He could do this. He could remember this. The deepsmen would be coming; Anne was going to call them. They would be big, and they would be aggressive: it would be difficult. But nothing was easy. And after all, Henry thought, after all these years, it would be satisfying to have something to fight.
THIRTY
HENRY DID NOT hear the deepsmen as they approached, nor the sound of Anne as she entered the water. The waves clattered over his head, and he floated in silence, listening. But he heard the sounds from the beach, the weird, creaking music the landsmen were playing to summon them. He lay, drifting on the waves, and waited.
Anne swam out to sea, the current brushing over her like a caress. The peace of solitude was such a relief that for a few minutes, she simply swam, slow and steady, rolling over to feel the water stroking her skin. The deepsmen were starting to call for her, but she held off answering. It was time to call Henry. Anne gathered herself, slipped up to the surface for a breath, and called. She did not answer the deepsmen’s signals: We are here, where are you? She gazed into the blackening gleam, and called, clear and steady: Whistle. Come here. Whistle.
She knew the currents in this bay, and she was accustomed to swimming. Following the deepsmen’s voices, she reached them before him.
Out of the haze they loomed, long-bodied and great-armed, suddenly more alarming than she’d expected. Erzebet’s iron will had kept her strong, and she’d bartered all she had to keep them friendly, but here, confronted with their massive bodies, Anne realised something, grasped it with her eyes and body instead of just her understanding: these deepsmen were huge. Henry was small. She’d only seen him crouched down, chained and hunched, but she had weighed him up. Everything looked larger under water; Anne had assumed that in the sea, Henry would be magnified to a deepsman’s bulk. Now she saw her mistake. He was bigger than her, but that was no great boast: everyone was bigger than her. She’d been weighing him up against Samuel, against John Claybrook. Henry would be more than a match for them; shorter, yes, because of how his legs bent under him, but he had a deepsman’s great chest and arms, thick with muscle and heavyset. He could have grappled any landsman in an instant. But he couldn’t grapple these men. Henry might be sturdy against courtiers, but he carried a landsman’s blood in him too, and no landsman was as brawny as these people of the ocean. Against these deepsmen, he was a mouse confronting rats, a cat against dogs. He was outmatched.
Anne curled in the water, twisting and coiling to keep their attention on her. She couldn’t say it now, not while the deepsmen were before her, but she called in her mind: Whistle, come here. Prove me wrong. Help me.
No one had seen him enter the water, she thought. If he lost, no one would come to help him. Erzebet wouldn’t have laughed, wouldn’t have found it funny—but she would have realised in advance what struck Anne now: at least it would solve the problem of what to do about him. She could placate them again, let whoever fought him claim her as a winner’s prize. Her throat burned with bile at the thought, and she swallowed, taking a sip of sharp brine to calm herself. She would live. She would survive. But if Henry failed now, he would die in the water, and she couldn’t help him. Louis-Philippe would take the throne with Mary, and Henry’s body would wash away. No one would ever know he had lived.
Anne’s voice had echoed across the water, calling: Whistle. Henry did not take the time to be surprised at the long-lost name. He was home; he was ready. There were voices mingling with hers, and all of them were different. After the unfamiliarity of the water, he understood them, the pitch and timbre, all different, all speaking together. He did not recognise any of them; their dialect was unfamiliar. He did not know this tribe.
It didn’t matter. He was going to make it his own.
Anne danced, and waited. Hands were reaching towards her, ghostly pale in the darkness. As she slipped out of their reach, a cloud passed away from the sun, and a streak of light struck down through the water, silver pale, salt glittering in its beam. It was beautiful. The brightness of it struck her hard: this glinting moment, ready to pass, easy to snatch away. She was alive.
Hands reached out again, a large palm folding around her narrow wrist. A peremptory rattle of sounds: Come on. This was the deepsman she had humoured before. Her fingertips tingled as his hand squeezed around her forearm, a memory of rough, slick flesh. Anne tugged back, but there was no way out of his grasp. She had to do something, now, at once. He could drag her down. His lungs were massive, his body immense, and there was no way she could outlast him. She needed air, needed to move before she drowned.
