One of the princesses, the youngest one, I thought—so that would be Princess Amelia—ran after her father. Timpani’s head came up, his nostrils flared, and he took three quick paces backward toward the trees.
“Go back, Emily, dear,” the king said. “Don’t startle him.” Turning back to Timpani, he began to mutter a string of soothing nonsense. “Come on, my boy. There’s a boy. What a fine lad you are. Come to Georgie, my boy.”
Timpani waited until the king was almost close enough to grab his rein, then sidled away into the bushes. There were enough evergreens to make good cover. Corwen and I held our breath. The king was close. A few feet more would be enough. Timpani stopped, turned his head, and whickered at the king. It was enough. King George, third of his name, stepped into the bushes, right into our waiting arms.
21
Mad King George
“PLEASE DON’T CALL out. We mean you no harm,” I said as Corwen swept a deep bow.
I followed with a curtsey. “We’ve met before—almost,” I said. “Maundy Thursday, at Westminster. We shook hands, like this.” I held out my hand, willing him to take it.
“You’re her,” he said, and took my hand.
Our magics met, with a shock and a tingle.
“You remembered.”
“I couldn’t easily forget.”
“Your Majesty—”
The king waved away my formal address. “How did you do that?” His look seemed to cut through me. This man might have had a bout of madness, but he was, undoubtedly the king, used to having everyone around him bow to his wishes.
“I’m a witch, Your Majesty, though not a licensed one. You’ll forgive us if we don’t give you our names, but the Mysterium would hang us for the talents we were born with.” I wasn’t specific about Corwen. There was no need.
“It was you who sent the letter . . . the meeting in Richmond Park. My advisers thought it was some plot.”
“It was, indeed, us, Majesty,” Corwen said. “I’m sorry if it worried you.”
“I wasn’t worried at all. I was nowhere near the place, but, tell me, how did you get away? My equerry—a good soldier in his day, you know—said you disappeared into thin air? And how did you do this?” He shook his hand as if his fingers still tingled.
“I didn’t do anything, Majesty, but the magic in you responds to the magic in me.”
For a moment I swear that the king’s face was a mask of fear, but he covered it up quickly and adopted a haughty manner. “I have no magic. I am the king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It would be wholly inappropriate for the king to have magic.”
“Yet here we are, and you’ve not called out yet,” Corwen said.
“You do have magic,” I said. “Though you may have been trying to tell yourself you haven’t for most of your life.”
“Young lady, if I had magic, I would know it.”
“With the greatest respect, Majesty, you might not. You might have told yourself that what you were feeling was perfectly natural. If you’d never explored your magic, how would you know your capabilities? Some of us can create illusion, some can control the elements to a greater or lesser degree, some can perform magic spells.”
“There’s a spell book, is there not?”
“A poor thing with limited use. Licensed witches are required to work those spells and no others. It contains small spells only, maybe a concealing spell, or one to make a lady’s hair curl, or one to hide a blemish from someone’s face—an illusion, you understand, not an actual cure.”
“What about love potions?” The king’s attitude changed again. I wondered at his capricious nature. Was this part of his affliction? Was he truly cured of the madness which had returned only last year? He seemed to have forgotten we were intruders into his garden. He leaned forward in his eagerness to hear the answer. Love potions! Fairy tale stuff. Always the same question from those who knew nothing.
“Alas, Majesty, though it is possible to sway someone’s interest in that direction, it almost never ends well. The person so persuaded may think himself, or herself, enamored, but it can’t last, and if certain promises have been made, or certain actions taken that can’t be undone, then lives and reputations may be destroyed. Or the spell may go awry, and the subject of the spell may become too enamored, leading to all kinds of inappropriate behavior.” I shook my head. “Coercing someone into doing something is a bad use of magic. In some cases, it can be dark magic, so dark it hurts people and twists the soul of the user and the soul of the used.”
“Do you practice this dark magic?”
I shook my head. “Magic is a great responsibility. It shouldn’t be used to harm people. To use magic to kill or maim or injure would be a grievous thing, and a person would suffer for it. I’ve defended myself with magic, but I’ve never deliberately killed with it.”
That was no lie. I’d done my killing with a pistol or a sword, but my privateering days were over.
“What can you do? Show me.”
I took two deep breaths to center myself and willed light into being. The feeling started in the center of my back, shivered up to my left shoulder and all the way down my arm until a tiny ball of light, no bigger than a pearl, glowed, cool, in my palm. I let it grow until it was half the width of my hand and then I tossed it up into a dense holly tree where it illuminated a little cave within the branches.
“Pretty,” the king said.
“And useful on a dark night.”
“But you have not registered with the Mysterium. Why not?”
“I intended to, but circumstances conspired against me. I wasn’t in the country at the time of my eighteenth birthday, and after that it was too late. The Mysterium would have hanged me.”
“For coming forward late? Surely not.”
