In Great Waters

by Kit Whitfield

  Anne had set out as quickly and discreetly as she could. Since the day he found her a unicorn horn, Robin Maydestone at the stables seemed to have taken a fancy to her, and indulged her requests for horses at odd hours with an affectionate grin under his bowing. Anne had assumed that this might be because he had a daughter of his own, or perhaps because he didn’t. She should have asked; playing stupid had left her ignorant. In any event, it was proving useful when she needed to slip away. It was a cool day, the ground soft under her horse’s hooves and taking sharp impressions with each step, and Anne let the damp air drift over her skin while her mind raced. She needed to know what this boy, this man knew. Never mind what Samuel said, to Hell with what Samuel said if he stood in her way. This bastard had been raised by somebody, and that somebody was somebody she needed to know about. Erzebet’s scorched face jostled at the back of her mind, and she kept her mouth closed to keep in the sickness.

  When John Claybrook rode up behind her, calling “My lady Princess!” Anne jumped so suddenly that her horse shied under her, jerking its head against the tug she had given its reins.

  John cantered up and caught at its bridle. Anne grabbed for the reins, trying to back away: some courtier following her, however pleasant his manners, would be a disaster just now.

  “My lady Princess, I come from the Bishop,” John said quietly.

  “I am going there.” Anne turned her head aside. She was not going to discuss this.

  “My lady Princess, I found the man he was hiding.”

  Anne dropped the reins. Her horse stood, stamping a protesting foot, as John held on to its bridle. “What man?” she said.

  “My lady Princess, I know you know.” John had always been friendly to her from the height of his superior years, but Anne did not feel herself a child any more, and she was not going to be addressed as such by any nobleman’s son.

  “You speak out of turn, sir,” she said. “Tell me your business or leave me.”

  John looked at her, his normally cheerful face anxious. “My lady Princess, forgive me. But I … there is no cause for alarm. I am your man.”

  “Explain yourself,” Anne snapped, her heart pounding. “I am out of patience.”

  “My lady Princess, I—I went to speak with the Bishop, to speak with him on a spiritual matter. But there was a noise from upstairs, and I went to see what it was. I found he was hiding the bastard in his house.”

  Anne frowned to stop her usual look of frightened idiocy coming back. “What story do you tell me, sir? You accuse a man of God.”

  John shook his head, persisted. “It was not the Bishop who told me you knew of this, my lady Princess. It was Henry. He mentioned a young deepswoman. It could only have been you.”

  “Henry?” So that was the name, Henry. A cautious choice; there had not been a Henry in the family for several generations. So Samuel had persuaded his name out of him in the end. It cost Anne a pang of unreasonable disappointment that she had not been there to hear the boy confess it himself before she steadied herself.

  John blinked, shook his head nervously. “That was his name, he told me. He said he had spoken with you and you had been kind to him.”

  “He was wrong,” Anne said. Her voice was clipped. That did not sound like the sullen, cautious boy she had seen. Surely her careful courtesy could not have made such an impression on him: she had not been kind, merely wary. Diplomatic of the boy to say so, perhaps. You would think a lord would raise a bastard for diplomacy, if nothing else.

  “My lady Princess, I can help you. My father can help you. We none of us want to see another burning.

  “Do you question the Crown?” Anne’s voice rose. It was one thing for Samuel to tell her, secretly and in a quiet place, that he did not care for fires. It was one thing for her to question, in her heart of hearts, if she could have watched such a sight. For a passing courtier to make such judgements on her mother’s decision, that hard-won decision that had frozen Erzebet’s face and brought a single embrace when Anne questioned it sideways, was another thing entirely.

  “My lady Princess.” John held on to her bridle. “I can help you. Let me help you.”

  Anne gathered herself, invoked her mother’s cold face. “Will you tell your father of this?” Because Robert Claybrook could raise an army, march on the capital with a bastard at his side. But he had power as Philip’s keeper, would have more when Edward died; he could be powerful without risking himself in battle. It might be very advantageous for him to hand Henry over. Or to claim him for a cause.

