And the Tudor princess herself was absent. But that he’d half expected.
Beltran skipped breakfast, as he often did; he’d been taught to make the hollow ache of an empty belly a gift to God. He was arranging their departure when he discovered Rhiannon’s mist-gray mare was missing.
Now here he stood, cooling his heels in the corridor like a damn pageboy, while Lady Elizabeth’s moon-faced governess explained—patient but resolute—why the mistress of the house was unavailable. Her Grace was suffering one of her megrims, Kat Ashley said firmly, and would likely be indisposed all day. Not even the daunting prospect of God’s Vengeance in a fury would sway Mistress Kat to admit him.
Beltran contained his mounting ire and stalked off to find Bedingfield, whom he threw into dismay and stiff-worded apologies with a few well-chosen threats. Elizabeth’s guardian seemed perplexed by his agitation, which was understandable, since Sir Henry had been laboring under the impression Rhiannon was free to do as she pleased. He could hardly share the bitter realization breaking over Beltran—the girl had cast aside her oath and slipped away beneath his very nose, no doubt laughing at his gullibility all the way to London.
Beltran struggled against an unexpected sting of disappointment. So much for her shining mantle of honor, her noble manner, the promise of grace and purity he’d longed to believe in. The lady was a liar, an opportunist, either a fool or a charlatan. And evidently a harlot to boot.
He bit out a vicious curse and pivoted toward the stables, an annoyed Sir Henry hurrying in his wake.
The groom Beltran had bribed to mind her mare was, unsurprisingly, nowhere to be found. He fired off a barrage of questions to the night guard, a poor stammering lad who couldn’t recall seeing a pale-haired lady on a gray mare. Was he supposed to have seen and detained such a person? Pale with dread, the youth swore on his mother’s soul he’d received no such orders.
Judging by the woody bite of ale on his breath, Beltran suspected the lad had slept through his watch—a dereliction that would, at San Miguel, have earned him a flogging until the blood ran down his back. But flogging derelict boys for minor failings was not Beltran’s business. If Sir Henry couldn’t compel better discipline from his lackeys, that was his problem.
“Why not leave her to her own devices, my lord?” Sir Henry urged. “As I understand the matter, there is no real connection between you, and you have said you’re overdue in London. One does not wish to keep the Archbishop of Canterbury waiting.”
Beltran’s mouth twisted in a cynical smile. Briefly, he pondered the notion of leaving Rhiannon le Fay to her fate. Whatever her dubious business with the Queen, surely her welfare or lack of it was no concern of his. How much damage could that slip of a girl possibly wreak? Pious Mary would make short work of her heathenish claims. Like as not, the girl would end up in Bishop Bonner’s pitiless hands—and thence to the pyre—with no intervention on his part.
Still, he’d come to England to support the Inquisition. More, he’d assumed responsibility for Rhiannon when he took her into custody, and Beltran Nemesto was no man to leave a job undone. The girl was his duty, nothing more. It was not as though he’d come to know her personally, not that he’d miss the imperious tilt of her chin when he imposed upon some prerogative she claimed as her due. Not that he’d hide a smile at the quick flare of her temper as she rode haughtily beside him, her emerald eyes incandescent with spirit, perched delicate as...well, a Faerie in her saddle.
Nor would he miss the smile that lit her elfin face, the chime of her laughter like silver bells, the faint sweetness of violets that floated around her, or the trusting way she’d yielded when he kissed—
He jerked these unsuitable musings to an abrupt halt.
God’s body, here he stood daydreaming about the chit like a lovesick maid, while every minute that ticked past opened more distance between them. Clearly the thing to do was depart for London forthwith. If he encountered the girl on the road—or word of her, for he’d question those who might have seen her—then he’d reclaim her. If not, he’d be sitting at the Archbishop’s fire by nightfall.
In either case, his business with the ethereal and unsettling Rhiannon le Fay was finished.
