In Great Waters (53 page)

It was empty in the water, but it wasn’t dull. There was no constriction,
bound by gravity. When you were walking, you didn’t think about air; you just passed through it. It was ground you thought about. But swimming, the ground held you, soaked into your hair, clotted in your ears, rushed into your mouth when you opened it. The bitter, metallic salt of home. It had been so long since he had swum like this, not just out to a bay, but beyond, far and far away, roaming like a nomad. He had been in England. When he was a child, he had swum past England, past France, up and down the cool currents that bound the world together, whatever the landsmen said about this patch of earth and its ways being so different from every other.

Tired and hungry after a while, Henry was enjoying himself. He floated, listening out. He needed to catch something, some crab or eel. He remembered how it had been, trawling the sea floor for crustaceans, creeping creatures that he could snatch up and crack open. He had seldom got his hands on a fish. But it hadn’t been that he couldn’t catch them, he thought. He had been quick enough with his hands. It was the other tribesmen. They were faster than him, stronger, and could knock him away from a fish he was just about to grab. That was because they didn’t fear him. But he wasn’t a child any more.

Henry hung in the water until he heard the clicking of fish. It was easy to lurk, hover close, until he saw it: a glittering shoal, every living body a vital handful of meat, enough to fill his stomach and strengthen his limbs. Mackerel, he thought; that was what the landsmen called them. There was another name for them in the sea.

Henry cruised beside them, and then dived. His hands shot out, grasped, and there it was: the prize in his grasp, a threshing, flexing meal, ready for his teeth. A victory he could swallow and digest. And when it was consumed, there could be other victories.

Why was it that life had been so straitened? He had been small and frightened before, but now he was meeting the world, and while it was big, he was less afraid of it. It wasn’t the risk of death that was dimming his vision and bending his back. The words of the landsmen, their Gods and ceremonies and borders, their books and clothes and customs. They were all
things
. You had to know what they stood for, what they represented. There was so little in the landsmen’s world
that just
was
. As Henry floated on his back, swallowing cold mouthfuls of mackerel flesh, he felt his spirits lift. This world was real, chilly and flowing up against your skin, real enough to make you shiver.

It was a long swim. The light faded overhead, leaving nothing to see in the water, little to see when he surfaced for breath except a soft sky, clouded with stars like sand churned up by waves. Before he had come to the land, Henry thought, he could never have seen them. He had been too short-sighted; he had never needed to see more than a few feet before him. That was one thing he had taken from the land that he was glad of: his sight. It was far away, too far to touch, but still the sky was beautiful. He did not regret it when he dived back under again. He could see it next time he surfaced. It was real, of the world, and it didn’t change when you took your eyes off it.

As the night wore on, Henry dozed for a while. It wasn’t difficult; he had not lost the trick. You held a breath and you drifted, waking enough to surface and inhale when you needed to. No rough sheets to tangle with. No wife beside him, he thought, with a little regret. Anne’s compliant flesh had become an enjoyable part of his life. But perhaps she could be persuaded to come swimming for a longer time with him, some day.

As grey skies dawned, Henry woke properly and swam further. The sun rose in the sky, sending shimmering fingers through the choppy surface. Henry caught another fish, feasted again, no less triumphant than he had been the first time. If this had been travelling by land, he would have felt lost by now, too many landmarks and hills, too many obstacles. But he knew where he was. He could hear the echo of the waves on the other side.

Drawn by the crash of water, Henry drew close to the shores of France. As he swam, he called out:
Challenge. I can beat you. I will lead you now
.

The tribesmen of France were many and loud-voiced, surrounding him like predators around a kill.
Stranger
, he heard.
Go away. Do not challenge us. This place is ours
.

Nobody liked a foreigner, Henry thought. There was never enough clanship to go around. And what were they, that they were so loyal to France?

I come from the north
, Henry said.
From the tall cliffs
. There was no word for
England
in his mother-tongue, not as such. The deepsmen guarded their shores, but what happened on the land, they cared very little. His mother had never let him see a ship. It was not patriotism, he thought. His father must have come from one. Perhaps she wanted to keep him with her, then, and was afraid the landsmen would steal him. Perhaps the others doubted his loyalty. Well, they were right to. But that did not mean he was wrong.

I am not a stranger
, Henry said.
Deal with me, not your landsmen
. There was a word for it, the treaties the deepsmen brokered with the men of the land. That was the word he used.
I am not a stranger. I am king
.

We do not deal with you
, said a voice. From the bass tone, making the water all around them ring, Henry recognised a man of great strength. This would be the man to deal with, the man to challenge.

Brother
, said Henry.
Your landsmen are stupid. They are weak, and fear dead men. Deal with me
.

We have a landsman king
, said this leader.
We do not know you
.

Henry swam a little closer. What he saw on the deepsman’s face struck him like a wave. He hung for a moment, his heart beating so hard it should have pulsed out through the water. There was a clench of fear, and then Henry remembered all those books, those courtiers, the endless negotiations.
England needs an English king
.

