The Herald of Day

by Nancy Northcott

  “I appreciate your concern, but what has you worried? Why are you still awake?”

  “I had another dream, a terrible dream.”

  “Tell me about it.” His eyes narrowed in concentration.

  She bit her lip and looked away, avoiding the newly precious sight of him. “I dreamed about you.”

  Her heart twisted. How could she say this to him? Somehow, she must.

  She took a deep breath and faced him. “In the dream—Lord Wyndon accused you of breaking into his house. The two of you fought a duel. With swords, but he attacked you magically, and … Richard, you died.”

  Chapter 15

  The next day, Richard met Kit, Cabot, and Jeremy in Kit’s London rooms. When Kit had poured ale for them all, Richard dropped onto the wooden settle by the hearth and told them about Miranda Willoughby’s latest dream.

  “What are you going to do?” Kit asked, passing the ale around. A lock of dark hair fell into his face, and he shoved it back impatiently.

  “Try not to fight a duel with Wyndon, obviously.” Richard answered in a dry voice.

  Kit added, “I heard about George’s betrothal. God’s feet, Richard, you cannot let that stand.”

  “I cannot stop it.” Richard took a long draught of the bitter brew. “George is of age, and he’s living in Wyndon’s pocket.”

  The unseasonable snow had given way to biting cold that suited Richard’s mood. So did the Spartan surroundings, leased chambers in a formerly grand palace in the Strand. Some of its neighbors had already been pulled down, while others, like this former home of the Duke of Wayland, had been divided into tenements.

  Using these rooms only once or twice a year, Kit saw no reason for elaborate furnishings. Of course, that would likely change when he married his Alice.

  Into the grim silence, Kit said, “I found something that may be a clue. Back when I first started reading about Richard III, when I was at Oxford, I talked to one of the dons about the Chronicle. He’d read that entire fifteenth-century bit, not only the parts about King Richard. I went through my notes last night and found something I’d forgotten. He said there was an account in the early part about a heresy trial, someone who claimed to have traveled through, and tinkered with, time.”

  Richard’s pulse kicked. “How could you forget that?”

  “I thought it was nonsense.” Kit shrugged. “But when you mentioned that bit about walking the path of death with a foot in life on either side, I knew I’d heard it before, just couldn’t recall where. It’s in my old notes.”

  “What else is in there?” Cabot asked, leaning forward in his seat.

  “Not much, alas. There was a bit about currents in time being like branches of a river, but who knows what that means?” Shaking his head, Kit added, “My old don was Gifted, so he’d thought that was worth noting, but he also thought it was nonsensical. We touched on it only briefly, in passing.”

  Richard asked, “Is he still teaching? Could you—”

  “Afraid not,” Kit answered. “He was rather old when I studied under him, and he died a few years back.” Frowning, he added, “Supposedly.”

  “That,” Jeremy said, “is worth looking into. It may be that the Chronicle wasn’t taken because of its material about King Richard at all.”

  “I’ll make inquiries among the old fellow’s friends,” Kit offered.

  Richard thanked him and turned to Jeremy, who occupied one of the chairs flanking the hearth. “What news from your archives?”

  “No changes spotted yet, and they’re back to 1667.” Jeremy shrugged. “I hope that means we haven’t yet looked far enough back to find the critical moment. I’m tempted to tell them to skip so the task goes faster, but if we do, we might miss something important.”

  Kit slid down in his chair, his feet thrust out toward the fire. “Has Miranda offered you anything helpful?”

  “Not much,” Richard answered, “though she has made substantial progress in using her powers.”

  Jeremy asked, “Have you learned any more about her?”

  Richard shrugged. “Only a bit. She’s well enough educated, though she has little to say.”

  “She may feel badly out of place,” Kit said. “Do you see much of her?”

  “Only for lessons and at meals. She seems sincere and, for a woman who worked in an inn and public house, somewhat naïve.”