Beltran was swinging into his saddle when it occurred to him to check the cache of heretical documents stowed in his saddlebag. It rather surprised him she would have left those behind...
When he realized they were missing—his sole evidence of her witchcraft—a red fury filmed his vision. In a heartbeat, his intent shifted. The blood began burning in his veins, unmistakable precursor to the holy madness. Clenching his teeth against the inevitable, he fought the onslaught with every particle of resolve, until smoke all but rose from his skin.
“Ride hard, Rhiannon,” he whispered hoarsely, the low rumble of a lion’s growl. “And pray to your pagan Goddess I don’t find you now.”
Chapter Nine
The French were invading the Tudor court.
“Alas, we are come too late,” Rhiannon murmured to Lady Linnet Norwood as they edged through the roistering throng at Hampton Court. “Clearly, war has already commenced.”
On a hastily erected stage in the Great Hall, some sort of elaborate pageant was rollicking along with gusto. Fortunately, the gallants of the invading force—mallard ducks sporting French colors—were armed with nothing more lethal than balloons filled with lavender water that drenched the hall in sweetness.
Behind the painted cliffs of Dover, England’s female protectors shrieked beneath the onslaught and rained showers of spring blossoms upon their assailants.
Lady Linnet held her ground bravely as a pair of drunken lords jostled past, leering at the ladies. Lord of Light, the girl looked nervous enough to jump from her skin, plunged into intimate congress with her own kind after the dreamlike drift of a year or more through the lavender mists of Faerie.
Of course, these mortals were Rhiannon’s kith also, little kinship though she felt with them. Disconcerting—the sheer din of these mortal hordes, reeking of sweat and stale perfume, so crude and alien, so removed from the sun-dappled green bowers and brooks of home.
Now she was drowning in a sea of brocade and taffeta and silk stretched over whalebone farthingales that bumped and poked her with every step. Her slippers pinched her feet; her toes were trodden on twice while they pressed through the crush. Her eyes were dazzled and blinded by the glitter of gemstones on hats and hems and borders, ears deafened by the roar of laughter. The ragged cacophony of lute and pipe that passed for music made her head ache.
And every man present, except the scurrying servants, was wearing steel.
In Linnet’s wake, she threaded among them, skin itching and burning at the nearness of daggers the length of her forearm. Nervously she fiddled with her silver rings. If they should slip off, or be stripped from her, she would convulse in agony...
Despite her own anxiety, Linnet seemed to sense the desperate unease that made Rhiannon long to flee this hellish inferno.
“Don’t fash yerself. It’s only a pageant, my lady. The Tudors are famous for them.” The familiar Scottish lilt of the girl’s voice reassured her as Linnet looped a slim arm through Rhiannon’s for a steadying squeeze. “No one here will harm ye.”
Unless Lord Beltran has managed to arrive before us. The thought sent legions of butterflies cartwheeling through Rhiannon’s belly. Again she prayed the Blade of God had washed his hands of her. She doubted Ka
t Ashley would have been able to conceal her flight for long, even with clever Elizabeth’s connivance.
But somehow Rhiannon knew he would pursue her. She could almost sense his wrathful presence, that stern-faced Being with flaming eyes and garnet wings, sweeping down the Queen’s Highway. He would have known instantly where she’d fled, grasping the treaty stolen from his very chamber while he prayed in the Hatfield chapel.
Hurry! The voice of instinct quickened her step. Find the Queen quickly.
Pushing back the clamoring tide of panic, Rhiannon summoned a shaky smile. For the faithful child beside her also required reassurance.
“Dear heart, how would I manage without thee? I bless thee a thousand times for thy constancy, Linnet.”
Reluctant to leave the wounded Ansgar yet more reluctant still to return to her Scottish kin, Linnet had gamely accepted his charge to guide Rhiannon through the Tudor court. Without her escort, Rhiannon could scarcely have managed to advance even this far. She must be very careful not to lose the girl in this teeming horde of mortals.
