Chapter Fifty-Three Cleves
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Cleves
The mountains of Heahmore are like daggers and swords, each one a battle, together a war. Cleves has no energy for anything beyond the journey. She has blisters inside and out – on her feet, her hands, her heart. It is a quiet misery.
As they climb and dip, climb and dip, taking paths that they are never certain are true paths, the wind rakes at their faces until their skin is peeling and raw.
They barely speak. At night, frozen and hungry, they satiate themselves on each other in the absence of food, and it is never enough, for Cleves knows that when they reach Mathmas, she must extricate herself from Seymour.
It will be for the best for both of them.
As the sun sets on their third day in the mountains, they reach an isolated town.
The buildings loom over the street, as if they are about to topple onto the vendors who sell their wares from makeshift stalls.
Cleves notes the lack of beggars, the way that while there is poverty here, there is little evidence of famine.
She nods to herself: that is no easy feat to manage in a territory such as Mathmas, where little grows.
Mindful of how recognisable Lelij is, she gathers the gargoyle into her arms and hides him beneath her cloak. His trembling warmth steadies her.
They pass a shelter, which must once have been a cowshed or some such, where a group of children crowd around a fire, sipping at warm milk and examining a pamphlet under the tutelage of a young Feorwan.
“They are teaching them to read,” Seymour whispers. “Is that permitted?”
“It is not,” Cleves says. The women smile at each other.
Only the nobility, religious men and certain professions are allowed an education of this nature.
Certainly these people would not qualify.
This is undoubtedly Queen Parr’s doing. Cleves has barely spoken to her; she is usually so reserved.
Now, though, she could almost look forward to spending more time with her.
At the end of the town, the road leads towards the cliffs, and the distant towers of the Castle of Mathmas can be glimpsed through the fog that hangs constantly this high up. They may as well be in the clouds.
“Should we go directly there?” Seymour says.
“Not without warning,” Cleves says, and leads Seymour over to a young woman selling good brown bread which makes Cleves’s stomach growl.
“Can you tell me where the blacksmith might be found?” she asks. The woman eyes her curiously. “You have no horses,” she says.
“It is not his services we seek. His mother was an old friend of mine.”
This seems to satisfy her, and she directs them to an alleyway off the high street.
They hear the sound of metal on metal and see the sparks flying long before they reach the blacksmith.
The man is bent over a short knife, the blade black and sharp, and Cleves remembers something her master of horse once told her about black heat: it is the most deceptive moment of forging, when the metal looks cool but is hot enough to kill with a touch.
They wait at a distance, feeling the heat seep into their warmth-starved limbs.
Eventually, the blacksmith straightens. He examines them both, then nods to the door behind him, which must lead into his home.
“She’s been expecting you,” is all he says.
Seymour looks at Cleves uncertainly. Cleves leads the way, ducking beneath the low doorway into a simple, single-roomed hovel. She hates that she cannot stop herself from being constantly aware of Seymour’s presence, as if she is one of her organs.
A doll lies on a wooden table, which is covered in the marks and stains of hard use.
There is a ladder at one side of the space, which leads up to a loft, and it is here that she spies movement.
A young, pale face peers down at her. The girl is not yet two, but already has a shock of red hair and a pretty scattering of freckles across her cheeks, which is tight and curious.
Seymour follows Cleves’s gaze and gasps.
“Is that—?”
“You have come then,” another voice says from their left. An older woman, her skin a few shades lighter than Seymour’s, stands upright in the doorway. One of her hands is holding a crop of purple carrots. The other rests on the head of a rather magnificent silver dragon.
“Good morrow, Mistress Syndony,” Cleves says. Lelij pops his head out from beneath her cloak and chirrups at the dragon.
Seymour is clutching her chest, looking between the two women and the Princess Elizabeth. Cleves smiles tightly at her. “Did you think I would employ anything less than the best for my spy network?”
Syndony closes the door firmly behind her. She looks up at Elizabeth.
“You can come down, Bess; they are friends,” she says.
With a steadiness belying her young age, the girl climbs carefully down the ladder and toddles over to them, looking up at Cleves and Seymour as if she were a judge and they accused of some crime.
Cleves kneels and holds out her hand in greeting.
It has been some time since she conversed with someone so young, but something about this child makes her think she is equal to it.
Elizabeth examines her hand, then takes it in her own and shakes it firmly.
“In my country we say ‘Gretal’, when we greet a stranger,” Cleves says.
