Midnight Never Come
When Lune’s recitation wound down, Rosamund said, “And how long has Invidiana been on the throne?”
The elfin woman blinked in astonishment. “What manner of question is that?” she said. “An age and a day; I do not know. We are not mortals, to come and go in measured time.” And indeed, Deven realized, in all her explanation of her tenure at court, she had not once named a date or span of years.
The sisters looked at each other, and Gertrude nodded. Rosamund said, with simple precision, “Invidiana became the Queen of faerie England on the fifteenth day of January, in the mortal year fifteen hundred and fifty-nine.”
Lune stared at her, then laughed in disbelief. “Impossible. That is scarcely thirty years! I myself have been at the Onyx Court longer than that.”
“Have you?” Gertrude said, over the top of her mead.
The elfin woman’s lips parted, at a loss for words. Deven had been quiet since they sat down, but now he spoke. “That is the day Elizabeth was crowned Queen.”
“Just so,” Rosamund answered.
Now he was included in Lune’s disbelieving stare. “That is not possible. I remember —”
“Most people do,” Gertrude said. “Not specific memories, tied to specific mortal years — no, you’re quite right, we do not measure time so closely. Perhaps if we did, more fae would notice the change. The Onyx Court as such has only existed for thirty-one years, perhaps a bit longer, depending on how one considers it. Vidar has been there longer. But all your memories of Invidiana’s reign do not go further back than that. You just believe they do, and forget what came before.”
Rosamund nodded. “My sister and I are some of the only ones who remember what came before. Francis was another. She let him remember on purpose, I believe, and we were with him when it happened; he kept us from forgetting. Of the others who know, every last one now rides with the Wild Hunt.”
Lune’s silver eyes widened, and she set her mug down with careful hands. “They claim to be kings.”
“And they were,” Gertrude confirmed. “Kings of faerie England, one corner of it or another. Until Elizabeth became Queen, and Invidiana with her. In one day — one moment — she deposed them all.”
Deven had not forgotten where the conversation began. “But why? This cannot be usual for your kind.” It was not usual for his kind, to be sitting in a hidden cellar of a faerie house, speaking with two brownies and an elf. His mead sat untouched on the table before him; he knew better than to drink it. “Why the connection?”
“We are creatures of magic,” Rosamund said, as casually as if she were reminding him they were English. “And in its own way, a coronation ceremony is magic; it makes a king — or a queen — out of an ordinary mortal. Gertrude and I have always assumed Invidiana took advantage of that ritual to establish her own power.”
Lune’s voice came from his right, unsteady and faint. “But she did more than that, didn’t she? Because there was a pact.”
“ ‘Pact?’ ” The word chilled Deven. “What do you mean?”
For a moment, he thought he perceived both sorrow and horror in her expression. “Do you recall me asking after a mortal named Francis Merriman?” Deven nodded warily. “He was under my eyes, as I was under yours. He . . . died tonight. He told me of a pact formed by Invidiana, my Queen, that he said was harming mortals and fae alike. And he begged me to break it.”
Deven said, “But a pact . . .”
“Must be known to both parties,” Rosamund finished for him. “Any fae with an ounce of political sense knows that Invidiana regularly interferes with the mortal court, and uses that court to control her own people. And from time to time a mortal learns that he or she has dealings with fae — usually someone enough in thrall that they will not betray it. But if what Francis said is correct . . . then someone on the other side knows precisely what is going on.”
The words were trembling in Deven’s throat. He let them out one by one, fearing what they meant. “The Principal Secretary . . . he told me of a hidden player. And he believed that player did — not often, but at times — have direct access to her Majesty.”
He missed their reactions; he could not bring himself to look up from his clenched fists. The suggestion was incredible, even coming from his own mouth. That Elizabeth might know of faeries — not simply know of them, but traffic with them. . . .
“I believe it,” Lune whispered. “Indeed, it makes more sense than I like.”
