“And the disrespect for authority—only you’re too kind to say it.” Jack leapt to his feet, still bursting with excitement. Once he was sworn in, he would have the Society’s patronage behind his work, and the Society had the King’s. What could he not do with that? “Come! Let us have a supper to celebrate. We could see one of those Punch shows in Covent Garden, or go to the gardens at Vauxhall. I only wish Kate were here to join us.”
A shadow crossed Antony’s features, most unexpectedly. What ailed the man? Something more than a single plague death, or even the larger threat in St. Giles.
Simple loneliness? His children were all gone: Alice married, Robin at sea, and Henry maintaining polite distance, with letters and the occasional visit, but nothing more. The thriving trade Antony had once ruled over now faltered; though still enough to keep body and soul together in decent comfort, it no longer seemed to give the baronet much joy in life. Kate’s journey to Norfolk could turn a man’s thoughts to his empty house.
Or more than that. “Did you and Kate quarrel?”
Antony rose and crossed to the window, gazing out into the cloudy day—and, as it happened, hiding his expression from Jack. He stood there a long moment, hands braced on the sill, until Jack almost gave up and changed the subject. But then Antony spoke. “I dislike keeping secrets.”
Jack blinked. “Then don’t.”
His old friend shook his head. “I do not—in every respect I can. But there are some few things in my life I can never tell her about.”
Which meant he should not be saying anything to Jack, either; it only roused the physician’s curiosity. Asking would gain him nothing, though. Jack said, “For fear of what? That she’ll turn against you? Antony, your wife loves you. You could burn down a church with a hundred parish orphans inside, and she would try to find out what good reason you had for doing it.”
“Not that.” Antony bowed his head, and the gray light gleamed through the gray hairs on his scalp. “I simply—cannot explain my actions to myself. I surely cannot explain them to anyone else.”
Though rarely at a loss for words, Jack had little notion what to say to that. Antony was not the sort of friend who shared the confidences of his heart—and while Jack might know about the circulation of the blood, he had no skill for dealing with that organ’s less physical functions. He bit his lip, thought it through, then asked, “Do you regret what you’ve done?”
Antony went still. “No.”
“Then why do you need to explain it, to yourself or any other?”
After a moment, the old baronet laughed ruefully. “I suppose I do not.”
“Just so. Now come.” Jack came forward and took his friend by the arm. Antony, surprisingly, permitted him the touch. “Supper, and some good cheer, and I will tell you about this ridiculous chymical physician who’s trying to gain entrance to the Royal Society.”
THE RED BULL THEATRE, CLERKENWELL: June 15, 1665
The audience roared with laughter as a gaily painted actor tumbled to the boards of the stage. The air in the Red Bull was stiflingly close and none too sweet, its foulness hardly veiled by thick clouds of tobacco smoke, but Lune laughed with all the rest, as coarsely as the red-faced mortal she pretended to be. Carline had persuaded her to come and see the new innovation of women actors, and while Lune thought the Bull’s lady shrill and overwrought, she was glad of the chance to distract herself.
The decision to come was not easy. There were six fae in the theatre that night, which meant six pieces of bread consumed—or rather, four pieces of bread, and two swallows of milk, though the latter was rarely seen in the Onyx Hall. Scarce resources nowadays; of the mortals who followed them from Berkshire, some had drifted away slowly, others with more speed, once the plague broke out in London’s parishes.
But Lune needed the diversion. Her messengers—she might call them spies—had returned again, footsore and annoyed, without word of Vidar. It worried her, not to know where he hid; she did not believe he would flee so far she could not find him. Not that her reach was so long, but she knew Vidar, and knew his arrogance. To take refuge in Italy would be to admit that he had failed, and that he would not do.
Nicneven had not found him either. Which was less of a surprise, the Gyre-Carling having a shorter reach than Lune’s own—but it did not put her heart any more at ease.
