Her mouth formed a perfect O shape, but no words came out.
“So, you see, we have to deliver the message because the king might actually understand it.”
“Then whatever you can do to deliver the message, do it swiftly because the more I think about the notebook, the scratchier my feelings get.”
I knew better than to disregard Aunt Rosie’s scratchy feelings. She was more of a witch than I would ever be.
* * *
“It’s all too much,” I said to Corwen as we rode back to the Okewood. “How can we possibly do everything everyone wants us to do? I feel as though I’m rolling with the punches, reacting to things all the time, rather than making my own decisions. The Fae, the Lady, even Aunt Rosie, and Will’s vague warning. Go here, do this. All I want to do is settle down and have our baby in peace. Or babies, if Aunt Rosie’s right.”
“It’s been a difficult two years,” Corwen said. “You deserve a rest. And our babies deserve the best start in life we can give them.”
“Now I feel mean because you’ve got all the same pressures I’ve got plus Freddie and your family.”
“Ah, life’s never simple, is it?” He shrugged. “I always hoped I’d become a father one day, but there were so many obstacles. Too many. Even finding someone to share my life with was something I thought impossible until I met you. And now here we are, in the middle of the most turbulent times, and it’s all happening at once.” He took a deep breath. “I think we have to decide what the most important thing is and follow it to its logical conclusion. What do you want most of all?”
“To protect my family.”
“Define family.”
“You, our offspring, David, Aunt Rosie, and Leo.” Every time I thought I was coming to the end of my list I opened my arms wider. “Your family, of course, your mother and Lily, and Freddie, too, I suppose, though he’s a bit of a horse’s arse.”
Corwen laughed. “Yes, he is. If he wasn’t my brother, I’d have given up on him before now.”
I sighed. “And then there’s Poppy and her family, and Hookey and the Heart’s crew. Damn. I seem to have more family than I’d realized.”
“Don’t forget the reverend, Charlotte, and Olivia, and—by extension—Henry Purdy, though we’ve never met him.”
“When did my family get so large?”
He reached across and took my hand as we rode. “Life was simpler when I was a single wolf, but it was a lot more lonely.”
I squeezed his hand. “I was surrounded by friends, but after Will died, I was lonely, too.” Maybe lonely wasn’t the right word. “Empty.”
“And now?”
I laughed and patted my belly. “Full, I think.”
“So, to protect our family, what do we need to do first?”
“Let’s take the threats in order. I don’t think we have a choice. The threat to magic users is our biggest problem, so first we have to deliver the Fae’s message to the king.”
Corwen nodded. “I agree. Then we need to investigate Walsingham’s notebook.”
“Yes, the notebook, definitely. But what about the capture and return of magical creatures to the Okewood and Iaru—”
“That’s something we can leave to Hartington with the volunteers from the Okewood and the Fae.”
“And Henry Purdy?” I felt guilty about Olivia’s father. Although it wasn’t, strictly speaking, our problem to deal with, we had volunteered.
“I’m sure Charlotte understands that on the grand scale of things . . . ” Corwen’s voice trailed off. “Oh, hell, yes, I feel guilty about Henry Purdy, too, but there’s not much we can do without knowing where he is. When we get that information, we’ll make a decision.”
“If we get it.” The Mysterium had treated its magicals very badly. I wasn’t hopeful the army had done any better by them. I sighed. “We can only do what we can do. Besides, if the king takes notice of the Fae ultimatum, any improvement should help all magicals, including Henry Purdy.”
“They’re both part of the same overall problem of making the country safe for magicals. We need to bring about a change in the law, but we also need to eliminate the kind of magical threat Walsingham presents. He’s proof anyone can learn magic if they have the right teachers and acquire the right spells even though they aren’t intrinsically magical themselves. Getting rid of Walsingham won’t entirely solve the problem. Getting rid of his notebook at least means no one else can access his dark magic after he’s gone.”
I nodded. “That’s a plan, then. King first, notebook and Walsingham second.”
20
Windsor
THE LETTER LILY had spoken about finally caught up with us the day after we arrived back in the Okewood. Delivered by Aileen, the fox-girl, it was a slim single sheet folded in on itself and sealed with a wafer.
Corwen read it first, then we went to Freddie’s compound, and he waved the letter. “It’s for you. It’s very personal. It’s from someone called Betsey in Gloucestershire. Shall I read it to you?”
Freddie hunkered down while Corwen read it out. It was an apology, a love letter, and an invitation to Gloucestershire.
Without warning, Freddie launched himself into the air, snatched the letter from Corwen’s hand, and ran off with it in his teeth.
“Lucky I copied the return address,” Corwen said softly. “Maybe we should write to this Betsey person.”
“I wonder who she is,” I said.
“I suspect she’s not a she at all. Betsey’s a common nickname in the molly houses.”
“Ah, that makes sense. Freddie’s lover, Roland.”
“That would be my guess.”
We penned a letter between us. This was much easier to form than our letter to the king had been.
To Mr. Roland Somerton.
