Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

His blood ran with ice, and for the first time, it occurred to him to fear, not the dissolution of Parliament, but its massacre.

“’Tis no matter,” the King said, his light tone belying the venom that backed it. “I think my eyes are as good as another’s.”

He lifted his chin and scanned the ranks of standing men. Antony squeezed his own eyes shut. He did not have to look. A messenger had come for Pym not ten minutes before, after which he obtained leave for himself and the others to depart. Lenthall had not detained them, though the Commons agreed the day before that the accused members should present themselves to answer the charges. Only Strode had caused any delay, insisting he wished to stay for the confrontation. Pym and the others dragged him out of the chapel by his cloak.

The only thing worse than arresting members of Parliament was coming to arrest them, and failing.

“I see all my birds have flown,” Charles said at last. The satisfied grandeur with which he had entered was gone; in its place reigned discontented anger. “I cannot do what I came for.” And with a snarl, he rose from the Speaker’s chair and stormed from the House, followed by rising voices crying the offended privileges of Parliament.

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: January 10, 1642

Lune’s heavy skirts flared every time she reached the end of her pacing and pivoted to retrace her steps. The Onyx Hall was a goodly palace, with many chambers and galleries, entertainments aplenty to amuse her, but for all that it was a cage; she missed the sun and breeze on her face.

London was not safe, though. Mortal bread might shield her against the prayers and invocations of the Puritan mobs in its streets, but it would do nothing to save her from a rock to the head. The barricades of benches torn from taverns, put up by the apprentices before their Christmas holiday ended on Twelfth Night, had been cleared away, but in their place were the Trained Bands of London. They placed cannon on the corners and stretched chains across the streets, all in preparation for the attack they feared would come.

She dared not go above; she wished Antony would not. He had struggled since that abortive Parliament two years ago to maintain an impossible balance: fighting for moderation while never trusting the King, opposing Pym’s junto while never alienating them too obviously. They branded him a Straffordian for voting against the attainder, and could do worse. Members of Parliament had been ousted from their seats for their opposition. Some had been sent to the Tower.

But Antony sat even now in the Guildhall with the House of Commons, which had exiled itself from Westminster for its own safety. At his request, she had sent out a few of her more reliable goblins, and learned the five treasonous members were hiding in Coleman Street, but what good did that do? The King could not strike them now. He had already suffered the failure he could not afford, and outraged the populace beyond endurance.

And Lune, who had vowed to protect England from such troubles, could only wait for a message: the name and nature of the Lord of Shadows, who fed this violence against the King on Nicneven’s behalf.

The flapping of wings halted her pacing. A falcon arrowed through the open latticework of the chamber wall and perched on the back of a chair. It shook its wings, then again, and with the third shake stretched upward and down until a sharp-faced powrie stood gripping the chair in his bony fingers. Where he had gotten the falcon cloak from, Lune never asked; it was not the common raiment of goblinkind. But it made him useful.

He had no cap to take off, no clothing save the cloak, which he swept around himself as he knelt. Lune offered her hand perfunctorily, bade him rise, and said, “What word?”

Orgat was no Onyx Courtier; his home was a disused peel tower along the Border. But the Goodemeades knew him from their time in the North, ages ago, and they had contracted him to bear messages from Cerenel. She was grateful now for her decision to leave Valentin Aspell out of those plans; he was too much in company with the Ascendants, these days.

“Got it here,” the powrie said, and began rooting around in the feathers of his cloak with one hand, the other clutching it in front of his groin for a modicum of decency. “Nimble little bastard—hope you can make sense of it, yer Grace—come on, now—ah! Didn’t even squish him.”

The spy triumphantly produced something small and wiggling. That Cerenel would not send a written message, or even a verbal one, Lune expected; it was not safe. But—“A spider?”

“Told me to fetch it meself,” Orgat said. “From me tower, he is. That there’s a cupboard spider, as we call them. Was real particular that it had to be a male.” He dropped it in the hand Lune reflexively held up; she shuddered as its legs scrabbled against her skin. “Careful with him, now. Supposed to be alive, too.”

A spider. A living, male cupboard spider, from Orgat’s peel tower.

This was the message Cerenel had sent her.

Find me this Lord of Shadows.

She knew someone, once, who called to mind images of spiders. Her heartless, twisted predecessor, the Queen of the Onyx Court. Invidiana.

But Invidiana was dead.

A living, male spider.

Lune whispered, “Ifarren Vidar.”

THREE CRANES WHARF, LONDON: January 11, 1642

Drumbeats echoed off the warehouses that lined the north bank of the Thames, overmastered only by the shouts of the crowd. The Trained Bands kept order, but in good cheer; they were not there to prevent violence—for there was none—but to keep the masses from overrunning the group that stood on the wharf.

The barge was drawn up to its moorings and steadied by the same lightermen who the day before had marched in the streets, offering their lives in defense of Parliament. Now they offered their hands to the five men who waited to board.

John Pym stood in the cold air, his eyes raised to God, his prayer of thanksgiving drowned out by the noise of the onlookers. Then he stepped aboard, followed by Hampden, Holles, Hesilrige, and Strode. No more concealment for them: they waved to their supporters, and received cheers and prayers in return.

The rest of the House of Commons made their way onto the barge. Antony placed himself in the middle, a false smile on his face. At this moment, of all moments, he could not afford to show his horror at the news.

The King was fled. For the royal family to retire to Hampton Court was common enough; for them to depart in the night, with no warning to the palace that they were coming, was not. But it was only an admission of the obvious: that Charles’s attempt to take the leaders of Parliament under arrest had irrevocably lost him the goodwill of his City.

London had feared attack, and prepared itself for such. Instead it won, without a fight.

Casting off the ropes, the lightermen put the barge to the river. They made slow progress up the Thames, surrounded on all sides by gaily decorated vessels, packed to their gunwales with celebrating men. From the Strand, Antony could hear the Trained Bands, paralleling their journey with drums and song, and the mocking calls they made as they passed the deserted Palace of Whitehall.

“Where is the King and his Cavaliers?”

Holding on to his smile for his life, Antony thought, They are gone to prepare for war.