As night falls, men watching from the walls of the Tower see the shape of the beast they battle. In the east it moves but slowly, fighting for every inch of ground it takes. In the west, it has claimed half the bank already. But the wind, veering first north, then south, has driven the flames up from the wharves, into virgin territory far from the water.
A great arch of fire reaches across the City, eclipsing the moon with its brightness. Behind its advancing front, a glowing, malevolent heart: the shattered ruins of churches, houses, company halls. Hundreds burnt, and thousands displaced.
And no sign of ending.
The Dragon snarls its pleasure, flexing across the darkened lanes. In the untouched parts of the City, candles and lanterns yet burn, obedient to laws that decree certain streets should be lit at night, for the safety and comfort of citizens. Those tiny flames speak a promise to the beast, that soon they, too, shall join its power, and feed its fury onward.
For the more it consumes, the more it hungers—and the stronger it ever grows.
PART TWO
That Man of Blood
1648-1649
The King. Shew me that Jurisdiction where Reason
is not to be heard.
Lord President. Sir, we shew it you here,
the Commons of England.
—“King Charls his Tryal at the High Court
of Justice”
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: October 3, 1648
Throughout the night garden, the only sound was the quiet trickle of the Walbrook—a river long buried and half-forgotten by the City of London, now a part of the Onyx Hall.
No lords and ladies walked the path, conversing quietly. No musicians played. The faerie lights that lit the garden formed a river of stars above, as if guiding Lune to her destination.
She needed no guide. This was a path she had walked many times before, every year upon this day.
She wore a simple, loose gown, a relic of an earlier age. The white fabric was rich samite, but unadorned by jewels or embroidery, and she stepped barefoot on the grassy paths. Tonight, the garden was hers alone. No one would disturb her.
The place she sought stood, not in the center of the garden, but in a sheltered corner. Lune had no illusions. No one in her court mourned as she did, for faerie hearts were fickle things—most of the time.
Once given, though, their passion never faded.
The obelisk stood beneath a canopy of ever-blooming apple trees, their petals carpeting the grass around its base. She could have had a statue carved, but it would have been one knife too many. His face would never fade from her memory.
Lune knelt at the grave of Michael Deven, the mortal man she had once loved—and did still.
She kissed her fingertips, then laid them against the cool marble. Pain rose up from a well deep inside. She rarely dipped into it, or let herself think of its existence; to do otherwise was to reduce herself to this, a shell containing nothing but sorrow. Her grief was as sharp now as the night he died. It was the price she paid for choosing to love him.
“I miss you, my heart,” she whispered to the stone—a refrain repeated far too many times. “There are nights I think I might give anything to see you again...to hear your voice. To feel your touch.”
Her skin ached with the loss. No more to have his arms around her, his warmth at her side. And he could never be replaced: Antony was not and never would be Michael Deven. She had known it, when she first vowed always to keep a mortal at her side, ruling the Onyx Court with her. She created the title Prince of the Stone to cushion the blow of change, so that she might think of it as a political position, an office any man might fill. Not her consort, with all that implied.
Antony understood. As had Michael; he knew he could not live forever. Dwelling too long among the fae would break even the strongest mind. The time her Princes spent in the Onyx Hall, the touch of enchantment they bore, slowed life for them; Antony, at forty, looked a decade younger. But despite that, inevitably, they aged and died.
The grass pricked through the fabric of her gown, and she dug her fingers into the cool soil. “We needed more time,” she murmured. “Time to map the path I stumble blindly down now. ’Tis a fine thing, to say this place stands for the harmony of mortals and fae, the possibility of bridging those worlds. But how? How may I aid them, without taking from them their choices? How may they aid us, when they do not even know we are here?”
It had been easier, when couched in terms of use instead of aid. That notion still thrived too strongly in her court, and not only because of Nicneven’s interference. Lune herself still struggled to effect change, without crossing that line.
And she had failed.
Six years of civil war. Royalist Cavaliers against Parliamentarian Roundheads, conflict reaching into every corner of the realm. Brother against brother. Father against son. Scotland at war with England, Ireland in raging revolt. The King imprisoned, sold by his own subjects to the Parliamentary armies for thirty pieces of silver. The land she had sworn to defend had torn itself apart...and she was powerless to heal it.
“We took Mary Stuart from them,” she said, tasting the bitterness in the words. “So they have taken her grandson from us.”
Nicneven’s grudge, given scope and power by Ifarren Vidar: an old enemy, and one Lune should have suspected from the start. But intelligence had put him in France, at the Cour du Lys, after he found no faerie kingdom in England would welcome him. Lune thought him safely gone. Nicneven, however, had given him a home. There was bitter irony in that; Vidar, at Invidiana’s command, had helped the Queen of Scots along her path to the headsman. Lune had no proof, though, and Nicneven would not believe her without it.
So now Lune reaped the consequences of letting him escape when she ascended her throne.
The years pressed down upon her, a weight she rarely felt. But by her bond of love, she tasted mortality, and at moments like this it threatened to crush her. The weariness of ages sapped her strength, and yet her mind would not rest; even now, here, she dragged the chains of her duty and her failures.
