In Great Waters (21 page)

Edward stood, bowed over his canes. The two men regarded each other, and Edward said nothing.

“Water,” Philip said, pointing at the bowls of brine the Privy Sponges carried to wet his skin.

Claybrook didn’t turn towards Philip. Instead, he motioned to the two Privy Sponges and they laid their bowls and sponges down on the deck.

“Water,” Philip said.

Edward stood and watched. Philip demanded a while longer, then stopped, patting at his face. The rasp of skin against drying skin was quiet against the lap of the Thames on the boat’s side.
“Water,”
Philip insisted.

Crystals of salt were drying on his face, the skin rough and brittle beneath. Anne stood silent, her heart beginning to pound in her ears.

Philip stared at Claybrook, who stood with his back firmly turned; at Edward, withered hands clasped over his sticks as his son gradually dried out. The wind blew cold across the Thames, and Philip began to whimper. His big webbed fingers patted again at his cheeks, his neck,
their grey pallor growing starker and starker as the dry air rushed over them.

It was a full two minutes before Claybrook turned and gestured to the Sponges, who began their work again. Philip whimpered louder as the brine first touched his face, but Claybrook made another gesture and the Sponges paused in their work.

Philip fell silent. He said nothing more as the rest of the party boarded, and the ship cast off to make its way down the Thames and out to sea.

Erzebet’s body lay wrapped in its winding sheet, ready for burial. Nothing was visible but a thick white bundle, unstained cloth, layer upon layer, swaddled like a baby. Anne stared at it, thinking of Erzebet’s fierce voice, her strong hands, her black eyes. The need to rip open the sheet was so strong that Anne gripped her sharp-carved canes harder than ever, fighting the sense that if she could just let Erzebet out of the cloth, if she could help her escape it, then she’d come out as stern as ever, quite all right.

Court musicians began the burial song; from below, the drummers beat against the hull, sending the echoes through the water to call the deepsmen. The music on deck would be all but inaudible to them until they reached the ship and surfaced, but Edward lifted his voice in harmony with it, singing out for the court to hear, a tribute to Erzebet. There was nothing else they could do for her now. Mary followed, and after a moment, so did Anne, singing away the hours as they floated downriver:
We are coming. Dead body. We are coming. Dead body
. The sound of the drums thrummed through Anne’s chest.

It was only when they finally made it out of the estuary, the grey waves opening in an endless vista before them, that the thought of the deepsmen came clearly into Anne’s mind. She had never swum with them when a body was buried at sea, but she had seen her father’s burial. At the time, the reigning emotion had been confusion, an uncertainty as to how she was supposed to mourn for this man she had seen so little of, but she remembered now the speed with which the deepsmen surfaced, the rapacity of their hands grabbing his body to take it down. They did not move like pallbearers. She had seen them grab
like that before, but only in one set of circumstances: when snatching a fish out of the water to eat. The way they had grabbed her father’s body looked nothing like mourning. It looked like hunger.

And what of her mother’s flesh, melted and soaked with poison? Would it be torn apart by the deepsmen’s sharp teeth, swallowed down their cold throats to kill them? If England were to poison its deepsmen allies, what then for its fleet? Would there be no deepsmen to see them safe across the Channel, or worse, mortally offended survivors ready to smash their hulls if they tried to leave port? The boat was preparing to drop her mother’s corrupt flesh into the arms of the deep, and maybe it would bring death with it.

Anne drew breath and changed her chant.
Not safe. Don’t eat. Not safe. Don’t eat
. Mary gave her a wet-eyed glare, a look of furious, unforgiving grief, but Edward merely gazed at her for a moment, then lowered his head in a slow, resigned nod. The lines on his forehead pressed close together as the crown tilted down his brow.

The deepsmen were waiting for them, a boiling mass of bodies, lithe and dark in the water. Arms and legs flashed above the surface, but they moved so fast around the hull that they could have been fish, porpoise, anything. There were no faces to be seen from this high up.

Not safe
, Anne cried across the waters.

The white package was carried across the deck. The Archbishop hastened forward to bless its final descent, and Westlake halted after him, lame leg dragging. He came to rest by Anne, who stood clutching the rail. The carvings on her sticks were too painful to hold, and she had dropped them, clutching the smooth wood as her mother’s body was lifted over it, throat sealed with tears, legs and back aching, ready to collapse.

As the body was released, falling in a white flash to the waves below, there was a crash of water and spray shot upwards, splattering on the deck. Summerscales and the bearers flinched back as if the droplets themselves were poison. Anne stayed where she was, the few fragments of seawater clinging to her cheeks and lips all that was left of her mother.

The deepsmen gathered around the body, circling it, patting it
with uncertain hands. Murmurs of
not safe
rose from below. As the water soaked through the white shroud, weighing it down to sink into the dark, the Bishop looked at Anne, his hair blowing untidily around his sad face.

For just a moment, he rested his hand on her shoulder.

And that one moment went straight to Anne’s crushed heart, sank in so deep she thought she might never recover.

T
HE DAY AFTER
the funeral, Anne went to the Bishop.

She had said almost nothing to anyone, only chanted the burial rites then fallen silent as the body went under. She returned to the palace, letting herself be ushered from place to place. She was unresisting, but she wouldn’t touch her food.

All night, she lay huddled under her blankets. Every rush of wind outside her window, every creak of wood outside her door, made her eyes fly open, staring into the dark. Clasped in her hand was a crucifix Erzebet had given her the previous New Year, a silver-and-pearl cross that felt smoother in her hand than the sharp-edged diamonds and sapphires she was often expected to wear, given by courtiers with some idea of complementing her blue face. It seemed to Anne that it was for the sake of the crucifix that she was staying awake: if she were to fall asleep, it might slip from her hand into the bedclothes, be bent by a careless roll, lose a pearl among the linen, even slip out of sight, not to be found. The thought of anything happening to it was so horrifying that the little cross felt charged with danger, but she couldn’t bear to put it aside. She lay awake, whispering soundlessly into the creaking, rustling quiet:
Mother of God, protect me. Holy Queen, help me. Stella Maris, save me
.

