“I would your husband had your principles and courage,” Antony said, meeting her eyes, blazing like fire in her mask. “Had England more like you, she would rest far easier at night.”
The lady’s mouth wavered. “My husband is a good man.”
But rendered powerless by forces that had escaped all control. The Army no longer answered to him. Antony had no comfort to offer Lady Fairfax, and none for himself.
Back inside, he found confusion. The Commissioners were filing out, in less order than was their custom, and the people were muttering amongst themselves. “What’s going on?”
Tom shrugged. “The King requested a hearing before the Lords and Commons. Claimed he had something that might bring peace. Bradshaw refused it, and then the Commissioners began arguing; Cromwell himself went after the man who started it. Didn’t hear what they said, though. And now Bradshaw has called for a withdrawal.”
It lasted half an hour—an uneasy span of time. Antony had some experience of Oliver Cromwell in the Commons; the man was good at intimidation. And while he had not joined Ireton in purging the House, once Cromwell agreed to participate in this trial, his support had been steadfast. Whatever objection his fellow Commissioner might have raised, Antony doubted it would survive the confrontation now going on in private.
He was right. When the assembly returned, Tom muttered that the dissenter was missing, and Bradshaw denied Charles’s request for the hearing.
His address to the prisoner went on interminably, through a thicket of legal arguments and historical examples, most of which Antony could have dismantled in a heartbeat. Only one thing Bradshaw said struck him.
“There is a contract and a bargain made between a King and his people,” the red-robed Commissioner said. “The one tie, the one bond, is the bond of protection that is due from the sovereign; the other is the bond of subjection that is due from the subject. Sir, if this bond be once broken, farewell sovereignty!”
Such a world once existed, Antony thought sadly. But it is broken indeed.
Charles tried to interrupt, to respond, to answer the charges Bradshaw laid. After three painful days of his attacks, though, Bradshaw was not going to repeat the mistake of letting the King gain any footing. Rushing through his final points, he declared the prisoner guilty, and a clerk rose to read the sentence from a paper already prepared.
“The said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public enemy, shall be put to death, by the severing of his head from his body.”
In a solemn wave, the Commissioners rose, silently declaring their assent.
The words fell into Antony’s heart like drops of lead. Not deposition. Not imprisonment.
They will execute him.
From his seat on the floor of the hall, the King of England said mildly, “Will you hear me a word, sir?”
But Bradshaw would not. Sentenced to death, Charles was already dead, in the eyes of the law. A dead man could not speak. Heartsick, Antony saw the growing dismay on the King’s face as he realized his miscalculation. He had not understood; he had expected to have one more chance—not to change his sentence, but to give one last statement. His voice rose, higher and more desperate, as the guards closed around him like an iron gauntlet, as the Commissioners ignored his cries.
Grim in this, his ignominious defeat, Charles had his final word. “I am not suffered for to speak: expect what justice other people will have.”
THE ONYX COURT, LONDON: January 30, 1649
“You cannot go,” Antony said, his voice flat and weary. “You cannot.”
Lune’s ladies were utterly silent as they carried out the task of dressing their mistress. They were not all needed—not for the plain gown Lune had ordered them to clothe her in—but they all stayed, the better to radiate their disapproval in harmony with the Prince. “Your authority, Lord Antony, extends to mortal affairs—not those of fae. Where we choose to go is our own concern.”
She should not have addressed him so formally, but her own temper was frayed beyond any chance of courtesy. As was his own, no doubt. Antony said through his teeth, “I give no commands, madam. I merely advise you that to leave your realm and go into such danger is unwise in the extreme.”
“I was once accounted quite good at this,” she said with some asperity, trying to make light of it. “You need not fear I will be found out.”
“Good or not, you propose to expose yourself to that which is anathema to you, with nothing to gain for it!”
A spark of rage flared in her heart. Did he think her entirely motivated by gain? Incapable of concerns beyond the betterment of her court? Amadea entered the room, bearing a crystalline coffer, but recoiled from the glare Lune laid on her. Free for the moment from her attendants, Lune turned to face her consort.
“I promised,” she said, forming each word precisely, “to protect England. Instead I have let her fall into the hands of a militant faction who discard her well-being in pursuit of their own interests. And so today they will cut the head from her King—a reigning monarch, tried and put to death by his own subjects.” Words were insufficient to contain her horror. Kings and queens had died before—deposed, abdicated, murdered without warning—but never like this. Never while on their thrones, under pretense of law.
Disguising what she felt was impossible; instead she used it as a weapon, letting Antony see. “I will not let this pass unwitnessed.”
He argues to preserve this realm—out of fear that something may befall me, and so both realms will crumble into chaos together. Robbed of his seat in Parliament, his position as alderman, his influence in his own world, Antony fought all the harder to preserve his other sovereign. She understood.
But I must do this.
At last Antony bowed his head. “Then come. The time grows short.”
WHITEHALL PALACE, WESTMINSTER: January 30, 1649
Silence reigned over King Street. Here and there a tearful, murmured prayer rose from hesitant lips, but the hundreds of people packing the road, leaning out of windows, perching on the roof, waited in grim and unnatural silence.
