Chapter Eleven Cleves
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Cleves
Everything has its place at Cnothan. It may not seem that way, on account of all the animals, but even the animals know where they are allowed and where they are forbidden. It is the same with things: each letter in Cleves’s study is carefully stowed in a particular order.
It is the same with people. Johana belongs in Ezzonid. Cleves in Cnothan. Seymour in the sunscína: visible but untouchable.
It’s always the people who cause problems with the order, never the animals.
Johana has come here and is making no move to return to his proper country.
And Seymour: Seymour has seemingly vanished.
It bothers Cleves, in as much as she ought to know where Seymour is for her own safety.
Not because she takes any particular interest in that woman’s wellbeing.
“Something is troubling you,” her lover says from her position between Cleves’s legs.
“Forgive me,” Cleves says, sitting up. Her lover, Lady Arundell, kisses her way up Cleves’s body. Cleves tries to lose herself in the sweetness of it, burying her hand in the woman’s hair.
“Your hair is the colour of the sun, did you know that?” Cleves says, letting her head fall back to provide easier access to her neck.
Arundell bites her gently as thanks for the compliment.
It is unexpectedly fierce for the usually pliant Arundell, and it makes her think of Seymour tearing and sawing at her own gown with a crone’s tooth.
“I have lost you again,” Arundell says, pulling away from her. She is not one for petulance, but her lips are pursed. Cleves grasps the back of her head and pulls her in for a kiss, enjoying the taste of her own desire on Arundell’s tongue. But Arundell places a hand on her chest.
“Talk to me,” she says. “Let me be your secret-keeper, Cleves.”
“What could be more secret than our assignations?” Cleves says, turning her attention to Arundell’s bare shoulder.
She strokes the branch of bone that runs just beneath the skin.
“Does it make me very strange that I can be so attracted to such parts of a body?” she says.
“This bone here, and then here, and here …” She kisses the shoulder bone, then the rivets beneath Arundell’s neck, and then down to the jut of her hips.
“Cleves,” Arundell says. It is a command. Cleves sits up, ignoring the way Arundell reaches for her. They have always had an easy tactility, but Cleves has known this moment was coming. It always does.
“I have never misled you,” she says.
“I know.”
“We are both married.”
Arundell fumbles her way through the coverlets to bridge the distance between them. “I am not asking for a proposal, my queen. You know that is not what I am asking.”
Cleves hears laughter, then. Laughter and the stamp of armour, coming ever closer.
“You can tell me anything,” Arundell says. She places a hand on Cleves’s cheek, and for a moment Cleves is almost tempted. But friendship is harder, far harder, to extricate oneself from than lust.
“I have much business to attend to,” she says, climbing out of bed and pulling on her stays. Arundell pulls the coverlets across her naked body. She tries to laugh, but it’s a hollow sound.
“Cernunnos forbid you ask your court to do anything.”
“You know how particular I am. Trust me, it is easier for everyone if I do it myself,” Cleves says. She steps into her skirt and then pulls the bodice over her head. The strings are tangled, though, and even with her dexterous fingers she cannot find a way to pull it tight at the back.
“Let me,” Arundell says. She climbs off the bed and stands behind Cleves, naked. Her breath is warm upon Cleves’s arms as she works her way through the knots.
“It is safer this way,” Cleves says into the silence.
“And that is all you want? Safety?”
Cleves almost laughs, except she knows that Arundell might take that as derision. The question is stupid. “Of course. Is it not what we all wish for?”
Arundell finishes undoing the knots and begins to pull at the strings. The boning tightens around Cleves’s ribs and waist – plank after plank of scaffolding to prop her up, to protect her.
“There,” Arundell says at last. “You are all armoured.” The nightingale’s song is inside her words.
“My thanks, my lady,” Cleves says. She cannot turn around, though she knows she should. She must give her lover the respect of a proper farewell.
“My husband returns from the north tomorrow,” Arundell says. Cleves smiles at the floor, closes her eyes. The sweet woman knows what she needs from her, and has given it to her as a final gift. She turns and takes both of Arundell’s hands in her own.
“Will you be meeting him at High Hall?” she asks.
“Yes, I think he’ll appreciate that.”
Cleves casts around for something to give Arundell that is just for her; not something her husband can claim. She keeps a small chest on a cabinet in the corner of her bedroom. She unlocks it and surveys the jewels within.
“Have I told you of my country’s superstitions around gems?” she asks, running a hand across the pieces.
“No.”
“It is a remnant of our old religions. It was said that certain powerful creatures, sometimes even gods, lived in jewels, and their divine powers run through them. Protection for topaz, lightning in diamonds, and so on. The brighter the jewel, the stronger the godly power.”
She lands upon a simple, large amethyst, set in a pendant surrounded by diamonds. Perfect.
“You do not believe it?” Arundell says.
“To believe it would be blasphemy against Cernunnos, would it not?” Cleves says. She drapes the necklace around Arundell’s neck so that the pendant rests upon her clavicle.
