In Great Waters (11 page)

It was at this point, while Anne’s tutor was pulling her back with a jerk to her ear and setting about her with a series of blows from the abandoned stick, that Erzebet made a slow, steady progress into the room. Anne ceased struggling and looked up wet-eyed, waiting for her mother to save her.

“What happens here?” Erzebet’s Latin was perfect, but she reserved it for foreign dignitaries, asserting to all the court in her flawed, accented English her claim to rule the country as well as a woman native born.

“The princess Anne pushed her sister, your Majesty.” The tutor, a woman by the name of Margaret, still held Anne by the arm, but the cane she held limp in an uncertain grip.

“Why do you have the cane?” Erzebet’s eyes on the woman’s hand were cold.

“I—I wished to correct the princess, your Majesty.” Margaret’s voice had gone dead. She made no effort to move back or even lower her head as Erzebet came towards her, canes tapping on the ground, the rustle of her skirts loud over the whisper of her feet on the floor. She stood before her attendant for a long pause before passing her right stick into her left hand, and with her free palm, giving Margaret a slap across the face that made her stagger.

“You do not touch the cane without a prince’s permission,” Erzebet said, her voice clear against the woman’s muffled whimpers. She turned to Anne. “Did you push your sister?”

Anne looked up at her mother. “The girl said I have a blue face.” The word “sister” was starting to hurt, and she reached up for her mother’s hand.

“Bad girl,” Erzebet said. “Go away.” She turned her back, and spoke not another word to Anne as her daughter was carried out of the room.

Anne spent a further week with her tutors, not knowing if she would ever see her mother again. Her inattention to lessons brought
punishments that made little impression. It was only when her mother reappeared to find her daughter behind in her studies, and left again, that Anne reapplied herself, struggling to master her letters with a frantic haste that made the words swim on the page.

A week later, Anne found herself once again in a room with this sister, her mother watching over them both. The sight of Erzebet made her heart beat frantically; her mother had called her a bad girl, and Anne was desperate for some sign of forgiveness. Erzebet gave none, neither frowning nor smiling at Anne; she sat watching both daughters, her eyes passing from one to another, the same intense, steady gaze on each little face. Anne answered when addressed, a sharp knot tightening in her throat every time her mother’s eyes flicked away to the girl. To Mary. The questions changed from Latin to Spanish, French to Magyar, and the sisters answered, correct and formal.

After some time, Mary was called on to recite an answer in Latin. Anne listened, struggling to find something in the girl that could justify the loss of her mother’s attention, when she heard a mistake.

Erzebet stopped Mary’s recitation with a raised eyebrow. “No,” she said.

Anne raised her courage on a tide of savage satisfaction that the interloper had misstepped. “It should be
benedicta,”
she volunteered.

Erzebet turned her head to Anne’s tense face. “Yes,” she said, “that is right.” She gave the girl a small smile that stayed in Anne’s memory as she studied for hours each day, learning anything she could find that might win her more.

Together, they studied. Languages. History, the story of the great houses of Europe and the complex strands of Angelica’s line. Geography, the cities and borders and armies of the nations that either of them might one day rule as queens. The first time Erzebet introduced that idea into a lesson, Anne found herself crying, for reasons she was too ashamed to explain: Erzebet had left her own country, her own mother, to be a queen in England. Anne had no desire to do such. She would never see Erzebet again.

“Enough, Anne,” Erzebet said. There was a little wrinkle in her forehead, but her tone was firm.

Anne couldn’t manage it. “I do not want to go abroad,” she said. Her voice was feeble-sounding; to talk this way in front of her rival sister was shaming.

To her surprise, she felt a small hand patting her arm. “Other nations are not bad,” Mary said. “They have different fashions and different foods, and they wait on you at banquets.”

Anne looked at Erzebet, waiting for her to say something enlightening, but Erzebet was sitting back, watching the two of them.

“I wish to stay home,” Anne said in a small voice.

“I have been to France,” Mary said. “The Dauphin gave me a ring, and this string of pearls. Would you like it?”

