Beneath Ceaseless Skies #50

by Brennan, Marie

  Issue #50 • Aug. 26, 2010

  “And Blow Them at the Moon,” by Marie Brennan

  “Winecask Bellies and Owl Wings,” by Liz Coleman

  For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  AND BLOW THEM AT THE MOON

  by Marie Brennan

  Thames Street, London: July 25, 1605

  Henry Garnet’s breathing was the only sound inside the room, marking the passage of time like a ragged and desperate clock. Everything else was remote, muffled, the street outside as distant as a foreign land. He knelt with both hands clenched white before him, trembling as his lips shaped the words. Domine, adjuva me.

  Soundless as those words were, they sent a faint chill rippling across Magrat’s skin. But she stayed and watched, because she’d made one mistake already, and didn’t want to make a second.

  It was hard to know the right path, even after all these years. Once she’d been the grim of Hyde Abbey, and her duties had been simple: she haunted the church—a task that would send most faeries shrieking for safety—and rang the bell on occasion, and knew which dead were destined for Heaven or Hell. But the abbey was gone, along with all the other monasteries, and English Catholicism was reduced to this: priests in disguise, creeping from house to house, saying Masses in the blind hours of the night for their tiny recusant flocks.

  She could have found another home. Occupied some new-built Anglican church, or fought another grim for his established place. Instead she followed the Catholics, and most particularly this man, who was Father Superior to the Jesuits in England.

  Henry Garnet could not see her. Magrat doubted he’d appreciate her presence; Jesuits were a passionate lot, their faith enough to try even her endurance, and they didn’t look kindly on the notion of faeries. And that was her excuse, inasmuch as she had one: it would have been harder to pass unnoticed in the garden. She was no woodland sprite, after all. So she’d stayed indoors, when Garnet invited the distraught Father Tesimond to walk as he confessed, and had therefore missed what Tesimond had said.

  Whatever it was, it put Garnet here, on his knees in this cramped little room, tears tracing bright lines down the weary planes of his face.

  He never liked coming to London. In some ways it was safer here; a man could easily vanish among the tens of thousands of mortals packed within the city walls. Out in the countryside, the searchers knew which houses were likely to harbour priests, and hunted them relentlessly. But the city was also the source of that threat: just upriver lay the chambers of Parliament, who passed laws telling England’s remaining Catholics the many things they were forbidden to do. Garnet was a gentle soul; he preferred to keep distant from politics, trusting in Providence to vindicate his cause.

  That trust had clearly taken a sharp blow today. What had Tesimond said? Some new law, perhaps, or the torture and execution of yet another priest—

  No. Before they went into the garden, Tesimond said he’d heard someone’s confession recently.

  “Blood and Bone,” Magrat said between her teeth. Garnet was so lost in prayer, he wouldn’t have heard her even without the charm that cloaked her presence.

  Confession. She’d followed the Catholics for decades, as the various recusant families married one another, bore children, grew to old age or died before they could, and so on to a new cycle. She knew them: the children who learned their catechisms in secret, the wives who concealed priests and then lied to the searchers, and the men.

  The men, who chafed at the restrictions of Parliament. Who eagerly anticipated the toleration James would grant once he had claimed the throne of England, and who cursed his name when that toleration proved merely the King’s usual ambivalent diplomacy, careful promises that committed him to nothing.

  The men. Some of whom had rebelled with the Earl of Essex four years ago, before old Queen Elizabeth died.

  Some of whom might do so again.

  A second curse formed on Magrat’s lips, but died unspoken as a cold wind brushed over her soul.

  Garnet’s breathing had stilled, where he knelt upon the floor.

  Magrat stared at him, holding her breath in unconscious echo of the priest. He’d done something—decided something—

  And now he was going to die.

  A church grim could taste death, scent it on the air, feel it in the marrow of her bones. Every mortal carried a little bit; death was always a possibility, from accident or disease. But sometimes the possibility grew stronger, closer, when a man stood at a fork in the road, then chose the path that led toward peril.

