Midnight Never Come (20 page)

Invidiana considered this, one hand idly stroking Tiresias’s hair. He leaned into the touch, as if there were no one else present.

“Pretty words,” the Queen said at last, musingly. She tightened her grip on Tiresias, dragging his head back until he gazed up at her, mouth slackened, throat exposed and vulnerable. The Queen gazed down into her seer’s eyes, as if she could see his visions there. “But what lies behind them?”

“Your Grace.” Lune risked the interruption; silence might kill her just as surely. “I will gladly return to the service I left. I told Dame Halgresta I had other options available to me; give me my freedom, and I will discover all you wish to know about Walsingham.”

Tiresias laughed breathlessly, still trapped by Invidiana’s hand. “A body in revolt, the laws of nature gone awry. It cannot happen. Yet the stories say it did, and are not stories true?” One hand rose, as if seeking something; it faltered midair, came to rest below the unlaced collar of his shirt. “Not those that are lies.”

His words hardened Invidiana’s black eyes. She trailed one fingernail down the seer’s face; then her hand moved to hover near the jewel in the center of her bodice, the black diamond edged by obsidian and mermaid’s tears. The sight transfixed Lune with fear. But when the Queen scowled and returned her attention to Lune, she left the jewel where it was pinned. “Walsingham is no longer a problem. You may be. But I am loathe to cast aside a tool that may yet have use in it, and so you will live.”

Lune immediately bent her head again. “I am most grateful for —”

“You will live,” Invidiana repeated in honeyed, venomous tones, “as a warning to those who might fail me in the future. Your chambers are no longer your own. You may remain in the Onyx Hall, but for hospitality you will be dependent upon others. Anyone giving you mortal food will be punished. If hands turn against you, I will turn a blind eye. Henceforth you are no lady of my court.”

The words struck like hammer blows on stone. Lune’s hands lay slack and nerveless in her lap. She might have wept — perhaps Invidiana wanted tears, begging, a humble prostration on the floor, a display of sycophantic fear. But she could not bring herself to move. She stared, dry eyed, at her Queen’s icy, contemptuous face, and tried to comprehend how she had failed.

“Take her,” the Queen said, her voice now indifferent, and this time Achilles truly did have to drag Lune to her feet and out of the hall.

M
EMORY
:
April 6, 1580

I
t began as a trembling, a rattling of cups and plates on sideboards, a clacking of shutters against walls.

Then the walls themselves began to shake.

People fled into the streets of London, fearing their houses would fall on them. Some were killed out there, as stones tumbled loose and plummeted to the streets. Nothing was exempt: a masonry spire on Westminster Abbey cracked and fell; the Queen felt it in her great chamber at Whitehall; across all of southern England, bells tolled in church steeples, without any hand to ring them.

God’s judgment, the credulous believed, was come to them at last.

The judgment, though, did not come from God — nor was it intended for them.

Out in the Channel, the seabed heaved and the waves rose to terrifying heights. The waters swamped all under, with no respect for country; English, French, and Flemish, all drowned alike as their ships foundered and sank.

Some few were close enough to see the cause of the tremor, in the short moments before their death.

The bodies struck the waves with titanic force. Those few, hapless sailors saw colossal heads, hands the size of cart horses, legs thicker than ancient trees. Then the waters rose up, and they saw nothing more.

At Dover, a raw white scar showed where a segment of the cliff had cracked and fallen in the struggle.

In the days to come, mortals on both sides of the Channel would feel the aftershocks of the earthquake, little suspecting that beneath the still unsteady waves, terrible sea beasts were tearing at the corpses of Gog and Magog, the great giants of London, who paraded in effigy through the streets of the city every Midsummer at the head of the Lord Mayor’s procession.

Rarely did the conflicts of fae become so publicly felt. But the giants, proud and ancient brothers, had long refused to recognize any Queen above them, and Invidiana did not take kindly to rebellion. Some said she had once been on friendly terms with them, but others scoffed; she had no friends. At most, they might have once been useful to her.

Now their use had ended.

