Chapter Fifty-Nine Cleves
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Cleves
It takes three days, avoiding the scrind road, to reach the borders of Mathmas and the island’s central estates.
Parr’s household rests at one of her noble’s estates to make the final preparations for their entrance to the Moon Ball.
Parr, Cleves and Seymour, however, ride at dawn on the fifth day of the seventh moon for the Sanctuary of the Blessed Litavis.
“The stories say that it was built by the Medrenkynd who came before the Hleaws,” Parr tells Cleves as they ride.
“The site is at the confluence of three of the most bountiful parts of Elben. People would bring their harvests to share with those from the more destitute regions on the night of the divine moon.”
“The night we now hold the Moon Ball,” Cleves says.
Parr purses her lips. “They did not just steal our power. They could not even trouble themselves to create their own celebrations.”
They emerge from heather and gorse into a peaceful, flat and flowered glade.
In the centre of the open space is a ramshackle tower with several narrow wings branching out from its base, and so many windows Cleves feels as though she is being watched by a great spider.
The old plaster is crumbling and the stone is blackened from the fire that was meant to destroy it, but for a place that is so rarely used and with such history, it is in remarkable condition.
A scattering of horses and servants already populates the space, and one comes forward to take their horses as they dismount.
Cleves glances over at Seymour, who has been silent their whole journey.
She is speaking in a low voice to Parr. Cleves is not insecure, but she cannot help but wonder whether they are discussing her.
“Shall we go in then?” she says, striding ahead of them.
The doors of the sanctuary open into a wide hall from which several passageways lead off.
What must have once been a grand spiral staircase leading up into the tower crumbles into charcoal not five steps up.
The place is devoid of furniture or decoration, yet it still feels oddly occupied, as if the spirits of long-ago communes still roam the stone floors.
“Through here,” a voice says from a doorway at the far side.
Cleves follows it into the central place of worship.
A dozen people turn to face them. At the head of the room is Queen Aragon, on a wheeled throne, her daughter, the Princess Tudor, standing on her right.
Howard is dressed regally in a gown of gold silk, more structured than the flowing gowns she used to favour.
Behind her stand two of her ladies. There are a handful of others: trusted servants, and a few representatives of the Feorwa Isles, here at Seymour’s invitation.
Howard’s smile when she sees Cleves is bright. At least one queen is still pleased to see her.
She takes a seat opposite Queen Aragon, twitching her rather bedraggled riding skirt into its proper place.
Seymour and Parr take their places, and finally Syndony leads Princess Elizabeth to the last chair.
Cleves notes the way Aragon and the Princess Tudor watch the little girl, with a hunger Cleves does not like.
“Now we are all finally here, perhaps we can begin,” Queen Aragon says, dragging her eyes away from the child.
“Won’t your king be suspicious? All his queens disappeared from their households?” one of the Feorwans says.
“One of my ladies-in-waiting is a passable mimic of me. She has taken my place in my absence,” Aragon says.
“My mother receives few visitors these days,” Princess Tudor adds, “so it is really only about having a presence …”
“Hush,” Aragon says, and the princess falls silent. The girl looks to the floor. Admitting her mother is no longer in favour with the nobility of Elben, or is too much an invalid to receive guests, will not be something Aragon would want this company to know. Cleves almost feels sorry for her.
“I am visiting my Lady Tylney’s family estate. She is in my confidence,” Howard says.
Parr raises an eyebrow. “And I live at Mathmas.” There is general laughter at this: there is a reason Cleves and Seymour fled there. It is the most unreachable and easily defendable of the queens’ castles.
“Very well,” Aragon says. “Let us—”
Cleves holds up a hand. She is teetering on the edge of a precipice. “May I speak a few words before we begin, sister?” she says.
Aragon looks as though she might object, but then she bows her head. “Of course, Queen Cleves. The floor is yours for as long as you need it.”
It is the most gracious thing Aragon has ever said to her.
She stands. What she is about to say is too important for a throne.
“I have been accused of being reticent,” she begins. She looks at each of the queens in turn, ensuring that she has their attention. She comes, last of all, to Seymour, and from her she does not look away.
