In Great Waters (32 page)

The deepsmen hadn’t invaded Venice for sport, or to save it from the French. There had been a war before ever the landsmen knew
they were waging it. The deepsmen could have been driven off, perhaps would have been, if there had been no go-between—but this time, there was. Angelica had been clever, and had taken the battle onto their ground. And once she was there, she had held it. What had Allard said? The Venetians didn’t want her children and grandchildren to rule in other countries, they wanted Venice to keep its advantage, to hold its empire. Of course they did. But Angelica had made it happen. Henry could picture her face now, not the flat-painted icon Allard had shown him, but a face like his own, fierce, grim, steady-eyed. Angelica hadn’t cared about Venice. She had cared about her own people. Her own coastal tribe, who had lived at risk too long in the shallow waters around Venice. Tribes in the water were wary of each other at the best of times; an empire of deepsmen, an alliance between the tribes, was inconceivable. This was no story of some invisible God sending aid to the landsmen. This was a woman whose ambition had refused to be chased back, who would not flee when she could fight. Angelica had brought the battle to the landsmen, and had triumphed so thoroughly that they never knew what they had lost, any more than her own people truly understood what they had won. She’d fought for her own kin, had fought so hard she had overturned the world.

You couldn’t avoid these landsmen, not once they knew you were there. Henry knew, deep down in his gut, that the landsmen were a threat to his people. Even back in the sea, where life was hard and clear, the landsmen’s boats had been a mystery, a cause of silences and withheld explanations and rough arms holding him down. The landsmen brought madness in their wake, and once they’d seen you, they wouldn’t let you go. If you let them have control of you, you were lost; only if you had the upper hand were you safe. And you couldn’t ignore them. Angelica hadn’t. You waited till they were weak, you found a place to attack, then you drove in and made them need you, until they quailed to hurt you for fear of hurting themselves.

And England was weak now.

A washed-up bastard squeaking on the shores of Cornwall to face the raised fist of a tyrant queen was one thing. A grown bastard speaking
English, washed up on the shores of a dying king and idiot heir, might be quite another. Claybrook was a bad man, and had no plans to bring soldiers to Henry’s aid; he would stand for ever while the fire burned, hair blowing in the scorching wind, and Henry wanted none of him. Claybrook would wait, and wait, and Henry would grow old and die on a few square miles of countryside, always waiting for the blow to fall. Let the court become uncertain enough, let Claybrook decide he needed an advantage, and what was to stop Claybrook selling Henry to the court, finding a bastard and burning him to prove his loyalty?

You did not find safety by staying still, hoping the current would carry it to you. You went out and you hunted it down.

So it was that one day Henry, maps memorised and his horse saddled and fed, rode to the edge of the land on which he had been imprisoned for thirteen years, drew a breath long enough to carry him over the edge, and set out for the sea.

The journey was not going to be a difficult one. He had only to travel south. Henry’s sense of direction was good, and he had composed a basic navigation chant as he studied the route, sung it to himself in the privacy of his bedroom often enough to fix the details in his mind. There was a river in London, a great river that led past the royal palace, and a great deal of it ran through Claybrook’s land; that, Allard had once explained, was why Claybrook was such a powerful man at court. If Henry could reach it, he could swim his way along. He could hide on the banks, watch, wait for a time when people were gathered, pick the moment to emerge.

The road as he travelled it was a familiar one. He had not much considered it before he set off, London occupying his mind, but it clenched around him now. To go south, he had to pass along the same route he had taken before. It made sense, of course: the princes were in London, and would have wanted an easy journey—but this route he had to follow was through the lands on which the little boy had burned.

What was the boy’s name, Henry wondered as his horse tramped through the woods. The navigation chant was running through his thoughts; it was, he realised, the first time in a while he’d been thinking in his mother tongue. His cloak—John’s cloak, which he hadn’t given back—was up around his face. The smell of smoke, meaty and oppressive, had got into the fabric, and filled his nose even as the cloth covered his ears. But this was caution. He was on some other man’s land; from a distance, he was best off looking like an anonymous shape.

What was the boy’s name? He must have had one. Henry had had a name in the sea. Whistle, that was it. It was so many years since he had heard it. Once it had been part of him. All he owned; you didn’t carry possessions in the sea, didn’t take anything with you that would slow you down. No crowns or thrones, no rich garments or disguises. You slipped into the translucent depths, and the water would hide you. He had been hungry and frightened and no one had much liked him, but life had been simple. You didn’t wait. You fought for what you wanted, and if you didn’t get it, you starved. If someone called him Whistle now, would he answer?

There were no rites for the dead in the sea. Corpses sank, and fish ate them. But he would have liked to have known the boy’s name. It had been years since he’d heard a deepsman’s name, even his own. No one on land could pronounce it.

The earth made little noise under the hooves of his horse. The beast’s breath huffed, the saddle creaked. He could hear these sounds through the thick wool of John’s cloak. But he couldn’t see out of the corners of his eyes. His mind was preoccupied, dwelling on the lost names of the sea.

When he first heard the sound of cantering horses, he turned his head, but fabric blocked his view. Henry kicked his horse and started hurrying on himself, just in case. It wasn’t till he had ridden several hundred yards that he realised the horses were following him.

There were hoofbeats, several animals, and they were gaining on him. Henry leaned down to his horse’s neck, kicked its sides, pushing it to go faster. It sped up, but there were trees in the way, fallen
branches to leap over, it was a woodland path and he didn’t know it well. In the end there was nothing to do but reach forward and kick, trusting the beast to avoid the trees, to keep its footing.