  John could ride straight home and tell his father, and then the secret would be out, the property of great men. Could she stop him? She could not stop his tongue, unless she had him placed where no one could hear him. It would be easy enough to do. A story of an assault, an attempted treason; she could lay any word against him. But he would talk, even if she had a headsman silence him, he could talk before the axe fell. Certainly he could talk to his father.

  “I believe he can help, my lady Princess.”

  Anne shook her head. She would believe a great many things, but not that a man like Claybrook would be motivated by Christian charity to a foundling bastard. A man of the Church, a man of medicine, men with only their own faith to recommend them, might be moved by such abstract concerns, but Claybrook had land, waterways, wealth. He had too much to lose. “Be silent with him,” she said. “Say nothing until I tell you otherwise.”

  John hesitated. “He will know if I am absent, my lady Princess. I must say something. And we cannot keep it from him for long. This must be known, sooner or later, whatever is done.”

  “Tell him you visit a sick friend,” Anne snapped. “Do not tell me you are unable to lie, Master Courtier.”

  A shadow of his old grin passed over John’s face, then he was serious again. “As you command. But as your courtier I know it my duty to advise you, and I advise you to let me tell my father. He can help us.”

  “A sick friend,” Anne said. “Or a fever of piety. Or you will find that I can speak too, and my words will be such that you may die of them.”

  Henry waited as the night fell. Claybrook knew he was here. He could talk, now, could accuse Claybrook and go with him hand-in-hand to the stake. Not Allard. Allard had been good to him, Henry saw it now. He had tied him up in a locked room and forced questions upon him, but now it had happened again; it could only be that this was how landsmen were. As a landsman, Allard had done his best. He had not made false promises like Claybrook.

  But Claybrook was ready to threaten. There would be no choice for him now. Claybrook would have to rally his soldiers at last. There was no safety except on the throne, and no safety for Claybrook unless he could put Henry upon it. He had not planned it so, but now he could force Claybrook’s hand. When John came tomorrow, he would send a message. They marched on the capital, or Henry named his keeper.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THERE WERE QUESTIONS to be asked, answers Anne needed. And the boy was in her grasp. All she had to do was ride back to her grandfather, say a few words. “Bishop Westlake has most vigilantly set spies upon our enemies, and has captured a traitor.” Credit to Samuel, credit to her, and the bastard curtained in flames, swallowed up in heat. It was a fine threat. With such a threat in her hands, Anne could force the name of her mother’s murderer out of him.

  John Claybrook was downstairs when she arrived at Samuel’s house. “My lady Princess,” he said, standing up, “my lord the Bishop will not let me see the bastard.”

  “No need to rise, Samuel, thank you,” said Anne, as Westlake prepared to pull himself to his feet. “You did well. You are not to see him unless I say so, my lord John.”

  John flushed, closed his hand and opened it as he bowed.

  “Have you told your father?”

  “My lady Princess?”

  “Yesterday I told you not to tell your father,” Anne said. “Have you obeyed me?”

  The flush deepened. “Yes, my lady Princess. I did as you bid
me and told him I had to visit a sick friend.” John shrugged. “He was most Christian about it. He gave me some wine to take him.”

  “Most Christian,” Anne said without warmth. “Where is it?”

  “The Bishop brought it upstairs for Henry.”

  “I am surprised,” said Anne. “Deepsmen do not like wine.”

  “He—is no deepsman, my lady Princess …” John’s face was confused.

  “No,” Anne said. “But he is no king either.”

  Samuel was waiting for her, but she brushed him aside. “I will speak with him alone today.” Anne headed for the stairs, Samuel limping anxious attendance.

  “My lady—”

  “I can call you if there is trouble,” Anne said with some bitterness. “That door does not keep in noise very well.”

  Samuel bowed. “Your forgiveness, my lady Princess. I am sorry.”

  “It cannot be helped,” Anne said. “Did he thank you for the wine?”