The Red Bull Theatre was glad to provide the diversion she needed. Why exactly the man now onstage was wearing a wooden tub around his naked body, Lune did not know—she had missed the explanation, if indeed there had been one—but the sheer absurdity of it was infectious.
All her amusement fled, though, when she spotted a figure forcing his way through the patrons of the Red Bull. Antony did not belong here; his back was stiff with disapproval, and more than a few of the men he shouldered aside glared at him. The baronet paid them no heed.
It did not take a great sage to realize some pressing errand brought him. Lune touched Carline’s arm and murmured in her ear, then rose to greet Antony.
“A moment of your time?” he muttered.
“Of course.” A man behind her was already complaining that she blocked his view; she eased her way clear, stumbling as someone’s foot snagged her hem. I am no Queen here, she thought wryly. Were I mortal and Christian, I would call it a lesson in humility.
Being neither of those things, she had no particular appreciation for humility, and was glad to gain the freer air of St. John’s Street outside. Straightening the disarray of her skirts, Lune opened her mouth to ask Antony what was so pressing it could not wait a few hours for her return.
He spoke before she could get one word out. “What in God’s name do you think you are doing?”
The harshness of it put her back up, for it evoked the guilt she felt in spending their scarcity on an evening’s entertainment. “I’ve hardly spent a moment outside since returning from Berkshire,” she began, prepared to defend her choice.
Antony cut her off with a violent motion. “That theatre is supposed to be closed. All of them are, by command of the King and Lord Mayor. And I find you in their midst, with no regard for the law!”
Lune winced. She could not pretend she hadn’t known. Kings came and went, but the plague orders remained the same: in times of sickness, all such public gatherings were banned, to prevent the spread of the distemper. After the strangulation of the Puritan era, though, London’s inhabitants, mortal and fae alike, were wild to partake of the licentious mood fostered by King Charles the Second—even in the face of danger.
“Fae are not vulnerable to disease,” she said, in vain defense. “We can neither contract it nor spread it; our presence here makes nothing worse.”
“It makes nothing better, either.” Antony snatched off his hat, crumpling the brim in his fingers. The hair beneath was thinner than she remembered it, and brittle. Their exile had broken his health; Antony had never fully recovered. But there was life in him still, and most of it currently burning with anger. “Lune, the plague is spreading, and at such a rate as to frighten me. They say it is God’s judgment for our license. I do not know about that, but certainly such behavior does not help.”
Lune spread her hands in bafflement. She was not to blame for the folk inside, and she could not see why Antony behaved as if she were. “What would you have me do? Send Bonecruncher and his friends in without glamours, to frighten everyone out?”
“It would be a start. But I had in mind a great deal more than that.”
She blinked. “Such as?”
He stepped closer, until only the crown of his hat separated them, so his voice would not carry. The passion in him had faded, leaving behind something less easily read. “You have more at your disposal than simple plague orders and medicines.”
“Magic?” Lune, too, kept her voice low. “Antony...our enchantments have no power over this sickness.”
“None?”
She let him see the honest regret in her eyes. “Disease is not something we know. We may spee
d the closing of wounds, a little; there are tales of greater things, that have more power to heal. But none in our possession. And none, so far as I know, that can banish the plague.”
Frustration hardened his features anew. Deven had asked this once, too; the plague was a frequent visitor to London. Lune had expected it from Antony during the last great visitation, some years before the war. It might have been easier for him to accept back then, before his own age made him so aware of his inevitable death.
Or not.
The Prince half turned away, jammed his hat back onto his head. Then he said, “There are other possibilities. Some of your stealthier folk could watch shut-up houses. The watchmen assigned to keep them closed are sent away on errands, and then the people escape; or else they threaten their watchers outright, hold them off with pistols or swords while their families flee, carrying the plague with them.”
“Antony—”
“Or the gentler ones, they could bring comfort to those in confinement, and perhaps keep healthy those who have not yet fallen sick.”
