TWENTY-SIX

ANNE DID NOT tell her grandfather. She went to greet the court as usual, and showed nothing on her face as she scanned the rows of faces. Earls and Dukes, great counties and rivers in their rule, men who could raise armies, men who could hide a bastard and make for the throne.

Behind one of those faces was the knowledge of the hidden boy, but she could not see which one. Any more than they would see behind her set face the knowledge of where their lost usurper was now.

Henry was with Westlake when he heard the sound of hooves outside. The sound was terrifying: hoofbeats meant soldiers now, people coming out of the shadows to find him. Westlake was still speaking to him, trying to explain once again why Henry should trust his captors; his landsman’s ears were too dull to hear the sound from far-off.

Henry turned his back and huddled his arms around himself. It was no good to trust anyone.

Then he heard a sound over the hoofbeats, faint and distant, muffled by the air—but he could hear it. If he lowered his head and blocked out Westlake’s words, he could hear it.

“Henry? Can you hear me? It is John. Shingleton came. I am coming to visit the Bishop.”

Henry closed his eyes, shielded his face in his arms so Westlake couldn’t see the desperate hope. The voice was getting closer, surfacing, bringing him nearer and nearer to breathing clean air.

“Henry, when I come in the house, make a lot of noise, and I can insist upon finding you. Do you hear me?”

“Are you unwell, my son?” Westlake said, seeing Henry drop his head and shield it.

Henry said nothing. He would be making enough noise by and by.

Anne sat before the court. All of a sudden she wondered whether the same man who had hidden the boy had killed her mother.

“My lord Bishop, I have a spiritual matter I wished to discuss with you,” Henry heard John’s voice saying below. The sound of it was so familiar that Henry almost paused, rocking a little with relief. It would almost be funny to hear what story John could make up as an excuse for visiting. But there was no time to hug pleasures to himself, and he wanted to see his friend.

He clenched his fist and banged on the door, raising his voice in a brazen deepsman’s call; yelled at the top of his voice, yelled for eleven years behind walls. “Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!”

Anne sat and shook. She should have asked herself this question before, but the sight of the boy had driven other thoughts from her mind. She had been thinking of pyres, executions, Erzebet’s stiff face as she ordered death for other people. Not her own end, not her wet red face as death came for her.

It could not have been this boy. To poison Erzebet’s bathwater would have taken speed and stealth, the ability to pass from room to room unobserved. But had he known of it? Had he been consulted? Had he ordered it, even?

Anne gripped one hand over another, and debated in cold terror whether or not to open her mouth and tell her grandfather the truth.

There were voices downstairs, a clatter of feet. There was the sound of a scuffle.

Henry thought of John, riding his horse fast, running on long limbs. He thought of the lame, gaunt man who had locked the door upon him.

He was not afraid as he heard the struggle. John would win, and then he would come up the stairs and find him.

Who could have put the poison in the water? How could it have been accomplished?

By anyone, that was the terrible thing. The salt was not guarded, and Erzebet had not been in that room since the day before. Anyone, anyone with sturdy limbs and a straight back who could run colt-footed from place to place instead of dragging like a split-limbed snail could have slipped into the room, shaken a packet over the salt and slipped out again. It could have been anyone.

And Samuel—Samuel had been poisoned. Or made ill enough to need a unicorn’s horn to cure him at least. And Shingleton had been reluctant to say whether that was poisoning or not. Why would he be so reluctant?

Only if he didn’t want to cross a powerful lord. Because he did not know who to accuse and feared the consequences of a mistake? Or because he knew who was responsible and dared not take a stand?

Only her weak legs kept Anne in her chair, kept her from leaping to her feet and running to find her horse and ride over to Samuel, crying out: We cannot trust Shingleton! We have made a mistake!

Shingleton had been at her mother’s bedside. And if the king’s surgeon had been in the room to examine the salts, he could have told any story he wished if discovered.

Anne’s mind raced on ahead of her, over the green to Samuel’s wooden door, but her legs stayed slumped in her chair, loose as wet cloth.

As John rattled at the catch, Henry heard the sound of Westlake’s dragging steps following him up. So John had not hurt the man. That was weak of him if they were going to make an escape, but then the door pulled open and Henry was so glad to see his friend that he forgave him his hesitation in battle.

Henry reached out a hand, his face opening into the first smile he had felt in days, but John stepped back, casting a quick glance over his shoulder. “You do not know me,” he hissed. Then he raised his voice. “Bishop, what is this?” he said.

Held down by the weight of her body, Anne drew a deep breath and bethought herself. Why would Shingleton make an assay at Samuel?

If she kept her thoughts light and careful, handled them only between her fingertips, she could understand why someone would kill her mother. If they had a bastard, a man to take the throne and beget sons, the country would probably welcome him. If he was strong enough. And this boy was strong-limbed, and strong-willed, too: he had not begged for mercy. Her grandfather was dying. Her uncle was simple. Her sister and she were young girls, a prize for anyone looking to marry onto the throne … but neither girl had ever given any sign that she could hold the rudder of power out of the grasp of a foreign husband.

