In Great Waters

by Kit Whitfield

  As the vows were read out, Anne followed, trying to mean them, reaching out for faith. I did not need to do any of this, she thought as she swore to God that this man beside her would be her husband. I could have spent my days in prayer. I could have joined a convent, dropped out of the succession, let Mary take the throne with her French husband.

  I could walk out of this cathedral right now. I could take my sticks and leave. Something else would happen. England would happen without me.

  Anne crossed herself and swore her life to her king and country in the living presence of God.

  Later that night, stripped by her maids and wrapped in linen, she found herself confronting the living presence of her husband, which was another thing altogether.

  Ushered in by attendants, Henry had barely spoken to her since the ceremony. The two of them had been carried side by side to the celebrations, had sat and dined. She could feel the tension of his body a foot away. Anne picked at her food, smiled and made pleasant answers; Henry, she saw, tasted very little. “Have you no appetite, my lord?” Anne said, trying to start a conversation. And Henry simply looked at her with his black eyes, and said curtly, “I do not care for meat.”

  Now she was alone with him, and he was staring at her, perched on the foot of the bed and sitting quite still. Helplessness overwhelmed Anne; she could still herself and live through anything if she had to, but her husband was just looking at her and making no move. Anne closed her eyes for a moment, prayed for strength. It seemed something was expected of her.

  When she opened her eyes, she thought, for a moment, that she saw it, the light of God. But it was just her own blue face, blushing in the darkness.

  Henry was staring at her in frustration. What were women supposed to do? If this were the sea, he could have swum around her, waiting to see if she would dive and flirt, offering a coiled body for his enjoyment. But she was just standing there, doing nothing. A landswoman’s body was not the same as a deepswoman’s; there were cloven legs, a crevice between, something darker and stranger than a deepswoman’s swift-stroking hands and flat-fronted slit. Henry had seen people couple in the sea, had seen landsmen couple from a distance, but, it was occurring to him with frustrating force now, he had not seen what he needed to know. Though John had explained happily enough how such things were done—years ago, fewer years ago than it seemed, when nothing more complicated than boredom and confinement and the dread of something unknown were troubling him—there was nobody to explain to him now. He had seen her naked in the sea, as she had seen him, but she swam with her legs together and had given him no clues. She had him at a disadvantage.

  Again, the urge to shake her overwhelmed him, to try his sharp nails on her white-grained skin. They were supposed to be friends, he and she. Why was she not making things easier?

  Anne swallowed, seeing Henry’s hands twitch. Memories rose in her mind. Philip’s hands, savaging under her skirts. The bodies of the deepsmen, her mind a long way from her loyal fingers. Offerings, prizes, tokens of exchange. The skin on a man’s body that she had never touched in safety.

  She could live through it. She could pledge her life away. There would be Heaven some day, and her soul could hide within her body till then. But in the meantime, her soul could curl up small, and her body could do what needed to be done. At least on her wedding night, perhaps, there would be no bruises in the morning.

  Anne, hanging on to one of the bedposts for support, slipped out of her linen robe and dropped it on the floor. Her face tingled as she reached into her mind for a phrase she had heard in the sea. No one had translated it for her, but she knew well enough what it meant. She had heard the deepsmen call it to Erzebet, had heard Philip cry it when he wasn’t crying Wife, had heard the strains of music that claimed to speak of love. This was her mother’s language, a secret language that no one on land understood, no one she didn’t trust. God could hear her heart, but no one listening would make anything else of this shrill little bird-cry, no one but Henry, who needed to hear it.

  Do you want to fuck me?

  The girl’s skin gleamed grey and lilac in the glow of her face, and as Henry heard her speak, something in him gave way a little. At last, she was talking like a person.

  Yes, he said. Come here.

  Allard had told him not to use coarse language in front of ladies, but what did men keep ladies with them for? The girl wasn’t dancing, wasn’t posing, but if she could be direct, she was human after all.

  Anne hauled her weak legs onto the bed and moved towards her husband. She wanted to say something else, but she couldn’t think what.

  Her skin under his hands was dry and cool, and smelled faintly of home. No one had taught him how to kiss, nor what to say. Henry was not gentle, but the girl in his arms made no attempt to resist as he bent her this way and that, learning with his hands the secret of royal flesh.

  BOOK SEVEN

  APOSTASY

  THIRTY-TWO

  “AFTER THE CORONATION we shall send word to your sister,” Henry told Anne. “Not before.”

  “As you say.” It took her a long time to bring that answer forth. Henry was right. If they paused now, if they did not take the throne, there would be deaths. Henry would go on the pyre, and so, perhaps, would she. So would Samuel, and Hakebourne, and the men who had supported them: the great families were all throwing their weight behind this new leader, and they would not give him up on Mary’s say-so. Not on the command of an English girl who was sent abroad to become French. They had to hold the throne, and if Mary objected, they would be stronger if they were already crowned. Anne wondered whether Mary’s marriage had taken place yet, whether even now an ambassador was coming with a proclamation. The man would be surprised when he reached England. Had she beaten her sister into the marriage-bed? How would Mary be changed when they next met? She bowed her head, trying not to worry about whether her sister was all right. It had to be this way. If they secured themselves fast, there would be no need for a conflict.

