Read and extract from Six Wild Crowns by Holly Race
NO KING CAN RULE THEM.
Praise for Six Wild Crowns:
‘A glittering, magnificent epic’ Francesca May, author of Wild and Wicked Things
‘A ferocious tale of female rage and the strength of sisterhood’ S.A. MacLean, author of The Phoenix Keeper
‘A beautifully written tale of resistance, rebellion, and sisterhood’ M. H. Ayinde, author of A Song of Legends Lost
‘Six Wild Crowns is a beautiful feminist epic, a luscious and luminous read’ Tasha Suri, author of The Jasmine Throne
‘Enchanting and brutal’ Frances White, author of Voyage of the Damned
‘Fiercely imaginative and beautifully written’ Sunyi Dean, author of The Book Eaters
‘Six Wild Crowns is a blade sheathed in silk: slick, sensuous, yet sharp enough to cut’ Lyra Selene, author of A Feather So Black
‘Bewitching, furious, and sharp, this is a Tudor reimagining helmed by unforgettable heroines’ Kritika H. Rao, author of The Surviving Sky
‘Dragons and deceit and love and magic . . . this is a truly dazzling novel’ Natasha Bowen, author of Skin of the Sea
‘Six Wild Crowns is sultry, sapphic, and seminal; an intoxicating blend of the historical and the magical that will earn itself a well-deserved place in the fantasy pantheon’ Nicholas Pullen, author of The Black Hunger
‘An intricate, powerful and utterly spectacular book’ Bea Fitzgerald, author of Girl, Goddess, Queen
‘Fierce and furious’ Helen Corcoran, author of Queen of Coin and Whispers
‘An intricate gem of a novel bursting with ancient magic and intrigue’, Molly O’Neill, author of Greenteeth
CHAPTER ONE
Boleyn
Her wedding dress is the colour of the massacre of Pilvreen. A scarlet so vivid it had to be dyed three times in the spice of the Wyrtang tree, imported all the way from the distant land of Avahuc. A red so deep it must be stored in the petals of the Thefor flower, lest its vermillion fade. The fabric still smells of the blossom now, ambrosial, like a fine wine.
She had the seamstresses cut the bodice low on the shoulders, so it looks as though it could be pulled down her frame with one strong tug. The tailors avoided each other’s gaze as they pinned the silk and measured the trim, but she didn’t care. She is determined to make the most of her long neck and the dips above her clavicles, the places the king likes to kiss when they’re alone and, sometimes, scandalously, when they’re not.
They tried to fleece her on the train. “I want it to flow down the aisle,” she had told the seamstress. The seamstress claimed she had measured the length of High Hall’s sanctuary, and presented her with a receipt for thirty yards of velvet, but she knew, as soon as she saw that figure, that the woman had guessed at the length. That, or she was deliberately disobeying her. She had measured it herself, after the king proposed. The Royal Sanctuary is forty yards long, so she made the seamstress buy an extra twenty. Let the train flow out of the door, so they have to keep it open. So anyone passing by can see the two of them, and see how much the king loves her.
Even here, in the queen’s chambers of the largest building in Elben, the train can barely be contained. Elben’s monarchs are always married at High Hall – the one palace in the kingdom that is the king’s alone, unshared with any of his consorts. She has been here a handful of times, and even then she was only permitted in the lower levels – the halls and galleries reserved for lesser nobility. To be here, on the third level, to now have her own wing of the palace, is a sign of how very far she has climbed.
Her sister fusses around her hair.
“Boleyn,” she says, “You must have it up. I’ll fetch my maid – she can braid it very beautifully.”
“No.”
“It’s not right to keep it down.”
“I said no, Mary.”
Henry loves her hair loose. It reminds him of that first hunt, when her hood snagged in a branch and was torn off, and she kept riding anyway. The hunt where she caught not just the finest stag on her father’s estate, but also the king’s eye.
Mary chews her lip but relents, stepping back to let Boleyn’s maid finish brushing the dark locks. The girl fetches a bottle of oil and rubs a little on her fingers before smoothing them over Boleyn’s hair, paying particular attention to the ends. The smell fills the chamber – marjoram and something warmer – clove, perhaps. Sweet with a sting. The scents seep into the ancient beams that arch over her, carved with whorled figurines and roses. They even flavour the fire.
She thinks: this is the smell of my wedding day. I will remember this scent for the rest of my life. Suddenly, Boleyn feels as though she can’t breathe. The room is stuffy, too full of bodies.
“Make them all leave,” she tells Mary, and a moment later the maids fussing around her train and polishing the coronet are shepherded out. Boleyn goes to the window and inhales the draught. From here she can see the wild gardens and fishing lakes of High Hall and, beyond them, the distant Holtwode that blankets most of Boleyn’s future territory. She cannot spy the coast, or the towers of Brynd, but if she looks hard enough she thinks she sees, on the horizon, the bruising flicker of the bordweal: the god-given cocoon that protects the island from its enemies. Her chest loosens. She is going to be part of that cocoon. Part of Elben’s saviour, part of its legacy.
Mary returns, gentler.
“Don’t be nervous,” she says. “The king adores you.”
“Of course he does.”
Mary tugs Boleyn’s hair. “Shall I let George and the others in?”
“No. Let it be just us, for a moment longer.”
“All right, Your Majesty.”
“Berevia, mun ceripucun.”