Corwen cleared his throat. “I would suggest, Majesty, they would show no mercy. Even those who register by their eighteenth birthday are not treated well or with respect. Anyone with more power than a hedge-witch is often spirited away and lost to their families. I believe some have been forced to take up positions in the army, using their talents on your behalf. The navy has wind and weather witches, more powerful than any you’d find for public hire in our towns.”
“Is it not their duty to use their talents for king and country?”
I shook my head. “Without allowing them to contact their family? Even press-ganged sailors are allowed to escape their fate if their family can pay the smart.”
“But it’s not only witches, Majesty,” Corwen continued. “We’ve come to talk to you about the rowankind.”
I saw by his expression that he knew what we were about to say.
“The rowankind have magic,” I said. “They didn’t know it until they gained their freedom. It’s been suppressed for many long years, but now they know.” I didn’t tell him my part in the freeing of the rowankind. “They have wind and water magic. Natural magic.”
He didn’t reply, which confirmed my suspicion that this was not news. Of course, the information would have passed from monarch to monarch via a trusted minister. Each monarch would have inherited a Walsingham.
“You already know, don’t you?” I asked.
He spread his hands wide.
“We know about the Walsinghams,” Corwen said. “We know Walsingham is not a real name, it’s a title. There’s been a Walsingham reporting to the monarch about magical threats ever since the first one, Sir Francis Walsingham, was appointed by Queen Elizabeth.”
“Is there a current Walsingham?” I asked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
There was a bead of perspiration on the king’s upper lip, and he looked anywhere but directly at me. The king didn’t like lying, but lying he was.
I shot Corwen a sideways glance. Yes, he’d picked up on that, too. My heart felt as if it was abo
ut to pound its way out of my chest. I pushed down my fear of Walsingham. Now was not the time to let it get the better of me.
“The way this country treats its magical folks is shocking,” Corwen said, “and counterproductive. The Mysterium is restrictive. Your magical subjects could use their talents for good—and would if you let them. A volunteer is worth ten pressed men.”
“What do you want from me?” The king sounded suddenly wary, as well he might.
Corwen bowed his head slightly. I recognized the gesture. He was trying not to appear dangerous. “We have been asked to bring you a warning, Your Majesty.”
“I am the Crown head. I do not respond to threats.”
“It’s not a threat, truly,” I said, “at least not from us. We’re only messengers. We bring word from the Fae.”
“Fae, fairies. Pah!”
“Majesty, if you know the origins of the rowankind, then you also know that when the Fae refused to help against the Spanish Armada, Queen Bess’ summoner did a great working. He drew the rowankind, the Fae’s helpmeets, from the forest, and summoned their magic from them so he could destroy Philip of Spain’s ships with storms and raging seas. Afterward, the summoner was broken by his own success and couldn’t reverse his working to restore the rowankind’s magic. The Fae, out of kindness to their former friends, took away their memories of Iaru and magic. Queen Bess placed the rowankind in her subjects’ households so that they could be looked after. But people forgot the rowankind’s sacrifice—if sacrifice it was and not wanton theft—and so they became servants, and within a few short generations, bonded folk.”
“But they’re not servants now, are they? Not bonded.”
“They have their magic once again. And though these rowankind are the descendants of those earlier ones, they have a race memory of where they came from. They have free will. Many have already returned to the Fae, but some have made lives here and want to stay. Unfortunately, the Mysterium is now persecuting them. At first it was by rounding them up, throwing them into jails, or shipping them out to sea, which is a terrible cruelty as they die from seasickness, but in Yorkshire they have hanged six rowankind without trial. In other parts of the country, too.”
Corwen cleared his throat. “To that end the Fae have charged us with delivering this message: The Mysterium should stop persecuting the rowankind for what they are and should release them all from captivity.”
“That, sir, would take an act of Parliament.”
Corwen nodded.
“Parliament is much engaged by the peace with France. I doubt it will be possible.”
“Majesty, the Fae ask that you make it possible through your ministers.”
He sighed. “They’re too busy fighting each other to have a care about magicals.”
I didn’t want to make the threat too overbearing, but I had to warn the king about the wholesale destruction the Fae could create. “We fear that if you don’t free the rowankind from persecution, the Fae will take matters into their own hands.”
“Great Britain is not afeared of fairies, young lady.”
I took a deep breath. “Majesty, you should be. The magic that destroyed the Spanish Armada was rowankind magic. Fae magic is ten—nay—a hundred times more powerful.”
“Do you threaten the realm?”
“Personally? No. Our magic is small. All we do is bring you a warning. If you saw a storm out at sea heading in your direction, would you not batten down the hatches and shorten sail? The Fae exist, and they are determined to protect the rowankind. Their honor demands it. The rowankind themselves wish only to be left in peace. They’ve done nothing to provoke the Fae into this. Please, Majesty, we beg you to stop the Mysterium from arresting and executing rowankind, for all our sakes.”
“Go back to your Fae friends and tell them Great Britain does not bow to threats.”
Corwen whistled up the horses.
I tried one last time. “I’m sorry, Majesty. I think you’ll find the Fae are good friends, but bad enemies. Let us arrange a meeting between the Fae and your ministers to discuss possibilities.”
