In Great Waters (50 page)

“You have tried to please too many people,” Anne said slowly. “I do not know if I can trust you not to tell your father of this conversation as soon as we reach land.”

John shook his head. “I will not. I swear, your Majesty.”

“You say so now.” Anne looked into the water, the surface slick with reflections over the dark weeds below. “But you did not ask how I know of your father’s hand in my mother’s end. I had only guessed it before. Now I know for certain.”

John shook his head again. He said nothing.

He had seemed so much older than her, only a few years ago, Anne thought. Time had passed by, too fast to grasp. “Your father will not survive this,” Anne said. “We are not safe on the throne yet. There is more to do before England is secured. We cannot have such a man as your father, with all his irons in the fire. You will have to choose.”

Here in the boat, she thought, it would not be a difficult choice. John would swear to them; he might even mean it. But if his father had hold of him again, could he be trusted?

“It would help,” Anne said carefully, “if you would give us some earnest against your father. If you have information you can lay. Henry loves you; he wishes you to have your father’s lands and waterways. I do not wish to confiscate them, not if you will be a loyal servant. But you are not to go home, my lord John. As of this moment,
you are to consider yourself under guard. If you leave the court, if you go to your father, or speak to him alone, I shall know the choice you have made.”

Anne’s heart hurt. Too many men today that she’d had to set down. Samuel put aside for the Archbishop, John pulled apart from his father. Was it going to end, this restless division of side from side? Would there be a day when everyone could stand together?

John raised his hand to swear. “I am your man, your Majesty. Yours, and King Henry’s.” He looked her straight in the eye, but his hand shook in the air.

“Henry is not king yet,” Anne said. “You must be his man before he is king, his man from this moment onwards, and no one else’s. Do not equivocate, my lord John. We cannot afford it.”

John’s hand stayed in the air. His five fingers hung loose, like an autumn leaf curling up at the edges. “From this moment onwards, I am your Majesty’s man, and my brother Henry’s.”

Anne drew a cold breath. This was winning, she thought. It was not as fine a sensation as she would have guessed, considering all the effort men put into gaining it.

“Your Majesty, I must plead for my father,” John said. His voice cracked a little. “I am your loyal man, but I must ask you for mercy.”

Anne didn’t want to hear him beg, didn’t want to see him cry. Erzebet had died skinless, Claybrook had raised a bastard to overthrow her. Too many people had bled. But how could she fault a son for loving his father?

There was nothing for it but the truth. “We have not yet decided what to do about your father,” she said. Her tone was thin, the lapping of the water almost as loud as her voice. “We shall remember what you asked. We can make no promises. That is all I can give you today.”

John bowed his head. “Yes, your Majesty.”

There was a long silence. John did not look at her face; instead, he reached for the oars, pushed the little boat off from the bank where it had drifted. He glanced at her, but Anne was staring into the cloudy water, and gave him no directions. John hesitated, then he started rowing the boat back downstream.

“My lord husband will not swear to uphold the Church,” Anne said after a while.

John looked up from his oars.

Anne shrugged with a lightness she did not feel. It was too painful to wrangle over a man’s life, and there were pressing issues still to decide. She could not let this day go without more planning. “You are his brother,” she said. “Perhaps you have some suggestions.”

John pulled the oars, shaking his head. “Henry does not much concern himself with things he cannot see,” he said.

“Did it ever trouble you, having a heathen for a brother?”

John frowned, his face anxious and puzzled. “We were boys together,” he said. “We—we played together. There were other things to discuss.”

John was not a holy man, Anne thought. If asked to choose between man and God, which way would he turn? But if it came to that, for all her prayers and her conviction, she herself did not know how to reconcile serving God and England. Too often, the two seemed to call for different things. How would God judge her now, sitting in a boat and telling a man his father was lost? She must have opinions about John if she was to make decisions, but she could not sit in judgement of him.

“It will go hard with the country if he will not swear to some form of it,” she said. “Will you help me to persuade him, when the Archbishop comes back with a more acceptable ceremony?”

The look on John’s face was of deep, passionate relief. Anne had said she would let him see Henry. The two brothers could talk to one another again. John could be their friend. It was going to be a longer struggle than she hoped, but if they were careful, they had at least that on their side. It was a blessing to be given thanks for. Anne was tired of enmity.

I
T WAS
G
EORGE
N
ARBRIDGE
who brought the letter, and after that, all was thrown into confusion.

