In Great Waters

by Kit Whitfield

  The smile heartened Anne briefly; no one else was smiling. But when her mother appeared, bent over her polished staffs, making her slow way unaided up to the altar, Anne’s heart clenched. Erzebet was not a smiling woman, nor a high-coloured one, but Anne was accustomed to an anxious study of her mother’s moods and expressions for any signs of warmth. In Erzebet’s pallor and stillness now, Anne read an unhappiness she had never seen before.

  The Archbishop of Stour was at the altar, holding aloft a pearled chalice. John Summerscales, his name was, a small, white-haired man with shrunken limbs and bright eyes, quick on his feet for one so elderly. Anne was used to paying him silent deference, but the man standing beside him was new to her. Narrow of face, dark-haired and thin, he was a puzzlement to her, for while he wore the robes of a bishop, he was a young man for such rank, forty at the oldest and possibly younger. It was hard to tell, for he had the haggard face of an ascetic. At first Anne supposed he must be one of the severe priests who fasted and did penance with fierce passion for their faith, but then she saw what was strange about him, what had drawn her eye and kept her attention well enough to offer a moment away from worrying about her mother. His left leg dragged behind him, lame and useless, giving him a halting, lopsided gait like no one else at court.

  Staffs were forbidden to courtiers, the province of royalty alone. If a man could not stand on his two good feet, he could never stand before the king. Even lame farmers laid down their crutches when the crown paraded by. But this man, staffless and hobbled, walked up to the altar to attend on the Archbishop, his leg scraping the ground behind him, no stick to help him, forcing himself forward on his one sound limb.

  The aisle of the Cathedral glistened with water where the Sponges had dripped. As the chant of Mass began, Erzebet stood before the congregation, her face frozen over like a winter lake.

  Philip sat staring in his chair, whimpering if the Sponges were slow in their work. As the Archbishop turned to him for a response in the ceremony, he blinked, unresponding.

  Claybrook turned and whispered something to him.

  Philip blinked, and Claybrook whispered again.

  “Yes,” Philip said, a deep bass croak. It was not the formal answer required, but it was an answer; the Archbishop evidently decided that it would suffice.

  So it was that Anne’s mother married her uncle, while Mary and Anne sat hand in hand, Anne trying over and over to catch her mother’s unresponding eye. Finally, the Archbishop stood up, straightening his back from bending down to keep a careful ear attuned to Philip’s mutterings, and declared to the world that here stood man and wife.

  At this, Philip looked up. “Wife?” he said.

  Claybrook looked at Erzebet, waiting for her response.

  Still-faced, Erzebet tottered over to Philip, her hands white on the heads of her canes. “Yes,” she said, Magyar accent thicker than usual, but clear before the court. “I am your wife, my lord.”

  Philip stared for a moment more. “Wife,” he said, then added something in the deepsman language, something Anne recognised from the tune the musicians played, about love.

  Erzebet did not move.

  Philip reached out a massive hand. His webbed fingers made an awkward grab, catching at the neckline of Erzebet’s jewelled gown, then reaching down and digging into the rich silk overlaying her breast. Anne heard her mother’s teeth snap shut, and then Claybrook stepped forward, spoke a quick word to the bearers. A shuffle, a grunt of effort, and the litter was hoisted on their shoulders, carried swiftly down the wet aisle, musicians striking up a loud refrain that failed to cover Philip’s protests, his voice tolling out, “Wife! Wife! Mine!” as they carried him out of the church.

  King Edward rose and stepped before the congregation, raising his hand in a gesture of blessing. At the sight of his gaunt frame, Anne sat straighter than before: Edward had always treated her with an austere kindness, and Philip’s grab had frightened her to tears. But Edward looked at no one: not at Anne, not at Mary, not at the Archbishop or the bride or the court. He stared straight ahead of him, at nothing.

  The congregation made their way outside, ready to hunt and feast to celebrate the marriage. Anne turned to Mary, still by her side, as small and ignored as she. “Will our mother be all right?” she said.

  Mary leaned over and gave Anne a kiss on the cheek, and then a maid came and took her away, and Anne was left alone.