  “What else?” The two of them were riding together, a trip around the park. There were too many people for privacy in the palace, too many people on the streets; Henry had ordered a space cleared and they had retreated there to discuss things. Anne was already learning that Henry was best appealed to straight; court formalities exasperated him.

  “My uncle.” Even as Anne spoke, she was not sure what her wish would be.

  Henry shrugged. “He is in the way, and nobody likes him. But if you do not want him harmed, that is all right. He is no threat. We could send him somewhere where he will trouble no one.”

  Philip could be sent away. She would be away from his wandering hands. Anne inhaled a breath of clear air. “Someone could look after him. Nobody too ambitious, though.”

  “We could put him somewhere with water,” Henry said. “The man would do better there anyway.”

  Anne twined a finger in her horse’s mane. “He has always been forbidden to go into the sea.”

  “Why? He does no good on land.” There was a certain sadness in Henry’s voice that unsettled Anne. Though he had shown little feeling for Philip beyond a matter-of-fact contempt, the idea of him trapped on land seemed to trouble Henry nonetheless. He had already proposed that the two of them visit the Thames together, go and swim alone, proposed it more than once. There never seemed to be time, and Henry grew more morose with each delay.

  It irritated her husband when she didn’t look at him as she spoke, so Anne made herself meet his eyes. “They say he could—fuck a deepswoman. Breed an heir that would challenge the throne.” I do not curse, Anne thought. I speak to my husband in his own language. Henry had an inability to see obscenity that was, after the first trying night, not without compensations. Anne’s body still felt liminal, uncertain as to its own privacy, uncertain as to how much right she had to claim her flesh as her own. But whatever her anxieties, it was at least difficult to be embarrassed in the presence of someone as physical as Henry. Even in his sleep he said not
hing in English, just the quiet chirrups of a deepsman: We must move on soon. Let’s drift. I don’t need to surface yet.

  “Him?” Henry shook his head, almost grinning. “Your landsmen have been worrying about that all these years?”

  “Well, yes.” Anne looked down at her hands, looked up again. “Is that funny?”

  “No deepswoman would want him,” Henry said.

  It was a thought that had never occurred to Anne. She did not want to be near Philip, but with royal seed such a thinned commodity, she had always thought that just her own feelings. “They must want landsmen sometimes,” Anne said, gesturing towards Henry’s own half-caste body.

  Henry shrugged again. “Healthy landsmen, yes. They get curious, I think. But a sick fish like your uncle? That man is no father for anybody’s child. Your people fear too many of the wrong things.”

  Anne thought to ask Henry what he feared, but she didn’t want to know. It was too refreshing to be around someone who did not seem afraid. “So we could send him away, to someone who would care for him. I must think of someone.”

  Henry brightened up, an idea striking him. “I can think of a man,” he said.

  Anne blinked. “Do you know anyone?”

  Henry thought for a moment. “We will have to arrange it. I do not want the man hurt. But we could send him to my father.”

  The suggestion startled Anne so much that a rein fell from her hand and her horse tossed its head. Henry leaned down and passed it to her. “Your father? You know your father?”

  “Not my real father,” Henry said “The man who took me in. He is a—scholar, I think you would say. He always wrote about me when I was little. He would be interested in your uncle.”

  Anne looked at Henry in open curiosity. “I do not remember my father well,” she said. “Was he good to you?”

  Henry thought about it. A crowd of images: bound hands, stone walls, the stick he had choked Allard for wielding on him. Salt in a bowl, a pen forever scratching. Raw fish. Lessons. Angelica. A painting on his wall, a story, a life on limited grounds. How far had he come from that frantic little fish, pissing himself on the way up a staircase, frightened of corners and blind to speech? It was a question, but he had no answer. Henry had lived on land most of his life, but he still did not know how much he liked the landsmen.

  “He was not a bad man,” he said in the end. He thought some more. “I think he liked me,” he added. All the times Allard had warned him to stay on bounds, had spoken of pyres, had checked him from running away seemed different in retrospect. Claybrook had played him like a tool he could abandon, but Allard, he thought, had honestly not wanted him hurt.

  Such a man as Henry’s father should technically be burned as a traitor. For a moment Anne panicked: how were they to save him? How could they explain it? Then she shook her head. In a few days’ time she would be queen. If she didn’t want a man burned, she could order him spared, and that would be that. It was hard to take in.

  Both of them were silent for a moment. Then Henry’s face darkened.

  “Claybrook,” he said.

  Anne drew breath. “Claybrook.”

  Each waited for the other to speak.

  “John is my brother,” Henry said in the end. “I want him spared.”