She had to lay it aside. For this one night, every year, she was not the Queen of the Onyx Court; she was simply Lune, and free to grieve, not for England, but for a single man.
Curling her legs underneath her, she leaned against the stone that marked Michael Deven’s grave, and gave herself over to sorrow.
LOMBARD STREET, LONDON: October 4, 1648
The house showed no physical scars of six long years of struggle. The defenses built for London had faced no army, let alone been breached. But the marks were there, albeit more subtly: in the absence of tapestries, candlesticks, much of the silver plate. The continual levies for the maintenance of the Parliamentary armies, the repeated loans from the City, had stripped Antony of funds, while the Royalist forces in Oxfordshire had so beggared his estate there that he was forced to sell it.
This is the price of moderation.
It could have been worse. Rightly suspecting his dedication to the Parliamentary cause, the commissioners appointed to gather the money had assessed him more highly than most, but at least they had not driven him from his home. And when things were at their tightest, carefully managed gifts of faerie gold had kept him from losing all.
Antony sat at the table, hands flat on its surface, gazing sightlessly at the wood between his fingers. The house was quiet. His sons and daughter had been sent to live with a cousin of Kate’s in Norfolk—a man of neutrality so inoffensive that he had managed to preserve himself relatively unscathed through a conflict that had brought not only all of England, but Scotland and Ireland, too, into battle. Antony’s manservant, inspired by sectarian zeal, had joined Fairfax’s New Model Army, fighting for Parliament against the King, and had not come back. The cook, finding herself with much less work to do, drank—but at least she was quiet about it.
He heard a door open, footsteps on the stairs. A light step, and so Antony did not bestir himself. Soon enough Kate came into the room, a
nd stopped when she saw him.
She finished unwinding the scarf that had protected her against the chilly air, and laid it at the other end of the table. “Coal is dear,” she said, “but not so bad as it has been. We shall have more tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Antony said, rising to take his wife’s hands. She had suffered more than he through the bitter winters of the war, when the King or the Scots controlled Newcastle and little coal came to London. That had been the other reason for sending the children away: the cousin had wood and turf to burn for warming his house.
She gripped his fingers, chin sunk down; then made an unreadable noise and turned away. “What is it?” he asked, baffled by her sudden aversion.
Kate pulled off the modest linen cap that covered her hair and twisted it before facing him, as abruptly as she had fled. “Do you think I don’t see the inkstains on your fingers? Do you think I don’t know what they mean?”
Antony stared at his hands. He had not given it much thought. His attention was elsewhere—a thousand other elsewheres. More than he could handle.
“Tell me,” she said bitterly, “do you work with Lilburne? Or someone else? What ideas do you put about, that are so subversive they must be printed in secret? Do not tell me those are from a quill; I know those marks from these.”
Her tirade left him speechless. Could she honestly believe he sided with Lilburne’s outrageous Levellers, those men who wished England to be ruled by the common mob? Lilburne spoke honestly about the corruption of Parliament, its leaders gone mad with their newfound power, but Antony’s agreement with the man ended there.
Except that was not Kate’s point. If she objected to the ideas he championed, she would argue them with him. This was something else.
She objected to secrets.
“Not Lilburne,” he admitted quietly, lowering his hands. “But yes—there is a printing press.”
Kate’s jaw tensed before she replied. “And what is it you deem so important, that you would risk being dragged to the Tower, or pilloried in the street?”
Antony sighed and went back to his chair. After a stiff hesitation, she joined him. “What else have you known me to promote? Moderation, and the hope of peace. Revelations of what goes on inside the House of Commons, what the Army plans, that their leaders would prefer the people not to know.”
The words came easily, hiding a world of confusion beneath. Moderation, yes—but how? There were not two sides, and a clear course between them; the world had come to such a disordered pass that he could see no sure path back to sanity, let alone herd anyone else down it.
His wife absorbed this quietly. She had not forgiven him; he had just openly admitted to endangering himself and his family, in these most dangerous times. But the initial flare of her anger had settled back to a smoldering heat. “When they published those incomplete reports from General Cromwell,” she said. “Was it your doing, that the full texts also came out?”
“One. The other was a mistake—sincere or contrived—on the part of the Lords.”
Kate still had her cap in her fists; she smoothed out the creases and laid it on the table. “Antony ... they know you for what you are. Do you think you have fooled them, by cutting your hair like a Roundhead?” He put one hand self-consciously to his barely covered collar. “How many members of the Commons have been driven out for opposing them? If they do not learn of this secret press of yours, they will hound you into the Tower for your politics, and the one makes it more likely that they will discover the other.”
She did not—need not—know how close he had already come. The fae were cautious of their aid these days; London was plagued with men convinced they could enact the godly Reformation they had come so near, and missed, in the days of old Elizabeth. It made an uncomfortable world for those who lived below. But they had stepped in when he had need of them, to keep him free of the Tower.
“Antony,” Kate said, her voice barely more than a whisper, “will you not consider leaving?”
He flinched. That pleading note...she was no coward, his Kate. But she saw little profit to remaining in the City, and much danger. Nor was she wrong.