  No children were to come of the match. Anne never became used to her mother’s behaviour after she was married; it was too erratic to understand. The moments when Erzebet would stoop and kiss her, stroking her face and crooning under her breath, rocking her on her jewelled lap, eyes closed, for hours at a time, were spoiled by the knowledge that the next day it was likely Erzebet would stand in court, face forward, looking at no one and with no time or glances to spend on her yearning little daughter. Erzebet was steady and proud as she spoke to ambassadors, greeting them gracefully and holding her ground in disputes, growing stronger and surer under Edward’s watchful eye as the months passed, until the king and his daughter-in-law were holding court equally. But in private, Erzebet answered no questions and her kisses came like rainfall, soothing to Anne’s parched skin but unpredictable, and as utterly beyond Anne’s command as the grey clouds.

  It was at the first blessing of the waters after Erzebet married Philip that Anne realised the full import of something about her uncle. It must have been the case even before the wedding, but then Anne was too young to be much interested in him except as a loud-voiced lumbering presence in the background, a figure she was anxious to avoid. Until now, blessing the waters had meant time with her mother and sister in the sea. But this time, as the court gathered itself up and progressed to the creaking of hautbois and the groaning of Philip’s litter all the way down to the shore, Anne suddenly saw the inconsistency. Erzebet was of the royal blood, half of the land and half of the sea. So was Mary, so was Anne herself; fin-limbed and supple in the water, quick-tongued enough to speak the language of the sea people. And so was Philip: his clumsy half-tail crippled him on the land, but would have been a mighty rudder out in the bay; his grasp of English was hardly better than a child’s, but the simpler rhythms of the deeps-men’s language presented no problem to him. Why then, Anne suddenly came to wonder, was he prevented from going into the sea?

  It was this question in her mind that made this voyage into the water a serious business. Since that first great voyage out into the bay with Mary, such trips had become a regular feature of their lives together; she had come to think of them as a seasonal treat, like feasting at Christmas and music at Easter. Six times a year, their elders took her and Mary out into the bay to play with these wonderful creatures that spoke their private language, that could dive and wheel in the cold waves faster even than Erzebet, that floated above the dark depths below them like living shadows, fearless as eagles. Anne had loved those trips; stripped naked and free of her tight-bound dresses, the nourishing brine on her skin, strict tutors and staring courtiers left behind, she had been eager to sport with the deepsmen, and had swum to them joyfully, twisting and circling them in races and contests that she never minded losing, so splendid were the feats of agility they performed to outpace her.

  Yet that day, when they brought Philip down to the shore with them, Anne realised that while she had delighted in the exchanges between Erzebet and the deepsmen, happy to be surrounded by their native language, she had never thought to wonder why her uncle’s voice was absent from the choir.

  The litter bearers laid Philip down in the sand. A phalanx stood around him: the Privy Sponges, wetting his grey skin with their endless trails of brine; Anne could see through their shirts the muscles in their arms rise and flex, grown strong with their ceaseless action; soldiers mounting guard; Robert Claybrook, his back to the sea, watching Philip with a careful smile. His son was beside him in recognition of the importance of the day: the whole court always attended the blessing of the waves. Claybrook’s son Jo
hn was a handsome boy a few years older than Anne, with an amiable smile that flashed out every time his father pushed him forward to bow to her and her family; Anne had often wished for him as a playmate, but from the lowliness of her six years, had little hope of attracting the attention of a grown boy of nine. Standing in the shadow of his father, John was keeping one eye on Philip, but his attention kept turning, as Anne’s did, to the waves beyond the beach, where the deepsmen were every moment expected.

