In Great Waters (40 page)

His son John had come round to talk to Samuel. John had never shown an interest in Samuel in his life.

They were a present family, the Claybrooks.

The memory of him came to her, hard and cold, of Claybrook standing before the door of her mother’s room. Erzebet’s screams had blinded her, blotted out all other impressions. Her ears had always been sharper than her eyes. But Claybrook had been there. Claybrook, who might have been anywhere else in the country, was on hand that day.

Claybrook could have wandered into Erzebet’s bath chamber if he wished, added something to the salt. But Anne thought of the pyre. The heat, the ultimate, fatal threat. Samuel had found no poisons that answered the case. What else could have scorched Erzebet’s skin? Anne had dismissed the idea of boiling water, for who could have wrestled her strong mother into a steaming bath? No one, no landsman, if Erzebet had her wits about her.

But Erzebet sleepy, Erzebet drugged from a harmless cup of wine sent to her through some uninformed servant …

Claybrook was a tall man, long of arm. He could easily have lifted her mother. If there had been something in her wine.

“Do not drink this,” Anne said, clutching the wine away from Whistle. It was a danger to her, to lean in and out, but she was fast and he was not expecting it, and the bottle was in her hand and out of his reach again before he could stop her. “Do not.”

“Why
not?”
His voice rose, close to a shout; Anne could hear the hoarseness, the strain, under the threat.

“I do not …” Anne turned, struggled for balance. “I wish to test something.”

She went to the door, called for Samuel.

“Tell no one of this,” she said as he came up the stairs, one step at a time. “Do not tell John Claybrook. I wish to send a message to Robin Maydestone at the stables. Tell him I wish for a dog to be sent. He will have dogs, yes? An old dog, one that is sick or turned savage, one that
he does not care for.” She thought of Maydestone’s gentle hands on the horses’ flanks, the way he crooned to them. “Not one he loves,” she added. “Warn him he will not see it again.”

“Yes, my lady Princess.” Samuel’s face was bewildered, and he hesitated for an explanation.

“Go swiftly,” Anne snapped. “Take it from him, bring it at once.”

The door closed behind her, and Anne sat down again, leaning against it, careless of her rich skirt crumpling on the floor. Henry sat across from her, his eyes never leaving her face.

“What do you want with a dog?” he said.

“I want to test the wine,” Anne replied. The situation chilled her to the bone, but she almost laughed. “I can tell you are a prince by hope, not by connection,” she said. “If you have never had a wine taster.”

“Do not laugh at me.”

Anne laughed again, her eyes stinging. “I do not trust my lord Claybrook’s wine.”

“Are you going to cry?” Henry said. He sounded less alarmed than interested.

Anne swallowed, shook her head.

Henry said nothing, and neither did she. They waited together for the dog to be brought.

It was a long wait before Samuel returned. “He is downstairs,” he said quietly. “He wished to bring it himself, and I could not dissuade him.”

Anne gave Samuel a sharp frown. “That was ill done, Samuel. I would have thought you could have found something to say that would make him stay.”

Westlake shook his head. “The man is not a fool, my lady Princess. He is fond of you and wished to see you. He would quickly grow suspicious if I argued.”

Anne shook her head. “I must go downstairs,” she said to Whistle. “Do I need to threaten you to make you stay silent?”

Henry looked at her, ignoring Samuel. “You have already done so,” he said. “I wish to see what you mean with this dog.”

Anne and Samuel struggled down the stairs together, to meet with Maydestone, who stood in the door. Under his arm was a hound, scraggly-limbed and sticky-eyed, white hairs clustering on its muzzle like the greying of an old man. He bowed, and the dog whimpered as he shifted his grip. “My lady Princess, the dog you commanded,” he said. Anne remembered the day by the river, the day Maydestone had helped her back onto her horse, and the memory of kindness was so strong that she almost reached her arms up to him, to be carried away, taken to her chamber and tucked in somewhere safe. She pulled herself up.

“I thank you, Master Maydestone,” she said. He bowed again. His eyes flicked behind her, to the room, innocuous enough in appearance. Not plotting, not scheming, but curiosity, no doubt. That was to be expected.

“Master Maydestone, you have done me good service, as ever,” Anne said, getting in the way of his vision. “I shall remember this.” There was a silver bracelet encircling her wrist, and she slipped it off, weighing it in her hand a moment before passing it to him.

“My lady …” Maydestone’s hand dropped a little, as if the bracelet was heavier than it should be. Surprise stretched over his face, almost dismay at the size of the gift.