Despite the frantic gaiety that permeated this half-Spanish court, the very air seethed with rumors. The French were massing under Dudley in Elizabeth’s name...they’d risen to capture the outpost of Calais...the Scots were arming over the border and would murder them all in their beds....
Despite the stifling heat of the Great Hall, her hands were ice.
Hurry, you must hurry. God’s Vengeance is coming.
She’d prepared so carefully for this moment, striven so desperately to reach this place, pleaded and struggled and suffered. She’d sacrificed the lives of precious friends—Caedmon, Cynyr, Nineve, so many others. Dear Goddess, would she never cease grieving them? Too much hung in the balance to be less than starkly terrified.
“The Watching Chamber lies yonder, if ye’re still intent on approaching the Queen tonight.” Glancing cautiously toward a knot of cassocked priests who scowled nearby, Linnet pitched her words beneath gusts of laughter that rang from the hammered beams.
“Forsooth, I’m determined,” Rhiannon murmured. “We dare not wait.”
“We’ll not manage our wee peek at her without a bit of luck,” the girl warned. “Only senior courtiers are permitted past the Yeomen without invitation. It needs more than a bonnie gown to broach the Queen’s privy chambers.”
“We’ve a message from the Queen’s own sister—the Lady Elizabeth herself.” Rhiannon lifted her chin. “If that will not suffice, perhaps a silver crown will prove persuasive. I’ve some coin left from our travel-purse.”
“I’d like to see ye pay a crown to those rogues in livery!” Linnet gasped. “Mercy, have ye no sense of money?”
“Forsooth, I suppose I have none. Easy come, easy go, do these mortals not say?”
For Queene Maeve had filled her purse with Faerie gold, which always returned to its mistress. Little though she liked the deception, all Rhiannon could do was urge her vendors to spend it quickly.
They’d gained the Great Hall without resort to bribery; a lady’s finery and Linnet’s childhood court memories proved sufficient for that. How easily the court’s gaze skimmed over Linnet’s demure figure in her rose damask, her sherry-gold eyes downcast, her riot of fire-streaked mahogany curls coiffed smooth beneath her Spanish hood. The ease of their passage had steadied Rhiannon’s nerves—until she noticed how the mortals looked at her.
Uneasy, she toyed with her moonstone pendant, the fragile charm all that stood between her and inevitable disaster if she were unveiled—an otherworldly being with glowing alabaster skin and hair like moonlight.
Thankfully, Rhiannon need not contend with Philip of Spain, away on the continent about the Holy Roman Emperor’s business. But lovesick Mary rarely emerged from her privy chambers as she pined for her missing lord.
A fresh commotion drew Rhiannon’s gaze to the oak-paneled doors of the Watching Chamber. Something was happening, a sudden disturbance among the blue-and-green liveried ranks of the Queen’s personal guard. Serving-folk scurried with trays and cushions. Then the door swung wide to disgorge an influx of black-haired lords and ladies, encrusted with gemstones, sallow-skinned and exotic to Rhiannon’s eyes.
Her heart beat swift with excitement. “What’s happening, Linnet? Are those the Spanish grandees?”
“Aye, some of them—though wearing French fashions.” Disdainfully Linnet tossed her loyal head. “Ruffs the size of dinner plates.”
But Rhiannon cared naught for fashion, despite the stiffened ruff edged with silver lace whose constant itch at her own throat nearly maddened her. Tightly she gripped Linnet’s fingers, the world narrowing around her until she heard nothing but the stern voice trumpeting:
“Make way for Mary, by God’s grace Queen of England, Spain, Sicily, Naples, Jerusalem and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, Duchess of Milan and Brabant, Countess of Habsburg, Flanders and Tyrol!”
Around her, every head bowed. Every knee bent low in homage before the glittering figure commanding the doorway. Belatedly Rhiannon sank into her curtsey, her head swirling. Dear Lady, grant me strength. If I should fail...
