SEVEN

ANNE WAS BORN a disappointment, but such was often the fate of royal girls.

King Edward, Anne’s grandfather, had held the English crown for forty years. It had been a fine start: two sons born in quick succession. Auguries had predicted that William, perfect first-born Prince William, would have a brother to follow him. But when the courtiers first beheld the child that emerged, slick and silent from his mother’s womb, none so much as dared cross himself. The deepsman strain had been preserved in royalty down the generations, prince marrying prince, cousin marrying cousin. And sometimes the salt blood thickened in the veins, cankering the flesh into mutant twists and clots that produced such children as Philip. Philip the Sufferer, second son of King Edward, fused from hip to knee in a single, solid tail, with two stunted and withered limbs branching off beneath. The court declared him a boy, and silently prayed that their guess, their resolute view of this flat-fronted, ungenitured infant, would prove correct.

William was the hope of the crown, as fine as Angelica herself in his mixture of elements. Coming up alongside Philip, who grew deep-voiced and massive, unquestionably male, with a rapidity equalled only by the slow development of his wits, was an endless lesson to him about the dangers of breeding too closely. William travelled the courts of Europe to find a bride. When he returned home with his Magyar princess, Erzebet, the country might have rebelled at the intrusion of such a foreigner into the sacred English palaces—not the daughter of a familiar foreign country like Scotland or Germany, not a child promised to William since birth and raised in an English court, but a distant, harsh-tongued princess—were it not for the news and rumours of Philip’s stupidity, his lumbering foolishness, his violent outbursts and clumsy mind, that travelled the country in gossip that could not be stilled, in songs and plays that the common people were careful not to perform in the presence of soldiers. Fierce, steady Erzebet was strange, but she was healthy, she was as deepsman as the English royals, she was not related to William for generations back, and she could be trusted to produce a clean-blooded heir.

Their first child Mary’s early birth and fine proportions were enough to counterbalance the girl’s sex. Were it not for Philip, Anne, second-born girl though she was, might have been equally welcomed. But as the midwife held her up, a tiny, struggling bag of bones, chirruping in protest at the removal from her mother’s arms, the skin on her face betrayed her.

Poets tried to write odes to her beauty, carefully referring to the “light of her countenance.” But the phosphorescence of Anne’s face was not enlightening. As the skin around her cheeks and eyes glimmered its queer blue light in the shade of indoor rooms, a glow that no amount of candlelight could quite blot out, there was no impression of beauty. The effect was only to cast her eyes into shadow, rendering the sockets hollow like a skull. Sailors told tales of fish in far-off seas that glowed in the dark, even of deepsmen with lit-up faces; most likely, Erzebet told her daughter, some distant ancestor of Angelica glowed just like Anne did. But courtiers only saw the deepsmen in glimpses at the best of times, and the people, whose faces thronged the streets as Anne’s litter went by, making her shy with their stares, never saw the deepsmen at all. Anne did not look royal. She looked ghostly, and it made people uncomfortable. Before she could even speak, the girl was a living memento mori, her eyes concealed, her visage a blank page on which any person, well-versed in tales of Philip’s idiocy, fearful of the collapse of the throne of England under the weight of corrupted blood, could read any story they cared to.

At least she was not like Philip, her sister Mary told her once in a moment of kindness. At least she had two legs that could walk. There would be plenty of princes who would be happy to marry her.

Anne had been four years in the world before she became aware that she had a sister. She was only five when William, her father, was killed by a soldier’s blade in Scotland. She was six when her mother shed her mourning dress and married her uncle Philip.

Erzebet’s intermittent attention dazzled Anne. From earliest memories, she had been a figure inspiring a kind of strained, yearning awe that Anne called love for want of a better word.

