In Great Waters (37 page)

Who could have put the poison in the water? How could it have been accomplished?

By anyone, that was the terrible thing. The salt was not guarded, and Erzebet had not been in that room since the day before. Anyone, anyone with sturdy limbs and a straight back who could run colt-footed from place to place instead of dragging like a split-limbed snail could have slipped into the room, shaken a packet over the salt and slipped out again. It could have been anyone.

And Samuel—Samuel had been poisoned. Or made ill enough to need a unicorn’s horn to cure him at least. And Shingleton had been reluctant to say whether that was poisoning or not. Why would he be so reluctant?

Only if he didn’t want to cross a powerful lord. Because he did not know who to accuse and feared the consequences of a mistake? Or because he knew who was responsible and dared not take a stand?

Only her weak legs kept Anne in her chair, kept her from leaping to her feet and running to find her horse and ride over to Samuel, crying out:
We cannot trust Shingleton! We have made a mistake!

Shingleton had been at her mother’s bedside. And if the king’s surgeon had been in the room to examine the salts, he could have told any story he wished if discovered.

Anne’s mind raced on ahead of her, over the green to Samuel’s wooden door, but her legs stayed slumped in her chair, loose as wet cloth.

As John rattled at the catch, Henry heard the sound of Westlake’s dragging steps following him up. So John had not hurt the man. That was weak of him if they were going to make an escape, but then the door pulled open and Henry was so glad to see his friend that he forgave him his hesitation in battle.

Henry reached out a hand, his face opening into the first smile he had felt in days, but John stepped back, casting a quick glance over his shoulder. “You do not know me,” he hissed. Then he raised his voice. “Bishop, what is this?” he said.

Held down by the weight of her body, Anne drew a deep breath and bethought herself. Why would Shingleton make an assay at Samuel?

If she kept her thoughts light and careful, handled them only between her fingertips, she could understand why someone would kill her mother. If they had a bastard, a man to take the throne and beget sons, the country would probably welcome him. If he was strong enough. And this boy was strong-limbed, and strong-willed, too: he had not begged for mercy. Her grandfather was dying. Her uncle was simple. Her sister and she were young girls, a prize for anyone looking to marry onto the throne … but neither girl had ever given any sign that she could hold the rudder of power out of the grasp of a foreign husband.

It had been a mistake, all those years, to hide her wits behind a staring face. She had traded privacy for safety, kept her thoughts secret and left her throne unguarded.

She had wasted her care in the wrong places. She had made a lifelong mistake.

Anne thought these thoughts with cool fastidiousness, as if judging someone else. She held them at a distance, examining them like soiled rags, and decided that they were correct. She had played the fool, and lived a fool, and she had been wrong.

So yes, there were reasons to remove Erzebet. As Edward ailed,
there was no other prince strong enough to stand against a bastard reaching for the throne. But Samuel? Samuel had never hurt anyone.

Samuel … Anne lowered her eyes. For a moment her face tried to settle itself in dull lines, laying over a mask of stupidity to give herself privacy to think. But she was done with that. She had trained her face to look stupid, and now it did. It would be a disadvantage.

She would have to work on that. Meantime, she looked at her folded hands, trying to look demure instead of stupid, and thought about Samuel, letting his face rest in her mind.

Samuel was favoured by Philip now, it seemed. He could soothe Philip, calm him down, control him as no other courtier had ever managed. But Samuel had been sick before that had happened. All he had ever done that she knew of, the only thing he had ever done to mark him as different, was to walk into court on a lame leg and speak privately to the Archbishop about the doubtful wisdom of burning a bastard.

But not this bastard. Someone else’s, a child no lord had had time to invest in. It made no sense.

Anne was done with guarded foolishness and hoping for answers. It was time to try her wits against the world. Erzebet, she told herself, looking at her sharp-clawed, well-tended fingers, Erzebet would be proud of her.

Westlake appeared behind John on the stairs. His clothing was untidy, he lurched on his lame leg, but his face showed little pain. Only, it was a little greyer than before.

“What is this, Bishop?” John repeated. His voice was conveying a good impression of shock, disapproval, disbelief.

Westlake shook his head. “I fear you are undone, my son,” he said to Henry. “Forgive me.”

John turned around to face Westlake. “Have you been hiding this—this bastard?”

Westlake looked at the floor. “Only a few days, I swear it. I have planned no treason. I found the boy and hoped to save him from
execution. That is all.” Around his neck there hung a cross, a sharp-cut pendant that Henry felt an instinctive dislike of every time he looked at it. But now the man’s hand was clutching it as if it were a spar.

