When summer returned, everything changed once again. Allard announced to Henry that he was going to see another man. This man was a friend, he said; Henry had not heard of him before, but according to Allard, he would be there before the day was out.
“You said no one should see me,” Henry said.
“This man will tell no one.” Allard twisted his hands together. Then stopped as he saw Henry watching.
“Why will he come?”
“He will help us.”
“Does he have soldiers?” Henry still wanted to see a soldier. Even if they were just landsmen who could do the things he was learning to do, he had the notion that there would be something unusual about them, something worth seeing. They were always spoken of as a group, like a shoal of fish; Henry imagined they might move together like one, or all look alike.
“He could raise them, yes. And he has a son.”
Henry frowned. “Is that not bad?” The fact that the king had children and would object to Henry as a result was something he understood; as deepsmen were not generally friendly to children not their own, he supposed that a son would make this man less inclined to like him, not more.
Allard frowned in his turn. “No, Henry. Good. He will bring his son with him.”
Henry could think of reasons why this was not necessarily good, but curiosity to see the son overcame his objections. The son might be near his own age. He felt some caution towards this person—deepsmen children had always been quicker with a pinch or an insult than the adults—but he had learned from sparring with Markeley, as well as grappling Allard on that strange day, that landsmen adults could be overcome. The son must be smaller, and no threat to him. Perhaps he could even threaten the son. It would be good to dominate someone else for a change.
So when Allard rode in with another mounted man by his side, Henry, who had been practising with his axe, was intrigued to see a brown-haired, blue-eyed boy riding on the saddle before him. The boy scrambled off the horse, but the man stayed mounted. Allard got off his horse and walked over to Henry.
“Here is the child,” he said.
Henry did not like being talked about as if he could not hear, but there was something curious about the situation: while Allard was clasping his hands, moving from foot to foot, a little more restless than usual, the man on the horse was rigid-backed, looking down on Allard. Henry had seen others act this way towards Allard, but never before had he seen Allard so submissive.
The boy trotted over to Henry, neat legs flashing to and fro faster than an adult’s. “Let us see you fight,” Allard told them.
Henry was too absorbed studying this pink-cheeked creature to pay much attention. The boy stared at Henry’s bent legs and webbed fingers. Henry didn’t move.
“Can I see your hands?” the boy said.
“Can I see yours?” Henry said back.
The boy grinned and approached him. “I am John,” he said, studying the pale skin that bound Henry’s fingers together. “John Claybrook.” The grin was not something Henry was quite comfortable with, having won few smiles at his home, most of them close-lipped. A memory of bared fangs troubled him for a second before he gathered himself.
“Your teeth are blunt,” he said. Landsmen’s generally were, but Henry felt it important to state at the outset that he wasn’t going to be intimidated.
“Can I see yours?” The smile didn’t fade. Henry shook off the memory and obliged with a grimace, his interest in the white squares in the other boy’s mouth taking over.
“Come, let us see you fight,” Allard said again.
Henry hefted his axe.
John’s eyes widened. “Not with that, you will cut my head off,” he said. “Here.” Two wooden swords were in his belt; he proffered one.
“These are no use,” Henry said.
John didn’t answer. Instead, he gave Henry a poke with his own sword, then another, before falling into the formal en garde position. He leaned in and prodded Henry again, pushing the other toy weapon into Henry’s grip.
Henry reared up on his legs, smashing the sword aside. John fell back and started to parry in earnest, but Henry, with the frantic haste of a boy who knew his legs would only bear him up so long, chased John furiously, slashing and swiping until the wooden sword fell from John’s hand. John jumped as it fell, and Henry pounced, taking the weight off his legs and sitting astride John, who struggled to get up until Henry pressed both hands over his face, covering his eyes.
“Enough!” came the voice of Allard. He turned to John’s father, who was looking at Henry with an expression the boy had seen once in his early childhood, when a man of his tribe had touched a rock that turned out to be a moray eel.
Henry turned back to John, who was spluttering under his hands. He released the boy’s head, but stayed sitting on him while he thought of the word he wanted, trying to phrase the sentence correctly. “Would you like to be my friend?”
BOOK TWO
ANNE
SEVEN
ANNE WAS BORN a disappointment, but such was often the fate of royal girls.
King Edward, Anne’s grandfather, had held the English crown for forty years. It had been a fine start: two sons born in quick succession. Auguries had predicted that William, perfect first-born Prince William, would have a brother to follow him. But when the courtiers first beheld the child that emerged, slick and silent from his mother’s womb, none so much as dared cross himself. The deepsman strain had been preserved in royalty down the generations, prince marrying prince, cousin marrying cousin. And sometimes the salt blood thickened in the veins, cankering the flesh into mutant twists and clots that produced such children as Philip. Philip the Sufferer, second son of King Edward, fused from hip to knee in a single, solid tail, with two stunted and withered limbs branching off beneath. The court declared him a boy, and silently prayed that their guess, their resolute view of this flat-fronted, ungenitured infant, would prove correct.
