Rowankind (3 Book Series)

by Jacey Bedford

  Martyn had summoned the rowankind, the Fae’s servants, out of Iaru with a complex magical working, binding them to our world. He’d sucked the weather magic right out of them and into himself, then used it against Spain’s ships. But defeating the Armada broke the old man, and he’d been unable to send the rowankind back. Even the Fae hadn’t been able to undo Martyn’s working, so they’d done the next best thing, they thought, stealing away the rowankind’s memories of Iaru and magic to enable them to live in the mundane world without yearning for something they could no longer have. Unfortunately, within a few generations, the rowankind had become little more than bondservants in the households where they had been placed.

  The ability to free them had passed through the Sumner family, firstborn to firstborn, until it rested with me. With my firstborn dead before he’d had a chance to live, it would end with me.

  Therefore, I had done it, returning knowledge and magic to the rowankind so they could go home.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as that. The rowankind, descendants of the original ones, had made homes and places for themselves in our world. Some had intermarried with humans and felt that leaving the world they knew for what seemed like a fairy kingdom, was too large a step. Some went happily to Iaru, but others declared their wish to stay and make their own place in the world, free of obligations.

  And that’s where the trouble lay.

  When the Mysterium began to persecute the rowankind, the Fae decided to send the king a warning. It was, they said, a matter of honor. In a time before time they had created the rowankind from the trees in the forest. Now they had a duty to protect them. We were supposed to tell the king to protect the Fae.

  If only it had been that simple.

  We’d already tried to tell them the king—even if we could find a way to speak with him, which, so far, had proved impossible—could not simply make laws. It all had to be done through Parliament.

  And now the Fae said it was our fault the king had not yet changed the law.

  Well, I wasn’t having it.

  “We didn’t volunteer. You gave us this task without a by-your-leave, Larien. We told you that commoners couldn’t simply march up to the palace and demand a private audience with the king. And the king can’t change the law without Parliament.”

  “Then we shall have to make Parliament want to change the law.” Dantin, Larien’s brother, was always ready with a harsh solution.

  The meaning in his words made me shudder.

  I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise. What were they planning? The Fae had largely ignored the world of men because they simply were not interested. If they chose to, they could wipe us out in a heartbeat.

  “How will you do that?” I dreaded his response, but I should have known the Fae never gave straight answers.

  “You’ll find out in time—or not,” Dantin said. The threat was implicit in his tone of voice. Dantin had always been the hotheaded one on the council.

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “Is it a threat?”

  Larien gave Dantin a sideways look. “Be less hasty, brother.” He turned to us. “Try again. Persuade the king, and Parliament, too, if that’s what it takes, to make the changes necessary.”

  Corwen slipped a protective arm around my waist. “Why us, Larien?”

  Larien stepped forward and bent his head as if he were addressing us alone.

  “You, Ross, are sister to my son. You, Corwen, are husband to my son’s sister. You are the nearest to family I have who are wholly human. I know you’ll not play me false. Besides, I also know it’s your dearest wish to be rid of the threat of the Mysterium for the sake of your own kin.”

  He looked down at my belly, still flat. How did he know? I was barely sure myself yet.

  “I won’t let you put her at risk, Larien,” Corwen said. “Especially not now. Why have the Fae not kept up diplomatic relations with the Crown? Surely you could have had a representative at court any time you wished.”

  Larien shook his head. “Our ambassador to the king deemed it prudent to return home when the king was beheaded. We never formed a relationship with Cromwell the usurper. It seemed to us things had changed too much, and we were better off sealing ourselves away.”

  I thought I understood. Cromwell wasn’t the rightful king, so anything lower than a monarch was beneath their dignity. I wondered why they hadn’t made advances to the court after the restoration of the monarchy.

  “You could simply go yourselves,” I said. “Resume diplomatic relations.”

  “That would not be appropriate. We’ll give your king and his Parliament the opportunity to correct their own mistakes first. If they don’t take it . . . ”

  He left that sentence dangling. A threat, but not directly to us, not yet, anyway.

  10

  The Mad King

  Maundy Thursday, 18th March 1802,

  Outside the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, London

  THEY SAID THE king was mad, but I had my own ideas. It seemed to me he was neither mad nor incapacitated in any physical way, but he had a whiff of magic about him. In a realm where unlicensed magic led to a merciless death at the end of a rope, the monarch would never have been able to reveal himself as magic-touched. Yet suppressing any kind of talent was dangerous.

  Magic had killed my mother. Repressing it had eaten her from the inside. The medical profession might have diagnosed a tumor, but I had seen her on her deathbed and pieced her story together.

  I knew.

  For the last ten days, Corwen and I had been dodging the Mysterium and observing King George, third of his name, from a distance fitting for commoners. We’d seen him ride past in his carriage, and then a day later had seen him out walking with his family in Green Park, his retinue following behind at a discreet distance.

