Changelings at Court

by Ken Altabef

  “He’s bad off, that's for sure.” Spagnelli spread the lamplighter’s grimy coat open and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  “What can we do?” Nora asked. So many powerful feelings gushed to the surface at once, making her dizzy. She was concerned for his life, afraid for him, and very angry with him at the same time. The plan had been to distract Cavendish, not to fight him to the death. But she had to grudgingly admire the effort. When Threadneedle got into character as the Green Man, he went all the way. He couldn’t run. He had a reputation to protect. For a mythical character? How could that be worth dying for? There was much more to the Green Man than she had ever realized.

  Or had it been just foolish pride?

  “Hold tight,” advised Spagnelli. “Hold tight. First order of business—let me get a field dressing on these wounds. Is it just the chest only?”

  Nora forced herself to focus. :”There’s a gash at the back of the knee.”

  The theatre manager tore a strip of linen from a raggedy costume close at hand and bound up the leg. “Not bleeding much.”

  “That’s a good sign,” said Nora uselessly.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood already.” Spagnelli gave her a look that sent a shiver down Nora’s spine. Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all. Oh, dear God, was he too far gone?

  Nora tore open the rest of Threadneedle’s shirt. Ignoring the sticky mess of blood that coated his abdomen she pressed her ear to his bare chest. His naked flesh felt cool against her cheek, flushed as she was with worry. Threadneedle’s heartbeat was quick but sounded weak and thready. Hot tears ran down the side of her nose.

  “We must get help. There has to be a doctor...”

  “For him?” Spagnelli’s eyes shot to the pool of purplish faery blood oozing through the makeshift bandage he was tightening around Threadneedle’s belly.

  “The Barrow Downes!” Nora exclaimed. “It’s our only hope. The fay folk have ways of healing. They can help him. Oh, I pray they can.”

  Spagnelli cinched his knot. “I suppose there’s nothing else for it. I’ll borrow a carriage from a friend down the road. Won’t take but a minute, I’m sure.” He stripped off his white shirt, now stained with a broad streak of purple across his chest. “Excuse my bare skin, dear lady,” he said as he turned and yanked a ridiculous red and yellow gypsy shirt from its peg on the rack. “Won’t be a minute.”

  He shot out the door.

  Left alone with her friend, the little room seemed to close in on Nora. This can’t be how he ends, she thought, stretched out on a cot in a dingy back room of the Menagerie. Now she had her first respite from the frantic activity of the past few hours, she let herself collapse onto a rickety rattan chair.

  After the fight in the gardens and the illusion that had frightened off Cavendish, she’d not had a moment’s rest. Threadneedle had disappeared from the scene of the battle by altering his appearance once again into the form of the lowly lamplighter. Nora had walked him away from Marylebone, putting on the illusion of a middle-aged factory worker, disguising her dress as a drab suit of gray clothes. Threadneedle had trained himself very well. As long as he remained conscious, his grip on the illusion was absolute. As he drifted in and out of unconsciousness his face returned to that of an olive-skinned faery, but he had wisely taken the precaution of actually dressing as the lamplighter.

  Nora kept his face nestled in her shoulder. In the darkened streets she seemed nothing more than a common man, helping a drunken friend home. Nobody paid the two soot-stained figures much heed. Threadneedle pushed himself forward, grunting with the pain that made every step a torment.

  Nora stood up, pacing anxiously across the room, if you could call one foray across the room pacing. She returned to the cot immediately; she didn’t want to leave his side for even that long. She bent over his prostrate form, smoothing sweat-soaked hair from his forehead and pressed her lips to his cool brow.

  “I won't let you die,” she said softly. “Not like this.”

  Spagnelli returned and the two carried Threadneedle out the stage door. He could no longer walk at all. They lay him down inside the rear of the carriage on an old blanket Spagnelli had spread out to catch the blood. So much blood, and still such a long way to Barrow Downes.

  “Two strong horses,” Spagnelli remarked. “Well rested.”

