“I can hardly keep guessing,” Westlake said. “And in your position, I would not care to hear myself constantly miscalled. I can call you Richard and Henry and William in turn, if you wish, or you can tell me which is the right name. It is your choice, my son.”
Henry shook his head. Was he even Henry any more? He could just as easily be Richard, be William. Be Whistle. Nothing had been true.
It was a second before he realised his mistake. He had made a landsman’s gesture, an Englishman’s gesture. No one shook their heads in the sea. He had shaken his head like a landsman, and West-lake had seen him do it. Had seen he understood English, just as clearly as if he had opened his mouth and spoken his useless, phantom name.
Desperate, he lunged off the floor, striking out a sharp-nailed hand against this probing man who had come to destroy him. Henry swung hard and Westlake was knocked from his stool, but the next moment Westlake had swung his cane around, a swift swipe to protect himself. The blow was not well-aimed, but it struck Henry’s forearm with a crack, wood on bone, and Henry drew his arm back before he could help himself. In that time, Westlake had struggled to his feet, ungainly but fast, and was standing over him at the door, out of reach and far enough away that Henry would have to crawl to reach him. His stick was held firm in his hand; the gesture was not exactly a threat, but Henry knew the value of a weapon. He had choked Allard to stop Allard beating him, but this man was out of reach. And Allard had wanted him alive.
“There is no call for that, my son,” Westlake said. “I am not here to hurt you.”
Henry stared at him, but he did not believe him.
“I had heard rumours,” Westlake said, leaning on his cane. Taking the man’s weight, it became a prop again, not a weapon. “I sent men to find you. You are lucky, Edward—is it Edward, You are lucky I found you before anybody else did. I might be able to keep you alive. But you will have to trust me. If you will not speak to me, I will not know how to help you.”
The tone was not unkind; the words were not a threat. But Henry had spent a lifetime locked in narrow rooms with men towering over him, promising him safety if he stayed obedient within his prison. He blinked up at Westlake for a moment. Then, mouth sealed, throat closed, a pocketful of air held guarded within his chest, he turned his back.
TWENTY-FOUR
“THE BOY WILL not speak to me, my lady Princess,” Westlake told Anne.
Anne sat unmoving. The shock was too great for words or gestures; deepsman’s call or English, she could express nothing. There was a little heat in her hands, a small point gathered at each wrist. Her face did not glow at all.
“My lady Princess, I must know,” Westlake said. His face had come unloosed; normally stiff with resolve, with the endless strain of bearing up his dignity while his leg dragged pain behind him, now it was moving, eyes blinking, mouth open, blood in the sallow cheeks. The openness of it was almost embarrassing. Anne had confided her secrets to his gravity, cried before his reserve, leaned herself on his steady, contained patience. Now it seemed she had exposed herself to a man of flesh and blood like any other.
But Samuel had been kind to her, and he was asking her for help. Just at that moment, nothing else seemed important.
Anne reached out and took his hand, clasped it. Anything to soothe the fright in his face. “I am not angry with you, Samuel,” she said. “I shall protect you.” That was the image before her eyes: Samuel marched between soldiers, a heaped bonfire before him. The boy conjured up no image in her mind; Anne knew little of boys.
There were a few seconds when she heard Samuel breathing, his rapid gasps slowing as if by will. “I am most grateful, my lady Princess,” he said in the end. The words did not seem to satisfy him. “I am your man.”
“You are my friend, Samuel,” Anne said. She wanted to keep talking about their friendship, to stay in this little bubble of kindness. If they moved out of it, they would be back into the current and the hard, dangerous fact that was starting to make itself felt: that Samuel had committed treason, had hidden from the Crown a criminal usurper who had been planning to kill them all.
“We must plan, my lady Princess,” Samuel said, and the bubble flew upwards as bubbles must, disintegrating around them. “We shall not be discovered by the men I sent after him; they are not talkers. But I found him because of rumours. If one man can hear a rumour, any man can hear it. I may not be the only man looking for this boy.”
