In Great Waters Read online

  When the stories Allard told were accompanied by a book, Henry quickly took against them. Even as his understanding of English grew, the words Allard used were difficult, and the stories themselves were wearisome and complex, and hard to see the point of. Allard produced a book he kept referring to as a “Bible;” the word was easy to say, two puffs of air that could be made under water without filling a mouth with brine, but with it came a horrible object, two straight lines crisscrossed over each other, an interlocking nest of corners that upset Henry just to look at it. The fact that there was a figure on it, what appeared to be the shape of a tiny landsman with corded muscles like a half-picked corpse, did nothing to improve his liking for it. Allard seemed to take this object seriously, more seriously than the crown he had let Henry grab: when Henry tried to take it away and break it up, Allard lifted it up out of his reach, looking almost alarmed; his grip was light and cautious, as if holding a clam that might be prised open for a meal but would clamp its shell shut at a tap. Allard used words like “Christ” and “cross” and “crucifix” and “Jesus,” but Henry had difficulty telling them apart, and the tangle of S-sounds struck awkwardly on his ear. There were stories attached to this object as well, about places that weren’t France or England or Spain. When Henry asked about these places, Allard could explain little, except that they were hot and had landsmen ruling them, because they had no sea except a great body called the Mediterranean, which had deepsmen in it but not ones the landsmen cared about, because the landsmen needed deepsmen to fight their enemies, and these landsmen’s enemies weren’t on the other side of the sea but on land. This Henry could follow, but when Allard tried to explain what this ugly cross had to do with it, he grew confused. Allard said that the figure on it was a king, but he didn’t seem to rule anything that Allard could make clear, and as the man looked nothing like Henry it was hard to see the connection. There were words like “sin” too, but that was a difficult idea as well. Henry knew that deepsmen children received a twist on the ear if they strayed off in a dangerous direction or provoked another tribe member, but it was a simple business: they either learned not to repeat such mistakes, or they stayed stupid and generally drowned or fell prey to a shark or a dolphin. Having done his best not to be stupid for as long as he could remember, Henry could not see any reason why a dead landsman who looked nothing like him should be accusing him of doing bad things. The notion obscurely hurt his feelings. He was aware that tribesmen too old for a twisted ear would become unpopular if they regularly snatched food or refused to help in a crisis, and he supposed this might be the kind of bad things Allard meant. But nobody seemed to like Henry, and nobody ever had. He assumed it was because of his queer legs, but those weren’t his fault. Try as he might, he could think of no clearer reason why he should be so isolated. A two-legged landsman who looked like so many others, starfished out on an ugly criss-cross, could have little to do with such problems. Henry kept his eyes off the object as much as he could, and shook his head; eventually, he took to curling up whenever Allard brought it into the room. For some reason, Allard was less willing to wrestle him upright when he had the cross around, so Henry grew stubborn, and eventually Allard stopped bringing it in.

  The one thing Allard had not done since the first few days was point to the painting up in Henry’s room. Henry remembered the word “Angelica” associated with it, so he assumed that was what it was, an angelica. When left alone, Henry still tore blankets, but more for comfort than anything else; the room remained square and straight however he attacked it, and it was too hard to keep bruising himself on the walls for so little reward. But with the loss of tantrums came boredom, worse than before, pressing him down as oppressively as the room itself. With nothing else to do, Henry took to exploring the room, examining its every inch, even occasionally reaching a cautious finger into a corner to touch it at its tightest point, before snatching his hand back quickly, out of harm’s way. But aside from scaring himself with corners, there was almost no other occupation: his ruined pallet and fraying rags, his two staffs and the chair Allard sat upon were the only distractions. Apart from the angelica, hanging low enough on the wall that Henry could scrunch up his short-sighted eyes and make out its shape.

  It was reddish, like so many things in this world, with swirls of colour and arching lines all over it; within its disagreeably straight edges, it was more like water than anything else he could find. As the image was flat, he could not suppose it served any purpose except, like his clothes, to be a colourful nuisance, but once he had accustomed himself to it, he found its variety pleasant and spent hours of solitude rocking quietly with his eyes on its soothing curves.

  Allard waited until he caught Henry staring at it before he tried to interest the boy in its contents. When he finally managed to come upon Henry with his eyes on the picture—by dint of opening the door faster than usual and putting his head in before the boy could retreat to his usual rocking and blank expression—he smiled and patted his charge. Henry retreated from the smile, bared teeth being a threatening sight, but Allard sat down on the floor beside him, dust and threads from Henry’s rags covering his fine clothing, and offered the boy some fish.

  Henry took it. He was becoming accustomed to the bland, saltless taste of the food, and as the season grew chillier, he knew he should eat as much as possible, laying down fat to keep out the cold—although the supply of fish was not increasing as the days grew darker and the temperature dropped, and the lack of food was worrying him. Allard passed him another piece, and said, “Good boy, Henry. See that?” He pointed. “That is Angelica.”

