Chapter Eight Cecilia
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cecilia
It’s not that she wants to hurt the panther.
She’s not a monster. In fact, she had rather hoped to transfer the creature’s affections to her, with time and food.
She is adept at achieving such switches in loyalty: anything can be bought for the right balance of love and cruelty.
But she never wanted it scarred. Scarred pets are so unsightly.
But she needs to understand the woman Seymour, and her usual methods are not working.
The first day she brought Seymour back to her palace, tied and gagged, she attempted friendliness – their common ground as women, as queens.
It did not work. She tried starving the girl of light as well as sustenance, locking her in an old well deep in the palace’s cellars. Still, Seymour said nothing.
Then it was time to bring out the needles. Broad wounds, deep wounds, hot or ice-covered needles. Even one tipped with a poison that makes its recipient hallucinate horrors. Still, silence.
It would be admirable if it were not so frustrating.
There is nothing else for it. She has the doctrini bring the panther to the dungeon where Seymour is shackled.
It struggles against its chains, thrashing like a demon.
By the time the doctrini has secured it to the wall opposite Seymour, it has struck four lines across his face.
As the man retires, straining beneath a bag of gold coin, Cecilia approaches the muzzled beast.
The panther bares his teeth at her. She bares her teeth back.
Cecilia goes to her needle collection, laid out on a simple wooden table in Seymour’s view.
“You love her, don’t you?” she says to the beast. It growls again, every muscle in its body tense.
“The more pertinent question is – does she love you?”
Seymour stirs, her bruises delightfully purple against her brown skin. One of her eyes is swollen shut; a regrettable loss of control. Cecilia is usually more delicate in her persuasions.
Cecilia selects a slender steel needle, one she sometimes uses for making kid gloves or hidden pockets. Then she opens a chest filled with bottles, each one stoppered and waxed.
“Did Henry ever talk to you of the games we played together as children?” She raises the needle so that Seymour can see it clearly.
“My sister and I were taught embroidery, of course. From time to time, Henry would join us. He would bring me things that he wanted me to embroider. A mouse. One of his songbirds. A quiet little serving girl.”
It is untrue, of course. Henry did no such thing, but it is useful to see how Seymour will take this information. Her lack of reaction is surprising. What an ingrate, to turn on the man who has only ever been generous to a fault.
“Did he embroider you from time to time, Lady Seymour?” she asks. “Or did he just prick?”
“Whatever he did, he never spoke of you,” Seymour says, and though her voice is measured there’s a spark in her eyes that Cecilia rather enjoys.
“No, I don’t imagine he did. I am the family’s shame, you see. Rather like you are your family’s shame.”
“The difference being that I killed my brother, and you are still ruled by yours,” she says.
Cecilia laughs. She bounces on her tiptoes.
“Did you? No one told me that. Which brother? No, do not tell me; I will guess. It was the snivelling one, wasn’t it? The eldest. Oh, what was his name?”
“Edward.”
Cecilia points the needle at Seymour. “Edward. Yes. I only met him once but I wanted so badly to put my hands around his skull and just …”
She mimes cracking a man’s head. Seymour’s eyes shutter. Ah well, for a brief moment she provoked a reaction.
Cecilia holds up the bottle.
“This is an extract brewed from the leaves of the portesia tree. Do you know what effect it has when it is placed just beneath the skin?”
Seymour raises her head. “Have you not realised by now that hurting me gains you nothing?”
“Indeed I have.” Seymour follows Cecilia’s eyes to the panther. She pales, but says nothing. A pathetic attempt at pretending she doesn’t care.
“Portesia sap has a curious effect when touched. It leaves no mark on the skin. Or fur. But an icy fire brews beneath. The kind where you feel as though you will never be warm again. Put enough on and it burrows deeper still, through every muscle and organ, gripping them in a deadly frost.”
Cecilia goes to the window and pulls the shutter aside, holding the bottle against the bone window until the wax securing the cork drips onto the floor like blood, warmed by the lava outside.
The other woman’s panic fills the chamber like smoke.
At last, she has found the key to unlocking the truth.
It will just take a little more pinching of the heart, and the door will spring open.
