Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

Many of the company halls were replaced, and a number of the churches, though some few were gone, never to be built again. A new Exchange stood along Cornhill, watched over by the statue of its founder Gresham, found miraculously preserved among the ashes. The new Custom House was much finer than the old, a splendid sight along the bank of the Thames.

And now the shouts of workmen filled the air atop Ludgate Hill, as a stone slid ponderously along the ground.

The cavity left behind by the destruction of the old cathedral, once filled with rainwater and debris, had since been dug anew. Not to the same shape: Sir Christopher Wren, who among the King’s surveyors had taken command of the rebuilding, yearned desperately to bring a fresh elegance to London. His plan for a new City had been discarded, along with several more unusual proposals for the cathedral, but here he had something like a victory.

The architect watched as the workmen coaxed and swore the first foundation stone into place. One stone set; many thousands to come.

It would be a different cathedral than the one London had known for centuries. But it was still St. Paul’s, standing proudly atop the City’s western hill—just as the streets were still the streets, from broad Cheapside down to many of the small lanes and alleys and courts. They stood now dressed in brick instead of the familiar timber and plaster, but even a disaster so great as the terrible Fire could not divide London from itself.

And as above, so below. So long as a cathedral stood on Ludgate Hill, so long as the Tower of London faced it from the east—so long as the wall held its arc, and the London Stone pierced the ground at the City’s heart—thus would London’s shadow endure.

And rise a fairer phoenix from its ashes.

If you go looking for the Vale of the White Horse, you will find it in Oxfordshire, not Berkshire (as described in this book). This is because the county boundaries have changed since the seventeenth century. It’s a lovely place, and well worth visiting, especially on a fine English summer day.

Alert readers may also notice that the spelling of the Queen of Scots’s surname has changed between books. This, believe it or not, is an attempt to avoid confusion. Spelling was a flexible thing back then; I’ve generally chosen to use the forms favored by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . They list the Queen of Scots as Mary Stewart, but her grandson as Charles Stuart. Since that relationship is relevant to this story, I decided to bring Mary in line with Charles, even if it meant contradicting my choice in Midnight Never Come . Likewise, what was Candlewick Street in the previous novel is Cannon Street in this one; its name changed over time.

Regarding the calendar: my habit has been to follow the convention of most recent history books, which is to date these events as if the year began in January. In the seventeenth century England still followed a convention wherein the new year began in March, but I decided to forgo that piece of historical accuracy in favor of clarity.

Marie Brennan is an anthropologist and folklorist who shamelessly pillages her academic fields for material. Her short stories have sold to more than a dozen venues. Find out more about the author at www.midnightnevercome.com

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For Matthew Swift, today is not like any other day. It is the day on which he returns to life.

Two years after his untimely death, Matthew Swift finds himself breathing once again, lying in bed in his London home.

Except that it’s no longer his bed, or his home. And the last time this sorcerer was seen alive, an unknown assailant had gouged a hole so deep in his chest that his death was irrefutable…despite his body never being found.

He doesn’t have long to mull over his resurrection though, or the changes that have been wrought upon him. His only concern now is vengeance. Vengeance upon his monstrous killer and vengeance upon the one who brought him back.

Not how it should have been.

Too long, this awakening, floor warm beneath my fingers, itchy carpet, thick, a prickling across my skin, turning rapidly into the red-hot feeling of burrowing ants, too long without sensation, everything weak, like the legs of a baby. I said twitch, and my toes twitched, and the rest of my body shuddered at the effort. I said blink, and my eyes were like two half-sucked toffees, uneven, sticky, heavy, pushing back against the passage of my eyelids like I was trying to lift weights before a marathon.

All this, I felt, would pass. As the static blue shock of my wakening, if that is the word, passed, little worms of it digging away into the floor or crawling along the ceiling back into the telephone lines, the hot blanket of their protection faded from my body. The cold intruded like a great hungry worm into every joint and inch of skin, my bones suddenly too long for my flesh, my muscles suddenly too tense in their relaxed form to tense ever again, every part starting to quiver as the full shock of sensation returned.

I lay on the floor naked as a shedding snake, and we contemplated our situation.

runrunrunrunrunRUNRUNRUNRUN! hissed the panicked voice inside me, the one that saw the bed legs an inch from my nose as the feet of an ogre, heard the odd swish of traffic through the rain outside as the spitting of venom down a forked tongue, felt the thin neon light drifting through the familiar dirty windowpane as hot as noonday glare through a hole in the ozone layer.

I tried moving my leg and found the action oddly giddying, as if this was the ultimate achievement for which my life so far had been spent in training, the fulfilment of all ambition. Or perhaps it was simply that we had pins and needles, and not entirely knowing how to deal with pain, we laughed through it, turning my head to stick my nose into the dust of the carpet to muffle my own inane giggling as I brought my knee up toward my chin, and tears dribbled around the edge of my mouth. We tasted them, curious, and found the saltiness pleasurable, like the first, tongue-clenching, moisture-eating bite of hot, crispy bacon. At that moment finding a plate of crispy bacon became my one guiding motivation in life, the thing that overwhelmed all others, and so, with a mighty heave and this light to guide me, I pulled myself up, crawling across the end of the bed and leaning against the chest of drawers while waiting for the world to decide which way down would be for the duration.

It wasn’t quite my room, this place I found myself in. The inaccuracies were gentle, superficial. It was still my paint on the wall, a pale, inoffensive yellow; it was still my window with its view out onto the little parade of shops on the other side of the road, unmistakeable; the newsagent, the off license, the cobbler and all-round domestic supplier, the laundrette, and, red lantern still burning cheerfully in the window, Mrs. Lee Po’s famous Chinese takeaway. My window, my view; not my room. The bed was new, an ugly, polished thing trying to pretend to be part of a medieval bridal chamber for a princess in a pointy hat. The mattress, when I sat on it, was so hard I ached within a minute from being in contact with it; on the wall hung a huge, gold-framed mirror in which I could picture Marie Antoinette having her curls perfected; in the corner there were two wardrobes, not one. I waddled across to them, and leaned against the nearest to recover my breath from the epic distance covered. Seeing by the light seeping under the door, and the neon glow from outside, I opened the first one and surveyed jackets of rough tweed, long dresses in silk, white and cream-colored shirts distinctively tailored, pointed black leather shoes, high-heeled sandals composed almost entirely of straps and no real protective substance, and a handbag the size of a feather pillow, suspended with a heavy, thick gold chain. I opened the handbag and riffled through the contents. A purse, containing fifty pounds, which I took, a couple of credit cards, a library membership to the local Dulwich port-a-cabin, and a small but orderly handful of thick white business cards. I pulled one out and in the dull light read the name “Laura Linbard; Business Associate, KSP.” I put it on the bed and opened the other wardrobe.