  She could even guess what Garnet had decided. A faerie couldn’t shadow Jesuits for years and not learn a few of their ways. Anything said in confession could only be shared with the permission of the penitent: Tesimond had gotten it, but Garnet, she was certain, had not.

  However tempted he might be—whatever reason he might have—he could not break the seal of the confessional. That was the conflict that had gripped him since Tesimond left. And the strange peace on his face, as he turned it up toward Heaven, told her what choice he’d made.

  He would keep the secret. And because of it, he would die.

  Might, Magrat thought, as the priest murmured a conclusion to his prayer, rose, and left the room. He might die. At some point in the near future. And that was none of her concern.

  But this was what came of following Catholics. It was easy to watch mortals come and go, from the security of a comfortable church; much harder when she lived in the shadows of their lives, seeing their dedication and courage in the face of persecution. Also their flaws, their missteps and mistakes—but that, too, was part of knowing them, and knowing was a dangerous thing.

  It was a short step from knowing to liking. Sometimes even admiring. Things no church grim should ever feel.

  She should let this go. Her duty was simple: if Henry Garnet died at the hands of the Crown, hung or burnt or drawn and quartered, then his Jesuit brethren would come in secret to witness. And if the eyes of one drifted past the scaffold to the shadows that lay beyond, she would show him whether his Superior was going to Heaven or to Hell.

  Only that, and nothing more.

  But she’d left her duty behind in the ruins of Hyde Abbey. Everything she’d done since was choice.

  And she liked Father Garnet too much to let him die.

  She chose instead to save him from his fate.

  * * *

  The Onyx Hall, London: August 24, 1605

  It was almost like being in a church again. The long gallery that led toward Magrat’s destination was a high, narrow thing, its ceiling a row of pointed arches; add windows of coloured glass, and an altar at one end, and she could imagine Father Garnet saying a Mass here.

  At least until the inhabitants stopped him. This was no holy ground, but rather a faerie palace, and its people did not take kindly to prayers.

  In the normal way of things, she would have been with him. It was the Feast of St. Bartholomew, and the Jesuit was at White Webbs; he and the ladies of his congregation were considering a pilgrimage in secret, to a holy well in Wales. Garnet’s fear seemed to have faded. He’d written in vague terms to Rome, saying he feared some violent action against the King, begging for the new Pope to forbid it; that was all he could do, and apparently he believed it would be enough.

  It wouldn’t. The death hovering over him proved that. And so Magrat, for the first time in years, abandoned the priest she’d appointed herself to follow, and came here instead.

  The gallery ended in a humble door, bronze-bound and low enough that taller fae would have to duck. Magrat pushed it open and stepped through into a place that
was very nearly as unchurchlike as it could be.

  The first thing she heard was a voice swearing in a thick Cornish accent. “Can’t even dig a tunnel straight, ye thickerd—I told you ‘twas sloping up, and so it was, right into someone’s cellar—”

  A scattering of faerie lights and tallow dips lit the wide, low-ceilinged room of the Crow’s Head, shedding their uneven glow across the heavy tables and benches. The tavern’s few occupants were a motley sort: one stick-boned sprite, giggling quietly amidst empty wineskins; three cloaked figures radiating silence in a shadowy corner; and nearest the door, two knockers, one berating the other without pause for breath.

  The tavern’s owner, a hob named Hafdean, was busy at work beneath the preserved human head mounted on the far wall. A platform raised him up high enough to wipe down his bar of beer barrels and wine casks; he was smaller than Magrat by a good foot, and ugly enough to make her goblin features seem plain. He tossed aside his rag as she approached and squinted the wrinkles around his eyes even deeper. “I’ve seen you before. Church grim, female, old-fashioned clothes—Magrat, isn’t it?”

  She put one hand defensively to the tattered dress she wore. Old-fashioned? Perhaps so; she’d taken it from the body of a woman refused consecrated burial, before the abbey was destroyed. But this was the Onyx Court; the fae here liked to copy mortal habits, in dress and other things, and Magrat’s usual rags would have gotten her laughed at just the same.

