In Ashes Lie

  How much of a difference did it make? Lune wondered if she deluded herself into thinking it too much, assuaging her own guilt through a show of action. Antony had bade her protect the people of London, and so she did what she could. Ellin, who was far more knowledgeable in these matters than she, said it did some good.

  Fae moved through the space, carrying water, medicines, food brought from above. Hobs made up the greater part of their number, called to this service by their helpful natures, but there were others as well. Some of the goblins came out of a twisted interest in the suffering and putrefaction of flesh. Ellin hated them, but so long as they followed his orders, they were permitted to stay.

  A despairing cry broke the quiet atmosphere. “God help me—please, I beg you, end my pain...” Several fae flinched, purely out of reflex. They were all protected. None of them, though, liked it when the mortals called out in their extremity. And the Onyx Hall’s stones trembled, but held.

  Lune exhaled slowly. Isolated voices, crying out in delirium, could not destroy this place—but she tensed every time it happened.

  She saw Ellin up ahead, wiping sweat from his face despite the cool air. Lune touched Segraine’s arm and pointed at an ugly little hob struggling along beneath a copper of water. “Aid him. I will not go far.”

  Alone, she approached the doctor, who gave her a weary smile. “Did the Goodemeades send you?”

  “No one ‘sends me’ anywhere,” Lune said with asperity. The shared misery of easing Antony through his final hours had created a peculiar bond between them, one that bypassed the deference of her rank. They had somehow transformed from strangers to close allies without any intervening stages, as if they had known each other for years. “I keep my own eye on you, Dr. Ellin.”

  “They left here not an hour ago,” he said, dropping his sodden handkerchief on a tray carried by a passing puck. “To purchase more food, I think.”

  Lune raised an eyebrow. “They left nearly half a day ago, and the food came not long after. They are resting. As you should be.”

  His surprise looked genuine. Lune smiled wryly. “Time is strange in this place. You are still not accustomed to it.”

  “Apparently not.” Ellin sank down upon a crate, resting his back against the wall. He could do courtesy when he chose to, but here, working in his element, he lapsed into a more casual manner, sparing his energy for those he tried to save. “I’ll rest; you have my word. In fact...”

  While he trailed off into thought, Lune snapped her fingers and summoned a hob. Exile in Berkshire had taught her the names of all her subjects who followed her there, but those who stayed apart were often unfamiliar to her. She knew her courtiers, but not those who lived below the glittering beauty of her court, shunning the elegant amusements of the privileged. “Mead, for Dr. Ellin,” she said. The Goodemeades provided barrels full, though when they had the time to make it, she could not guess.

  Ellin accepted the cup when it came. Initially he had feared its effect on him, but Gertrude convinced him it was safe for mortals to drink. After a hearty swallow, he said, “I think it may be time to close this place.”

  “Oh?”

  He nodded, gesturing around. “If you look, you’ll see that it’s emptier than it was. Plague weakens in the winter months. I don’t think this visitation has run its course, but I’m mindful of the dangers posed by keeping people here. G—” He almost choked on the name. “Ah, that is—someone forbid that next summer should be as bad as the last, but if it is, we might consider this little pest-house again. But for now, we may return these people to the London they left.”

  I almost want to argue with him. Having come so late to the defense of the city, Lune was loath to end this service. But if she deferred to Ellin in the creation of the pest-house to begin with, she could hardly disagree when he decided to close it. “I have noticed myself that trade is reviving.”

  “Yes, and the King may return soon. Nor is he the only one.” Ellin contemplated his mead cup for a moment, then muttered, almost too quietly to hear, “Lady Ware has returned.”

  Lune went still. Then she asked, “Is that safe?”

  He snorted. “Safety has rarely been her foremost concern.”

  Antony’s children were grown and gone. The blessings they had received in the cradle would shelter them as much as could be; beyond that, Lune had no interest in them. Some fae assumed she would pursue the eldest as the next Prince of the Stone, but Lune had no such design; Henry’s disposition would be far too hostile to her, both as a faerie and a Queen. Antony, however, had loved Katherine Ware, and would want her looked after.

