In Great Waters (34 page)

Henry clamped his mouth. He was not going to plead.

The man settled himself on the stool.
“Losquerisne Latine?”
he said. Henry swallowed. Latin, the bane of his childhood, the language this man had chanted at the fire. He did not speak it, would not, was furiously glad he had never learned.

“Français? Italiano? Deutsch?”
The man paused, then shook his head. “You would hardly have swum here from Italy, would you? Come now, my boy, answer me. I know you understand me.”

Henry fought the impulse to shake his head. He was not going to give this man the satisfaction.

“Perhaps—look at me,” the man said. Holding his fingers together, he sketched a gesture in the air, a wide-armed wave that ended palm-to-chest. It was a motion Henry had seen before, not a deepsman-to-deepsman pose—no landsman could reproduce those out of the water, and probably not that easily in it either—but he had seen adults of the tribe showing it to children as they swam up to greet the ships. No one had explained what it meant, though. Henry kept his face blank, said nothing.

His questioner sighed. “My name is Samuel Westlake,” he said. “I would like to know yours. Will you favour me?” The question was met with silence, but, to Henry’s discomfort, it did not seem to bother the man. No smiles like Claybrook, no anxious scribbling like Allard;
he simply sat there, let the silence hang. Henry felt in that moment a longing for Allard, his anxious courtesy and his long explanations, that was stronger than anything he had ever felt in Allard’s presence. Allard had been right. He should have stayed home.

Westlake nodded. “You have lasted a long time,” he said. “Whoever took you in should be congratulated. What did they call you? Richard? William? Philip? Henry? Edward?”

Henry could not quite suppress a flinch at the sound of his own name, but he caught himself quickly, hoping the man had not noticed. The word
Henry
had leaped out of the litany like a slap, leaving him shaking. How was this murderer able to grab so quickly at his name?

Westlake caught the flinch, and shook his head. “My dear son, there is no mystery. No one would have taken you in who did not have thoughts of the throne. If they wished you to wear a king’s crown, you needed a king’s name. There are only so many names to choose from.”

So that was all the thought Allard had put into his name. The homesick nostalgia that had gripped him a moment ago was replaced by a heartsick fury. The name had come to him when he was still unable to speak, when English was a foreign tongue and the words meant nothing. It had been bestowed without explanation, like a law of nature. But there was no art to it, nothing profound. Just a choice off a list. The country had a Philip alive, and an Edward, a William recently dead. Allard had preferred Henry to Richard, and that was all. Even his name was not his own.

“I can hardly keep guessing,” Westlake said. “And in your position, I would not care to hear myself constantly miscalled. I can call you Richard and Henry and William in turn, if you wish, or you can tell me which is the right name. It is your choice, my son.”

Henry shook his head. Was he even Henry any more? He could just as easily be Richard, be William. Be
Whistle
. Nothing had been true.

It was a second before he realised his mistake. He had made a landsman’s gesture, an Englishman’s gesture. No one shook their heads in the sea. He had shaken his head like a landsman, and West-lake had seen him do it. Had seen he understood English, just as
clearly as if he had opened his mouth and spoken his useless, phantom name.

Desperate, he lunged off the floor, striking out a sharp-nailed hand against this probing man who had come to destroy him. Henry swung hard and Westlake was knocked from his stool, but the next moment Westlake had swung his cane around, a swift swipe to protect himself. The blow was not well-aimed, but it struck Henry’s forearm with a crack, wood on bone, and Henry drew his arm back before he could help himself. In that time, Westlake had struggled to his feet, ungainly but fast, and was standing over him at the door, out of reach and far enough away that Henry would have to crawl to reach him. His stick was held firm in his hand; the gesture was not exactly a threat, but Henry knew the value of a weapon. He had choked Allard to stop Allard beating him, but this man was out of reach. And Allard had wanted him alive.

“There is no call for that, my son,” Westlake said. “I am not here to hurt you.”

Henry stared at him, but he did not believe him.