Anne spent most of her babyhood in the arms of nurses. Tight bands swaddled her legs in the hope of instilling some firmness in them, and wet nurses remained at hand to supply milk that flowed thin and tepidly sweet over the princess’s hardening gums. Erzebet appeared at intervals. Though her memories stretched back far, her wits ripening early like a deepsman’s, Anne remembered little of her first year—but later recollections of her mother were coloured by an unsurprised anxiety that suggested such scenes were already familiar. Nurses would be dismissed with a clap of the hands, deafeningly loud from Erzebet’s stretched webs, and then the bands would be loosed, her mother muttering imprecations against them that Anne, too young to understand the precise terms, was never sure were not a criticism of her. Yet there were other sensations too. Anne could still recall an occasion when her mother unlooped her great pearl necklace and opened the bodice of her weighty gown, guiding into her daughter’s mouth a tough, cool nipple, faintly salty but producing a thick, buttery nourishment that warmed her baby as the nurses’ offerings never had. The familiarity of the feeling led Anne to conclude that it was not the first occasion, that memory as well as appetite might be causing her discontent with the watery secretions of her attendants. Erzebet rocked her daughter and crooned a sound that Anne, still without language, recognised: a reassurance, meaning my baby, safe, my baby. It was the last occasion she was to experience the uneasy pleasure of Erzebet’s nursing, rich milk in her mouth and an intense voice overhead. As soon as her sharp teeth appeared, nurses pulled her away with cries of alarm, and Erzebet made no further efforts to feed her.

Nurses gave way to tutors as soon as Anne could speak. Latin followed English along with French and Spanish, languages of the great courts that Anne studied with devoted attention, always aware of the slap that would follow a mistake. When she was three, her first nurse was sent out of her life, and on an occasion when Anne encountered the woman walking outside and wobbled up to her hoping for a kiss, the woman curtsied and called her “your Majesty.” Anne studied anxiously, absorbing the languages of Europe all at once, translating doctrine and rhetoric she could barely follow from language to language, knowing that at an uncertain interval, her mother would appear to test her. Those intervals could last a long time. Sometimes, Erzebet did not appear for months.

Erzebet insisted that there was nothing wrong with Anne’s wits, and courtiers deferred, at least to her face. As only a few tutors had the privilege of teaching her, and all were too frightened of Erzebet’s unforgiving temper to speak without her permission, opinions on the blue-faced girl were varied. Undoubtedly her languages were better than Philip’s: Philip could speak the deepsmen’s language and a few phrases of English, but children of two could construct better sentences than he could. Anne learned English and Latin, French, Spanish and Magyar with equal ease, but to courtiers raised to be equally cosmopolitan of tongue, this skill did not seem exceptional. And up until Erzebet’s second marriage, it was only to her mother and tutors that Anne displayed anything else. After six years in the world, she was still a blank to the court, the light of her face shielding her expressions, and her tongue stilled in the presence of so many awesome men. She could have been anything.

It was in the context of lessons that she first became aware of her sister. Later, Anne learned the reason for this: Mary was a prize for any prince seeking a healthy bride, but tales of Philip’s idiocy had travelled fast and far. To prove Mary’s clean blood, Edward had insisted that she be handed to a royal wet nurse and taken across the courts of Europe to show herself: Mary had spent the first few years of her life away from home, with Erzebet sometimes leaving Anne behind, making diplomatic visits to the courts where her oldest daughter was a temporary guest. Erzebet had never set foot in England before she was crowned there, and she knew the hostility that such queens gathered; a princess from England would be all the more welcome if she had visited her people before her marriage, even if she was only a toddler at the time. Mary had been passed from nurse to nurse, court to court, laying the foundations of a future that remained, as long as they had no brother to ensure England’s succession, unclear. By the time Anne was old enough to study, Erzebet had insisted that enough was enough, that it was time for Mary to come home, and anybody who wished to inspect her could visit England. But all of this, she had not mentioned to Anne. Erzebet’s appearances had been so wide-spaced, so unpredictable, that Anne had never asked about the outside world, that great, weighty place that fought so hard for her mother’s attention. Erzebet, in her turn, had a focus, a blade-straight intensity when she spoke to Anne, which left little room for outsiders. Anne thought it was only the two of them in the world.

Hence, the first time Anne was lined up with this unfamiliar child, waiting for Erzebet’s attendance, the two of them stared openly. The fact that this girl’s legs were bent and her hands webbed like Anne’s was astonishing and, after a second’s study, outrageous. Other people were straight and split-handed, but Anne and her mother had shared a bond, and the nerve of this stranger openly laying ownership to this shape, her shape, provoked Anne to horrified fury. The girl pointed, raising her unfairly webbed hand, and said to Anne, “What ails your face?”