“You are the only man who found him,” Anne said. Erzebet would have had a plan by now, she thought. But then Erzebet would have been angry. Erzebet would have raised her hand and sent Samuel to the stake without a word. The uncomfortable thought possessed Anne that it was her mother’s absence that freed her to treat Samuel’s news with mercy. Erzebet would have thought that mercy a mistake.
Anne shook her head. It was a mistake God would forgive. She did not want another silent day while the world went to watch a burning child.
“I do not wish the boy to suffer,” Samuel was saying. “But I cannot hide him for ever. I thought of smuggling him out of the country, but that would do him little good. He would face the same dangers on any other shore.”
“He might pose greater dangers to us,” Anne said. Erzebet had taught her to use her head. She had to think. “How many countries would turn down the chance to march upon England with an English-born king to place on our throne? He could strike an alliance at any court in Europe.”
Westlake nodded, rubbed his face. “You are right, my lady Princess. But he cannot live here. I had wondered—do you think he might be better taking shelter in the sea?”
There was a look of hope on his face, and Anne shook her head again, frustrated at the gulf in his understanding. This man was her friend. He did not know that what he suggested was impossible. “The deepsmen would not take him,” she said. “Not for ever. To them we are visitors, not kinsmen. I—if he were to stay …” It was not a comfortable thought. Anne had no illusions left about the deepsmen, the wonderful diving angels of her childhood, the relentless creatures she must appease over and over, but it was not easy to say such things out loud. “I do not think they would accept his presence in the sea,” she said quietly. “And they have no charity at all for those they do not accept.”
Her face had begun to tingle at the thoughts, but Westlake was too preoccupied with the problem to notice. It was urgent, desperately urgent; she could see it in the tension of his arms. For all they knew, there were already soldiers knocking on his door.
“Besides,” he said, answering her without a pause, “we could hardly ask the boy to stay in the sea for ever. He could walk back up the beach whenever he wished. No, whatever we do for him we must do in England. You are right, my lady Princess.”
Anne wondered if Westlake had thought of giving the boy a knife and letting him choose a quicker, kinder death than the flames. But if Samuel wasn’t going to suggest it, she wasn’t either.
“Has he a plan?” she said. The words “the boy” told her nothing; perhaps if he was clever he might have a solution worked out already.
Westlake shook his head. “He says nothing, my lady Princess. He has not spoken a word since my men first laid hands on him.”
Anne looked up, startled. “Then are you even sure he is English? Or that he has his wits?” The thought of Philip loomed in her imagination: huge-bulked, brass-lunged, thick-handed. If the boy was another such idiot, another rapacious block … if the boy was such a being, then she was not sure she wanted to help him.
Westlake cleared his throat. “He seems to understand me,” he said. “I do not know, not absolutely. But he does not seem stupid. He listens. He just does not reply.”
Anne felt a sudden, unexpected sense of kinship with the captive boy. She had faced too many situations, surrounded by demands, questions, threats, where she had no way out. She could not hide herself among the crowd, could not claim ignorance, irresponsibility. Her face and form spoke loud, a clanging bell proclaiming to everyone wh
o saw, here was a royal body, a body politic, a body expected to have answers. What other refuge was left except silence?
“Does he answer you in the deepsmen’s language?” she said.
Westlake bent a swift, interested look at her. Her secret was out, it seemed: asking such a question was admitting that she hid behind idiocy, behind her mother tongue, when she did not feel like speaking. Even if it was only Samuel who knew, Anne felt a shiver of vulnerability at being so exposed, but she shook it off. There wasn’t time to repine.