Slowly her vision cleared. She focused on the rich luster of her own skirts, black brocade divided over ivory taffeta, billowing around her bent knees like an ocean of moon-crossed midnight. The colors symbolized eternal virginity—an irony not lost on her, after Morrigan’s prophecy. With shaking hands she straightened the rope of fat black pearls that girdled her hips—pearls for maidenhood, pearls for sorrow. The tang of clove-studded citrus from her pomander revived her.
Before her neighbors could rise, she floated to her feet, stately as a queen herself. Head lifting proudly, she looked straight into the eyes of a startled Mary Tudor.
The daughter of King Henry VIII and Queen Katherine of Aragon was a woman of forty, no taller than Rhiannon, face lined and haggard with a lifetime of hardship. Boleyn caprice had torn her away from the mother she adored, then left her to languish in lonely penury while Katherine sickened and died. She’d been threatened with beating and worse for defying the tyrannical father who established his own Church of England and placed himself at its head. She’d suffered through Henry’s six wives, bastardized and removed from succession, clung stubbornly to the mainstay of her Catholic faith while her father died and a boy of eleven replaced him, though his Protestant Council threatened and bullied her.
Then her brother Edward coughed out his lungs and died in wasting agony at the tender age of fifteen. And his greedy council scorned Mary to crown her heretic cousin Jane Grey. At last Mary Tudor had flung off the fetters of injustice and risen, sweeping into London with magnificent courage to face down her oppressors, bringing the entire nation with her to tumble Lady Jane from her nine days’ throne.
But those triumphant events were years behind her. Now the Queen’s auburn hair was faded, thin lips pinched with pain, small shoulders stooped beneath the crimson-and-gold train that dragged at her like a disappointment she could never cast aside. Her eyesight was failing; her red-rimmed eyes squinted against the blaze of light, as though she’d been weeping.
Now those weary eyes skimmed over her kneeling court to find the woman who’d boldly risen too soon—a slim moonbeam in black pearls and damask, bareheaded but for a coronet of silver-gilt hair, face framed in silver lace that violated the sumptuary laws for any lady who lacked a Maid of Honor’s status.
Suddenly Rhiannon feared she�
��d dressed too richly, that the paranoid Queen who burned heretics alive must view her pride and boldness as an unforgivable challenge.
The Queen of England’s gaze pierced her like an Inquisition. “God in Heaven, is it you?”
Rhiannon swayed before the Holy Name, but refused to drop her gaze. She was a princess of the Fair Folk, daughter of the Dreaming King; this sister monarch must be made to acknowledge it. Suddenly she was alive and tingling with energy.
“Majesty,” she said steadily, ignoring the court’s straining ears, “I bear thee tribute and greeting from thy fellow sovereign on this blessed isle. Wilt thou speak with me?”
Mary Tudor’s mud-colored eyes narrowed. “Are you an emissary from Scotland? From that brazen strumpet Mary Stuart who seeks to supplant me as England’s Queen?”
“Nay, not from Scotland. And well do thou know it.” Rhiannon put steel in her spine and assumed her mother’s commanding tone. On the edge of this moment she would rise or fall, her life forfeit in a Catholic dungeon if she failed. Already the Queen’s attention was flickering over the eagle-eyed Spaniards who hovered, avidly absorbing every word.
Bold action was called for, or Rhiannon would miss her moment. Swiftly, she unclasped the moonstone pendant from her throat.
Just for a breath, she stood revealed. An astral wind stirred her garments—stiff damask no longer, but the shining pearlescent draperies of a Faerie princess, the star of evening flashing in her fingers. Moonlight poured from her skin to stream over Mary Tudor’s lined face. The Queen’s pupils shrank to pinpricks against it as she gasped.
From those nearby swelled a murmur of shock and wonder. Beside her, a pale-haired youth gripping a lyre sank to his knees and gazed worshipfully at Rhiannon.
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