Midnight Never Come

  “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.

  ST. JAMES’ PALACE, WESTMINSTER: 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.

  THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: 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.

  Without mortal bread, going into the city was impossible. But when she heard a familiar, heavy tread, she ran without thinking; the nearest escape lay in the Threadneedle Street well, one of the exits from the Onyx Hall.

  Luck afforded her this one sign of favor; with no sense of what hour it was in the mortal city, Lune found herself above ground in the dead of night. She wasted no time in flinging a glamour over herself and dodging into the shadows of a tiny lane, where she waited until she was certain the giantess had not followed.

  It was a dangerous place to be. One of the nearest things to an inviolable rule in the Onyx Hall forbade drawing too much attention among mortals. Night allowed more freedom of movement than day, but without bread or milk, she would be limited to a goblin’s skulking mischief.

  Or she could flee.

  Like a needle pointing to the north star, her head swiveled unerringly to look up Threadneedle, as if she could see through the houses to Bishopsgate and the road beyond. Out of London.

  Invidiana wanted her to stay and suffer. But did she have to?

  Wherever Lune had been before she came here, London was her home now. Some few fae migrated, even to foreign lands, but she could no more leave her city to live in Scotland than she could dwell among the folk of the sea.

  She looked back at the well. Dame Halgresta lacked the patience to lie in wait; whether she had been chasi
ng Lune, or simply passing by, she would be gone now.

  Lune stepped back out into Threadneedle Street, laid her hand on the rope, and descended down the well, back into the darkness of the Onyx Hall.

  MORTLAKE, SURREY: April 25, 1590

  Deven rode inattentively, his eyes fixed on the letter in his hand, though he knew its contents by heart already.

  I arranged a position for Mistress Montrose with Lady Warwick at the request of her cousin, a former waiting-gentlewoman in my own service, Margaret Rolford.

  Colsey was no fool. He knew why his master had searched London from one end to the other; he asked the next logical question before he left Staffordshire, knowing that otherwise he would have to turn around and go back. The answer was waiting in the letter.

  Margaret Rolford lives now in the parish of St. Dunstan in the East.

  The manservant had that answer waiting, too. “No Rolfords, either. Not there, nor in Fleet Street. I checked already.”

  No Margaret Rolford. No Anne Montrose. Deven wondered how Margaret had come into Lettice Knollys’s service, but it wasn’t worth sending again to Staffordshire to ask; he no longer believed he would uncover anything useful by that route. Anne seemed to have come from nowhere, and to have vanished back to the same place.

  He scowled and tucked the letter into his purse.

  Cottages dotted the land up ahead, placid and pastoral, with a modest church spire rising above them. Had he reached the right village? Deven had given both his servants a day’s liberty and ridden out alone; Colsey would not approve of him coming here. So he himself had to flag down a fellow trudging along the riverside towpath with a basket on his back and ask, “Is this the village of Mortlake?”

  The man took in his taffeta doublet, the velvet cap on his head, and bowed as much as the weight of the basket would allow. “Even so, sir. Can I direct you?”

  “I seek the astrologer Dee.”

  He half-expected his words to wipe the pleasant look from the man’s face, but no such thing; the fellow nodded, as if the scholar were an ordinary citizen, not a man suspected of black magic. “Keep along this road, sir, and you’ll find him. There’s a cluster of houses, but the one you want is the largest, with the extra bits built on.”

  The villager caught the penny Deven tossed, then quickly sidestepped to regain control of his burden as it slipped.

  Deven soon saw what the man had meant. The “extra bits” were extensions easily as large as the house to which they had been added, making for a lopsided, rambling structure that encroached on the cottages around it. Flagstone paths connected that building to several nearby ones, as if they were all part of the same complex. And none of it was what Deven expected; nothing about the exterior suggested necromancy and devilish conjurations.

  He dismounted, looped his horse’s reins around a fence post, and knocked at the door. It was opened a moment later by a maidservant, who promptly curtsied when she found a gentleman on the step.

  A twinkling later he was in the parlor, surreptitiously eyeing the unremarkable furnishings. But he did not have long to look; soon an older man with a pointed, snow-white beard entered.

  “Doctor Dee?” Deven offered him a polite bow. “I am Michael Deven, of the Queen’s Gentlemen Pensioners, and formerly in service to Master Secretary Walsingham. I beg your pardon for the imposition — I should have sent a letter in advance — but I have heard much of you from my master, and I hoped I might beg assistance from such a learned man.”

  His nerves hummed as he spoke. If his suspicions were correct, he was foolish to come here, to expose himself thus to his quarry. But he had not been able to talk himself out of this journey; the best he could do was to deliberately omit to send a letter, so that Dee would have no warning of his coming.

  But what did he expect to find? There were no mystic circles on the floor, no effigies of courtiers awaiting burial at a crossroads or beneath a tree. And Dee did not flinch at Walsingham’s name. The man might be the hidden player, but it was increasingly difficult for Deven to believe he might have killed Walsingham by foul magic.

  “Assistance?” Dee said, gesturing for Deven to take a seat.

