In Ashes Lie

by Marie Brennan

  The race that preceded the vote had drained him as badly as the unending debate. From St. Albans the Army had marched, drawing nearer every day, into Westminster itself, until the fear that Ireton and his soldiers would forcibly dissolve Parliament had frayed every man’s nerves. To do so would destroy the Houses’ last shreds of tattered credibility; anything after that would have no claim to legitimacy. But they might have done it.

  Falling prey to his relief would be easy. Their vote yesterday, however, had not sent their problems up in smoke; the Army was still quartered all over Westminster, still capable of trouble. Antony had not heard from Ben Hipley in days, not since the soldiers left St. Albans. He went by coach the next morning, and heard the measured beat of boots on cobblestones. Lifting the curtain, he saw soldiers patrolling the streets—not the Trained Bands of the City, but New Model men, loyal to Henry Ireton.

  Then he descended from his coach in the Palace Yard, and saw it was worse.

  Two companies, one of horse, one of foot, were stationed around the edges of the courtyard. They stood at attention, not menacing anyone—but again, where were the Trained Bands, whose task it was to guard this place? Antony stood, staring, unblinking, until from above he heard a whisper from his coachman. “Sir...”

  Glancing up, he saw fear in the man’s eyes. “Go,” he said, as if there were nothing amiss. “I will be well.”

  Or if I be not, you can do nothing to help me.

  With his coach rattling away behind him, he settled his cloak and advanced. The soldiers let him pass without comment, and he breathed more easily—but did not release his fear. Their presence must portend something ill. He worried at the question as he hurried through the vaulted, crowded space of Westminster Hall, past the legal courts that met there, into the Court of Wards that lay in a set of chambers off its southern end. He was almost at the stairs leading up to the lobby of the Commons when he heard a disturbance.

  “Mr. Prynne,” an unfamiliar voice said, “you must not go into the House, but must go along with me.”

  Heedless of the looks from men carrying on their business around him, Antony stopped just shy of the doorway and listened.

  From the stairs came William Prynne’s defiant tones. “I am a member of the House, and am going into it to discharge my duty.”

  Footsteps, then a sudden scuffle. Despite his better judgment, Antony peered around the corner—and what he saw turned his blood to ice.

  Soldiers, more New Model men, blocked the stairs to the Commons. Antony recognized one fellow, a grinning dwarf of a man called Lord Grey of Groby; but the rest were unfamiliar, and among them was a colonel who directed his men to drag the struggling Prynne bodily back down the steps. Prynne fought them, his ugly, scarred face red with effort, but he stood no chance. Recognizing that, he employed his favorite weapon, that had served him so loyally during the debate. “This is a high breach of the privileges of Parliament! And an affront to the House of Commons, whose servant I am!” Antony leapt back as the soldiers hauled the man through the doorway. All pretense of business in the Court of Wards had stopped, and Prynne’s bellows rang from the walls; he knew how to use his voice. “These men, being more and stronger than I, and all armed, may forcibly carry me where they please—but stir from here of my own accord I will not! ”

  His own accord mattered not a whit; will he, nil he, they forced him through into the Court of Requests, and came out a moment later, breathing hard, but some of the men laughing.

  By then Antony had faded back amongst the bystanders, where they might not see him. He could taste his own pulse, so strongly was his heart pounding. What criteria formed that list, he didn’t know, but by any standards the Army might use, he would not be allowed through.

  If the Commons will not vote against the King, as the Army wishes it to—why, then, they will purge it until it does.

  He had known for months—years—that the power in England had shifted once again, into the hands of the Army’s officers, both in and out of Parliament. But he had never imagined they would exert it so nakedly, against all the laws and traditions of the land.

  Fear curdled the blood in his veins.

  So long as the contrary members did not sit, that might satisfy them; it might be enough for him to return home, and not try to enter the Commons. But what if it were not? If they came after him...

  They were arresting members of Parliament. They might do anything.