Thank you, my pretty maid. The allusion to the Capetian queen’s nickname for the sisters when they served under her makes Mary laugh. They both used to bridle at the pejorative implied in maid, for pucun can mean both virgin and servant.
Mary leans over Boleyn, so her head is resting on her sister’s, and they stare into Boleyn’s mirror together. Two pale faces stare back – one full-cheeked and framed with gold; the other all shadows. One all honeysuckle sweetness; the other cedar wood and smoke.
Boleyn runs her hands over the crystals on her bodice, each one worth more than her entire dowry would have been had she married a man who required one. Silently, Mary fetches the coronet from its pillow and settles it on her head. It’s heavy for such a slender object, but Boleyn’s dark hair offsets the silver. Boleyn watches her sister, dressed in her widow’s black, in the mirror, and even though Boleyn is so, so happy and so, so in love, a sadness creeps across her. Mary has been her companion since childhood. The sun to her moon. Soon Boleyn will be swept up in her royal duties, and no matter how much favour she bestows upon Mary and her children, a growing distance is inevitable.
“Well, I suppose I’ll never be as beautiful as Queen Howard,” Boleyn says to fill the void.
“You don’t need to be,” Mary replies, smoothing the hair that has rucked up beneath the coronet.
Mary’s right. Boleyn has her hair, her neck, and her mind, and Henry fell in love with all three. The rest of her – thin lips, thin body, skin that never seems to hold any colour – will never be considered beautiful on this island. But she doesn’t need to be the most beautiful Queen to hold the king’s attention. Haven’t the last few months proved that?
A servant peers round the door. “My lady, it’s nearly time.”
“Are the ambassadors waiting?”
“They are all here.”
“Let them come in.”
The servant opens the door fully to reveal a packed antechamber, full of courtiers who have travelled to the centre of Elben to pay their respects to the newest queen. Mary busies herself with Boleyn’s train, pulling and heaving at the fabric to show off its length. Their family is waiting eagerly. Dearest brother George, bouncing on his tiptoes as he talks to his spouses, Rochford and Mark, and their parents, more reserved. Their mother smooths her dress, which is far finer than the gowns she’s used to wearing back at home, and their father puts an arm on her waist, muttering reassurances.
Boleyn ignores her family for now, instead paying attention to the five veiled women before her. Each one accompanies a gift – some small and wrapped in finely embroidered silk, and one so large it is carried by four servants. They curtsey in unison. Boleyn could so easily have been one of them. Before her engagement, she matched their rank – the almosts, the good but not the best. The ladies-in-waiting. In waiting.
Boleyn has never been good at waiting.
The first lady, dressed in the silver tulle of Queen Howard, offers Boleyn her queen’s gift and steps back, her hands coming to rest over her stomach. The tulle doesn’t suit this woman, and the poor thing knows it. She would have been better served in the subtler linen of Queen Parr, whose fashion would flatter this lady’s curves. Howard’s style is unforgiving.
“Oh, queen to be, I bring you a gift from Queen Howard of the Palace of Plythe. She wishes you great joy in your marriage to our king.”
Boleyn has been drilled in the correct reply. “I, Boleyn, soon to be consort of the Castle Brynd, thank Queen Howard for her gift and her wish, and hope to be a proper sister to her hereafter.”
The lady-in-waiting curtseys again and Boleyn passes the gift to Mary, who opens it on her behalf. Inside is a lute, with strings made from the vocal cords of the whales that patrol the river below the Palace of Plythe. Boleyn is impressed. Everything she’s heard about Queen Howard is that she’s an unthinking, flighty woman. The lute is frivolous but far from thoughtless.
The other ladies-in-waiting take their turns to step forward, offer their queen’s good wishes and a gift – a book of healing herbs from Queen Parr, the cover made from iridescent dragon leather; a jewel-encrusted headdress from the ailing Queen Blount of the Palace of Hyde; and, in the crate borne by servants, a dragon with a coat of silver from Queen Cleves. No annoying little lap dragon, this, but a guard dragon about the size of a greyhound. Boleyn thanks them all, and reckons she sounds very noble doing so.
Last comes the chosen ambassador of Queen Aragon, the first of Henry’s queens, married mere weeks after his ascension to the throne, twenty-four years ago. Aragon dresses all her ladies in heavy fabrics, the kind the Boleyns use as curtains. This lady looks as though she is buckling beneath the weight of her gown. If she’d only stand straight, she would tower over Boleyn, but her shoulders are curved in a constant apology. Boleyn can’t get a good look at the face beneath the veil, but when the woman curtseys, one hand resting over the other in her lap, she notices how the pale pink of her fingernails stands out against the tan of her skin. The lady isn’t holding a gift.
“From Queen Aragon I bring you the wish of friendship,” the woman says, her voice barely above a whisper.
Others have noticed her lack of gift too. No one knows what to do. This is unprecedented. The Queens of Elben are rarely friends but they do have to observe the customs. Boleyn refuses to show that she’s thrown by this, raising her chin and pasting on a smile as she considers Aragon’s reasons for such a snub. It can’t be her family’s status – Aragon and Cleves are the only two queens who come from royal blood themselves. The other three queens were raised from lower-born families than Boleyn’s. Is it Boleyn’s association with Capetia? Aragon, a Quistoan princess by birth, is naturally inclined against Capetia, but surely not enough to merit such a publicly hostile declaration.
Boleyn realises, with a glow of triumph, what this must mean – that of all the consorts, Aragon sees her as a true threat, and means to put her in her place. Well, she’s equal to that.