  “Yes,” she said, in answer to Hafdean’s question. The hob raised a cup and a questioning eyebrow, but she shook her head. “I didn’t come here to drink. I’m looking for help.”

  “It don’t come cheap,” he warned her.

  Of course it didn’t. This was what happened when faeries gathered in anything so organised as a court: they whispered and schemed and bartered their favours to one another. And since gold and silver meant little to them, the price of those favours took a different form.

  “I’ve bread,” Magrat said. “Baked by a Warwickshire kitchen maid, who was beaten when her mistress learned she was tithing to the fae.” The last loaf was stained with a bloody fingerprint and damp where the maid had cried, bidding farewell to her faerie friends. Magrat had fought the local sprites to claim that one.

  Hafdean nodded. Mortal bread protected against mortal banes, which made it the most precious thing in all the Onyx Hall. These fae lived beneath London itself, and few of them had a church grim’s tolerance for church bells. And iron, of course, hurt everyone. “What is it you need?” the hob asked.

  “Someone who can look into a mortal’s dreams, and read what lies there.”

  “Whose dreams?”

  Magrat winced. But truly, had she expected Hafdean not to ask? Someone would have, sooner or later. “A Jesuit priest’s.”

  His laughter echoed from the tavern rafters, knobbled beams like old black bones. “Not for bread, no; not for the heart of Mab herself. You’re mad if you think anyone would try.”

  Not mad, just desperate. She didn’t know who’d confessed to Tesimond, which meant the priests were presently her only sources of information. “I think some Catholic is planning something,” she said at last.

  Hafdean managed to look down his lumpy nose at her, even though his platform put them at equal height. “I remember more than just your name, Magrat. I remember the first time you came into this tavern. Full of grand statements, you were, how faeries shouldn’t meddle in mortal doings. Now here you are, asking just that, because now you’ve found something you care about. A Catholic something, at that.”

  Venom dripped from the word. Fae didn’t care a rush for the points of doctrine that divided mortals, but they did care about the effects. Catholic rituals had been around a long time; they’d worn channels in the fabric of the world, strengthening their power against faeries. The hot faith of puritans could be just as bad, brute force acting in time’s stead, but the Reformation was a good thing in the eyes of many fae.

  Particularly those of the Onyx Court. Living as they did beneath dozens of churches, of course they favoured anything that made it easier for them to walk outside.

  Magrat didn’t want to debate religion with the keeper of the Crow’s Head. Instead she used the other obsession of these London fae. “If there’s Catholic trouble, it means trouble for everyone. And your Queen doesn’t want that, does she?”

  Hafdean scowled. Magrat had never seen the Queen of the Onyx Court, but she knew the tales: Lune had sworn to work for the good of England and its people. She even ruled with a mortal man at her side, the symbol of her pledge to live in harmony with his kind.

  Secret harmony, of course. Even besotted with love, as rumours claimed, Lune wasn’t mad enough to think fae could announce their presence beneath London and survive. If her subjects wanted to meddle, they had to do so in stealth.

  Grudgingly, Hafdean said, “Could be Parliament’s ruffled someone’s feathers. But they’ve been out of session because of plague. Won’t meet again until....” He leaned past Magrat. “Gommuck! When’s Parliament sitting again?”

  The knocker who had been complaining when Magrat came in said, “The fifth of November.”

  Hafdean jerked one calloused thumb at the mining spirits. “They’d know; they’ve been in and out of Westminster for the last year. Trying to make their own faerie palace over there, if you can believe it; but all they have to show so far is a half-finished tunnel. Ran out of bread, which makes it hard for them to work. If you want help, you could pay them.”

  Magrat cast a dubious glance at the pair. “Are they any use?”

