In Great Waters (56 page)

“My lady Princess,” Samuel said. His voice was urgent. It was what he had always called her. Anne did not feel insulted that he did not say
your Majesty
. It was almost comforting to be addressed in the familiar way. “God commands against vengeance.”

“But man must have justice,” Anne said. “My mother would have said that.”

The ship rolled, and Samuel grabbed at the mast behind his back for support. “Your mother’s justice is not something you should follow,” he said.

“I would not burn a child,” Anne said. “Why else would I have married Henry?” Hearing herself say the words, she remembered that Henry could undoubtedly hear her say them too. It was not tactful. She cursed herself inwardly; now she would have to make amends.

“And what will you do with Claybrook?” Westlake said. “If you would follow your mother? Burn him? Poison him?”

“Poison him? My mother was no poisoner.”

Gulls screamed overhead, and Westlake looked at her in desperate anger. “You know that is not so, my lady Princess.”

“I know no such thing.” Anne found she was gripping her skirt; embroidery pressed into her palms.

“I did not ask you to talk of it,” Samuel said. His face was as grave as ever, but his voice, quiet enough for privacy, was as raw as Anne’s. “You could not have stopped it. And you tried to make amends. I thought you were a good girl. But now you are striking for the throne any way you can. I have seen where that leads. I fear for England, my lady Princess, I truly do.”

“What are you talking about?” Anne’s voice began to rise, and she checked it. Across the deck came Henry’s voice:
Are you all right? Do you need me?

Stay where you are, Whistle
, she said. “I want to hear this. What do you talk of, Samuel? I would have you tell me now.”

Samuel glared at her, his face tinged red by the wind. “You cannot have known nothing of it,” he said. “I cannot believe that.”

“Samuel, tell me now, or I will call my husband,” Anne said. Her voice was sharp, but underneath it she was frantic. Even if Henry came over, she had no idea what she would ask him to do, but she could not stand here another moment on her weak legs while Samuel talked of God only knew what sin on her conscience.

“You must have known it was your mother who poisoned me,” Samuel said. “I survived, by the grace of God, and the care of Master Shingleton. And the medicine you sent me. But you must have known it was her.”

Anne’s lips cracked, dry as ash. All around her, the groaning timbers and whipping winds made a reckless commotion; there was no silence, no stillness to absorb the words she had heard. The horizon lurched, and the boat ploughed on its way towards her sister.

“You cannot be serious,” Anne said in the end. Her voice came out papery, as if a dead wasp’s nest rattled in her throat.

Samuel raised a thin hand. “Before God, I am.”

“W-why?” It was all Anne could do to speak the syllable.

Samuel bent a look on her, frustration mixed with doubt. She had never seen his face so unguarded. “I wrote to her before the burning,” he said. “I pleaded with her for the life of the child. And she sent me to bless the bonfire, myself, not the Archbishop or one of my brother clerics. She sent me. She said if I was so concerned for the child, I should be the one to bless his passage into Heaven. I thought that was enough for her, I thought that was how she had made her point. But it was not. There was poison in my food. Your mother decided she could not spare a man of God in England who would speak up against her authority.”

Anne stood on the rocking deck, speechless.

“If you say it was my lord Claybrook who murdered your mother, that is a sin upon his soul,” Samuel said. “But he saved my life by doing it, my lady Princess. Your mother died before she could make another attempt. If he was hiding a bastard, I can well believe that he would be frightened. Your mother was a fearsome woman.”

Anne had never in her life minded the cold, had loved it as a memory of the sea on her skin, but now she was shivering. She grasped frantically at the remains of her thoughts, trying to see some way clear. “My mother was a Christian,” she said. “Why should you fear a pagan king more than her?”

Samuel’s eyes were pinched at the corners, as if holding back tears. “You were willing to overturn the Church to place him on the throne, to secure it,” he said. “Against the laws of God. It was not him I feared, my lady Princess. It was you.”

“Samuel, I love the Church. I would not have let any pagan king overset it.”

“As long as a pagan king is on the land, we cannot have unity,” Samuel said. “If the king himself does not honour God, what will become of us all? Frenchness breeds out in a generation, but heresy grows, my lady Princess. I did not want to see the Church fractured in a deepsman’s hands.”

“You—you are wrong,” Anne said. She could think of no answer, but everything in her cried this out. “I would have preserved the Church. I will. God does not want us to make war. I have only ever acted to save lives, Samuel. Will you say that lives are of no account?”

Samuel leaned against the mast, hands behind his back. “Your mother would have said the same thing,” he said. “I knew her. I do not say lives are of no account. But I do not think you have reckoned the price well.”

I should go in the water
, Henry’s voice came across the deck.
It is time. Stop talking about dead landsmen and come and help me
.

Dead landsmen. That was how Henry spoke of Christ. Anne unclasped her hands from their wooden support, began the unsteady journey back to the prow. It seemed a long time before she reached the others. Samuel stood in the stern, watching her go. He made no attempt to follow her.

And Mary was in the water.