William was the hope of the crown, as fine as Angelica herself in his mixture of elements. Coming up alongside Philip, who grew deep-voiced and massive, unquestionably male, with a rapidity equalled only by the slow development of his wits, was an endless lesson to him about the dangers of breeding too closely. William travelled the courts of Europe to find a bride. When he returned home with his Magyar princess, Erzebet, the country might have rebelled at the intrusion of such a foreigner into the sacred English palaces—not the daughter of a familiar foreign country like Scotland or Germany, not a child promised to William since birth and raised in an English court, but a distant, harsh-tongued princess—were it not for the news and rumours of Philip’s stupidity, his lumbering foolishness, his violent outbursts and clumsy mind, that travelled the country in gossip that could not be stilled, in songs and plays that the common people were careful not to perform in the presence of soldiers. Fierce, steady Erzebet was strange, but she was healthy, she was as deepsman as the English royals, she was not related to William for generations back, and she could be trusted to produce a clean-blooded heir.
Their first child Mary’s early birth and fine proportions were enough to counterbalance the girl’s sex. Were it not for Philip, Anne, second-born girl though she was, might have been equally welcomed. But as the midwife held her up, a tiny, struggling bag of bones, chirruping in protest at the removal from her mother’s arms, the skin on her face betrayed her.
Poets tried to write odes to her beauty, carefully referring to the “light of her countenance.” But the phosphorescence of Anne’s face was not enlightening. As the skin around her cheeks and eyes glimmered its queer blue light in the shade of indoor rooms, a glow that no amount of candlelight could quite blot out, there was no impression of beauty. The effect was only to cast her eyes into shadow, rendering the sockets hollow like a skull. Sailors told tales of fish in far-off seas that glowed in the dark, even of deepsmen with lit-up faces; most likely, Erzebet told her daughter, some distant ancestor of Angelica glowed just like Anne did. But court
iers only saw the deepsmen in glimpses at the best of times, and the people, whose faces thronged the streets as Anne’s litter went by, making her shy with their stares, never saw the deepsmen at all. Anne did not look royal. She looked ghostly, and it made people uncomfortable. Before she could even speak, the girl was a living memento mori, her eyes concealed, her visage a blank page on which any person, well-versed in tales of Philip’s idiocy, fearful of the collapse of the throne of England under the weight of corrupted blood, could read any story they cared to.
At least she was not like Philip, her sister Mary told her once in a moment of kindness. At least she had two legs that could walk. There would be plenty of princes who would be happy to marry her.
Anne had been four years in the world before she became aware that she had a sister. She was only five when William, her father, was killed by a soldier’s blade in Scotland. She was six when her mother shed her mourning dress and married her uncle Philip.
Erzebet’s intermittent attention dazzled Anne. From earliest memories, she had been a figure inspiring a kind of strained, yearning awe that Anne called love for want of a better word.
Anne spent most of her babyhood in the arms of nurses. Tight bands swaddled her legs in the hope of instilling some firmness in them, and wet nurses remained at hand to supply milk that flowed thin and tepidly sweet over the princess’s hardening gums. Erzebet appeared at intervals. Though her memories stretched back far, her wits ripening early like a deepsman’s, Anne remembered little of her first year—but later recollections of her mother were coloured by an unsurprised anxiety that suggested such scenes were already familiar. Nurses would be dismissed with a clap of the hands, deafeningly loud from Erzebet’s stretched webs, and then the bands would be loosed, her mother muttering imprecations against them that Anne, too young to understand the precise terms, was never sure were not a criticism of her. Yet there were other sensations too. Anne could still recall an occasion when her mother unlooped her great pearl necklace and opened the bodice of her weighty gown, guiding into her daughter’s mouth a tough, cool nipple, faintly salty but producing a thick, buttery nourishment that warmed her baby as the nurses’ offerings never had. The familiarity of the feeling led Anne to conclude that it was not the first occasion, that memory as well as appetite might be causing her discontent with the watery secretions of her attendants. Erzebet rocked her daughter and crooned a sound that Anne, still without language, recognised: a reassurance, meaning my baby, safe, my baby. It was the last occasion she was to experience the uneasy pleasure of Erzebet’s nursing, rich milk in her mouth and an intense voice overhead. As soon as her sharp teeth appeared, nurses pulled her away with cries of alarm, and Erzebet made no further efforts to feed her.
Nurses gave way to tutors as soon as Anne could speak. Latin followed English along with French and Spanish, languages of the great courts that Anne studied with devoted attention, always aware of the slap that would follow a mistake. When she was three, her first nurse was sent out of her life, and on an occasion when Anne encountered the woman walking outside and wobbled up to her hoping for a kiss, the woman curtsied and called her “your Majesty.” Anne studied anxiously, absorbing the languages of Europe all at once, translating doctrine and rhetoric she could barely follow from language to language, knowing that at an uncertain interval, her mother would appear to test her. Those intervals could last a long time. Sometimes, Erzebet did not appear for months.