  Richard stared out the window. Instead of the rain-wet street below, he saw her troubled blue eyes when he’d arrived home last night. He’d managed to avoid thinking of her in his arms, holding him close with her breasts pressed into his chest and his arms locked around her warm body. Kit’s question, though, brought the memory roaring back. Letting her go last night, doing the honorable thing, had been painful.

  “She has steel at her core,” he said softly.

  “I expect she needed it,” Jeremy commented.

  Silence fell, broken only by the sounds of the rain on the windows and the hiss of drops falling into the fire. Richard rubbed his tense neck. He should be thinking of this puzzle, but Miranda haunted him.

  “She’s an odd creature,” he mused, “a shy woman with inner resolve, a lower-class girl who doesn’t curry favor or seek to take advantage, a Gifted woman who fears her Gifts.”

  Softly, he added, “An independent creature who asks for little.”

  “All of that draws you,” Cabot said quietly.

  The words broke over Richard like a blow to the forehead, and he realized he’d spoken aloud. He rubbed a hand over his face. “It doesn’t matter. It can’t, because nothing about any of this promises a way to lift the family curse.”

  A wary light came into Jeremy’s eyes. Slowly, he said, “All this digging in the archives has turned up something of interest, Richard. Apparently deeds of great courage and daring can sometimes expiate a blood curse.”

  Hating the sudden stab of hope, Richard said, “Deeds like slaying a dragon, swimming a moat wearing mail, rescuing a fair maiden? Those sorts of deeds?”

  “I was thinking,” Jeremy replied, his gaze level, “of correcting an altered timestream.”

  “Don’t.” Richard’s sharp tone cut off Kit, who abruptly closed his mouth.

  Taking a deep breath, Richard softened his tone. “Jeremy, I know you mean well. I’m grateful you care. But you all know what the curse did to my parents. What it could do to me. Hope is the devil’s poison when it comes in vain. I won’t indulge it.”

  No one spoke. Richard watched the fire burn. His mother had never forgiven his father for the oath that had doomed Richard, their only son. How could any woman? The madness that often came upon the doomed earls, with no rhyme or reason as to which ones suffered it, only made matters worse.

  “You won’t go mad,” Cabot stated. “We won’t allow it.”

  Richard had to smile at that. Their loyalty would always be beyond question, even if those words were likely hollow. Not even magic could stop madness.

  “You know,” Kit said quietly, “none of us can put himself in your place when it comes to this family curse. I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to feel about it.”

  “But you’re about to?” Richard guessed.

  Kit shook his head. “I understand why you feel a duty to spare those unborn, even if that means they never come to be.” He looked down at his ale, turning his goblet between his hands. “Yet you must know anything George inherits, Wyndon or his heir will control. What will it mean for the folk of Hawkstowe if your lands fall into their hands?”

  What of your duty to them? he meant.

  Richard stared at him. Of his close friends, only Kit also held a title. Only he had been trained to consider those responsibilities.

  “I’ve been trying not to think of that,” Richard admitted. “Or of the disaster George will be as an earl.” Thinking of that, truly facing it, might force him down a path he’d forsworn.

  Which carried more weight—his duty to generations yet unborn or his family’s duty to the people on their
lands? He feared it was the latter, but saving his people led down a road fraught with other troubles.

  Slowly, Richard said, “If we can restore the true stream of history, that betrothal will likely come undone.”

  “Or not,” Cabot said. “We’ve no way to know which events are the result of the alterations in history and which are not.”

  “There’s no denying that.” Richard frowned. “Perhaps Morgan’s pool will give us an answer. Morgan’s handmaidens have consented to let us use its waters tomorrow night to explore Miranda’s visions.”

  “Took them long enough,” Jeremy commented.

  “They won’t allow anyone to use it,” Richard told him, “even at Pendragon, unless one of them is by. Tomorrow is the first night a handmaiden was available.”

  “A dangerous move,” Jeremy said, “using blood magic.”

  “Life is full of danger,” Richard replied. “Hiding from it never helps.”

  Kit’s faced paled. Doubling, he gripped his stomach.

  “Kit?” Richard sprang toward him as Jeremy rushed around the table.

