Deven closed his eyes, wishing he did not see his young friend’s face as if painted on his eyelids. “Because he wished to prove—to me, or to himself; perhaps both—that he could serve this court.”
Lune murmured, “And the well-being of England.”
“What?”
Deven opened his eyes and made himself face Antony. “Armadas, gunpowder plots—the fae have had their hand in thwarting such things. I told you they aid mortals when they can. I fear that Henry, seeing some scheme afoot, acted to prevent it. But rather than sharing what he knew and seeking aid, he thought to carry it off on his own.”
It was the sort of thing Henry would have done, and they all knew it, Antony best of all. An unreadable mixture of feelings played across the young man’s face, before focusing once more. “What threat could one gentleman and one disaffected Spaniard pose to England?”
His choice of phrase for Quijada made Deven frown. “Spain…Penshaw harbours a great animosity for them. He wanted James to agree to a Spanish war, and no doubt thought his chances would improve once Charles took the throne. But France—”
“Is reluctant to commit to an alliance,” Antony said, seeing where he struck. “And without their aid, England would be far too vulnerable. So if Penshaw wants that war, he needs something to provoke both Louis and Charles into action.”
“And who,” Lune said, weaving the last thread into the fabric, “sits at Boulogne, waiting for the weather to permit a crossing to England?”
Deven answered her flatly. “Henrietta Maria. Louis’ sister, and Charles’ new bride.”
Married by proxy at the beginning of May, now on her way to join her husband. A lovely girl, not yet sixteen, and the bargaining-piece for an alliance between France and England, in support of the Palatinate, in opposition to the Habsburgs. But there was one circumstance in which her loss could cement that alliance better than her presence ever could.
Antony worked through the logic methodically. “The Spanish might think Quijada was attempting to regain his master’s favour by such a desperate move. But every one else—or at least England and France, who are all that matters—would see Spanish treachery, and his dismissal from Inojosa’s service as a ruse to disguise the truth.” He paused, horrified. “Would it work?”
“The deception? It does not have to,” Deven said. “By the time anyone sorted out the truth, opinion in both England and France would already be set. Those who mutter for war now would scream for it then. Which is precisely what Penshaw wants.”
A crash of glass brought them both back to themselves. Lune had flung the nearest wine-cup into the fire, and her eyes glittered like the fragments in the light. “At the price of one innocent girl’s life.”
Cold-blooded murder, to precipitate two nations into vengeance.
“If we are right,” Antony said. “This…my father has taught me politics, but he speaks of the City and Parliament, not royal murder. Would Penshaw truly do this?”
Deven’s heart ached a little for the disbelief in the young man’s tone, the sound of a piece of his innocence dying. “I believe so. We will know soon enough—for I have no intention of letting him try.”
He is wise, will make him friends
Of such, who never love, but for their ends.
—V.v.163-4
Blackfriars, London: 15 February, 1625
Deven’s house increasingly felt half-abandoned, more empty every time he came to it. He and Lune had long since worked out the pattern of his days, which ones he spent above, which below—but that pattern had begun to disintegrate these last few years, as he poured his efforts into preparing Henry to follow him. And Lune, whose conception of time was not as secure as it might be, had not noticed.
She would notice soon enough, if he were not careful. The resulting madness was distinctive.
He dismissed the thought with a snort. I am not that close to lunacy. But it was a danger nonetheless, and so he came here, to the quiet emptiness of his Blackfriars house, inhabited too often by only his few servants.
Henry found him there that evening. “I did not know you had a house,” the young man said, looking around with frank curiosity.
It touched too closely on Deven’s own worries, and that made him peevish. “Where have you been of late? I tried to find you all yesterday, but you were nowhere to be found—above or below.”
The cheerful expression faded from Henry’s face, replaced by surprise. “I—I did not know you were searching. I went hunting with Robin Penshaw, and we stayed the night in his lodge, for it was too late to ride back.” Defensively, he added, “I have not gone hunting for months now. All my leisure time I spend underneath London.”