Whistle, she cried again. She was not drowning, she wasn’t: she had air enough. She was just breathless at the sudden grab. She could last. Whistle, hurry. Where was he? Silence yawned around her, stretching in every direction, and for a long, choking moment, there was only an arm pulling her forward and the rustle of the sea.
Then a voice out of the void: I am coming. This is mine. I am coming.
And Anne kicked back, striking out with her sharp-clawed feet, and fought her way free. It wasn’t much of a blow, not by the standards of the deep, but it was fast and sudden and she gouged her nails against the coarse skin of her captor, her suitor, her subject—she ground in her nails and the man holding her arm let her go.
And the voice sounded again: I am here. This is mine. Do not trifle with me.
It was coming from the other direction, Anne realised. Instinctively she turned her head, but the deepsmen, used to the blindness of the water, made no such movement. Instead they gathered together, swimming back to back in a coiling spiral, a great long column that sank a whirling shaft into the depths like the pillar of a cathedral, a sleek, turning regiment of bodies shining white against the black in a single ray of light. It was a fighting stance, one that she recognised with a foolish stab of loneliness: backs to each other, united in trust, in motion and watching for whatever threat might come, ready to face it together. Her bastard was coming, and they had banded. She was making them unite. This was how much she needed this.
The sound continued, around and around. He was doing something Anne had never seen: circling, out of sight, calling as he swam. It couldn’t possibly work as a flanking movement, not when they outnumbered him: all they had to do was split up and follow the sound, and they could lay hands on him easily. But his voice echoed out of obscurity, and the deepsmen gathered together, waiting.
Henry swam in a spiral, yelling out his claim. This was a hunt, a chase. He had seen his family do it a hundred times: surround the fish, circle them, drive them into a ball. When the threat could be coming from any direction, you massed ranks and kept on the move and hoped for the best. The deepsmen did it to fish, but they did not do it to each other. That was why it was the right thing to do now. The deepsmen were a frightened people. If something was new, they would not take the risk of attack. Hide and circle, watch and wait: he knew how to do this. Now it was time to come out of the dark.
Anne swam backwards, keeping in sight of the deepsmen. Whistle, she called.
A voice answered her: I am here. And a body swam out of the depths.
It was Henry, Whistle, gleaming in the grey light. Anne had seen women naked, deepsmen, but the sight of him darting past her unclothed gave her a moment of alarm before she pulled herself together. He was circling, following the path of the waiting deepsmen, and he called to her: Which? Who is in charge?
Anne pointed her arm and bounced her voice forward, driving the sound towards the great-armed titan who had grasped her wrist. That one, she said. I do not want him. Her arm tingled in the cold, and she cried out again, loud enough to echo off the shore: I do not want him!
The deepsman changed his path, rising up the centre of the spiral like the eye of a whirlpool, his tribe swimming round him. Who are you? he said. Do not trifle with me.
Henry swam out beside Anne, pausing in the water. He hung very still, and his arm came around her. Rough skin brushed her waist as he pushed her behind him. Mine, he sai
d, taking up as bold a pose as he could strike. I will fight you for her.
The deepsman raised his arms, thrashed his great tail. The force of it swept a current forward that rocked Anne where she floated, and she thrust her arms out, paddling frantically to stay upright. Do not trifle with me, the great voice groaned out. I am strong.
Henry did not look away. Challenge, he called back. I will fight you for her. Mine.
The man was immense, Henry saw, half as long again as him. This was something he would never survive, not if it came to a clash of tails, the wave-shattering smack of bone against bone. He couldn’t kill him. If he was going to bid for the throne, he had to subdue this tribe, not destroy it. The deepsman towered before Henry, and fury twisted in Henry’s throat: he was a stranger, small, fighting alone. He tasted crab meat in his mouth. Just let this girl look away, he said in his mind, and I will eat your tongue.