Henry dipped up to the surface for a breath, and as his head broke up into the air, he laughed, laughed aloud. He was still struggling to keep the laughter within his lungs as he swam back down.

The face of the leader was familiar to him. It had grown and changed, from a small child to a fine man, but he knew the features. He even remembered the man’s name, a sequence of clatters no landsman’s tongue could ever manage.

In the gloom, he thought he recognised another man, and a woman beside him. People sometimes swam off alone, joined other
tribes. When he was little, his family had been almost entirely nomadic. There had been some changes of custom, perhaps, a few changes of side in the time he had been gone. But these were not strangers to him. Their dialect was familiar, and so were their faces.

Who would have thought it?
Henry thought.
After all this time, I am a Frenchman after all
.

The leader had not been too bad, he recalled. Older than him, ready as any to deal out a twisted ear or a pinch if someone became too tiresome, but not by nature a bully. Quick in a hunt, disinclined to steal food. A steady character. Very probably he was popular with his tribe.

Henry had come prepared to do battle. Remembering how a rope had defeated the English tribe, he had swum armed, even though the weapons dragged against his streamlined body a little: a rope around his waist, spurs on his heels. But now, recognising this man, he did not feel like a fight.

I know you
, Henry said, naming his new-found friend.
I am no stranger. Your landsmen are strangers. You are my tribesman
.

The leader swam forwards, scanned Henry’s face.
What is your name?
he asked. Around him, others were poised to fight. Henry could see the massive arms and tail, the mighty body he was trying to talk himself out of fighting. This was a splendid man indeed. He had thrived in the sea.

Whistle
, he said.
I have been away a long time
.

A
NNE SAT
in the church and lifted up her heart, or tried to. The news was not good. Intelligence returned fact after fact about the French: their strong navy, their popular king, their healthy sons. England’s navy was not bad, but they would have to meet in the Channel to keep the French out. There were English deepsmen to protect their own shores, but they were not a guarantee, not if the French deepsmen came in support of their own ships. Country would fight against country, and tribe against tribe.

It could not be what God wanted. God could not create life and love killing, whatever politicians or theologians could argue about it.

She needed to talk to Mary. But what could she say to her?
Do not start a war to get what you want; let me have it instead?
She might as well send a letter saying
Surrender at once so that we can both be happy
.

Could God be against them? It was a hard question, but Anne was a prince, she told herself. Princes did not turn the hard questions aside. She had said to herself that she would protect the Church, that Henry might be a pagan but that God might exempt the deepsmen from such concerns. But by blood, Henry was as much a deepsman as she. If God could touch her heart, he could touch Henry’s. Should she have tried harder to convert him? Should she have given way and handed the kingdom to the Christian French? She had begun this with no greater aim than keeping a strange boy from the stake. Now she was within a vow of the throne, ready to begin a war.

And, it could not be forgotten, very possibly pregnant as well.

It was hard to hear God when her mind was so troubled. And troubled it was. Samuel had not spoken to her since she had told him that she would ask Summerscales to rewrite the vows. He had looked at her, and backed away. There was something about his face. Angry with her, perhaps: he would have a right to be. Concerned for her soul. Betrayed, even; though she had never been the theologian he had, Anne knew full well that a heathen king in Christendom was, at best, a dispensation she did not have the spiritual authority to grant. But that wasn’t what troubled her.

Samuel looked at her, and his face was frightened.

“Tell me the truth,” Anne said to John. “Did your father write to my sister?”

John had come before her, asked for an audience. His pleasant face was paler these days, and he smiled less. When he came into her presence, he brought with him a bag. Guards had tried to take it off him, but Anne intervened. Even if he had a weapon, she thought she could hold her own.

It was not a weapon he brought in his pack. John bowed before her, and drew out letters.

“I have letters here,” he said. “They were to my father. He does not know I took them.”

“Are they from France?” Anne’s heart sounded in her ears, a faint echo of the surf.

John bit his lip for a moment, then handed them to her. “They are.”

The letters sat in her lap, cold and brittle.

“So you have chosen your side,” Anne said.

John lowered his head for a moment, then raised it. “I have,” he said. “I do not want a war.”

The letters were partial, referred to other letters, but their message was clear enough. There would be a force on the shores to sabotage the English fleet should it go out to meet the French. Ships were being
built, small ships with harpooners aboard. There was no reference to their use, but Anne understood.

“You said that you went on a porpoise hunt when you were young,” she said to John, looking up.

John did not need to ask which letter she was reading from. “Yes, your Majesty,” he said. “There are older men enough who know how to spear from the water. And if you read the next one, you will see talk of nets.”

The deepsmen had been a bane to her, but at the thought of them tangled in ropes, Anne shivered. With sailors battled on the shore and deepsmen hunted beyond it, France could sail across the Channel and step onto English soil unopposed.