“That’s what worries me,” Henry muttered. “He is too beloved, of James in particular. No man who is not King should have such a voice in the governance of a realm.”
Except, perhaps, a Prince. Would this work, when the time came? Would Lune be able to rule alongside a man she did not love? For as much as Lune found Henry pleasing, Deven knew it went no further than friendship.
It had to work. Lune might not be a mortal Queen, forced to wed for the sake of alliance, but in the end it might come to the same thing. She needed a Prince, someone to speak for the world above. It was not so different from Charles’ marriage, after all.
Henry fingered his cards, hesitating, before finally laying them down. Deven displayed his own hand, and his friend sighed in defeat.
No, not perfect. But Henry could learn. He had already begun. And Deven was more than willing to teach him, for the sake of both Lune and the Onyx Court.
For, night hath many eies,
Whereof, though most doe sleep, yet some are spies.
—V.iv.70-1
The Onyx Hall, London: 8 June, 1625
Steam veiled the bathing chamber, wafting up from the salamander-heated water, such that Lady Carline did not see the pale figure until it was nearly upon her.
She yelped in surprise, splashing water out of her bath, but gave an impatient sigh when she saw the figure properly. “Of course you would linger,” she said to the ghost, in the tone of one not expecting a reply. “I wonder if his lordship troubled to mention it, that you might end up as some wretched shade. Well, along with you; whatever message you bear, I have no interest in it.” She settled her head against the pool’s rim, muttering under breath, “I would we had that Eurydice creature still, to dispose of these remnants.”
Had the lady been attending, she would have seen a nonplussed expression cross the spectre’s face. Deven, watching from concealment, suppressed a smile. After a moment’s hesitation, the ghost of Henry Ware drifted away, soundless on the stone floor.
Deven pulled him aside just before a servant came through to wait upon Carline, and together they slipped out while the two were distracted. Still wearing his brother’s deathly seeming, Antony Ware said, “I would never have believed a person could dismiss a ghost so easily.”
“She isn’t a person; she’s a faerie.” Deven wiped steam from his face and said, “She did not look guilty to me.”
“Nor to me. The ladies here intrigue with such venom, that you would suspect her?”
“They see little reason why human notions of womanly behaviour should affect them, unless they wish it. After all, what holy book commands them to propriety?”
For all that this masquerade had been his own idea, it disturbed Deven to look at the illusory face of Henry. And he could not decide which was worse: when Antony behaved as himself, incongruous with his appearance, or when he adopted the mannerisms of his brother. He did the latter unnervingly well.
Antony shifted uncomfortably, as if trying to settle a doublet that kept binding across the shoulders. “How many do you intend to test?”
As many as I must. But he couldn’t parade Antony in front of every courtier and subject in the realm; sooner or later someone would notice the illusion. “One more,” Deven said, “that I think a likely suspect. If that yields us nothing, we must consider our next move. Come, before someone sees you.”
The passage they entered was a secret one, and little more than a cramped tunnel, which they traversed on their hands and knees. Lune had arranged for it to be cleaned, at least, so they would not emerge filthy on the other end. Though it ran straight enough, the path it followed obeyed no mortal geometry; despite the stair they had climbed to reach the opening, Deven knew they were passing below several chambers. And when they reached the far end—
Antony gasped when he saw what lay before them. “I hope you do not fear the height,” Deven said.
The young man shook his head, though his eyes were wider than usual. “But how are we to get down? I have no wings.”
Deven’s throat tightened with unexpected tears. The chamber before them was called the Vault of Birds, a soaring space punctuated by columns, arches, bridges, and platforms, an aerial maze built for play. The first time he saw it, and the flying fae who gambolled there, Henry had asked if he, too, could be given wings.
The Vault was empty now, by Lune’s design. “There are handholds,” Deven said, once his voice was steady. “And a bit of a path, that will take us much of the way without climbing.”