It had been a mistake, all those years, to hide her wits behind a staring face. She had traded privacy for safety, kept her thoughts secret and left her throne unguarded.

She had wasted her care in the wrong places. She had made a lifelong mistake.

Anne thought these thoughts with cool fastidiousness, as if judging someone else. She held them at a distance, examining them like soiled rags, and decided that they were correct. She had played the fool, and lived a fool, and she had been wrong.

So yes, there were reasons to remove Erzebet. As Edward ailed, there was no other prince strong enough to stand against a bastard reaching for the throne. But Samuel? Samuel had never hurt anyone.

Samuel … Anne lowered her eyes. For a moment her face tried to settle itself in dull lines, laying over a mask of stupidity to give herself privacy to think. But she was done with that. She had trained her face to look stupid, and now it did. It would be a disadvantage.

She would have to work on that. Meantime, she looked at her folded hands, trying to look demure instead of stupid, and thought about Samuel, letting his face rest in her mind.

Samuel was favoured by Philip now, it seemed. He could soothe Philip, calm him down, control him as no other courtier had ever managed. But Samuel had been sick before that had happened. All he had ever done that she knew of, the only thing he had ever done to mark him as different, was to walk into court on a lame leg and speak privately to the Archbishop about the doubtful wisdom of burning a bastard.

But not this bastard. Someone else’s, a child no lord had had time to invest in. It made no sense.

Anne was done with guarded foolishness and hoping for answers. It was time to try her wits against the world. Erzebet, she told herself, looking at her sharp-clawed, well-tended fingers, Erzebet would be proud of her.

Westlake appeared behind John on the stairs. His clothing was untidy, he lurched on his lame leg, but his face showed little pain. Only, it was a little greyer than before.

“What is this, Bishop?” John repeated. His voice was conveying a good impression of shock, disapproval, disbelief.

Westlake shook his head. “I fear you are undone, my son,” he said to Henry. “Forgive me.”

John turned around to face Westlake. “Have you been hiding this—this bastard?”

Westlake looked at the floor. “Only a few days, I swear it. I have planned no treason. I found the boy and hoped to save him from execution. That is all.” Around his neck there hung a cross, a sharp-cut pendant that Henry felt an instinctive dislike of every time he looked at it. But now the man’s hand was clutching it as if it were a spar.

John stared at him a moment. Then he reached out and closed his hand over Westlake’s, pinning the cross between his fingers. “Swear,” he said. “Swear before Christ.”

Westlake’s face showed no colour, only stillness. He looked at John with dead, hopeless eyes, and raised the cross. “I swear before Christ,” he said. “I wished only to save him from the pyre. I do not think it pleases God when we burn his children.”

Henry looked at John’s face. From here, he could hear his friend’s breathing, a cautious, shivering set of breaths like an unstable staircase. Henry remembered the day they had ridden out to the burning, how sick John had looked at the sight. “You were present at the last one,” John said. “You blessed the flames.”

Westlake dropped his head, his fingers still around the cross. “I prayed for the child’s soul,” he said. “I could not save his body.”

“And is it the body or the soul of this man you wish to save?” John said. His eyes were bright and blue, staring hard at Westlake’s pallor.

“You may leave my soul alone,” Henry said. “You will be with us, or you will not leave this house.” It was what he would have said to a stranger, so he said it to John. It troubled him a little, though. He did not think he was good at lying, and he was so tired of being lonely. He wanted this conversation done with.

“There is no call to threaten,” John said. “If you do not threaten the throne, I will not threaten you.”

“We do not,” Westlake said, so quickly that he was speaking before John finished. “I swear before Christ, we only mean to save this man’s life. It is a hard fate, caught between the land and the sea, and I do not wish to see anyone punished for it. Do not betray us, and I will pray for you every day of my life.”

John sighed, ruffled his hair. Henry sat back on the floor, wondering how long he would have to act before he could plausibly give in.

A few hours later, as Anne was riding over to Westlake’s house, John Claybrook accosted her.

Anne had set out as quickly and discreetly as she could. Since the day he found her a unicorn horn, Robin Maydestone at the stables seemed to have taken a fancy to her, and indulged her requests for horses at odd hours with an affectionate grin under his bowing. Anne had assumed that this might be because he had a daughter of his own, or perhaps because he didn’t. She should have asked; playing stupid had left her ignorant. In any event, it was proving useful when she needed to slip away. It was a cool day, the ground soft under her horse’s hooves and taking sharp impressions with each step, and Anne let the damp air drift over her skin while her mind raced. She needed to know what this boy, this man knew. Never mind what Samuel said, to Hell with what Samuel said if he stood in her way. This bastard had been raised by somebody, and that somebody was somebody she needed to know about. Erzebet’s scorched face jostled at the back of her mind, and she kept her mouth closed to keep in the sickness.

When John Claybrook rode up behind her, calling “My lady Princess!” Anne jumped so suddenly that her horse shied under her, jerking its head against the tug she had given its reins.