She pulls the stopper from the bottle and, careful not to let any of the tincture touch her own hands, dips the needle into it, shaking gently to rid it of any excess. The panther, as if aware of what is about to happen, growls at her even as it cowers.
“Such a magnificent beast. I think the back of the neck to start, don’t you?”
Seymour straightens. “If you hurt him, you will never be able to claim him as yours.”
Cecilia continues to circle the panther. “You underestimate me at every turn. A good play, though, my lady. I applaud the attempt.”
In one swift movement, Cecilia springs onto the panther’s back, wedging one knee at the top of his neck, the other pinning him on his side. She takes hold of his scruff, readying the needle. The creature whimpers, his tail lashing ineffectively.
“What do you want to know?” Seymour says. “I will tell you. Please do not hurt him.”
Cecilia is tempted to insert the needle anyway, just to teach the woman a lesson, but on this occasion her desire for knowledge is greater than her desire for power. She lifts the needle but does not yet rise. The panther continues to whimper beneath her.
“Why were you visiting the Hleaws?” she asks.
“I follow their religion.”
“Is that why you left Elben? Because you turned heathen?”
“I would not expect someone like you to understand.”
“Born royalty, you mean?”
“I mean Henry’s sister.”
“The king’s sister, ordained by God.”
Seymour smirks. The last time someone looked at Cecilia like that, she sewed their eyes shut.
“Have a care,” Cecilia says, passing the poisoned needle between her fingers like a coin trick. “Tell me what you are not telling me.”
The panther whines again, and Seymour’s bravado is punctured.
“What have you been told about Queen Boleyn’s death?” she asks.
“Many things.” Cecilia doesn’t want to admit that everything she has been told has felt wrong in some way, even in More’s missives.
“Have you been told that she leapt to her own death?”
“I have.” She does not say that of all the things she had been told – execution, magic, the power of Cernunnos, at Henry’s hand – this had seemed the unlikeliest cause of death. Cecilia cannot fathom anyone throwing away their own life.
“She did so because she discovered something about the true nature of the bordweal.”
“Tell me.”
Seymour looks at her panther, lying submissive beneath Cecilia’s knee.
“Boleyn and I came to understand that the god we’d worshipped all our lives – Cernunnos – was an imposter.
The true power of the bordweal comes not from him, or any king, but from the goddess Medren and from the six queens.
The palaces of Elben were built long before High Hall, and whichever women command them command the bordweal.
Your brother is using the power of the goddess – through his queens – to wage war on the world and to make himself invincible.
The truth is, without his queens he would be nothing. ”
Cecilia leans forward, examining Seymour’s expression. She can find no sign of deception.
“Who knows about this?” she says.
“Only Boleyn and me,” Seymour replies, a little too quickly for Cecilia to credit it. Still, she lets that lie go for now. She has greater questions to ask.
“You say my brother knows that his power is based on a lie.”
“Oh, he knows.”
Cecilia doesn’t have to wonder how long Henry has known for. She knows precisely when he was told.
“So you went to the Hleaws because they worship this goddess you say is the true source of the bordweal’s power?” Cecilia says, rising and going to the window, trying to think clearly.
“Yes.”
“No.” Cecilia rounds on the prisoner. “Do not mistake my getting up to mean that your beast is no longer in danger. You were seeking allies.”
“Yes.”
Cecilia comes close to Seymour now. Her heart is pounding in a particular way: the way it does when she fucks in the audience chamber, hoping for someone to see her; the way it does when she perfects a particularly difficult stitch.
“And this goddess. She contains the power of the bordweal. And whoever commands one of her palaces will command the power of a goddess? With no need to marry him?”
Seymour stiffens in understanding. She cannot bring herself to say yes, but she doesn’t have to.
Cecilia laughs. She tosses the poisoned needle into the air, not caring where it lands, and spins, arms outstretched, to the door of the dungeon.
Flinging it open, she speaks to the guard outside: “Commandeer a ship immediately.”
The guard bows. “To go where, Your Majesty?”
“To return to my homeland, imbecile.”
She turns, drinking in the hunch of Seymour’s shoulders. “I’m going to get myself a palace.”