“I had heard rumours,” Westlake said, leaning on his cane. Taking the man’s weight, it became a prop again, not a weapon. “I sent men to find you. You are lucky, Edward—is it Edward, You are lucky I found you before anybody else did. I might be able to keep you alive. But you will have to trust me. If you will not speak to me, I will not know how to help you.”

The tone was not unkind; the words were not a threat. But Henry had spent a lifetime locked in narrow rooms with men towering over him, promising him safety if he stayed obedient within his prison. He blinked up at Westlake for a moment. Then, mouth sealed, throat closed, a pocketful of air held guarded within his chest, he turned his back.

“T
HE BOY WILL
not speak to me, my lady Princess,” Westlake told Anne.

Anne sat unmoving. The shock was too great for words or gestures; deepsman’s call or English, she could express nothing. There was a little heat in her hands, a small point gathered at each wrist. Her face did not glow at all.

“My lady Princess, I must know,” Westlake said. His face had come unloosed; normally stiff with resolve, with the endless strain of bearing up his dignity while his leg dragged pain behind him, now it was moving, eyes blinking, mouth open, blood in the sallow cheeks. The openness of it was almost embarrassing. Anne had confided her secrets to his gravity, cried before his reserve, leaned herself on his steady, contained patience. Now it seemed she had exposed herself to a man of flesh and blood like any other.

But Samuel had been kind to her, and he was asking her for help. Just at that moment, nothing else seemed important.

Anne reached out and took his hand, clasped it. Anything to soothe the fright in his face. “I am not angry with you, Samuel,” she said. “I shall protect you.” That was the image before her eyes: Samuel marched between soldiers, a heaped bonfire before him. The boy conjured up no image in her mind; Anne knew little of boys.

There were a few seconds when she heard Samuel breathing, his rapid gasps slowing as if by will. “I am most grateful, my lady Princess,”
he said in the end. The words did not seem to satisfy him. “I am your man.”

“You are my friend, Samuel,” Anne said. She wanted to keep talking about their friendship, to stay in this little bubble of kindness. If they moved out of it, they would be back into the current and the hard, dangerous fact that was starting to make itself felt: that Samuel had committed treason, had hidden from the Crown a criminal usurper who had been planning to kill them all.

“We must plan, my lady Princess,” Samuel said, and the bubble flew upwards as bubbles must, disintegrating around them. “We shall not be discovered by the men I sent after him; they are not talkers. But I found him because of rumours. If one man can hear a rumour, any man can hear it. I may not be the only man looking for this boy.”

“You are the only man who found him,” Anne said. Erzebet would have had a plan by now, she thought. But then Erzebet would have been angry. Erzebet would have raised her hand and sent Samuel to the stake without a word. The uncomfortable thought possessed Anne that it was her mother’s absence that freed her to treat Samuel’s news with mercy. Erzebet would have thought that mercy a mistake.

Anne shook her head. It was a mistake God would forgive. She did not want another silent day while the world went to watch a burning child.

“I do not wish the boy to suffer,” Samuel was saying. “But I cannot hide him for ever. I thought of smuggling him out of the country, but that would do him little good. He would face the same dangers on any other shore.”

“He might pose greater dangers to us,” Anne said. Erzebet had taught her to use her head. She had to think. “How many countries would turn down the chance to march upon England with an English-born king to place on our throne? He could strike an alliance at any court in Europe.”

Westlake nodded, rubbed his face. “You are right, my lady Princess. But he cannot live here. I had wondered—do you think he might be better taking shelter in the sea?”

There was a look of hope on his face, and Anne shook her head
again, frustrated at the gulf in his understanding. This man was her friend. He did not know that what he suggested was impossible. “The deepsmen would not take him,” she said. “Not for ever. To them we are visitors, not kinsmen. I—if he were to stay …” It was not a comfortable thought. Anne had no illusions left about the deepsmen, the wonderful diving angels of her childhood, the relentless creatures she must appease over and over, but it was not easy to say such things out loud. “I do not think they would accept his presence in the sea,” she said quietly. “And they have no charity at all for those they do not accept.”

Her face had begun to tingle at the thoughts, but Westlake was too preoccupied with the problem to notice. It was urgent, desperately urgent; she could see it in the tension of his arms. For all they knew, there were already soldiers knocking on his door.