  Reality collapsed, twisting in on itself. Darkness blotted out the world, then gave way to rolling, stinking purple-gray fog. Off-balance, Richard reached out for support. Into nothingness.

  A heartbeat later, the fog cleared. He staggered into a table and clutched it. Across it, Jeremy’s figure blurred, then became clear, as he grabbed for the table and missed. Jeremy crashed to the floor.

  The room spun. Richard shook his head and cleared his vision except for fuzziness at the edges. Steadying himself against the table, he lurched around it.

  “Jeremy?” The name emerged as a croak.

  He dropped to his knees beside his friend. “Jeremy!”

  Jeremy winced. Rising on an elbow, he said, “I hit my head on the table’s edge.” He pressed the heel of his other hand to his temple.

  “Let me see.” Richard brushed Jeremy’s brown hair aside carefully. “You’ve a knot coming up already but no blood.”

  “That’s a boon. Room’s not spinning anymore.” Jeremy pushed himself upright, blinking. “But it’s the wrong room. And where’s Kit?”

  Bracing Jeremy with one hand, Richard glanced around them. Kit’s parlor had become a paneled chamber hung with maroon damask, its corner bedstead covered and curtained in the same fabric. “This looks like the room you use when you’re at Lambeth.”

  “Because it is.” Jeremy’s lips set in a line. He hauled himself to his feet. “So what are we doing here?”

  Time shifts changed life and death—“Kit always comes to London this time of year. We should be in his rooms.”

  “Unless something happened to him,” Jeremy said. “I imagine Cabot’s at our house, but I’ll send someone to see.”

  “We must see about Kit. Can you travel as far as the Strand?”

  They raced to the stables, saddled mounts themselves, and rushed to the waterside. The horse ferry ride across the Thames seemed to last an age.

  The ride through Westminster and past Whitehall Palace seemed interminable. Richard and Jeremy pushed their mounts through the crowds on the Strand until they reached Wayland House. Ahead loomed Temple Bar, Christopher Wren’s elaborate, Portland stone gateway to the City of London. Statues of the king and his father still flanked the window above the arch. So the order of kingship, at least, had not changed.

  Wayland House, where they’d just been, lay ahead on their right, past Middle and Inner Temple Lanes. The two streets were lined with lawyers’ chambers and led to the river.

  Richard drew rein and stared at the house. The gray stone front wall looked tightly mortared and well kept. The gate itself, a double one like Richard’s, looked new, not worn and rain-bleached as it had been a short time ago.

  Richard turned to Jeremy, who was looking at him with fear stark in his eyes. Richard said, “I’ll ask.”

  They drew their mounts to the side, out of traffic. Richard dismounted, passed Jeremy his reins, and strode to the doorway beside the big gate.

  He knocked, and a man opened a panel in the door. Richard said, “I’m here to see Lord Havelock.”

  The man frowned. “This is Lord Wayland’s house,” he said. Richard’s heart plummeted, and the man added, “There’s no Lord Havelock here.”

  Damn. Richard said softly, “My mistake.”

  Shaking his head, he walked back to Jeremy and mounted.

  Jeremy said, “I feared this from the look of the house. Since it was divided into rooms to let, it hasn’t been as well maintained.”

  “Perhaps Kit’s merely not in London,” Richard said. But fear gnawed at his throat. Because of the White Rose dinner, Kit always came to the city in October.

  “If he’s in London, we should have word by the time we return to Lambeth. We should go there and consult the archives. We’re holding peerage records for the College of Arms until their new building is finished.”

  The old building had been destroyed in the Great Fire, but many of the records had been saved. Some were stored at Westminster and others at Lambeth Palace.

  They returned to Lambeth Palace and were relieved to meet Cabot there, waiting for them just inside the main gate. He’d found himself at home in Aysgarth House.

  “We went looking for Kit,” Jeremy told his brother.

  “And?” Cabot asked carefully.

  Jeremy shook his head, and fear flashed in Cabot’s eyes. His face tightened.

  “We’ve come to check the archive from the College of Arms,” Jeremy said. “Perhaps Kit is still alive but not in London.”

