In Ashes Lie

by Marie Brennan

  THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, LONDON: November 7, 1648

  “You’re sending me away?”

  The courtyard of the Royal Exchange was a poor place for a private conversation, but Benjamin Hipley had sought Antony out there, and did not look minded to hold his peace. Glancing around, Antony pulled him into the corner of the arcade, where a stretch of the bench that ringed it sat empty. “You speak as though you are the first to be asked to serve the Onyx Court elsewhere.”

  Ben’s native discretion did not fail him; he kept his voice low, though intense. “It’s not a matter of leaving London. I cannot leave you. Not at such a time.”

  The damp chill of the air stifled business, leaving the courtyard only half-full of its usual gentry. The flowerlike array of colors that once prevailed had given way to the sad hues favored by the godly; though the fabrics were still rich, a dull green was the brightest thing in sight. For all the fae reflected the tastes of the world above, sometimes they did so by inversion. Court nowadays was enough to make a man’s eyes bleed.

  Antony gestured at his own staid murrey doublet. “I am a respectable baronet, an alderman, and a member of Parliament. By the skin of my teeth, but it suffices. I will be safe.”

  Ben shook his head. “You need me here. The machinations in Parliament, over this treaty with the King—”

  “I need you more there. I can watch Parliament on my own, but I cannot keep one eye on Westminster and one on Hertfordshire. Henry Ireton has called a ‘General Council of the Army’ at St. Albans, and it has the potential to destroy everything. He hates the treaty like poison. His idea of peace is to see the King punished like any other man.”

  The blood drained from Hipley’s face. “He goes that far?”

  It was the logical extension of all that had gone before, yet it still had power to appall. Pym had undermined the foundations of sovereignty itself, until men like Ireton could look at the King and see a common criminal.

  But not everyone felt that way, God be thanked. “You’re not the only one to flinch,” Antony said grimly. “General Cromwell is delaying in the North; I think he hesitates to oppose a fellow officer openly, but he would see us follow a different course. Fairfax argues against it as well. Those two are greatly loved in the Army, and without them, Ireton may achieve nothing—but I cannot afford to let him go unwatched.”

  The truth was that they needed agents within the Army, men or disguised fae placed close enough to the generals and lower officers that they could supply both intelligence and action as needed. But the Army was beyond their reach: forged out of the disastrous chaos of Parliament’s early armies, it had become a finely honed weapon that crushed the Royalists at every turn. And between their common soldiers, who liked the Leveller arguments that they should rule England, and their fiercely Puritan officers, there had never been any good chance to position such agents. Antony had sat in Westminster through all those years of war, exerting what force he could in Parliament, but the sieges and battles, the capture of prisoners and the smuggling of information, had gone on in a hundred locations across the kingdom, miles away from the men who thought the power was still in their hands.

  Until they reached this point. A General Council of the Army at St. Albans, and Henry Ireton their self-appointed champion, preparing to tear England’s wounds yet wider.

  Scowling, Ben rose and moved a few steps away, pausing with his back to Antony. At last the intelligencer asked, “Will the treaty conclude in time?”

  The question every man in Parliament would give his fortune to answer. They had already extended the deadline for the negotiations once. England wanted peace; it wanted an end to the chaos and upheaval caused by the disruption of government and the forced quartering of soldiers and the lack of uniformity in religion.

  Some of England did. But not all.

  “We stand at a precipice,” Antony said, just loudly enough for Ben to hear. “The King is poised to retake all he had, making no concessions he cannot squirm out of once power is his again. Those who sue for peace tie hope over their eyes like a blindfold, telling themselves he can be trusted. But our alternative is the Army, and the Levellers, and Independency in religion. We know it; our treaty commissioners know it. Charles knows it, and so he sits in his prison on the Isle of Wight and waits.”

  Ben turned back, his hands curled at his sides, not quite fists. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  Antony offered him a baring of teeth that might stand in for a smile. “Whether or not it concludes in time depends on what Ireton and the Army do. Get to St. Albans—tell me what you find there—and I will answer your question then.”

  THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: November 20, 1648

  The greater presence chamber had never been Lune’s favorite part of the Onyx Hall, being too grand, too chill—too full of the memory of Invidiana. For formal state occasions, however, she could not avoid it. Anything less would be an insult to the dignitaries who gathered for this ceremony.

  So she sat upon her silver throne, and a selection of her courtiers waited in bright array across the black-and-white pietre dura floor. Eochu Airt stood to one side, in the full splendor of what passed for court dress among the Irish, with gold torcs banding his neck and arms.

  He made a poisonously polite nod to the empty seat next to hers on the dais. “I see your Prince could not be here today.”

  Lune pressed her lips together. Antony’s reply to her messenger had been brusque to the point of rudeness: he was at Westminster, and could not leave. The General Council of the Army had presented a Remonstrance to the Commons, a listing of their grievances, like the one the Commons had once presented to the King. Lune did not know their demands; her messenger had not tarried, but come back with stinging ears to relay Antony’s words. He did say, though, that the Remonstrance had already been two hours in the reading, and showed no signs of ending soon.

  Antony’s refusal vexed her, but perhaps it was just as well. “He sends his regrets, my lord, and wishes you all good speed.”

  A snort answered that. “At Parliament, I see. Voting again to gut my land and hang it out to dry?”

  Her ladies whispered behind their fans. Only their eyes showed, glinting like jewels in the masks they had adopted and elaborated from mortal fashion; even Lune could not read their expressions from that alone. “My lord ambassador, nothing happens in isolation. Lord Antony wishes the Army disbanded as much as you do. With the soldiers owed arrears of pay, however, and fearing reprisals for their wartime actions, setting them loose would threaten stability here.”

  “And so he votes to send them to Ireland. Where England sends all of its refuse.”

  Now it was not lips but teeth she was pressing together. “Had the mortals of your land not risen in rebellion—”

  “Had they not done so, we would not now have a free Ireland!”

  “You will not have it for long.” Try as she might to be angry with Eochu Airt, in truth, Lune felt sadness; the Irish, mortal and fae alike, were so blinded by success and the hope it brought that they did not see the hammer poised above them.

  She tried to find the words to make at least this one sidhe see. “Had they settled with Charles during the war, they might have won something.” And brought the King to victory in the bargain. “But the Vatican’s ambassador encouraged them to overreach, and now, wanting the whole of their freedom, they will instead lose the whole. Their Catholic Confederation will survive only so long as England’s attention is divided. Once we have peace here, someone—Charles or Parliament—will crush them.”

  “With the very Army your Prince voted to send. Just as he voted to save Strafford’s life.”

  Against Lune’s wishes, in both cases. If she could have persuaded the Prince to vote against sending regiments across, it might have gone some way to healing that injury. But Antony—understandably, damn him—was more concerned with England’s well-being than Ireland’s. In the end the proposal had failed by a single vote... but not his.

&nb
sp; “The hammer has not yet fallen upon you,” Lune said, doing what little she could to mollify the sidhe. “I will do everything in my power to stay it.”

  Whatever response Eochu Airt might have made, he swallowed it when the great doors at the other end of the chamber swung open. Lune’s Lord Herald spoke in a voice that echoed from the high ceiling. “From the Court of Temair in Ireland, the ambassador of Nuada Ard-Rí, Lady Feidelm of the Far-Seeing Eye!”

  An imposing sidhe woman appeared in the opening. Her green silk tunic, clasped at the shoulders with silver and gold, was stiff with red-gold embroidery; her cloak, thrown back, revealed strong white shoulders. The branch she held, however, was mere silver, compared to Eochu Airt’s gold. She knelt briefly, then rose and advanced until she came to the foot of the dais, where she knelt again.

  “Lady Feidelm,” Lune said, “we welcome you to the Onyx Court, and tender our thanks to our royal cousin Nuada.”

  The new ambassador’s voice was rich and finely trained. “His Majesty sends his greetings, and begs your kind pardon for calling away Lord Eochu Airt, whose services are needed in Emain Macha, serving King Conchobar of Ulster.”