  “Thank you for telling me,” Lune murmured, then strengthened her voice. “Well. If you are certain it is time to move on, then let us arrange the return of your patients to their homes.”

  LOMBARD STREET, LONDON: December 31, 1665

  The church service was a long one, praying for the souls lost to the plague, and beseeching the Lord God to preserve those who remained. Many who filed out of St. Nicholas’s afterward wore deep mourning; it was a wealthy parish, whose members could afford the black cloth that had grown so dear.

  Fortified by the tithe, Lune could have gone in. It felt too great a hypocrisy, though, and so she waited outside in the winter air, watching, until she saw the drawn face and white hair of Lady Ware among the mourners. Then she followed at a discreet distance, from the church to the house on Lombard Street. Once enough time had passed to make it seem she had not followed, she crossed the street and knocked on the door.

  Lady Ware answered it herself. Her weary eyes hardened at the sight of the face Lune wore: Anne Montrose, a familiar guise for her, and the one Antony’s widow would recognize. She had altered it for the years that had passed since their last meeting, but that was not so much.

  “What do you want?” Lady Ware asked.

  Lune offered her a respectful curtsy. “If it please you—I would beg a moment of your time. Nothing more.”

  Katherine Ware hesitated, then grudgingly stepped back. “Come in.”

  The parlor upstairs was a bare place; like so many other Royalists, Antony had been but meanly rewarded by the bankrupt King upon his restoration. What recovery he made through trade, he had spent in parish relief during the long, awful summer. His widow’s stiff posture suggested her embarrassment at the spartan furnishings—or perhaps that was hostility.

  Lune sat upon a hard chair and doubted her own purpose in coming. What could the two of them say to one another, across the chasm that divided them?

  She must say something. Smoothing the looped-up layers of her skirt, Lune said, “I am very sorry for your husband’s death.”

  The aging woman across from her closed her eyes briefly against the grief. “Dr. Ellin tells me you were here.”

  “Yes. I—am not vulnerable to plague. I have survived it already.” It happened; Antony’s old manservant Burnett was one of Ellin’s assistants now, having emerged alive from the pest-house. “If I could have done anything to save him, I would have.”

  Lady Ware’s brown gaze was steady now. “I see. You were close to my husband?”

  This, at least, Lune was prepared for. She said, “He was a treasured friend. No less, and no more.”

  “Yes,” the widow said. “Antony told me.”

  An unspoken world whispered in the name. That was their bridge across the chasm: the man who had been such a vital part of both their lives. And if Lune’s own life would go on for ages to come, as Katherine Ware’s would not, still, she would not forget the forty years they shared.

  Nor the principles he championed, nor the promise he wrung from her at the end.

  She stared at her gloves, struggling with herself. When Lune looked up, she saw a faint smile grace Kate’s lips. “You are wondering whether you should tell me more,” the widow said. “I will save you the trouble: do not. I know something of who you are, and what you did with my husband; some of what I know, he told me, and some I pieced together on my own. I
suspect, for example, that the printing press we used during the war belonged to your secret fellowship.”

  Lune’s eyes widened. It deepened the smile briefly. Then the merriment faded, and Kate’s chin trembled before she regained control. “I had hoped,” the woman went on, “that in time he would find the courage to tell me what secret he kept back. The plague has robbed us of that chance. But if I cannot hear the remainder of it from my husband, then I do not wish to hear it from you. Let it be, Mistress Montrose.”

  The speech surprised Lune, and she wondered if Lady Ware had rehearsed it against the possibility of this day, so that familiarity wore the most painful edges off her declaration, allowing her to speak it without faltering.

  But there was no hostility in it; just sorrow and regret. Lune bent and retrieved the box at her feet. “You may refuse this,” she said, “and I will not be offended. But I should like you to have it. I have no family to whom I may pass it on, and it seems to me such a thing should be given as a gift.”

