Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “You claim so? Had we not slipped your grasp in King Street, we would have been prisoners from the execution onward. Later, by order of the traitor Ifarren Vidar, you were marching our person and that of Lord Antony to the cells beneath the Tower. Were it not for Benjamin Hipley’s intervention, you would have carried out that order. Wouldn’t you? ”
Prigurd’s shoulders jerked, and the chain binding his wrists rattled. He shrank even further into himself. “Y—Your Grace remembers the execution. I was there. I was protected. When Hipley started singing...it didn’t hurt me at all.”
It was so unexpected, Lune’s anger faltered. Was he telling the truth? She remembered the psalm washing over her, deflected by the tithe.
Which all of them had eaten, before going to Westminster. Not Essain and Mellehan, who did not accompany them—but Prigurd had.
She should have noticed the incongruity. Had she been thinking at all clearly that day, she would have. But with the death of the King ringing in her bones and Vidar upon her throne, such lesser considerations had fled her mind. And later, when she had more leisure, she had not given it a second thought.
Yet why should he have carried out such a ruse?
Irritation sparked, irrationally. She had granted him this audience believing she knew what path she would follow. Now, thanks to his revelation, she could not condemn him out of hand—however much she wanted to. Having chosen to hear him publicly, she had to ask him the question all her subjects, like her, wanted answered. “Why?”
Prigurd’s head rose just a hair, then dragged itself farther down. Had he tried to look her in the face, she would have ordered him to drop his gaze, and he knew it. He had lost the right to behave so familiarly. “I wanted to be loyal, your Majesty.”
If that was supposed to excite mercy, it failed; her rage recovered from its stumble. Rising from her throne, Lune spat, “Then why did you betray me to Vidar?”
“Because of Kentigern.” The anguished whisper, tearing from the giant’s great chest, still carried through the hall. “Majesty—he was my brother. He asked it of me, he—he told me we owed it to Halgresta—he was all the family I had left!”
She did not want to pity him. Prigurd was an idiot, a blind fool, too easily led by others; she should never have given him command of the Onyx Guard. But the mistake was of her own creation: she had always known him to be the only one of the three Nellt siblings moved by true duty and loyalty.
Which bound him from two directions. His sister dead, his brother exiled, Prigurd must have felt his failure keenly. And Kentigern—less cunning than Halgresta, but just as vicious, and utterly without principles—had used that to manipulate Prigurd into betraying his Queen on behalf of his kin.
An error Prigurd had tried, in his pathetic way, to remedy.
Lune gestured sharply at Bonecruncher. “During the retaking of the Hall—what did the traitor do?”
The barguest pointed one hooked claw at a fetch in his group. “He brought the giant in. Said he found him hiding in his chambers.”
“I didn’t fight,” Prigurd insisted.
“Silence!” Lune’s shoulders ached with tension. Kneeling humbly, awaiting judgment, Prigurd infuriated her, because now she had to decide what to do with him. A mortal could be imprisoned, to be let out when old, or left there until dead; Lune had no such luxury with her immortal subjects. Locking him back in the dungeon would only postpone the problem.
Unless, of course, the Onyx Guard murdered him in his cell. Which was entirely possible.
I must execute him myself, or send him away; he cannot stay here. And if she killed him, it would annihilate any chance of healing the breach in her court. No one could expect mercy from her then. If exiled, though, he would be a ready pawn for her enemies.
Once, this court had possessed a gem that could bind anyone, faerie or mortal, to a specified ban, bringing death to those who broke it. And for one sick, horrifying instant, Lune wished she still had it to hand.
She turned to hide her face from the watching fae, and seated herself once more upon the throne when she had mastered her wrenching repugnance. Must this be my fate? By ruling London, am I doomed to become like Invidiana?
It must not be. “Prigurd Nellt,” she said, coldly calm once more. “Do you abjure Ifarren Vidar, Nicneven of Fife, Conchobar of Ulster, and all their allies?”