The question could only be an insult, for Anne had sat quietly through a rough-clothed washing before being ushered in. “Go away,” she said.

“Your face is blue, it shines.” The girl’s face was pretty and pink-skinned; Anne glared at her.

“Nothing ails my face,” she said, her voice choked with an anger that sounded frustratingly like tears.

“It shines in the dark.” The girl pointed again, and Anne forsook the safety of one of her canes to give a hard shove that toppled the girl to the ground.

It was at this point, while Anne’s tutor was pulling her back with a jerk to her ear and setting about her with a series of blows from the abandoned stick, that Erzebet made a slow, steady progress into the room. Anne ceased struggling and looked up wet-eyed, waiting for her mother to save her.

“What happens here?” Erzebet’s Latin was perfect, but she reserved it for foreign dignitaries, asserting to all the court in her flawed, accented English her claim to rule the country as well as a woman native born.

“The princess Anne pushed her sister, your Majesty.” The tutor, a woman by the name of Margaret, still held Anne by the arm, but the cane she held limp in an uncertain grip.

“Why do you have the cane?” Erzebet’s eyes on the woman’s hand were cold.

“I—I wished to correct the princess, your Majesty.” Margaret’s voice had gone dead. She made no effort to move back or even lower her head as Erzebet came towards her, canes tapping on the ground, the rustle of her skirts loud over the whisper of her feet on the floor. She stood before her attendant for a long pause before passing her right stick into her left hand, and with her free palm, giving Margaret a slap across the face that made her stagger.

“You do not touch the cane without a prince’s permission,” Erzebet said, her voice clear against the woman’s muffled whimpers. She turned to Anne. “Did you push your sister?”

Anne looked up at her mother. “The girl said I have a blue face.” The word “sister” was starting to hurt, and she reached up for her mother’s hand.

“Bad girl,” Erzebet said. “Go away.” She turned her back, and spoke not another word to Anne as her daughter was carried out of the room.

Anne spent a further week with her tutors, not knowing if she would ever see her mother again. Her inattention to lessons brought punishments that made little impression. It was only when her mother reappeared to find her daughter behind in her studies, and left again, that Anne reapplied herself, struggling to master her letters with a frantic haste that made the words swim on the page.

A week later, Anne found herself once again in a room with this sister, her mother watching over them both. The sight of Erzebet made her heart beat frantically; her mother had called her a bad girl, and Anne was desperate for some sign of forgiveness. Erzebet gave none, neither frowning nor smiling at Anne; she sat watching both daughters, her eyes passing from one to another, the same intense, steady gaze on each little face. Anne answered when addressed, a sharp knot tightening in her throat every time her mother’s eyes flicked away to the girl. To Mary. The questions changed from Latin to Spanish, French to Magyar, and the sisters answered, correct and formal.

After some time, Mary was called on to recite an answer in Latin. Anne listened, struggling to find something in the girl that could justify the loss of her mother’s attention, when she heard a mistake.

Erzebet stopped Mary’s recitation with a raised eyebrow. “No,” she said.

Anne raised her courage on a tide of savage satisfaction that the interloper had misstepped. “It should be benedicta,” she volunteered.

Erzebet turned her head to Anne’s tense face. “Yes,” she said, “that is right.” She gave the girl a small smile that stayed in Anne’s memory as she studied for hours each day, learning anything she could find that might win her more.

Together, they studied. Languages. History, the story of the great houses of Europe and the complex strands of Angelica’s line. Geography, the cities and borders and armies of the nations that either of them might one day rule as queens. The first time Erzebet introduced that idea into a lesson, Anne found herself crying, for reasons she was too ashamed to explain: Erzebet had left her own country, her own mother, to be a queen in England. Anne had no desire to do such. She would never see Erzebet again.

“Enough, Anne,” Erzebet said. There was a little wrinkle in her forehead, but her tone was firm.

Anne couldn’t manage it. “I do not want to go abroad,” she said. Her voice was feeble-sounding; to talk this way in front of her rival sister was shaming.

To her surprise, she felt a small hand patting her arm. “Other nations are not bad,” Mary said. “They have different fashions and different foods, and they wait on you at banquets.”

