TWENTY-THREE

HENRY COULD REMEMBER the first time he saw a building, a great towering rock of straight-sided stones, Allard’s arms wrapped around him and the jolting steps leading to a square, oppressive room, bound hands and rank food and nothing to do but bite his sticks and worry at the walls. The sensation of ropes around his wrists filled him with a childish terror, a panic so stark that as the soldiers tied him to his saddle, the trees of the forest stiffened around him, forming bars, an enclosing canopy of leaves trapping him, and he leaned up on his saddle as if to swim up through them, break the green surface and draw breath in the white, clear air above. But as he yearned upwards towards the green, a man came and placed a sack over his head, and Henry heard the coarse-woven hemp rustle in his ears with the sound of a crackling fire.

It was a long ride, a harsh one. At nightfall the soldiers stopped to rest their horses and built a fire to warm themselves; one of them pulled up Henry’s hood and offered him some meat. Henry saw the man’s face, blue eyes and sallow skin, but gave no answer, instead baring his teeth and snapping at him. The soldier dropped the hood with a jump and left him sitting there, saying only, “We had better tie his legs.” So Henry slept bound hand and foot, the open air parting around him, sounds on all sides of rustling leaves and shrilling birds and the scampering of small-footed mice, all within his hearing and out of his reach and no help to him now.

Blindfolded, he was brought to a house and bundled inside. Henry fought the arms carrying him and, outnumbered as he was, gained nothing for his struggles but a sudden drop to the floor, cracking his head, followed by a swift recapture and a march up some narrow stairs, his body swinging in a helpless pendulum between his stretched arms and legs.

A door creaked, they entered a room, and the soldiers dropped him and left him. Henry scrambled up immediately, pressed his bound hands against his covered face to bring the sackcloth to his sharp teeth and began chewing. His mouth filled with grit and threads, but he persisted, teeth and jaws aching with haste, until he had a hole in the sack wide enough to let the ropes through, biting until they too parted, leaving him free to untangle his head and unbind his feet, ready to fight.

But as the hours went by, he found that his speed had been wasted. He sat in an oak-floored room, whitewashed walls and beams overhead and nothing to see through the narrow window but a green lawn, and nobody in sight. It was a full day before anyone came to the door.

The creak of the hinges flooded Henry with terror; his mind flashed full of soldiers, strong numerous men ready to drag him to the stake. Mixed with the fear was a desperate anger, fury at the waste of it, all those years preparing himself, learning how to use weapons, bracing himself for a conflict that would never come. Sixteen years, sea and land. Even in the ocean, he could have lived another decade before some predator took him, maybe two or even three, a lowering mouth and sharp teeth and a swift severing of his life. Not this. Not blazing red flames and hundreds of strangers crowding round while he screamed his life out on the pyre.

The door opened, and no soldiers came through it; only a man with a pale face and lame leg, leaning his weight on a stick, a stool under his arm. There was a moment of hope at the sight, that perhaps this man might be something like him if he had to walk on a cane, that he might help Henry rather than burn him—but then the anger settled back, gripping his muscles tight against the bones. Henry recognised his face. This was the man who had stood before the bonfire, had stood in the shuddering heat and muttered Latin while the little boy burned. The man was here for his life.

Henry retreated, bared his teeth. If he only had his axe, he could deal with this man.

The man stood over him, tilted his head for a second. “Do you have a name?” he said.

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.