“Antony!”
Her call silenced him for just an instant, and into that gap came the sound of a bell. It did not ring the hour, which had passed just short while ago, but tolled six times: the death of a woman.
It might not be plague, but she knew they both thought it.
As the holy sound washed harmlessly over her, Lune said, “How often are the bells heard? Too much for safety. You will tell me I should not have spent bread on this visit to the theatre, and you will be right. But even without that—Antony, we cannot afford to be in the streets, not such as you ask. Not with people praying constantly for deliverance; not with crosses painted on the doors of the sick.”
“We said we would protect London,” he said, with ragged determination. “If not all of England, then at least the City. Lune, you have to try!”
Something black and desperate curled in her stomach, shortening her breath, making all her nerves hum. The bell was still sounding, ringing out the age of the unknown dead woman. Somewhere nearby, a parish servant pulled on the rope, fearing that soon someone else would ring the bell for him.
“I cannot,” she said, through the thickness that made her tongue stumble. “This is not something I can affect, Antony. I am sorry.” And without waiting for his reply, she fled back into the desperate frivolity of the theatre.
ROSE HOUSE, ISLINGTON: June 20, 1665
“Oh dear,” Rosamund said, somehow communicating a world of concern and frustration in that short exhalation.
The new rose bush planted behind the Angel was yet a slender thing, but the house below had been more than restored; one of Lune’s first actions after retaking the Onyx Hall had been to lend the sisters aid in improving their home. The bedchambers were enlarged, and each had its own hearth, until the place had the feel of a sumptuous little inn that just happened to be underground. The courtiers were calling it “Rose House” now—a name that caused Gertrude endless vexation.
As a concession to her, the upholstered chair Antony rested in was embroidered with daisies, instead of her sister’s endless roses. The two sat in their own small chairs, having listened to his frustrated account of the argument with Lune, while food sat untouched before him. He had no stomach for it, not with the problems he faced.
Gertrude nobly did not comment on his refusal, though her eyes followed the dish as he pushed it aside. “She’s right, I’m afraid. We have no charm to simply banish disease. Not once it’s taken hold in the body, and we are none of us great powers of Faerie, to bless the whole City of London.”
“But that is not what I asked for!” Antony sighed and clenched his fists. “Very well, it is—but I understand why you cannot. What of my other suggestions, though? Why will she not even consider those? She all but ran from me when I asked!”
The sisters exchanged a glance—an ingrained habit that today only made Antony’s useless anger worse. His ill temper was not for them, and not even, he thought, for Lune; but it was hard to be anything like calm, when every day brought news of more parishes infected. The further it spread, the dimmer his hope of doing anything to combat it.
Their silent conference seemed to pass the responsibility for answering to Gertrude. “She’s afraid,” the little brownie said.
“Of church bells, yes, and crosses on the doors, but there are ways to shelter oneself—”
“Not of those,” Gertrude said. “Of death.”
Antony’s brow knitted in confusion. “Death? By the plague? She told me herself, fae are not vulnerable to it.”
“That isn’t the point,” Rosamund said softly. “The point is death itself. To see humans in such a state—not just one or two, but dozens, hundreds, and all the rest living in fear. Mortality. Some of the crueler goblins find sport in it, but not Lune.”
Gertrude nodded. “She’s touched mortality too closely, with all the bread she’s eaten, and loving one of your kind. She understands it just enough to fear it even more than most. But you’ll find few fae who would like the thought of being surrounded by the dead and dying.”
“No one likes it,” Antony said, staring. “No one with any spark of compassion in them. That does not prevent us from caring for those in need!” Except that it did. Already, those who could afford to were retreating from London, the wealthy going to their country estates, or imposing themselves upon cousins. He could understand the King leaving; they could not afford the risk of him dying. But others fled, too—even doctors, who of all people should stay to help.