  “Angelica,” Henry said, and reached out his hand; Allard generally gave him a small bit of fish when he repeated words.

  “Good.” The fish was produced, and Henry stuffed it into his mouth. “Queen Angelica.”

  “Queen Angelica.” Henry held out an expectant hand, but no fish came.

  “Queen, Henry?” Allard gave him a stern look. “What is a queen?”

  Henry said nothing; there was no reason to expect him to know what a queen was.

  “Do you want to know what a queen is?”

  “Fish,” Henry said; the sentence was a complicated one.

  “Later. A queen has a crown.”

  “Crown.” Henry patted his lap; the crown was his only other plaything, a cheering bright circle in this bleak room.

  “A queen is married to a king.”

  “Fish.”

  “Talk to me and I will give you fish,” Allard said.

  “Not know ‘married,’” Henry said, frowning with concentration. He needed more food if he was to avoid freezing.

  “King and queen are together. Man and woman,” Allard said. This made little sense to Henry, but he said nothing. “King is the son of a king and queen.”

  Henry nodded; he had seen children born in the sea, and the spawning that preceded it; sometimes a deepsman and woman grew attached to each other and stayed together, breeding season after season, if the man wasn’t too weak to defend himself. King and queen must mean a breeding couple.

  “You have queen?” Henry said.

  “No.” Allard tapped the ground impatiently. “Only one king and queen in one country.”

  Henry lowered his head; “country” was another difficult concept. “Fish?”

  “Very well.” Allard passed him another piece. “King and queen are leaders. King and queen rule. They tell all the subjects—the people who are not king and queen—what they must do. Subjects obey king and queen. Loyal to …” He stopped. The glance he gave out of the window made Henry start up in alarm; sudden looks usually meant an approaching predator.

  Allard showed no sign of flight, though, so Henry repeated, “Subjet-ss obey king an queen.” The consonants were difficult, but the idea was not. He had been used to having a single leader in the tribe.

  Then he frowned. “King have crown. Henry have crown.” He looked at Allard in consternation. Henry knew only too well how the leader change
d: another leader challenged them. The battle would be bloody and frantic. He had only ever seen two such, but he had never forgotten them, the rocks clenched in hard fists, the rising plumes of white bubbles and the cloudy trails of dark blood as the loser sank out of sight, arms limp and adrift on the current.

  “Angelica was not born a queen, Henry. Listen.”

  The story of Angelica began in Venice. Henry struggled with the ideas for weeks, but Allard was patient. He repeated the tale over and over, passing the boy titbits, giving him unwelcome pats, seeing no sign in the child’s still expression of the idea that possessed him: a ravaged body, head cracked with a rock, falling through the air, not even with the slow inevitability of a slain deepsman, but with a swift crash to the shattering ground below. A vague notion occupied Henry that someone might take his crown away, though, and he was determined not to have that happen. He had lost too many things in his life to relinquish it.

  In the ninth century of our Lord, hundreds of years ago, Allard explained, the great city of Venice was finding its strength. “Century” and “our Lord” were lost on Henry, but he gathered that the story happened a long time ago, before living memory, many generations back. “City” meant little either, but Allard described a place of land and sea both, of islands and waterways, where the solid ground was parted and split by the flowing ocean.

  “Go there,” Henry said at once. He could get around in such a place much better; he could break his sticks and swim.

  “Venice is far away, Henry.”

  “Go there.”

  “Venice is not in England. We cannot live there, we would not be welcome.”

  “Far?”

  “Many miles. Many weeks to travel.”

  This did not sound so bad to Henry; the entrapment in a single place worried him as much as the coming winter. How could they continue to eat if they did not move on? Existence in the sea had been an endless search, and weeks of swimming were part of life.

  “Go,” Henry said. He did not really expect Allard to take him to Venice—unless Henry was asking for food, Allard never granted a request—but he was tired to death of his room.

  “Some day, perhaps, Henry. When you are ready.”

  Henry felt ready; if he could only have had more to eat and knowledge of the way, he would have set out for Venice that moment. Allard was staring at him, though, not giving anything, not troubled by the cold or the confinement, so Henry gave up and asked for another piece of fish.

  People had come to Venice, Allard explained, because they were unhappy in other lands. They wanted to rule themselves. But they were still subject to Constantinople, a place Henry could not understand any descriptions of. Venice a strong city, living on fish, harvesting salt, selling it to people who came to buy it. The word “salt” Henry did not recognise, until Allard produced some for him, a little pile of sand, startlingly white in a bowl. Henry made nothing of it until he tasted it, but when he did, he stopped dead, rocking himself to avoid speaking to Allard, his mouth filled with taste of home. The boy refused to listen to any more of Allard’s story until he had finished the bowl, licking out its curves with a dark, tough tongue before turning to Allard and saying, “Salt an fish.”