“Perhaps I have been wary. I have wanted us to examine our plans before acting hastily. Many of you have been frustrated with me. I can understand that. But I hope that once I am finished speaking, you will understand me better too.
“Some of you may have heard of the Tilhepf – the Unrest?” she continues.
“I was seven. My father had just inherited the throne from his uncle, who was not a popular ruler. There was another noble, a very charismatic duke, who had an old claim to the throne through his maternal line, and he saw a chance to take the crown of Ezzonid.”
“The civil war,” Howard says softly.
“Yes, well, these things happen sometimes, as we know,” Cleves says, shrugging. Inwardly, she chides herself. She should not make light of this, even if sincerity makes the memories more painful.
“It was …” Cleves closes her eyes, but that only makes the images more vivid.
Maybe that’s what she needs. She has spent so long packing them away, burying them deep inside herself, and now they are rising, rising, like bloated bodies in a lake.
“We moved a lot. From place to place. The tide between the two forces – my father’s and the duke’s – kept switching.
The battle-lines kept being redrawn, sometimes so suddenly that we would be woken from our sleep in order to flee to safety, because the lodge we were staying in was about to be overrun.
Our allies changed constantly, so I never knew whether the lord who was hosting us would attempt to turn us over to the duke after supper.
“Sometimes my parents would leave us with one noble or other, so that we stood a chance of escaping should they be captured. But for the most part, my sister and cousins and I went where they went. My brother insisted upon fighting. I suppose it was his own inheritance he was fighting for.”
She breathes out. There is more that she could tell them about the soldiers’ boots and their laughter, but that is a story to be whispered, not declaimed.
“My point is that though our claim is sound, though Henry is the interloper, we are about to plunge Elben into civil war. Deposing a king is never clean, and it is never without bloodshed. Songs are sung of the Massacre of Pilvreen. Think of the songs they will sing about what is to come, and tell me I am wrong to be reticent.”
Silence falls across the space. A glittering silence that fills the building with dread.
Cleves tips her head back and stares up at the rafters.
In that moment, she can sense the history of the building.
It was indeed a holy place, for what is a holy place but a space where grief and joy can exist together in the presence of awe?
Parr stands. She takes Cleves’s hands, squeezes them, then turns to the others.
She addresses not their fellow monarchs, but those standing behind them.
“What Queen Cleves has so bravely said affects all of us, but we queens have the most to gain from victory. I believe that our way forward can only be accomplished with the blessing of those who will not win a throne. It is not too late for us to change course: we could all of us flee Elben, and leave it to Henry and Cernunnos.”
Aragon stirs. “You may flee, but I shall not. My daughter is owed her inheritance.”
Cleves wonders whether she knows that those are the words Boleyn might well have spoken were she still alive.
One of the Feorwans – taller and broader than Clarice next to them – steps forward. “We will throw in our lot with you, in the hope of a kinder future for our lands. You talk of bloodshed, Queen Cleves: Elben may have been free of it under the king’s rule, but Feorwa has seen plenty.”
Cleves suspects that less bloodshed is not all they hope for.
A weakened Elben in the wake of a civil war will, after all, be less able to keep hold of their colonies.
This is a play for independence. While the royal in her may baulk, the part of her that has sought for so long to build her own little fortress understands only too well.
Syndony raises a hand next, commanding attention with that simple gesture as though she too were a queen.
“My childhood was spent in the worst kind of penury. I have no parents, for they left me on the steps of a sanctuary when I was a babe. I learned at a tender age that Cernunnos is not merciful. I learned that nobility is not either, unless it can wring something from you. I found work as a washerwoman at Brynd, and I listened and I learned. I bore children and I raised them and I taught them to listen and to learn also. Forty years later, I became stewardess of Brynd, and not once did I hold any loyalty in my heart to anyone but my own family.”
Princess Elizabeth looks up at her. “Then mother.”
“That is right, little princess,” Syndony says, her voice softening.
“Then I met your mother. My point is, you have asked.” Cleves cannot ever imagine Syndony weeping, but the woman is blazing with unshed emotion now.