“What?” Mary was such a rival to her mother’s affections that Anne had found more or less everything she did offensive, but sending gifts was usually done by courtiers aiming to please people. Anne had nothing to offer Mary, nothing to make Mary wish to keep on her good side, so there was no good reason why Mary should give her anything. The pearls, though, were pretty, not unlike the string she remembered Erzebet wearing in those few moments when she had nursed Anne. Temptation and antagonism warred in Anne’s stinging throat.

“They would look well when your face is alight,” Mary said. “They would glow.”

So there it was: her face again. The girl was just teasing her. “You should go back to France,” Anne said.

To her astonishment, Mary’s eyes filled with tears. “You are unkind,” she said. “I offered you a gift. In France I thought of my sister, that I could bring her back a gift.” Mary wiped her face with the back of her wrist. The gesture was so inelegant, so unlike a courtier’s delicacy, that it filled Anne with a startled sense of fellow-feeling. She had thought she was the only clumsy one.

Anne didn’t want to surrender, didn’t want to be the one to climb down, but her mother was still sitting there, watching them both. The idea of Mary thinking of her in France gave Anne a sense of guilt, too: she hadn’t thought of Mary in England, hadn’t known of her existence, and part of her still heartily wished the girl back in France. But
nobody had offered Anne a gift before. Mary was the first person who had ever suggested she’d minded Anne’s absence.

Anne cast around. “I have a sapphire bracelet that is too big for me,” she said. “I could give you that if you give me the pearls.”

Mary looked up with something like interest.

“You cannot give away a gift,” Erzebet cut in. “It offends the giver. A princess must not give offence.”

Anne sighed. Erzebet hadn’t reprimanded Mary, but now she was chiding both of them. Perhaps it was only Anne who caused offence.

“I do not like pearls,” Mary said. “Courtiers always give me pearls, and I have too many of them, and they look dull.”

“Pearls are royal, from the sea,” Erzebet said. Her tone brooked no disagreement.

Mary cast Anne a glance of conspiracy. It was a limited start, but it was the first time Mary had looked like anything but a rival.

At times, Erzebet still visited her younger daughter alone. On these occasions, she would sit beside her and croon in the language Anne had only heard her mother speak. She was growing resignedly aware that such scenes were probably taking place with Mary as well, but she drank them in, taking in every second of her mother’s presence. The language itself was easy, a fluid, musical flow of groans and squeaks, whistles and clicks that soothed her even while she knew the moments couldn’t last.

From infancy, it had been the language with which her mother called her to safety when they swam together. Anne was long accustomed to the court’s journeys from castle to castle, and had as clear an understanding of the lakes and streams of each residence as she had of the rooms within. There were many times when her mother, away from the court, would place Anne before her on a horse and the two of them would ride off—Anne thrilling with the secrecy and closeness of the adventure—and strip off their heavy court gowns to slip naked into the water. Released from the strain of bearing themselves up like landsmen, mother and daughter would dive and whirl, their legs coiling like whips through the water, cold and clean and free.

Once the two sisters had been introduced, there were other trips too. The first time the court gathered up for a journey to the shore, Anne was anxious. She had understood that her mother made such trips, but as she was placed onto a litter with her sister, ready to be carried, Erzebet’s litter seemed a long way ahead, carried side by side with William’s and Edward’s, and there was no one to ask.

Mary, beside her, was wearing the same kind of garment as Anne: a dress surprisingly plain for a formal occasion. Anne’s nurse had dressed her that morning, but the gown had only ties at the front, tapes that could be unknotted even by small, webbed hands, and the fabric was light and unjewelled. Both small heads were weighted with silver crowns, but these light dresses were a mystery.

Anne was becoming more and more nervous. She didn’t quite want to admit it to Mary, but she wanted someone to explain things. “Have you done this before?” she managed.

Mary shook her head. “No. Have you?”

It was that question that warmed Anne a little. Mary seemed so big, so assured. The idea that she might consider Anne ahead of her in anything at all was a shocking compliment. “No.” Anne felt sufficiently better to admit some ignorance of her own. “What will happen, do you know?”

“We will go into the sea with our mother,” Mary said. “We are going to see the deepsmen.”