  It was several hours ride to Barrow Downes even with a pair of fresh horses. Nora didn't know if he could last that long, and she didn’t even know if the faeries would be able to help him. She knew so very little of them. She’d denied her heritage for so many years, refusing to visit the faeries’ sanctuary with her mother and brother. Only in recent weeks had she embraced her dual nature, and haltingly at that, when she thought it would help with her acting career. But with Threadneedle it was different. The faery spy had shown her much more of what was at stake, what it meant to him to be a faery, to work for a larger cause, the same one championed by her father. Through it all, Threadneedle remained an enigmatic character, but his commitment to a cause that was greater than himself impressed her. She hoped he would not have to die for that cause. She very desperately hoped that.

  Spagnelli ascended to the front seat, launching a new set of complaints about his aching spine. Nora closed the carriage door and came round the other side. Suddenly she saw a man standing beside the carriage. She could hardly make out his features in the darkened street.

  “Miss Meadows? Is that you?”

  As the man stepped closer, Nora recognized Charles Thurston. He had dressed for a night on the town, but he didn’t seem to have been drinking. He was clear-eyed and steady on his feet. When he saw her disheveled state, his face went very serious.

  “What’s happened?” he asked. “Who was that?”

  “A friend. He’s been injured. We have to take him to St. Bartholomew’s right away.”

  “What friend?”

  “A friend of Master Spagnelli. You don’t know him.” Nora had neither time nor energy to come up with any more artful story than that. At least it was the truth of sorts.

  Thurston wrinkled his nose, looking more closely at her again. She hadn’t given a care to what she looked like, her dress soiled and torn, a splotch of purple blood all across the neckline and sleeves. He was rightfully concerned. “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine, but we must hurry.”

  “I’d hoped we’d be able to talk. I want to know you take me seriously.”

  She realized this was no chance encounter. He’d come looking for her. How long had he been wandering round the streets of Covent Garden waiting for her to show up? It had been more than a week since his clumsy proposal, if that’s what it really had been, and they had not yet had the chance to discuss it.

  “I can’t talk now.”

  “Of course not. But listen—I’ll come with. Perhaps I can help.” He took her wrist, gently, warmly.

  “No!” she said firmly, struggling to make up some lie to brush him off. She couldn’t think of anything. There wasn’t any time. She didn’t know what to say. She had no real excuse.

  “You can’t. You just can’t. Please, I’ll explain it all later. I promise.”

  She removed his hand from her wrist. There was nothing else she could say. He was obviously hurt and offended. She didn’t want that. She’d been so swept up she’d had no chance to sort out her feelings for Thurston. Or for Threadneedle. That kiss with Threadneedle at the docks, so spur of the moment, so unexpected. Had it been just the heat of the moment, or something much more real? As their lips pressed together she’d felt something much more than just physical contact. She’d tasted his confidence and thoughtfulness, his genuine kindness, and all the complex and fiery passions of a faery. She’d tasted his soul. That had been very real. So different from Thurston’s clumsy attempts at affection.

  “We have to go.”

  She ascended the front seat. Thurston still stood close beside the carriage, too close, gazing dumbly back at them.

  “Step b
ack, Mr. Thurston,” she called down.

  Thurston stepped back from the carriage, looking down at his hand. She had left it sticky with blood. Purple blood. Oh dear. Perhaps he wouldn't notice the color in the dark.

  Chapter 24

  October 24, 1760

  St. James’s Palace, London

  It had been a long day. Ah, thought King George, but they are all long days now, aren’t they?

  He sat at his desk, completely exhausted and out of breath. The day’s correspondence had been stacked neatly before him, right next to the previous day’s pile, still untouched, and the ledgers and the maps. He still hadn’t decided whether or not to send troops to support the Prussians against the Austrian Field Marshal Josef Daun. Or rather, William Pitt had not yet decided. The Austrians had taken refuge on the Süptitzer Heights just west of Torgau and seemed potentially vulnerable. How many men did they have? George thumbed through the stack of handwritten reports. Forty-two thousand infantry, ten thousand cavalries, and upwards of two hundred cannons, at last count. No doubt about it, Torgau was going to be bloody indeed. How many casualties? Waiting on his order.

