognise him, don’t you?” she says. Goldfoot is clever enough to understand a gift when he sees it. She knows – oh, she knows now, all too well – that those creatures people believe to be dumb are often merely misunderstood. “I thought you might like to have your revenge.”
The dragon snorts.
“Take it closer,” she tells the others.
“Are you mad?” Florin asks.
“It will not hurt us,” she says, although she’s not certain of that at all. “It cannot reach him this far away. We must get closer.”
“Do as the queen says,” Ursula says, her brow dripping with sweat. Four of them pick up Culpepper again, and heave him towards the dragon, dropping him within the circle of bones. The skeletons rattle and crackle, protesting at his weight.
“Now get back,” Florin says, pushing Howard and Ursula behind him.
But the dragon sniffs the air in two long, growling inhales.
It uncurls from around its tether and drags itself, pockmarked with branding and spears, creased with claw marks, over to Culpepper.
It nudges him with its muzzle, sniffs him and bares its teeth once more.
It is at that moment, as if the goddess herself wished to witness Culpepper’s final humiliation, that the man wakes.
He was not dead at all. It takes him a moment, through the wound in his head, to realise where he is.
His eyes widen on the dragon’s open maw.
He screams as the dragon begins to feed, from the bottom up.
Her ladies-in-waiting turn away, but Howard watches it all, for she is a queen, and queens take responsibility for the lives they snuff out.