  In the time we’d been observing him, we’d changed lodgings six times, only avoiding a check by militia troops by a very narrow margin. They weren’t looking for us in particular, but if we’d drawn attention to ourselves, our descriptions were probably still on their wanted sheets. I was fairly unremarkable: brown hair, middling height, no distinguishing features. However, Corwen’s silver hair and his piercing gray eyes were memorable, which was why he pulled his hat down low.

  The silver showed his color as a wolf.

  Neither of us liked being here, but we needed a way to get to the king, and the king was in the capital.

  King George wasn’t a young man. His sixty-four years, the loss of the Americas, the war against revolutionary France, and the exploits of his notorious elder son sat heavily upon him. As did his illness. If we succeeded in passing on the Fae’s ultimatum, we would make his life infinitely more complicated.

  London was a risk, but Larien was right. If we could make a difference to the way magical folk were treated in this great nation, we owed it to our future family to try. I was pretty sure now that there would be a future family. The discovery had come as something of a surprise, since I’d thought myself barren after my only child, Will’s son, had been born early and had not lingered beyond a few days.

  When Corwen had asked me to marry him, I had told him the possibility of children was vanishingly small, yet here we were. Of course, there was a long way to go yet and every possibility that I wouldn’t carry the child to term, so, much as I hoped, I didn’t let myself get too involved with the tiny being inside me. I would carry on as normal, I resolved. And what would be, would be.

  The Fae’s threat against the mundane world was real, too real.

  They hadn’t interfered with humanity for over two thousand years, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t; it simply meant they hadn’t cared to. The rowankind were under Fae protection now, and the Fae took their responsibility seriously. I didn’t know how far the Fae would go, but I was sure that if they wanted to, they could reduce London to a smoking hole in th
e ground.

  So here we were, standing in the crowd at Whitehall, outside the Chapel Royal, waiting for a glimpse of the king on his way to distribute Maundy money to the poor. Though it was an ancient custom, no kings had actually participated in the service for over a hundred years until King George had taken it upon himself to distribute the Maundy gifts this year, possibly to prove to his people he had recovered from his most recent attack of melancholy and was entirely fit to rule.

  I shivered beneath my woolen cloak and pulled my hood closer. Easter was early this year. It was still the middle of March. A cold dampness rose from the Thames, bringing with it the scents of fish, mud, and ordure in equal measure. I felt slightly queasy, but I didn’t know if it was my condition or the stench.

  “Cold?” Corwen put one arm around me and drew me close. “You’re sure we need to be here? I could take you back to our lodgings and warm your bones.”

  I didn’t think he was contemplating extra blankets and a warm mustard bath for my feet.

  “You can warm me later. Right now I want to get a closer look at His Majesty,” I said. “There was an air about him when we saw him in the park last week, but we were so far away that I wasn’t sure.”

  “You think he’s affected by—” Corwen wasn’t going to say the word magic in public. That kind of talk could attract unwelcome attention, and here, close to Westminster, where the first of the Mysterium’s militia companies had been deployed, everyone was watching out for magic users. Even talking about it could draw the interest of concerned citizens all too ready to claim the offered reward.

  I nodded. “I think it’s possible.”

  “Will it make our job easier or harder?”

  I shrugged and heard him sigh.

  The crowd stirred. The king and his retinue were emerging from the chapel.

  “God bless Your Majesty,” someone in the crowd shouted, and the rest of the crowd took up the cry.

  “The people love him,” Corwen said softly in my ear. “Even though the poor have been struggling for bread.”

  “They blame Bonaparte and the French, not the king. He presents a good face to them. Farmer George.”

  The king was closer now. He’d stopped to shake hands with someone, and the crowd had surged in his direction. This was my chance. Emboldened, I shrugged off Corwen’s arm, squeezed between two men, and pushed my way to the front. I doubt the king had intended to shake the hand of a random female, but as he held out a hand to the man on my right, I snatched off my glove, reached out, and took it.

  The reaction was instantaneous. I felt a shock run up my arm, and it was obvious the king did, too. For barely a heartbeat the king’s gaze met my own, his eyes wide, and then he was past, being hurried away.

  “Did you get what you wanted?” Corwen was right behind me.

  “Oh, yes.” I turned to him, grinning. “Now all we have to do is find a way to talk to him.”

  * * *

  Corwen and I walked back to our lodging at the Golden Lion, where we’d taken a room under the name of Parker. Since our direct approach had failed, we had to come up with a more creative plan. Finding a way to talk to the king was easier said than done, but I had an idea. The king was, if not fond of, perhaps inured to being dipped in the sea. I’d read about it in the Gentleman’s Magazine. In fact, I still had the copy in my valise. This started to spark an idea.

  “You can swim, Corwen, can’t you?” I asked him as we walked.

  “Yes, why? You aren’t planning any more terrifying trips along the Thames, are you?”

  “I didn’t plan that one; it just happened.”

  We’d shot the rapids beneath London Bridge, chased by Walsingham’s hellhounds while trying to rescue my brother Philip, who turned out to be not worth rescuing, though we didn’t discover our mistake until he tried to kill us.

  “I’m thinking of a way we might be able to get to the king,” I said. “You saw how many retainers surrounded him today.”