But Lune asked him to stay.
Openly, he had little use in the Commons. If he spoke his mind, he would be out before he could finish. But he watched, and reported, and worked covertly to tip the balance when he could. Even now, commissioners sat in the King’s prison on the Isle of Wight, struggling to achieve a treaty that might yet restore England to some semblance of ordinary life.
He reached out and took Kate’s hands again, resting them atop the linen cap. “I cannot back away,” he said. “The Army has too many supporters in Parliament for anyone’s peace of mind. We are a hair’s-breadth from it declaring itself the master of England, and the rule of law giving way to the rule of the sword.”
“Have we not been there six years?” she said, bitter once more.
“Not so badly as we might be. There are some yet in the Commons who fear the Army’s leaders, and want to see our old ways restored, with the King on his throne instead of in prison. But the hotter minded among them would cast aside all the structures and precepts by which God meant men to be governed, and leave us at the mercy of a Parliament with no foundation but what armed might makes.”
They walked that edge already, starting with Pym’s old nonsensical arguments: that the King’s authority was separate from the person of the King, and that such authority rested with Parliament so long as Charles did not do as he should—in other words, as Parliament wished. Yet for all he despised such sophistry, such justifications for these wars against the Crown, Antony wished Pym were still alive. The man had at least been a politician, not a bloody-minded revolutionary. The men who had succeeded him were worse.
His wife took a deep breath and stood, towering over him in his seat. “Antony,” she said, “I will not let you destroy this family.”
His heart stuttered. “Kate—”
“They know how you speak; they know how you write. If not that, then someone will see you going to this press of yours.” She straightened her skirts, unnecessarily. “Henceforth I shall handle these pamphlets of yours.”
Now he was on his feet, with no recollection of having moved. “Kate—”
“Do you think me any happier with this world than you?” she demanded, blazing up. “Scottish forces brought onto English soil to fight the King of them both, then selling that King to his enemies—this ‘New Model Army’ of Parliament’s holding the country to ransom—all the bonds of courtesy and respect that once held us together broken, perhaps beyond repair—” She cut herself off, breathing heavily. Mastering her rage with an effort, Kate said in a low growl, “I can write as well as you. I do not know what to put in them, but you can tell me that.”
His tongue seemed to have fled. When it came back, Antony said the first thing that came into his mind—which was far from the most important objection. “But I cannot send you to print them.”
“Why not?”
Because the press lies in the Onyx Hall. He had gotten himself into this disaster by expiating the sin of keeping one secret; now he brought her hard up against another. And this one, he could not confess.
“If they saw you,” he said, “do not think they would hesitate to administer punishment because you’re a woman.”
Kate sniffed. “If you must so shelter me—surely you do not work alone? No. Send some man or boy, then, to collect the papers from our house. That will be less suspicious than you forever running off to the thing you don’t want them to find.”
Against his will, he found himself considering it. The messenger could be a fae, and disguised under a variety of glamours to prevent suspicion. And it would be one less thing for him to exhaust himself over—
“I know that look,” Kate said dryly. “You just thought of agreeing, then wondered in horror how you could possibly consider such a thing. If it salves your conscience at all, tell yourself this is safer than letting me find
my own means of being useful. Else you’ll find me sailing about the countryside with as many armed men as I can raise, calling myself ‘Her She Majesty Generalissima’ like the Queen.”
Laughter snorted out of him despite himself. She would do it, too; plenty of noble and gentry women had maintained their homes against sieges during the war, or smuggled messages through enemy lines. Kate chafed under the austere life of London nowadays, with no plays or frivolity on Sundays.
Truth be told, he chafed, too. And he had the outlet of the Onyx Hall, which bit its thumb at Puritan piety.
“I shall take your silence as a ‘yes,’ ” Kate said, more cheerful than she had sounded in days. “Fear not—you may read over what I write, and tell me if it’s up to standard. Now, let us go wake the cook from her stupor, and have some supper.”
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: October 8, 1648
An assortment of fae ringed the room, whispering amongst themselves, from elf-kind to goblins, pucks, and hobs. They had come to see for themselves if the rumors were true.
From behind the figured velvet curtains circling the bed came harsh, panicked breathing. Lune gestured, and a sprite whisked them aside.
Lady Carline flinched at the movement. Her lovely, voluptuous face gleamed with the sweat that soaked the bedclothes, and her pale fingers clutched convulsively in the fabric.
“What happened?”
The lady struggled upright. “Majesty—the man sang—”
“Stop. Begin earlier.” Worry sharpened the command; Lune schooled herself to a softer tone. “Why had you gone above?”
“To—to visit a man.”
She need not have bothered asking. As far as Carline was concerned, bed play was the purpose for which mortal men had been put on earth. Men of any kind, really. “Who?”
Carline brushed damp strands out of her face, a reflexive gesture, as if being questioned about her lover made her realize her disheveled and unattractive state, and the onlookers there to witness it. “A Cavalier,” she said. “One who took arms for the King, and fought at Naseby. He lives in secret, in a friend’s cellar, and I—I keep him company.”
In Ashes Lie Page 12