“But why?” Frustrated fear and confusion boiled out of Deven. “Why should such a pact be formed? What would Elizabeth stand to gain?”
An ironic smile touched Lune’s thin, sculpted lips. “The keeping of her throne. We have worked hard to ensure it, at Invidiana’s command. The Queen of Scots you have already named; Invidiana took great care to remove her as a threat. Likewise with other political complications. And the Armada . . .”
Her sentence trailed off, but Gertrude finished it, quite cheerfully. “You have Lady Lune to thank for those storms that kept the Spanish from our shores.”
The bottom dropped out of Deven’s stomach. Lune said, “I negotiated the treaty only. I have no power to summon storms myself.”
He desperately floundered his way back to politics, away from magic. “And your Queen gained her own throne in return.”
The black feathers he’d collected along the way had fallen from his hand at some point after he came downstairs. Lune had the broken tip of one in her fingers, and with it was tracing invisible patterns on the tabletop, her gaze unfocused. “More than that,” she said, distant with thought. “Elizabeth is a Protestant.”
Rosamund nodded. “Whereas Mary Tudor and Mary Stewart were both Catholics.”
“What means that to you? Surely you cannot be Christian.”
“Indeed, we are not,” Lune said. “But Christianity can be a weapon against us — as you yourself have seen.” Nor had Deven forgotten; he would use it again, if necessary. “Catholics have rites against us — prayers, exorcisms, and the like.”
“As does the Church of England. And many puritan-minded folk call your kind all devils; surely that cannot be to your advantage.”
“But the puritans are few in number, and the Church of England is a new-formed thing, which few follow with any ardor. ’Tis a compromise, designed to offend as few as possible as little as possible, and it has not existed long enough for its rites to acquire true power. The Book of Common Prayer is an empty litany to most people, form without the passionate substance of faith.” Lune laid the feather tip down on the table and turned her attention to him. “This might change, in years to come. But for now, the ascendancy of your Protestant Queen is a boon to us.”
He could taste his pulse, so hard was his heart beating. The chessboard in his mind rearranged itself, pieces of new colors adding themselves to the fray. Walsingham had surely never dreamed of this. And when Beale heard . . .
If Beale heard.
In personal beliefs, Walsingham had been a Protestant reformer, a “puritan” as their opponents called them; he would have loved to see the Church of England stripped of its many remaining papist trappings. But Walsingham was also a political realist, who knew well that any attempt at sweeping reformation would provoke rebellion Elizabeth could not survive. Beale, on the other hand, was outspoken about his beliefs, and often agitated for puritan causes at court.
Should Beale ever hear that Elizabeth, the great compromiser of religion, had formed a pact with a faerie queen —
England was already at war with Catholic powers. She could not fight another one within her own borders.
Deven looked from Rosamund, to Gertrude, to Lune. “You said this Francis Merriman of yours begged you to break the pact.”
Lune nodded. “He said it was a mistake, that both sides had suffered for it.” Her hesitation was difficult to read; the silver eyes were alien to him. “I do not know the effects of this pact, but I know Invidiana. I can imagine why he wanted me to break it.”
“D
o you intend to do so?”
The question hung in the air. This deep underground, there was no sound except their breathing, and the soft crackling of the fire. The Goodemeade sisters had their lips pressed together in matching expressions; both of them were watching Lune, whose gaze lay on the broken feather tip before her.
Deven had known Anne Montrose — or thought he had. This silver-haired faerie woman, he did not know at all. He would have given a great deal to hear her thoughts just then.
“I do not know how to,” Lune said, very controlled.
“That is not what I asked. I do not know the arrangements of your court, but two things I can presume: first, that your Queen would not want you to interfere with this matter, and second, that you are out of favor with her. Else you would not be here, barefoot and in hiding, with her soldiers hunting you out of the city. So will you defy her? Will you try to break this pact?”
Lune looked to the Goodemeades. The brownies’ faces showed identical resolution; it was not hard to guess what they thought should be done.
