Chapter Sixty-Four Howard
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Howard
Howard schools her features as Cleves and Seymour are thrust, still struggling, before her table.
She must be the rose without a thorn for a little longer.
A smooth and pretty object with fragile petals.
Something to be consumed, smelled, plucked and displayed.
Something with no way to protect itself from such treatment. Something with no other purpose.
Henry struts towards the two captured queens. His limp is barely visible, the bandage that must be around his thigh covered with hose of gold velvet.
Lord Brandon pushes Cleves to her knees, and Henry stands over her.
“Queen Cleves, if I had known you could look like this …” He raises eyebrows at the assembled courtiers, enjoying their laughter. Their gaze rakes across Cleves’s body. She holds her head high, and Howard tries not to let the pride show on her face.
Cleves smiles up at Henry. “Even if I had looked like this all along, I would still have found a way to avoid your touch, husband.”
Henry flushes. Cleves does not need to detail her deceit on their wedding night. All she needs to do is sow questions in the guests’ minds. Sometimes questions can be more destructive than answers.
“It matters not,” Henry says, attempting to regain his audience. He has not even glanced at Seymour: she is beneath even his words.
Cromwell, at one corner of the hall, begins to clap. The sound catches, and soon every courtier is applauding the arrests of the two traitor queens. Howard joins in, clapping more loudly than anyone else. Henry bows. “Here is the start of the remedy!” he shouts. Quiet resumes.
“There is a way to bolster the bordweal. To ensure the survival of Elben and of our people. A way to end the unrest in our great kingdom. I have given all I can to protect you,” Henry says. “Now it is time for my queens to do their duty.”
Howard grips the arms of her chair, steadying herself.
“How may we serve you, Your Majesty?” Mary Boleyn says.
“Not me: Elben.”
“My apologies.”
Henry goes to her, kissing the back of her hand as a sign of his forgiveness for her error.
“I can be stronger,” he says. “I can channel more of the divine power. But Cernunnos requires a sign of loyalty from my queens.”
Here it is.
“The blood of a Queen of Elben, spilt upon the binding cloth that ties her to me, and thereby to Cernunnos, will multiply my power tenfold. A hundredfold. Elben will be invincible.”
A stunned silence descends upon the hall. Not even Henry’s most loyal advisors can look up from the floor. Howard glances across at his sister. Cecilia is very still. No one, no one apart from Henry, is enjoying this moment.
Henry looks to the dais where his loyal queens are seated. “You know I love you all, my darling wives. But I am a king first and foremost. It is my duty to love my country more than life itself. Will you make this greatest of sacrifices for our kingdom?”
The very floorboards seem to hold a breath. There is no air in the hall.
This is her moment.
Howard forces herself to her feet. “I will be glad to serve my country and my king, Your Majesty.”
Parr stands next. “My life’s work is to be useful in all that I do. What greater use can I offer than this?”
Aragon takes Princess Tudor’s hand, gripping it tightly as she says from her seat, “As the first and most loyal of your queens, it is only right that I humble myself to further the glory of you and our country, my husband.”
Howard looks to Mary Boleyn, the only one of them who has not prepared for this moment.
Her sister was always the paler of them, but now Mary is ashen.
She was always the more substantial of the sisters, but now she is ghostly.
Her eyes flick from Henry to two children who stand among the guests, their fine cloth of gold garments marking them as royal children.
Mary’s children, from her first marriage, made royal through her second.
At last, she stands. “Whatever you wish, Your Majesty,” is all she is able to utter.
What a price to pay for a few moons of queenship.
Howard is led into a line. Cleves is pushed to her right, Parr to her left.
Lord Wolsey, old and shaking, emerges bearing a tray of six boxes.
The boxes containing the binding cloths.
Cleves cannot take her eyes off them, and Henry notices.
He sneers, comes close to her so that only she and Howard can hear.
