In Great Waters

by Kit Whitfield

  John bowed his head again. All her life, Anne remembered his face being merry, amused, amiable. There was no smile on it now. He could hardly have aged in the short weeks since she last saw him, carrying his bottle of poison, but there was a slackness to his expression, like a hanging limb, as if, unable to smile, he didn’t know what to do with his face.

  “It is a great pleasure to see you again, my—your Majesty,” John said.

  Anne extended a hand as he walked towards the boat. John hesitated for a moment, then took it, making the boat jolt and sway as he set foot aboard. His hand was hotter than Henry’s.

  Anne sat in the boat and waited.

  “Do you wish to go upstream or down, your Majesty?” John braced himself between the oars. Small though she was, Anne could have handled them, she reflected; if it came to a trial of strength between the two of them, she would have the deepsman’s vigour on her side. But he was a subject, and could do the rowing. She would sit and watch him toil.

  “Upstream,” Anne said. “Let us have the current with you when we return. You will be tired then, I think. That takes us towards your father’s land, I believe?”

  “Indeed.” John turned his head aside to study the oars, handles of wood he would have to negotiate by grip and heft, not by sight. He leaned back, and began to row. The oars split the surface cleanly, a flower of water exploding upwards with each dip. The boat moved, dragging through the water slowly for the first few moments, then settling into its momentum, moving forward with a steady flow. John’s arms rotated, his body moving to and fro with each pull, as if he swam backwards through air.

  “You row well,” Anne said. Muddy banks and draggled grass slipped past them; overhanging trees dipped their frazzled heads in the water.

  “Thank you, your Majesty.” John’s voice, though a little breathless now, sounded stronger, as if the effort of exercise gave him some cover for his nerves.

  There were no listening ears; only the dark banks drifting away from them. Time enough, Anne thought, to speak openly.

  “My husband misses your company, I think,” she said.

  John looked up. His face, a little flushed from rowing, was hesitant.

  “He has spoken of you,” Anne said, seeing his predicament. John didn’t know how much Henry had said about his childhood. Married to him or not, Anne was still the Delamere that Henry’s protectors had sought to overthrow; she might easily resent John’s conspiracy. As far as John knew, this might even be an assassination, a lure away from prying eyes into some land of secretive punishment for his treason. Anne decided to leave him in uncertainty about her intentions for just a while longer. Just to see what he would do.

  “Has he, your Majesty?” John trailed off, huffing as if the oars were heavy.

  “He tells me you were playmates as boys,” Anne continued. “He holds great love for you, I think. I would say he trusts you above any man.”

  An avenue of willows overhung them, drooping narrow branches into the water. There was nothing to see either side but long twigs bowing weak-stemmed under their own weight.

  “He will regret that he could not join us,” Anne said, as if John was not silent, emotion struggling on his face. “He has asked and asked that we should swim in the Thames together. He longs for it.”

  John stopped rowing, and the boat rocked in the water. “I did not know there was poison in the wine,” he said. There was a raw edge to his voice, as if there was a hand around his throat.

  Anne said nothing, raised an eyebrow. The suddenness with which John had broken out startled her; she sat very still, as if watching a deer she didn’t want to alarm into flight.

  John rocked the oars on the edge of the boat. Out of the water, the paddles beat in the air like flags. “My father gave me wine to take,” he said hoarsely. “I wished to see Henry, to know if he was all right. And to know if he was going to name us. I did not think he would, but if he was tortured I did not want to end on the pyre. Henry—Henry and I watched the burning in Cornwall. I was so afraid I thought I would be sick, the whole time, but Henry just rode beside me, he insisted that he would go to it. He fears nothing, Henry. He just rides it down. I did not know what to do if he was captured. I just wished to see him. And—and my father gave me some wine to take. He told me to speak to Henry, to find out what was happening so that we could make plans. He always knew that—Henry cared for me more than for him. Henry hates my father, I think. I tried to tell him—I wished to tell him, he handled Henry all wrong, but what could I say? My father said Henry might speak to me, he would not speak to him.”

  The boat was turning in the current, its nose floating round towards the bank, but John did not put his oars in the water to check it.

  “I went home and told my father that Bishop Westlake did not seem ready to turn Henry in, that we might have some time in hand. And he said—he told me …” John’s face convulsed. “When he was counsellor to his Majesty Philip, my father felt sure he could direct the state. But when his Majesty turned more to the Bishop, my father was angry, he said things were slipping away from us. Then he said that Henry was our best chance, that one iron in the fire was going cold and we should pull out the other one.” John spoke faster and faster. “But Henry ran away before he could do anything, and then he turned up in Bishop Westlake’s house, and—my lady, your Majesty, you must believe me, I had no hand in it. I never wished it. Henry has been my brother all my life. My father always told me, when I was a child, one day he and I might come out into the open, that Henry would be a greater king than—he told me about his Majesty Philip, too, but I did not—It did not seem …” The oars creaked on the sides of the boat as they turned in John’s frantic hands. “My father is a subtle man,” John said, drawing breath. “But when you are with Henry, subtlety does not seem to mean much. I never wished him harm, your Majesty. I will swear it on a Bible.”