  Curious, Kate accepted the box, gliding her fingers over the polished holly of its lid. Then she opened it, and lifted out a small bowl, blown from delicate glass, glowing emerald in the light.

  “It is a luck,” Lune said. “The story is that a faerie woman gave it to a great-grandfather of mine, in exchange for some kind deed on his part. So long as it is not lost or broken, it will bring good fortune to the family that owns it.” She permitted herself a brief hesitation, then said, “It is, I suppose, not the most godly object I could offer—”

  Kate laughed quietly. “I’ve had enough of godly folk for a lifetime. But will it not be unwise for you to give it away?”

  Lune shook her head. The bowl was made for Lady Ware herself, at Lune’s request. She had blessed Antony’s three children; now she did what she could to look after his wife.

  And not just his kin, of course, but all the City he had placed in her charge.

  “I would rather see it passed on to a friend,” she said. “Or at least the family of a friend.”

  Kate answered her with a wavering smile, but an honest one. “Say ‘friend,’ ” she replied, and held out her hand to Lune. “You may use that word without fear.”

  THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: December 19, 1665

  Irrith did not like the snaky Lord Keeper, Valentin Aspell. He was one of those fae who seemed to take a certain delight in cruelty, though he kept it hidden behind well-oiled courtesy. He bowed often as he conveyed his ill news to the Queen, but it never went deeper than the surface. “The Gyre-Carling’s demand is unreasonable, of course, madam. Your own justice has already dealt with Ifarren Vidar, and it is not for another Queen to demand possession of him—most especially when his crimes against this court were so great. But her message was most...insistent.”

  Lune scowled and spun away from Aspell, skirts whirling in a sapphire blur. She had been pacing the length of the privy chamber through his entire recitation, and showed no sign of stopping. “She can be insistent all she pleases; we will not give her Ifarren Vidar.”

  Irrith wished she would. At least that damn box would be out of the Onyx Hall.

  The sprite concealed a shudder. Living in the Vale, she had heard of the Onyx courtiers and their well-crafted intrigues, the poisonous traps they wove for one another. That was under the old Queen, of course, and in Lune’s time the stories were not so foul, but everyone agreed the fae of London had learned all the backstabbing, manipulative lessons of their mortal counterparts. In the Vale, if two fae hated one another, they had a duel and ended it. Here, they devised far more intricate ways of making their enemies suffer. Nothing she had seen, though, measured up to the terrible fate Lune meted out to Ifarren Vidar.

  She had called it mercy, but it was nothing of the sort.

  Aspell coughed delicately. “Madam—though the Gyre-Carling cannot mount a second attack, with her Irish allies lost, she will yet find other ways to trouble us. And in this court’s, ah, parlous state—”

  That stopped Lune’s pacing. She glared at the Lord Keeper. “Speak plainly, Valentin; I have no patience for your hesitations.”

  “Your Majesty has previously forbidden us to speak of such matters.”

  “I have forbidden you to contrive about them. Speak, before I have that forked tongue of yours torn out.”

  Irrith sidled backward, wishing she had some excuse to leave the room. The Queen’s temper had been uncertain ever since the death of her mortal favorite—and she had not even loved that one.

  The Lord Keeper bowed deeply. “Without a Prince, madam, this court is vulnerable. I know Lord Antony was more than a symbol of your Grace’s principles; he was essential to the stability of your crown. With the Gyre-Carling threatening us once more, I must beg your Highness to consider the possibilities for his successor.”

  Lune scowled and gestured sharply for wine. Irrith, unfortunately, was the nearest to it; she had to hurry forward with the cup. But Lune merely took it and drank, without so much as subjecting Irrith to a glare. “We shall take that under advisement, Lord Valentin. But our previous command still holds: this is a matter for us to decide. Anyone who attempts to interfere shall find our displeasure great indeed.”

  MONKWELL STREET, LONDON: January 3, 1666

  She showed up on the tenth day of Christmas, wearing the Montrose face, and startled Jack nearly out of his wits.