“I thank Queen Aragon for her wish, and desire that you should choose whichever of my gifts here that you think she might enjoy the most. It saddens me that a queen of such rich lineage should be unable to fulfil a tradition. It must hurt her greatly, and I wouldn’t wish to see our oldest and first of sisters brought so low.”
Boleyn doesn’t need to look to know that her brother, George, is smirking. The other ladies-in-waiting fidget in embarrassment, or excitement.
“Careful, B.,” Mary whispers. Boleyn knows she’s skirting the edge of decency, but this is all part of the game of court – knowing how to turn a phrase so that those listening can construe it in different ways. She learned the art in Capetia and regards it as the most precious part of her education. Played well, it can make you feared and admired. It can even make you queen.
“Oh,” the lady says. “My apologies, Your Grace. Queen Aragon did send a gift. She sent me.”
Boleyn stares at the mouse. “You?”
“She says . . .” The woman pauses, trying to recollect the exact words. “She says that the queens of Daven and Brynd should be the closest of sisters, and in recognition of this she sends you her most loyal attendant.”
“I see.” Boleyn’s theory was correct. Aragon does see her as a threat. “How very thoughtful. A new friend is the best and greatest of gifts. I welcome you into my household . . . ?”
“Seymour,” the woman says, curtseying again.
“Lady Seymour.”
So, she’s going to have a cuckoo in her household. If this Seymour is Aragon’s spy, she must be made of stronger stuff than she looks.
CHAPTER TWO
Seymour
Seymour’s brothers have always claimed that they can smell her monthly blood. They have a litany of ways to describe it: musty, putrid, mouldy; like a damp tapestry or a fresh kill. She wonders if the other ladies here can smell it too. The wad of fabric tied between her thighs feels as claggy as the sweat beneath her armpits. Usually she loves the beautiful, embroidered fabrics of Queen Aragon’s uniform, but when she’s bleeding she wants to peel them off and run breezy in her shift. That’s what’s going through her mind when she steps forward and bungles what she’s supposed to say.
She should have included the fact that she was the “gift” – and what a poor gift she makes – from the start, so Lady Boleyn wouldn’t think that Queen Aragon had slighted her. The way Boleyn tightened should have made her realise immediately, but as usual she’s slow on the uptake. She has her suspicions as to why Aragon decided to gift a lady-in-waiting to Boleyn. What perplexes her is why Aragon has chosen her. Why not choose one of her inner circle? A daughter of one of the women who came with her from Quisto, perhaps. At least choose someone with intelligence, then mistakes like this would not happen. Or maybe the act of giving Boleyn her most uninspiring of ladies is the insult.
After the gift-giving, Seymour moves to the side of the chamber and watches, which is the one thing she’s passably good at. The formalities over, other members of Lady Boleyn’s new household are permitted to approach her. From beneath the veil, Seymour can look at her as much as she likes. There’s not a person present whose gaze isn’t drawn to her. Seen objectively, Lady Boleyn should be one of the last women in the room to be noticed. No artist would choose her as their muse – she’s too narrow and her features are too sharp. Her magic lies in her living. The grace with which she moves and speaks; the way she is so solidly present in her body. When she looks at someone, she gives them her entire attention. It is a rare and bewitching trait.
Boleyn’s brother and sister surround her, touching her bodice and bolstering her train, making a grand show of admiring her and, what’s more astonishing, meaning it. For all that Boleyn shines brightest, there is an open, easy complicity between the three siblings that brooks no disdain or jealousy. George’s spouses approach and are absorbed into the circle of confidants. Seymour has noticed Rochford around High Hall – she is always restrained, always watchful, in contrast to her husbands George and Mark, who have a reputation for being raucous.
“You must insist on it,” Boleyn’s sister says. “A fortnight. Nothing less.”
“Mary, you’re being too much,” Rochford says. Mary. A name purely for her, not like Boleyn or Seymour or Rochford, the brands of the first-born daughter to make sure everyone knows who their fathers are even after they take their husband’s last name.
“It will depend on how the war with Alpich goes,” Boleyn says, looking past her siblings to the gardens beyond the window. “He may need to return to his army. He must serve the kingdom.” George places his hands on his sisters’ shoulders. “Cynn æ hredsigor.”
King and victory. The Boleyn family motto, as though their ancestors had foreseen this day.
The new queen reminds Seymour of a bow, the arrow already fitted: taut, dangerous, elegant. She wears her wit the way Seymour wears her veil. Comfortable armour. But there’s also something blunt about her. It must come from her time in Capetia, because it is certainly not Elben behaviour. It’s undoubtedly part of what makes her so interesting, but Seymour wonders whether such entertaining audacity might become tiresome after a while. It must be exhausting to perform.
In the very centre of High Hall, a bell tolls. It’s followed by the sound of music – a choir of young girls singing the traditional royal wedding madrigal. It’s so faint that it could be birdsong, heard on the brink of wakefulness. Seymour likes it at this distance – heard close the song is too aggressive for her liking.
Without instruction, Seymour and the other four ambassadors move to their appointed spots along Lady Boleyn’s train. It’s grotesquely long, Seymour doesn’t know what she or her seamstress were thinking. She tries not to catch the eyes of the others in case they all descend into laughter. Boleyn herself seems momentarily to be aware of how ridiculous it is, especially when she almost trips over the fabric. She regains her composure, and glances at them. Ambassadors are generally chosen for their tactfulness, so they play their parts perfectly. Eyes downcast beneath their veils, hands cupped over their stomachers. Boleyn turns at the door to address the room behind her and the crowd assembled in the antechamber outside.