The Italianate expanse of the Banqueting House formed the background of the scene, a classical limestone island in the midst of Tudor brick. Black cloth draped the railings of the platform in front, concealing from those in the street the low block at its center, and the staples hammered into the boards around it. Should it prove necessary, they would chain the King to his scaffold, like a dog.
Tower Hill and Tyburn were both too large and open, too difficult to control. A vast mob had gathered to gloat over Strafford’s death; the men who now held England’s reins could not risk a similar mob turning against them. The confines of Whitehall Palace could be controlled, with the Banqueting House marking one side of King Street, the Tilt-yard the other, and Holbein Gate capping the southern end. An artillery platform left over from the wars, wedged in the corner by the scaffold, kept black watch over the street, and mounted soldiers ringed the scaffold, armored and armed. They would kill Charles outside his monument to beauty, Inigo Jones’s elegant architecture and Rubens’s transcendent ceiling within: an added twist of the knife.
The spare, ascetic woman at Antony’s side showed her years in her gray hairs and the worn lines of her face, and a hint of stiffness in her joints betrayed the encroachment of age. Lune had not exaggerated; she counterfeited humanity so well, he could not have told her for a fae. The three who accompanied her were easier to identify: Sir Prigurd Nellt was the enormous fellow with shoulders as wide as an axe handle, and the other two served in the Onyx Guard. Even now, dressed as humble tradesmen, they stood like knights—and faerie knights at that. The sober, Puritan dress they all wore was a thin mask. But no one’s eye would be on them today.
Kate had called Antony monstrous for attending, as if the grisly spectacle were his reason. The truth was that he could not let Lune come alone.
It was easy to think the elfin woman careless, even heartless. Together they had played the game of po
litics for so long he had lost sight of the truth: that Lune did care, as deeply as he. And this day might even hurt her more, for her dedication to the monarchy was born in a time when the monarch deserved the love of her servants.
Now, they might not have even an undeserving monarch. Earlier, one of Ben Hipley’s beggar-children informants had found Antony where he and the others waited on the steeply gabled roof above the artillery platform, overlooking the scaffold. The execution was delayed because the Commons was rushing a bill through, rendering it illegal for anyone to proclaim a new king. It was a defensive tactic, a futile attempt to protect themselves against Charles, the Prince of Wales, who was young, energetic, not hated as his father was, and roaming free on the Continent. But Antony feared they intended something more permanent.
Movement drew his eye. Men were filing out onto the scaffold: soldiers, a couple of fellows with inkhorns and paper, and the executioner, who along with his assistant was heavily disguised. The noble windows of the Banqueting House had mostly been blocked up, but one in the annex on the north side had been torn out and enlarged, and it was through this they came.
Whispers ran through the crowd, rippling the deadly tension. And then a gasp, as the King stepped into view.
He dressed plainly, his only jewel the George, the insignia of the Order of the Garter. He seemed composed, but asked one of the soldiers something with a nod toward the block. Though the crowd was fearfully quiet, a sharp wind blew, bringing winter’s bite and carrying Charles’s voice away. Even from his nearby position, Antony could only catch stray words; the rest of the onlookers, held back by the thick ring of mounted troops, would fare little better. When Charles drew a small paper from his pocket, he addressed his final speech to the men on the scaffold, the only ones who could hear him. But the men with the inkhorns took notes, and it would not be long before the King’s last words were published all over London.
I must get their notes, Antony thought, biting his lip. If they censor anything out—the people must have the truth.
With the help of the bishop who had accompanied him out of the Banqueting House, Charles donned a nightcap and tucked his hair inside, leaving his neck bare. What the bishop said to Charles was inaudible, but the King’s reply came in a stronger voice, carrying to the now almost perfectly silent crowd. “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be—no disturbance in the world.”
Antony’s stomach twisted in agony as the King removed the George and handed it to the bishop. “Remember,” Charles said, and Antony thought, Yes. I will remember forever this moment—when a man convinced that God has ordained his authority is murdered by men convinced that God has ordained theirs.
Always they laid it at the feet of the Almighty. Charles believed his defeat proof of God’s punishment. Parliament’s leaders believed their victory proof of God’s favor.
Or was it simply proof of Cromwell’s military genius, and the effectiveness of the New Model Army? What if all of this, every bit of it, was the work of men alone—their choices and mistakes, their dreams and ideals—and God watched it all play out, letting them rise and fall with neither aid nor hindrance?
Someone had to be wrong; God could not be on both sides. And watching Charles remove his doublet and cloak, watching him raise his hands in prayer and then lay himself flat with his head over the low block, Antony felt with cold certainty that both were wrong. God watched, nothing more. His hand was nowhere in this day—nor any other.
This is the doing of men.
A frozen, silent instant—then Charles stretched out his arms.
The axe flashed through the air, and a groan wrenched free of the crowd, horror too great for words.
The disguised executioner lifted up the severed head of the King by his hair, the nightcap tumbling to the boards. Weeping and praying filled the air as the soldiers dragged the body clear and loaded it into a coffin draped with black velvet.
