Midnight Never Come (18 page)

Madame Malline studied her, then nodded thoughtfully. “
Oui,
Lady Lune. I will do so. And I look forward to hearing the continuation of your tale.”

A moment later she was gone, and the door closed again, blocking out all light. But a stool stayed behind, a promise of assistance to come.

S
T
. J
AMES’
P
ALACE
, W
ESTMINSTER
:
April 10, 1590

In the end, his urine came forth at his mouth and nose, with so odious a stench that none could endure to come near him.

The report crumpled abruptly in Deven’s hand; he made his fingers unclench. Laying the paper on the table, he smoothed it out, and suppressed the urge to fling it in the fire.

Walsingham was barely in his tomb, and already the Catholics were rejoicing, and spreading damnable rumors in their glee. They made of the Principal Secretary’s death something so utterly vile —

The paper was creasing again. Deven snarled and turned his back on it.

He did so in time to see Beale enter the room. The older man looked as if he had not slept well the previous night, but he was composed. Beale’s gaze flicked past Deven to the battered report.

“They saw him as their chief persecutor,” he said quietly, brushing a strand of graying hair out of his eyes. “So terrible a figure cannot die like an ordinary man, and so they invent stories, which confirm their belief that he was an atheist and font of rank corruption.”

Deven’s jaw ached as he moved it, from having been clenched so tight. “No doubt there will be a festival in Spain, when the news reaches Philip.”

“No doubt.” Beale came farther into the room, sought out a chair and sank into it. “While here we mourn him. The English Crown has lost a great supporter. A great man.”

At the moment when we need him the most.

The thought was casual, reflexive — and then the implications struck him.

His jerk of movement drew Beale’s eye. “Indeed,” Deven said, half to himself. “The Catholics are very glad of it. But he said he did not think the guilty party was Catholic.”

Beale frowned. “ ‘Guilty party’?”

Deven turned to face him, driven by a sudden energy. “He must have spoken of it to you- — he held you in great trust. A hidden player, he told me, scarcely a month gone. Someone with a hand in our court, who operates in secret.”

“Ah,” Beale said, and his frown deepened. “Yes.”

“Do you doubt him?”

“Not entirely.” Beale’s hands moved to straighten the papers scattered over the desk, as if they needed something to do while his brain and mouth were otherwise occupied. “He told you of the Queen of Scots, I presume? In that matter, I agree with him. I was closely involved with certain parts of that affair, and I do believe someone was influencing the Queen. Regarding the recent events with Perrot . . . I am not so sure.”

Disregarding this latter part, Deven said, “But you do believe there is such a player.”

“Or was. He may be gone now.”

“Walsingham set me to hunt this man. He hoped fresh eyes might see what his could not. And now he’s dead.”

The paper shuffling stopped, as Beale saw the mark he aimed at. “Deven,” he said, clearly choosing his words with care, “Sir Francis has — had been sick for a long time. Think of his absence last year. This is not a new-sprung development, risen out of nowhere in the last month.”

“But if the hidden player
is
still around, and is involved with the Irish matter —”

“If, if,” Beale said impatiently. “I am not convinced of either. And even were it so, why not eliminate
you
? After all, you are the one up to your eyebrows in the trouble surrounding Perrot. If anyone was about to uncover the secret, it would be you.”

Deven snorted. “I do not have so high an opinion of myself as to think I pose a greater threat than Walsingham. If I did not uncover it, someone else would, and pass it along to him.”

Beale rose and came around the corner of the table to take him by the shoulders. “Michael,” the older secretary said, soft but firm. “I know it would be easier to believe that someone poisoned or cursed Sir Francis, and brought about his untimely death. But he was a sick man, one who had shaken off illness often before in his determination to continue his work. He could not do so forever. God willed it that his time should end. That is all the explanation there is.”

The grip on his shoulders threatened his self-control. Just a short month before, Deven had seen before himself a bright and intriguing future, with both a patron and a wife to lend it purpose. Now he had no prospect of either.

All he had was the duty the Principal Secretary had laid upon him.

