Henry remembered with a sudden force the day Allard had placed a crown on his head. It had horrified him, but it had become his toy, his one cheerful thing. Most likely he would never see that toy again. But crowns were made of silver, he knew now, and the one Allard offered him could not have been. He had never thought to ask. It was probably only a bauble of tin.
I am here, said the girl, I hear you. Who are you?
It struck Henry hard that if he were in their position, he would give up soon and try beating the prisoner for information.
Anne’s hands were shaking. “Excuse me,” she said to the boy, and turned aside. It was foolish to want to be polite to him, but she was too afraid to be otherwise. Tears stung in her throat, and she wasn’t sure why. “I do not think it polite to talk over any man’s head, but perhaps our guest will forgive me. I believe I might speak to him more freely alone.”
“That cannot be, my lady Princess,” said Westlake. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the boy twitch. She turned back.
“We have much to discuss,” she said. “If you will not speak English to us, perhaps you might speak our mother tongue to me.”
The boy’s face stiffened further, and he closed his arms around his body.
“If we are to save you, we must speak with you to make a plan,” Anne persisted. “Please, sir. I know you understand me.”
Henry swallowed, and raised his head. There was nothing for it but speech. “I understand you,” he said. “I do not trust your salvation.”
Everyone stiffened. The sight of them tensing made Henry tense in turn; were they poised to spring? Both men opened their mouths to speak, but the girl raised a hand and they stopped.
“There were rumours of your presence,” she said. “You would have been caught soon. We do not wish to see you burned, and we found you first. You should trust us, or we cannot help you.” She gave him a bleak, black-eyed stare. “You have little choice.”
How did she get grown men to be silent with a flick of her hand? Henry had wished all his life for such an impact on people, but he had had to shout and tussle for purchase. He shook his head. “I do not believe you.”
“My lady Princess.” That was Shingleton’s voice. Henry was so afraid of betraying their acquaintance that he hardly dared look at him. Measured against the girl’s impassivity, his own face was treacherous, an unschooled horse that shied when it should be still. “I would like to speak to the boy alone, with your Majesty’s permission.”
The girl gave him a sharp look. “Why?”
Shingleton glanced at him. “My lady Princess, we do not know the state of this boy’s mind.”
“He is no simpleton,” the girl said. Her arms were crooked in front of her body; it was a frightened pose. But still, there was a clip to her voice, an assurance. She did not speak fast or loud: she spoke without clearing her throat or looking around her, as if she knew without reflection that people would fall silent when she spoke. “It is easy to pretend to be a natural, Master Shingleton, and he is not one.”
Shingleton shook his head. His hands were folded very carefully before him. “Not a simpleton, perhaps, my lady Princess, but other things affect the wits. And, my lady Princess, perhaps it would be wise to ascertain his wits before we let him speak too long with you.”
“I give nothing away,” she said.
“How do you endure them calling you ‘my lady Princess’ every time they speak?” Henry heard his own voice cutting into the conversation. If Shingleton had his way, the girl would go out of the room. He needed to speak to Shingleton alone, but perhaps he would never see her again, and the question had surfaced, suddenly and unbearably. “They would serve you better if they called you nothing.”
“How do you mean?” said the girl. “Master Deepsman?”
There was something in the way she added the last words that reminded him of John, but there was no humour in her face. “They call you their lady Princess when they want you to follow their wishes instead of your own,” Henry said. “If what they have to say would please you, they would have no need to princess it.”
The girl looked at him, her ugly face glowing in the shadowed room. “How long have you been longing to be called a king?”
There was a silence. It was not practical to hit the girl with two men standing by. Henry turned his face to the wall and withdrew into speechlessness. It made it easier for Shingleton to ask for time alone with him.
Anne retreated to the next room, with Westlake halting after her. A wish possessed her that she had not seen this boy. She could not blame him for his silence, his mistrust; she had hidden too many years behind a dull face not to recognise the freezing of an animal when predators are gathered all around. But if Shingleton could not talk him around, if Samuel could not, then he would not help himself. And if he would not, then he would have to go.
It would be easier to endure the death of someone she had not met.
“Perhaps Shingleton can prevail upon him, my lady Princess,” Westlake started to say.
Anne cut him off. “Let us say a decade,” she said, taking out her rosary. Better to hear the whisper of prayer than the crackle of flames.
It occurred to her as they started on the Hail Mary that she did not know the name of the boy she was praying over.
Shingleton closed the door, checked the lock, craned his neck at the crack.
“Whisper,” Henry said in irritation. “I can hear you.”
Shingleton edged closer to him. “The princess Anne has ears as sharp as yours, I would warrant.” There was barely any sound: Henry had to lean close, training his short-sighted eyes on the movement of the man’s lips. “Are you hurt, Henry?”
Henry shook his head. “Can you get word to John Claybrook?” he said. A longing for John’s face, his laughter, was tugging inside him, but he felt some despair as well. Robert Claybrook had lied to him. It was John he trusted—but John was dependent on his father, and John had not an army at his command. All his life, Henry had loved John as a follower, but a follower was little help to him now.