Anne looked at Erzebet, waiting for her to say something enlightening, but Erzebet was sitting back, watching the two of them.

“I wish to stay home,” Anne said in a small voice.

“I have been to France,” Mary said. “The Dauphin gave me a ring, and this string of pearls. Would you like it?”

“What?” Mary was such a rival to her mother’s affections that Anne had found more or less everything she did offensive, but sending gifts was usually done by courtiers aiming to please people. Anne had nothing to offer Mary, nothing to make Mary wish to keep on her good side, so there was no good reason why Mary should give her anything. The pearls, though, were pretty, not unlike the string she remembered Erzebet wearing in those few moments when she had nursed Anne. Temptation and antagonism warred in Anne’s stinging throat.

“They would look well when your face is alight,” Mary said. “They would glow.”

So there it was: her face again. The girl was just teasing her. “You should go back to France,” Anne said.

To her astonishment, Mary’s eyes filled with tears. “You are unkind,” she said. “I offered you a gift. In France I thought of my sister, that I could bring her back a gift.” Mary wiped her face with the back of her wrist. The gesture was so inelegant, so unlike a courtier’s delicacy, that it filled Anne with a startled sense of fellow-feeling. She had thought she was the only clumsy one.

Anne didn’t want to surrender, didn’t want to be the one to climb down, but her mother was still sitting there, watching them both. The idea of Mary thinking of her in France gave Anne a sense of guilt, too: she hadn’t thought of Mary in England, hadn’t known of her existence, and part of her still heartily wished the girl back in France. But nobody had offered Anne a gift before. Mary was the first person who had ever suggested she’d minded Anne’s absence.

Anne cast around. “I have a sapphire bracelet that is too big for me,” she said. “I could give you that if you give me the pearls.”

Mary looked up with something like interest.

“You cannot give away a gift,” Erzebet cut in. “It offends the giver. A princess must not give offence.”

Anne sighed. Erzebet hadn’t reprimanded Mary, but now she was chiding both of them. Perhaps it was only Anne who caused offence.

“I do not like pearls,” Mary said. “Courtiers always give me pearls, and I have too many of them, and they look dull.”

“Pearls are royal, from the sea,” Erzebet said. Her tone brooked no disagreement.

Mary cast Anne a glance of conspiracy. It was a limited start, but it was the first time Mary had looked like anything but a rival.

At times, Erzebet still visited her younger daughter alone. On these occasions, she would sit beside her and croon in the language Anne had only heard her mother speak. She was growing resignedly aware that such scenes were probably taking place with Mary as well, but she drank them in, taking in every second of her mother’s presence. The language itself was easy, a fluid, musical flow of groans and squeaks, whistles and clicks that soothed her even while she knew the moments couldn’t last.

From infancy, it had been the language with which her mother called her to safety when they swam together. Anne was long accustomed to the court’s journeys from castle to castle, and had as clear an understanding of the lakes and streams of each residence as she had of the rooms within. There were many times when her mother, away from the court, would place Anne before her on a horse and the two of them would ride off—Anne thrilling with the secrecy and closeness of the adventure—and strip off their heavy court gowns to slip naked into the water. Released from the strain of bearing themselves up like landsmen, mother and daughter would dive and whirl, their legs coiling like whips through the water, cold and clean and free.

Once the two sisters had been introduced, there were other trips too. The first time the court gathered up for a journey to the shore, Anne was anxious. She had understood that her mother made such trips, but as she was placed onto a litter with her sister, ready to be carried, Erzebet’s litter seemed a long way ahead, carried side by side with William’s and Edward’s, and there was no one to ask.

Mary, beside her, was wearing the same kind of garment as Anne: a dress surprisingly plain for a formal occasion. Anne’s nurse had dressed her that morning, but the gown had only ties at the front, tapes that could be unknotted even by small, webbed hands, and the fabric was light and unjewelled. Both small heads were weighted with silver crowns, but these light dresses were a mystery.

Anne was becoming more and more nervous. She didn’t quite want to admit it to Mary, but she wanted someone to explain things. “Have you done this before?” she managed.

Mary shook her head. “No. Have you?”