  Hafdean snorted as if swallowing a laugh as loud as when she’d spoken of Jesuit priests. “They’re the most incompetent knockers in all of Cornwall. Think digging a hole in the ground, with shovels and their bare hands, is the way to build something like this.” Hafdean’s gesture took in not just the Crow’s Head, but everything beyond it: the Onyx Hall, miles of galleries and passages and chambers great and little, all enchanted against iron and faith and the curiosity of mortals.

  Well, she didn’t need their architectural skills. The knockers looked up hopefully when Magrat approached. They were knobbled things, and well-covered in dirt, but they listened eagerly as she made her offer: bread in exchange for the whereabouts of certain Catholic gentlemen, when they came to London.

  Perhaps she couldn’t get information from Tesimond or Garnet. But if she found the penitent who made the original confession, she wouldn’t have to.

  Gommuck puffed out the chest of his filthy doublet and said, “We’ll find ‘em for you. Anyone you want us to start with?”

  Magrat bared her teeth in something like a smile. She knew exactly where to start.

  “Robert Catesby.”

  * * *

  Westminster Palace, Westminster: September 2, 1605

  Unfortunately, Robin Catesby was the one man they couldn’t find.

  He wasn’t the only one to have ridden with Essex in that failed rebellion; his cousin Francis Tresham had been there, too, and Tresham’s brother-in-law Lord Monteagle. But Monteagle was too cautious to court danger on his own, and Francis had always followed his cousin’s lead, even though Catesby was the younger by several years. Everybody followed Catesby’s lead: he inspired without trying, through his reputation for courage, his potent charm, and the blazing light of his faith.

  Gommuck and his friend did find another Catholic for her, though, a fellow Magrat knew well. Thomas Percy had leased a house near the knockers’ tunnel, within the precinct of Westminster Palace, an edifice nearly as sprawling as the Onyx Hall itself. The choice made sense: Percy had been made a Gentleman Pensioner last year, one of the bodyguards to the King, and there was advantage to being so near the chambers used by Parliament. But when Magrat went, under cover of a glamour and with a piece of bread to protect her, she found someone else living there, a man of Percy’s named John Johnson.

  Johnson was a tall fellow, red-haired and strong; he looked more a soldier than a servant
, and the eye he bent upon Magrat was very warlike indeed, when she asked where Percy could be found. “What do you want with my master?”

  Fortunately, she had an answer prepared. The mortal man who ruled the Onyx Court alongside Lune was also a Gentleman Pensioner, in his public life. “I come on the business of Sir Michael Deven,” she said.

  The glamour disguising her was of an ordinary varlet. Respectable enough, but Johnson’s frown deepened. “What business?”

  “None of yours,” Magrat said, trying to think of a way to question him without being stabbed for her pains. She’d felt it the moment he opened the door: the spectre of death hovered over this man, as over Father Garnet. Which meant Percy had probably fallen under that shadow, too.

  “Anything that concerns my master concerns me,” Johnson said, crossing his arms. The chamber behind him was dark and cramped, even by the standards of Westminster Palace; she couldn’t imagine what Percy would want with it, and certainly he and Johnson could not both live there at once. Not in a style befitting a gentleman’s dignity.

  The servant saw her looking and shifted to block her view. Magrat wished she’d made her glamour as tall as he was, but did her best with the height she had, matching him glare for glare. “Sir Michael will hear of your interference,” she said.

  The prospect of a knight’s wrath apparently did not trouble Johnson. He shut the door in her face.

  In the narrow passage outside, dank with the smell of the nearby Thames, Magrat sighed. Truthfully, she would tell the Queen’s consort nothing. Even presuming she could gain access to him, he wouldn’t appreciate her free use of his name, and even if he let that pass... the man was a Protestant, and shared Lune’s opinions on religion and the fae. Neither of them would help her save a Jesuit priest.

  No matter how kind and generous that priest was. No matter how much he desired peace, or wished to be a faithful subject to the King. All they would see was Catholicism, and stamp it out.

  Johnson was only a servant; it wasn’t worth the cost of having someone delve into his mind. She needed Percy, or better yet, Catesby. And if the knockers couldn’t find those two for her, she would have to hunt down people who could.