Chapter Sixty-Five Cecilia
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Cecilia
He was such a sweet boy. This is all Cecilia can think as she witnesses Henry watching his youngest queen cradling the body of her lapdragon. That sneer, those red cheeks: they are not her brother’s.
He was such a sweet boy, always protecting her and her sister.
She does not recognise the man before her.
Or she does. He has turned into the other brother. The one who was supposed to have died. And she does not know when the transformation began. She has never been the sort to freeze in the face of adversity, but she freezes now, only able to watch, while all around her is movement.
Mary Boleyn pulls the cloth from around her neck and rushes to her children, standing too close to the violence, and covers their eyes.
Her binding cloth lies discarded on the floor, trampled beneath panicked feet.
Aragon is wheeling herself towards the door while Princess Tudor and Queen Parr fumble to untie Seymour and Cleves’s bindings.
Well, well, well. What clever women. Cecilia could never have conceived of so many of them conspiring. If she had a heart, she would find it touching.
Something of the old Cecilia winds through her. She has spent the last few days forgetting herself. It is time for Queen Cecilia to rise again.
Cromwell is directing soldiers to intercept Aragon, but Cecilia runs towards her brother.
He has launched himself upon Howard, pinning her to the ground.
The body of her pet lies beside her. Cecilia wonders why he does not use the divine power upon the little queen as he did her dragon. She is a mere chit, after all.
As she gets closer, she sees that they are tussling for the knife that should have already slit the girl’s throat.
“Oh,” she says, coming to a halt.
A thread of gold-pink-blue winds around the couple’s hands. Yet the divine power is not aiding Henry. His eyes flicker between Howard and the threaded light, and sweat sheens upon his brow. The power is not helping him; it is helping her.
The hunger takes Cecilia.
“Brother, allow me,” she says. She rips through their conjoined fingers, takes hold of the knife. Howard fumbles for the weapon, and Cecilia dances out of her reach.
“Give it to me, sister,” Henry says, his eyes alight.
Cecilia spins the knife. It is very slender. Not so different from a needle.
She pounces. Howard screams as Cecilia pins her down with one arm and with the other holds the knife to her throat.
“Shall I do your blood ritual for you, brother?” she asks Henry.
He prowls. She and he are the same in so many ways. She does not know how to feel about that. It once would have thrilled her.
“He will never give you your crown,” Howard says, struggling against Cecilia’s grasp.
No divine power surrounds her now. Cecilia glances around the hall.
Most of the courtiers have scattered, blocking the entrance as they flee.
Mary Boleyn and her children are nowhere to be seen.
The remaining queens are surrounded by royal soldiers.
Seymour stands before Cleves like a shield.
They should be on their knees, but there is no hint of surrender in their stances. Instead, they are surrounded by light. It gathers like a storm around them. It is the bordweal, flocking to protect its true mistresses.
“It is time,” Henry says not to Cecilia, but to Charles Brandon, standing to her right.
Brandon grimaces. “Your Majesty, we have not—”
“It. Is. Time.”
Henry flexes his fingers, and a little of his remaining power glows around his fists. Cromwell disappears through the door behind the dais.
“Even if you kill us, people know the truth now,” Howard says.
Henry sneers at her. “An old truth is nothing. You want a new religion, little rose? Then I will give you one.”
The doors behind the dais open. Cecilia spins around, bringing Howard with her, and witnesses the most monstrous being she has ever seen loping across the threshold, its eyes red, its teeth bright.
The beast is as big as two men, and though its shape is human, little else about it is.
Its arms are too long for its body, and they end in claws sharp as knives.
It is covered in rusty scales, patched and painful, raw as though it once had skin that has flaked away.
Along its spine several horns erupt, bone-white and tipped with poisonous green.
The face is the most unsettling part of it: it has the muzzle of a brute, but its ears are shell-like, human.
It roars again, that same sound she heard the night More sacrificed himself. The roar of the crone.
She knows those eyes.
“What have you done?” Cecilia whispers.
They have forged a crone from the bones of the man she once adored. But this is a different kind of crone. They will need to find a new name for this horror.
“Kill the women,” Henry shouts. Not the queens. The women.
The beast that was More surveys its targets, its eyes coming to rest upon Cecilia and Howard. The creature bares its teeth and snarls.
In some part of her, Cecilia has known how this will end since the day she found Arthur’s book – with the space inside for his favourite instruments of torture – inside Henry’s rooms. She knows what she must do.
She pushes Howard away and flings herself at her brother. They topple together to the floor.
It is not Henry she grapples with. Not the beloved brother who protected her, day after day. It is the other one, the older one. The one who liked to pull her hair out and burn her toys.
Their tussle is frantic. All around them courtiers flee the monster that was Bishop More, and the plight of their king is lost in the pursuit of their own survival. If she tries hard, she can imagine they are children once more, play-fighting in the nurseries of High Hall.
He bears down on her, his mouth pursed with effort. His hand closes around her wrist and slams it against the oak floor. Pain shoots up her arm, but she does not let go of the knife. She knows pain, and she can bear it. She is a woman, after all.
She brings her leg up hard against his groin.
His weight slacks, and she uses the momentum to swivel them over, so she is on top. She kneels upon his chest. It is obscene. She likes that. She likes that this final humiliation should be so shocking.
“Sister,” he says. She pauses. Is her Henry returned? But no – from the corner of her eye, she spies him reaching for a cudgel, dropped by some panicked guard.
He thinks to use her heart against her? Oh, what a foolish boy he is.
The knife slides into his neck, between his spine and the tender hardness of his gullet. For a fleeting moment, she sees the boy he once was. Then he is gone, and all she sees is Arthur’s hatred.
“Goodbye, brother,” she whispers, kissing him on the lips as the strength ebbs from him.
She stands and raises the bloody knife. “The king is dead!” she shouts.
Time itself seems to pause. The chaos of the hall ebbs.
She addresses the beast, its claws hanging with gore. “Stop, More. Come to me now. I am the Tudor line.”
She is beautiful. She is magnificent. She shall be king and queen both. She wields the knife as she would a needle.
Why is the beast not obeying her? Why are Cromwell and Wolsey and Brandon – especially Brandon, who she could make her consort if he plays his cards right – exchanging glances? As though they have a secret that she does not.
“Someone bring me Mary Boleyn,” she says.
If she gives enough orders, they will accept her as their leader.
She will kill Mary Boleyn, and take the Palace of Brynd for herself, and from there work out how to expand her control over the rest of the island.
Now she has saved Howard, the other queens will have to accept her.
As one, the men shrug off their robes. Cromwell does so willingly; Wolsey is slowest of all.
Cecilia stamps her foot. “Why are you not listening to me?” she shouts.
Brandon rips his shirt down the front, revealing a stomach taut from long hours in the saddle and in bed. “I am sorry, my lady,” he says.
The men curl inwards. They convulse. They grow, like smoke and rage, welts wriggling across their backs. When they stand, there is not one beast, but four in the banqueting hall. Their scaled bodies reek of musk. Their eyes are the only remnants of the humans they once were.
“Brandon,” she says, keeping her voice steady. “Brandon, I order you—”
The creature springs towards her, fixing his jaws around her waist. His teeth puncture her beautiful gown, ruining the embroidery she laboured so long over. Pearls scatter across the floor as he shakes.
Don’t they understand? She is a queen, goddamn them. She is a queen.