Anne blinked. She had heard stories of them since she was old enough to talk, those mighty, essential allies in the water, but Erzebet had always told her that she wouldn’t see them until she was big enough. Bobbing along on her litter, she didn’t feel very big.

“Do you swim well?” she asked Mary.

Mary nodded. “Yes, very well.” She sounded a little more pleased with herself than Anne could like, but before she could feel too annoyed, she noticed one of the litter bearers, a man named John Fisher, of whom Anne had always been shy, watching them out of the corner of his eye.

Anne took a chance.
Is it safe?
she asked. She put the question in her mother tongue, her and Erzebet’s private language. If Erzebet
spent time with Mary, Mary would understand it, and at least they would be safe from Fisher’s ears.

Mary looked at her, a quick, startled look. There was a pause before she slipped her hand into Anne’s.
Stay with me
, she said. Mary’s head was upright, but as her hand gripped hard around Anne’s it trembled a little.

The reason for the gowns became clear at the water’s edge: following Erzebet’s lead, the two girls found themselves stripping off, unaided, before the court. Anne struggled to keep her mind off the dozens of eyes behind them, to look out to sea, holding herself steady. If she could get through this well, her mother would be pleased with her.

The court musicians were sounding music, playing a march of approach. Anne noticed that Philip was still in his litter. His voice rose, louder and louder, protesting: “Go in! Go in!”

Edward, their grandfather, laid his crown on the sand, and William and Erzebet followed. Anne cast a quick look at Mary, and the two girls imitated the motions of their parents, wobbling a little on their flexible legs; neither of them could manage it as gracefully as Erzebet. Then Edward was wading into the water, a few arthritic steps before the sea grew deeper and he dived forward like a young man. William followed, a great leap that drove the water up in plumes around him. Anne and Mary hesitated, then Erzebet reached back, took one girl by each hand, and led them into the shallows.
Stay with me
, she said. They swam off together, into the cold, salt water, where the tides pulled and the currents ran in icy streams beneath the surface, and they could hear, ringing through the water, cries the musician’s march had tried to imitate:
We are coming. We are coming
.

And ringing back, from out in the bay, louder and stronger and richer than the cries of the family, were other voices:
We are here
.

As Erzebet speeded up, her hands slipped free, and she swam ahead, calling back quietly—
Keep up, children
. All around, the water was dark, and if Erzebet swam into the shadows, they’d lose sight of her. Anne kicked as hard as she could, but her legs were small, and she found herself alarmed.

Don’t lose me
, she said. And before Erzebet could answer, Mary called back,
Stay with me
. Anne felt a moment of resentment that her sister was answering when it was her mother’s voice that she wanted, needed to hear, but Erzebet was calling, sending her voice after her husband:
I have children with me. Do not threaten them. We are strong. We have children
.

Stay with me
, came Mary’s voice again, definitely a frightened squeak now, and Anne gathered herself. Mary knew no more than she did, and they were wild in the water, and the voices were tolling out all around them, louder than a cathedral organ. Their parents were there. Freedom rushed to Anne’s head in a sudden torrent: she was in the dark, away from the court, away from everything, and there were deepsmen out in the bay.

From the sounds of their voices, there were many deepsmen in the court they met that day, thirty, forty, a whole choir. But the water in the bay was muddy and stirred, and though Anne had seen pictures all her life, her first glimpses of the deepsmen were only a few white bodies flashing through the haze. They were massive, larger even than her father, and as they approached, one of them swam out of the dark and stared straight into her face. There were black eyes, tiny sharp teeth, a small, flattened nose, and Anne leaped in the water, too shocked to react: the face that stared at her was almost skull-like. Sharp-nailed fingers reached out, and she heard the deepsman cry out:
Face. Deep face
.

It was her blue face again, Anne realised. But then she saw it: little glimmers of blue shining up from the depths. Not on every deepsman, but glints here and there, glints that told her she was not alone.

Anne pulled all her courage together, and spoke through the water.
I am not a stranger
, she said.
Welcome me
. And the deepsman swam round her, round in a rapid circle, fast as a minnow.