  He could flee to the safety of the Onyx Hall, had he warning enough, and no soldier would find him there.

  But he could not take Kate with him.

  Whether Lune would allow her in was not the question. Antony could not so suddenly reveal to his wife the secrets of all these years. But—Hell, he snarled inwardly, and cursed his wandering thoughts, which flinched from the real question: whether he should advance or retreat.

  Advance, and he would find himself held in the Court of Requests with Prynne—and, no doubt, others from the Commons. Retreat...

  Antony thought of Kate. The hard set of her jaw when she insisted she be permitted to lend her aid in the writing of secret pamphlets. Her disdain for his sober clothes and trimmed hair, disguising his body as he disguised his principles—all to maintain his position in the Commons and Guildhall, where he might do some good.

  But I haven’t, he realized. Not enough. Not to prevent this catastrophe.

  A clerk stood nearby, still gaping. With scarcely a word, Antony claimed a pen and scrap of paper from the man and scribbled a quick note, spattering ink in his haste. The clerk handed over sealing wax without being asked, and after Antony had pressed his signet into the soft mass, he gave the paper back, followed by the first coin that came into his hand—a shilling, and more than enough. “Take this note to Lombard Street—the house under the sign of the White Hart. Do you understand me?” The clerk nodded. “Go.”

  With the man gone, Antony took a moment to straighten his doublet and settle his cloak on his shoulders, before he turned and ascended the steps.

  Groby whispered in the colonel’s ear, pointing at the list. When Antony reached them, the officer swept his hat off and greeted him with hypocritical courtesy. “Sir Antony Ware. I am Colonel Thomas Pride, and my orders are not to permit you within the House, but to take you into custody.”

  Antony met his eyes, then Groby’s, willing some doubt to be there. But he found none. “You have no authority save that which your swords and pistols make. By barring me from my rightful place, you trample upon the very liberties you swore to protect.”

  Groby said, “We are liberating Parliament from a self-interested and corrupt faction that impedes the faithful and trustworthy in the conduct of their duties.”

  He sounded almost as if he believed it, and perhaps he did. If there was one thing Antony knew from all these struggles, it was that men could come to believe in anything, no matter how absurd.

  Pride said merely, “Do you refuse to go?”

  The eager-handed soldiers wanted another fight, but Antony would not give them one. He would be ruled by choice, not by the sword. “You will not need your weapons,” he said. “Under protest, I will go.”

  THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: December 6, 1648

  Lune was playing cards with her ladies when Ben Hipley slammed through the door, trailing an offended usher. “They’ve taken him.”

  She stared at the man. Where had he been for the last week? She had quarreled with Antony over sending Hipley to St. Albans; she had another use for their mortal spymaster. But she had been willing to accept it so long as Hipley was sending useful information. For days, though, nothing—and now he showed up utterly without warning, unwashed and bristling with unshaved stubble.

  Then his words sank in. “What? Who?”

  “Antony,” Hipley said, confirming the fear already forming in her mind. “The Army. They were waiting at Westminster. They’ve taken Antony to Hell.”

  The cards slipped from Lune’s nerveless fingers and fluttered to the carpe
t; she had stood without realizing. Her body felt very far away. All she could hear was that final word, echoing like thunder.

  “It’s an eating house!” Hipley exclaimed, putting his hands up.

  Lune returned to herself with the crack of a bone popping back into its socket. “In Westminster. There’s three of them—Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. Someone with a twisted sense of humor put them in Hell. Lord Antony, and about forty others.”

  Nianna fluttered at Lune’s side, fan in hand as if she thought her Queen would faint. Lune gestured her away, irritable now that the fear was gone—or at least reduced. Her trembling, she hoped, was hardly noticeable. “Members of Parliament?”

  He nodded. “Anybody with a record of voting against the Army’s desires has been excluded from the Commons; the worst offenders are arrested. But there’s more, madam. They’ve moved the King to Hurst Castle, under strict guard. They’re going to try him.”