  “Not now,” he said. Then, considering he might have admonished the stack of papers rather too sternly, he added, “Perhaps tomorrow.”

  Matters of state were best dealt with on a fresh start to the day, after a decent night’s sleep, if that were possible. If he didn’t put the war out of his mind right this minute, he’d never get to sleep.

  He’d suffered altogether too much commotion already today. His hands were still shaking. He made a sudden and firm resolution—no more lottery tickets. No more secret meetings in the Pleasure Gardens, no more street thugs like William Cavendish. No more.

  If not for that kind man in the park—what was his name? The Earl of Durham or some such…

  He took up the little brass hand bell from his blotter and rang it several times.

  The Earl of Dunham and all his talk of faeries. Faeries in England again…

  A brisk knock at his bedroom door. He almost didn’t have the strength to answer it, but finally mustered, “Come in, come in.”

  Jacob Schroeder, groom of the King’s bedchamber, entered with his usual brisk stride. “Good evening, sire.”

  “Good evening,” rasped George. He hadn’t realized his throat was so dry. “I am ready for bed.”

  “Of course, sir.” Schroeder jumped to it, retrieving the King’s bedclothes from his dresser and laying them carefully atop his four-poster bed. He stepped briskly to the desk. “Let’s get you out of that greatcoat, sire.”

  I suppose I’ll have to stand up, thought George, though he felt altogether too tired to do so. He struggled, pushing up against the arms of his leather wingchair. Just when he thought he might not make it, Schroeder steadied his elbow. George stood still, wheezing considerably, as his man removed his coat, jacket and shirt. Having caught his breath sufficiently, the King let down his own trousers.

  Too much excitement. That was the cause of all his trouble. Another resolution—no more excursions from the palace after supper. A man of his age should live a more sedentary life in the evenings. He must never see Cavendish again. Just then it struck him that the rogue might very well have met his end this night anyway. Hadn’t he been dueling with the Green Man?

  “Have you ever seen him?” he asked.

  “Who’s that, sire?” asked Schroeder, without pausing from what he was doing, which was tying up the King’s nightshirt at the rear.

  “The Green Man, the Green Man… I think I may have seen him this night.”

  “Oh? I hadn’t thought he was real, but if your highness has actually seen him…”

  “He’s real, very real. Ghastly fellow, really. Hah! Maybe I should send him against the French.”

  When Schroeder finished fussing over his clothes, the groomsman flipped the bed cover open at a precise forty-five degree angle and invited the King to rest himself. George sat on the edge instead. “Perhaps a taste before bed. Yes, I think so. A taste would do the trick nicely.”

  Mr. Schroeder seemed taken aback by this request. An idiotically servile expression still plastered on his face, his eyes ranged across the bedroom.

  “The rum, man! Go and get it.” George jabbed his finger at the desk.

  Schroeder snapped to, and quickly retrieved a bottle and a crystal glass from the top drawer. He poured a generous nightcap and presented the glass to George. George threw the drink back with great satisfaction. There was nothing like a little nip at bedtime to warm up the belly. “Too much excitement,” he muttered. “Too much. Say, my man, do you think there are still faeries in England? Living underground?”

  Schroeder seemed initially disturbed by this comment as well, but a playful smile crept across his thin lips. “I can’t say, sir.”

  “What?”

  Schroeder raised his voice. “I can’t say!”

  George handed back the glass and stretched out in the bed. Faeries in England. Grayson—that was his name--Grayson would grant them the land. A place of their own. But of course they must plead fealty to the crown. And he could tour the area in his finest carriage. He would meet them, he would talk with them. So many wonderful possibilities. He dared not think that he might see her again. But if he did… just for one moment…

  Schroeder doused the lamp and took up his place, standing silently by the desk.

  “Good night, Schroeder.”

  “Good night, sire.”

  George awoke with a start.