He couldn’t outswim this tribesman. If he had stayed in the sea, he would have been his subject, always, inescapably, until he died. But he was not going to be the subject of any man, ever again.
He dived down, and the great arms reached to grab him.
Anne’s throat closed as she saw Henry swim forwards. The deepsman reached out and took hold of him, and the water heaved around them as the great tail swept out again. Whistle was small against him, a boy against a man, but the tail did not connect: Henry had parted his legs, let the wave sweep between them. He did not call, did not look. He lunged back, and the arms gripping his shoulders pulled at him.
The cold of the water bit into her skin, and Anne watched, her heart pounding in her throat. Henry could not get himself out of the deepsman’s grip. The tail struck out, and the water rocked; Anne tumbled over, somersaulting to steady herself. Everything around them was tossed as if by a storm, and Henry was struggling, pulling himself back, the massive hands digging into his shoulders. His legs were snaking to and fro, twisting like banners in a high wind, but he couldn’t avoid it for ever: the deepsman had him, and he was going to break his legs.
Teeth shut, Anne looked, and in the gloom, saw something she hadn’t seen before, so fast had Henry flown by. There was a dark band around his waist.
He hadn’t told her about it, hadn’t warned her. He didn’t trust her. But he had thought ahead, and he was hers, and she was going to help him.
Anne drove herself straight up, broke the surface and snatched a mouthful of air. For a brief second, the thin sounds of the land cut through the air, and then she was underwater again, swimming down to join the fight.
As the girl flickered at the corner of his vision, Henry’s first thought was, No, stay out. Deepsmen had little time for chivalry, but a dominance match was a one-on-one issue; if she joined in, then the tribe would too, and they would both die. The two of them couldn’t fight them all.
But then he felt hands tugging at his waist, unknotting, and his rope, the rope he had carried with him across the bay, was being looped, ready for him to use.
Henry sprang back again, reached out and grabbed, and the rope was in his hands. The deepsman kept hold of his shoulders, and Henry braced himself, feet against the deepsman’s chest. That was all he needed, a little purchase.
And, with his arms outstretched before him, the deepsman’s wrists were level. Henry reached out, and wound the cords, and pulled them fast. There, he thought as he tugged on the knot. See how you like that.
The deepsman let go, suddenly grappling with himself. Henry floated above him for a moment. The sea was movement, endless and unconstrained, and if you couldn’t swim, you drowned. Rope could be gnawed through eventually, Henry had learned in those first painful months as a captive in Allard’s hideaway—but the sickening dismay of constriction, the panic and horror it induced, was something he had never forgotten. Even with a lungful of air, this tribesman could not think.
He was confined. He had lost.
Henry flicked himself downwards and grabbed the tribesman’s legs, pulling him down into the dark. Mine, he said. Yield. Yield to me. Yield.
And, kicking and thrashing in the blue abyss, he heard the reply: I yield.
The tribe, Henry said. Everyone yield.
The beaten deepsman’s voice carried upwards, and he heard it, crackling all around him: voices, each of them blending to the same final, blazing, longed-for, hard-won answer. We yield. You are the king. We yield.
The girl’s voice echoed from above him, a shriek of triumph: Us! Us! Ours!
Henry bent his head to gnaw the deepsman free. The taste of salt filled his mouth.
So it was that Anne, Princess of England, walked naked out of the sea, and beside her walked a young man no one had ever seen before, a straight-spined young man balancing on his curved legs. He stood with his back steady, unbowed by a prince’s hunch, but his eyes were black to the edges and his teeth were sharp, his hands webbed across, and in his hand he held a lock of hair, pulled from the skull of a deepsman out in the bay.