Anne and Henry stripped and prepared to dive off the end of the boat. This was not how a funeral was supposed to be conducted, but no one was going to argue with them. Henry’s eyes lingered on Anne as she bared her skin to the air, but Anne could not feel any response. Samuel’s news had struck her like a wave, and she was soaked in it. She could think only of her mother.

I have always wanted this
, Anne told herself as she dived.
I have never been out past the bay. Now, for the first time, I am seeing the real ocean
.

But the sea was dark and obscure, a blank vista in every direction. Clouded light and shadows below, no different from a bay. Sounds carried, the shore of England quieter and France louder, the calls of deepsmen in the water and the bat-clicks of fish, but Anne looked at her own grey legs, light wavering over them from above, and saw nothing but her own flesh. No answers in the water.

Mother
, she thought. Erzebet’s face, tense and proud, raising her chin as the bruises on her body were laid open to all eyes. Erzebet sleeking forward through the water, hurling herself towards the deepsmen she had to appease, with only her own strength and
endurance to do so. Erzebet cradling a child, Anne, her own daughter, sending maids out of the room and crooning,
Safe, my baby, safe
. Erzebet kissing Anne for asking whether or not princes should spare their enemies, and making no answer to the question.

Anne had waited all her life for her mother’s love. She had had it all along, she thought now. But she had waited more for her mother’s heart, to know what thoughts Erzebet was keeping behind that still face. As the deepsmen started to gather, as calls began to echo from the south in response to Henry’s calls, Anne thought she knew.

It was fear.

It was so easy to say it:
This has to be done for the greater good. This has to be done to protect those I love
. To spend your life watching the faces around you, trying to anticipate, trying to protect, to conceal yourself and find out others, to compromise and bargain away pieces of yourself, waiting for the moment when the promise to the baby in your arms would one day be true. Erzebet had seen her uncle’s skull crack under a blazing crown. Anne had seen her uncle thrash and bellow, helpless as a stunned bull, had seen her mother scream and bleed, had seen her sister, her only sister, sent away to a stranger. Always, always saying to herself:
One day I shall be secure. One day, we shall be safe
.

In the stillness of a chapel, Anne could feel God in her heart. But she never felt further from the light of Heaven than when she said to herself the same sentence she had been saying, heart-deep, since she could first remember:
One day, not today, but one day, I shall be safe
.

Anne had not been willing to see a man burned. But she had not been ruling very long. And there was a long time yet before she could reach that point. She was still only fourteen.

She had waited to be loved all her life. And in waiting, what would she become?

Somewhere, Mary was waiting. It had been months since she had seen her sister’s face, but she would not see it here in the water. Diving down, Anne remembered the first years of her life: Erzebet’s here-and-gone attention and Mary elsewhere, unmentioned by anyone. Why had Erzebet not told her that she had a sister?

The thought of being angry with her mother was terrifying, something she could not face; Anne fought down the thought as hard as she could:
My mother should have told me I had a sister
. It was not the thought for this moment, could do no good at all. But Anne remembered sitting at Erzebet’s funeral, how Mary had reached for her hand while Anne sat rigid with her eyes straight ahead.

There was no turning back. It was the best chance England stood, to hazard a clean-blooded king, it was right for the country. But Anne swam through the dark water, thinking of how she had waited and waited for her mother’s notice, had strained her eyes past Mary to find it, when all the time, Mary had been waiting for hers.

Henry’s calls were being answered. The voices of the English deepsmen were drawing nearer. In the darkness of her own mind, Anne said to herself what she had said so many times before:
I must attend to business now, I have not time to think of this
. But would she ever have time?

Whistle
, she said,
surface with me
. She could hardly see Henry in the black depths, but she heard, after a pause, the reply.

All right. Surface
.

And the two of them pushed their heads above water.

“What do you want?” Henry said. “We have not much time.”

Anne reached out, wrapped her hand around his shoulder. “Do not hurt my sister,” she said. “Promise me.”

Henry shook his head. He did not like having his ears out of the water like this; unable to listen properly, any predator might be closing in on him, and all his instincts jangled. “Why do you trouble me with this now?”

“Promise me.” Anne’s fingers clutched him, and her nails pressed against his skin. He reached up and took her wrist. It was small in his hand, narrow and delicate. She was floating up and down as the wind blew, and Henry reached out, laid his hand on her waist. In the privacy of darkness, intimacies were easy.

“If she fights me, I must defend myself,” he said. He was trying not to sound angry. His wife seemed to be upset about something again. Henry felt some compunction about that; he did not like to see
her unhappy—but she was unhappy a lot, quickly upset. It was no way to survive an active life, getting so distressed so easily.

“She will not, you—she is smaller than you, much smaller. Promise you will not hurt her.”

Henry sighed. This was no time to wrangle, and if she wanted it, she could have his promise. He had committed himself to be loyal to her. “If you wish. Now we must get on.”

His hand squeezed her waist, briefly, and then he was under the surface with a flick.

Anne hesitated. At the level of her eyes, the waves stretched out: great ripples, miles across, little swells that would rise and crash down on the beaches. She could see for miles, here in the daylight.

Then she plunged her head back into the darkness.

Sister
, she called.
Come to me. Sister. Where are you?

Mary’s voice answered.
I am here
.