John cantered up and caught at its bridle. Anne grabbed for the reins, trying to back away: some courtier following her, however pleasant his manners, would be a disaster just now.

“My lady Princess, I come from the Bishop,” John said quietly.

“I am going there.” Anne turned her head aside. She was not going to discuss this.

“My lady Princess, I found the man he was hiding.”

Anne dropped the reins. Her horse stood, stamping a protesting foot, as John held on to its bridle. “What man?” she said.

“My lady Princess, I know you know.” John had always been friendly to her from the height of his superior years, but Anne did not feel herself a child any more, and she was not going to be addressed as such by any nobleman’s son.

“You speak out of turn, sir,” she said. “Tell me your business or leave me.”

John looked at her, his normally cheerful face anxious. “My lady Princess, forgive me. But I … there is no cause for alarm. I am your man.”

“Explain yourself,” Anne snapped, her heart pounding. “I am out of patience.”

“My lady Princess, I—I went to speak with the Bishop, to speak with him on a spiritual matter. But there was a noise from upstairs, and I went to see what it was. I found he was hiding the bastard in his house.”

Anne frowned to stop her usual look of frightened idiocy coming back. “What story do you tell me, sir? You accuse a man of God.”

John shook his head, persisted. “It was not the Bishop who told me you knew of this, my lady Princess. It was Henry. He mentioned a young deepswoman. It could only have been you.”

“Henry?” So that was the name, Henry. A cautious choice; there had not been a Henry in the family for several generations. So Samuel had persuaded his name out of him in the end. It cost Anne a pang of unreasonable disappointment that she had not been there to hear the boy confess it himself before she steadied herself.

John blinked, shook his head nervously. “That was his name, he told me. He said he had spoken with you and you had been kind to him.”

“He was wrong,” Anne said. Her voice was clipped. That did not sound like the sullen, cautious boy she had seen. Surely her careful courtesy could not have made such an impression on him: she had not been kind, merely wary. Diplomatic of the boy to say so, perhaps. You would think a lord would raise a bastard for diplomacy, if nothing else.

“My lady Princess, I can help you. My father can help you. We none of us want to see another burning.

“Do you question the Crown?” Anne’s voice rose. It was one thing for Samuel to tell her, secretly and in a quiet place, that he did not care for fires. It was one thing for her to question, in her heart of hearts, if she could have watched such a sight. For a passing courtier to make such judgements on her mother’s decision, that hard-won decision that had frozen Erzebet’s face and brought a single embrace when Anne questioned it sideways, was another thing entirely.

“My lady Princess.” John held on to her bridle. “I can help you. Let me help you.”

Anne gathered herself, invoked her mother’s cold face. “Will you tell your father of this?” Because Robert Claybrook could raise an army, march on the capital with a bastard at his side. But he had power as Philip’s keeper, would have more when Edward died; he could be powerful without risking himself in battle. It might be very advantageous for him to hand Henry over. Or to claim him for a cause.

John could ride straight home and tell his father, and then the secret would be out, the property of great men. Could she stop him? She could not stop his tongue, unless she had him placed where no one could hear him. It would be easy enough to do. A story of an assault, an attempted treason; she could lay any word against him. But he would talk, even if she had a headsman silence him, he could talk before the axe fell. Certainly he could talk to his father.

“I believe he can help, my lady Princess.”

Anne shook her head. She would believe a great many things, but not that a man like Claybrook would be motivated by Christian charity to a foundling bastard. A man of the Church, a man of medicine, men with only their own faith to recommend them, might be moved by such abstract concerns, but Claybrook had land, waterways, wealth. He had too much to lose. “Be silent with him,” she said. “Say nothing until I tell you otherwise.”

John hesitated. “He will know if I am absent, my lady Princess. I must say something. And we cannot keep it from him for long. This must be known, sooner or later, whatever is done.”

“Tell him you visit a sick friend,” Anne snapped. “Do not tell me you are unable to lie, Master Courtier.”

A shadow of his old grin passed over John’s face, then he was serious again. “As you command. But as your courtier I know it my duty to advise you, and I advise you to let me tell my father. He can help us.”

“A sick friend,” Anne said. “Or a fever of piety. Or you will find that I can speak too, and my words will be such that you may die of them.”

Henry waited as the night fell. Claybrook knew he was here. He could talk, now, could accuse Claybrook and go with him hand-in-hand to the stake. Not Allard. Allard had been good to him, Henry saw it now. He had tied him up in a locked room and forced questions upon him, but now it had happened again; it could only be that this was how landsmen were. As a landsman, Allard had done his best. He had not made false promises like Claybrook.

But Claybrook was ready to threaten. There would be no choice for him now. Claybrook would have to rally his soldiers at last. There was no safety except on the throne, and no safety for Claybrook unless he could put Henry upon it. He had not planned it so, but now he could force Claybrook’s hand. When John came tomorrow, he would send a message. They marched on the capital, or Henry named his keeper.