Marie Brennan - In Ashes Lie

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.”