Chapter Sixty-One Cleves
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Cleves
They travel in near silence, joining the large groups making their way to High Hall for the festivities.
The journey is more muted than Cleves remembers from previous years.
This will be her sixth Moon Ball. Despite her determination to never be too impressed by her new country, she still remembers the feelings of awe inspired by every one.
The Elbenese may be a strange people, but she cannot deny that they understand pomp, especially when it comes to their monarchs.
Even the most committed enemy of Elben could not fail to by moved by the Moon Balls’ spectacle.
None of them compared to last year’s, and Boleyn’s daring display of truth. In that moment, she understood why Seymour loved the woman. She understood that she herself could be more than simply the Queen of Cnothan. She was seduced by both idea and ideal. Fool that she was. Is.
Cleves also knows that when a monarch is threatened, they will do their utmost to give the impression of ultimate power.
So it is with this year’s Moon Ball. Despite the anxiety that hangs over those travelling to High Hall, from the nobility with their trains of carts, to the hired performers and the cooks and salesmen hawking their wares, it becomes clear that this ball is going to be the greatest in Elben’s history.
And if Cleves and the queens have their say, then it will be the most memorable. Possibly even the last.
For the first time in her life, Cleves does not enjoy her solitude during the journey.
With Lelij stowed safely back at Mathmas in the care of Parr’s household, she is truly alone for the first time in her life.
It had never occurred to her before that she was not a recluse by nature.
She had merely replaced people with animals.
They stop on the outskirts of the palace’s grounds, in sight of Cleves’s own old wing, which is just visible above the manicured orchards of her gardens.
Here there is a makeshift village set up next to a small fishing lake, where aspiring performers prepare.
Beside the tents, people take turns bathing in large wooden butts filled with warm water boiled from a local stream.
She washes herself in one such bath, then – while the rest of the makeshift camp sleeps – she lights a candle and sets to work on herself.
Her glasses are put to one side. She warms curling irons on the candle and sets her hair into waves.
Her telltale Ezzonid blouse is folded away in a bag and she dresses in Elben’s more fashionable full gown and sleeves.
When she has finished, she sits back and stares at herself in the hand mirror, her face clouded.
“There,” she says. “You do not look like yourself at all.”
Does she feel like herself? She no longer knows.
The Cleves who was a fixed point would not be in this position.
She once prided herself on being unapologetic.
Yet – was that her, or was it her armour?
Is this Cleves, the one who feels so raw, so open and so wounded – was this the real Cleves all along?
There is one more thing she must do.
Seymour’s tent is on the other side of the encampment, and there is still a candle burning inside.
Cleves stands outside it for what seems like an age, listening to the other woman moving around inside.
It is only when the bells of High Hall toll midnight that Cleves summons the courage to approach.
“I hardly recognise you,” Seymour says when she sees Cleves.
“I want to tell you something,” Cleves says, her back stiff, her face stiffer.
Seymour moves aside for Cleves to enter. The tent is bare except for a travelling bag and a thin mattress that can be rolled up and secured on the back. A lone candle flickers in one corner.
“What do you wish to tell me?” Seymour says, securing the tent shut and sitting on one end of the mattress. There is space for Cleves on the other end, but she has not been given permission.
Cleves is used to saying whatever will swing the balance of power in her favour.
She has a quip or a soft little barb for anything and anyone, king or commoner.
But that’s not what she must do here. If she wants Seymour – and oh, how she wants her – then she must hand that power over to her, willingly, in gilded paper.
“There is something that I did not tell the others at the Sanctuary of Litavis,” she says.
“I know,” Seymour replies. “You went to a memory, at the end, and your face shuttered.”
Cleves’s shoulders curve inwards.
“I have never spoken about this with anyone. Not even my siblings or my parents or Johana.”
“I understand.” Seymour is giving her permission to speak or be silent.
To speak would expose her soul, stabbed and bleeding, and invite further injuries. To be silent would strengthen the wall, fix her cement. Stand, or leap?
“One night during the Tilhepf, we were not quick enough to flee,” she says.
She holds Seymour’s gaze; a reminder of why she is doing this.
“The duke’s soldiers came upon the house where we were staying and rounded up my family in the banqueting hall.
I did not know it at the time, but my father’s troops were on their way.
He only needed to buy us time. The soldiers taunted him and Mother, telling them how they were going to kill my sister and me in front of them. ”
Seymour takes Cleves’s hands and kisses her knuckles. Cleves wants her to tell her not to go on.