The giant raised his gaze as far as the hem of her skirts and placed one massive fist over his heart. “Your Majesty—I will never again oppose you, the Prince, or the Onyx Court. I will take no action against you, and I will keep no secret that might threaten you. I will never again raise my hand against you or any of your subjects. This I swear, in ancient Mab’s name.”
Her heart beat painfully in her breast. An oath had not been her intent—not after Cerenel. She had some idea of how to frighten Prigurd sufficiently to keep him away from her opponents. And a vow so broad... his choice of terms was nothing short of asinine. It rendered him as useless to her as he was against her.
But bound in such manner, she could release him without fear.
Sun and Moon. Were my courtiers bound half so stringently, I need never again fear rebellion from within.
Another sickening thought. Parliament and the Army had tried that course, demanding varied and repeated oaths from members of the puppet Commons and other officials. The result had been to cheapen them into mere words. She would not risk the same here.
She had to reply. Lune gathered her wits and said, “We accept and recognize your vow. Despite it, however, your face is an unwelcome reminder of your treachery, and the price this court has paid for it. We therefore exile you from London and its environs, not to come within one day’s journey, on pain of imprisonment and further punishment. Go now, and let us not look upon you again.”
Prigurd’s breath caught. Slowly, awkwardly, he bowed until his face almost touched the floor. Then he stumbled to his feet and stood, broken-shouldered, while Bonecruncher unlocked his chains. No one spoke a word as he turned and made his way from the chamber, steps dragging, and out the shattered doors.
When he was gone, Lune said, “And now to our third matter.”
Every eye was upon her as she formed the words, enunciating them with razor-edged precision. “Bring me Ifarren Vidar.”
ST. MARTIN’S LANE, LONDON: August 14, 1659
“You should have waited for me,” Antony said.
“I could not.” Lune wore a different guise today, a younger version of the stern woman he had accompanied to the King’s execution. Whether she wished not to show the Montrose face again, or was thinking back to that terrible day, he could not guess. “I must return the court to order as quickly as I can, and that means addressing such matters.”
Impatience flared at the edges of his temper. That was good, in its way; he had the vigor to feel impatient. Owing, at least in part, to the vast meal he was currently gulping down. He had gone to church that morning, for the first time in far too long, and thanked God for the gift of his life—and the wife who had preserved it. “I am not so far away. You could have sent a messenger for me.”
The faerie woman shook her head. “No. You must stay above, and reestablish your roots in this world.”
There was a grotesque irony in her words: that, having wasted halfway to death because he was too long outside the Onyx Hall, he should nearly have killed himself by flinging his spirit so deeply into its embrace. In his waking moments, Antony could remember little of what he felt after pulling the ceiling down, but it returned to haunt him in dreams.
Compared to that, the world of this small house was gloriously solid and bright. “But I cannot stay here forever; I must come below again, and soon.”
Lune hesitated. He wished she would show her true face; masked by humanity, she was harder for him to read. “Antony...do you wish to?”
“What?” He put down the pheasant bone he had just torn half-clean. “Wish to stay here, or to come below?”
“To be free of us.”
She spoke the words with an abruptness that could only be born of inner turmoil forcibly chained. Staring, Antony fumbled for a napkin and wiped his fingers clean, then rose from his chair. “Lune...”
He got no further than her name; he was not sure what to say. She lifted her chin and went on. “I do not know if it’s possible. But we could try. Your bond to my world has almost killed you, more than once, and I know it has almost cost you your marriage. I never meant for this to bring you pain, but it has. I would spare you more, if I can.”
To be free of Faerie...he could not think what to feel about that. I have been with them two-thirds of my life. The realm beneath his feet was as much a part of his world as the one he stood in now.
But perhaps he was not so much of her world. “You have no more use for me, then.”
“No!” Lune reined herself in, but that unguarded cry rang in his ears. “If anything, we are of no use to you.”
The conversation was stumbling further and further from reason. “No use? How can you say that?”