“Besides,” he said, answering her without a pause, “we could hardly ask the boy to stay in the sea for ever. He could walk back up the beach whenever he wished. No, whatever we do for him we must do in England. You are right, my lady Princess.”

Anne wondered if Westlake had thought of giving the boy a knife and letting him choose a quicker, kinder death than the flames. But if Samuel wasn’t going to suggest it, she wasn’t either.

“Has he a plan?” she said. The words “the boy” told her nothing; perhaps if he was clever he might have a solution worked out already.

Westlake shook his head. “He says nothing, my lady Princess. He has not spoken a word since my men first laid hands on him.”

Anne looked up, startled. “Then are you even sure he is English? Or that he has his wits?” The thought of Philip loomed in her imagination: huge-bulked, brass-lunged, thick-handed. If the boy was another such idiot, another rapacious block … if the boy was such a being, then she was not sure she wanted to help him.

Westlake cleared his throat. “He seems to understand me,” he said. “I do not know, not absolutely. But he does not seem stupid. He listens. He just does not reply.”

Anne felt a sudden, unexpected sense of kinship with the captive boy. She had faced too many situations, surrounded by demands, questions,
threats, where she had no way out. She could not hide herself among the crowd, could not claim ignorance, irresponsibility. Her face and form spoke loud, a clanging bell proclaiming to everyone who saw, here was a royal body, a body politic, a body expected to have answers. What other refuge was left except silence?

“Does he answer you in the deepsmen’s language?” she said.

Westlake bent a swift, interested look at her. Her secret was out, it seemed: asking such a question was admitting that she hid behind idiocy, behind her mother tongue, when she did not feel like speaking. Even if it was only Samuel who knew, Anne felt a shiver of vulnerability at being so exposed, but she shook it off. There wasn’t time to repine.

“No, my lady Princess. I tried him with sailor’s signs too, but he did not respond even to those.” Samuel made a brief gesture of demonstration, signing the word “friendship” in the sailor’s pidgin that was sometimes used between traders out where the princes could not reach. The language was a crude one even compared with the deepsmen’s limited vocabulary: sailors and swimmers seemed to find little beyond brief offers or requests for assistance that they could companionably discuss. It was not a form of speech that could be trusted for more important issues, questions of power and planning: the demands of a second language quickly exhausted the deepsmen’s understanding, and the effort to convey the complexities of royal affairs in it was not one they were eager to make. Princes, speaking their tongue and visiting them regularly, were worth forging a bond with, but sailors were alien to their eyes, travelled along routes they could not follow for ever, and presented a different set of men in every ship. Such men were offered passing courtesies rather than serious discourse, and the pidgin was accordingly limited. It was a practical language, not a political one, and common to sea and land people both; it would hardly incriminate the boy if he displayed an understanding of the signs. Samuel was right: this was refusal to speak, not failure to understand. “He says nothing at all, gives nothing away.”

“He cannot stay so for ever.” Anne said it without thinking, because it was the truth, the absolute truth of her life. However
cornered you were, eventually you had to find an answer, even an inadequate one, even a foolish one. You were never left alone for good.

Samuel said nothing, rubbed his face again. She could hear the joints of his ankle click as he shifted in his seat.

“Do you wish me to meet with him?” Anne said.

Samuel looked up at her, as if startled.

“Come now,” Anne said. “You cannot have failed to think such a thought.”

Samuel almost smiled. “No, my lady Princess, I have thought it. But I did not expect you to suggest it.”

“We must decide at once,” Anne said. “We have no time for this.” This was a moment in time, suspended as in water, with dark, violent shapes swimming fast into view. If you could not hide, you had to act, or you would be dragged under.

“The boy is violent,” Samuel said. “He made for me. I could not see you injured.”

“I am stronger than a landsman,” Anne said. She did not wish to allude to Samuel’s bent leg, the crooked list of weakness that a predator would spot in an instant, but she would if she had to.

“I—” Samuel bent his head, rubbed it in thought. “If he were to injure you, there would be no saving any of us, my lady Princess. How could you account for such an injury?”