John stared at him a moment. Then he reached out and closed his hand over Westlake’s, pinning the cross between his fingers. “Swear,” he said. “Swear before Christ.”

Westlake’s face showed no colour, only stillness. He looked at John with dead, hopeless eyes, and raised the cross. “I swear before Christ,” he said. “I wished only to save him from the pyre. I do not think it pleases God when we burn his children.”

Henry looked at John’s face. From here, he could hear his friend’s breathing, a cautious, shivering set of breaths like an unstable staircase. Henry remembered the day they had ridden out to the burning, how sick John had looked at the sight. “You were present at the last one,” John said. “You blessed the flames.”

Westlake dropped his head, his fingers still around the cross. “I prayed for the child’s soul,” he said. “I could not save his body.”

“And is it the body or the soul of this man you wish to save?” John said. His eyes were bright and blue, staring hard at Westlake’s pallor.

“You may leave my soul alone,” Henry said. “You will be with us, or you will not leave this house.” It was what he would have said to a stranger, so he said it to John. It troubled him a little, though. He did not think he was good at lying, and he was so tired of being lonely. He wanted this conversation done with.

“There is no call to threaten,” John said. “If you do not threaten the throne, I will not threaten you.”

“We do not,” Westlake said, so quickly that he was speaking before John finished. “I swear before Christ, we only mean to save this man’s life. It is a hard fate, caught between the land and the sea, and I do not wish to see anyone punished for it. Do not betray us, and I will pray for you every day of my life.”

John sighed, ruffled his hair. Henry sat back on the floor, wondering how long he would have to act before he could plausibly give in.

A few hours later, as Anne was riding over to Westlake’s house, John Claybrook accosted her.

Anne had set out as quickly and discreetly as she could. Since the day he found her a unicorn horn, Robin Maydestone at the stables seemed to have taken a fancy to her, and indulged her requests for horses at odd hours with an affectionate grin under his bowing. Anne had assumed that this might be because he had a daughter of his own, or perhaps because he didn’t. She should have asked; playing stupid had left her ignorant. In any event, it was proving useful when she needed to slip away. It was a cool day, the ground soft under her horse’s hooves and taking sharp impressions with each step, and Anne let the damp air drift over her skin while her mind raced. She needed to know what this boy, this man knew. Never mind what Samuel said, to
Hell
with what Samuel said if he stood in her way. This bastard had been raised by somebody, and that somebody was somebody she needed to know about. Erzebet’s scorched face jostled at the back of her mind, and she kept her mouth closed to keep in the sickness.

When John Claybrook rode up behind her, calling “My lady Princess!” Anne jumped so suddenly that her horse shied under her, jerking its head against the tug she had given its reins.

John cantered up and caught at its bridle. Anne grabbed for the reins, trying to back away: some courtier following her, however pleasant his manners, would be a disaster just now.

“My lady Princess, I come from the Bishop,” John said quietly.

“I am going there.” Anne turned her head aside. She was not going to discuss this.

“My lady Princess, I found the man he was hiding.”

Anne dropped the reins. Her horse stood, stamping a protesting foot, as John held on to its bridle. “What man?” she said.

“My lady Princess, I know you know.” John had always been friendly to her from the height of his superior years, but Anne did not feel herself a child any more, and she was not going to be addressed as such by any nobleman’s son.

“You speak out of turn, sir,” she said. “Tell me your business or leave me.”

John looked at her, his normally cheerful face anxious. “My lady Princess, forgive me. But I … there is no cause for alarm. I am your man.”

“Explain yourself,” Anne snapped, her heart pounding. “I am out of patience.”

“My lady Princess, I—I went to speak with the Bishop, to speak with him on a spiritual matter. But there was a noise from upstairs, and I went to see what it was. I found he was hiding the bastard in his house.”

Anne frowned to stop her usual look of frightened idiocy coming back. “What story do you tell me, sir? You accuse a man of God.”

John shook his head, persisted. “It was not the Bishop who told me you knew of this, my lady Princess. It was Henry. He mentioned a young deepswoman. It could only have been you.”

“Henry?” So that was the name, Henry. A cautious choice; there had not been a Henry in the family for several generations. So Samuel had persuaded his name out of him in the end. It cost Anne a pang of unreasonable disappointment that she had not been there to hear the boy confess it himself before she steadied herself.