And that turned Deven’s own peevishness into guilt. “I am sorry, Henry. I never meant the faerie court to seem a burden to you, and if it has become one—”
“No, no.” Henry waved the apology away. “Merely that I craved the free air. The Onyx Hall is a marvellous place, and I might spend my whole life exploring it—just so long as I need not spend every day of my life there. I miss the company of horses and hounds and hawks. And Robin has excellent specimens of all three.”
Deven gestured his friend into a seat and called for wine. “Whereas I am lamentably deficient in all three. But ’tis not true you spend all your leisure time beneath London. From what I hear, a good half of it is spent in whatever tennis court is most convenient to hand, losing your last penny to that same Robin Penshaw.”
Henry flushed and muttered something indistinct. Deven took pity on the boy and said, “He is a good friend to you, I know—though I might wish him a good enough friend to teach you better tennis.”
“He is very dear to me,” Henry admitted. “In truth…”
He left the sentence hanging, until Deven prompted him. “Yes?”
“I have no right to ask this,” Henry said, shaking his head.
“No right to ask what? I do not call you friend simply because I like the sound of the word. If there is anything I can grant you, I will.”
The young man swallowed, then spoke in a rush. “How do you decide who to bring below?”
It sobered Deven. He had not expected to regret his generous words to Henry, but this brought him close to it. “You wish to bring Penshaw among us.”
Henry nodded.
“Why?”
“I—I think he might like it. You are more…permissive, and he chafes, sometimes, at the strictures of James’ court.”
Lune would not like that answer. Deven was not certain he liked it himself. A man who came below seeking his liberty might well carry it back to the world above, and with it, the secrets of the fae. But he could not simply refuse Henry out of hand—not if he truly meant to have the young man succeed him.
Instead he asked a question. “How well do you trust him?”
Henry gave it serious consideration. Good, Deven thought, already feeling more sanguine. This wasn’t a pure whim on Henry’s part, and that restored his confidence, even as he watched the young man stop and start a number of replies.
Finally, Henry said, “Not well enough.”
Deven wondered what reservation had prompted that answer. He would not ask, though; Henry seemed uncomfortable enough as it was. “That, at least in part, is your answer: we first weigh our trust.” His friend smiled in rueful understanding. “But if your mind alters, do not hesitate to ask again. I trust your judgement, Henry. I would not have shared the Onyx Court with you, did I not.”
Henry nodded, unwontedly sad. “Let me find out what has happened to that wine,” Deven said, rising to give him a moment of privacy. “Unless my man is picking the grapes himself, it should have been here by now.”
It must be active valour must redeeme
Our losse, or none.
—IV.iii.65-6
Dover, Kent: 13 June, 1625
In the privacy of his mind, where the words could not offend the fae accompanying him, Deven thanked the Lord God that Robert Penshaw had a sense
of pageantry about Henrietta Maria’s death.
Had he not, they might never have had a chance to stop him. While faerie agents were seeking proof of Penshaw’s intentions, Quijada slipped their net; the Spaniard was on his way to Dover by the time they discovered his departure. The storms that kept Charles’ bride delayed in Boulogne had blown clear, and she had landed in England. Had Quijada shot her on the docks—or worse, had Penshaw smuggled him to France, ere she ever set sail—he might have done it cleanly.
But there was the pageantry to consider. Henrietta Maria slept in Dover Castle, her first night on English soil. The King was on his way; together they would journey to Canterbury, there to consummate their marriage, and to crown Henrietta Maria as Queen.
It would be easier to reach her later, when confidence and use had slackened the guard about her, but it seemed that was a delay Penshaw could not stomach. Or perhaps it was the thought of a Catholic Queen of England that he could not endure.
Either way, Henrietta Maria would die just as her husband came to claim her.
No, Deven vowed, she will not.