“No, my lady Princess. I tried him with sailor’s signs too, but he did not respond even to those.” Samuel made a brief gesture of demonstration, signing the word “friendship” in the sailor’s pidgin that was sometimes used between traders out where the princes could not reach. The language was a crude one even compared with the deepsmen’s limited vocabulary: sailors and swimmers seemed to find little beyond brief offers or requests for assistance that they could companionably discuss. It was not a form of speech that could be trusted for more important issues, questions of power and planning: the demands of a second language quickly exhausted the deepsmen’s understanding, and the effort to convey the complexities of royal affairs in it was not one they were eager to make. Princes, speaking their tongue and visiting them regularly, were worth forging a bond with, but sailors were alien to their eyes, travelled along routes they could not follow for ever, and presented a different set of men in every ship. Such men were offered passing courtesies rather than serious discourse, and the pidgin was accordingly limited. It was a practical language, not a political one, and common to sea and land people both; it would hardly incriminate the boy if he displayed an understanding of the signs. Samuel was right: this was refusal to speak, not failure to understand. “He says nothing at all, gives nothing away.”
“He cannot stay so for ever.” Anne said it without thinking, because it was the truth, the absolute truth of her life. However cornered you were, eventually you had to find an answer, even an inadequate one, even a foolish one. You were never left alone for good.
Samuel said nothing, rubbed his face again. She could hear the joints of his ankle click as he shifted in his seat.
“Do you wish me to meet with him?” Anne said.
Samuel looked up at her, as if startled.
“Come now,” Anne said. “You cannot have failed to think such a thought.”
Samuel almost smiled. “No, my lady Princess, I have thought it. But I did not expect you to suggest it.”
“We must decide at once,” Anne said. “We have no time for this.” This was a moment in time, suspended as in water, with dark, violent shapes swimming fast into view. If you could not hide, you had to act, or you would be dragged under.
“The boy is violent,” Samuel said. “He made for me. I could not see you injured.”
“I am stronger than a landsman,” Anne said. She did not wish to allude to Samuel’s bent leg, the crooked list of weakness that a predator would spot in an instant, but she would if she had to.
“I—” Samuel bent his head, rubbed it in thought. “If he were to injure you, there would be no saving any of us, my lady Princess. How could you account for such an injury?”
Anne remembered a misty morning, a failed quest that saved Samuel’s life none the less. “There is a man in the stables. Robin Maydestone. He has been kind to me. If I command him to say I fell from my horse, I think he will say so.”
Samuel was looking at her, his eyebrows rising further up his face the faster her answers came. “He is still far bigger than you, my lady Princess. It is rash to risk your life.”
“My life is at risk by this boy’s birth!” Anne snapped, hearing Erzebet’s bite in her tone. “He aims at my throne, my country; do you think he will leave my head on its shoulders if I do not find some means to stay him? Do you think my grandfather will be pleased with me if he knows I have talked to you thus? This is not a moment to pause in the tide, Samuel; if we stay, we shall drown.”
Samuel’s hand had wandered to his staff, closed his fingers around it, as if unaware of its own movement. “I think we might try another attempt first, my lady Princess,” he said, cradling the wood. “If you were to see him, you must have an able-bodied man with you. I cannot protect you well enough.”
In all the time she had known him, Anne had never heard Samuel allude to his leg. He had answered few questions about it once, and never mentioned it again; he had never spoken of himself as weak. The jolt it gave her was enough to make her pause and listen for a moment.
“Who have you in mind?” she said.
“I do not know for certain,” Samuel said. “But the surgeon, Francis Shingleton, can be trusted, I think. We spoke of many things when I was sick. He does not like burnings either, my lady Princess.”
“And he has a hospital for idiots,” Anne said, filling in the pause. “If the boy is simple-minded, then perhaps he may know him to be so.”
“That was my thought, my lady Princess,” Samuel said.
“Can he be trusted to keep silent, do you think?” Anne said.
“I hope so,” Samuel said. His voice was quiet.
“Well.” Anne spoke into the hush. “If he cannot, then I suppose we will know of it by and by.”
TWENTY-FIVE
WHEN THE DOOR opened again to admit Shingleton and the girl, Henry was so startled that he did not know which of them was more alarming.
