In Great Waters (36 page)

There was a silence. It was not practical to hit the girl with two men standing by. Henry turned his face to the wall and withdrew into speechlessness. It made it easier for Shingleton to ask for time alone with him.

Anne retreated to the next room, with Westlake halting after her. A wish possessed her that she had not seen this boy. She could not blame him for his silence, his mistrust; she had hidden too many years behind a dull face not to recognise the freezing of an animal when predators are gathered all around. But if Shingleton could not talk him around, if Samuel could not, then he would not help himself. And if he would not, then he would have to go.

It would be easier to endure the death of someone she had not met.

“Perhaps Shingleton can prevail upon him, my lady Princess,” Westlake started to say.

Anne cut him off. “Let us say a decade,” she said, taking out her rosary. Better to hear the whisper of prayer than the crackle of flames.

It occurred to her as they started on the Hail Mary that she did not know the name of the boy she was praying over.

Shingleton closed the door, checked the lock, craned his neck at the crack.

“Whisper,” Henry said in irritation. “I can hear you.”

Shingleton edged closer to him. “The princess Anne has ears as sharp as yours, I would warrant.” There was barely any sound: Henry had to lean close, training his short-sighted eyes on the movement of the man’s lips. “Are you hurt, Henry?”

Henry shook his head. “Can you get word to John Claybrook?” he said. A longing for John’s face, his laughter, was tugging inside him, but he felt some despair as well. Robert Claybrook had lied to him. It was John he trusted—but John was dependent on his father, and John had not an army at his command. All his life, Henry had loved John as a follower, but a follower was little help to him now.

Shingleton nodded. “I will ride to the Claybrooks straightway. Westlake will not follow me, he has not the men to guard you and go after me as well. Henry, how did you come to this?”

“Not ‘my lord Henry’ now?” To hear his name repeated so baldly cast Henry back into childhood, stiff-sided rooms and his hands bound and sickening food in exchange for speech. Where was there escape from captivity?

Shingleton didn’t answer. “When Bishop Westlake told me he had a deepsman boy in his charge, I almost fell down on the spot. I had no idea if it was you. I thought he might have told me so that I could have notice to fly.”

“Would that be like him?” You needed to know the habits of your captors. Henry had lived all his life on that rule.

Shingleton nodded. “He is a man of God.” Henry shook his head; God had never meant much to him. “He has little taste for killing.”

“How far can I trust him?” Henry asked. The quietness of the conversation did not bother him, but Shingleton’s strained face as he struggled to make out what Henry said was frustrating.

“He will not betray you if he can help it,” Shingleton said. “But last time there was a bastard found, he could not.”

Henry saw Westlake again in his mind, standing before the blackening bodies.

A
NNE DID NOT
tell her grandfather. She went to greet the court as usual, and showed nothing on her face as she scanned the rows of faces. Earls and Dukes, great counties and rivers in their rule, men who could raise armies, men who could hide a bastard and make for the throne.

Behind one of those faces was the knowledge of the hidden boy, but she could not see which one. Any more than they would see behind her set face the knowledge of where their lost usurper was now.

Henry was with Westlake when he heard the sound of hooves outside. The sound was terrifying: hoofbeats meant soldiers now, people coming out of the shadows to find him. Westlake was still speaking to him, trying to explain once again why Henry should trust his captors; his landsman’s ears were too dull to hear the sound from far-off.

Henry turned his back and huddled his arms around himself. It was no good to trust anyone.

Then he heard a sound over the hoofbeats, faint and distant, muffled by the air—but he could hear it. If he lowered his head and blocked out Westlake’s words, he could hear it.

“Henry? Can you hear me? It is John. Shingleton came. I am coming to visit the Bishop.”

Henry closed his eyes, shielded his face in his arms so Westlake
couldn’t see the desperate hope. The voice was getting closer, surfacing, bringing him nearer and nearer to breathing clean air.

“Henry, when I come in the house, make a lot of noise, and I can insist upon finding you. Do you hear me?”

“Are you unwell, my son?” Westlake said, seeing Henry drop his head and shield it.

Henry said nothing. He would be making enough noise by and by.

Anne sat before the court. All of a sudden she wondered whether the same man who had hidden the boy had killed her mother.

“My lord Bishop, I have a spiritual matter I wished to discuss with you,” Henry heard John’s voice saying below. The sound of it was so familiar that Henry almost paused, rocking a little with relief. It would almost be funny to hear what story John could make up as an excuse for visiting. But there was no time to hug pleasures to himself, and he wanted to see his friend.

He clenched his fist and banged on the door, raising his voice in a brazen deepsman’s call; yelled at the top of his voice, yelled for eleven years behind walls. “Let me out! Let me out!
Let me out!”

Anne sat and shook. She should have asked herself this question before, but the sight of the boy had driven other thoughts from her mind. She had been thinking of pyres, executions, Erzebet’s stiff face as she ordered death for other people. Not her own end, not her wet red face as death came for her.

It could not have been this boy. To poison Erzebet’s bathwater would have taken speed and stealth, the ability to pass from room to room unobserved. But had he known of it? Had he been consulted? Had he ordered it, even?

Anne gripped one hand over another, and debated in cold terror whether or not to open her mouth and tell her grandfather the truth.

There were voices downstairs, a clatter of feet. There was the sound of a scuffle.

Henry thought of John, riding his horse fast, running on long limbs. He thought of the lame, gaunt man who had locked the door upon him.

He was not afraid as he heard the struggle. John would win, and then he would come up the stairs and find him.