THIRTEEN

ERZEBET LINGERED FOR HOURS before she died. Once Anne’s ears had tuned themselves to the screaming, she couldn’t stop hearing it, not when Robert Claybrook lifted her up and carried her out of the room, not when Lady Margaret took her from him, a shaking, mute, wide-eyed bundle, and bore her away. Anne clutched at Margaret as if terrified of being dropped, her legs wrapping round the woman’s waist with a wrestler’s grip until Margaret tried to pull her loose, pushing against the clinging girl and gasping for breath. Anne hung on, staring at Margaret’s white, familiar face, hysterically waiting for her to say something that would make it all right. Lady Margaret carried Anne to the other side of the palace, back to Anne’s chamber, where she tried again to unlock the girl’s legs from their suffocating grip. Anne was not to be loosened. Lady Margaret paced the chamber like a woman soothing a baby on her hip, staggering under Anne’s weight, until attendants came and pried Anne loose, unwrapping her limb by limb. They put her on a chair and covered her with a blanket, poured wine into her mouth, but Anne could not swallow. The wine ran over her chin, her lips too loose to fasten on the goblet, and Anne made no attempt to clean herself. She sat smothered in her blanket, legs lolling from the chair, red wine smearing her white and blue face. People fussed around her, spoke to her, but the screaming, distant and muffled through rooms and rooms of closed doors, drowned everything out.

It was hours before Erzebet’s voice gave out, and hours more before she finally died. Anne did not move in all that time. Lady Margaret lifted her from her chair and laid her on the bed, but though the girl lay still on her pillow, she gave no sign of sleeping. Her eyes stayed wide open as the dusk set in, staring into the dark.

The funeral was planned for London. Anne sat in a rattling carriage for hours of the journey, saying nothing, looking at no one. Custom laid down the rules for what was to follow: Erzebet was to be buried at sea. The mass of courtiers would accompany the funeral ship to the water’s edge, the more powerful men would join them on board as they sailed out to the bay, and Erzebet’s body would be cast into the deep. There would not be a grave to visit. Erzebet would go back to the sea, where she had taken Anne so many times to dive and spiral under the rocking waves.

A new dress was given to Anne the morning of the funeral. Her maid Alice tried to interest her in it as she pushed Anne’s unresisting hands through one sleeve then the other, telling her that it was the gift of my lord Thames, a fine gift, my lady Princess, but Anne made no response. The weight of the dress, unusually heavy even for a formal gown, bowed her legs and tethered her arms, and Anne was more aware of the drag of her skirt than the words of her maid. She stooped over her sticks without being asked, obediently following the procession.

Mary sat beside Anne in the church as Archbishop Summerscales, who had married her mother to Philip years before, recited the funeral rites, with Bishop Westlake in attendance. He had recovered from his illness, looked as well as he ever did, but the thought was little comfort now. Anne wondered if he knew she had found the unicorn horn for him. If it had made any difference. Her faith in its power, anything’s power, to counteract poison, was broken.

Mary cried throughout the ceremony, and reached for Anne’s hand, but Anne merely lifted it in her own, and with her other hand, dug sharp fingernails into Mary’s pink skin. Mary snatched it back, crying harder under her breath, and shuffled away from her sister on the pew, fidgeting to and fro till Anne reached out again and placed her nails against Mary’s wrist, not digging in but holding them there, poised to scratch. Mary, who had been taken riding the day of Erzebet’s death and had spoken to Anne of the “fever” of which she had been told their mother died, drew in a deep breath and held it, staying still and silent until Anne withdrew her claws and laid them back in her lap. Mary’s eyes were accusing, bewildered, but Anne kept her gaze straight ahead on the gold censer that an altar boy swung, releasing choking clouds of incense into the air. She couldn’t look at her sister’s face and see Erzebet’s brow and cheeks, reproduced in miniature, see them smeared with the tears of the girl who hadn’t heard their mother scream.