  Lune smiled pleasantly at the old ambassador, who stood mute and unreadable. “We shall sorely miss his presence at court, for he has been an unfailing advocate on Temair’s behalf, and an ornament to our days, with poetry and song.”

  A lovely mask of courteous speech, laid over the simple truth that Eochu Airt had asked to go. He could not be quit of them soon enough. What remained to be seen was what Feidelm’s appointment signaled. If the lady were amenable, Lune hoped to negotiate for aid against Nicneven.

  But that would have to wait. Lune beckoned to Lord Valentin, who came forward with a parchment already prepared. When the revocation of Eochu Airt’s diplomatic status was done, and Feidelm proclaimed in his place—then she would see the dance Temair followed now.

  THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: November 21, 1648

  The feasting and presentation of gifts ran through the night, with music and dancing and a contest of poetry between the old and new ambassadors. Eochu Airt begged leave to retire when it was done, though, and soon after Lune withdrew to walk with Feidelm in the garden.

  The sidhe hailed from Connacht, and spoke as openly of King Ailill and Queen Medb as she did of the High Kings of Temair. The different perspective was useful to Lune, after years of Eochu Airt’s Ulster-bred sentiments. More useful still was the lack of hostility; Feidelm might not be an ally, but she clearly intended to form her own opinion of Lune, rather than adopting her predecessor’s. It was as close to a tabula rasa as Lune would get, and with Nicneven temporarily set back by the removal of Sir Leslic, Lune had the leisure to try and mend her relations with Temair.

  “Lady Feidelm,” she said as they wandered the paths, “I know from the branch you bear that you are a poetess. Yet for you to be called ‘the Far-Seeing Eye’—are not such matters the province of your druids?”

  “The imbas forosna is the province of poets,” the sidhe replied in her rich lilt, trailing her fingers over the flank of a marble stag that stood along the path. “For my skill at that, I am so named.”

  “We have no seer at this court,” Lune said, and did not have to feign the regret in her voice. “And we live in most unpredictable times, when all the world seems upside-down. Might I prevail upon you to see on our behalf, and give some sense of what lies ahead?”

  Feidelm pursed her sculpted lips. “Madam, visions do not come at a simple command. It needs something to call them, to bid the gates of time open.”

  She had heard that the Irish hedged their divination about with barbaric rituals. “What do you need?”

  The answer made Lune wonder if this were some malicious prank perpetrated on her as petty revenge for her soured relations with Temair. But Feidelm’s attendants did not seem at all surprised when their mistress called for a bull to be slaughtered. In the end Lune sent a pair of goblins to steal one from a garden above, with Sir Prigurd to carry it back down, and to leave payment for the missing beast. Then the Irish set to work, and soon presented the ambassadress with meat and broth and a stinking, bloody hide. There in the night garden, without any embarrassment, Feidelm stripped off her finery and wrapped herself in the hide, then lay down beneath a hazel tree.

  The attendants bowed and retired, leaving Lune alone with the poetess.

  She had no idea what to expect, except that Feidelm had promised her answers to three questions. Lune pondered her choices while the sidhe lay silent in the trance of the imbas forosna. When the faerie’s emerald eyes snapped open, she twitched in surprise.

  Feidelm said, “Speak.”

  The words stumbled out, despite her preparation; the strange atmosphere of this entire affair had Lune off balance. “What—what do you see for my people?”

  “I see them bloody; I see them red.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. Warfare, or murder. Were the precautions she had taken not enough? Killing Leslic and his allies was too drastic a move; fae bred so rarely. Sending them back to Vidar was not an option. So she had placed them in cells beneath the Tower of London—but perhaps she must do more.

  Vowing to double their guard as soon as she left the garden, Lune tried again. “What of my home?”

  “I see it ashen, I see it gold.”

  Less clear—unless the men who insisted the rule of their Christ would begin in eighteen years were right, and London to rise as the new Jerusalem, the fifth monarchy of Heaven. But would he cast down the City first? Feidelm’s answers were maddeningly cryptic, and far too brief.

