In Ashes Lie (7 page)

As he slid onto the bench in front of the knight, murmuring a greeting, Antony marshaled his resolve.
It has only been three weeks. I
will
master this dance.
Neither for the King’s demands, nor for Pym’s turbulent reforms, but for a moderate course between the two. It would not be easy, but given time, it could be done.

Then an oddity caught his eye. “Where is Glanville?” he whispered into Seymour’s ear. The Speaker’s chair stood empty, even though it was nearly time for the opening prayers to begin.

Seymour shook his head. “I do not know. Nor do I like the look of it.”

Neither did Antony. Glanville had spoken with some force the previous day, which could not have won him favor with the King. Would Charles go so far as to depose the Speaker of the House of Commons? Pym was overfond of declaring everything a breach of the privileges of Parliament, but on this point Antony would have no choice but to agree with him. Surely the King would not give such flagrant offense—not when the House was already at odds with him. It would destroy any hope of conciliation.

He worried about it as he bowed his head for the prayers. What would happen, if Glanville had been removed? Speakers, he knew, had met bad ends before; there was a reason the chosen man was traditionally dragged to his chair. But Antony had thought that all in the distant past.

“Amen,” the assembled members said, some with more fervency than others. And then, without warning, the doors to the chapel swung open.

A man bearing a black rod of office entered and positioned himself before the Speaker’s table. The clerks who sat at one end paused, pens in the air, staring in surprise. Maxwell, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod for the House of Lords, had the duty of summoning the Commons to attend any full meetings of the entire Parliament. Given Glanville’s absence, it was not a promising sign.

In a loud voice, Maxwell declared, “It is his Majesty’s pleasure that you knights, citizens, and burgesses of his House of Commons come up presently to his Majesty, to sit in assembly with the House of Lords.”

Antony’s own oath was drowned out by louder ones around him. A few men stood, shouting questions, but Maxwell ignored them all; he simply waited, impassive, to guide them to the greater chamber where the Lords met.

“You have more experience of this than I,” Antony said to Seymour, under the cover of the shouting. “Tell me—is there any good cause for which his Majesty might summon us now?”

The older man’s face had sagged into weary lines, and his eyes held the bleak cast of hopes on the verge of death. “If you mean good for us ... unlikely. A terrible defeat in Scotland, perhaps. Or rebellion in Ireland; these plans to arm the Irish against the Scots may be reaping their expected reward. Or some other disaster.”

And that is the
best
we can hope for.
Antony gritted his teeth, then raised his voice over the clamor. “It does us no good to argue it here! We are summoned to the Lords; our answers lie with them. Let us go and be done.”

Still muttering in confusion and anger, they formed up and let Black Rod lead them through the Palace of Westminster. Antony’s blood ran cold when he entered the Lords’ chamber and saw Glanville at the far end. The dark circles under the Speaker’s eyes stood out like bruises.

Near him, in a richly upholstered chair, sat Charles Stuart, first of his name, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, et cetera. The dais on which the chair sat elevated him to a position of prominence, but could not disguise the King’s low stature. Antony sometimes wondered if some of his obstinacy were not born of that deficiency, which put him at perpetual disadvantage against taller, stronger men.

Certainly obstinacy was writ large in his expression. The members of the House of Lords were in their seats; filing in, the Commons stood on the floor between the peers and the bishops. Antony had a poor view, blocked by the men who had crowded in front of him, but by shifting his weight onto his left foot he could just see the King’s face. Behind his luxuriant mustache and pointed beard, Charles’s lips were pressed into a thin, impatient line.

When the doors closed behind the last man, the King spoke.

“There can no occasion of coming to this House,” he said, delivering the words in a measured cadence designed to minimize his unfortunate stammer, “be so unpleasant to me as this at this time.”

Antony’s stomach clenched. And the sickness in it only grew as Charles continued to speak, thanking the Lords of the higher house for their good endeavours. “If there had been any means to have had a happy end of this Parliament,” the King said, “it was not your lordships’ fault that it was not so.”