Before they were even finished, a clatter broke the grief. Horsemen advanced from the far end of King Street and the interior side of Holbein Gate, not too fast, but with enough deliberate menace to achieve their aim: the people broke ranks and scattered as best they could. Some brave few dodged beneath the scaffold to dip their handkerchiefs in the blood—a few even dared the soldiers by vaulting the railings—but most began to flee.
Even the rooftops were not safe. Shouts arose from the gate; turning, Antony saw soldiers climbing over the leads. They paid little notice to the people around them, though, instead moving forward with purpose.
His hand moved without him thinking, closing around Lune’s arm like steel. Then he realized she was looking the other way, toward the buildings that fronted the Privy Garden behind them—toward a second troop of soldiers, approaching from the other direction. And they, like the others, caught his eye in a way he had come to recognize.
Even before one of them pointed and called to his men, Antony knew their target.
“They—” Lune began to say, but he cut her off.
“Run.”
The Banqueting House rose to their right, but that would only trap them on the roofs. Discarding propriety and her pretense of age, Lune kilted up her skirts and leapt forward. Antony didn’t let himself think; he just followed her. For an instant he felt weightless; then the artillery platform below rushed up with terrible speed. White heat flared through his right knee as he hit and rolled to the side. It was more by accident than design that his momentum carried him off the boards and onto the street before the soldiers could recover from their surprise.
Lune heard his cry of pain and moved to help him. Antony shoved her forward. “Go!” She needed no second encouragement. Around the base of the scaffold, through the scattering crowds—a horse blocked their path and they dodged right, into the arch of the Court Gate and the Palace Court beyond it.
“Sir Prigurd—” Lune said, twisting to look back.
“Will buy time for us to get away. Those were fae, Lune, and I do not think they were yours.”
The Palace Court wasn’t empty. Nor were he and Lune the first to come through; ahead they saw other onlookers being wrestled aside by the soldiers stationed there. Antony swore a blistering oath and hurled himself left, into a narrow passageway that ran past the Comptroller’s rooms. Whitehall Palace was a God-forsaken maze; when the passage ended, they had to go right, into another courtyard.
One glance at Lune told him it had been too long since she came here; she was more lost than he. Praying his own memory served him correctly, Antony went left again, through an even narrower passage that twisted almost back on itself before ending in yet another courtyard.
But this one opened back onto King Street. They were far enough from the scaffold now that the soldiers paid them little mind, and the convolutions of Whitehall did them one service; their faerie pursuers had lost them for the moment.
He would not count them safe, though, until they reached the Onyx Hall. “The river,” Antony said.
Lune shook her head. “A wherry would make us easy targets. They’ll watch for that. Can you continue?”
“I will,” Antony said grimly, and limped toward Charing Cross.
WESTMINSTER AND LONDON : January 30, 1649
Something ached beneath Lune’s breastbone, deeper than grief or despair. She felt as if the ground beneath her might fall away at any moment, as if the world had lost some fundamental solidity.
The King is dead.
She hurried through the streets with Antony at her side and her eyes burned, dry and unblinking.
The King is dead.
It shivered through her marrow. The King is dead; long live the King—But no. By decree of Parliament, young Charles did not yet succeed to his father’s place. The throne was empty. It had sat empty before, between the death of one sovereign and the coronation of another, but that was a different suspension—the hesitation between one breath and the next. This was purgatory, without a promised end.
It m
eant nothing. The news would reach the Prince, the new King, soon enough; people would declare him regardless. He was King by the grace of God, not Parliament. Their law meant nothing.
And yet it meant far too much.
England had no King. And on some deep level, the spiritual bedrock of the land, that absence rang like a terrible brazen bell.
She could not afford to think on it, not until they reached safety, and they were not there yet. Despite the fierce cold, sweat stood out in beads on Antony’s face. She hadn’t stopped to think when she leapt from the roof; he was human, and no longer young. His limp worsened with every furlong, but he forced himself onward—now that she had made it clear she would not leave him behind.
The closest entrance was the only one to breach the City’s boundaries; the tunnel opened inside the wall, but gave out into the filth of the River Fleet. Even were she willing to brave that sewer, the hag of the Fleet might not let them pass. They would have to go through Ludgate to the Fish Street arch—
No. Feidelm had been unable to guess the purpose for which the Red Branch was sent to London, but it seemed clear they intended to strike at either Lune or Antony. Or both. Which meant, if they were clever, they would place a force at Ludgate, where the Queen and Prince would be most likely to pass.
How many knights had Conchobar sent? There had been eight at King Street. But the oak man might have seen only one group; there could be more. Surely, though, they could not be enough to guard all the entrances, or the gates into the City.
They were already on Fleet Street; she had to make a decision. Glancing at Antony, seeing his clenched jaw, Lune knew he could not make it to Islington and the Goodemeades. They would have to risk it.
“Follow me,” she said, and turned north on Fetter Lane. Passing the lesser Inns of Court, they crossed the Fleet at Turnagain Lane and came in through Newgate. The skin between her shoulder blades crawled, expecting an arrow at any moment, but none came. They reached the butchers’ shambles, and Lune helped Antony down the steps into a cellar that ceased to be a cellar as they traversed it.
In Ashes Lie Page 18