It was that question that warmed Anne a little. Mary seemed so big, so assured. The idea that she might consider Anne ahead of her in anything at all was a shocking compliment. “No.” Anne felt sufficiently better to admit some ignorance of her own. “What will happen, do you know?”

“We will go into the sea with our mother,” Mary said. “We are going to see the deepsmen.”

Anne blinked. She had heard stories of them since she was old enough to talk, those mighty, essential allies in the water, but Erzebet had always told her that she wouldn’t see them until she was big enough. Bobbing along on her litter, she didn’t feel very big.

“Do you swim well?” she asked Mary.

Mary nodded. “Yes, very well.” She sounded a little more pleased with herself than Anne could like, but before she could feel too annoyed, she noticed one of the litter bearers, a man named John Fisher, of whom Anne had always been shy, watching them out of the corner of his eye.

Anne took a chance. Is it safe? she asked. She put the question in her mother tongue, her and Erzebet’s private language. If Erzebet spent time with Mary, Mary would understand it, and at least they would be safe from Fisher’s ears.

Mary looked at her, a quick, startled look. There was a pause before she slipped her hand into Anne’s. Stay with me, she said. Mary’s head was upright, but as her hand gripped hard around Anne’s it trembled a little.

The reason for the gowns became clear at the water’s edge: following Erzebet’s lead, the two girls found themselves stripping off, unaided, before the court. Anne struggled to keep her mind off the dozens of eyes behind them, to look out to sea, holding herself steady. If she could get through this well, her mother would be pleased with her.

The court musicians were sounding music, playing a march of approach. Anne noticed that Philip was still in his litter. His voice rose, louder and louder, protesting: “Go in! Go in!”

Edward, their grandfather, laid his crown on the sand, and William and Erzebet followed. Anne cast a quick look at Mary, and the two girls imitated the motions of their parents, wobbling a little on their flexible legs; neither of them could manage it as gracefully as Erzebet. Then Edward was wading into the water, a few arthritic steps before the sea grew deeper and he dived forward like a young man. William followed, a great leap that drove the water up in plumes around him. Anne and Mary hesitated, then Erzebet reached back, took one girl by each hand, and led them into the shallows. Stay with me, she said. They swam off together, into the cold, salt water, where the tides pulled and the currents ran in icy streams beneath the surface, and they could hear, ringing through the water, cries the musician’s march had tried to imitate: We are coming. We are coming.

And ringing back, from out in the bay, louder and stronger and richer than the cries of the family, were other voices: We are here.

As Erzebet speeded up, her hands slipped free, and she swam ahead, calling back quietly—Keep up, children. All around, the water was dark, and if Erzebet swam into the shadows, they’d lose sight of her. Anne kicked as hard as she could, but her legs were small, and she found herself alarmed.

Don’t lose me, she said. And before Erzebet could answer, Mary called back, Stay with me. Anne felt a moment of resentment that her sister was answering when it was her mother’s voice that she wanted, needed to hear, but Erzebet was calling, sending her voice after her husband: I have children with me. Do not threaten them. We are strong. We have children.

Stay with me, came Mary’s voice again, definitely a frightened squeak now, and Anne gathered herself. Mary knew no more than she did, and they were wild in the water, and the voices were tolling out all around them, louder than a cathedral organ. Their parents were there. Freedom rushed to Anne’s head in a sudden torrent: she was in the dark, away from the court, away from everything, and there were deepsmen out in the bay.

From the sounds of their voices, there were many deepsmen in the court they met that day, thirty, forty, a whole choir. But the water in the bay was muddy and stirred, and though Anne had seen pictures all her life, her first glimpses of the deepsmen were only a few white bodies flashing through the haze. They were massive, larger even than her father, and as they approached, one of them swam out of the dark and stared straight into her face. There were black eyes, tiny sharp teeth, a small, flattened nose, and Anne leaped in the water, too shocked to react: the face that stared at her was almost skull-like. Sharp-nailed fingers reached out, and she heard the deepsman cry out: Face. Deep face.

It was her blue face again, Anne realised. But then she saw it: little glimmers of blue shining up from the depths. Not on every deepsman, but glints here and there, glints that told her she was not alone.