Deven stepped back, out of Beale’s hands. His voice came out steadier than he expected as he said, “No doubt you are right. But it does not answer the matter of this hidden player. You do not know if he is still around, but you also do not know that he is gone. I intend to find out. Will you help me?”

Beale grimaced. “As I may. Sir Francis’s death has put matters into disarray. If anything is to be preserved of the work he has done, the agents and informers he acquired, I’ll have to find someone else to take them on.”

This broke through the desolate fog that had gripped Deven’s mind. He had not thought of that, but of course Beale was right; only someone well placed on the privy council could make good use of Walsingham’s people. “Did you have someone in mind?”

“Burghley has made overtures, which I expected. But Essex also expressed an interest.”

“Essex?” Deven knew it was disrespectful, but he could not repress a snort. “He hasn’t the patience for intelligence work.” Or the mind.

“No, he hasn’t. But he married Sir Francis’s daughter.”

“What?”

Beale sighed heavily, sitting once more. “In secret. I don’t know when, and I don’t know if Sir Francis knew. But Essex told me, as a means of strengthening his position.” His tired eyes shifted back up to Deven. “Do not tell the Queen.”

“And risk her throwing a shoe at me? I think not.” Essex had been her favorite since his stepfather Leicester’s death, though God alone knew why. The Queen’s affection was easy enough to understand; she was in her late fifties, and Essex not yet twenty-five. But Deven did not believe the man held much affection for his sovereign. Elizabeth might still be admired for her wit and political acumen, but not for her beauty, and Essex did not seem the type to love her mind. His affection would last precisely as long as the tangible rewards of her favor.

“Unfortunately,” Beale went on, “when all is said and done I cannot pass on everything intact, even if Burghley or Essex concedes the ground to the other. Too much of it was in Sir Francis’s head, and never committed to writing. Even I do not know who all his informants were.”

With that, Deven could not help. Walsingham had never shared all his secrets with anyone, and now, without a proper patron, Deven lacked the influence to be of use politically. He would have to scrabble hard for favor and preferment.

Unless . . .

If Walsingham was right, and the hidden player had occasional direct access to the Queen, then Elizabeth certainly knew who it was. But was she pleased with that situation? Knowing her distaste for being managed by her councillors, no. If Deven could uncover the man’s identity, and use the knowledge to break his influence. . . .

He hadn’t Essex’s beauty. But he did not want the burden of being Elizabeth’s favorite; all he wanted was her favor.

This might earn it for him.

Deven settled himself back into his chair, and shoved the report of Catholic rumors aside without looking at it. “Tell me,” he said, “what you know of the hidden player.”

T
HE
O
NYX
H
ALL
, L
ONDON
:
April 9–12, 1590

The improvements to her circumstances came one tantalizing step at a time. First it was the stool, left in her cell, followed shortly by a torch and a pallet on which to sleep. Then removal to a better cell, one that did not lie at the roots of the White Tower. To earn that one, Lune had to tell Madame Malline of her leap from the cliffs of Dover, plummeting three hundred feet into the choppy waters of the English Channel. It was no jest: the strangely shimmering pearl she’d been given to swallow permitted her to survive underwater, though not to move with the grace of her nymph escorts, or the merfolk who waited for her below.

The merfolk. The roanes. The evanescent sprites born from the spray of the crashing waves. Stranger things, in deeper waters. She did not see the Leviathan itself, but lesser sea serpents still occasionally haunted the Channel between England and France.

Were the folk of the sea fae? What defined fae nature? They were alien, enchanting, disturbing, even to one such as Lune. No wonder mortals told such strange stories of them.

But they were little touched by human society. That, she told Madame Malline, was the most difficult thing about them. Those fae who dwelt in the cracks and shadows of the mortal world did so because of their fascination with humans and human life. The Onyx Court was only the most vivid proof of that fascination, the most intensive mimicry of mortal habits. The folk of the sea were more like the inhabitants of deeper Faerie, less touched by the currents of change. But at least those who dwelt in Faerie breathed air and walked on the earth; beneath the waves lay a world where up and down were little different from north or east, where events flowed according to inscrutable rhythms.