  “No, my lady Princess,” Samuel sighed. “He barely speaks to me at all.”

  “I will have him speak to me,” Anne said, and went up the stairs.

  The bottle of wine was resting between Henry’s hands as Anne came in. They had tied one of his legs to a bolt in the wall, and one of his wrists was shackled to it; he could sit up, but not reach the door. The bottle clinked against the fetters as he weighed it. It was a gift from Claybrook, it had to be: John had no cellar of his own. The thought of such a cheap peace-offering made Henry want to smash it, but he restrained himself. Perhaps he would drink it first. Claybrook could give him more later, and he would. Henry would see to that.

  The girl stood in the doorway. Henry could still not get over the femaleness of her; land women had been a rare enough sight in his own life, but they had been tall creatures, entirely foreign. This girl, down on his own height, smaller even, with her webbed hands and bent legs, was an aberration. Though he had never seen that blueness of skin on members of his own tribe, he had seen it on others occasionally: tribesmen from colder waters, further to the north where the waters were dark in winter even during the day, tribesmen with strong arms and great lungs, who could dive deep. Meetings with them had been fraught at best: he remembered the displays, brandishing of rocks and shows of strength, the men of each tribe breaking for the surface and leaping high in the air, higher than their competitors; cries to carry across the fathoms: I am strong. Do not trifle with me. Deepsmen did not draw imaginary lines to separate themselves; they judged on territory and kin, and unfamiliar faces were occasions for challenge. He remembered, distantly, the insults and shrieks when unfamiliar tribes came within earshot of each other: Weakling. Ship-follower. Stranger. Not “my son,” not the lame man’s weird courtesies. You did not pretend, in the sea, to be kin when you weren’t, and this girl was no kin to him. Even her dialect, when she spoke their shared language, was not the one he had grown up with; he understood it, but the groan and shrill of her voice fell in alien patterns on his ears. She was a foreigner, this girl. So many years had he spent looking at landsmen that her face, featured like a deepsman’s with her small sharp teeth and black-set eyes, seemed grotesquely alien. He would have liked to defeat her, somehow, beat her down in a fight or make her obey him, to stop her face from troubling him any further. He wanted to eat her tongue.

  She came in, hunch-backed and grim, and stood before him. Out of the sleeve of her dress, she drew a knife.

  “I wish to know,” she said, “what you know of the death of Princess Erzebet.”

  Henry stared up at her, saying nothing.

  The girl twitched her knife before him. “You are to answer me,” she said, and there was a fierceness in her voice that made Henry see bared teeth, sharp claws, the sea breaking its currents around her feet. “Tell me what you know, or I shall send you to the pyre today. And I will hurt you before I send you.” She opened her mouth as if to say more, then closed it again. Henry gripped the fetters. If she had said more, he might have thought she was bluffing, working herself up, but she said only what she meant. She meant what she said.

  “If you come near me I will fight you,” Henry said. He was not going to show fear to this woman, not for anything. “And I am stronger, and if I hurt you before you hurt me you will suffer.”

  She looked at him for a moment, then opened her palm, dropped the knife. It quivered in the floorboards, point piercing the wood. “I can throw,” she said. “Can you catch?”

  Henry reached forward in a lunge, the fetters yanking against him as he made for her.

  “That was a noise the men will have heard,” the girl said. “I can have them shackle your other arm. I have only to give the word.”

  She could, and he would be bound and helpless with her knife before him. Henry wrenched his chains again, sick and unsurprised. He would have begun the threats sooner if he were in her position.

  “I have—handled deepsmen.” The girl’s voice was low in her throat, a hoarse throb that cut the air. “And I can manage you, Master Deepsman. You are in my land, and it is me you must answer to.” She reached down and plucked the knife from the floor, wobbling on her staff but steady-eyed. He could see the tension in her fingers.

