TWENTY-FOUR

“THE 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?”

Anne remembered a misty morning, a failed quest that saved Samuel’s life none the less. “There is a man in the stables. Robin Maydestone. He has been kind to me. If I command him to say I fell from my horse, I think he will say so.”

Samuel was looking at her, his eyebrows rising further up his face the faster her answers came. “He is still far bigger than you, my lady Princess. It is rash to risk your life.”

“My life is at risk by this boy’s birth!” Anne snapped, hearing Erzebet’s bite in her tone. “He aims at my throne, my country; do you think he will leave my head on its shoulders if I do not find some means to stay him? Do you think my grandfather will be pleased with me if he knows I have talked to you thus? This is not a moment to pause in the tide, Samuel; if we stay, we shall drown.”

Samuel’s hand had wandered to his staff, closed his fingers around it, as if unaware of its own movement. “I think we might try another attempt first, my lady Princess,” he said, cradling the wood. “If you were to see him, you must have an able-bodied man with you. I cannot protect you well enough.”

In all the time she had known him, Anne had never heard Samuel allude to his leg. He had answered few questions about it once, and never mentioned it again; he had never spoken of himself as weak. The jolt it gave her was enough to make her pause and listen for a moment.

“Who have you in mind?” she said.

“I do not know for certain,” Samuel said. “But the surgeon, Francis Shingleton, can be trusted, I think. We spoke of many things when I was sick. He does not like burnings either, my lady Princess.”

“And he has a hospital for idiots,” Anne said, filling in the pause. “If the boy is simple-minded, then perhaps he may know him to be so.”

“That was my thought, my lady Princess,” Samuel said.

“Can he be trusted to keep silent, do you think?” Anne said.

“I hope so,” Samuel said. His voice was quiet.

“Well.” Anne spoke into the hush. “If he cannot, then I suppose we will know of it by and by.”