Whatever hope old Seymour might have clung to, that they were called forth to be told the Irish were revolting and the Scots had overrun the North and the Dutch had sunk all their ships and Charles had sold England to Spain, it must have died in that moment. For his own part, Antony was not surprised. Not since he had seen Glanville.

Glanville, who led the House on which Charles was squarely placing the blame.

Oh, the King made a passing nod, as he went on, to the Lords’ part in presenting grievances. “Out of Parliament,” the King added, most unconvincingly, “I shall be as ready—if not
more
willing—to hear any, and to redress just grievances, as in Parliament.”

No, you will not,
Antony thought, fury and disappointed rage boiling in his gut.
If you were, we would never have come to this pass.

Charles could claim all he liked that he would preserve the purity of religion now established in the Church of England; he could remind them that delay in supplying his war was more dangerous than refusing. None of it mattered a rush, for everyone heard the words, even before Charles commanded the Lord Keeper to speak them.

The words that burnt to black cinders all Antony’s victories, and all his hopes for the future.

“It is his Majesty’s pleasure,” the Lord Keeper said, his words echoing from the walls of the chamber, where less than a month before they had conducted the opening ceremonies, “that this Parliament be dissolved; and he giveth license to all knights, citizens, and burgesses to depart at their pleasure. And so, God save the King!”

Lune tapped her fan against the arm of her chair in time to the beat of the allemande, watching the fae of her court swirl past in their finery. The music this time came from an entire consort of mortals, which rumor said had been snatched from one of the fine houses along the Strand, where some peer or other had contracted them for his own amusement.

But the musicians did not look unhappy to be here, and so she let the matter pass. So long as no one was mistreated, the occasional temporary theft did not bother her. They would be returned no worse for the wear, and in time might even come to frequent this court. That would please her immensely.

Which her courtiers knew. She was therefore not surprised to see the black head of Sir Cerenel coming her way, with a man in tow behind him. The stranger, a human in ragged clothing, gaped open-mouthed at everything around him, devoting his attention impartially to goblins and shoes, her ivory chair and the sharply arched ceiling of the hall in which the fae danced. Cerenel had him firmly but not unkindly in hand, and with gentle pressure convinced the man to kneel with him before Lune.

“Your Majesty,” the knight said, “I beg your indulgence to bring a guest to this occasion.”

In Antony’s absence, Lune glanced around and gestured for Benjamin Hipley to approach. “Who is he?”

Cerenel glanced sideways at the unwashed stranger, then up at her. “I found him in London, madam, where I had gone to call upon a lady. Though I was well masked in a glamour, and protected against its failure, this fellow saw my true face through that concealment.”

“A lunatic,” she said, straightening in her chair. No one had brought such a mortal below for quite some time, though they used to be fashionable. “Escaped from Bedlam?”

“More likely he was permitted to leave,” Hipley said, when she looked to him for clarification. With her permission he approached the man, who flinched back, but did not run. “The violent ones are chained, and not likely to escape. Did he have a small bowl?” That last was directed to Cerenel, who nodded. “Licensed to beg, then.”

He did not look happy at the madman’s presence in the Onyx Hall, but whether it was because of the stranger’s mean status, or Cerenel’s notion of entertainment, Lune could not say. She herself was not fond of lunatics; she remembered too well how this court had once abused them. But this one would not be mistreated now—and it might be useful to welcome him. Let her subjects see that she favored those who dealt kindly with the mad. “Has he a name?” she asked.

“None I can get from him,” Cerenel said. She believed him, too. He had not always been concerned with mortals as people, but he was one of Lune’s better converts; over the years since her accession, Cerenel had come more or less to share her way of thinking. Not quite with such fervency, but she counted it a victory.

The allemande had drawn to a close, the musicians playing out their final measures long after most of the dancers had ceased to move. Courtiers jostled for position, trying to see the stranger.