Anne had not written to Mary announcing her marriage. She had been waiting until after the coronation. In that time, she had thought often of her sister. Mary had understood things Anne had not, had put a sisterly hand inside Anne’s. She had not been unkind; even for an older child, a pink-cheeked child with perfect health and a clear line to the succession, Mary had been as pleasant as could be expected. But by the time they had parted, it had been Mary who was the crier, Mary who trembled in public while Anne set her teeth and fixed her face and carried her head high. It had been hard having Mary around and keeping her self-control at the same time. There had been too many things Mary might have said, things that Anne could not afford to hear.

Anne was not prepared to see England break up over a French king, not when there was an Englishman on the shore who everyone would accept. It would cause havoc, the blood of thousands would weigh down her soul. But still, she thought of Mary.

What would have happened if Mary had been at home when Samuel found Henry? Anne had faced the court, heard men swearing loyalty to her, seen towering nobles holding out the reins of power and expecting her to grasp them. There was Henry. Even after so short a knowledge of him, already it was hard to picture the world without
him: his certainty, his fierceness, his open demands, reshaped life around him so boldly that it was hard to believe he had not always been there. Mary was from another life. When Mary had been there, Edward had held the throne, and Anne had been the baby. She had been too frightened to speak to people. Now there was Henry, and Anne had come out of the shadows, out of the deeps. The new times demanded strength, and she was holding. Mary had kissed her when she was young and confused, had struggled to hold back tears before an audience. What would Anne be if faced again with her big sister?

So she had not written to Mary. Time enough when Henry was crowned. Edward lay dying, and his last day drew closer and closer, even as he held silently to life. There would be a funeral, and a coronation, and she could speak to Mary with silver and pearls on her head and the throne at her back. It was the politic thing to do, and it was also easier. Thinking of Mary right now shook up parts of her heart that she could not afford to disturb. Henry’s prohibition against writing to her gave Anne a breathing space, time to pretend that, among all her other choices, she had not chosen to take the throne from her sister.

It was a long journey to France. Even a fast courier must ride to the coast, find a ship, carry his message along. It was for this reason that Anne was surprised when George Narbridge arrived at her door, bearing a letter.

“You do me honour to bring this yourself, Lord Tamar,” Anne said, bewildered. She and Henry had been seated together indoors, debating when to meet with John. For a lord like Narbridge to act as courier was rare to the point of crisis; no man would come himself when he could send riders to do his work for him.

“I thought the letter should pass through as few hands as possible, your Majesty,” Narbridge said with a low bow. Beside her, Henry stiffened. Bows did not usually antagonise him, not when someone was doing his job, and Anne suffered a momentary distraction, wondering what the problem was.

“Have you read it?” Anxiety prickled against Anne’s skin.

“No, your Majesty. I only spoke to the messenger. He remains on my lands; I have bade him speak to no one.”

“Has the messenger offended you?” Henry said. His voice was far sharper than it should have been; Anne shot a nervous look at his face. He was pale, angry.

Narbridge looked puzzled. “No, your Majesty,” he said. “But this matter is one of secrecy.”

Henry shook his head, as if shaking off a fly. Later, Anne told herself, she would ask him what was troubling him, but the arrival of the letter was too worrying. “We shall read it alone,” she said, reaching out her hand. “What do you know of it?”

Narbridge made a careful bow. “Only,” he said, “that it comes from your Majesty’s sister.”

The letter was short, written in a hasty hand. Mary had crossed and re-crossed the page below her signature so no one could add anything, but there was no need for the precaution; Anne recognised her sister’s script. The letters were almost comforting in their familiarity, but they stretched and straggled across the page and the seal was smudged. Mary had wasted no time before sending this missive.

The letter was signed only “Mary.” There were no greetings from Louis-Philippe, no king’s seal. Holding the letter in shaking hands, Anne could only believe that Mary had not shown it to them before sending it.

“What is the matter?” Henry tapped on her arm with a closed fist. It was a hard push, the kind of blow a soldier might give to a comrade, and Anne winced. Henry did not always know his own strength.

Her throat was tight, and she passed the letter over without speaking.

Henry studied it for a few seconds, the parchment held between his fingertips. “I cannot read,” he said. “What does it say?”

Even with her sister’s words burning in her eyes, Anne blinked. “You cannot read?”

Henry handed back the letter with an impatient air. “I refused to learn when I was a child. Perhaps you should teach me, if you wish me to know. But why does this letter have you so upset? What is in it?”

Anne swallowed, and laid the letter in her lap. Her hands rested lightly upon it, as if she feared to damage it. “Someone has told my sister of our marriage,” she said. “I do not know whether she has spies here, or whether a spy was sent from England, but someone has told my sister.”