“Shall we get married?” Boleyn says. Her voice is higher than normal, her hands fingering the objects on her pomander. There’s a brightness to her features though – these aren’t the nerves of a reluctant bride.
Another clot pushes its way into the cloth between Seymour’s legs as they process through the palace. Boleyn’s consort chambers are in the north-east wing, in accordance with her station as the queen-to-be of Castle Brynd. The Royal Sanctuary is situated on a higher floor, just beneath the king’s rooms at the very apex of High Hall. The procession must pass through the centre of the building – the series of halls and chambers that make up the spine of the palace. Each one contains a different assortment of courtiers – politicians, knights, artists and performers. Some of them are loyal to a particular queen, some to a political persuasion and some to one of the empires across the sea.
The other ladies-in-waiting begin to amass coteries. Foreign ambassadors and courtiers flock to Howard’s lady because, as the youngest queen, she is most likely to bear an heir. Seymour knows that this is why she and Cleves’s lady are largely left alone – Aragon is now past childbearing age, and with the new, Capetian-allied queen in the ascendant, Aragon’s Quistoan heritage makes her favour a gamble, and it is well known that the king rarely visits Queen Cleves. Even simpletons like Seymour understand the fundamental rule of Elben: without a male heir, the bordweal fails. Without a male heir, foreign powers invade. Without a male heir, Elben is lost. What puzzles her, though, are the lack of attendants to Queen Blount’s ambassador – Blount is still young, still in the king’s favour, or so she had thought.
Soon even the few courtiers keeping pace with Seymour drop away. Seymour is thankful for it. Queen Aragon still possesses some power, due to her royal lineage, but they’ve realised that Seymour is in no position to wield it. She watches anxiously for her own family, and with every chamber they pass through, she feels lighter. Maybe they’ve decided to stay away from High Hall today, or maybe they’re too busy scheming elsewhere.
The procession mounts the central staircase to the floor above. These higher floors are the domain of god and king and decorated according to the king’s taste. Initials are carved into the panelling – those of the monarch and his wives, entwined. In every window hangs an ornamental birdcage, from which canaries and nightingales warble, and the candles have been replaced by expensive lantern dragons that scamper around their cages in perpetual motion. The birdsong combines with the choir’s melody, which is louder now. The design of High Hall – a domed skep with six sides and a crowning turret – is such that the acoustics make distances ephemeral. When Seymour was a child, her nurse told her that the original architect designed it so there is a single spot in the king’s chambers from which he can hear the whispers of the quietest servants in their lodgings six floors below. Before Seymour came here, she thought it was superstition, like the myths of the sunscína – the fabled mirrors that permitted royalty to communicate across vast distances. Now, though, Seymour can well believe it. This is a building that is made for ears, whether by design or otherwise.
As the procession passes into another gallery, Seymour spots one of her brothers and feels her shoulders curling further inwards. Edward’s eyes land on her like a hawk on a sparrow. Seymour keeps her own on Boleyn’s naked hair. Unbidden, she imagines Boleyn winding it around her neck and pulling it tight, like deadly silk. The hairs on her arms stand on end.
Edward falls in beside his sister, so close that she can smell the hog he ate for lunch.
“Bare hair,” he comments, his eyes raking Boleyn’s back. “How common. Do you think she showed him her other hair to get him to the altar?”
“Shhh. People will hear,” Seymour says. She wants to shout at him to be quiet, but she’s never been able to stand up to either of her brothers. Besides, she’s still shaken by that image of Boleyn’s hair, by the way it shifted something in her stomach. She’s no prude, but an infatuation with the new queen would be excessively inconvenient.
“Blount’s on her own again,” Edward says, looking over at the third queen’s ambassador, a matronly woman in a deep grey veil.
“The rumours must be true.”
“What rumours?” Seymour asks.
“She’s ill again,” Edward replies, making a slicing motion across his throat.
As if she’s heard him, Blount’s ambassador looks at Seymour across the expanse of Boleyn’s train. Her unhappiness is resigned and Seymour finds herself pulling back. So this is why she had so few attendants. For all that she will never be the brightest light at court, Seymour can sense a lost cause. It’s primal, especially in Elben where the death of a queen signals instability and the threat of invasion.
“They’re saying Gkontai warships have been spotted off the coast of Hyde,” Edward mutters. “They must be waiting. And the war in Alpich is going badly.”
“Remember what Thomas says about listening to rumours, brother,” Seymour says.
“Remember what Father says about women offering advice. Like a dog trying to write.” Edward reaches over and casually pinches the skin on the back of Seymour’s hand. She swallows her justifications and awaits what he is inevitably about to say. She’s stupid, but anyone who knows Edward can tell what his next scheme will be.
“I’d have preferred Plythe if we could be rid of Howard, but if Blount’s dying, Hyde would be better than nothing. You put yourself in his way, you hear?” Edward says. “Or don’t bother speaking to me again.”
They pass through a narrow gallery, and the sound of the choir becomes clearer. The doors at the end are already open. Beyond is the Royal Sanctuary, where the choir of angelic girls is assembled. Beyond them, at the head of the altar, waits King Henry in cloth of gold and purple, his eyes only for his new bride. How could he have eyes for anyone else? How could anyone? And how on earth is Seymour supposed to draw his attention when Boleyn is in the room.