The procession to the burial ship was a long one, and the voyage down the Thames out to sea the work of hours. Philip’s sedan creaked on board, Privy Sponges following in attendance, and Edward limped on after him. Anne had seen little of her grandfather since her mother’s death, but the sight of him loosened something in her, just a little. Stumbling on her heavy dress, she edged up to him, putting both canes in one hand and reaching to touch him on the arm. Edward, who had always answered her questions with patience, turned to look at her for a brief moment, and then there was a yell from Philip and he turned aside, gesturing for guards to attend him.

Philip, disturbed by the rocking of the boat, was pointing into the Thames. His voice blared out in the cold morning: “Want! Want!”

Anne froze on her canes, the carved ebony handles cutting into her palms, pressing patterns through the webs between her fingers. They were new, elaborately carved with waves, skulls, symbols of mourning. Like the new dress, they were impractical, too ornate to rest weight on comfortably, and Anne’s hands were already stamped with their carvings, but she had not thought to ask for replacements. It seemed inevitable that the world was heavier now, sharper-edged.

Philip was thrashing, pointing overboard. Swim, he yelled in the deepsman’s tongue. Want to swim.

Robert Claybrook hurried to attend on Philip, a sober, pallid John at his heels. John turned and gave Anne an uncomfortable glance as her uncle tried to grab Claybrook’s arm, but Anne was too heartsick to wave at him.

Mary hastened to Anne’s side, the scratches of the church apparently forgotten in the tension of a threatened royal tantrum. Anne didn’t turn, but she didn’t move away.

“A-are you well, sister?” Mary, red-eyed, was quieter than her usual self. Any hopes of a kiss or pat, those little reassurances that had sometimes come from her big sister, seemed remote. Mary was just a girl, two years older than herself and under the impression that their mother had died of natural causes.

Anne didn’t look at Mary. Instead, she swallowed, and spoke her first sentence since Erzebet’s death. “Why do they not let him in the water?” she said.

Mary bowed her head; her canes clicked heads as her hands drew together over her body. “They say he could make love with a deepswoman,” she said. “As he could not with a queen. Then the next prince of England could never leave the sea.”

Anne had seen Philip bathed naked once or twice, before her father’s death, before his marriage to her mother. His flat-fronted abdomen, bereft of any genital protrusion, had meant little to her at the time: she had only been young, and the deepsmen were similarly streamlined, any manhood concealed behind a neat slit level with their hips. She had not thought of it since. The bruises on her mother’s arms took on a new and sickening significance. Erzebet and William had had the genitals of landsmen, as Anne herself had. Philip had roared with lust and grabbed at her mother, but built as he was, as Erzebet was, how could there be any way of satisfying it? The sight of Philip, wallowing and bucking in his sedan, was suddenly too repulsive to watch, and she closed her eyes, turning her head aside. Philip always lashed out when he was frustrated. Tears were gathering in her throat, closing it tighter and tighter until it hurt to swallow.

“He will be king, will he not?” she said, opening her eyes to look at Mary.

Mary took a hoarse breath. “Grandfather may live a long time yet,” she said.

“God willing.” Anne crossed herself, a moment of genuine prayer. Erzebet could have held the throne. But she and Mary were young, unmarried. If Edward were to die, Philip would be all that was left.

Edward stood, watching his son. His lined, sunken face bore no particular expression, but the wrinkles around his eyes, the creased forehead and the downward strokes of the mouth, all gave him a cast of misery. His crown was on his head, a bright silver circlet polished for the occasion, but age was shrinking his flesh and the band was loose, sitting a little crooked, a little too low over his face, pushing the flesh into bunches below. Though Edward had always been grave and calm, in the cocked slant of his crown there was a cold breath of the ridiculous—like a boy wearing his father’s hat—that made Anne shiver under her gown.

Philip was still thrashing in his chair, shouting. As the Privy Sponges attended him, wary of his flying fists, Robert Claybrook darted forwards and held up his hand, gesturing for them to wait.

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.