  “You want salt with your fish?”

  “Yes.” Henry spoke imperiously; salt was too important to be denied.

  “Very well, if you are a good boy, you shall have salt.” Allard had added another bribe to Henry’s attention, but a punishment too: on the days when Henry did not listen, when he rocked too much or tugged between his legs or showed his teeth to the nurse, fish would arrive without salt, dull grey and tasteless.

  The people of Venice were happy there, Allard said. They lived well, even though Constantinople ruled them. Then one day, the people of the sea came.

  Down the canals they swam, around the islands, turning and diving in the brown water. The Venetians had never seen such a sight. Some had seen deepsmen before, yes, riding the waves as the prows of ships cleft the water, but for most of the landsmen, the deepsmen were entirely unfamiliar.

  “Ship?” said Henry.

  “Yes,” Allard said, and produced a model. He waved it before the boy’s eyes, making it dance as if bobbing on a wave. Seeing the boy’s blank face, Allard stopped and handed him the toy. Henry sniffed at it, tasted the edges, but it was still puzzling. Allard had moved it to and fro, but when Henry turned it over in his hands, something tugged at his memory. He lay down on the floor and held the model above his head. There it was, a sight only seen from fathoms below: a dark fin-shape that meant a strong hand on his wrist, the sight of the tribe swimming up to greet it while he remained below, chastened and guarded by his mother.

  “Ship,” Henry said. “What do ship?”

  “Ships are how people travel the seas, Henry. How landsmen go across the water.”

  Henry frowned; it was difficult to see why they didn’t swim, but already he was learning that landsmen had a passion for things, for fabrics and chairs and doors and windows, that they stayed to guard these things and tied your hands if you damaged them. Now it seemed that they wanted a thing if they were to go through the water as well. It was no clearer than before why these ships had been forbidden him. He frowned again, and asked Allard for some fish to cover his disappointment.

  The people of the sea came to Venice, Allard said. The Venetians were bewitched by these strange newcomers, by the sound of the voices that rang out across the canals. Pale faces flashed through the brown water, dark tails churned foam from the depths, and the deepsmen’s song echoed off the clean, damp walls. For a while, all the music of Venice was composed around it, flutes trying to imitate the sonorous groans that the deepsmen called across the waters. Then the Venetians sent people out, ambassadors, in flat-bottomed boats, flutes playing this new sound.

  Hearing the weighty notes called across the canals, the deepsmen united in groups of three and five, strongest at the head, in the phalanx formation that was to become familiar over the years. They swam out to greet the ambassadors, and as the flautists strove to imitate the sounds they made, powerful hands reached out and overturned the boats.

  Allard explained this with sign language, with words, with sounds and grimaces and gestures. Explaining music took a while, and Henry responded poorly to Allard’s awkward attempts to play a flute; singing he understood, but the flute was just sounds without meaning. Just occasionally Allard managed to pipe out a note that sounded a little like a word—the echo of one, blurred and imprecise—which attracted Henry’s attention a little more, but either Allard’s musicianship or the boy’s willingness was too faulty to make much headway. This was all difficult for him to explain, but Allard took a great interest in Henry’s wavering enthusiasm for the flute, scratching note after note before carrying on with his explanation. Henry learned how the deepsmen had challenged the flautists, toppling them into the water to fight. Landsmen fare ill in underwater battles, and the deepsmen fought by their own traditions. Water cushions the blow of a striking tail a little, but the great muscles and flexing joints of a sea man’s tail are always better able to clash and wrestle than the fragile limbs of an unseated musician. Several of Venice’s most promising composers suffered broken legs before the boating attempts were abandoned.

  Unfortunately for the city, once the musicians had been subdued, the deepsmen took to refusing entry to the canals where such ambushes had taken place. They swam up and down, rolling over in the water, wide-eyed and thoughtful, tolling out a sweet-voiced chant very similar to the tunes the well-meaning ambassadors had relayed to them. The translation was becoming increasingly obvious to the philosophers of the city: Ours.

  Venice, independent and strong, found itself with enemies on its banks. The sea people attacked boats, pulled down bridges, until it was all but impossible to travel. Attempts were made to block the canals: the deepsmen broke the dams. Arrows were fired into the water and some casualties followed, but it was hard to take aim on a quarry that could disappear
into the opaque depths within a moment. Nets were of little use: the deepsmen spent little time in the Grand Canal, only flashing across it fast enough to do damage. Instead, they prowled the narrower waters, where no boat large enough to haul up the full weight of a deepsman could travel. Citizens waited on the banks grasping harpoons; the deepsmen swam silently under the water, concealed in the cloudy brown tide, only flashing up for long enough to cast rocks, toppling the huntsmen, dragging their bleeding bodies into the canals, never to surface again.