“Gret-al,” Elizabeth repeats haltingly.
“Very good. Hichoprac bool, missat crene,” Cleves says. “That means, ‘Well met, little princess’.”
Elizabeth stares at her. Syndony coughs. “Yes, well, she is not yet two, and I have not had the means to teach her all the languages yet.”
“How long have you been in contact with each other?” Seymour says.
Syndony and Cleves do not look at each other.
How can Cleves admit that Syndony has been in her employ for many years, since the year she became Queen of Cnothan, in fact?
Seeing that she will not get a straight answer, Seymour asks Cleves another question: “Why did you not tell any of us when we were concerned for the princess?”
“I had to place Mistress Syndony’s safety above all else. I was not certain that the other queens could be trusted.”
“And what of the last few weeks, when it has just been us?” Seymour says, her voice rising. Cleves looks at the floor, her stomach writhing. Syndony picks Elizabeth up, jostling her in her arms. “I take it you’d like me to get word to Queen Parr of your arrival?” she asks, ignoring the tension.
“Yes, mistress,” Cleves says.
“Give me a few hours. You may wait here. I’ll have my nephew fetch you some food.”
Cleves and Seymour sink into the chairs beside the table as Syndony leaves with Elizabeth.
The dragon, Urial, nuzzles Cleves’s hand, perhaps remembering that it was she who bred him, perhaps simply recognising a lover of animals.
Lelij chirrups again from Cleves’s lap, warning the dragon off from his mistress.
The silence stretches out between them until the blacksmith appears with cheese, a pot of honey still on its comb and some hard wafers studded with seeds and herbs. Their hunger overcoming all else, the women smother the wafers with soft goat’s cheese and drizzle honey on top.
Cleves takes a bite and leans back in her chair.
“Well,” she says, trying to lighten the mood, “I had to give you something to be angry at me about, or what would happen to us?”
“Why do you do that?” Seymour says.
“Do what?”
“Turn everything into a jape? Act as if nothing matters?”
Cleves does not have an answer.
“Not everything has to be serious,” she says.
Seymour throws her hands up in frustration, wafer seeds spilling to the table. “There is so much that is going on in your head and you will not tell me even half of it.”
“You may have my body and my desire, but to lay claim to my thoughts is too much, my lady,” Cleves says. How dare Seymour try to prise her open, to lay bare the innermost workings of her mind, when she has revealed nothing of her own heart?
“Why is it too much?” Seymour says. “Do you not love me?”
Cleves loses her breath. She flounders and Seymour, seeing this, presses her point. “Well? Do you, or not?”
Cleves will not lie to her, but she cannot admit the truth either. So she says the worst thing she could say: “Well, you do not love me, so …”
She does not know what point she is trying to make, only that she absolutely must divert the conversation.
Damn her obsession, damn that moment Seymour tore her skirt with the crone’s tooth and tore through Cleves’s defences at the same time.
Seymour has gone very still, and very soft, as though someone has punctured her.
“If that is what you believe, then I do not know why I am here,” she says. She stands, gathering one final wafer and a large slice of cheese.
“Where are you going?” Cleves says.
“To find Syndony,” is the terse reply. Seymour pauses at the door. “For all that you claim to despise her, you and Cecilia Tudor are very alike. She too will do anything rather than admit the truth of her heart.”
“Just because I am wise enough not to declare my weaknesses for all to see does not make me like that woman,” Cleves says.
Seymour smiles sadly. “It is a weakness, is it?”
If Cleves thought she could not feel smaller, she was wrong.
She wants to kiss Seymour, she wants to press her against that doorway and make her never leave.
But most of all, Cleves wants to run. The thud thud of the soldier’s steps is thumping through her head so hard that she barely hears Seymour’s parting words: “I think I am cursed to love women who can never love me back.”
The next moment, she is gone, the door closing gently behind her.
Cleves closes her eyes, tightening and loosening her hands until the thumping recedes.
When she has control of herself again, she shrugs, smiles ruefully, though no one can witness it.
Well, it had to end when they reached Mathmas anyway.
They will be friends by and by. It is for the best. She deposits Lelij on the floor beside her, stretches her legs out, pulls a blanket over her lap, and takes another wafer.
Syndony will be back soon, and they will visit Parr and finalise their plan.
This is what is important. They will defeat Henry, kill him, and she will go back to Cnothan and continue her life as she always has. Perfectly content.
She does not notice that she is crying until she tastes salt in the honey.