Chapter Thirty-Two Howard
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Howard
Howard can barely control her excitement as she presses her sunscína and waits for the other queens to appear.
They will be so pleased, tell her that she is brilliant, the best of them, how could they have doubted her.
She has secured the only survivor who might be able to tell Henry that Seymour was aboard that wrecked ship.
She has bought them safety, for a little longer.
But Cleves is the only one who appears.
“I think it is just you and I, sister,” she tells Howard. “I am told that Aragon and Parr are playing host to some of Henry’s closest advisors. Wolsey and Cromwell and the like. Perhaps they are not as resourceful as you when it comes to avoiding detection.”
Howard appreciates the compliment, but cannot help but be disappointed. She had hoped to reveal her rescue of Florin to all of them. Even Aragon, surely, must be impressed by her daring. Still, Cleves will make a most gratifying audience.
“I have done something that I think you will like,” she says. Cleves smiles when she tells her of her experiment with the sunscína. She bites her lip when she relays what she heard of the survivor from Cecilia’s ship. But when Howard talks of her rescue of Florin, Cleves’s expression darkens.
“In any case, I have him in my holding now,” Howard says, her voice smaller than she had intended. She rocks in her seat, unsure why Cleves is silent.
Eventually Cleves speaks: “Did you not consider the danger, Howard?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Did you not think that it might have been better to send word to the rest of us? I have people in Sweillan who could have conspired to rescue this boy without any suspicion falling upon you.”
“There was no time – Cromwell’s men were at the door. We fought our way past them when we left.”
Cleves’s eyes widen. “Did they survive?”
“Well …” She is no murderer. She only wished to escape.
Cleves rubs her face. “I will see to it that no suspicion falls upon you. I will employ my resources to talk of another young woman seen heading north with the prisoner. That should allay any misgivings about you.”
Howard swallows. “I thought you would be pleased with me.”
Only a few moments ago Cleves had praised her, called her clever, but if she truly believed that why does she dismiss her now?
“I can protect myself,” Howard says.
“Yes, clearly.”
Howard flinches. Cleves sighs. “There is just so much to be done, sister. I did not expect this surprise.”
“What more can we do?” Howard says. “Tell me and I will help.”
“I have it in hand.”
Howard grows hot. She is still bruised and aching from her adventure, and yet she is here and the others are not. She has done something, at least. Yes, it may have been rash, but at least it was something.
“Are you not lonely?” she whispers. “Are you not so terribly lonely, sister? Because I am.”
Cleves stares at her.
“I know what you all think of me,” Howard says. “I know that none of you enjoy my company. But you said something to me at the Moon Ball. Do you remember?”
Cleves nods. “I remember.”
“Your words – they altered my life’s path. Without your words, I would not be here. I would not have joined the dance that night, and I would not have joined Boleyn. But ever since that night, you have disappointed me, sister.”
The smile that is never far from Cleves’s lips falters. Any jest she had been about to make falls away. Her walls are built and are crumbled in the same moment. Then it is back, that dancing smirk.
“I disappoint many people,” Cleves says. “And yet somehow I have learned to live with myself.”
“Do you? Or do you stagnate?”
Howard should not be talking in this way.
“A fiery queen,” Cleves says, and whistles.
“Stop that,” Howard says, and the frustration is so great that she stamps her foot. “Stop throwing me crumbs of appreciation that mean nothing!”
The two queens stare at each other, an impasse reached. Howard realises that she is crying. Of course she is, child that she is. But the tears keep coming.
Into the silence, Cleves presses a hand to the sunscína. “We must find the binding cloths,” she says. She is gentle, but firm, ignoring the fact that Howard is openly weeping.
“Why?”
“I believe they hold the key to freeing us from Cernunnos’s control.”
Of course. Now that Cleves has said it, it seems obvious. It is the one ritual that tied the queens to their king. If the cloths are destroyed, then perhaps the bond will be also.
“They are kept at High Hall, are they not?” Howard says.
“They are, sister. But we have little hope of finding where unless …”
They smile at each other. Cleves has left the sentence unfinished for Howard: “Unless the king intends to marry again.”
She and Ursula follow the path into the woods near Plythe that afternoon, telling the guards that they are hunting for fresh blackberries. A girlish hunt.
But they do not find blackberries. Instead, they find a woodsman’s ruined hut, and a boy upon a truckle bed.
The hut is little more than four cragged walls, the thatch roof and its timbers having succumbed to rain and rot long ago.
Florin is shivering inside it, but he is alert, and he makes an attempt at a bow when he sees them.
“I will leave you alone,” Ursula says, raising her basket to indicate that she will look for fruit by herself.