Another clot slides into her cloth as Edward delivers his parting shot: “By the by – you stink.”
CHAPTER THREE
Boleyn
Every movement at court is a performance. This is the first thing Boleyn remembers learning, and the only knowledge that she reminds herself of daily. The Royal Sanctuary commands a display with its gilded formality. But when she sees Henry standing there, Boleyn forgets her mantra. She forgets the representatives from Capetia that she has been entertaining. She forgets the five ladies-in-waiting, the disdain and awe and jealousy she senses through their veils. She even forgets her own family, and all their practice. They had timed her walk to make sure she would reach Henry at exactly the right swell of the choir. But as soon as she sees him she flies up the sanctuary’s aisle, her hands outstretched for his.
It’s only when she stands opposite him – those eyes that always seem to be laughing, the soft waves of his hair, the whisper of divine magic that ripples across his skin – that Boleyn realises that despite the impropriety, it was absolutely the right thing to do. Henry’s grinning down at her: Not very ladylike, Boleyn. Desperate to make me yours, are you?
She tilts her head at him, silently replying: No more than you’re desperate to make me yours.
His grip tightens. Beneath his linen shirt, his arms tense. How she longs to push up those sleeves and run her hands along the ridges of his muscles, across his chest and down the tautness of his stomach, to revel in the hot balm of his magic as it plays across her skin as well as his. Yes, she wants to make him hers, as a dragon desires blood. She will always be hunting him, and he her. It was the way their courtship began, after all.
Slowly, the pews in the sanctuary fill. The royal family comes first – a handful of Henry’s cousins, his two sisters being abroad – followed by Boleyn’s family. After them are the high-ranking courtiers with their sable-trimmed doublets, and then the lower ranking nobility in crimson or blue damask. Boleyn clears her throat, turning away from her audience and towards Henry. In the silence that follows, she feels curiously aware of the space around her. The chapel is small, intimate, the huge stained-glass windows that line one side of it doing nothing to make it feel more spacious. It is busy, even without the mass of bodies filling it – every wall, every object is decorated or filigreed. In any other room, it would feel gaudy, but there’s a solemnity to the faded gold, the sad smiles of the statues looking down on them from the pillars. The only space that does not feel cluttered is the wall behind the altar, which is dominated by a pair of antlers, stark white and big as a man, that hangs from iron brackets.
Bishop More steps onto the dais. A chain, devoid of gems, seems too heavy for his slender frame. His cap hides a thick mane of dark hair. He avoids looking at either the king or the bride. He’s a well-known acolyte of Queen Aragon, despite his see lying in Boleyn’s new territory of Brynd. She wonders if Aragon is trying to pinch her between Lady Seymour and the bishop, to make her feel uneasy on her wedding day. If that’s the case, Aragon doesn’t know that Boleyn grows sharper with every such move. Behind More, two servants place a cage containing a ceremonial dragon about the size of a goat, pearl-scaled and meaty, on the altar. It is submissive, drugged with tincture of pypas, ready for the bonding.
More raises his arms to frame the giant antlers on the wall behind him. When he speaks, his voice is sonorous. “We are gathered here today, beneath His antlers, to celebrate the binding of the King of Elben to this honoured woman, the Lady Boleyn.” Boleyn stares into Henry’s eyes. It can’t have only been a few months since they met, since they fell in love beneath hazel trees.
The bishop turns to the antlers behind the altar, and raises his arms once more in supplication.
“Haehfaeder upyrdum, besiroth tusenunga debryd,” he intones. Highfather above us, we seek your blessing on this union. Old Elbenese is too guttural for Boleyn’s taste – she prefers the cradle-rock lilt of the Osharan languages – but More’s reverence lends the words a certain beauty. He turns back to the assembled guests, returning to the modern tongue: “Our precious island of Elben, the confluence and gem of the three oceans, has long been coveted by those who would strip it of its riches.”
Boleyn does not look away from Henry. She doesn’t want to see the Capetian ambassador scowling on a day when she – and he – should be victorious. She doesn’t even wish to see the discomfort of the Quistoan representatives. It may be tradition to tell the story of how Elben’s queens came to be, but More is being needlessly heavy-handed. Henry rubs his thumb across the back of her left hand. It will pass, he is telling her. It matters not.
“There came a time, in Elben’s youth, when it seemed as though our island might be overwhelmed and lost. Our verdant forests burned, our glittering mines turned to dust, our livestock and people slaughtered. The king, strong and fearless though he was, could not hold off our enemies.”
There is a rustling of satin and velvet as the foreign ambassadors shift in their pews. Boleyn knows precisely what they are thinking. It was the one point of contention between her and her hosts during her time in Capetia. No country likes to believe that their shared god favours another.
More opens the cage and the servants help him to lift the ceremonial dragon, still slumbering. Its scales wax cream and silver beneath the sanctuary’s candlelight. The only mark on its hide is a thin scar at its throat, where its vocal cords have been removed. The bishop brings the dragon to the altar, where the servants bind its feet and wings.
“In despair and hope,” More continues, “King Aethelred journeyed to the sacred mountains of Hyfostelle, and there he made a sacrifice before the great god Cernunnos.”
A servant brings More a plain, golden dagger. More raises it so that all can see, then stands over the sleeping dragon. The air in the sanctuary congeals around Boleyn.