Giants could not be disposed of quietly. She sent a legion of minions against them, elf knights and hobyahs, barguests and redcaps from the north of England, and the brutal Sir Kentigern Nellt to lead them. On the cliffs of Dover the battle had raged, until first one brother and then the other fell to their opponents. In a final gesture of contempt, Nellt hurled their bodies into the sea, and shook the earth for miles around.

While the mortals cowered and prayed, the warriors laughed at their fallen enemies. And when the waves had subsided and there was no more to see, they retired to celebrate their bloody triumph.

T
OWER
W
ARD AND
F
ARRINGDON
W
ITHOUT
, L
ONDON
:
April 15, 1590

A monumental stone Elizabeth gazed down on Deven as he rode up Ludgate Hill toward the city wall, making him feel like a small boy that had been caught shirking his duties. He had leave from the lieutenant of the Gentlemen Pensioners to be absent that day, but still, he breathed more easily when he and Colsey passed through the gate, with its image of the Queen, and into London.

The rains that had deluged the city of late had washed it moderately clean for once. The smaller streets were still a treacherous sludge of mud, but Deven kept to wider lanes, where cobbled or paved surfaces glistened after their dousing. Only when he turned north onto St. Dunstan’s Hill did he have to be careful of his horse’s footing.

In the churchyard, he halted and tossed his reins to Colsey. He cleared the steps leading to the church door in two bounds, passing a puzzled laborer who was scrubbing them clean, and went inside.

The interior of the church was murky, after the rain-washed brilliance outside. Deven’s eyes had not yet adjusted when he heard a voice say, “How may I be of service, young master?”

The words came from up ahead, on his left. Deven turned his head that way and said, “I seek a parishioner of yours, but I do not know where the house lies. Can you direct me?”

“I would be glad to. The name?”

His vision had cleared enough to make out a balding priest. Deven said, “The Montrose family.”

The priest’s brow furrowed along well-worn lines. “Montrose . . . of this parish, you said?”

“Yes. I am searching for Anne Montrose, a young woman of gentle birth, who was until recently in service to the Countess of Warwick.”

But the priest shook his head after a moment of further thought and said, “I am sorry, young master. I have no parishioners by that name. Perhaps you seek the church of St. Dunstan in the West, outside the city walls, near to Temple Bar?”

“I will ask there,” Deven said mechanically, then thanked the priest for his assistance and left. The countess would not have confused the two parishes. Yet some vain hope made him ride a circuit around St. Dunstan’s, asking at all the churches that stood near it, then cross the breadth of the city again to visit the other St. Dunstan’s, which he had passed on his way in from Westminster that morning.

Only one church, St. Margaret Pattens, had any parishioners by the surname of Montrose: a destitute family with no children above the age of six.

Colsey stayed remarkably silent through this entire enterprise, given how Deven had told him nothing of the day’s purpose. When his master emerged from St. Dunstan in the West, though, the servant said tentatively, “Is there aught I can do?”

The very hesitance in Colsey’s voice told Deven something of his own expression; in the normal way of things the man never hesitated to speak up. Deven made an effort to banish the blackness he felt to somewhere less public, but his tone was still brusque when he snapped, “No, Colsey. There is not.”

Riding back along the Strand, he wrestled with that blackness, struggling to shape it into something he could master. Anne Montrose was false as Hell. She had lied to her mistress about her home and her family. Doubtless she was not the only one at court to have hidden inconvenient truths behind a falsehood or two, but in light of the suspicions Deven had formed, he could not let the trail die there.

The ghost of Walsingham haunted his mind, asking questions, prodding his thoughts. So Anne was false. What should be his next step?

Trace her by other means.

S
T
. J
AMES’
P
ALACE
, W
ESTMINSTER
:
April 16, 1590

Hunsdon looked dubious when he heard Deven’s request. “I do not know . . . Easter will be upon us in a week. ’Tis the duty of her Majesty’s Gentlemen Pensioners to be attendant upon her during the holiday.
All
of them.”