  Deven contrived to look embarrassed; he might as well put his flush to use. “-I — I have heard, sir, that you are as able an astrologer as dwells in England. I am sure your time is much occupied by working on behalf of the Queen’s grace, but if you might spare a moment to help a young man in need. . . .”

  Dee’s alert, focused eyes narrowed slightly at this. “You wish me to draw up a horoscope? To what end?”

  Glancing away, Deven permitted himself a nervous, self-deprecating laugh. “-I — well, that is — you see, there’s a young woman.”

  “Master Deven,” the astrologer said in unpromising tones,“I do occasionally calculate on behalf of some of her Majesty’s court, but not often. I am no street corner prophet, predicting marriage, prosperity, and the weather for any who pass by.”

  “Certainly not!” Deven hastened to reassure the man. “I would not even ask, were it simply a matter of ‘will she or won’t she.’ But I have run into difficulty, and having tried everything at my disposal, I am at a loss as to how to proceed.” He had to skirt that part carefully; he did not want to give Dee any more information than necessary. Assuming the man had not already heard his name from Anne. “I am sure you have many more important researches to occupy your time — I would be more than happy to fund them in some small part.”

  The words were perfectly chosen. Dee would have taken offense at the suggestion of being paid for his work; no doubt the man wanted to distinguish himself as no common magician. But an offer of patronage, no matter how fleeting and minor, did not go amiss, especially given the astrologer’s financial difficulties.

  Dee’s consideration did not take long. “A horary chart is simple enough to draw up. I imagine, by your flushed complexion, that the matter is of some urgency to you?”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  “Then come with me; we can answer your question directly.”

  Deven followed his host through the cottage and into one of the extensions, where he stopped dead on the threshold, awed into silence by the sight that greeted him. The room was lined with shelves, a great library that dwarfed those held by even the most learned of Deven’s own acquaintances. Yet it had an air of recent abuse, that called to mind what Anne had said about Dee’s troubles; there were blank stretches of shelving, scars on the woodwork, and a conspicuous lack of reading podiums or other accoutrements he expected of a library.

  Dee invited him over to the one table the room still held, with a stool on either side of it and a slew of paper on top. The papers were swept away before Deven could attempt to read them, and fresh sheets brought out, with an inkwell and a battered quill.

  “First,” Dee said, “we pray.”

  Startled, Deven nodded. The two men knelt on the floor, and Dee began to speak. His words were English, but they did not come from the Book of Common Prayer; Deven listened with sharp interest. Not Catholic, but perhaps not entirely Church of England either. Yet the man apparently considered prayer a requisite precursor to any kind of mystical work.

  None of it was what he had expected.

  When the prayer was done, they sat, and Dee sharpened his quill with a penknife. “Now. What is the question you wish answered?”

  Deven had not formulated its precise wording in his mind. He said, choosing his words with care, “As I said, there’s a young gentlewoman. She and I have had difficulties, that I wish to smoothe over, but she has gone away, and despite my best efforts I cannot locate her. What . . .” He reconsidered the question before it even came out of his mouth. “How may I find her again?”

  Dee sat with his eyes closed, listening to this, then nodded briskly and began marking out a square on the paper that lay before him.

  After watching the astrologer work for a few minutes, Deven said hesitantly, “Do you not wish to know my date of birth?”

&n
bsp; “ ’Tis not necessary.” Dee did not even look up. “For a horary chart, what matters is the moment at which the question was formulated.” He selected a book from a stack on the floor behind him and consulted it; Deven glimpsed orderly charts of numbers and strange symbols, some of them marked in red ink.

  He waited, and tried not to show his relief. That had worried him the most, the prospect of giving Dee such information about himself. A magician might do a great deal with that knowledge. As it stood now, he might be any ordinary gentleman, asking after any ordinary woman; he had not even mentioned Anne’s name.

  But had she mentioned his?

  Dee worked in silence for several minutes, examining the chart in the book, making calculations, then noting the results on the square horoscope he sketched out. It did not take long. Soon Dee leaned back on his stool and studied the paper, one hand idly stroking his pointed white beard.

  “Be of good cheer, Master Deven,” Dee said at last in absent, thoughtful tones at odds with his words. “You will see your young woman soon. I cannot say when, but look you here — the Moon is in the Twelfth House, and the Stellium of Mars, Mercury, and Venus — her influence has not yet passed out of your life.”

  Deven did not look where the ink-stained finger pointed; instead he watched Dee. The chart meant nothing to him, while the astrologer’s pensive expression meant a great deal. “Is there more?”

  The sharp eyes flicked up to meet his. “Yes. Enemies threaten — her enemies, I think, but they may pose a danger to you as well. The gentlewoman’s disposition is obscure to me, I fear. Conflict surrounds her, complicating the matter. Death will send her into your path again.”

  Death? A chill touched Deven’s spine. Was that a threat? He did his best to feign the concern of the lovestruck man he pretended to be, while searching for any hint of malice in the other’s gaze. Perhaps the chart really did say that. He wished he knew something of astrology.