Howard looks towards Florin, feeling suddenly uncertain. Cleves thinks she has been stupid.
She knows it is a risk, of course she does. But something beyond her ability to put into words tells her it was a risk worth taking. That it is a risk Boleyn would have taken.
And look where that led Boleyn.
“I think you’re a good person,” she says, more to herself.
He frown-smiles. “Is that a compliment or a question?”
Howard approaches. “The brilliance of Elbenese humour is that you will never know.”
“Well, that sounds like a recipe for anxiety.”
Florin’s expression turns thoughtful a moment later.
“I think you are a good person too,” he says.
“I try to be.”
“Do you believe in true love?”
The question is so unexpected that Howard stutters, worried she has given him the wrong impression.
He would not be the first man to declare himself when she had not meant for him to develop feelings.
Usually she would take pride in such unintended seduction, but this – this would be awkward and counterproductive.
The other queens would talk about her as some harlot.
Florin holds out his hands, placatingly.
“Not you, Your Majesty. We barely know each other.”
“Oh,” she says. Then, “Oh,” with more relief.
“I speak of another. An Elbenese lady whom I loved. Love. She always spoke in such a way, so I never knew if she was teasing me or praising me.”
Howard thinks of Henry, and her stomach twists painfully. “That sounds … intoxicating.”
His face lights up. “Yes. That is the word for it. But intoxicating is not always a good thing, is it?”
“No.”
Howard does not want to have this conversation, but Florin is lost in his own rumination, and she is not sure that it would be right to break him out of it. For trust is born of familiarity, is it not? And she needs him to trust her.
“This lady – will you find her again?” she asks.
Florin shrugs, his eyes downcast. “I do not think she is alive.”
“The ship,” she guesses.
“The ship, yes.”
She thinks of the way he laughed when she told him she was a queen, and she makes another guess.
“Henry’s sister. Cecilia.”
He looks up at her, eyes wide. “How did you know?”
“She is alive, Florin,” Howard says, grasping his hand. “My friends have her in their custody. But she is alive, and unharmed.”
His reaction is fascinating. It reminds her, in a strange way, of Boleyn in her final moments – the way she had stood on the edge of that cliff, poised between victory and hope and the dregs of adoration, and then resigned herself to what must come next.
“You wish to go to her,” Howard ventures.
Florin laughs. “No,” he says. “And yes.”
“Please do not betray me.” Howard removes her hand from his and wraps her arms around herself. Her chest is tight. Cleves was right. She has been so foolish.
Florin reaches for her. “Oh, Katheryn. We both of us have trusted the wrong people in the past, I think.”
“Yes.”
“I have been thinking a lot about love, since before I even stepped foot on that cursed ship. I thought for the longest time that the kind of love that can survive deep, deep hurt must be the truest kind of love.”
Howard thinks of Henry, and then she thinks of her father.
“But now you are not so sure?”
“Now I think … is that not the definition of intoxicating? To crave something even as you know it is poisoning you?”
They are both silent for a long while. The birds whistle above them, communing in their own simple way. The earth feels cold and reassuring beneath Howard’s knees, as though it is the only solid thing about her.
“I think …” Howard begins, her thoughts fractured, her heart hammering, as though she is cocooned within a sanctuary’s confessional. “I think you are right, but I do not think you are alone. I think it is the most human thing about us.”
“You think we crave the poison?” Florin says. There is no judgement or laughter in his question. If she had not met the same curiosity in Voda Kelaverinn, she would not have trusted it.
“If it is the poison of love, then yes. I do.” Howard says.
“Is that not the saddest thing you have heard?”
She laughs. “I think it is the saddest thing I have said. Maybe the cleverest, too.”
Florin tilts his head. “I doubt that.”
Howard shrugs, stands, stretches. She accepted Boleyn telling her she had some intelligence.
A man telling her the same thing is different.
It makes her feel as though they are offering her a concessionary prize.
And while she is relieved that Florin does not harbour hopes in that area, she does not need him to lie to her.
“I have placed my life, and the lives of my sisters, in your trust. I did not have to tell you the truth, Florin, and I did not seek any assurances from you. But if you betray us, I will see to it that the woman you love has her throat slit and I will have her head presented to you on a jewelled platter. Do you understand?”
“My word, you are a queen,” he says, staring up at her.
“Do you understand, sir?”
Ursula’s voice breaks through the silence. “Is all well, Your Majesty?”
Howard spins round. Her lady teeters in what remains of the doorway, her basket piled high with purple fruit.
“All is well, Ursula. Let us go.” She passes her friend, ignoring the thumping in her head. She has never spoken in such a way before, and already the anger that drove those words is ebbing from her. He may despise her now, but she does not mind that as much as she once would have.
Intoxicating.