In Great Waters (26 page)

Henry turned on Claybrook. “You talk of soldiers. Why have I seen none? We could go to Cornwall and stop them doing this.”

Claybrook gave a polite smile. In this conversation, it looked utterly wrong, and Henry glowered. “We are not yet ready, my lord.”

“He may be right, sir,” John said to his father. “I do not think the people will wish to see a child burn. Henry and I are well grown now. Maybe this would be a good moment to strike.”

“Not unless we wish to put this child on the throne,” Claybrook said, a sharp edge in his voice. “And it is Henry we wish to crown, not this Cornwall infant.”

“He could be my son,” Henry said. “You say that the King is weak because he has not enough sons. This boy could be mine.”

“You are too young to be his father, my lord,” Claybrook said, as if correcting a mistake.

“I am not a fool, I know this,” Henry snapped. “But if we could take the throne, then I could say he was my son and that would make him so. You say England needs deepsmen boys. There would be two of us.” In fact, Henry had ill memories of deepsmen boys, but this child was smaller than him, weaker, and could not hurt him. With Henry’s dominance assured, the infant might be useful. And whether or not he would like the child, Henry could not stand the thought of a burning. If England could burn one bastard, it could burn another, and the child’s death would bring him a long step closer to the scorching pyre.

“This boy would be a threat to you, my lord.” Henry noticed with
anger that Claybrook’s voice, so biting when speaking to his son, had turned back to courtesy and calm when addressing Henry.

“I could settle such a threat if it happened,” Henry said. “But it is not coming from him now.”

“This is useless talk, my lord,” Claybrook said. “It cannot be done.”

“Why do you not want to save the child?” Henry demanded.

Claybrook gave him a politic smile. “England would accept one bastard on the throne, my lord. England would become used to him in time, if he could hold it. But England would never accept two bastards at once. One bastard would become a king, if he were strong enough. But the king is king by birth. Two bastards together would destroy the very notion of kingship.”

“England would accept a king that ruled,” Henry said, his voice unfamiliarly choked as fury made it harder to speak. “You are—are talking songs. These are thoughts, not real things.” His vocabulary was beginning to desert him in the cold haze of his anger.

“My lord,” Claybrook said firmly, “we have not the soldiers.”

“Then
what have you been doing for eight years?”
Henry looked over and saw John sitting silent in his chair, gnawing his knuckles as Henry shouted at his father. Henry drew a breath, held it, held it, let the seconds stretch as his lungs settled around their hoard of air.

A silence hung in the room.

Henry let the breath out of his lungs, drew another. “John, could we raise soldiers?” he said.

John swallowed, avoiding his father’s eyes. “Probably not fast enough,” he said. “And possibly not many enough. The burning will happen soon. It takes many days to bring an army together. Weeks, usually.”

“Could it be done?”

“Possibly.” John looked at Henry, his shoulders hunched as if to hide him from the adults staring at him. “But probably it would fail. And then we would go on the pyre together.”

Henry looked at John for a moment, refusing to drop his gaze.
The air in the room was too thick, too windless for comfort. He lowered his voice, sitting down on the floor. “Can you go to this burning?”

“My lord …” Claybrook began.

“I do not speak to you.”
Henry did not shout, but his words rang around the room, resonant as a cry in the sea, and everyone flinched at the sound.

John shrugged. “If I must. You will wish for news straight away, yes?”

“Will you stay awhile after you come back?”

John nodded. “Yes, I can do that.”

“Then you should go. Go alone. Do not bring a servant, no one who will make a noise or want to talk to you while you are there. Listen to what the people say, and tell me about it.”

“I will do that.” John’s face, normally pink of cheek and bright of eye, was dull in the half-lit room.

“You do not look well,” Henry said. “Will it make you ill to see it?”

John straightened up, shook his head rapidly, his curls flying about his face. “It will not kill me,” he said. There was a moment when his face struggled for composure, but then his old grin was back, almost as wide as before. “I shall be as brave as a soldier about it, Henry. It may do me good to see what we face, make me cautious.”

“If you cannot watch it, you should tell me so,” Henry said.

John shook his head again. “No,” he said. “We will see more deaths than this before we get to the throne.” He smiled again. Henry could see that the smile was forced, but he was not going to hurt his friend’s pride by pointing it out. “After all, it will not be you on the pyre.”

John rode away that night. Henry had insisted on accompanying him to the edge of the estate, and with Claybrook already gone to catch the royal party, Allard made no objection; his face was sad and frightened, but he knew better than to quarrel with Henry in his current mood. Henry and John rode quietly together, no sound but the hooves of their horses drumming against the damp earth. The air was cool on
Henry’s skin, damp and pleasant, and the moon cut a sharp slice of light in the black sky above. It was a bright night, easily bright enough to ride by.