The jingle of metal and the pounding of hooves came at him from the side, and then there was a man in view, shouting, “Stop! You there, stop!” Henry turned his head, kicked, kicked, but the man was dashing towards him, leaning down, and the next thing he knew there was a hand grabbing at his bridle.

Henry’s horse, overtaxed and frantic, shied back, rising on its hind legs with a sudden jolt that shook Henry in the saddle. As the man made another grab for its reins it reared again, and Henry was falling, the ground slamming into him, leaf litter and earth and horse’s legs all around him.

As the man who had been reaching for his horse dismounted, Henry was filled with a wild disbelief. This couldn’t be. An hour ago, he had been safe, this had not been happening, and if he had ridden in another direction he would be alone now, alone and secure. He could reach back in his mind, touch that time, it was so close. It seemed impossible that he could not undo the terrible mistake that had led him to these people.

A hand was gripping him. Henry kept his head down, desperately hiding in his hood, but then a hand reached forward and yanked it from his face. There was a cry of, “There!” and Henry saw, in the red faces of the four men surrounding him, the scarlet skin and fair hair and blue eyes that were so alien beside his own features. He was exposed, white-skinned and black-eyed and sharp-toothed, his face naked before strangers.

He could fight these men. Landsmen were weak. All of them had swords hanging from their belts, and Henry reared up and made a grab for the nearest. His hand closed around its hilt, but the owner’s arm chopped down on his, forearm on bony forearm, and Henry lost his balance, his weak legs toppling him back on the ground. If he had his axe, if he had something to lean on—

Something looped around him, pinning his arms to his sides. A rope. A man was crouching at his side, a dagger in his hand, pointing it
at Henry’s throat. “Be still, bastard,” he said. “Do not stir.” Skilled hands were tying Henry’s wrists behind his back, rope cutting into his skin.

There was something in the way these landsmen moved. They each acted separately, yes, but together they were more than him. One standing over him, one looking to their horses, keeping look-out, one at his back tying his hands, one at his throat with a blade. There was a kind of synchrony to their movements that he remembered from his days in the sea, so many years ago now, when the tribe had closed in on its prey.

They had hunted him in a pack. They were armed, they acted together, and together they had run him down. Henry had wanted the sight all his life, and now, for the first time, he was seeing soldiers.

P
HILIP HAD NEVER
much cared for Mass, and today was no different; as Archbishop Summerscales stood at the altar, intoning the liturgy, he lolled in his pew, banging his hands against the wood of his seat to entertain himself with the noise, occasionally saying something in the deepsmen’s language—
move on; hungry
. The deepsmen didn’t have a word for “bored,” though clearly that was his problem. Robert Claybrook rose from his seat to try and calm Philip down. He leaned over his prince, spoke quietly into his ear.

“No,” said Philip, giving him a push. It wasn’t aggressive, just the light shove of a child uninterested in a toy being offered him—but Philip was strong, and Claybrook took a hard step back to maintain his balance.

Summerscales raised his voice a little, but he was an old man, no match for Philip’s bellow.

“Mary?” Philip said. He seldom bothered with names when people were actually around him, but since Mary had been sent to France—an insult to the Crown of England, that she had to cross the seas to meet her consort when it was her country that would be ruled, but one that Edward, coughing now and growing more fragile by the day, was in no condition to dispute—he had remembered her name well enough to ask about her. He didn’t seem to miss her, but the explanation (Princess Mary has gone to visit a friend, she will be home
soon and happy to see us) seemed to please him, and he enjoyed hearing it repeated.

Anne sat alone in her pew, hands pressed together. Mary had given her a gift before she left, a silver and gold crucifix. It hung on the wall of Anne’s chamber. The pearl cross that Erzebet had given her Anne wore daily, she would not part with it; Mary must have realised Anne would not want a pendant, must have put some consideration into the gift. Anne had not thought to give Mary anything. She had been carried in a separate litter down to the docks as the court went to see Mary off; they had embraced briefly, too briefly for conversation: everyone’s eyes were on them, and Edward had been coughing, Philip complaining, the captain of the ship—a man of consequence, brother to the Baron of Tyne—standing on the gangplank, ready to carry Mary up himself. He wasn’t quite managing to keep from turning his eye to the flapping sails, haste to get underway in every line of his body. Mary had whispered, “Pray for me,” and Anne had kissed her cheek, anxious at Mary’s departure. That Mary had asked for her prayers tugged at her: Mary knew how much time she spent in prayer, knew it was the right thing to ask. And then the captain had come forward, lifted Mary up, and Mary’s weak legs dangled awkwardly as she was carried on board before Anne could think of an equally suitable farewell. Anne raised her hand, but Mary was slung in his arms like a parcel, her head concealed behind his shoulder, and Anne did not think that Mary saw her wave goodbye.

Philip pushed at Claybrook again as Claybrook attempted to explain it. He turned his head, saying again, “Mary!” He spoke pointedly to Westlake.

Westlake quietly left the altar where he had been standing in attendance. The click and scrape of his cane on the stone floor caused most people in the chapel to turn their heads aside, reluctant to witness his offensive ownership of a royal object. Reaching Philip, he sat down beside him. Anne could see in the stoop of his legs that it was easier for him to sit than it had been before Philip had given him a staff.

“Princess Mary has gone to visit a friend …” Westlake said, his voice cheerful and calm. The explanation was, in fact, of Westlake’s
devising. Mention of sailing the sea, ships and marriage were all subjects that agitated Philip and led to demands, frustration, raucous clamouring for things he couldn’t have. Claybrook had attempted to reason with Philip, but he had had to accept the formula Westlake improvised one day when Philip had pulled him over to question him: it was incomplete, but it worked. Philip never tired of it.