He could have left the task to Lune’s hand-picked group of fae: two elf-knights, three goblins, and more than enough to take care of one murderous Spaniard. But no power under Heaven could stop Antony Ware from riding to Dover, and so Deven went as well, to watch over him and keep him from folly—assuming he could keep the young man from anything.
They rode faster than the Spaniard could, on faerie steeds that knew no weariness, and arrived in Dover in the small hours of the morning on the thirteenth. Deven, unlike Penshaw, had no need for pageantry; to rescue the French princess publicly would cause more trouble than it was worth. They would stop Quijada without delay. “Track him,” he said to Dead Rick, the black dog that ran at their heels, and threw down a scrap of cloth from Quijada’s bed in Coldharbour. The skriker sniffed it, growled softly, and ran off into the night.
Speaking for the first time since they had departed London, Antony Ware asked, “Once we find him—what then?”
“My first concern,” Deven murmured back, “is preventing this murder. After that…what would you see done?”
The moon was a bare sliver in the sky, often hidden by clouds; Antony was all but invisible in the darkness, and his voice gave little hint of what was in his mind. “We have no proof we could bring before a judge, to convict Quijada of murder.”
“A knight and a baronet’s son, against a Spaniard? We would not need much in the way of proof.”
Antony did not answer that, but sat waiting for the skriker’s return.
Dead Rick was gone for some time, though, while the moon played chase with the clouds. Deven kept himself occupied by trying to guess Quijada’s plan. Tomorrow the royal party would ride out from Dover Castle to Canterbury, along the same road that had brought the fae from London. Deven and his companions had paused outside the port town, close enough to smell the salt air, but not to catch the attention of the constables. They might be in the very spot from which Quijada intended to shoot.
No sound warned of the skriker’s approach. A blackness simply melted out of the shadows and writhed upward into the form of a man. “By the docks,” Dead Rick said, and Deven nodded. Where a Spaniard would excite less comment. “I’ll lead you.”
A mounted company of armed men descending upon a dockside inn ran too much risk of alerting Quijada; they left their horses outside town and proceeded on foot. Soon the buildings closed about them, warehouses and forges and carpenters’ shops, all the attendant facilities of a major port. These were dark in the night, but up ahead was light, for the docks did not sleep with the sun.
No more did the men who worked them. Sailors and labourers were in the streets, some working, some drinking away their pay. After the clean air of the Kentish countryside, the reek was like a physical assault. Deven hoped they could subdue Quijada quietly. It was a coin-toss whether the Dover constables would ignore the sounds of a brawl, or wade in to arrest them all.
“In there,” Dead Rick said, nodding toward a three-storey inn that leaned dangerously over the street. The sign was too battered to read in the lantern light. “Don’t know what room; I came back for you first.”
Deven set his jaw. Sixty-two years old, and charging into a Dover hell in the middle of the night. This was a game for younger men.
He turned to say as much to his companion—and found Antony gone.
For one blank heartbeat, his mind would not work. Then it jerked into motion once more. What had waylaid Antony did not matter; none of the possibilities were good. Whirling, Deven saw his companions had arrived at the same conclusion. “Find him,” he snapped, and Dead Rick went, not even pausing to conceal himself. Between one stride and the next, the faerie man dropped to all fours, and then the black dog ran back the way they’d come, the others at his heels.
Scarce two houses down, the skriker’s keen nose led them off the street into an alley, into the warren of Dover’s dockside. It was black as pitch in those back ways, and Deven could not see in the dark as the goblins did; he slipped in the mud, stumbled over things invisible to him, falling further behind.
But suddenly the buildings gave way to open grass. Deven, after an instant’s disorientation, realised the shadowed hulk in the middle distance was Dover Castle. Dead Rick had led them eastward, parallel to the docks and past the town’s edge. And in the scant light of the moon, he saw why.
Two figures struggled on the slope leading up to the castle, dancing to the music of steel. Gritting his teeth, Deven trusted the ground and ran, wrenching his sword free as he went, knowing the fae would beat him there and that none of them would be in time.