  “I answer to no one,” Henry said. If she came close enough, it would come to bloodlust between them. He could fight. And it would be good to grapple her, force her down and tear the certainty out of her; that measured voice could scream for mercy, he was sure of it, and those pale little arms would feel good gripped in his fists. Wasn’t this what it all came down to, a cry of claim against claim? Mine, her hand was saying. Why else would she so clearly be gasping to plunge in the knife?

  “Answer me about the death of Erzebet, or I shall begin by unmanning you.” Her lips dragged over the last words, as if she was unused to saying them, but Henry saw the angle of the blade.

  Henry was back where he was born, chest convulsed with dread, and only fury to keep it at bay. So he concentrated on her stupidity until its magnitude made him want to slap her; she was not even asking the right questions. “I know nothing about the death of your Erzebet,” he said.

  “Answer me,” she said. Her hand lowered the knife a little, as if testing its edge against the air.

  “What do you want of me? She died of a fever. I did not give it to her.” John had told him this, he remembered; he had thought it good news, one less obstacle to the throne. Fevers meant burning skin, hot and painful; it had given him a moment of angry gladness. That moment seemed a long time ago now. Henry clenched his teeth together, to keep from blurting out the insults that crowded inside him. If he berated her for asking the wrong questions, he might point her to the right ones.

  Did you kill her? The question came in his mother tongue, and it shook Henry badly. The urge possessed him to grab her face, press his hand hard over that neat little mouth and silence this sea-water call, but he could not reach her.

  Henry inhaled, finding himself oddly breathless. He could carry air in his lungs for a quarter hour, but this girl, this fragile ugly girl, was making him gasp as if he had been fighting. She would answer for it later, he told himself; it was a reassuring thought.

  I did not, he said. She is a stranger. You could lie in the deepsman’s language, but it was difficult to equivocate with so simple a vocabulary. In the sea you needed only statements and challenges: The prey is there. Do not trifle with me. I want that.

  The girl turned the knife in her fingers. “Tell me what you know of her,” she said.

  Henry shook his head. “You are foolish, Princess, and you ask me things I cannot answer. I know nothing of this Erzebet of yours. I heard she died of a fever, and I was happy to hear it because it meant one less prince between me and my goal. Do you think I should weep for her?”

  “Do not lie to me.” The girl’s voice was quiet, but as she stared at him, she bared her teeth suddenly and the knife went back in her grip. “Do not lie to me, do not lie to me!”

  Henry felt an angry pulse of pleasure at th
e distress in her voice. “A fever took the tyrant bitch before she could burn me,” he said. “I saw what she did to my brother and I know what she would have made of me.”

  The girl was blinking now, her voice a hiss. “Do not tell me he was your brother,” she said. “I have been in the sea, and I do not believe you.”

  So she was not sentimental. Good. “He might have been,” Henry said, telling the truth. It was an idea he had not told to John, even; he could not tell his laughing friend so weak-minded a thought. “My mother must have liked to fuck landsmen, after all, just like yours. I saw him burn.”

  The girl stopped for a moment, stood over him. “My mother did not fuck landsmen,” she said. Her voice caught over the word, as if she were unused to coarse language, and Henry gritted his teeth in satisfaction. “My mother was a prince, not an animal. My mother married an imbecile who cannot go into the water in case he fucks a deepswoman. Do not talk to me of fucking or I will tell you what imbeciles do.”

  “I thought you meant to begin by unmanning me,” Henry said. “If you wish to begin by talking to me, that is a lesser threat.” He had not really meant that Erzebet fucked landsmen; if he thought about it, this girl must have been the child of a half-caste, her parents the children of half-castes, back and back, generations of hobbling spiders like her. She had understood what he meant, which was odd in itself; John or Allard would have frowned, made him explain. But the word animal was a strange one on his ears, one he had never thought of. Animals were creatures you hunted, spitted on spears or choked with your bare hands. They were prey. Out of the water, he knew no animals that could threaten him like the creatures of the water: no sharks, no porpoises, no poison fish. Only landsmen, with their swords and their numbers and their incomprehensible rules. He had two languages, and now he was trapped, he was, for the first time in his life, speaking to a person who understood both of them.