But what he was asking of her was treason.
Deven wondered if Walsingham had ever felt such compunctions, asking his agents to betray those they professed to serve.
Lune closed her eyes and said, “I will.”
MEMORY: January 14–15, 1559
D espite the cold, people packed the streets of London. In the southwestern portions of the city, in the northeast — in all those areas removed from the center — men wandered drunkenly and women sang songs, while bonfires burned on street corners, creating islands of light and heat in the frozen air, banners and the clothing of the wealthy providing points of rich color. Everywhere in the city was music and celebration, and if underneath it all many worried or schemed, no such matters were permitted to stain the appearance of universal rejoicing.
The press was greatest in the heart of the city, the great artery that ran from west to east. Crowds packed so tightly along the route that hardly anyone could move, save a few lithe child thieves who took advantage of the bounty. Petty Wales, Tower Street, Mark Lane, Fenchurch, and up Gracechurch Street; then the course straightened westward, running down Cornhill, past Leadenhall, and into the broad thoroughfare of Cheapside. The cathedral of St. Paul awaited its moment, and then the great portal of Ludgate, all bedecked with finery. From there, Fleet Street, the Strand, and so down into Westminster, and every step of the way, the citizens of London thronged to see their Queen.
A roar went up as the first members of the procession exited the Tower, temporarily in use once more as a royal residence. By the time the slender figure in cloth of gold and silver came into view, riding in an open-sided litter and waving to her people, the noise was deafening.
The procession made its slow way along the designated route, stopping at predetermined points for pageants that demonstrated for all the glory and virtue of the new sovereign. No passive spectator she, nor afraid of the chill; when she could not hear over the noise of the crowd, she bid the pageant be performed again. She called responses to her loyal subjects, touching strangers for a moment with the honor and privilege of royal attention. And they loved her for that, for the promise of change she brought, for the evanescent beauty that would all too soon fade back to show an architecture of steel beneath.
She reached Westminster late in the day, exhausted but radiant from her ordeal. The night passed: in drunkenness for the people of London, in busy preparation for the great officials in Westminster.
Come the following morning, when she set forth again, a shadow mirrored her elsewhere.
In crimson robes, treading upon a path of blue cloth, one uncrowned woman passed from Westminster Hall to the Abbey.
In deepest black, moving through subterranean halls, a second uncrowned woman passed from the Tower of London to a chamber that stood beneath Candlewick Street.
Westminster Abbey rang with the sonorous speeches and ceremony of coronation. Step by step, a woman was transformed into a Queen. And a few miles away, the passages and chambers of the Onyx Hall, emptied for this day, echoed back the ghostlike voice of a fae, as she stripped herself of one name and donned another.
A sword glimmered in her hand.
The presiding bishop spoke traditional words as the emblems of sovereignty were bestowed upon the red-haired woman. The sound should not have reached the Onyx Hall, any more than the shouts of the crowd should have, but it was not a matter of loudness. For today, the two spaces resounded as one.
Then the fanfares began, as one by one, a succession of three crowns were placed upon an auburn head.
As the Onyx Hall rang with the trumpet’s blast, the sword flashed through the air and struck a stone that descended from the ceiling of the chamber.
Drunken revelers in London heard the sound, and thought it a part of the celebrations: the tolling of a terrible, triumphant bell, marking the coronation of their Queen. And soon enough the bells would come, ringing out in Westminster and spreading east to the city, but this sound reached them first, and resonated the most deeply. Sovereignty was in that sound.
Those citizens who were on Candlewick Street at the time fell silent, and dropped to their knees in reverence, not caring that the object they bowed to was a half-buried stone along the street’s south edge, its limestone surface weathered and scarred, unremarkable to any who did not know its tale.
Three times the stone tolled its note, as three times the sword struck it from below, as three times the crowns were placed. And on the third, the sword plunged into the heart of the stone.