  Her third question came the hardest of all. This was the answer Antony wanted, the answer she feared to obtain for him. “What do you see for England?”

  Feidelm took a slow, wavering breath; then the words flowed from her like a river, as if this one question released all the eloquence dammed up before. “I see a broad-shouldered man who takes the head and becomes the head, though he crushes the crown beneath his boot. In his hands he holds the ink that brings death: both for them who wrote it, and him it is written for. I see the churches cast down and raised up, and the people weep for sorrow and joy. Many are the wounds this land has suffered, and will suffer, and yet will go forward; I see it endure, and yet I see its end, that lies both near and far. The Kingdom of England will die twice ere long, and you will see those deaths.”

  Hope and fear warred in Lune’s heart, and fear had the advantage. Nothing endured forever, not even fae; they could be slain, or become weary of life and fade away. The great empire of Rome had spanned the world, but where was it now? Fragmented and gone, its Italian heartland languishing under Spanish rule. She knew, if she was honest, that some day England, too, would pass. But when? What was soon to a faerie?

  Feidelm shuddered, and Lune thought the trance ended. But the sidhe’s gaze shifted to Lune, unfocused yet piercing, as if seeing through her flesh to the spirit beneath, and her voice still held the resonance of the imbas forosna. “What is a king, or a queen? For whom does one such rule, and by what right? What shall be the fate of sovereignty? These are the questions the land asks, the people, the heart. But you have not asked, and so you must answer them yourself.”

  Her eyelids sagged, pale lashes brushing her skin. When Feidelm opened her eyes once more, the fog of her trance had lifted from them, but she seemed to have no awareness of the words she had just spoken. For a moment, Lune met that emerald gaze, and wondered.

  Did she invent her answers, as a subterfuge to gain some advantage?

  She might wish it so, but she thought not. The Irish seer had spoken truly.

  What lay hidden in her words—that, Lune would have to discover for herself.

  PALACE YARD, WESTMINSTER: December 5, 1648

  The sun crept above the horizon, hidden behind a veil of thick clouds and blustering winds. The only sign of its presence was a muted brightening, a gray pallor replacing the blackness of night.

  The doors to Westminster
Hall swung open, and out filed a line of weary men: the two-hundred-odd members of Parliament who had doggedly persevered, in a session that lasted all day and all through the night, to surmount the obstacles of acrimony and fear, and to answer the question put to them.

  The men agitating for the Army’s outrageous wishes had wanted that question put thus: whether the King’s answers to the treaty, brought to them at long last, were satisfactory. But every man partisan enough to the Royalist cause to say yes had long since been driven from the Commons; that vote was designed to fail, and so those who sought peace had diverted it away. Satisfaction was not needed. After the long struggles, the near misses and dashed hopes for reconciliation, all the Commons wanted to know was this: whether the King’s concessions were enough to be going on with.

  The question passed without a division. They would accept the treaty, and move on to restoring peace in England. The wars were done at last.

  Antony ignored the abusive language flung by the Army officers who pursued the members down the stairs and out through Westminster Hall; he could barely hear them through his jaw-cracking yawn. Soame, at his side, had declared that walking normally was not worth the effort; he staggered as if drunk. “Somewhere in Hell,” the younger man said, ramming the heels of his hands into his eyes, “there is a circle where men are forced to listen to Prynne go on for three hours without pause. And when I am sent thither, I’ll tell the Devil I have been there already, and ask for something new.”

  It sparked a weary laugh, tinged with exhausted relief. “And in Heaven is a feather mattress, well fluffed and warm. I’m for home,” Antony said. “I will see you tomorrow.”

  WESTMINSTER PALACE, WESTMINSTER: December 6, 1648

  He fell asleep like a man who has been clubbed over the head, and woke only for supper. “It passed?” Kate asked; she had waited the whole night for him, knowing they debated England’s fate. And Antony said, “Pray God we will find some peace now.”