Henry looked across a beachful of people, ornately dressed old men, long-legged young ones, a profusion of horses stamping at his presence. He had not seen so many landsmen at once since he had watched his brother burn. A spasm of shyness gripped his throat, and for a moment he could not speak. Then his fingers tightened on the lock he had torn from his beaten adversary, and he raised it aloft.
“I have heard how your country fares ill against the French,” he said. Anne had told him to mention France, to say nothing of himself. “They will not come to you now. I have taken this from the king of the deepsmen as token of his fealty, and I come now for yours.” They were courtier words, liar’s words; Anne had made him memorise them. She thought a speech was in order.
A man stepped forward, a man with a grey face and white hair. “Who do you come from?” he said. “Whose bastard are you?”
“Lord Wade, please.” Anne’s voice wasn’t conciliatory; it was sharp.
There had been more to the speech, but Henry decided against it. He looked the man in the eyes. “Do you want a French king?” he said. “I have come from the sea, and I have beaten the deepsmen. They will do what I say. So will you. Give me a horse: my legs are tired from standing.”
It was a long moment that passed, and then a man came forward. Samuel Westlake, Henry saw. He leaned his weight against the horse as he approached, and then handed the reins over. Henry took them, and mounted up.
BOOK SIX
TROTH
THIRTY-ONE
ANNE SAT ALONE in the chapel, her hands clasped. She couldn’t kneel, but she was praying. Samuel had explained to her that it wasn’t royal privilege not to kneel before God, but a consideration for a prince’s weak legs; that no prince should ever consider himself too high to kneel, in spirit, before the Creator.
Anne hadn’t argued with him, but it hadn’t seemed relevant to her. Samuel was interested in theology. God, to Anne, was both infinite and simple: to pray was to be cradled in light. She reached out within herself now, tried to relax, open her soul, feel the blessings of God around her. When she prayed best, she could vibrate with the sacred, feel the atmosphere coil and hum with blessings, Holy Presence in every drop of air, every fibre of herself, her own body and the bench under her and the stone beneath her feet ringing with divinely omnipresent as salt in the sea. Christ had said to man, You are the salt of the earth, and Anne had listened. When she prayed, she could taste it: God, the flavour of every thread and scrap of the world.
What she prayed for was blessings upon her marriage. That had been quickly arranged; Henry could be crowned as her husband, she had declared herself intent, and who was to stop it? There had been some talk of getting Philip’s consent, some notional royal blessing, but Henry had stopped that: when one man wanted a woman in the sea, he said, and another man tried to stop him, they fought for her. Did Philip wish to fight? He said it dryly, and several people laughed, as if he was making a joke. It could have been a joke, a reference to Philip’s infirmity, his unfitness to fight being his un
fitness to rule. They thought it meant a resolute and witty king. In that moment Anne understood just how much everyone disliked her uncle.
Anne didn’t think it was a joke, though. She was not sure if she should be afraid of Henry.
But marrying him was the only option, and it might be a good one. She could have sons, lots of sons, a shoal of them to lead out to the delights of water, to help her guard the shores. The idea of childbirth seemed inconceivable in this moment, procreation unreal, but she reached out to God, asking for strength. In this moment, she was safe in the arms of the Lord; what would follow, would follow. And whatever became of her, it could not be a worse death than shrieking in bloody sheets, skin boiled from her body. She would marry Henry, and God would support her.
Anne sat in the chapel and prayed. She could find no form of words appropriate to the situation, but God would forgive her for that. God forgave. There was infinite mercy in Heaven; this she believed. There had to be, when there was so little mercy on earth.
Anne opened herself to God, and felt God around her. The living heart of the world beat within her chest.
Henry was surrounded by men he didn’t know. They had escorted him to a palace, a stone building broader and higher than any he’d ever seen before, with buildings and buildings around it. This was London: no estate, but a reef of landsmen, wood and stone, thickets of people and dwellings. The city made him nervous; there were too many obstacles, blind spots on every side. There was no way to know what would approach.
In Great Waters Page 29