  “Well, he is the king, and not well by all accounts. And I expect our letter alerted those around him whose job it is to keep him safe.”

  “Did you read the article in the Gentleman’s Magazine about saltwater cures?”

  “Not yet. You’ve been hogging it since I bought it.”

  “The king takes saltwater cures. We might be able to get to him in the sea.”

  “Not exactly a great place for a discussion.”

  “We could swim him out to a boat standing offshore.”

  Corwen’s silence spoke volumes.

  “Not my best idea, huh?”

  “Let me get it straight. You, an increasing lady, may I remind you, intend to kidnap an elderly naked king out of the shallows, shove him into a boat, within sight of the shore and his retainers, and then try and discuss the plight of magic users in general and the rowankind in particular.”

  “Well, now you put it that way . . . ” I sighed. “Since the king rarely goes anywhere without his entourage, I thought they might give him a little space while he was in the sea.”

  “They wheel him down to the sea in a bathing machine, right?”

  “Yes, a very distinctive one—white with blue panels and red cornices, a crown, and a flagpole.”

  “A flagpole?”

  “In case anyone misses the royal coat of arms painted on the front.”

  “Of course.” Corwen’s tone was so dry I could almost imagine his words crumbling to dust.

  “He gets undressed in the bathing machine,” I said. “I don’t know whether someone helps him or whether he undresses himself.”

  “Does a king ever undress himself? Isn’t that what all his flunkies are for?”

  “Usually, but it’s a very small bathing machine, so he can’t have more than one attendant. While he’s getting undressed, they wheel it down to the water’s edge and push it into the waves. The king opens the seaward door and steps, naked, into the water under the supervision of two guides, ladies experienced in the dipping of those who may not even be able to swim. Don’t you think it possible for someone who’s a strong swimmer to swim under the water and pop up beside the bather?”

  “Possibly, but what happens after that? The king’s entourage on land would surely have pistols.”

  “They’d never risk hurting the king. Pistols and muskets are too inaccurate.”

  “What if they had a sharpshooter with a rifle? Accurate at a distance of four hundred yards.”

  “Hmmm, all right. You read the article and see if you can come up with a better idea.”

  Back in our room, I shrugged out of my cloak and threw it on the bed. A meager fire smoldered in the grate. Corwen stirred what was left of the coals with an iron poker and carefully placed two small logs which sizzled and smoked before eventually beginning to flame.

  I took the copy of the Gentleman’s Magazine to the grimy window to catch some daylight and read the article again.

  The author, who simply signed himself A Physician, strongly recommended full immersion in seawater, combined with taking it as a drink, mixed with milk. Both practices to be done under strict medical supervision, of course, and topped off by a session of bloodletting.

  It sounded like the sort of thing designed to line the pockets of the medical profession without offering any benefits to their patients, except perhaps relief when the treatment was over.

  Only once had a surgeon recommended bloodletting to me, and it had been the end of a promising professional relationship. I’d seen what losing blood could do to a body. Bleeding after a skirmish or an accident was one thing, but relinquishing blood voluntarily made no sense.

  As for drinking seawater . . . I’d drunk it, accidentally, a number of times, and it wasn’t something I’d recommend to anyone. When it came to swimming, the warmer waters of the Caribbean were a better prospect than Britain’s coastal waters, espec
ially at this time of year. It made me shiver to read the article.

  “Look.” I handed the magazine to Corwen. “It says here Prince George, apparently, prefers to be dipped at Brighthelmstone, while the king prefers the relative peace of Bognor or Weymouth. The sea at Weymouth apparently cured him of a bilious attack, though it took three months. That’s a long time to get over a bilious attack. I bet if he’d stayed in a nice comfy bed, he’d have been cured in three days.”

  “I would think the king’s enthusiasm for Bognor and Weymouth is entirely due to his firstborn’s enthusiasm for Brighthelmstone. I can’t see the king being enamored of Prinny’s set.”

  Corwen settled down in a chair by the window to read the article for himself. At length, he looked up. “Swimming away with the king is a terrible idea, but what if we were to take the place of his dippers?”

  “His dippers are both female,” I said.

  Corwen raised one eyebrow at me. “Well, you qualify. How long did you pass for a man as Captain Tremayne? I could dress myself in skirts.”

  “You’d be a powerfully tall woman.”

  He laughed. “Once in the water, who could tell?” He stared out of the window, looking thoughtful. “I’m not saying it’s a bad idea to try and get to him when he visits the coast, but probably not disguised as dippers, especially in your condition.”

  “My condition? I shouldn’t have told you. I’ve barely missed my first course yet. If I hadn’t been sick in the mornings, I wouldn’t even have guessed.”

  “I’m glad you did—tell me, I mean. Though I’d have noticed you throwing up and your breasts.”

  “What’s wrong with my breasts?”

  “Nothing. They’re lovely.” He had a smile on his face. “But definitely more tender than usual and, I do believe, a little heavier.”

  “Already? No. It’s your imagination.”