Deven bowed. “I understand, my lord. But never in my time here has every single member of the corps been present at once, even at last month’s muster. I have served continually since gaining my position, taking on the duty periods of others. This is the first time I have asked leave to be absent for more than a day. I would not do so were it not important.”

Hunsdon’s searching eye had not half the force of Walsingham’s, but Deven imagined it saw enough. He had not been sleeping well since the Principal Secretary’s death — since his rift with Anne, in truth — and only the joint efforts of Colsey and Ranwell were keeping him from looking entirely unkempt. No one could fault him in his performance of his duties, but his mind was elsewhere, and surely Hunsdon could see that.

The baron said, “How long would you be absent?”

Deven shook his head. “If I could predict that for you, I would. But I do not know how long I will need to sort this matter out.”

“Very well,” Hunsdon said, sighing. “You will be fined for your absence on Easter, but nothing more. With everyone — or at least most of the corps — coming to court, finding someone to replace you until the end of the quarter should not be difficult. You have earned a rest, ’tis true. Notify Fitzgerald if you intend to return for the new quarter.”

If this matter occupied him until late June, it was even worse than he feared. “Thank you, my lord,” Deven said, bowing again.

Once free of Hunsdon, he went straightaway to the Countess of Warwick again.

She had taken Anne on as a favor to Lettice Knollys, the widowed Countess of Leicester, who had last year married for the third time, to Sir Christopher Blount. A question to her new husband confirmed that his wife, out of favor with Elizabeth, was also out of easy reach; she had retired in disgrace to an estate in Staffordshire. Blount himself knew nothing of Anne Montrose.

Deven ground his teeth in frustration, then forced himself to stop. Had he expected the answer to offer itself up freely? No. So he would persist.

Inferior as Ranwell’s personal services were to Colsey’s, the newer servant could not be trusted with this. Deven sent Colsey north with a letter for the countess, and made plans himself to visit Doctor John Dee.

T
HE
O
NYX
H
ALL
, L
ONDON
:
April 18, 1590

Lune’s own words mocked her, until she thought she heard them echoing from the unforgiving walls of the palace:
No fae who cannot find a way to benefit herself while also serving the Onyx Throne belongs in your court.

It was true, but not sufficient. Lune did not believe for an instant that Invidiana was angry at the lie she had given Madame Malline; that was simply an excuse. But the Queen had set her mind against Lune before that audience ever happened — before Lune ever went to the Tower. Would anything have changed that?

Ever since she went undersea, her fortunes had deteriorated. The assignment to Walsingham had seemed like an improvement, but only a temporary one; in the end, what had it gained her?

Time among mortals. A stolen year, hovering like a moth near the flame of the human court. A lie far preferable to the truth she lived now.

Living as an exile in her own home, hiding in shadows, trying to keep away from those who would hurt her for political advancement or simple pleasure, Lune missed her life as Anne with a fierce and inescapable ache. Try as she did to discipline her mind, she could not help thinking of other places, other people. Another Queen.

Elizabeth had her jealousies, her rages, and she had thrown her ladies and her courtiers in the Tower for a variety of offenses. But for all that her ringing tones echoed from the walls of her chambers, threatening to chop off the heads of those who vexed her, she rarely did so for anything short of genuine, incontrovertible treason.

And despite those rages, people flocked to her court.

They went for money, for prestige, for connections and marriages and Elizabeth’s reflected splendor. But there was more to it than that. Old as she was, contrary and capricious as she was, they loved their Gloriana. She charmed them, flattered them, wooed them, bound them to her with charisma more than fear.

What would it be like, to love one’s Queen? To enjoy her company for more than just the advantage it might bring, without concern for the pit beneath one’s feet?

Lune felt the eyes on her as she moved through the palace, never staying long in one place. A red-haired faerie woman, resplendent in a jeweled black gown that spoke of a rapid climb within the court, watched her with a sharp and calculating eye. Two maliciously leering bogles followed Lune until to escape them she had to dodge through a cramped passageway few knew about and emerge filthy on the other side.

She kept moving. If she stayed in one place, Vidar would find her. Or Halgresta Nellt.