“He is welcome among us,” Lune declared, loud enough for all to hear. “As an honored guest. Food and wine for him, from Lord Antony’s store.” Addressing the madman, she said, “Be of good cheer. Tonight, you need not beg for your supper.”

She did not need to tell Hipley to watch after the man. Nor, she was glad to see, did he do so alone; while several ladies flirted with Cerenel, feeding on the minor status he had just won, Lady Amadea devoted her attentions to the lunatic, keeping him safe from the more predatory of courtiers. As for the madman, he gorged happily enough on the sweetmeats and candied fruit brought for him, though he watched the room through skittish eyes.

Her supervision was interrupted when the usher at the door announced the Prince of the Stone. Everyone paused in their places, bowing to Antony as he entered, but no one approached him; the black look on his face forbade it.

He came straight for Lune and spoke before she could even ask what was wrong. “He has dissolved Parliament.”

It struck like a blow, less for her own disappointment and frustration than his. Antony had struggled so hard to achieve this, and now it was taken from him, after a few short, wasted weeks. “We passed acts concerning the pointing of needles,” he said through his teeth, “while Pym and his men forced us toward business they
knew
would alienate the King. Indeed, they
wished
it! The Puritans among them have no desire to see the Covenanters suppressed.”

The notion that they would deliberately undermine the King was disturbing. “That,” Lune said, “is just shy of treason.”

“Or past it.” Antony dropped without looking into the chair a hobthrush hurried to place behind him, and glared away the fae who were unabashedly eavesdropping.

Lune recognized the bleak hardness in his eyes. It had grown over the years she’d known him, from his first arrival in this court as a young man with scarcely enough whiskers to call a beard. She made him her consort because she needed his stubborn loyalty to the mortal world; he accepted because he dreamed of changing that world for the better, with faerie aid. But he was a single man, whatever aid he had, and all too often his efforts ended in failure.

It saddened her to see him thus, growing older and grimmer, year by year. How old was he now? How much longer would he last?

I will lose him some day. As I lost the man before him.

She smiled, a practiced mask to conceal the inevitable grief. “There will be another opportunity,” she said. “Charles is not the ruler his father was; he has no skill at playing factions off one another. I have no doubt that circumstances will force him to convene Parliament again.”

“But how long will that take?” Antony muttered, and lapsed into silence.

She left him to it, recognizing the need to let a mood pass. Her own subdued spirits demanded distraction, not contemplation. After the next dance was done, she left the dais and went to join an energetic courante, her slippers flickering along the marble floor. All around her was a mass of paned sleeves and flying curls, courtiers moving flawlessly through the quick, running steps of the dance. For a few moments, she was able to lay her thoughts aside.

Until a chill sharper than winter’s breath gripped her bones.

Without warning, the dancers faltered. They staggered against one another, weak and nauseous, and Lune’s foot caught the hem of her skirts; she stumbled and almost fell.

Pain stabbed through her shoulder, locking her entire body in paralysis, so she could not even cry out.

A roar came from behind her, and then the transfixing spike ripped free, leaving her to crumple in a boneless heap to the floor. Rolling, weeping in agony and shock, Lune saw her attacker.

He, too, was on the floor, pinned under the weight of the elf-knight who had thrown him down. The madman laughed in unintelligible triumph even as the knight smashed his hand against the marble, shattering bones and knocking free his bloodstained iron knife.

And then the laughter stopped, lost in a wet gurgle when the knight plunged his own dagger through the mortal’s throat.

Antony slammed through the nauseated fae an instant later, interposing himself between Lune and the dead man. “What the devil is going on?”

Followed by another, earthier curse, as Antony saw the iron blade. He didn’t hesitate; with the knights of the Onyx Guard closing in to protect their Queen, he snatched up the weapon and tossed it to Hipley, who ran for the door. Lune breathed more easily with every step he took, though she would feel its presence until he removed it from the Onyx Hall entirely.