At the edge of the grounds, Henry patted the neck of John’s horse and said, “I will see you soon.” John looked at him and nodded, his mouth pinched shut, his face grey in the moonlight. He turned his face without speaking and, after a moment, kicked his horse to a trot and set off.

Henry sat by himself, listening to the sound of the hooves as it faded in the distance. In the still, moist air, sound carried far, and he could hear great distances: owls hooting from miles away, the rush of a river, the scuttle of mice in the underbrush. In that great quiet, John’s horse was the loudest thing for miles.

After a few minutes, when he was sure that he was out of John’s earshot, he followed.

John was easy to track. His horse pattered along, a steady, sustainable pace: John had never liked to press his animals too hard. Neither did he like to be alone; Henry could hear him whispering under his breath: “Good beast. On we go …” He sang songs to keep himself company, talked to his horse, clattered his teeth together to make noise to go along with him. The sound of his loneliness made Henry sorry that he was trailing so far behind, but irritated him a little as well. Henry knew about hunting at night. If this were in the sea, with all the noise John was making, a shark would have taken him in the first ten minutes.

Hour after hour they kept on. He did not know where the burning was to be held, but the distances were still greater than Henry, used to cantering in circles within a few miles of land, had ever ridden in his life. The trees did not change, the earth smelled fresh and black and the wind parted before him as it always did, but despite the danger of the journey, the openness, the wild risk of discovery, something in Henry relaxed. After years imprisoned, he was travelling the miles again.

The thought of the bastard had driven him almost mad when he had first resolved to follow John. Henry was too old to think he could somehow rescue the poor landed brat, but he had to go anyway. They were going to burn him. Were it not for Allard—it was a thought that had never spurred him to gratitude before, but he felt a surprising stirring of it now—that would have been him. This child, his kinsman, was headed for the pyre, and Henry had to see it. Even if the boy didn’t know he was there, Henry had to be near him. Whether he was destined for the throne or the fire, Henry didn’t know, but the flames were something he needed to see. The thought of them made his heart pound so loud in his chest he could hear it over the noise of John’s horse, and that made him angry. He was going to face the flames, match his courage against them and stare them down.

It was early the next morning, grey dawn seeping through the sky, that Henry finally decided he had hidden long enough. John’s horse stopped pacing in the distance and Henry heard a slithering dismount, the familiar voice saying, “Good girl. Just a little rest and we will go on …” It was time to make his approach. As the sky whitened, Henry could feel his chest constrict; a dark sky was like a dark sea overhead, soft and expansive, deep enough to hide in, but with light capping the day he was beginning to feel exposed. They were on a dirt road, tufts of long grass straggling at the sides and brambles leaning toothed, drunken legs this way and that, and Henry didn’t like it. He’d never seen this place before.

John sat shut-eyed on the ground, his horse cropping the grass beside him. He didn’t see Henry coming. A small flare of frustration briefly warmed the chill in Henry’s bones: John shouldn’t be so easy to track. It was careless. How would he survive if they were ever hunted?

“You should not close your eyes on a strange road,” he said, riding forward, and John’s eyes flew open. He stared at Henry, his mouth hanging open and his face pale.

“Good morrow,” Henry continued, seeing that John wasn’t going to say anything. The sight of his friend speechless made him uncomfortable,
and there was nothing to do but carry on and wait for John’s spirits to catch up. He hoped it would be soon; Henry was not good at being the cheerful one. “I am coming with you.”

John looked frantically back and forth, up and down the road. There was no one in sight; brown puddles shivered in the wind and the grass bobbed beside them, but the road was clear. “Get back into the woods!” John leaped to his feet, making a grab for Henry’s bridle. Henry’s horse turned its head and Henry grabbed at the reins, steadying it. “Henry, hide yourself! Get into the woods! What do you do here?”

“I am coming to the burning,” Henry said. “Leave my horse be, you will frighten him.”

“To Hell with your horse, Henry. Do you mean to have us killed? How did you follow me?”

Henry shrugged. “I could hear you from a mile away. I wish to come to—”

“Henry, you can’t! Go back, please. You will be killed. We will both be killed if you are seen, and if you are not seen my father will kill me when we get home anyway. Henry, please go back.” John’s face was drained of colour, his eyes wide. His hand, reached out for the bridle, was frozen in mid-air, and Henry could see it shake.

“I will not give you up if anyone sees me,” Henry said. “But I shall come to the burning.”

“No you will not. Not with me.” From the ground, John was far taller than Henry, but secure in his saddle, Henry could see the top of John’s head, an unaccustomed sight. “Henry, I cannot take you with me. You must go home.”

Henry leaned down and patted John on the shoulder. John flinched like a nervous animal, but Henry felt no aggression, just a sense of friendship. He wasn’t going to get John hurt. “I do not know the way,” he said. “I only followed the sound of your hooves. I will get lost.”

“Then I will take you.”