She laughed bitterly. “What have we done for you, for your world, that you can say has bettered it? I do not mean the distant past. Since the start of these struggles, we have been leaves in a flood, deluding ourselves that we control where the torrent will carry us.
“When England was a Queen and her court, we—the fae—had some chance of steering a course. But England is grown too big for us; its concerns are grown too many. It is a hydra with a thousand heads. Parliament is the heart of this land now, speaking in contradictory voices, and I cannot control it by any honorable means.”
The words stung like wasps. Antony had never heard Lune like this, scourging herself with her failures. He could not say she was wrong in the substance of it—but what provoked her to such self-recrimination?
Me. I have done it. He saw it in the way her gaze fixed on him. Her world had nearly destroyed him, and the guilt of that tore deeply into her.
No other fae he knew would care so much, with the possible exception of the Goodemeades. It was the love of a friend, such as her kind were scarcely capable of, at least for his kind.
And it blinded her. “You may be right,” he said quietly, and did something he had not done for years; he took her by the arms, fingers curling into the cambric that draped her shoulders. “The whole of England is too much for us alone. We cannot control it, any more than Charles could, or John Pym, or even Oliver Cromwell. But we can help, as any of her loyal people do, for love of their home. There are smaller moments, and there is London; you should not give up on those. Certainly I will not.”
Was it accident or conscious choice that altered her eyes? When she looked up at him, they shone silver—Lune’s eyes in a mortal’s face. And her voice, saying, “You wish to stay?”
“I do,” Antony confirmed. Even if the enchantment of his bond released him, he would not abandon her. “And together we will do what we can, however small or great.”
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: October 25, 1659
Hasty work had converted Sir Mellehan’s former chamber over to an armory, while its previous occupant enjoyed the hospitality of the dungeon. Racks held the shining brass of the muskets and pistols Wayland Smith forged for Lune and Antony’s army—locked away for the time being, except for those few Sir Peregrin permitted to trusted hands.
“We can provide you with means to carry these back to Berkshire,” Lune said to the sprite who stood near the door.
She heard Irrith’s weight shift. “That won’t be necessary, madam. He’s Wayland Smith. He makes things; he doesn’t keep them.”
Lune suppressed a smile at the awkward manner of Irrith’s address. The wild faerie was learning courtesy, but did not yet use it well.
Keeping the firearms made her uneasy, but she recognized that sending them back to Wayland would not solve anything. Over time, the fae adopted any mortal thing that interested them; sooner or later, someone would have picked up a gun. And she might need them again.
She took her hand from a musket stock and faced Irrith. “You may tell your King that I am looking into the fulfillment of my promise. The Army has dissolved Parliament—”
“Again?” said Irrith in disgust. She was learning mortal history, too, and found it inexplicable.
“Again. But I think it shall not last for long. Without the Rump, the Army has nothing to legitimate itself save the sword; we shall have new war or a new Parliament before long. Either way, they have greater concerns than the maintenance of your Horse, but there are other means of achieving it. The people are tired of having Puritan morality imposed on them from without.”
The Horse had gone back to its hillside; Lune wondered if Irrith would follow suit. The sprite asked endless questions about the mortals of London, but passing fancies were common among fae. She might not return.
Concealing her disappointment at that thought, Lune said, “And please also convey to your King what I have said regarding Vidar. I will reward handsomely anyone who brings word of him to me.”
The delicate face broke into a fierce smile. “I should not like to be your enemy, madam. I’ll carry your message, and search for Vidar myself.”
THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, LONDON: December 5, 1659
Throwing roof tiles and chunks of filthy ice had seemed like a good idea at the time. London’s apprentices had presented a petition to the City’s Common Council; they wanted a new Parliamentary election, or at least the return of the Rump ejected in October. When Dendy showed up to post a proclamation from the Army’s so-called Committee of Safety, outlawing petitions, it didn’t take much encouragement from the handful of disguised pucks and goblins among them to provoke the apprentices into standing up for their demands. And the sergeant-at-arms, ducking the missiles, had withdrawn with his men.