Shingleton nodded. “I will ride to the Claybrooks straightway. Westlake will not follow me, he has not the men to guard you and go after me as well. Henry, how did you come to this?”
“Not ‘my lord Henry’ now?” To hear his name repeated so baldly cast Henry back into childhood, stiff-sided rooms and his hands bound and sickening food in exchange for speech. Where was there escape from captivity?
Shingleton didn’t answer. “When Bishop Westlake told me he had a deepsman boy in his charge, I almost fell down on the spot. I had no idea if it was you. I thought he might have told me so that I could have notice to fly.”
“Would that be like him?” You needed to know the habits of your captors. Henry had lived all his life on that rule.
Shingleton nodded. “He is a man of God.” Henry shook his head; God had never meant much to him. “He has little taste for killing.”
“How far can I trust him?” Henry asked. The quietness of the conversation did not bother him, but Shingleton’s strained face as he struggled to make out what Henry said was frustrating.
“He will not betray you if he can help it,” Shingleton said. “But last time there was a bastard found, he could not.”
Henry saw Westlake again in his mind, standing before the blackening bodies.
TWENTY-SIX
ANNE DID NOT tell her grandfather. She went to greet the court as usual, and showed nothing on her face as she scanned the rows of faces. Earls and Dukes, great counties and rivers in their rule, men who could raise armies, men who could hide a bastard and make for the throne.
Behind one of those faces was the knowledge of the hidden boy, but she could not see which one. Any more than they would see behind her set face the knowledge of where their lost usurper was now.
Henry was with Westlake when he heard the sound of hooves outside. The sound was terrifying: hoofbeats meant soldiers now, people coming out of the shadows to find him. We
stlake was still speaking to him, trying to explain once again why Henry should trust his captors; his landsman’s ears were too dull to hear the sound from far-off.
Henry turned his back and huddled his arms around himself. It was no good to trust anyone.
Then he heard a sound over the hoofbeats, faint and distant, muffled by the air—but he could hear it. If he lowered his head and blocked out Westlake’s words, he could hear it.
“Henry? Can you hear me? It is John. Shingleton came. I am coming to visit the Bishop.”
Henry closed his eyes, shielded his face in his arms so Westlake couldn’t see the desperate hope. The voice was getting closer, surfacing, bringing him nearer and nearer to breathing clean air.
“Henry, when I come in the house, make a lot of noise, and I can insist upon finding you. Do you hear me?”
“Are you unwell, my son?” Westlake said, seeing Henry drop his head and shield it.
Henry said nothing. He would be making enough noise by and by.
Anne sat before the court. All of a sudden she wondered whether the same man who had hidden the boy had killed her mother.
“My lord Bishop, I have a spiritual matter I wished to discuss with you,” Henry heard John’s voice saying below. The sound of it was so familiar that Henry almost paused, rocking a little with relief. It would almost be funny to hear what story John could make up as an excuse for visiting. But there was no time to hug pleasures to himself, and he wanted to see his friend.
He clenched his fist and banged on the door, raising his voice in a brazen deepsman’s call; yelled at the top of his voice, yelled for eleven years behind walls. “Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!”
Anne sat and shook. She should have asked herself this question before, but the sight of the boy had driven other thoughts from her mind. She had been thinking of pyres, executions, Erzebet’s stiff face as she ordered death for other people. Not her own end, not her wet red face as death came for her.
It could not have been this boy. To poison Erzebet’s bathwater would have taken speed and stealth, the ability to pass from room to room unobserved. But had he known of it? Had he been consulted? Had he ordered it, even?
Anne gripped one hand over another, and debated in cold terror whether or not to open her mouth and tell her grandfather the truth.
There were voices downstairs, a clatter of feet. There was the sound of a scuffle.
Henry thought of John, riding his horse fast, running on long limbs. He thought of the lame, gaunt man who had locked the door upon him.
He was not afraid as he heard the struggle. John would win, and then he would come up the stairs and find him.
Who could have put the poison in the water? How could it have been accomplished?
By anyone, that was the terrible thing. The salt was not guarded, and Erzebet had not been in that room since the day before. Anyone, anyone with sturdy limbs and a straight back who could run colt-footed from place to place instead of dragging like a split-limbed snail could have slipped into the room, shaken a packet over the salt and slipped out again. It could have been anyone.
And Samuel—Samuel had been poisoned. Or made ill enough to need a unicorn’s horn to cure him at least. And Shingleton had been reluctant to say whether that was poisoning or not. Why would he be so reluctant?
Only if he didn’t want to cross a powerful lord. Because he did not know who to accuse and feared the consequences of a mistake? Or because he knew who was responsible and dared not take a stand?
Only her weak legs kept Anne in her chair, kept her from leaping to her feet and running to find her horse and ride over to Samuel, crying out: We cannot trust Shingleton! We have made a mistake!
Shingleton had been at her mother’s bedside. And if the king’s surgeon had been in the room to examine the salts, he could have told any story he wished if discovered.
Anne’s mind raced on ahead of her, over the green to Samuel’s wooden door, but her legs stayed slumped in her chair, loose as wet cloth.