Even speaking of them, she fell back into the metaphors of speech she had acquired there, likening everything to the subtle behavior of water.

That information got Lune into a more comfortable cell. A primer on the diplomacy of underwater society took her back to her own chambers, where she lived under house arrest, with Sir Prigurd Nellt instead of Sir Kentigern commanding the guards that bracketed her door.

Then came the final negotiation, the one she had been anticipating for some time.

“Now,” Madame Malline said when they had dispensed with the pleasantries, “you know what I wish to hear. Stories of how you went to the sea, what you found there — these are interesting, and I thank you for them. But I have shown you my goodwill in helping you thus far, and the time has come for you to repay it.”

They were seated by the fire in Lune’s outer chamber, with glasses of wine at hand. Not the fine French vintage Vidar had offered the day he set Lune on Walsingham’s trail, but a good wine nevertheless. Lune could almost ignore the way her chambers had been ransacked after her downfall, her charms breached, her jewels and her little store of mortal bread stolen away by unknown hands.

“Au contraire, madame ambassadrice,”
Lune said, dropping briefly into the envoy’s own tongue to soften the rudeness she was about to offer. “Secure my freedom; have the guards removed from my door. Then I will give you the information you seek.”

Madame Malline’s smile was beautiful and utterly without warmth. “I do not think so, Lady Lune. Should I do so, there would be nothing save gratitude that binds you to help me further. And though grateful you may be, when weighed against your fear of angering Invidiana . . . ” She lifted her wine goblet in one graceful, ringed hand, and her smile turned just the faintest bit malicious. “
Non.
You will tell me, and take your chances with your Queen.”

All as Lune had expected. And, in a way, as she had needed.

“Very well,” she said, letting the words out reluctantly. “You wish to know, then, what I agreed to. What price I offered them, in exchange for their assistance against the Spanish Armada.”

“Oui.”

“Peace,” Lune said.

One delicately plucked eyebrow arched upward. “I do not understand.”

“The folk of the sea do not ignore everything that goes on in the air. I do not know who spread the rumors; perhaps a draca or other water spirit eavesdropped on someone’s indiscreet conference, then spoke to another, and so on until the news flowed downriver and reached them. Invidiana intended to make war against the folk of the sea. And the concession I offered them was an agreement to abandon that course.”

Madame Malline studied her, eyes narrowed and full lips pursed. At last she said, meditatively, “I do not believe you.”

Lune met her gaze without flinching. “It is true.”

“Your Queen has an obsession with mortal ways, mortal power. Even her wars against the Courts of the North have their origin in mortal affairs, the accusation that she sabotaged the Queen of Scots. There is no human court out on the water. Why should Invidiana desire power over the folk of the sea? What cares she for what they do beneath the surface?”

“She cares nothing for it,” Lune said. “But she cares a great deal for what the folk of the sea can do about mortals
on
its surface. Had her Majesty’s plans moved more quickly, we would not have had to negotiate for their assistance against the Armada, but she was not yet fully prepared to assert sovereignty over the undersea. If she had done so . . . imagine what she could do, were they bound to obey her.” Lune paused, to let Madame Malline consider it. Break the back of Spanish shipping. Give fair weather to English vessels, and foul to their enemies. Strike coastal areas with crippling storms.

The ambassador’s mind quickly moved ahead to the next complication. “But you have told me yourself that they are not organized, they have no
Grand Roi
— that you had to bargain with a dozen nobles of one sort or another to reach any agreement. Even the Courts of the North have unified themselves more than that. Your Queen could not hope to control the oceans.”

“She would not need to. A small force would do. They are highly mobile, the folk of the sea, and adapt with speed; a few dedicated, obedient groups would be able to wreak quite enough havoc to suit her purposes.”

Lune took advantage of the pause to reach for her own wine and conceal her face behind the rim. Madame Malline was staring into the fire, clearly working through the ramifications of this. Searching for a way to turn it to the benefit of the Cour du Lys. They had their own conflicts with Spain, with Italy, with heathen fae across the Mediterranean Sea.