Greetings.
And greetings also to Betsey.
I write on behalf of my brother, Freddie, who is currently indisposed and in a troubled state, but I believe would be heartened by a visit from your good self. If you are inclined to accept this invitation, please write back via Mr. Arthur Reynard at the Valiant Soldier in Buckfastleigh, Devonshire, and we will arrange to meet you and conduct you to Freddie in the hope that you might be able to bring him out of his melancholy.
Sincerely
Corwen Deverell.
“He’ll either come or he won’t,” Corwen said. “We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
“What if he replies while we’re away trying to speak to the king?”
“Charlotte will watch for a reply.”
The day after that, we got a message from the goblins. The king had gone to Frogmore House, Windsor, to inspect the building works there. Bought as a retreat for Queen Charlotte and the unmarried princesses, the building works had added flanking pavilions and work was now underway on a new dining room and library.
This was our best opportunity. If the king wouldn’t meet us willingly, we’d have to use stealth. At Frogmore with his family, King George was at his most informal and least observed.
“Better to catch him in the garden if we can,” Corwen said. “Let’s get a little help from David. Larien won’t allow the Fae to get involved at this stage, so he can’t come with us, but he will be able to give us the lay of the land if his Fae talent for geography still holds good.”
It took us less than an hour to cross into Iaru and find David. Annie was with him, and I noticed that even when talking to us, David and Annie’s hands were not far from touching. I wondered how David and Larien were resolving the impending marriage issue. Surely, David was too young to be tied into a relationship he didn’t want. But maybe that was the price that Fae lords paid.
It happened to English nobility, too. Marriages were made to secure support or simply for money. Thank goodness I was too far down the social scale to worry about that. It
seemed that there was an unhappy equation—wealth went hand in hand with lack of freedom to marry for love, while those who could marry for love often did so with no hopes of wealth at all.
Corwen and I were lucky.
“You can cross from Iaru to the Windsor Forest,” David said, drawing a map in the air. His finger left a line of light. “It’s a short sprint from there to Frogmore on horseback. Head for the river. Frogmore is low-lying, hence its name. It’s close to the castle, but not too close.”
Corwen stared at the map, committing it to memory. “I expect the household servants have all been selected for their common sense and handiness with a weapon.”
“That and the Blues, the Royal Horseguards, are now stationed in the new barracks in Clewer Park, three miles away.”
Three whole miles. Somehow, that distance didn’t give me much confidence. But even without alerting the regiment assigned to protect the king, the royal family would have some kind of protection. All we had to do, or not do, was trigger it.
We didn’t waste time; we changed into what I thought of as our real-world clothes. I wore my riding habit, given to me by the Fae, which always looked presentable no matter how I abused it. It was a rich red-brown color with black velvet trim. I wore bloomers for comfort under the divided skirt. I didn’t care if bloomers were considered fast. No one was going to see them besides me and Corwen.
Corwen wore a slightly more elegant version of his usual country gentleman style and looked more like a man about town with buckskin breeches and a deep green woolen coat cut in the latest close-fitting style.
“Are we fit to see the king?”
“As fit as we’ll ever be.”
* * *
Parts of the Windsor Forest are old. An eerie feeling pervaded the gnarled trunks. The Okewood felt like home, but Windsor’s trees felt slightly alien. Herne the Hunter was supposed to abide here, but that was a myth plaited together with stories of the Green Man. I’ve met him—the Green Man, I mean—a figure of awe, but not cold and alien like the malevolent presence in Windsor.
Corwen shuddered and looked over his shoulder as we passed through the trees.
“Do you feel it, too?” I asked.
“Something,” he said, “but I don’t know what. I was going to suggest you waited here with the horses while I scouted around Frogmore in wolf form. I can be quick, and I can be sneaky, but . . . ” He looked over his shoulder again. “I don’t want to leave you here alone.”
I didn’t want to stay alone, either. Even the horses were uneasy. Dancer tossed his head, and I could feel his whole body stiff and ready to bolt at a moment’s notice.
“Let’s go down the Long Walk,” I suggested. Since Easter, the spring weather had turned mild. The trees were beginning to bud, though they weren’t in leaf yet, but there was a double row on each side of the walk, and their trunks would help to keep us from being easily spotted from a distance.
We made a dash for the edge of the forest. The horses needed no urging, and we came out onto the grassy hillside above the Long Walk which led directly to the castle itself, three miles away.
“Impressive,” Corwen said.
“It’s meant to be.”
“Glad the king isn’t somewhere in the middle of all those stone walls.”
“Frogmore may be as impenetrable.”
“Well, we’ll have to try.”
We walked our horses steadily through the trees bordering the Long Walk. As we left the forest behind, the feeling of oppression gradually lightened. Corwen lost the tendency to keep twitching around to see if we were being followed, and Dancer relaxed.
“Do we have to go back that way?” I asked.
“If we need to make a quick exit.”
Presuming we were free to make any kind of exit. How many guards surrounded the king at any one time? Staff, too, and several of them were likely to be military types. The king and his family must be surrounded by people all the time, even when at their most informal.