“You thought you could steal yours, did you? I knew you would attempt it. Once again, I have outsmarted you, my lady. And the most delightful part of it is that your brother has washed his hands of you. Your death will not even be mourned in your own putrid country. My people will piss upon your grave, as they piss upon Isabet’s. ”
Howard has to stop herself from laughing. Powerful men and their need to be right. It makes them so very short-sighted. Howard cannot quite believe that she once thought him the cleverest man in the world.
The boxes are opened, one by one, and the velvet binding cloths are pulled from their innards and tied around the queens’ necks. Aragon’s is so old that it bears almost no resemblance to the vivid purple of Mary Boleyn and Seymour’s cloths.
In the rafters above them Goldfoot, set loose from his mistress, lets out a mournful cry.
Howard does not dare look at him lest it betray their secret, but she takes comfort from Cleves’s presence beside her.
She thinks of their conversation at the last Moon Ball.
Of the simple sentence that made Howard laugh delightedly.
Come, sister. Do not let them see that you are more than your beauty. It will confuse them.
She will not let them see. She is a little queen and a mighty songbird. She will keep her wings furled until the last moment.
Henry’s eyes are wet. There is nothing performative about it. As they all realised long ago, he believes himself a loving husband. He believes that what he must do for the sake of the kingdom is his sacrifice as much as theirs.
Cromwell hands him a silver knife, the blade glinting in dragonlight.
Henry holds it loosely, and Howard cannot work out whether he is genuinely doubting what he thinks he must do.
Maybe even he knows that if he kills all his queens – including those who he believes to be faithful – he will never again be able to see himself as a good husband.
“Your Majesty, may I beg you to take me first?” Howard says. Her voice is tremulous, the perfect pitch of sweet and terrified. Men like Henry tend to fall in love with a voice like that. Henry looks at her in astonishment.
“My queen? You wish for this?” he says.
“I am ashamed to say it, my liege, but I am scared that if I am not first I will not hold my mettle. I will humiliate myself.”
Keep those wings furled.
Henry nods, crying freely now. He kisses her, long and hungrily. Goldfoot caws from above.
“My rose without a thorn,” he says. He holds the knife up to Howard’s throat. Only Henry is close enough to hear Howard’s next words.
“Maybe one.”
Henry pauses. “What, my sweet?”
Howard puts her hands over his, smiling beatifically at him.
“I said, maybe just one thorn, Henry.”
She looks to the ceiling and her wings unfurl. Her voice rings throughout the hall like the tolling of a bell. “Now, Goldfoot! Now!”
In the pause before Henry exhales, Aragon and Parr pull the binding cloths from where they are wrapped around their necks like lovers’ hands, and toss them high into the air.
The lapdragon’s flame hits them at their zenith.
The purple velvet catches light like a firework, the cloth brittle from their long residence in those little boxes.
In the seconds between Henry’s confusion and his rage, Howard pulls at her cloth, and then Cleves’s, while Parr tears at Seymour’s. Henry roars, reaching for the fabric as it rises into the air. Goldfoot lets out another blast of flame, incinerating all of them.
The hall is full of noise, full of bodies rushing this way and that, full of orders being shouted and followed and ignored. Howard lifts her arm once more, calling Goldfoot back to her. He screeches, flitting like liquid through the air to his mistress’s side.
Henry spins to face her. She has never seen hatred so potent. The divine power is leaving him, dissipating into the air like mist. But it is not gone yet, and she is too newly freed, too fluttery, to be able to command it as she should.
“Oh, little rose,” he growls. “How I am going to rip your petals out.”
The chaos narrows to him and her. The vestiges of the divine power gather in his hands. He will choose to use it all on her if he must, even if it means he has none left for anyone else. She cannot outrun him. But at least she sang, at the end, her very own song.
He thrusts his hands towards her, and the power flashes from him. Inescapable. She will not close her eyes. She can be brave, as Boleyn was brave.
There is a shriek, high and familiar. A whip of iridescent colour, fleeting towards her, quicker than magic.
Goldfoot somersaults through the air. He spreads his wings before her, and the power of a vengeful god smites him in his beautiful, brave little heart.