  Christmas it might be, but disease waited neither for man nor for the Son of God; it still brazenly afflicted people, in total disrespect of the holy season. Jack worked every morning in his shop near Cripplegate, and went every afternoon to the houses of those who could not come to him. Though the plague was mostly held in abeyance by the winter cold, there were other complaints, in numbers more than sufficient to keep him busy.

  He hadn’t been below for weeks, and perhaps some part of his mind had given up on curiosity, and dismissed the whole thing as a delusion.

  Mistress Montrose looked so resolutely ordinary, just another gentlewoman come in to consult with a physician, that he would never have connected her with the faerie Queen of London had she not admitted it that day in Antony’s house. He even wondered briefly if it might be another; he knew well enough by now that the fae could adopt any faces they chose. But she offered him a grave nod when she entered, and he knew it was her.

  Jack got rid of his patient as quickly as he could; the man had a cold, nothing more, which his fears had magnified into plague and spotted fever and the old sweating sickness, all at once. Then he offered the disguised Queen a bow. “I...didn’t expect to see you here.”

  She smiled faintly at his restraint. “My apologies; I do not mean to discomfit you. We have not seen you in our halls, though, and I have a question I would put to you—before you grow too far from us, and convince yourself it was all a dream.”

  Close to the mark; she was sharp, this elfin woman. He supposed she had unknown ages in which to practice. “Then please, come into the back. A poor enough place, compared with your home—”

  Lune dismissed that with a wave of her gloved hand. “Hard as it may be to believe, Dr. Ellin, a hovel is as interesting to me, in its own way, as a palace. Both are reflections of humanity.”

  And that, in turn, interested him. Jack showed her through into the back room, where a fire warmed the air, and offered her wine, which she accepted.

  While he busied himself with such small tasks, Lune waited with the patient air of one who recognized nervous delay when she saw it. What question was pressing enough to send her into his home? Not until he was seated did she speak. “Tell me, Dr. Ellin—were you born in London?”

  He blinked. “On Gracechurch Street. Is that what you came here to ask?”

  She laughed quietly. He heard the faintest undercurrent of tension in it; was she nervous, too? Something had ruffled the faerie woman’s composure, beneath the mask of her mortal face. “No. But it’s a necessary prelude. As is this: how much do you know of Antony’s relation to my court?”

  “Fra
gments,” Jack said honestly, and took a gulp of his wine while he considered. “I heard a few call him ‘the Prince.’ ” Though a man less like a faerie prince, he was hard-pressed to imagine. I suppose a Puritan would be less like.

  “Prince of the Stone,” Lune said. “You will hear some call that the title of my mortal consort, but the...intimate relationship the word consort implies was no part of my dealings with Antony. I swore years ago to always rule the Onyx Court with a mortal at my side, and the Prince is the man who fills that role.”

  Jack listened with a distracted ear; half his attention was taken up by the light this shed on Antony’s behavior, particularly with regards to Kate. Consort and yet not to a faerie Queen—no wonder he feared to confess it to his wife.

  “If you wish it,” that selfsame faerie Queen said, “the title shall be yours.”

  He blinked. Then blinked again. Then fought the urge to clean out his ear, as if its physical state could be blamed for what he’d just heard. “I beg your pardon?”

  Lune met his gaze without flinching, though her hands were wrapped tight around the wine. “There has been no Prince since Antony’s death. Already some of my courtiers whisper that my vow was but a passing fancy, and that henceforth I will rule as our kind usually does—alone, or with a consort more fitting to my nature. Some would like it to be true. But I promised Antony before he died that I would do everything in my power to help London and its people, and I cannot do that without someone to speak for them.”

  Words fled like startled cats when he reached for them; Jack became aware that he was gaping, and tried to stop. “So—” He trailed off, unsure where to begin. “You need a consort, and so you come to me.”

  “I need a Prince,” she said. “I do not offer it to you out of desperation; were you not suitable, I would search until I found another.”

  “Suitable?” The word came out on an undignified laugh. “I’m no Prince. My unsavory habit of dabbling in surgery and other such matters even tarnishes my name as a gentleman. And I know nothing of your world.”