About two thirds of the way down the Long Walk, Corwen pointed down to the right. “Frogmore, though David says we’re as likely to find the king and his family at the Queen’s Lodge, that is the Upper Lodge which is the house that protrudes into the Long Walk, not forty yards from the castle walls.”
“If the king has come to see the new building at Frogmore and is staying at the Queen’s Lodge, perhaps the answer is to find him on the route between the two. Can we shelter somewhere and watch the likely path?”
I breathed a silent thank you to the gardeners who had dotted the environs of the castle with picturesque groves of trees. Thus settled, we observed a party of liveried servants carry basket after basket of what looked like food and drink from the Upper Lodge along the path toward Frogmore.
“Do you think they’re planning a picnic in the grounds or a meal within the house itself?” I asked.
“If the house is being renovated, maybe a picnic in the gardens. Let’s hope so, anyway.”
“If we backtrack the way we came, we could access the gardens from the south side.”
“Let’s do it.”
We waited for the column of servants to march past us. Then, as quietly as we could, we left our grove and retraced our steps up the Long Walk for maybe a quarter of a mile, then followed a track until we came to the garden wall. It was tall enough to keep out the deer, but not so tall that we couldn’t climb it, even with the ditch in front and the trees behind.
Corwen rode up close and peered over. “A good horse could jump that,” he said. “What do you think, Timpani?”
The horse huffed out a loud breath.
“Is that a yes or a no?” I asked Corwen.
“It’s a yes,” he said, sounding more positive than I felt.
It was a huge jump with the width of the ditch and the height of the wall. Misjudging it could bring both horse and rider down with broken bones. I’d spent my childhood riding small ponies suitable for a girl of my station, that is to say, somewhat docile. My formative years had been on the deck of a ship. I wasn’t a bad rider, and my partnership with Dancer had taught me a lot, but it was still a big jump.
I drew in a deep breath and nodded. “After you.”
Corwen put Timpani at the wall and soared over. Of course, he’d had the benefit of a country upbringing.
Dancer began to dance. “All right. Here we go.” I cantered in a circle, then turned until the wall was all I could see in front of me. I sat down firmly in the saddle, keeping a good contact with Dancer’s mouth, holding him in until he was almost bouncing. Then three strides away from the ditch I gave him his head and pushed him on. One, two, three, and up. Dancer launched himself and I swung forward with him, keeping my center of balance over his. Ditch and wall flew beneath us and then another ditch on the other side which Corwen had conveniently forgotten to warn me about. Dancer’s hooves came down, front, rear, with two clumps and his momentum carried us forward for a few strides until I gathered him up and circled around to where Corwen was waiting.
“You might have warned me about the second ditch.”
Corwen dismissed my complaint with a backward wave of his hand. “You’d only have worried, and the arc of his jump carried you both safely over, which I knew it would.”
I harrumphed at him, but he was probably right.
Frogmore’s gardens had been laid out to give privacy to an area of lawn trimmed impeccably short, hours of backbreaking work for a team of groundsmen. Toward the boundary wall there was a barrier of hedges and trees and through the middle a serpentine lake, artificially created, no doubt.
We peered out of our tree cover. The first of the servants were carrying tables and chairs onto the lawn, covering the table and setting places.
The house itself had been newly painted a startling white. It was pleasantly proportioned with a colonnaded walkway across the b
ack of the house between two single-story wings. To the right-hand side was a stack of timber and sandstone, the timber mostly covered by a tarpaulin. There were sawhorses and rough-cut planks that looked as though the builders had removed them from the house so that their royal employers could see their progress. That explained why the family intended to take a meal outside.
A group of people stepped out of the house into the colonnade and from there to the garden. They were the first not carrying baskets. It took me a while to recognize the king and to realize this was his family. They were dressed as a normal country family, that is to say, not expensively. Beside the king was a stately lady whom I took to be Queen Charlotte, and four young women. I knew the king had five unmarried daughters, but I didn’t recognize them by sight. From this distance it was difficult to guess their ages. It didn’t look as though any of the princes were in attendance. Three of the young women linked arms and walked down to the edge of the lake while one remained close by her parents.
Food was served with footmen standing behind each chair to help the diners. My own belly grumbled. “We should have brought a picnic,” I whispered to Corwen. “This is going to take forever. How on earth are we going to get the king away from his family?”
“I have an idea,” Corwen said as the servants cleared the table and at last left the royal family alone.
I suspected the servants hadn’t gone far. They would certainly be within earshot if called. Corwen whispered in Timpani’s ear and then sent him out of the bushes into the garden. One of the princesses spotted him first and pointed him out to the others. The king said something and stood. Queen Charlotte put out a restraining arm, but the king patted her hand and stepped toward Timpani.
A riderless horse in an enclosed garden would be a puzzle. Not only that, but the king was famous for his love of horses and riding. Anyone with half an eye could see Timpani was an exceptionally fine horse, and the king had more than half an eye.
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