  Anne sat in the stern of the boat, one hand sheltering the other. Her voice was quiet. “What harm did you wish to us?”

  John looked at her again. There were frightened tears in the corners of his eyes. “None to you, your Majesty, I swear it. Henry—I did not know what would become of you, of you all. I—I feared for England with your royal father lost. It was only after that my father would meet him—but—I—I was a child, when Henry was found. I heard my father talk of him, talk of him for years before I met him. I only thought I would meet him, that he would be my brother. Your Majesty—I knew that if Henry rose, there would be war. But I always meant to speak for you. You have been kind to me, in the past. Henry listens to me. I always meant to ask him to spare you.”

  He had not mentioned Mary. Anne’s heart was pounding through her chest, but her face felt a long way away from it, cool in the damp air of the river. She could not give way to feeling now, not when this man was pleading before her. “You have lived a long time with—incompatible ideas, I think,” she said.

  John blinked his eyes. “I swear to you, your Majesty, I only ever thought for the best. I prayed for the best, I prayed that God would see us through this. I—am no match for my father’s subtlety. I have tried to be his loyal son and Henry’s loyal friend, and I wished to be a loyal subject to England.”

  To England, Anne noted. Not to you. “I fear the time has come when you must choose between them,” she said.

  John had smiled at her, chatted with her, when she had been a sad, scared little girl. It cut at her heart, to think how many secrets there were behind those smiles. She thought of John, a child confronted with a strange new brother, a conspiring father, a freakish heir to the throne. What would she have wished him to do? What would she have done?

  God tell us to forgive, Anne thought. But in her mind was Erzebet, screaming in a shroud of blood.

  “I shall be loyal to you,” John was saying. “Henry has always been first in my heart, your Majesty. I—I wish to serve you so that my loyalties may reconcile. But I miss Henry, I shall be his loyal servant. Please, let me see him so I may tell him
so.”

  “What,” asked Anne, “do you know of the death of my mother?”

  Wood creaked on wood, and John looked at her, wet-eyed and white-faced. “Your Majesty …”

  Anne clenched her teeth together. “Do not tell me you were out of your father’s counsels,” she said. “Or that he did not tell you what he had done, after the doing of it. I can have you racked. Henry will not like it, but he does not like liars either. Do you wish to place yourself between me and him? Tell me what you know of my mother.”

  The boat rocked. John looked away, dropped an oar in the water and gave a pull, turning the prow upstream again. His voice was very low. “He told me nothing,” he said. “Only that she died of a fever. But he did not speak of it much, and that was uncommon. He speaks a great deal of the doings of court, and how they may play out, how we can best anticipate possible advantages. He did not speak much of his plans after her death. He said—he said before she died, that—that we could ill afford a queen who burned bastards and punished those who opposed the burnings. He said once, it was a mercy that she was no longer with us. And after that, he did not speak of it again.”

  Anne swallowed. “I do not believe you,” she said.

  “I will swear it on a Bible, your Majesty.”

  “If you would murder your queen, you would forswear yourself on a Bible.”

  “I did not know.”

  “You were no child then,” Anne said. “You were almost a man. My lord Claybrook must wish for a son to follow in his ways.”

  “I was almost a man whose father did not trust him,” John said. He spoke with desperate haste. “Henry trusted me. My father wanted me to follow him, yes. But he did not trust me not to tell Henry.”

  Anne sat silent for a moment. John sounded sincere. That didn’t mean he was telling the truth, but if he was lying, he was lying too well to see through. His lies must have been weighing very heavily on his conscience if he would spit them out on such little provocation. Perhaps, under pressure, John lacked a talent for secrets.

  “You have tried to please too many people,” Anne said slowly. “I do not know if I can trust you not to tell your father of this conversation as soon as we reach land.”

  John shook his head. “I will not. I swear, your Majesty.”

  “You say so now.” Anne looked into the water, the surface slick with reflections over the dark weeds below. “But you did not ask how I know of your father’s hand in my mother’s end. I had only guessed it before. Now I know for certain.”

  John shook his head again. He said nothing.

  He had seemed so much older than her, only a few years ago, Anne thought. Time had passed by, too fast to grasp. “Your father will not survive this,” Anne said. “We are not safe on the throne yet. There is more to do before England is secured. We cannot have such a man as your father, with all his irons in the fire. You will have to choose.”

  Here in the boat, she thought, it would not be a difficult choice. John would swear to them; he might even mean it. But if his father had hold of him again, could he be trusted?

  “It would help,” Anne said carefully, “if you would give us some earnest against your father. If you have information you can lay. Henry loves you; he wishes you to have your father’s lands and waterways. I do not wish to confiscate them, not if you will be a loyal servant. But you are not to go home, my lord John. As of this moment, you are to consider yourself under guard. If you leave the court, if you go to your father, or speak to him alone, I shall know the choice you have made.”

  Anne’s heart hurt. Too many men today that she’d had to set down. Samuel put aside for the Archbishop, John pulled apart from his father. Was it going to end, this restless division of side from side? Would there be a day when everyone could stand together?