  Cabot nodded. “Then lead on.”

  Fearing any hope was in vain, Richard held fast to it anyway as they walked his and Jeremy’s mounts to the stable and turned them over to grooms.

  A grim-faced Jeremy led the way across the hall courtyard, up a flight of stairs, and into the upper cloister and the library. The low-ceilinged chamber had narrow windows with bookshelves lining all the space in between. Below the carved ceiling, a row of small windows added light in the central area, over a table. The place smelled of old leather and parchment.

  “The peerage records are over here,” Jeremy said, hurrying to a shelf on the room’s left side. He scanned it for a moment and then reached for a thick, leather-bound volume.

  “This covers the last half-century and Kit’s succession to the title.” He laid it on the table and flipped it open. “Hamely ... ” He turned several pages. “Hatfield ... ”

  Jeremy turned another page. Cabot leaned closer. Richard skimmed the text, and his neck tightened with foreboding.

  “Havelock.” Jeremy turned ashen. “Oh, God.”

  Lapsed. The word jumped off the page at Richard. He glanced hastily over the text, looking for descendants. His eyes locked onto Kit’s name, Christopher Stephen Edward Grayson. Information followed—the names of his parents and sisters, and then—

  Richard’s chest went tight. He stared at the page. It couldn’t be true. It mustn’t.

  But he knew it was.

  The last line of the entry read, Killed in a coaching accident, eighteenth September in the year of our Lord 1659.

  Kit had been dead for 15 years.

  Despairing, Richard stared around the Council table in the Green Bull’s cellar that afternoon. No one had any suggestions for stopping the wrenching changes rolling forward daily. Kit’s wasn’t the only life wrongly cut short. And without him, they’d no idea which Oxford don he’d consulted about the Chronicle or who that man’s friends might’ve been.

  “People are disappearing and coming back to life,” Richard said for the fourth time, haunted by Kit’s pained face in the moment before he vanished. “We’ve a duty to question anyone who might know anything about how to fix this.”

  “Fair enough,” stout, balding Hugh Bentham, a draper, said, “but you’ve given us no reason to assume Lord Wyndon does.”

  Richard gritted his teeth. If he had to admit to his search of Wyndon’s home, Hugh and
others would cling to that and refuse to hear anything else he said.

  “Wyndon has always been the loudest voice among us for coming out of hiding,” Richard insisted, “and he argued that we should turn this change to our advantage.”

  “He wasn’t the only one,” Hugh pointed out reasonably.

  “He was the most insistent,” Richard countered. “And he studied necromancy at Pendragon last year. And his family was part of an ancient plot to seize power for our kind.”

  Hugh replied, “That’s not on him. And even if it were, he’d not likely admit it.”

  “If he drinks the water from Morgan’s pool,” Richard shot back, “he’ll have to tell the truth.” If Richard could only convince them to order that test. “We must question him. With the weather changes growing even worse, and people appearing and disappearing, we can’t just do nothing and hope things improve.”

  Three of the other six members, including Lucius, listened attentively. Eliza Harper sat forward, frowning, her thin frame tense. Bentham toyed with the bread on his plate.

  “You don’t know Wyndon’s done anything,” Thomas Surry said. An excellent carpenter, he believed in what he could see. “So what if he studied necromancy? Many of us have dabbled with it. ’Tisn’t forbidden. And I don’t see how it changes time.”

  Richard hesitated. Could he frame this in a way they would not only grasp but believe? “There is a theory that the world of the dead is all around us, that someone who knows how can pass from here to there. And the world of the dead touches all places and times.”

  The men and women at the table traded bemused glances. Only Lucius seemed ready to listen.

  The Council head said, “That’s an interesting theory, Richard. Where did you see it?”

  “I heard it from an ancient scholar.” Surely Edmund qualified as that after all this time. “Besides, after what Wyndon said in the Conclave the other day, you must see that he’s the most likely person to have tampered with the timeline.”

  “I asked him what he meant about seizing the moment,” Bentham told them, frowning. “He said he merely wanted the best for the Gifted out of this upheaval.”