It was still a heart-stopping experience, and by the time they were done he suspected Antony’s true face was pale. But the young man breathed not a word of complaint, and followed Deven silently out the triple archway on one side of the chamber, before ducking into a cramped room whose door was invisible in the black wall.
The hidden closet was too small for furniture. One chair, with a man sitting in it, would have left scarcely enough space for the other to stand. But it stood near the chambers of Valentin Aspell, Lune’s Lord Keeper and the other likely murderer, and so Antony slid down the wall to the floor, folding his legs to leave room for Deven to sit as well. “These suspects,” he said abruptly. “The ones who may have ordered my brother’s death. Why them? Or rather, why him?”
As awkward as it would be to share the floor with the young man, looming over him would be worse. Deven crouched in the remaining space, ruing that even faerie-bestowed youth could not make his knees happy. “Patronage. I favoured Henry for a position, and those I suspect had their rival clients. This court was once a murderous place indeed, and not all, I fear, have fallen out of such habits.”
The young man brooded upon this for a moment, then said, “Your position. Am I right?”
“How did you guess?”
“A tiredness in your manner,” Antony said. “As if you had a burden you thought to lay down, but now must carry a while longer.”
And that was true enough. It was not so much that Deven minded his responsibilities as Prince of the Stone; they were part of what he shared with Lune. But the need to find a successor weighed heavily upon him, and more so now that Henry was lost.
“What are you?” Antony asked. “She called you the Prince. That…Queen did.”
“Her mortal consort,” Deven answered him. “I am her love, and she is mine, but no man can inherit that bond. What I mean to pass on is my role in her court. Lune assists mankind where and as she can—particularly as it concerns politics—but she needs one of us to advise her how best to do that. And I will not be with her forever. I was educating Henry to follow me.”
“Henry!” It was a startled exclamation, all the more jarring because it seemed to come from the young man himself, ghost-pale in the dim light. “Since when did he care for such matters?”
Deven’s reply was soft with sorrow. “Since he came among us.”
Antony, it seemed, had no answer to that, for they waited in silence until a scratch came at the door.
Opening it, Deven found a figure outside, twig-like and scarcely larger than his hand, with bat-wings of mere gossamer. “He approaches?” Deven asked, and the creature nodded, before taking off into the air.
Antony rose with the ease of the young. Already they heard footsteps. Deven gestured for the young man to conceal himself to one side of the entrance into the Vault of Birds, then stepped back into his own hidden chamber, leaving the door cracked the merest sliver, and the light inside extinguished.
The footsteps passed him and then paused. And then came a voice that nearly stopped Deven’s heart.
“Well, young master! Not entirely dead after all, I see.”
A chilling rasp, not the sibilant elegance of Valentin Aspell. A voice Deven feared, and Antony did not—because he knew almost nothing of the fae, and did not know the creature he had accosted was not their target, but a fetch.
As Deven fought with himself, whether to stay hidden or to leap out in Antony’s defence, the fetch went on. “Did you learn—” But
then more footsteps echoed down the passage, and the words cut off. A whisper, almost too quiet to hear: “This way.”
Clenching his hands, swallowing down the curses he wanted to spit, Deven stayed where he was. The newcomer approached his hiding spot. The instant he was past, Deven slipped out, and saw Valentin Aspell crossing the Vault of Birds, a minion in tow. Antony was nowhere in sight.
They could not have gone down the passage, not with Aspell there. With a silent prayer, Deven chose a direction at random, dodging into the forest of columns that filled the soaring chamber. If Antony Ware died of this—
He rounded a thick pillar and found himself face-to-face with the fetch.
“Why, my lord Prince,” Nithen said, and gave him an ironic bow. “I didn’t think you would be behind this game. Did you think a glamour would fool me long—me, when I call death a personal friend?”
Behind him stood a sheepish Antony. No fear in his eyes; he did not understand Nithen’s words. “The ruse was not intended for you,” Deven told the fetch.