“What godly power does amethyst have, then?” Arundell says, her hand resting on the jewel.
Cleves smooths her lover’s hair over the chain. This is the last time she will perform such an intimate act with Arundell.
“Healing,” Cleves says. “Healing and good health.”
Arundell half sobs, half laughs. “Does it heal every ailment? Even heartbreak?”
“I hope so,” Cleves says.
Johana is waiting for her in her study, his booted feet resting on her desk.
“Grutzch,” she curses when she sees him.
“Good morning to you too, cousin.”
“No,” she says. She slaps his feet off her desk. “I do not want you here, Johana.”
“That hurts my feelings.”
She pushes him out of her chair, which is no small task given he is so much larger than her.
“I do not care. I did not invite you to Elben. I did not invite you to Cnothan. I do not want this.”
“What do you want, then?”
He is being infuriatingly calm with that little smirk he is so fond of wearing.
“I want to be alone. I just want—” She gestures at her surroundings, her perfectly neat study and the courtyards outside her window, populated by animals and as few servants as she can manage. “I want to be with my pets, and my work, in my castle, by myself.”
Johana considers this. “Very well, cousin. I will give you some peace.”
“Thank you.”
“I merely came to deliver some excellent news,” he says.
Her heart skips a beat. Has Seymour been seized?
“Enlighten me then,” she says.
“Our two countries are to become closer than ever. Your husband and brother have signed a new treaty of enduring friendship between Elben and Ezzonid.”
“I see,” Cleves says. She eyes a bowl at the edge of her desk that she rather wants to throw at a wall. “That is excellent news indeed. And does this treaty involve more than pretty words of friendship?”
Johana waves a hand airily. “Oh, some warships and a few dozen war dragons. And in exchange we receive favourable trading routes through Elbenese waters and a good price on the exquisite crystal that is so prevalent in this meagre little island.”
Warships and dragons. Henry is planning further conquest then – the question is: over his queens, or over other countries? Or both?
“You do not seem to be as happy as I might expect,” Johana says, his head tilted.
“I am merely surprised that no one thought to inform me of these negotiations,” Cleves says.
“Ah, the same way you do not think to inform your relatives of, well, anything?” Johana retorts. They are both speaking lightly, like children walking across ice.
“What do you suppose I should be informing you of? How large my prize sow’s litter was last month? Where I source my wine?”
“Queen Aragon tells all to her country’s diplomats.”
Cleves bites her lip. She knows from her butterflies that Henry had made overtures towards Quisto – a new alliance between them – and that Queen Aragon’s royal nephew had refused all negotiations.
At the time she had assumed it was merely because Quisto believed it had the strength to take Elben when the time was right.
Now she wonders: is it because Aragon, that damned prideful woman, had asked her nephew not to?
“We cannot stand by you if we do not know we must,” Johana says, looking at her directly at last. Cleves’s heart is pounding too fast, but she does not let her smile slip.
“I will keep that in mind, cousin, if I ever have something to share that might be considered of interest. Now, if you please.”
He salutes her smartly, then shuts the door behind him. Cleves growls as she sits. His boots have left dirt on her lovely desk. Lelij mewls from his bed in the corner of the room, and she pats her leg so that he knows he can curl up against it as she works.
“Why does everyone want to be friends so suddenly?” she asks the gargoyle. He snorts.
“Precisely. It is tiresome,” she says.
She tries to lose herself in her work: to push aside Johana’s pointed comments, and the news that her kingly brother now has more reason to be loyal to her husband than he does to her.
She tries not to think of the fallen queen who is missing across an ocean, and all the many treasons she might confess if seized.
For a while, she is able to forget. There are dozens of letters containing nothings that require answers containing equal amounts of nothings.
There are accounts and receipts and invoices that must be paid, for she has never been indebted to anyone and is damned if she’ll let a moon pass without paying her bills.
The people she employs need the money far more than she.
There is a report from her master of husbandry into the crone that has taken up residence near the Fietherford, and another from her steward outlining the costs of renovating the castle’s stables.
She usually finishes reading her correspondence before inviting more, but this morning she lays a handful to one side to make space for her paper and inkwell.
She does not address the letter, for it will not be delivered by any of the usual methods, and it is better if no one knows the intended recipient, should it be intercepted.
Please you to set your butterflies upon Lady Arundell, as you did Lady Paston. I will compensate accordingly.
She pauses. Should she ask what she wants to ask? Surely the recipient will already be hunting for information. She would have heard if there was any news. To ask outright would be to show her cards.
She closes the letter and warms the wax to seal it. A single droplet falls upon the parchment before Cleves sets aside the heated wax in its brass cup, and opens the letter once more.
Have you heard news of our mutual friend from the east? I am concerned by their silence.
“You’re a fool,” she mutters to herself as she closes the letter once more and presses a blank seal into the wax with such force that it splatters.
Lelij grunts again at her feet.