“Beteoth tufolgestaella, Haehfaeder!” he calls, his voice echoing around the chamber. Protect your people, Highfather. More brings the dagger down upon the dragon’s stomach. The beast rears from its stupor, writhing. Its jaws stretch open in agony, but the only sound is the clanking of the chains against the marble altar.
It is the first time since entering the sanctuary that Henry and Boleyn have willingly taken their eyes from each other. More ignores the dragon’s death throes, carving through the length of its stomach and dipping a long hand into the cavity to collect the fire brewed there. The dragon has been fed with nothing but honeyed meat for a month, to ensure its flames are golden, but there is always the fear of fate speaking louder than design. Of brown flames, or pale yellow – augurs of a weak bordweal, or the wrong choice of queen. The stories tell of fire thick and red as blood at the wedding of the traitor Queen Isabet.
More pulls his hand out of the dragon’s stomach. Cradled in his bare palm is a swirl of fire, molten gold. In the smile that Henry and Boleyn share lies a promise: the gold means certainty, safety, a loyal queen and a strong bordweal. It means, surely: a son.
Boleyn turns to the guests. She doesn’t return the relieved smiles of her family – to do so would be to admit that she had been uncertain of the outcome of the sacrifice. No, she stands tall and justified as More deposits the flame into a lantern and continues the story.
“From the mountain, Cernunnos, the great Highfather, spoke. Our antlered god looked upon King Aethelred. He said, ‘For the great love I bear for you and for this blessed isle, I will grant you protection.’ From a crevice at the apex of the mountain he pulled forth six substances, and fashioned each into a fortress. From sand, he made the Palace of Daven and set it upon the north coast. From fire, he made the Castle of Brynd, and placed it beyond the Holtwode, facing the Sea of Hreonessa. From ice, he made the Palace of Hyde, and buried it in Elben’s eastern rocks. From flesh, he made the Palace of Cnothan on the southern coast. From air he spun the Palace of Plythe and placed it at the mouth of the Kyttle River. And from rock and earth, he made the Castle of Mathmas and set it on the western cliffs.”
As the bishop speaks, servants remove the dragon’s body and in its place set a platter of six locked boxes, each one forged from a different metal.
“Cernunnos said unto the king, ‘I hereby give to you my strength. The strength of a god. Take six wives, loyal and humble and true, and place each of them in one of these sovereign castles, and visit them. Through them, your divine strength shall flow, and through them this blessed isle shall be protected from those who seek to harm it.’”
Boleyn watches as Henry produces a set of keys from a leather pouch, and passes one to the bishop. The key is made of garnet, and it fits into a box beaten from copper plates and engraved with flames. The bishop unlocks the box and withdraws from it a length of tattered cloth, once vivid purple, now faded to grey. The binding cloth of the dowager queen, one of Henry’s stepmothers. As she watches More burn the old cloth in the dragon’s flame, Boleyn imagines a day long hence when her son will replace her binding cloth with a fresh one as he marries his own beloved queen. She stirs, trying to shift a sudden light-headedness, and focuses on More’s voice.
“And so King Aethelred found six wives, humble, loyal and true, and through their marriage he passed to them a portion of his new divine strength. Through their marriage, and through the castles of Cernunnos, the power of the bordweal was formed, and Elben’s enemies were expelled. And ever since that day, so long as Elben is ruled by an heir of Aethelred and the six castles are occupied by queens humble, loyal and true, the power of Cernunnos has flowed from king to queens to bordweal, and thus we have thrived. Heahthrima eCynn. Haethrima eHaehfaeder!” Glory to the King. Glory to the Highfather. More’s sudden shout echoes around the sanctuary, making Boleyn’s sister-in-law, Rochford, jump. Boleyn wills George not to descend into juvenile laughter as she raises her arm for the next part of the ceremony.
More takes fresh purple cloth and binds Henry and Boleyn’s arms together. The bishop is rougher than he needs to be, the cloth so tight around her forearm that the circulation begins to wane.
“With this cloth, I invoke the ancient magics of this country. Lord Cernunnos, with this marriage the six palaces of Elben are filled. Grant us safety and protection, we beg of you. Beteoth tufolgestaella, Haehfaeder.”
Something clouds Henry’s features. Boleyn doesn’t like the implication either – this reminder that the king must fill the six palaces, that he must have six queens, or the kingdom falls. His other marriages were of convenience, that’s what he’s always told Boleyn. This union, though – this is a love match. He and Howard may have a meeting of bodies; he and Aragon may have a meeting of minds, but he and Boleyn – they have both. She clasps Henry’s hand, but there’s still a shadow across his features that she cannot shift.
The Bishop holds the dragonflame lantern beneath their bound arms. His eyes are closed, as though he’s silently communing with Cernunnos. Boleyn fights the urge to laugh. George, in the front pew, is losing his own struggle. While she may defend Elbenese beliefs to the Capetians, the god has never been tangible to Boleyn the way He is to most. She has never heard Him answer her when she’s praying as Mary has. Nor does Boleyn like it when the good she has made happen is attributed to Cernunnos. It should be enough that He protects Elben. Let the mortals have their own victories.