“I have said all I’m going to say on the subject.”
Dancer shoved his nose between my shoulder blades and nudged me. I curtseyed to the king and turned to mount. Corwen was already up on Timpani.
“Wait,” the king stepped forward and raised one hand. “You can’t just come here and—”
“Papa.” A female voice called. I could hear light footsteps brushing through the grass. “Did you catch the horse?”
I suddenly had an idea. “How many of your own children are affected, carrying the power and trying to keep it suppressed until it feels like a red-hot coal in their throat. If the Mysterium knew about them, what would happen?”
“Are you saying you would tell them?”
“Never. You can trust me with that secret, but you owe it to your children and your children’s children to make this land safe for magicals. You owe it to yourself, before it kills you. Imagine, Majesty, how it might feel to be persecuted for your magic, to be the subject of inhuman experiments. Imagine if your own children were taken forcibly and kept in an iron cage, subject to cruel treatment until they performed magic to order.”
“My children will be left out of this.”
He spoke so fiercely that I wondered which of his children had demonstrated magical tendencies. They were all over the age of eighteen, and none of them, to my knowledge, had registered with the Mysterium.
“Please think on it, Majesty, and take action.”
“Papa? Did you catch the horse? Are you in there?”
I wheeled Dancer alongside Timpani and touched his sides with my heels. He sprang forward, twisting through the trees. We galloped toward the boundary, making the leap to freedom together.
* * *
As we leaped the wall and ditches, I heard the king’s voice yelling, “Intruders. After them. Stop them. Quickly.”
We galloped flat out, not bothering to hide ourselves in the trees of the Long Walk, racing for the forest, though neither of us liked it that our fastest way back lay through that haunted place. I turned and looked behind. A number of servants and equerries had come running out. Behind them, half a dozen uniformed riders set their horses into a gallop, chasing us. We had a good head start, but we’d have to slow when we reached the trees. Whatever was in there didn’t like us.
Of course, it might not like our pursuers either.
A shot rang out. We had enough of a head start that we were out of range of pistols and only a very lucky shot from a musket could find its target, but if any of those servants on the ground had rifles and could take careful aim, they might be able to hit us. I crouched low and looked back over my shoulder. Dammit, I couldn’t tell, but a puff of smoke and a loud crack told me the worst.
“They’ve got at least one rifleman. Sharpshooter.”
We began to weave from side to side to make a more erratic target.
“That wasn’t the best meeting we could have hoped for,” Corwen said through gritted teeth, and he dropped behind to get between me and the line of fire.
“Don’t be an idiot, get up here,” I yelled. “Now is not the time to be gallant.”
“You go. Fast as you can.”
“Not without you.”
“I’m right behind you.”
We veered to the right and crossed the double bank of trees into the Long Walk to put the trees between us and their sharpshooter, but another half dozen riders were galloping up the Long Walk. At least they wouldn’t be able to shoot accurately from horseback. I turned to Corwen only to see his face pale and a spreading stain of dark blood high up on the left breast of his coat.
“Corwen! Why didn’t you say?”
“How would it have made a difference?” He coughed, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. “Ride, damn y
ou, Ross.”
I slapped Timpani across the rump with my hand. “Fast and smooth, boy. Take him home.”
I wheeled around and pulled my pistol out of the saddle holster, took a steadying breath, pulled back the doghead, and squeezed off a shot in the direction of our followers. I had no chance of hitting anyone from this distance, but I hoped it might slow them a little if they thought us armed. I clamped my heels to Dancer’s flanks and raced to catch up with Timpani and his precious burden. Our Fae horses were fast enough to outpace those behind, but we couldn’t lose them altogether until we reached the forest.
We veered left across the foot of Snowden Hill, heading for the thick bank of trees. The feeling of dread that had pervaded the forest rolled toward us like a wave. Our only hope was to find the gate quickly, but I wasn’t familiar with this wood, and Corwen was our gate finder.
We crashed through the dense undergrowth at the edge of the forest, to where the lack of light kept the forest floor clear of growth. Last year’s leaves carpeted the spaces between the trees. Though the canopy was nothing but bare branches, it still seemed to cut out the daylight as much as fully leaved trees would have done—unless something else was causing the darkness. The horses slowed from a gallop to a canter and thence to a steady jog.
Corwen lay over Timpani’s neck, bright blood streaking the gray’s shoulder. I could see where the ball had entered to the side of Corwen’s left shoulder blade. It had gone right through, doing its damage. He’d already be dead if he was heartshot, but from the blood on his mouth and Corwen’s wheezing, he was lungshot. This was bad. If I could find him somewhere quiet to hide and he could change to wolf and back, he could begin to heal, but this could easily kill him before we found a refuge.
I heard the riders behind us, wading through the undergrowth. So they’d decided to brave the forest. Maybe whatever it was that felt dark and dangerous to me didn’t affect them. I heard voices as they called to each other, spreading out through the trees.
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