  At the head of the court stood Erzebet. Much of her journey had been made in a litter, as had her daughters’; the walk was a long one for royal legs, and they needed to save their strength for the swim. But as the bearers laid her down, Erzebet gathered her sticks and pushed herself upright without help, the grit of her staffs and the whisper of her feet in the sand a quiet note against the undertone of the hushing sea. Anne, who had been carried in her own little chair, resignedly aware that a place in her mother’s was out of the question and finding herself surprisingly lonely that Mary had been placed in another litter as well, recognised the stiffness of her mother’s neck and the stillness of her face: Erzebet was not in a talking humour. Anne turned instead to her grandfather, who sat braced on his horse, the stoop of a lifetime on crutches bending his back until it mirrored the curve of his mount’s neck. His face was less rigid than Erzebet’s, though no happier, but when he caught his granddaughter’s eye, it softened just a little.

  “Will you swim with us?” Anne mouthed. Her voice was too low for the courtiers to hear, but royal ears could catch a whisper from half a mile away.

  “No, Anne,” Edward whispered back. “Your mother can go alone, it is time for her to do so.”

  “Are we not to go?” Alarmed disappointment rose in Anne’s throat: was she going to be left behind?

  “Yes, you and Mary are to go. I shall stay on the shore.” Edward turned his head, casting a bleak look at his son. “Philip and I shall stay behind.”

  “Why?” Anne wanted to know. Erzebet grew quickly impatient with too many questions, but Edward had never slapped her for importuning him.

  Edward did not grow angry, but he shook his head, slowly and carefully. “Pay attention to the ceremony, Anne,” he said.

  Anne paid attention, but there was little there: the musicians played their usual chant, trills and arpeggios around the central call like lichen around a tree branch: Come here.

  The music continued, and Erzebet, standing on the shore, raised her face and called. The chant was a grave one, a low, resonating cry that would have been startling from a landswoman, but as Erzebet sang to the depths, Anne relaxed, hearing the familiar sounds that were, to her, part of Erzebet’s being, her mother’s real language. Mary picked up the chant and Anne followed, their smaller voices straining down to the sound. It was a difficult call for a child to make, but though its equivalents—help me; mother—might suit her range better, they were no language for a princess. Anne adapted the call, harmonising, piping her own chant over the deeper one of her mother, trying her best to sing like an adult.

  Erzebet’s voice blended with the girls’ as the waves shimmered sharp-edged on the face of the sea. The sky was white over their heads, and the water reflected back steel-grey, dull and scratched over with turbulence. The call went on and on; no response came, but the women had deepsmen’s lungs, able to carry a chant for hours. At the sound, gulls left their perches and circled the court, ready and waiting in case a hunt was to follow, one that might drive up fish within the reach of a sharp-beaked plunge. And against the cries of the white birds, a faint sound emerged, lost on the court amid the squawks and the hautbois and the pulse of the surf, but clear as a footfall to the family’s waiting ears. A clatter of water, a sigh and a gasp, then a rush of waves closing over. A deepsman, breaking the surface for air. The first sound was followed by a cascade of others as the troop followed the leader’s example, and then Anne’s eyes caught them, pale backs turning as the bodies dived again, trails of bubbles cleaving the grey behind them, spray leaping in the air like pebbles flung up by a child’s hand. And as the water in the bay streaked white, other voices cut across the family’s, stronger, louder, half-buried in the water but, to Anne’s ears, slicing through them with the precision of an arrow: We are here.

  Erzebet lifted her hand, fingers raised in a gesture half of blessing, half of pointing, directing the court’s view to those white trails spreading their parallel lines towards the shore. Anne and Mary hushed as Erzebet changed her notes, a tumble of soprano clicks: We will join you.

  The musicians lowered their instruments: this was between the Princess and the deep. Erzebet’s voice was the only human sound from the beach.

  There was a pause, pale shapes moving beneath the surface. Then, with a rush of sound and an explosion of droplets, a body burst upwards, rising hip-high in the water. Only for a moment was his face visible before he dropped back beneath, black eyes and white skin, ragged, matted locks and teeth as small and as sharp as a pike’s. The answer rose from the waves, from a dozen throats, picking up Erzebet’s initial call: Come here.