  “Did he know of the death of my mother?” Anne’s voice was stiff. She had faced Henry with a knife in her fist, but she was married to him now. It was more difficult to know how to argue with him having pledged him her hand.

  Henry shook his head. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” He had said no; why was she pressing it? John hadn’t known. “He told me a great deal about court,” he said shortly. “He did not expect any of it to be repeated to you. He told me your mother died of a fever.” John hadn’t told him how near London they were, but that was a lie of omission. It wasn’t the same thing. People either lied or they didn’t, but John had known Henry was frustrated about his surroundings, and could have lied to him about where they were to keep him quiet. Instead, he kept quiet himself. He could have lied, and he hadn’t. If John said it was a fever, he thought it was a fever.

  Anne sighed. She wasn’t so sure. But John had been pleasant to her over the years. She was not eager to see him dead. And if his father were dealt with quietly, John would inherit the Thames, would be a powerful man with a king who considered him a brother. It would not be in his interests to betray them.

  Perhaps they could poison Claybrook, she thought. God would not want it, but it would solve a lot of problems. “John will be against us if we kill his father openly,” Anne said.

  Henry shook his head. Personally he wished to take an axe and deal with Claybrook simply, but John was likely to be unhappy about it. His wife was right: this was a difficult thing to solve.

  “If we claimed it was he who found you and raised you, perhaps we could execute him for it instead of your father,” Anne said. “That would at least be done in the light. It would look ungrateful, but we could try to pass it off as justice. A king so just he punishes even criminals who help him.”

  Henry stared at her, dismayed, and angry that it sounded feasible. “That is a crooked plan,” he said. “You would lie to many people.”

  Anne looked up at the clouds, stretched back in her saddle. The action bared her throat to the sky, and Henry struggled not to be distracted. “Yes,” she said. “It would be better if we could think of a straight one. But I cannot, can you?”

  She didn’t say it as a challenge, only a question. Henry didn’t answer.

  “We cannot move till after the coronation, in any case,” Anne said. “We can strike harder with our backs braced against the throne. Has Samuel talked to you about the ceremony yet?”

  “Not yet.” That was another dull conversation Henry did not wish to go through. Only days after the wedding, and again he was expected to totter into some great cavernous room and talk nonsense at an old man’s prompting. Once he had the crown on his head so no language-tangled landsman could argue about it, he was going to see to it that less of his time was wasted that way.

  “Oh, and after Archbishop Summerscales dies,” said Anne, “I wish Samuel Westlake to succeed him. You would be happy with that?”

  Henry wasn’t sure what an Archbishop did, but Westlake was a sharp man, who hadn’t mistreated him when he had the opportunity, and Henry felt he owed him a favour. “As you please,” he said.

  Much to Henry’s disgust, Westlake chose to discuss the coronation with him in the same cathedral he had been married in. Henry would have preferred outside, anywhere outside, but the day was a rainy one, and while that would not have troubled Henry landsmen seemed to be fussy about their clothing and hair; it was difficult to make them concentrate when the weather was against them. So, back in the dislikeable chamber they went. Empty but for the two of them, it seemed bigger, but the obscuring windows were still a nuisance. There were faces and hands sketched in among the colours, but they were nothing like real faces. Just crude images, as much like a real face as a court tune was like a real word. Court landsmen seemed to have a compulsion to mimic real things, and to do it badly. There was something uncomfortable about being surrounded by these glass corpses. Being penned in on all sides by something so useless was like being smothered in cloth, rolled up and bound in landsmen’s muddle-headed thinking.

  “That is the Annunciation,” Westlake said, seeing him staring at one of the windows. Henry had been trying to see through the glass; there were more white patches than usual in amongst the blue and red, and he was hoping he might get more of a view.

  “The what?” Henry’s first impulse was to assume that “annunciation” was the name of that particular window, or perhaps the usual name for a window that faced south, but it was easy to be misled when landsmen took to naming imitations of things.

  “The Annunciation. The Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she was to be the mother of God.”

  That helped not
at all. God and Virgin Mary were words his wife was fond of muttering to herself, and while she was welcome to play with such words if it pleased her, Henry was becoming tired of hearing them from other people. They were recurring with greater and greater frequency; landsmen could not seem to stop mentioning them. He had the sense that they were word-objects landsmen toyed with when nervous, the way a man riding might fiddle with a rein. Allard had tried to explain something of their significance when he was very little, but Henry had classed it as Latin, something pointlessly abstruse that he didn’t want to learn. If he tried biting Westlake now to make him stop talking nonsense, Westlake could hardly tie his hands as Allard had, but it seemed that such behaviour wasn’t acceptable among landsmen.

  Best to ignore it, perhaps, and ask his wife about it later. “What do I need to know about this coronation?” Henry said.

  “There are some speeches you should memorise,” Westlake said. Henry noted that there was no “your Majesty” or “my lord” in his speech. He spoke plainly, an older man to a younger. Henry wasn’t sure if he liked this or not.