But as Boleyn stands in the oppressive beauty of the sanctuary, she feels the heat from the lantern and the divine magic begin to work upon her. A heavy, floral scent fills the room. The cloth seems to flow across her skin, even though it doesn’t move. This is the start of the true bonding, where the king’s inexhaustible strength is meted out to the consorts for the good of the kingdom. Henry watches her. Of course, he’s been through this ceremony five times already. He knows what to expect. He had warned her that it would be uncomfortable, and that no matter what she feels, she cannot make a sound if the bonding is to work. But god help her this isn’t uncomfortable – this is torture. She had imagined the divine power would make her strong, but she has never felt weaker. Beneath her skin, she is being twisted, stretched, snapped, suffocated. The pain is a fever, engulfing. It is the bite of a hundred dragons. It is the bone-deep memory of overhearing her parents agreeing that Mary was the beautiful sister.
Henry exhibits no discomfort. Maybe her experience is different to his. Maybe the pain is reserved for the consorts. She clings to his gaze. Their love for each other is her lighthouse. As long as she has sight of him, safety is within reach.
As soon as Boleyn thinks she cannot stand the pain any more, that she must, must scream, it’s over. She wills her legs, damp beneath the impossible heaviness of her gown, to hold her up. The bishop extinguishes the flame and unwinds the cloth. Henry catches her as she stumbles.
“I’m here,” he whispers, his hands gentle but strong. “You won’t fall; I have you.”
She is left with the exhaustion that comes after a migraine, but the ceremony isn’t over yet. The bishop folds the binding cloth carefully and places it in the copper box, where until moments ago the dowager queen’s cloth sat.
“What tokens have you chosen, Your Majesty?” More asks her.
With fumbling fingers, Boleyn produces the objects tethered to her belt. It’s traditional for each queen to commission a number of tokens on her wedding day. They become a proclamation of the kind of consort the people can expect her to become. Her first, the stag, is one that makes Henry smile. He thinks it’s the representation of their first meeting – the race through the woods; the way their hands touched as they both took hold of the dead beast’s antlers. But it’s more than that – it’s a promise, from queen to king. For Henry is the embodiment of Cernunnos on the island, a birthright imbued in his blood, passed from father to son. In taking the god’s symbol for herself, Boleyn is sending a message – she’s ready to be Henry’s equal.
She speaks the words that she has spent many nights writing, George and Mary, Mark and Rochford advising. “With this stag I pledge my strength to you, my king,” she says.
Her other tokens are more obviously controversial. A quill, fashioned in silver and pointed with a crimson garnet. More’s eyes narrow when he sees it. His seat is in Pilvreen, after all. She had to get special dispensation to mine the garnet, and now that she looks at it, it seems to shift, to congeal, as if remembering the blood that once suffused it. A sound passes around the chapel – a sigh, like the expelling of a final breath.
Boleyn’s family cannot understand why using the Pilvreen garnet is so important to her. They don’t understand that she is trying to reclaim it from the legacy of the queen whose treachery created the garnets. That in using these gems, Boleyn is spinning their bloodied beauty into something pure.
“Words cannot help but betray truths, both open and hidden, so with this quill, I pledge my truth to you, my king.”
Henry’s eyes glitter.
Her final token is a thunderstorm: a cloud of obsidian, flecked with silver raindrops. It’s unlike anything any other queen has conceived of – with them it’s all flowers and rabbits and religious symbols. But Boleyn is not like other queens.
“With this storm I pledge my fertility to you, my king. For the flowers cannot bloom without the rain, and the sun never shines brighter than after the thunder.”
Henry’s smile this time is slow, almost rueful, as though he has turned a new page of a favourite book and discovered one final surprise. It is now his turn to pledge his troth. When Boleyn has asked him what token he plans on giving to her, he has been evasive. Now, a servant brings him a velvet cushion upon which rest two items: a nugget of gold, and a crystal sphere in which flutters a fairy.
“Oh, Henry,” Boleyn breathes.
“I told you I would find something that would do justice to my love for you,” he says. He rests the gold and the crystal in his palm. The divine magic that always plays across his muscles floods to his hand, forming an orb around both objects that shimmers with the light of the bordweal. Boleyn has never seen him use his magic in this way. She does not watch the orb, but her new husband’s face. The way his eyes are closed in concentration, the way his throat pulses as he swallows.
When the orb dissipates, what remains in Henry’s palm is a plain poesy ring. As Henry slips the band onto Boleyn’s finger, she imagines she can feel the fairy trapped inside beating against its golden cage. If Henry were to swear an oath on this ring and Boleyn were to accept it, he would be bound by the fairy within to honour his oath or suffer the most terrible of deaths. Of course, no one makes such oaths any more, for fear of accidentally falling foul of them. But the symbolism is plain for everyone present to see. It is truly a kingly gift, for only the kings of Elben possess the magic to make such jewellery, and they have not done so for centuries.
Henry says, “I accept your strength, your truth and your fertility, my queen, and pledge my own in return. Together let us protect our kingdom in unity with the six palaces, an island fortress eternally impenetrable.”
The solemnity in the chapel lifts. Boleyn’s family breaks into applause. The consorts’ ambassadors lift their veils, and the new queen sees clearly, for the first time, the Lady Seymour, Queen Aragon’s gift. She looks quite sickly, her brown skin shining with sweat.
Boleyn forgets her, allowing herself to be caught up in the happiness of the moment. Her siblings crowd around her and Henry’s hand remains on her waist as he talks to the bishop. They’ve done it. She’s a queen.
There is one final piece of the ceremony left to complete, though, and it must take place tonight, while the magic from the binding ceremony is still strong. It’s why Henry and Boleyn must leave immediately for her new palace of Brynd.
She clasps George and Mary to her. “Come directly in the morning,” she whispers to them, inexplicably sad.