Erzebet insisted that there was nothing wrong with Anne’s wits, and courtiers deferred, at least to her face. As only a few tutors had the privilege of teaching her, and all were too frightened of Erzebet’s unforgiving temper to speak without her permission, opinions on the blue-faced girl were varied. Undoubtedly her languages were better than Philip’s: Philip could speak the deepsmen’s language and a few phrases of English, but children of two could construct better sentences than he could. Anne learned English and Latin, French, Spanish and Magyar with equal ease, but to courtiers raised to be equally cosmopolitan of tongue, this skill did not seem exceptional. And up until Erzebet’s second marriage, it was only to her mother and tutors that Anne displayed anything else. After six years in the world, she was still a blank to the court, the light of her face shielding her expressions, and her tongue stilled in the presence of so many awesome men. She could have been anything.
It was in the context of lessons that she first became aware of her sister. Later, Anne learned the reason for this: Mary was a prize for any prince seeking a healthy bride, but tales of Philip’s idiocy had travelled fast and far. To prove Mary’s clean blood, Edward had insisted that she be handed to a royal wet nurse and taken across the courts of Europe to show herself: Mary had spent the first few years of her life away from home, with Erzebet sometimes leaving Anne behind, making diplomatic visits to the courts where her oldest daughter was a temporary guest. Erzebet had never set foot in England before she was crowned there, and she knew the hostility that such queens gathered; a princess from England would be all the more welcome if she had visited her people before her marriage, even if she was only a toddler at the time. Mary had been passed from nurse to nurse, court to court, laying the foundations of a future that remained, as long as they had no brother to ensure England’s succession, unclear. By the time Anne was old enough to study, Erzebet had insisted that enough was enough, that it was time for Mary to come home, and anybody who wished to inspect her could visit England. But all of this, she had not mentioned to Anne. Erzebet’s appearances had been so wide-spaced, so unpredictable, that Anne had never asked about the outside world, that great, weighty place that fought so hard for her mother’s attention. Erzebet, in her turn, had a focus, a blade-straight intensity when she spoke to Anne, which left little room for outsiders. Anne thought it was only the two of them in the world.
Hence, the first time Anne was lined up with this unfamiliar child, waiting for Erzebet’s attendance, the two of them stared openly. The fact that this girl’s legs were bent and her hands webbed like Anne’s was astonishing and, after a second’s study, outrageous. Other people were straight and split-handed, but Anne and her mother had shared a bond, and the nerve of this stranger openly laying ownership to this shape, her shape, provoked Anne to horrified fury. The girl pointed, raising her unfairly webbed hand, and said to Anne, “What ails your face?”
The question could only be an insult, for Anne had sat quietly through a rough-clothed washing before being ushered in. “Go away,” she said.
“Your face is blue, it shines.” The girl’s face was pretty and pink-skinned; Anne glared at her.
“Nothing ails my face,” she said, her voice choked with an anger that sounded frustratingly like tears.
“It shines in the dark.” The girl pointed again, and Anne forsook the safety of one of her canes to give a hard shove that toppled the girl to the ground.
It was at this point, while Anne’s tutor was pulling her back with a jerk to her ear and setting about her with a series of blows from the abandoned stick, that Erzebet made a slow, steady progress into the room. Anne ceased struggling and looked up wet-eyed, waiting for her mother to save her.
“What happens here?” Erzebet’s Latin was perfect, but she reserved it for foreign dignitaries, asserting to all the court in her flawed, accented English her claim to rule the country as well as a woman native born.
“The princess Anne pushed her sister, your Majesty.” The tutor, a woman by the name of Margaret, still held Anne by the arm, but the cane she held limp in an uncertain grip.
“Why do you have the cane?” Erzebet’s eyes on the woman’s hand were cold.
“I—I wished to correct the princess, your Majesty.” Margaret’s voice had gone dead. She made no effort to move back or even lower her head as Erzebet came towards her, canes tapping on the ground, the rustle of her skirts loud over the whisper of her feet on the floor. She stood before her attendant for a long pause before passing her right stick into her left hand, and with her free pal
m, giving Margaret a slap across the face that made her stagger.
“You do not touch the cane without a prince’s permission,” Erzebet said, her voice clear against the woman’s muffled whimpers. She turned to Anne. “Did you push your sister?”
Anne looked up at her mother. “The girl said I have a blue face.” The word “sister” was starting to hurt, and she reached up for her mother’s hand.
“Bad girl,” Erzebet said. “Go away.” She turned her back, and spoke not another word to Anne as her daughter was carried out of the room.
Anne spent a further week with her tutors, not knowing if she would ever see her mother again. Her inattention to lessons brought punishments that made little impression. It was only when her mother reappeared to find her daughter behind in her studies, and left again, that Anne reapplied herself, struggling to master her letters with a frantic haste that made the words swim on the page.
A week later, Anne found herself once again in a room with this sister, her mother watching over them both. The sight of Erzebet made her heart beat frantically; her mother had called her a bad girl, and Anne was desperate for some sign of forgiveness. Erzebet gave none, neither frowning nor smiling at Anne; she sat watching both daughters, her eyes passing from one to another, the same intense, steady gaze on each little face. Anne answered when addressed, a sharp knot tightening in her throat every time her mother’s eyes flicked away to the girl. To Mary. The questions changed from Latin to Spanish, French to Magyar, and the sisters answered, correct and formal.
In Great Waters Page 7