For he recognised Antony, even in the darkness, even at this distance—and the young man was losing.
Retreating hastily from the other’s blade, Antony’s heel caught against something and betrayed him to the ground. He parried one thrust, rolling desperately, but lost his sword to the second, and as his opponent struck for the third time—
Dead Rick’s flying leap carried him clear across Antony’s body, and his jaws closed on the other man’s throat.
Deven arrived last of them all, gasping as he had not for years. His pretence of age and infirmity had robbed him of his wind in truth. “Are you hurt?” he asked. One elf-knight stood over Antony, while the other had followed the goblins to Dead Rick.
“N-no,” Antony stammered, sitting up. Even allowing for the light, he looked deathly pale. “My ankle twinges a bit, is all.” He flexed it in his boot, but refused help in standing.
They both looked down the slope to where the skriker and his victim had rolled. Dead Rick shifted back, spat into the grass, and said, “Spaniards taste like shit.”
“Quijada?” Deven asked.
“I believe so,” Antony said. “He was on the street in town—I would have thought nothing of it, for how am I to know his face? But he saw mine, and ran.”
Because of his resemblance to Henry. Deven walked down the slope to the body. Dead Rick had taken no chances, but had torn the Spaniard’s throat out. One of the other goblins searched the corpse and found a brace of pistols, with powder and shot, a dagger, and a coil of rope. “He must have thought his chances of escape better if he struck during the night,” Deven murmured. Was his assessment of Penshaw wrong? Or had Quijada made his own plans?
Either way, the man was dead, and Henrietta Maria was safe.
Antony had followed him, and stood hesitating a small distance from the group. He was seventeen, and he had lost his brother; he might resent being robbed of his vengeance. But he squared his shoulders, drew near, and thrust his hand out toward Dead Rick. “I owe you my life,” he said, voice rough. “My thanks—though they are little enough to repay you with.”
The skriker took it readily enough. “Buy me an ale,” he suggested. “To wash the taste from my mouth.”
The young man mustered an uncertain smile. “And a loaf of bread?”
“Wouldn’t go ami
ss,” one of the others said, and something tight inside Deven eased at last. The hostility with which Antony had first greeted him had not, in truth, been intended for the fae, but the revelation of Henry’s secret life could still have made an enemy of this young man.
One of his secret lives, at least. There was still Penshaw to deal with.
After nearly dying on Quijada’s blade, Antony could have been forgiven for not thinking of such matters. But as the group made its way back into town, to report the dead Spaniard to the local watch, Antony fell back to speak with Deven.
“Penshaw is a gentleman himself,” he said. “A judge would need proof for him.”
They were close enough to the docks now for the occasional lantern to be hung out. Deven took advantage of the light to watch Antony’s reaction as he said, “Must it be a trial?”
“I would not sully my brother’s name by calling him out,” the young man said flatly, confirming Deven’s evaluation of him that day in Westminster. But then he followed Deven’s gaze to the disguised goblins ahead of them, and guessed his true meaning. Antony set his jaw, then said, “Yes. It must be a trial.”
And not a second murder in the night. Deven said, “Then we shall find a way.”
The coward, and the valiant man must fall,
Only the cause, and manner how, discernes them
—III.i.334-5
The Onyx Hall, London: 27 March, 1625
Soon enough the Gentlemen Pensioners would be called to attend upon Charles, but not yet. For tonight, they were left to their own devices, while in the streets of London men said in tones varying from horror to satisfaction, The King is dead. Long live the King.
And occasionally, in hushed tones, Buckingham has poisoned the King.
It was arrant nonsense: whatever his political ambitions, however close his friendship with Charles, Buckingham had loved James. And it needed no poison to kill an elderly man who had been ill for months, even years. But the Duke was the most hated man in all of England, and an easy scapegoat for the upheaval that attended the death of a monarch, even with the succession assured to be peaceful.
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