“My father laughed at them. He told them that my sister and I were worth nothing to him. My mother joined in, made some comment about having girls that made the soldiers laugh. Soon, they were exchanging quips – barbed, still dangerous, but the soldiers were less likely to kill us. They said they would wait for the duke to arrive and give them orders. It bought us enough time.”
“So the soldiers did not …?”
“Not to me,” Cleves says. She does not mention the other bargain her mother made with the soldiers, or the sounds Cleves was forced to hear from the antechamber next to the banqueting hall, and how she grew to understand what they meant as she learned about the different violences that people could enact upon one another. That is not Cleves’s anguish to share.
“It was all a ploy, of course,” Cleves says. “But it worked. My parents told us, once we were safe again, that it was an act. That act saved our lives that night. It was a lesson to me, and I have never forgotten it.”
Seymour smooths a stray lock of hair away from Cleves’s face. She kisses the teardrop clinging to Cleves’s eyelash. “I am not a soldier,” she whispers.
She kisses Cleves’s cheek. “I am not going to hurt you.”
She kisses Cleves’s mouth, long and soft. “If you want me, I am yours. But if you want me, you must be mine too.”
Cleves makes a sound in the back of her throat, her hands tightening around Seymour’s waist. She starts to cry in earnest then, great wracking sobs that she cannot hide.
Seymour cradles her head to her chest. Cleves is making Seymour’s bodice wet, but she cannot stop.
Twenty-five years of tears are pouring out of her, and she cannot find the right joke to make them subside.
All she can do is bury her face against the woman she loves, like a drowning sailor clinging to driftwood.
Seymour lets her cry until she feels wrung out. When Cleves can command her words again, she wipes her nose on the back of her hand and says in a thick voice, “My apologies. I felt the lake outside was looking a little dry.”
Seymour chuckles. “You are doing it again.”
“Well, we cannot both be angry queens.”
“Not all the time, no.”
Cleves looks up at the woman who has endured so much hardship and yet is still able to hand her heart to another so freely, knowing that it might be crushed. Cleves runs a hand down Seymour’s beautiful, beautiful cheek, her brown skin peppered with darker freckles.
“There is something else I came here to do,” she says.
Seymour raises an eyebrow. “That is very forward of you.”
“Not that.”
Cleves dips a hand into her pocket and pulls out the little cushion Johana gave to her in his dying moments. The phoenix feathers that cap each dress pin glimmer in the candlelight.
“Do you know what these are?” she says.
Seymour shakes her head. Her hand hovers over the pins, not daring to touch them. “I saw them and knew they were precious, but you did not wish to talk about them.”
Cleves tells Seymour about the phoenix, about the tradition of the royal family of Ezzonid, and how her sister Sybil was granted a single, priceless feather.
“I did not know what she had done with it until I saw these,” Cleves explains. “I imagine it was my mother’s idea. She always had a talent for making precious things appear worthless.”
She and Seymour possess hundreds of dress pins, of course.
Even the lowliest of nobles do. Even a peasant might own a dozen, for pinning coifs and hoods or securing belts.
Those on the hunt for a feather of mighty power would look to brooches, or rings – not a common dress pin, intended to be invisible.
“Now I see where you get your own talent for disguise,” Seymour says.
Cleves touches the tips of the phoenix feathers, feeling the warmth radiating from them. More than a decade separated from the bird, and they still have something of its heat.
“There is an old tale told about phoenix feathers, in my country,” she says. “No one knows if it is true, of course. Probably it is not.”
“Tell me.”
“It is said that they who wear the feather of a phoenix in its entirety, freely given by bird or hand, shall never come to harm.”
She tips the cushion into Seymour’s palm. Seymour catches her breath.
“Cleves, no—”
“Your life is worth more to me than anything else.”
The cushion lays there on Seymour’s open palm, as though she is afraid to claim it.
“I have already lost one woman I loved,” Seymour says. “And my love for her is nothing compared to my love for you. What would I do if …?”
Cleves wipes away her tears. “You will continue to shine, Seymour. You and your brightness. It blinds me.”
Seymour rubs her cheek against Cleves’s hand. “A sun cannot blind another sun.”
Cleves’s heart skips a beat.
“My angry queen. You could rip me to shreds.”
Seymour claims her mouth, and there is no softness in it this time. This time, they are two dragons, marking their territory. Cleves tears at Seymour’s bodice, then slips her hands beneath her shift and finds the spot that makes Seymour’s legs buckle.
Seymour groans. “And you could burn me to ashes, my sunlit queen. Let us warm each other instead.”
There are no more words. There is only their bodies. Parr was right. Boleyn was right. Sometimes, stepping over the cliff’s edge is the only way to live.