  Hence the arrest of those in opposition. Even with the open Royalists driven out these past years, and recruiters elected to fill their places, the full Commons would not vote for the Army’s desired aims—not to the extent of putting their anointed sovereign on trial like a common criminal.

  And what sentence would they pass?

  That was a concern, but not the first one. Lune had no immediate way to stop this coup; she had to focus on getting Antony out. She cursed the choice of Westminster. The Onyx Hall did not extend beyond the walls of the City. But the Army had already occupied London once, during the later part of the war, creating much ill will; they would not be so stupid as to imprison their opponents among their enemies.

  The cards were long forgotten; all her ladies were on their feet, hovering uselessly. I let myself be caught here, idle, while outside the world changed irrevocably. “Get out!” Lune spat, flinging her fury at them; as one, they curtsied and fled.

  Leaving just her and Hipley. Lune paced the chamber, fingers curled under the point of her bodice. “Can you get in to see him?”

  The plan taking shape in her mind collapsed when he shook his head. “I’ve already been caught asking too many questions around St. Albans.”

  He made no explanation beyond that, but the mystery of his absence was solved. Small wonder they had no warning of this beforehand. Snarling, Lune spun back to the nearest table and grabbed a mask Nianna had left behind, intending to hurl it across the room. Then she paused.

  “You can still go,” she said, fingering the mask, and gave Hipley a thin smile. “You only need a different face.”

  HELL AND WHITEHALL, WESTMINSTER: December 7, 1648

  “Wallingford House, my lily-white arse.”

  Soame muttered the words under his breath, a profane counterpoint to the psalms some of the other men were singing. The holy music grated on Antony’s nerves, but there was little else to do; more than two score men were crammed into a pair of upstairs chambers, with nowhere to sleep but benches or the floor. A few read, by the light of what candles they had been grudgingly allotted; others talked in low voices in the corners. Prynne was pacing, threading his way carefully amongst those trying to rest.

  Antony wondered if it was a misunderstanding or a deliberate lie that made Hugh Peter promise they were to be taken from Westminster Hall to suitable lodgings at Wallingford. Instead the coaches deposited them scarcely a street away, at the aptly named Hell. A handful of the prisoners had been offered their parole and leave to go home, but to a man they had refused. He was not the only one taking a martyr’s pleasure in facing this outrage.

  Morning light peeped through the shutters, lending slivers of brightness to the otherwise gloomy chamber. Light-headed from lack of food and sleep, Antony nevertheless crossed the room and threw open the door.

  The pair of soldiers outside jerked around, hands on their pistols as if eager to strike. Antony carefully stayed inside the threshold, making no threatening move. “You have been holding us since yesterday morning with no food, and little to drink. Unless it is your officers’ intention to starve us, we need breakfast.”

  “And if it is your intention to starve us, at least have the decency to admit it, so we can begin trapping pigeons and rats.” Thomas Soame had come up behind his right shoulder, and his stomach rumbled loudly in accompaniment.

  The soldiers merely glared. “Get back inside.”

  The hostility was nothing new. Who spread the rumor, Antony did not know, but their guards believed them to have pocketed the coin that should have covered the Army’s arrears of pay. I can no longer even tell what might be faerie interference, and what is simply the madness of our own world.

  “Some of these men are ill,” Antony said. As if to demonstrate, Sir Robert Harley sneezed miserably, huddled on his bench. He was one who could have gone home, but refused. “I do not imagine your Provost-Marshal would be glad to hear that anyone came to great harm while under your watch.”

  One soldier sneered, but the other said, “We’ll ask,” and slammed the door shut.

  The Provost-Marshal agreed to request food, but was gone for hours, and when he returned it was not to give them breakfast. Instead the arrested members were shoved back into the coaches and taken to Whitehall. Nor was there anything waiting for them on the other end but a cold room without a fire, where they waited for hours longer. Supposedly the General Council intended to interview them, but Antony suspected that message was nothing more than a delaying tactic, something to give hope to the men who still believed that if they just protested the illegality of their treatment loudly enough, the officers would come to their senses.