All mortal England hailed the coronation of Elizabeth, first of her name, by the Grace of God, Queen of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, et cetera; and all faerie England trembled at the coronation of Invidiana, Queen of the Onyx Court, Mistress of the Glens and Hollow Hills.
And a dozen faerie kings and queens cried out in rage as their sovereignty was stripped from them.
-Half-buried in the soil of Candlewick Street, the London Stone, the ancient marker said to have been placed there by the Trojan Brutus, the mythical founder of Britain; the stone upon which sacred oaths were sworn; the half-forgotten symbol of authority, against which the rebel Jack Cade had struck his sword a century before, in validation of his claim to London, made fast the bargain between two women.
Elizabeth, and Invidiana.
A great light and her great shadow.
Act Four
O no! O no! tryall onely shewes
The bitter iuice of forsaken woes;
Where former blisse present euils do staine;
Nay, former blisse addes to present paine,
While remembrance doth both states containe.
—Sir Philip Sidney
“The Smokes of Melancholy”
S unlight caresses his face with warmth, and grass pricks through the linen of his shirt to tickle the skin inside. He smiles, eyes closed, and lets his thoughts drift on the breeze. Insects sing a gentle chorus, with birds supplying the melody. He can hear leaves rustling, and over the crest of the hill, her laughter, light and sweet as bells.
The damp soil yields softly beneath his bare feet as he runs through the wood. She is not far ahead — he can almost glimpse her through the shifting, dappled emerald of the shadows — but branches keep hindering him. A silly game. She must have asked the trees to help her. But they play too roughly, twigs snagging, even tearing his shirt, leaf edges turning sharp and scoring his face, while acorns and rocks batter the soles of his feet. He leaves a trail of footprints that fill with blood. He does not like this game anymore.
And then he teeters on the edge of a pit, almost falling in.
Below, so far below . . .
She might be sleeping. Her face is peaceful, almost smiling.
But then the rot comes, and her skin decays, turning mushroom-colored, wrinkling, swelling, bloating, sinking in at the hollows of her face, and he cries out but he cannot go to her — the serpent has him fast in its coils, and as
he fights to free himself it rears back and strikes, sinking its fangs into his brow, six stabbing wounds that paralyze him, steal his voice, and she is lost to him.
The fae gathered around laugh, taking malicious pleasure in his blind struggles, but it loses all savor when he slumps into the vines they have bound around him. His dreams are so easy to play with, and the Queen never objects. Bored now by his silent shudders, they let the vines fall away as they depart.
He is left in the night garden, where the plants have never felt neither sun nor breeze. High above, cold lights twinkle, spelling out indecipherable messages. There might be a warning in them, if he could but read it.
What good would it do him? He had warnings before, and misunderstood them.
Water rushes along at his side. Like him it is buried, forgotten by the world above, disregarded by the world below, chained to serve at her pleasure.
It has no sympathy for him.
He weeps for his loss, there on the bank of the brook — weeps bloody tears that stain the water for only an instant before dissolving into nothingness.
He has lost the sunlit fields, lost the laughter, lost her. He shares her grave, here in these stone halls. It only remains for him to die.
But he knows the truth.
Even death cannot bring him to her again.
THE ANGEL INN, ISLINGTON: April 25, 1590
“We must get you back into the Onyx Hall,” Rosamund said to Lune.
Gertrude was in the corner, murmuring to a sleek gray mouse that nodded its understanding from within her cupped hands. Lune was watching her, not really thinking; her thoughts seemed to have collapsed in fatigue and shock after she committed herself to treason. It was a reckless decision, suicidal even; tomorrow morning she would regret having said it.
Or would she? Her gaze slid once more to Deven, like iron to a lodestone. His stony face showed no regrets. She had never expected him to become caught in this net, and could not see a way to free him. However lost he might be right now, he would not back away. Though this pact might benefit Elizabeth, it was also harming her; so Tiresias had said — no, Francis Merriman. The seer had fought so hard to reclaim that self. Having killed him, the least Lune could do was grant him his proper name.