“You have asked, Queen Parr, Queen Cleves, as Queen Boleyn chose to ride to her death rather than force her people to fight for her. That secures my loyalty, and the loyalty of my people.”
The glittering stillness is with them, around them once more. Cleves can almost taste it – the feeling of the phoenix and its majesty, the sunlit glory of that memory.
“Well,” she says, her throat thick. “If we are agreed, then I have one final suggestion to make.”
“Go on,” Syndony says.
Cleves swallows. “We must let Henry find out that Seymour and I will be at High Hall.”
She raises her hands to quell the inevitable protests. “Listen to me, I beg of you. When Seymour and I almost killed Henry, he was triumphant at having found us out. I think it has become an obsession of his to prove that he will not be hoodwinked again by any of his wives.”
Aragon nods. “I can see that being true.”
Cleves continues: “We have fed him a believable lie about the binding cloths. He believes that spilling our lifeblood upon the cloths will secure his theft of Medren’s power. He has believed it because it appears to place us in great danger.”
“It does place us in great danger,” Aragon says. “If all does not go to plan, we all of us will have our throats cut before the nobility of Elben.”
“But he also knows that we need the binding cloths in order to separate ourselves from him. He will be at his most insecure that night,” Cleves says.
“The weakest part of our plan is that Seymour and I have no clear way of getting to our own cloths. We merely hoped that we would be able to reach them once the others are brought to the banqueting hall. But what if we were standing beside all of you? What if Mistress Syndony found a way of letting Cromwell know that Seymour and I are planning to infiltrate the ball in order to steal them?”
Parr seems to trace the plan with her fingers. “We make Henry think that he has triumphed. He thinks that the divine power will be entirely his with each queenly throat he cuts. He is already desperate to capture you both for your treachery. That desperation will blind him to our deceit.”
Howard leans forward. “I do not know if it is a double deception or a triple deception, but either way, I think it will work.”
Everyone turns towards Seymour. “If you say no, then it shall be a no,” Cleves says.
She cannot riddle Seymour’s expression. It is pregnant with … what? Praise? Desire? Whatever it is, she finds no doubt in it.
“It is a good plan,” Seymour says eventually.
Aragon taps the armrest of her throne. “Very well. We should all be returning to our households. We have already tarried too long.”
“Wait,” Howard says. She trips into the centre of the circle.
“I do not care if you think it silly. I want us all to take hands before we leave this place. The next time we see each other will be at High Hall and on the brink of victory or despair. But in this place of all places we ought to recognise our sisterhood.”
Cleves readily takes her hand. When did their little songbird grow so bold as to command her fellow queens?
One by one, the others follow. Parr, and then Seymour, facing Cleves in the circle.
And finally, her chair pushed by the Princess Tudor, Aragon.
She grips Cleves’s remaining hand with iron strength.
“Five united,” Cleves says, echoing the oracle’s words that brought Boleyn to their doors.
She thinks of Mary, to the east of the island, in her lonely castle at Brynd.
Poor, deluded woman, to set herself apart in such a way by betraying her own sister and denying the goddess who could give her so much more than a castle and a mere consort’s crown.
“Goddess. Medren,” Howard says, her eyes closed. “If you can hear me, shine your favour upon us. Know that we work to free you, and to return your land to you.”
The answer is almost instant. Aragon flinches, utters a little, “Oh”. To the rest of them, who have felt the divine power before, it is surprising but not shocking.
Cleves laughs to see the light – its purple-green-blue joined by oranges and pinks – dancing across her skin. Whenever she has witnessed Henry using his divine power, it has always seemed too raw, too childish. This feeling flowing through her is neither gentle nor aggressive.
To Cleves, it is the inevitability of the seasons – snowfall and the unfurling of spring.
To Howard, it is the tumble of Goldfoot through the air.
For Seymour, it is the muted roar of the ocean, or a waterfall.
Parr feels it in her core, a burst of ecstasy the like of which she has only experienced once in her girlhood with a man of charming danger.
And Aragon? For Aragon it is a silent predator, like the gealgena dragon housed inside the great tree at Daven, feeding and sustaining, feasting and sustaining.