Shingleton: the man who had examined him, the man he had conversed with. No fighter, but not untrustworthy; that was what Henry had thought. It angered Henry, but the fact was that new faces frightened him; he had lived five years with a small tribe and eleven years captive with a handful of familiars, and unfamiliar faces were cataclysmic. To see Shingleton here was no guarantee of safety, he knew if he reasoned about it, but still the fact was that his face was known to Henry and he couldn’t help relaxing a little at the sight of it. This was wrong, his reason told him. He should not be pleased to see this man in this place. The lame man who had captured him was no part of Claybrook’s plan, or he would have said so. This was some new circumstance, with flames flickering around its edges. He must not let himself be stupidly calmed by the sight of a known face. He might still talk himself onto the pyre.
But it was the sight of the girl that drove everything else out of his mind. She entered tottering on two sticks, white-faced and web-handed, and she was a princess.
She was tiny. The princes had occupied Henry’s mind so long that even though he had caught only a distant glance of them, they were huge in his mind, long-bodied deepsmen with great limbs and weaponed hands. This girl had pallid skin with a faint blue sheen like you saw on fish deep, deep in the black, and on tribesmen from those darker waters. Her hair was an array of matted locks like a deepsman’s, but arranged into neat rolls that swung too long around her face; a huge jellyfish dress concealed her legs—but she was no landswoman. Under the skirt, she was low-slung, her legs bent under their own weight, so her body sat near the floor as if she was crouching. Her back was bent, hunched over like a cripple’s. She shuffled on her sticks, and stared at him, black eyes in a white face, thin lips pinched together—but under those lips, the teeth would be sharp. Her hand could grip a rock, he was sure of it. This was what kept him hidden, trapped in a stupid house with people who lied to him. This withered girl.
She stared at him. She was in that moment so profoundly ugly that he wished for a spear.
Anne could not show anything, not before Shingleton. But this boy was extraordinary. He crouched on the floor, face closed and hostile, still as a rock in the current. His back was straight. The elderly curve of a prince’s spine, the aching hunch garnered from years of leaning on canes, was absent. This boy was straight-spined like a commoner, like a soldier. His supple legs splayed over the floor, his webbed hands and white face and dark eyes were all princely, but he was sound, strong, unbroken.
Anne had seen her grandfather, withered and ageing; she had seen her un
cle, flesh-slabbed and rolling. She had few memories of her father. Looking at this strange boy, she wondered for a long moment if he had looked like this.
The lame man came in and closed the door behind him. “Francis Shingleton,” he said indicating the surgeon. “This man will not hurt you, but he wishes to speak with you. This is the boy, Shingleton. I think his name is Henry or Edward, or Philip or John or one such name, but he will not tell me which.”
Shingleton had not told the lame man—Westlake, that was it—had not said that he knew Henry. Shingleton was keeping quiet.
“How do you do?” Shingleton said, and Henry said nothing.
“And this—” Westlake seemed to pause, then cleared his throat and said, “This is her Majesty Princess Anne, the second granddaughter of King Edward.”
The girl stood quite still. He looked at her and she looked at him.
Who are you? she said in the deepsman’s language. Her accent was a little foreign, not that of his own kin, but he understood it. The language he had gone without for so long, had heard only in his own throat and, once, from a distance, in the screams of a dying child. She had been part of that: for her to speak this private language was an outrage that made him grip his hands on the floor.
“I am Anne Delamere,” she said. “I have no other name. Who are you?”
There was no answer to give in the deepsmen’s language but Whistle, his old name, his old self. But Whistle had been pushed up on a beach eleven years before and left to die. It was a long time since he had heard his native language spoken in a woman’s voice.
“Can you speak to him, Shingleton?” said Westlake. “Is he simple? You act simple, my son, but I do not think you can be.”
I know you know what I say, the girl said. Henry could not stop seeing how tiny she was, frail as a dead leaf. She was right; even if he was just out of the sea, he would understand the language she was using now. But she did not say it to the men, she said it to him.
In Great Waters Page 24