Anne pulled all her courage together, and spoke through the water. I am not a stranger, she said. Welcome me. And the deepsman swam round her, round in a rapid circle, fast as a minnow.

After a moment, Anne heard Mary’s voice repeat the call. There were other sounds, noises she recognised as welcome. As the deepsmen circled them—glorious, she saw now, great magnificent beings white as milk and mighty as horses, and circling her—Anne smiled into the brine. Mary might know more about the land, but Anne had spoken first, and she had spoken well, and Mary had learned and followed. It was a moment of pure victory.

A year later, it was in the water that Erzebet told Anne of the death of William. The tale was quickly told: there had been a war. Anne had been aware of a great army going out, the rattle of weapons and pounding of hooves, and her father had been among them, but the reasons for it had been unclear to her. As Erzebet explained it now, it seemed as if the war had mostly gone well. There were no more kings in Scotland. Like Wales, it was now under the rule of one family: their own. Edward ruled the whole island.

Erzebet did not sound happy. Anne had tried to understand why, if the war troubled her, it had happened at all. All Erzebet could say to make it clear was, “It is not good to have borders on land.” Countries divided by seas maintained a reasonable peace. The deepsmen guarded their shores, and few nations ever risked their sailors against a fleet of patriots who could swim up from beneath and smash hulls, pull off rudders, drag men down to a thrashing death. But nothing guarded borders on land except landsmen. Soldiers who feared a dark end in the deep water were not afraid to fight each other. Landlocked countries sparred with their neighbours like cats in a sack, but countries protected by deepsmen on their shores were safe from countries overseas, more or less. This was why the princes were so vital, Erzebet explained. They treated with the deepsmen, and if the deepsmen did not protect the country, it was an unguarded feast, ready for any flock of ships to swoop upon. Deepsmen must be loyal, or nations would be as unstable as if they were landlocked.

Now the island was one nation, ruled by one king. It should have meant peace within her borders. But William was dead, and Erzebet floated in the water, dry-eyed and hoarse-voiced, cuddling her little daughter to her. There was a note in her voice that Anne had not heard before. Erzebet had never sounded less than sure. It troubled Anne for a moment, but Erzebet’s hands stroked her hair gently, and in that moment, the joy of her mother’s attention was strong enough to make her push doubts out of her mind.

Anne’s father had been a vague presence in her life, a figure to whom she had to make obeisance on formal occasions when she was tucked into heavy, jewelled dresses and presented before the court, a fast-swimming figure on trips through the sea; though he was small compared with the sea people, he was so much bigger than Erzebet—than her—that in Anne’s mind he was classed more or less as a deepsman. She had paid formal respects to him, anointing his hands with salt water and murmuring the deepsmen’s chant of submission before moving on to her grandfather to perform the same task for him, but she could remember few conversations with her father; having confused him so much with the deepsmen, she would have been hard put to describe his face. Erzebet lay on her back, cold waves lapping around them, with Anne’s small form curled on her chest, breathing in the fresh, rain-tasting air. Though Anne could hear the strain in her mother’s voice, even years later, when she was a woman and old enough to understand, still the strongest memory of her father’s death was the peace of the waves kissing her sides, the comfort of her mother’s strong arms around her, carrying her face-up under the sky.

So on the day when the marriage was announced between Erzebet, widow of William, heir to Edward’s throne, and Philip, the new crown prince, last remaining son of gaunt, shrewd Edward, Anne’s feelings were hurt that Erzebet had not taken her for a swim to give her this news. The disappointment was so strong that her eyes stung with tears. A little, cool hand reached out and clasped around hers, and to her surprise, she realised that it was Mary’s, her sister reaching teary-eyed and giving her hand a sympathetic squeeze. Erzebet stood, hunched over her canes, facing the court from her dais. There was a stiffness around her eyes and mouth that Anne had never seen before. For a moment, Anne stood before the court, tears in her eyes, perceiving her sister’s clasping hand and her mother’s set face. Longing gripped her, a deep longing that they could all shed their clothes and jewels and slip into the water together, swim out to sea. She knew it would make her feel better. But whether it would console Mary and Erzebet from their strange, unspoken grief, she was too young to know.