  John raised his hand to swear. “I am your man, your Majesty. Yours, and King Henry’s.” He looked her straight in the eye, but his hand shook in the air.

  “Henry is not king yet,” Anne said. “You must be his man before he is king, his man from this moment onwards, and no one else’s. Do not equivocate, my lord John. We cannot afford it.”

  John’s hand stayed in the air. His five fingers hung loose, like an autumn leaf curling up at the edges. “From this moment onwards, I am your Majesty’s man, and my brother Henry’s.”

  Anne drew a cold breath. This was winning, she thought. It was not as fine a sensation as she would have guessed, considering all the effort men put into gaining it.

  “Your Majesty, I must plead for my father,” John said. His voice cracked a little. “I am your loyal man, but I must ask you for mercy.”

  Anne didn’t want to hear him beg, didn’t want to see him cry. Erzebet had died skinless, Claybrook had raised a bastard to overthrow her. Too many people had bled. But how could she fault a son for loving his father?

  There was nothing for it but the truth. “We have not yet decided what to do about your father,” she said. Her tone was thin, the lapping of the water almost as loud as her voice. “We shall remember what you asked. We can make no promises. That is all I can give you today.”

  John bowed his head. “Yes, your Majesty.”

  There was a long silence. John did not look at her face; instead, he reached for the oars, pushed the little boat off from the bank where it had drifted. He glanced at her, but Anne was staring into the cloudy water, and gave him no directions. John hesitated, then he started rowing the boat back downstream.

  “My lord husband will not swear to uphold the Church,” Anne said after a while.

  John looked up from his oars.

  Anne shrugged with a lightness she did not feel. It was too painful to wrangle over a man’s life, and there were pressing issues still to decide. She could not let this day go without more planning. “You are his brother,” she said. “Perhaps you have some suggestions.”

  John pulled the oars, shaking his head. “Henry does not much concern himself with things he cannot see,” he said.

  “Did it ever trouble you, having a heathen for a brother?”

  John frowned, his face anxious and puzzled. “We were boys together,” he said. “We—we played together. There were other things to discuss.”

  John was not a holy man, Anne thought. If asked to choose between man and God, which way would he turn? But if it came to that, for all her prayers and her conviction, she herself did not know how to reconcile serving God and England. Too often, the two seemed to call for different things. How would God judge her now, sitting in a boat and telling a man his father was lost? She must have opinions about John if she was to make decisions, but she could not sit in judgement of him.

  “It will go hard with the country if he will not swear to some form of it,” she said. “Will you help me to persuade him, when the Archbishop comes back with a more acceptable ceremony?”

  The look on John’s face was of deep, passionate relief. Anne had said she would let him see Henry. The two brothers could talk to one another again. John could be their friend. It was going to be a longer struggle than she hoped, but if they were careful, they had at least that on their side. It was a blessing to be given thanks for. Anne was tired of enmity.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  IT WAS GEORGE NARBRIDGE who brought the letter, and after that, all was thrown into confusion.

  Anne had not written to Mary announcing her marriage. She had been waiting until after the coronation. In that time, she had thought often of her sister. Mary had understood things Anne had not, had put a sisterly hand inside Anne’s. She had not been unkind; even for an older child, a pink-cheeked child with perfect health and a clear line to the succession, Mary had been as pleasant as could be expected. But by the time they had parted, it had been Mary who was the crier, Mary who trembled in public while Anne set her teeth and fixed her face and carried her head high. It had been hard having Mary around and keeping her self-control at the same time. There had been too many things Mary might have said, things that Anne could not afford to
hear.

  Anne was not prepared to see England break up over a French king, not when there was an Englishman on the shore who everyone would accept. It would cause havoc, the blood of thousands would weigh down her soul. But still, she thought of Mary.

  What would have happened if Mary had been at home when Samuel found Henry? Anne had faced the court, heard men swearing loyalty to her, seen towering nobles holding out the reins of power and expecting her to grasp them. There was Henry. Even after so short a knowledge of him, already it was hard to picture the world without him: his certainty, his fierceness, his open demands, reshaped life around him so boldly that it was hard to believe he had not always been there. Mary was from another life. When Mary had been there, Edward had held the throne, and Anne had been the baby. She had been too frightened to speak to people. Now there was Henry, and Anne had come out of the shadows, out of the deeps. The new times demanded strength, and she was holding. Mary had kissed her when she was young and confused, had struggled to hold back tears before an audience. What would Anne be if faced again with her big sister?

  So she had not written to Mary. Time enough when Henry was crowned. Edward lay dying, and his last day drew closer and closer, even as he held silently to life. There would be a funeral, and a coronation, and she could speak to Mary with silver and pearls on her head and the throne at her back. It was the politic thing to do, and it was also easier. Thinking of Mary right now shook up parts of her heart that she could not afford to disturb. Henry’s prohibition against writing to her gave Anne a breathing space, time to pretend that, among all her other choices, she had not chosen to take the throne from her sister.

  It was a long journey to France. Even a fast courier must ride to the coast, find a ship, carry his message along. It was for this reason that Anne was surprised when George Narbridge arrived at her door, bearing a letter.