TWENTY-FIVE

WHEN THE DOOR opened again to admit Shingleton and the girl, Henry was so startled that he did not know which of them was more alarming.

Shingleton: the man who had examined him, the man he had conversed with. No fighter, but not untrustworthy; that was what Henry had thought. It angered Henry, but the fact was that new faces frightened him; he had lived five years with a small tribe and eleven years captive with a handful of familiars, and unfamiliar faces were cataclysmic. To see Shingleton here was no guarantee of safety, he knew if he reasoned about it, but still the fact was that his face was known to Henry and he couldn’t help relaxing a little at the sight of it. This was wrong, his reason told him. He should not be pleased to see this man in this place. The lame man who had captured him was no part of Claybrook’s plan, or he would have said so. This was some new circumstance, with flames flickering around its edges. He must not let himself be stupidly calmed by the sight of a known face. He might still talk himself onto the pyre.

But it was the sight of the girl that drove everything else out of his mind. She entered tottering on two sticks, white-faced and web-handed, and she was a princess.

She was tiny. The princes had occupied Henry’s mind so long that even though he had caught only a distant glance of them, they were huge in his mind, long-bodied deepsmen with great limbs and weaponed hands. This girl had pallid skin with a faint blue sheen like you saw on fish deep, deep in the black, and on tribesmen from those darker waters. Her hair was an array of matted locks like a deepsman’s, but arranged into neat rolls that swung too long around her face; a huge jellyfish dress concealed her legs—but she was no landswoman. Under the skirt, she was low-slung, her legs bent under their own weight, so her body sat near the floor as if she was crouching. Her back was bent, hunched over like a cripple’s. She shuffled on her sticks, and stared at him, black eyes in a white face, thin lips pinched together—but under those lips, the teeth would be sharp. Her hand could grip a rock, he was sure of it. This was what kept him hidden, trapped in a stupid house with people who lied to him. This withered girl.

She stared at him. She was in that moment so profoundly ugly that he wished for a spear.

Anne could not show anything, not before Shingleton. But this boy was extraordinary. He crouched on the floor, face closed and hostile, still as a rock in the current. His back was straight. The elderly curve of a prince’s spine, the aching hunch garnered from years of leaning on canes, was absent. This boy was straight-spined like a commoner, like a soldier. His supple legs splayed over the floor, his webbed hands and white face and dark eyes were all princely, but he was sound, strong, unbroken.

Anne had seen her grandfather, withered and ageing; she had seen her uncle, flesh-slabbed and rolling. She had few memories of her father. Looking at this strange boy, she wondered for a long moment if he had looked like this.

The lame man came in and closed the door behind him. “Francis Shingleton,” he said indicating the surgeon. “This man will not hurt you, but he wishes to speak with you. This is the boy, Shingleton. I think his name is Henry or Edward, or Philip or John or one such name, but he will not tell me which.”

Shingleton had not told the lame man—Westlake, that was it—had not said that he knew Henry. Shingleton was keeping quiet.

“How do you do?” Shingleton said, and Henry said nothing.

“And this—” Westlake seemed to pause, then cleared his throat and said, “This is her Majesty Princess Anne, the second granddaughter of King Edward.”

The girl stood quite still. He looked at her and she looked at him.

Who are you? she said in the deepsman’s language. Her accent was a little foreign, not that of his own kin, but he understood it. The language he had gone without for so long, had heard only in his own throat and, once, from a distance, in the screams of a dying child. She had been part of that: for her to speak this private language was an outrage that made him grip his hands on the floor.

“I am Anne Delamere,” she said. “I have no other name. Who are you?”

There was no answer to give in the deepsmen’s language but Whistle, his old name, his old self. But Whistle had been pushed up on a beach eleven years before and left to die. It was a long time since he had heard his native language spoken in a woman’s voice.

“Can you speak to him, Shingleton?” said Westlake. “Is he simple? You act simple, my son, but I do not think you can be.”

I know you know what I say, the girl said. Henry could not stop seeing how tiny she was, frail as a dead leaf. She was right; even if he was just out of the sea, he would understand the language she was using now. But she did not say it to the men, she said it to him.

Henry remembered with a sudden force the day Allard had placed a crown on his head. It had horrified him, but it had become his toy, his one cheerful thing. Most likely he would never see that toy again. But crowns were made of silver, he knew now, and the one Allard offered him could not have been. He had never thought to ask. It was probably only a bauble of tin.

I am here, said the girl, I hear you. Who are you?

It struck Henry hard that if he were in their position, he would give up soon and try beating the prisoner for information.

Anne’s hands were shaking. “Excuse me,” she said to the boy, and turned aside. It was foolish to want to be polite to him, but she was too afraid to be otherwise. Tears stung in her throat, and she wasn’t sure why. “I do not think it polite to talk over any man’s head, but perhaps our guest will forgive me. I believe I might speak to him more freely alone.”

“That cannot be, my lady Princess,” said Westlake. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the boy twitch. She turned back.

“We have much to discuss,” she said. “If you will not speak English to us, perhaps you might speak our mother tongue to me.”

The boy’s face stiffened further, and he closed his arms around his body.

“If we are to save you, we must speak with you to make a plan,” Anne persisted. “Please, sir. I know you understand me.”

Henry swallowed, and raised his head. There was nothing for it but speech. “I understand you,” he said. “I do not trust your salvation.”

Everyone stiffened. The sight of them tensing made Henry tense in turn; were they poised to spring? Both men opened their mouths to speak, but the girl raised a hand and they stopped.

“There were rumours of your presence,” she said. “You would have been caught soon. We do not wish to see you burned, and we found you first. You should trust us, or we cannot help you.” She gave him a bleak, black-eyed stare. “You have little choice.”

How did she get grown men to be silent with a flick of her hand? Henry had wished all his life for such an impact on people, but he had had to shout and tussle for purchase. He shook his head. “I do not believe you.”

“My lady Princess.” That was Shingleton’s voice. Henry was so afraid of betraying their acquaintance that he hardly dared look at him. Measured against the girl’s impassivity, his own face was treacherous, an unschooled horse that shied when it should be still. “I would like to speak to the boy alone, with your Majesty’s permission.”

The girl gave him a sharp look. “Why?”

Shingleton glanced at him. “My lady Princess, we do not know the state of this boy’s mind.”

“He is no simpleton,” the girl said. Her arms were crooked in front of her body; it was a frightened pose. But still, there was a clip to her voice, an assurance. She did not speak fast or loud: she spoke without clearing her throat or looking around her, as if she knew without reflection that people would fall silent when she spoke. “It is easy to pretend to be a natural, Master Shingleton, and he is not one.”

Shingleton shook his head. His hands were folded very carefully before him. “Not a simpleton, perhaps, my lady Princess, but other things affect the wits. And, my lady Princess, perhaps it would be wise to ascertain his wits before we let him speak too long with you.”

“I give nothing away,” she said.

“How do you endure them calling you ‘my lady Princess’ every time they speak?” Henry heard his own voice cutting into the conversation. If Shingleton had his way, the girl would go out of the room. He needed to speak to Shingleton alone, but perhaps he would never see her again, and the question had surfaced, suddenly and unbearably. “They would serve you better if they called you nothing.”

“How do you mean?” said the girl. “Master Deepsman?”

There was something in the way she added the last words that reminded him of John, but there was no humour in her face. “They call you their lady Princess when they want you to follow their wishes instead of your own,” Henry said. “If what they have to say would please you, they would have no need to princess it.”

The girl looked at him, her ugly face glowing in the shadowed room. “How long have you been longing to be called a king?”

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.