  The court stood quietly by, damp sand caking around their costly shoes, as Erzebet began to disrobe at the shore’s edge. Her movements were slow and careful, revealing for all who wished to see her fleshly claim to the crown, her supple legs and webbed toes, her rough white skin and hairless sex and long, sturdy waist, marbled here and there with the marks of two pregnancies like the ripples on a wave. It was a sight Anne usually found relaxing, meaning as it did a chance for privacy; the intrusive presence of the court compensated for by the prospect of a real swim, not in a lake but out to sea. But as Anne began unfastening her own dress, she saw the dark patches on her mother’s arms and chest, deep purple bruises a hand’s width across.

  A stir passed among the court, no louder than the fall of a wave. Eyes turned to Philip. Claybrook, standing beside him, looked at his lord for a long, silent second, his normal smile gone. He showed no expression at all; without the smile, he became unfamiliar, almost unrecognisable. His eyes flickered over Philip and Erzebet with a speed that made them seem the only living thing in that still face. Erzebet did not turn her head. She lifted it and froze, a statue standing motionless amid the white foam that frothed and stroked at her feet.

  Anne’s throat tightened. Under the water, she could go without breath for as long as ten or more minutes, and at the sight of the marks on her mother’s pallid limbs, she closed her mouth and let no more air in. She didn’t breathe again until she, Mary and Erzebet had waded out past the shallows, and the chilly embrace of the water had taken the weight of her body and floated it out to sea.

  Under the surface, sounds changed. The rustle of the waves ceased the instant her head dipped below the surface: water stopped her ears, filled them with its ringing silence, a deep solid lull that extended for miles. Sounds were tangible under water, felt against the ears. Against the background of damped quiet, there were endless small ticks and rattles, the clatter of stones rolling over each other in the sea’s restless, curving grasp, the clicks of fish signalling to each other in a continual crackling like twigs breaking underfoot: tiny, intimate sounds, small enough to be blown away by the wind on-shore, but here, in the fresh, yielding cold, as vivid as the touch of a finger on skin. Anne listened, coiling her legs to drive herself forward, working her cramped muscles until they stretched out to their full mobility, absorbed as always in the precision and importance of sounds under water, travelling across wide spaces and still as clear and close as if they spoke entirely to her. Distance became palpable, as if her very flesh could reach out and feel the far-off sounds, and she swam faster, water holding her, stroking around her, a present, soothing grasp, carrying everything to her.

  Through that dense quiet came the chant of the deepsmen. Just about audible from the beach, under the water it was loud, immediate long before the deepsmen came into view. As she swam further out, the pebbled bottom loomed a greater and greater distance beneath them, th
e haze of the water blurring it out. Anne, eyes open in the darkening water, felt no fear of the depths, but her chest tingled a little at the sight of it, an excitement and sense of risk she could not explain to herself. Rising to breathe, her lungs more tired than her mother and sister’s after holding her breath for so long, she turned like a deepsman, cresting the water in a swift roll, her body turning over and her face breaking into the air long enough for a swift inhalation, then spinning back down without losing speed, bending her back and diving down to her mother. Erzebet, racing ahead graceful as a seal, made no reprimand as she would have on land: here, sound carried far enough that Anne could have swum to the other side of the bay or beyond, and still have been summoned by her mother’s voice, even as the fading light hid her in the depths.

  In this way, Anne was embraced by the voices long before forms began to appear in the void. As she swam, Anne gathered her wits. Always before now, the joy of speed and the freedom of the water had dominated her thinking, but her mother’s bruises, black in the half-light, had made her alert. In this new state of attention, the rattling, atonal harmony called another image to her mind: her father, swimming on ahead, a long dark shape in her memory, in the days before the war took him. The emotion she felt most in those remembered moments was an uneasy bewilderment that this stranger should be present with her mother and sister, a tense doubt as to what he wanted. But the world was always puzzling then, the appearance of a frog in a stream matter for question, the language and concerns of adults a fathomless mystery, and so the presence of her father had been swallowed up in the general glut of strangeness that beset her infantine world. Now he was gone, and with Philip on the shore and Edward watching from his horse, the swim was like the swims she and Erzebet took in the lakes, a female conclave. Their part in it, anyway. The deepsmen’s bass voices echoed around her, but for all their closeness to her ears, the sounds were not oppressive. None of them wanted anything from her.