People fled, though, because they feared the danger to themselves. What the brownies were trying to say was that fae feared the thing itself: death, stark and omnipresent, as incomprehensible to them as love.
They could love. And they could die. But it came rarely, and few of them understood either one.
He tried to have sympathy, without much success. He had greater concerns than to coddle the fragile feelings of immortal creatures who were in no immediate peril. But sympathy or no, at least now he understood the source of the Queen’s reluctance. And knew, too, that it would go beyond Lune alone, if he tried to seek help elsewhere in the court.
He would just have to find a way to move them past that reluctance.
It could start here, in Rose House. “Will you, at least, do what you can to help?”
“We always do,” Gertrude answered him stoutly. “Though it’s little enough, I fear.”
Antony sighed. “It will be no worse than mere mortals can do.”
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON : July 16, 1665
Someone was stealing Irrith’s bread.
The realization annoyed her; then, a few moments later, her annoyance surprised her. The mortal food was a gift from the Queen—more like wages, really, given over the years both for reward and practical use, as Irrith played messenger to the Vale and other faerie courts. Despite seven years in Berkshire, where such protection was rarely necessary, Lune had soon reverted to the assumption that one could not set foot in the mortal world without being armored by their food.
Now that she had experience of London, Irrith understood it. The fae of the Onyx Court lived with one hundred and nine churches above their heads, and more iron than any sensible faerie should get within smelling distance of. But once clear of the city, Irrith had no need of bread on her journeys, and so she hoarded much of her allotment. Sometimes she traded it for favors, using the little morsels like currency, but more often she ate it so she could venture outside in safety.
Proof of her own madness, really. She hadn’t done it as much of late, because of the plague; London was not a friendly place nowadays. She even thought about returning to Berkshire, where she wouldn’t have to worry about such horrors. If she did leave, though, Irrith knew she would return. The mortals here kept changing! New plays, and new broadside ballads, and men’s clothing had recently sprouted masses of ribbons like brightly colored fungus. She couldn’t give up the chance to stare at them.
But sh
e could only do that if she had bread to protect her, and someone had begun pilfering it.
When she realized it, she thought of informing the guards—not the Onyx Guard, who protected the Queen, but the lesser warriors. She preferred not to bother them, though, and so one day, after receiving her allotment from Lune, Irrith left her bedchamber and passed very obviously through a public area where other fae gathered, then circled back by a more secret route.
For all that dwelling encased in stone bothered her, she liked the bedchamber Amadea had found for her. The Lady Chamberlain, searching for something that would evoke Irrith’s home, put her in a room where pillars of silvery marble had been carved to look like birch trees, sprouting leaves of green agate along the arching branches that supported the ceiling. It was in the shadow of one such pillar that Irrith concealed herself, to catch the thief.
She was a patient creature, when she had to be. Fae ate when they felt like it, and so Irrith could sit there for days, if necessary. And she was prepared to.
Patience, unfortunately, was a tedious thing. Irrith didn’t even realize she had dozed off until she heard a click—the lid of the box in which she kept her bread. By the time she had her wits about her, the door to her chamber was swinging closed.
Irrith was on her feet instantly, but not fast enough. The corridor outside was empty, with no footsteps to be heard. Charms for silence were easy things, though; she called one of her own, and stole with rapid, noiseless strides to the corner.
A shadowed figure vanished down another passage just as she peeked around the edge.
Despite herself, the sprite grinned. Very well, then. This was not the woods of Berkshire, and she lacked her bow, but it was a hunt all the same. She would track her quarry, and see where the creature went.
He—she thought the indistinct figure was male—knew the Onyx Hall well, whoever he was. The doorways and turnings he chose were familiar to Irrith only because Lune made her memorize them six years ago. They led her through parts of the Hall rarely used, leaving behind the bedchambers of the courtiers and common subjects. The warren she entered lay near the cathedral entrance Lord Antony had used, though its own passage to the surface came out in Billingsgate, near the Tower.