As John rattled at the catch, Henry heard the sound of Westlake’s dragging steps following him up. So John had not hurt the man. That was weak of him if they were going to make an escape, but then the door pulled open and Henry was so glad to see his friend that he forgave him his hesitation in battle.
Henry reached out a hand, his face opening into the first smile he had felt in days, but John stepped back, casting a quick glance over his shoulder. “You do not know me,” he hissed. Then he raised his voice. “Bishop, what is this?” he said.
Held down by the weight of her body, Anne drew a deep breath and bethought herself. Why would Shingleton make an assay at Samuel?
If she kept her thoughts light and careful, handled them only between her fingertips, she could understand why someone would kill her mother. If they had a bastard, a man to take the throne and beget sons, the country would probably welcome him. If he was strong enough. And this boy was strong-limbed, and strong-willed, too: he had not begged for mercy. Her grandfather was dying. Her uncle was simple. Her sister and she were young girls, a prize for anyone looking to marry onto the throne … but neither girl had ever given any sign that she could hold the rudder of power out of the grasp of a foreign husband.
It had been a mistake, all those years, to hide her wits behind a staring face. She had traded privacy for safety, kept her thoughts secret and left her throne unguarded.
She had wasted her care in the wrong places. She had made a lifelong mistake.
Anne thought these thoughts with cool fastidiousness, as if judging someone else. She held them at a distance, examining them like soiled rags, and decided that they were correct. She had played the fool, and lived a fool, and she had been wrong.
So yes, there were reasons to remove Erzebet. As Edward ailed, there was no other prince strong enough to stand against a bastard reaching for the throne. But Samuel? Samuel had never hurt anyone.
Samuel … Anne lowered her eyes. For a moment her face tried to settle itself in dull lines, laying over a mask of stupidity to give herself privacy to think. But she was done with that. She had trained her face to look stupid, and now it did. It would be a disadvantage.
She would have to work on that. Meantime, she looked at her folded hands, trying to look demure instead of stupid, and thought about Samuel, letting his face rest in her mind.
Samuel was favoured by Philip now, it seemed. He could soothe Philip, calm him down, control him as no other courtier had ever managed. But Samuel had been sick before that had happened. All he had ever done that she knew of, the only thing he had ever done to mark him as different, was to walk into court on a lame leg and speak privately to the Archbishop about the doubtful wisdom of burning a bastard.
But not this bastard. Someone else’s, a child no lord had had time to invest in. It made no sense.
Anne was done with guarded foolishness and hoping for answers. It was time to try her wits against the world. Erzebet, she told herself, looking at her sharp-clawed, well-tended fingers, Erzebet would be proud of her.
Westlake appeared behind John on the stairs. His clothing was untidy, he lurched on his lame leg, but his face showed little pain. Only, it was a little greyer than before.
“What is this, Bishop?” John repeated. His voice was conveying a good impression of shock, disapproval, disbelief.
Westlake shook his head. “I fear you are undone, my son,” he said to Henry. “Forgive me.”
John turned around to face Westlake. “Have you been hiding this—this bastard?”
Westlake looked at the floor. “Only a few days, I swear it. I have planned no treason. I found the boy and hoped to save him from execution. That is all.” Around his neck there hung a cross, a sharp-cut pendant that Henry felt an instinctive dislike of every time he looked at it. But now the man’s hand was clutching it as if it were a spar.
John stared at him a moment. Then he reached out and closed his hand over Westlake’s, pinning the cross between his fingers. “S
wear,” he said. “Swear before Christ.”
Westlake’s face showed no colour, only stillness. He looked at John with dead, hopeless eyes, and raised the cross. “I swear before Christ,” he said. “I wished only to save him from the pyre. I do not think it pleases God when we burn his children.”
Henry looked at John’s face. From here, he could hear his friend’s breathing, a cautious, shivering set of breaths like an unstable staircase. Henry remembered the day they had ridden out to the burning, how sick John had looked at the sight. “You were present at the last one,” John said. “You blessed the flames.”
Westlake dropped his head, his fingers still around the cross. “I prayed for the child’s soul,” he said. “I could not save his body.”
“And is it the body or the soul of this man you wish to save?” John said. His eyes were bright and blue, staring hard at Westlake’s pallor.
“You may leave my soul alone,” Henry said. “You will be with us, or you will not leave this house.” It was what he would have said to a stranger, so he said it to John. It troubled him a little, though. He did not think he was good at lying, and he was so tired of being lonely. He wanted this conversation done with.
“There is no call to threaten,” John said. “If you do not threaten the throne, I will not threaten you.”
“We do not,” Westlake said, so quickly that he was speaking before John finished. “I swear before Christ, we only mean to save this man’s life. It is a hard fate, caught between the land and the sea, and I do not wish to see anyone punished for it. Do not betray us, and I will pray for you every day of my life.”
John sighed, ruffled his hair. Henry sat back on the floor, wondering how long he would have to act before he could plausibly give in.
A few hours later, as Anne was riding over to Westlake’s house, John Claybrook accosted her.
In Great Waters Page 25