“Have fun tonight,” Mary says. “Enjoy him all you can.”
George, who for all his ribaldry is sometimes more insightful than their sister, whispers in her ear as he hugs her farewell, “Remember this is for you and the king. Try to forget about everyone else.”
Boleyn quickly changes into her travelling clothes – a kirtle and petticoat beneath a fur gown, split at the front to reveal the silk.
“Pack my wedding gown away to be brought on to Brynd,” she tells the maids. They eye the material enviously. A single yard of it costs their yearly wage. Boleyn had better check the gown’s still intact when it arrives in her retinue tomorrow.
Henry helps her into the royal carriage, and the horses – six dappled chargers – spring away as soon as the door has closed. They must reach Brynd before nightfall, and as such they take the scrind road – the most direct route between High Hall and Boleyn’s new home, and one of six charmed, long ago, to convey those who travel upon them more swiftly than other paths. Henry settles himself opposite her, and for a moment Boleyn feels unaccountably nervous. They are here, husband and wife, at last. The performance can drop away – she doesn’t need to play the queen. He has chosen her above all others.
“Alone, my love,” he says.
“Alone,” she echoes.
The carriage jolts against a stone, and she braces herself against the wall. Outside the window, High Hall recedes. From this distance, the palace looks squat, ugly. Wooden houses, punctuated by the occasional inn, are strung out along the road like garlands. It is lined with subjects. Her subjects, now. They should all be cheering the passing of the newest consort, but these people are quiet. It’s only the occasional child, overcome by the ceremony and the grandness of the carriage, who shouts out happily. Boleyn permits them some grace: the people of her territory have been suspicious of their consorts ever since Queen Isabet. She will need to earn their joy.
Gradually, the houses ebb into countryside – fields of wheat and corn and livestock. In the distance, the Holtwode clouds the horizon.
“Are you nervous about tonight?” Henry asks her.
“No,” she says. “But I do wish we could consummate our love a different way.”
“Not with an audience, you mean?”
Cernunnos’s protection isn’t complete until a marriage is consummated, so tradition has it that a group of courtiers and religious men must bear witness, to make sure that the bordweal will hold. It’s necessary, but not what she wants for her first time. She explains this to Henry.
“The bordweal only requires us to make love in Brynd on the first night. It doesn’t require it to be our first time.”
“You mean, we could . . . ?” she says. The knot in her stomach tightens, as it always does when she thinks about Henry’s body pressing against hers. The fields are giving way now, melting into the Holtwode. Woods like the one they fell in love in. Henry’s eyes meet hers, and she knows – like always – that they are thinking the same thing.
Henry knocks on the carriage wall. The driver pulls the chargers to a halt.
“Your Highness?” a groom says, peering into the window.
Henry gestures for him to open the door, then lifts Boleyn down onto the path as though she were no heavier than one of the leaves coating the ground.
“Give the horses a rest,” Henry says.
“But Your Highness – nightfall . . .” the groom stutters. “And there’s been talk of a crone in . . .”
Henry strikes the groom with the back of one hand, a clap of a movement that drives the boy into a nearby tree trunk. He lies at the tree’s base. Simply unconscious, Boleyn thinks, looking away from the smear of blood on the bark, and the uncanny jut of the groom’s jaw. There is a certain thrill in Henry’s demonstration of strength. Her desire twists.
“Give them a rest,” Henry repeats.
The driver bows deeply. Henry leads Boleyn away from the scrind road – a slight tug behind her navel the only sign she is leaving its magic – and towards a bed of bluebells. Her heart is hammering, even though she’s dreamed of this moment for months. One hears stories of first times. Mary’s very free with her tales. But then they reach the bluebells, where they can no longer see or hear the carriage. In the distance, something barks. He kisses her everywhere, tenderly stripping her of clothes and guile. Her hands skate over the linen shirt beneath his doublet, feeling muscles toned from years of hunting, jousting and battle. They have both waited far too long for this moment, and Boleyn had feared that the anticipation would be more delicious than the reality.
She need not have worried. Henry is uxorious. He kisses his way down her neck, her breasts, her stomach. When he’s on his knees, he pulls her to the ground, and a moment later she understands why – her legs would not have held beneath the intensity of the pleasure.
“What can I do for you?” she says between gasps. She dimly has some notion of unfairness. Henry presses her hand, and she understands: this is for you. She takes his gift and lets it bloom inside her, tendrils of rapture threading up her spine.
“Let me see you,” she says.
Her husband, her king, removes his shirt. She runs her hands down his chest. The magic whirling across his skin seems to reach for her. Then he is naked, and she understands how the power of a god could flow through such a man without destroying him. She pulls him down on top of her, wrapping her legs around his waist. His desire presses against her most intimate part, but he holds himself back, his mouth on her neck and lips, his hands in her hair. Unbidden, the image of the groom, his jaw twisted, springs to Boleyn’s mind. There is so much power in Henry, so much rage and destruction, but for her he is gentle. She has tamed him. She almost laughs.
“I’m ready,” she says.
He pushes inside her, joining their bodies at last, as their minds and hearts joined so many months ago. A mere pinch, and then she relaxes.
“My queen, my love, my strength and my future,” he says. “I would do anything for you, Boleyn.”
“And I you.”
As she rocks her hips in time with his, Boleyn cradles his head to her shoulder and smiles up at the canopy above. The trees whisper to each other of secrets and wild magic.