  “Oh…”

  His head hurt as if he’d been drinking. How many shots of rum? He could only recall the one. Where was his groomsman? Who was his groomsman this night? Schroeder, wasn’t it?

  “Schroeder?” he rasped. He rose up on one elbow and peered toward the desk. His man was not there. His morning chocolate had been laid out on the end table beside the bed, so he must have already come and gone. What time? Early morning, just after dawn, judging by the pale sunlight oozing in through the window.

  What had he been dreaming about? Faeries?

  The sunlight irritated his one good eye. He should have had Schroeder pull down the shade. And then he saw it.

  A shadow passed before the window, melting into or coming out of, the warm amber sunlight. His heart fluttered in his chest. He settled down onto his pillows, afraid to move a muscle lest he dispel the moment.

  The golden silhouette lingered. He could not see the lady’s face with the early morning sun as stark backdrop, but her outline set his heart to pattering. The figure was tall and graceful, long necked and great-bosomed. Her long honey-dewed hair! Those colorful, paper-thin wings!

  “A thousand times, I thought of you,” he whispered. Please, please come closer, he dare not ask. “I used to wander the woods and search for you.”

  As she stepped toward him, the beatific, rounded contours of her face took shape. He marveled at the high cheekbones, the plump rosy cheeks, the full sensuous lips. Her eyes glittered just as he remembered, like icy blue gemstones.

  He spoke again, hoping to draw her ever closer. “I breathed only for you. I looked for you in the music of Handel, and thought I glimpsed you there. But not often. I sought you out among the courtesans of Hanover and Saxony, and thought for a moment I glimpsed you in my wife Caroline—for she was tall and stately, fair-haired, and well-bosomed as well, but with her I could only pretend.”

  “You loved her,” said the faery goddess.

  “Well… ehm… as best I could. I could never appreciate any woman’s beauty but that it approximated your own. Oftentimes when I bedded her, I had a picture in my mind—a vision of you.”

  “Oh sir, you go too far.” She sat gracefully on the edge of the bed, her face turned full to face him. He dare not move. If this be a dream he did not want it to end.

  “Ich liebe dich,” he breathed.

  “Oh, how very flattering.”

  She reached out and he was amazed at the lithe elegance of her bare arm, the slender wr
ist, the long unearthly fingers. Two fingertips brushed the front of his nightshirt, tracing their way seductively from his collarbone and down toward his left nipple. George tried to sit up, but she pushed him gently back down.

  She laughed. Her rounded lips pulled back across perfect teeth, so white and straight, so very appealing.

  “I dreamt of this moment,” he admitted.

  “Of course you did.”

  “My heart is beating fit to burst.”

  She smiled again. “Poor dear. Don’t worry. All will be a’right now. I know what you want.”

  She leaned over him, her full, olive-toned breasts straining against a corset of ribbed bark and green dulcet leaves. Her lips moved so close, he could feel her sweet breath on the nape of his neck. Again, he dare not move.

  She moved forward further still and pressed her soft lips against his cheek.

  George could not breathe. Lights of every color popped and danced before his eyes. His excitement swelled even greater than in younger days. The kiss stretched on and he was beset by several intense sensations at once. His head ached, his groin ached, both seeking some type of release. His head exploded first.

  Meadowlark stepped away from the bed. He wiped the kiss from his lips with the back of his hand.

  For a moment he, too, was dizzy. Causing the faery stroke took more out of him than he had expected. It was a tricky matter. To pull it off he’d had to turn the healing powers of the faeries to an opposite end, to form a link and then seek disruption instead of resolution, to turn the victim’s every breath and pulse against him, to burst his heart. He’d had to first make the King completely helpless. The victim must trust you, lay their souls open to the killing stroke. In this case not so very hard—all it took was a pretty face and a big pair of tits.

  George stared at him still, eyes bulging from his pained, startled, dead face.

  “Ponzy bastard.”

  Meadowlark reached for the glass of liquid chocolate on the end table and took a long, satisfying gulp.