“Say nothing of this to anyone,” Anne said firmly. Maydestone’s expression relaxed. A bracelet was no price for a used-up old dog, still whining and pawing its feet against the air, tucked under Maydestone’s arm—but for a dog and for silence, that was a different matter. That was understandable.

“As you command, my lady Princess,” he said, bowing again. He set the dog down. For just a moment, he tousled its ears; then he straightened up and shooed it into the room. It walked a few steps, unhurried, then lay down, splaying out emaciated legs behind it.

“I thank you,” Anne said, and closed the door.

Henry heard the voices downstairs. The girl would return. She had threatened him, she had warned him. He no longer knew what to feel
about her, except a desire to keep talking. If they kept talking, perhaps he might know what he felt.

She came in awkwardly, carrying a wretched-looking dog. He made no move to grab her as she shuffled over the floor, within his reach.

“Help me feed the dog this wine,” she said. “I cannot do it alone.”

The dog whimpered, scratching a little at the floor, and suddenly Henry’s heart quickened. This was a fox to catch, a creature to hunt. He leaned forward, rolling onto his hands and knees, and crept across the floor, silent as a bird, drawing nearer and nearer. The dog laid its head down between its paws, rheumy eyes closing, huffing a little sigh—and then Henry was on it, wrenching it up off the ground.

Anne was beside him quickly, the wine in her hand. “Pull its head back,” she said, “and open its mouth.”

Henry grabbed the dog’s jaws, forced them open. There in its mouth was the tongue, grey-pink and ready for his grasp—but this was not a killing hunt, he must leave it alone. Already the girl was pouring wine down the dog’s throat. The beast coughed and struggled, its throat convulsing against Henry’s wrist, and Henry gripped harder. The wine trickled down, an unsteady stream, splashing and thinning, foaming pink as it mingled with the dog’s spit.

Anne set the goblet down. “Very well,” she said. “Now we wait.”

It was not a long wait. To Anne, it was no surprise, not really, as the dog thrashed and twitched, paddling at its belly with its hind paws, whimpering out its life on the cold stone floor. Henry sat frozen.

Anne swallowed. “We may not have much time,” she said. “But I would have you tell me what you know of Robert Claybrook.”

Henry looked at her, this girl who poisoned a dog with the wine meant for him. Anger choked him until he could wish for nothing more than a rock to smash her skull. This girl, this black-eyed, blue-faced freak of a girl who had saved him and killed the dog, with wine from the man for whose favour he had waited all his life.

He almost reached to slap her away. It was the sight of water gathering in her eyes that stopped him. What was he to do with a creature so incomprehensible?

“I think you should tell me,” Anne said. “I think—I believe we may have an enemy in common.”

B
OOK
F
IVE
CONQUEST

K
ING
E
DWARD’S HEALTH
failed with a suddenness that surprised even the most ambitious of courtiers. Princess Mary was still in France, her courtship with Louis-Philippe mired in treaties and diplomacy. Prince Philip was in his chamber, attended as always by Privy Sponges, staring into space and saying little. Princess Anne had been missing all day, and nobody knew where she was. By the time she returned to the palace, unblushing and oddly silent, Edward was already lying in his bed, speech struck away from him.

As Anne sat by his bedside, ambassadors were already being assembled to make the journey across the Channel. Mary would have to come home with a husband. Philip could sit on the throne, make a suffering king, but it would not hold. Mary must come home bringing the new heir to the throne, the French king of England. Otherwise England would flounder and sink. Philip was a broken rudder, and the country needed more.

Air dragged in and out of Edward’s thin body, a long pause between each breath. His arms tried to lift up, point and give directions, even though his shaking hand could not have held a pen and his dry eyes creased in puzzlement as he tried to make out the words people said to him. He was going back to the sea, back to his deepsman’s blood, English a complexity beyond him, every breath a quest, a fragile body clinging to life moment to moment. He was so weak,
Anne thought, watching his thin arms fall back onto the covers. In the sea, he would have drowned.

A few weeks and Mary would bring a husband home. She was perhaps in his company right now, a stranger unable to console her. Anne found herself longing for her sister. Though matters had been tense between them, Mary had been present at every grief of Anne’s life, at William’s death, Erzebet’s marriage, Erzebet’s end. She had been older than Anne and far above her, or she had been ignorant of the truth and frustrating, but she had been there. Now she was away, and Anne felt a sense of dislocation. Without Mary there, the grief had an air of unreality, a nightmarish absence she could not quite manage.