But now a regiment had come, with horsemen to back them up. It didn’t stop the apprentices; a knot of them descended upon one unfortunate soldier not wise enough to keep up with his fellows, and disarmed him by force. Antony could not get through the crowd to them as they kicked the man to the ground outside the Royal Exchange.
And what could he do, if he did? Tell them he was an alderman of London? The Court of Aldermen was not in high esteem at the moment, though Antony had been working since his restoration to better that. He might join the soldier on the ground.
The regiment’s commander was going to carry out the duty Dendy had failed at, come the forces of Hell itself. Ignoring insults from the crowd and the football some of the apprentices were kicking about, disregarding—or perhaps oblivious to—the fate of his soldier, Hewson was reading out the proclamation in a determined bellow.
And then someone threw a stone.
Antony didn’t see where the first one came from. He saw some of those following, though, as other apprentices took up the idea and began to pelt the soldiers with anything that came to hand. The shopkeepers of the Exchange had long since cleared away, but there was rubbish aplenty, and some of the apprentices had strong arms.
This goes too far. He craned his neck and caught the eye of a starveling beggar child on the roof, crouching on the shadowed balcony of the clock tower; the puck gestured helplessly in response. Fae were much better at sowing chaos than stopping it. Christ. I’ve started a riot—just as Vidar used to.
Then the child shrieked a warning, his thin voice unintelligible over the clamor.
Antony cupped one hand to his ear, uselessly. The child was waving his arms wildly. What does he—
A shot shattered the air, deafening in the confines of the courtyard. Someone screamed. Antony ducked, instinctively sheltering behind the brawny apprentice in front of him.
God help us all. The soldiers were firing on the crowd.
The mass of bodies became a flood of rats, battling their way toward the arch that led to the street. Antony was buffeted from all sides, stumbling, keeping his feet only because to fall was to die, in this madness. Out onto Cornhill; he wen
t with the current, which took him left, toward Gracechurch Street. All around him, apprentices split off into alleys and byways; he kept on straight, thinking vaguely to lose himself in the Leadenhall Market up ahead, and to hide among the patrons there—should the soldiers follow so far.
But it seemed no one was pursuing them. Antony staggered to a halt at the entrance to Leadenhall, air rasping in his lungs, and bent nearly double with coughing. One of the young men had followed his same path, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Careful, old man.”
Spasm ended, Antony forced himself upright. “I am perfectly—” He choked on the last word and nearly started coughing again. If a soldier had ridden by and poleaxed Henry in passing, Antony’s son could not have looked more stunned. “Father?”
The boy sounded disbelieving, as well he might. Antony was dressed to blend in with the apprentices; the Court of Aldermen would need to believe they were telling the truth when they promised the Army they had nothing to do with the riot. Henry’s face settled into sardonic lines. “I didn’t know you fought for the good old cause.”
Antony almost laughed. Good old cause? Henry was scarcely old enough to remember the days when that phrase had been coined, and he was hardly an Army man, to talk of fighting for it. “The Commonwealth? Not hardly—nor the Rump, neither. I’d fight for my seat in Parliament back, if I thought it might do any good. But since it will not, I side with your apprentice friends: our soldier-masters should at least arrange a new and free election.”
What possessed him to say it, he did not know. Even supposing he wanted to break their tradition of never discussing politics, the entrance to Leadenhall was hardly the place to do it. But Henry had caught him off guard.
Predictably, his son’s expression turned mutinous. “Of course you wish your old place. You and your friends would vote for the restoration of the monarchy before the opening prayers were done.”
Henry had no sense of discretion—but then neither did he, it seemed. They were far too public. Antony took his son by the arm and dragged him, protesting, around the corner of the market, into a narrow alley reeking of piss. After years of skulking about London, hiding from Vidar and Cromwell alike, he knew all the hidden byways.
In Ashes Lie Page 29
