Chapter Fifty-Seven Howard
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Howard
When a songbird first flies, it is stuttering.
Howard has watched the fledglings perched on the edge of the nest they were born in, their mother nearby, tweeting impatiently for them to fall.
Howard once spent a full morning watching those nesting on the windowsill outside her room pluck up the courage to take their first flights.
There were six of them in total, the shells from which they hatched long since eaten, their nest filled with white faeces.
First one, then another, took flight, their little wings unused to catching the currents.
The third took longer, and when it jumped, for a brief moment Howard thought it wasn’t going to survive, as it plummeted out of view.
But there, a second later, she spied it fluttering up to the branch where its siblings and mother sat.
She thought, by the time the sixth leapt, that they would all make it.
That there was something in a bird’s memory, perhaps from its ancestors, that told it exactly how to make that first leap.
The little body lay at the base of the house for days as rats and wasps made a feast of its bones.
Howard is not sure whether she is still perched on the edge of the nest, whether she is plummeting without an idea of how to beat her wings or whether she is flying, uncertain, towards the branch that means safety.
Her ladies are all a flutter too. Gone are the conversations about who is courting whom, of which gown is the most beautiful (it is always Howard’s), of which music they are to dance to before supper. Ursula now openly reads her book of Hleaw prayer, a horseshoe of rapt ladies kneeling around her.
That is how Florin finds them, when he comes with the gift.
“This was sent to you from a duke of Gkontai,” he says, handing her a parcel wrapped in silk.
“Why?” Legh says. Lady Tylney tuts at her, but Legh shrugs. “I do not mean it like that, only that Howard has never received anything from anyone there before.”
“Maybe they wish to form an alliance,” Ursula says, setting aside her prayer book.
Howard opens the letter that accompanies the gift. Voda Kelaverinn would be proud at how she sounds out the characters.
To Her Majesty Queen Howard of Plythe, of the great Kingdom of Elben,
Hearing of your great beauty and your preference for the finest of fabrics, His Excellency the Duke Vinoft of the twelfth district of Gkontai sends you this cushion from his most perfect craftsmen. He begs Your Majesty to recommend him to your great and kingly husband, and remains,
Yours faithfully.
“He merely wants me to broker some favour with Henry,” Howard says, feeling a little bereft as she turns to the present itself.
“Oh, how horrible,” Legh says. For once, no one contradicts her.
The embroidery is poorly done; anyone with the smallest knowledge of the craft can see that. The songbird is uneven and the fabric bunches at the corners.
“Does this duke from Gkontai despise you?” Legh says, as she and the ladies pass the cushion round. It is an appalling misuse of such expensive thread. Florin peers over Lady Tylney’s shoulder. “I do not understand. What is wrong with it? It is obviously a bird.”
Ursula shoots him a withering look. “If you had practised embroidery for even a year, you would recognise how bad this is.”
Howard looks up, her worries that she had inadvertently displeased Gkontai dissipating.
“Someone bring me a knife.”
“Are you planning on killing someone else, Your Majesty?” Susanna teases, but Howard only grabs the cushion from her, running her hand over the bird, seeing if she can prise it apart with her nails. Ursula hands her a penknife, and she drives the point beneath the thread.
“It is not that bad,” Lady Tylney says.
Howard saws at the motif until the threads break. Florin whistles quietly. For sewn tightly between image and the velvet base is a further piece of embroidery on simple linen. This embroidery is far finer, the work of a practised hand:
Five remain. Sanctuary of the Blessed Litavis on the fifth day of the seventh moon.
Howard laughs. Five remain. That must mean that Cleves and Seymour have reached Mathmas safely: five queens are still loyal to Medren.
Florin is staring at her with his mouth open.
“Do women do such things often?” he asks.
She is about to say, No, but we ought to, and then she remembers what Cleves said to her at the last Moon Ball. “Perhaps not exactly like this, but in a hundred other ways, yes.”
Florin nods and turns away thoughtfully.
“The fifth day of the seventh moon is only a few nights before the Moon Ball,” Lady Tylney says.
“Where is this sanctuary anyway?” Legh asks.
“It is in Mathmas,” Ursula says. “Well, it is near the intersection of Mathmas, Daven and Plythe.”
Howard smiles at her. She had been about to call for a map of Elben. “Do you have family near it?” she asks.
Ursula shakes her head. “It is a ruin. It was once a holy place for the Hleaws, before it was razed by King Ricard in one of his holy purges. I read about it.”
Howard reaches for Ursula’s hand, looking round as her ladies begin to plan how they might be able to transport her in secret to the sanctuary and then on to High Hall for the ball without Cromwell’s agents getting wind of it.
Yes, sometimes trust is earned, and sometimes it is gifted, and sometimes it is both.