  At last a man came in with burnt wine and biscuits. The prisoners fell to as if it were a feast, scattering around the chamber with their food, like dogs protecting the bones they gnawed upon. Antony waited, letting others take their share first, until at last the man came around to him.

  “Lord Antony,” the fellow said in an undertone, “her Majesty sent me. I am to try and get you out.”

  Antony blinked. He’d never seen the soldier before, but that meant nothing; he simply could not believe she would risk sending a faerie into the Puritan teeth of the Army.

  And so she hadn’t. “Ben,” the man whispered, jerking his thumb surreptitiously toward himself.

  There was no reason one couldn’t put a glamour on a mortal; Antony had just never thought to do so. He cast a swift glance around. Only one guard was looking his way, but that was already too many; they could not talk for long. “We’ve been kept in Hell.”

  “I know.”

  “Too closely guarded there and here. You’ll never manage a rescue. Do it politically.”

  That was all he dared say; Ben had to move on with his wine jug. Antony spoke in hope; he didn’t know if there was any way to free him through legitimate efforts. But any attempt to do so by more arcane means would attract too much attention, if only by his sudden absence.

  So he sat in the room with his fellow prisoners until long after the sun had set and an officer came in to say the General Council was too busy to see them until the morrow. “Back to Hell we go,” Soame muttered, but no; a troop of musketeers took them into custody and marched them to the Strand. Antony suffered himself to be hauled along by the arm, ignored the insults of the soldiers, and thought, Very well. I am a prisoner, as I chose. But what can I accomplish from here?

  I can speak my mind.

  THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: December 11, 1648

  “What is he doing? ” Lune exploded, hurling down the papers she held.

  Benjamin Hipley wisely waited until the fluttering pages had settled before he said, “Making a point, madam.”

  “He does us no good there. Cromwell has his minions running about, planning who knows what against Ireton—certainly I do not know. And why not? Because Sir Antony Ware, who should be helping me, chose to go to prison!”

  It was unfair to shout at Hipley, who was doing everything he could. But the man was the son of a cooper; his contacts were apprentices and laborers and dockhands o
n the streets of London, not the gentry and officers who would decide the fate of the kingdom. Antony was her eyes and ears when it came to such matters, and he was under guard in the King’s Head, one of two inns to which the secluded members of Parliament had been moved.

  Hipley coughed discreetly and, bowing, offered her a slender sheaf of papers.

  She regarded them with deep suspicion. “What are these?” “The good Lord Antony is doing,” Hipley said. “Not alone; I’m given to understand one William Prynne did much of the scribing. But the Prince wishes it published, as soon as may be.”

  Lune accepted the sheaf. Across the top, in a bold hand she did not recognize, was a title: A Solemn Protestation of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members. The rest was less clear to the eye, but she glanced over it, and marked many calls for action against the Army, which had sinned so gravely against the liberties of Parliament.

  “Will it do any good?” she asked, half to herself.

  Hipley paused before answering, unsure whether she addressed him. “It may, madam. Short of an armed revolt at the King’s Head, or a bald-faced theft of him by faerie magic, I see little else we can do.”

  Stir up anger against the Army. It might work. The officers were losing the support of the men beneath them, who wanted outrageous reforms even Ireton balked at, and the common people hated them, even before the purge of the Commons. General Fairfax, the beloved hero of the New Model Army, was no fool; he had done what he could to quarter his soldiers in warehouses and other empty places. But nothing could hide that London was under martial occupation. There were even troops inside St. Paul’s itself. Lune had little care for the houses of the Almighty, but the cathedral was a sorry sight, shorn of its grandeur, its choir stalls and paneling reduced to firewood for the soldiers.

  Opponents of the Army were plentiful; what they were not was unified. If they could be joined to this cause, though, however briefly—