“Ah—for the one behind me, I’m guessing.” Nithen’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Who’s your friend, then? I’d like to see his face.”
“You shall not.” Now Henry’s face protected Antony. Surely it would not be an omen of death, if the fetch took on the appearance of a young man already gone. Deven said, “Those words you spoke, before you fled. You know something of Henry Ware’s death.”
Nithen bowed again, fawning. “Not I, my lord. My hand to my heart—I bore no such omen to him.”
Now Antony was beginning to understand. He backed a step away. “I am not accusing you of murder,” Deven said, leaving open the possibility that he might accuse Nithen of other crimes. “But what of the days before Henry’s death? ’Did you learn’—what might he have learned?”
The fetch squirmed, not meeting his eyes. “Oh, a great many things, my lord—he was a curious young man, seeking knowledge here, in Westminster—”
“—and in Coldharbour? If you prefer, we can go before her Grace, and she will compel you to tell me what you know.” Deven folded his arms. “Or we can do it without troubling her.”
No courtier, mortal or fae, wanted that sort of attention from his sovereign. Nithen sighed. “He bade me follow a man one night. Went to a house in Coldharbour, the fellow did, and that’s all I know—save that young Ware wanted to know what he was about. Which I couldn’t tell him.”
Antony gave a minute shake of his head; it meant nothing to him, either. “Who was the man?” Deven asked.
The fetch shrugged. “Some mortal. Well-dressed, neither old nor young. I don’t attend much to who they are, unless death walks at their heels.”
A mortal. Nithen would know had it been any of the favourites at court, and Deven did not think he was lying. Some stranger—but not to Henry.
“Which house?” Antony asked.
Nithen snorted. “They don’t have signs down among the tenements, Master Wearing-Another’s-Face. Go west three alleys from where they found his corpse, face the end, last house on your left. There was a dead dog on the front step when I was there, but I expect someone’s eaten that by now.”
Coldharbour. They had missed confronting Aspell…but this would gain them more than any number of ghostly ambushes, for it could tell them what Henry had been doing above.
A single glance at Antony told Deven which course the young man favoured.
“Very well,” he said to Nithen. “If you tell anyone of this—”
Nithen gave him an ingratiating bow. “Say no more, milord. I shall be silent as the grave.” Grinning at his own jest, the fetch departed.
Antony twitched like a man desperate to be rid of an uncomfortable garment. “Get this enchantment off me, and show me the way back above.”
The prince, who shames a tyrannes name to beare,
Shall never dare doe any thing, but feare
—II.ii.40-1
Whitehall Palace, Westminster: 1 March, 1624
“God’s blood!” Henry exploded, hurling his unlit pipe to the floor. “How can the King think of it? How can he listen to more promises from the Spanish? After that farce in Madrid last year, all the reports from the Prince and the duke about the duplicity of the Spanish—”
Deven answered him in a single word. “Peace.”
“The whole point of the Spanish match was to gain us help for war in the Palatinate!”
Perhaps more than a single word was needed, after all. “Peace with Spain. Whom James views in a friendly light, as he has always been wont to do.”
Henry opened his mouth to reply, but stopped himself. The young man was learning to chart the winds of these storms; what he still struggled with was remembering to do so before he gave his mouth free rein. Deven waited, patiently, not prompting him with any clues. How much had Henry learned?
“The Commons,” the young man said at last. “James had to call a Parliament if he were to have any coin at all for war, in the Palatinate or otherwise—but the Commons would rather see us fight Catholic Spain. A war of religion, against an old enemy.”
“Whereas James,” Deven finished for him, “wants only to restore the Elector Palatine to his dominion in the Germanies—mostly for the sake of his daughter. Were she not wed to the Elector, this would be a much smaller matter.”
“But Buckingham is on the side of the Commons, is he not? Against Spain.”
