Page 73 of Six Wild Crowns

Seymour is bracing her. “Boleyn?” she keeps saying. If she carries on she will wear the name out. “Boleyn? What do we do?”

Boleyn shakes her head, squatting as another surge passes across her belly and up her spine. She no longer knows what to do. Why does everyone want something? Want her to give to them, give give give? They have taken all the pieces of her and left her with nothing of herself. There is no certainty any more, anywhere.

That is not true at all, dear heart, a voice says. One moment she thinks it comes from a small, forgotten core deep within her. The next she thinks it emanates from the cavern itself, from the sleeping queens bearing silent witness to her labour. Boleyn spreads the fingers of one hand across the crystal, over the crossed arms of one of the women.

What do I do?

Trust yourself, the reply comes, swift as thought.

Seymour is spreading their discarded gowns across the floor into a makeshift bed. She squeezes out into the silent mine shaft, justoutside the cave, and returns with an abandoned miner’s blanket, covered in the dust of garnets and rock. Seymour spreads it over the gowns. Boleyn’s child is going to be born into the presence of majesty upon dirty fabric.

“Lie down,” Seymour says, helping Boleyn to the ground. Her face is tight, eyes wide. “Lie back. That’s what happens, I think, isn’t it. It’s like a bed. It’s going to be all right. You’re going to be all right.”

She helps her down, but no sooner is Boleyn upon the floor than she rolls herself over onto all fours.

“Boleyn, lie back, then I’m going to fetch help.”

Boleyn shakes her head. She is listening for that small, still voice, and it is saying that her body does not want to lie down, to lie back, to be submissive. Her body wants to move, wants to sway and heave. It wants to plant her hands and knees on the rock and grow roots through them.

Dimly, Boleyn hears a commotion at the cavern’s entrance. Urial leaps through the hole and flows towards her. Behind him, more flustered than she’s ever seen her, is Syndony.

“The creature went wild,” Syndony is explaining to Seymour. “It kept pulling on my gown, like it wanted me to follow it. I thought it might burn me.”

Urial nuzzles into Boleyn, mewling over her stomach. Syndony crouches beside her, her eyes flicking to the sleeping queens and away again – she will tackle their meaning later. There are more pressing matters to deal with here.

“We need to get you out. You can’t give birth in here,” she says, her hands expertly kneading the base of Boleyn’s back.

“I don’t think she can go all that way,” Seymour says.

Follow the light, the voice tells Boleyn.

She gets to her feet, and stumbles through the cave, ignoring Syndony and Seymour’s alarm. She follows the smell of the sea.

There are more carvings on the rock faces here. Boleyn cannot stop to read them, but as she lurches through the cave their meaning works its way into her, like a dream, recalled in snatches of clarity. With every surge, a new vision. She sees those six women walk into the water of a volcano – the Font of Cernunnos? Or the font ofanother divinity? They emerge from their baptism as queens. She sees that same volcano rise from the earth, a great and terrible and beautiful woman. The woman breaks parts of herself from her rocky, icy, heathery body and gives a piece to each queen. A piece of stone that will become a gargoyle. The spirit stones of the castles of Elben.

The divine power was a gift, not from Cernunnos, but fromHer, and not to the king, but to the queens. The Hleaws may have called her Medren, but she doesn’t have a name. She is the rich soil and the tune of the nightingale. She is the gasp of the lover and the groans within Boleyn now.

The inscriptions tell of the six queens building their castles, establishing the bordweal. Boleyn looks and looks as each new vision hits her, but nowhere can she see Him. No king, no antlered god. The bordweal was never bound to him. The power always, all along, came from the women in their six fortresses. The kings somehow stole it, subverted it, manipulated it for their own glory.

Another surge, stronger than before, and Boleyn lets out a roar to break chains.

She stumbles around one final corner, and almost falls into shallow water. The ceiling of this cavern, open to the ocean, is almost as high as the hall back at Brynd. It glitters with garnets, turning the pool of water inside scarlet, like the colour of her wedding dress. The cave’s entrance is concealed by a waterfall. Beyond it is the sea.

Boleyn wades out into the water. All she knows is that she needs to be out there.

“Where are you going?” Seymour shouts from the last dry step. Boleyn keeps going, letting the waterfall drench her hair, her body. There’s a ledge, and then a drop, and then she’s swimming, the chill of the waves numbing the next surge.

“Boleyn!”

Seymour wades out behind her, but clings to the side of the cave, beneath the waterfall. A storm is coming. The clouds gather above Boleyn, and the waves reach for them. Boleyn rides them, waiting in power, like those clouds. She lets the sea pull her under for a moment, communing with the hidden currents.

Syndony appears next to Boleyn, her own gown discarded.

“Let me check the babe?” she says, her voice gravelly. Boleyn nods. Syndony takes a deep breath and ducks beneath the waves. Boleyn feels her steady hands, pressing, pushing. When she rises again, her expression is impenetrable.

“Your womb has broken in the wrong place,” she says.

“What does that mean?” Boleyn asks.

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