In the morning, she rose hot-eyed and tousled, and addressed Alice: “I wish to pray with Bishop Westlake.”

It would have been easier if Westlake had come to her, but Anne wanted to go and see him. She refused offers of bearers, help with her canes. She laid aside her carved mourning canes for the ones she usually used, smooth oak. Her maid Alice protested a little at the impropriety, but Anne didn’t answer except to say, “And I want another mourning dress. This one is too heavy. See to it.” Erzebet had had no patience with impractical things.

Anne walked by herself to meet Westlake in the chapel. The going was difficult, but her walk this way was about the same distance as his. If he could limp halfway, so could she. When she got there, he was already waiting. His face was grave; though lines scored his mouth and brow, he did not have the crumpled appearance Edward had. Rather, the wrinkles seemed like scars, cuts of expression made in younger skin, a frown of thought on his brow and the remnants of smiles around his mouth—along with deeper twists made from an expression she had often seen, the stern pinching-in of his mouth as he rested his weight for step after brief step on his damaged leg.

Anne hesitated before him, gripping the familiar wood of her canes for comfort. Her heart was pounding in her throat. Over her black dress, the pearl crucifix had been a reassuring adornment, but now it felt light, as if it were about to float away.

Westlake got to his feet and motioned her into a chair, saying only, “My lady Princess.” Anne struggled as usual to sit without toppling, a complex balancing act that required keeping her canes in hand at all times if she wished to retain any dignity, but Westlake did not offer to help her, merely seating himself, slowly, one hand gripping hard on the back of his chair as he extended his left leg with steady, careful grace. Except for his hand on her shoulder, no one had touched Anne for days but Claybrook and Lady Margaret when they had carried her away from Erzebet; Westlake’s failure to fuss awkwardly around her chair as most courtiers did, uncertain how to help and too dutiful to touch the princess uninvited, was soothing, but it did not make it any easier to talk to him.

“How are you this morning, my lady Anne?” Westlake said. He spoke quietly, as if he actually wanted to know. Her name came easily off his tongue. It should have sounded wrong, was probably a mistake: “my lady Anne” was the address for a noblewoman, not a princess. But at the sound of it, something tugged inside her. So very few people called her by name.

Anne looked at her hands for a moment. “Why did you come to court, my lord Bishop?” she asked.

“My lady Princess?” Westlake looked at her curiously, apparently unoffended.

“Your leg must trouble you,” Anne said. “If you stayed at home, you could have a staff to help you walk. But you come to court.”

Westlake did not look uncomfortable at the question. “I wished to serve God, my lady Princess.”

“Could you not serve him at home?”

The Bishop did not answer for a moment. His eyes rested on her, dark blue-grey like a faded garment. “Do you wish to talk about your mother?” he said.

The question was a shock, too overwhelming to answer. “What happened to your leg, my lord Bishop?” Anne said in an unsteady voice.

Westlake smiled. It was a small smile, his mouth stretching only slightly outwards, but it softened his face a great deal. “I fell from a horse when I was about your age, my lady Princess, and broke it. It had to be set.”

“Did it hurt?”

“I was fortunate not to die of the injury, my lady Princess. And more fortunate that the surgeon did not need to remove it. I can only thank God for his favour.”

“But you were unlucky to fall,” Anne said, anxiously aware that this was questioning God in His own house but too miserable to abandon the conversation.

Westlake smiled again. “That was my bad riding, my lady Princess. I am lucky God smiles even on such poor horsemen as myself.”

For just a moment, a smile warmed itself at the corners of Anne’s mouth. The movement was her undoing: the moment she felt it, her face remembered how to feel, and then she was crying, her eyes clenched shut, her mouth beyond her control, everything in her slipped loose from its moorings.

Westlake reached out and took hold of her hand, clasping it between both of his. He was not a warm-blooded man, and his touch was cooler than most courtiers’, but the pressure of his palm either side of her chilled fingers, like blankets and mattress cradling a sleeper, was the only comfort in a swaying world. Anne cried and cried, gripping her small, webbed fingers around Westlake’s hand, until she lost track of time altogether and there was only the sound of her sobbing voice.

It was a good while before she managed to draw breath and swallow, trying to rein herself in. Westlake removed his hand long enough to draw a handkerchief from his sleeve, and, tilting her chin up, wiped her eyes. Anne swallowed again, blinked, struggled for a voice to speak with.

“I—I do wish to speak about my mother,” she said. The word
mother
was somehow no harder to say than any other word.

“Is it true you were present at her death?” the Bishop asked.

Anne nodded. “What is your Christian name, my lord Bishop?” The question was an intimate one, but it was too disorienting to know the man’s surname alone, so Anne decided to exercise her royal prerogative.

“Samuel, my lady Anne.” He said her name kindly, showing no resentment.

“My lord Samuel. I do not wish, I, I do not wish to speak of it.”

Samuel Westlake did not push the question, merely sat and waited for her to speak again.

“Is your health recovered, Samuel?” The name was reassuring, and Anne said it again.

“I am very well, I thank you,” Westlake said. “I heard that in your kindness you sent me medicine in my illness.” His eyes were on her again, and despite their dark colour, there was a brightness to them
that made Anne uncertain how to look back at him. “I am most grateful, my lady Princess. I have prayed many times that God would smile upon you for your charity.”