“Not quite.” Deven kept sparse quarters here in Whitehall Palace, liking his ability to claim a room, but not often bothering to occupy it. The furnishings, however, did include a chess board. He fought the urge to place a piece in front of Henry and ask him to list the players in the question of Charles’ marriage, and the Palatine war. “Buckingham sees, not states, but something else. The Habsburgs.”
Henry paled. “Spain—and Austria.”
“And anywhere else they have extended their influence. Which is much too far, and that is why Buckingham hopes to check them.”
“Hence courting France,” his friend said, comprehension dawning. “The French can be Catholic all they like, so long as their sovereign is not a Habsburg. Though isn’t his Queen one of theirs?”
Deven scratched behind his ear, grimacing. “Yes, Anne of Austria. Sister to King Philip of Spain. Round and round the kinship goes, and that is why Buckingham fears the House of Habsburg. Henrietta Maria, by virtue of being Louis’ sister, is clean of that taint—and if this French match Buckingham desires goes through, it will bind France into alliance with England. First for the Palatinate, and then, perhaps, for more.”
Henry’s breath blew out in a long, impressed sigh. Then he said, “No wonder James quails.”
“Precisely.” The Scottish King had always been a peacemaker, detesting war. It must be a bitter pill in his old age to see Europe crumbling into chaos, the Protestant corners of the Holy Roman Empire against those that remained Catholic.
Deven let Henry consider it in peace, rising to stoke the fire against the day’s damp chill. The young man knew the details of the Armada’s defeat; he might well wonder what aid the fae could lend, if it came to war against half of Europe. That was the question Deven and Lune had debated for many long hours, with no answer offering even a semblance of satisfaction.
But when Henry spoke again, he chose quite a different tack. “This marriage with France, Buckingham’s attempts to ally with the Dutch—all of it will come to nothing if James crawls back to Spain’s empty promises.”
“Buckingham will convince him,” Deven said. “That worrisome influence does have its uses.”
“Enough to bring James to war with Spain? And Austria, too? I have not known him as long as you, but Robin says he will never turn on them, not after so many years of seeking alliance.”
Penshaw might well be right. Spain was too canny to give James serious offence, of the sort that would drive him to war. And the King was ailing, his good days fewer and further apart. What old man would accept the death of the policy to which he h
ad dedicated his life, so close to that life’s end?
Charles was another matter. Here in Whitehall, Deven dared not speak openly of the succession, but he said, “The Prince has begun to feel his strength since returning from Spain, and he is more of Buckingham’s mind.”
“Good,” Henry said feelingly, and Deven thought, he is young. Henry, like Penshaw, like many of the Gentlemen Pensioners, wanted a war. Against Spain, for preference, but they would take what they could get, so long as there was glory to be had. James’ peace had lasted too long for their taste.
But it seemed Henry was thinking closer to home. “So what can we do?”
“We?” Deven asked, unsure who he was including in the word.
“You more than me, I suppose. To push matters in the direction they need to go. Isn’t that your responsibility? To do things on behalf of…a certain lady?”
Lune. Henry had not needed reminders to be discreet outside the Onyx Hall. “To consult with her,” Deven corrected him. Then he grinned. “Mind you, when I was a younger man, I indulged in my share of action—running across rooftops, lying to astrologers, and generally risking my neck. But I am old and sedate now, if not precisely wiser.”
Scandalised, his friend said, “You are not old.”
The grin became a laugh. “Flattery never loses its appeal. But I am happy to leave such vigorous pursuits to younger men, I assure you. Regardless, the time has not come for me to do anything. England cannot go to war without allies, and the Dutch are not enough. If you want to take action, then pray with me that nothing provokes us against Spain before we have France on our side.”
Henry looked faintly disappointed, but he nodded. Deven breathed an inward sigh of relief. You have years before you, my young friend. Do not race to meet a war that will come to us soon enough.
A man factious, and dangerous,
A sower of sedition in the state,