In Ashes Lie (19 page)

Feidelm pursed her sculpted lips. “Madam, visions do not come at a simple command. It needs something to call them, to bid the gates of time open.”

She had heard that the Irish hedged their divination about with barbaric rituals. “What do you need?”

The answer made Lune wonder if this were some malicious prank perpetrated on her as petty revenge for her soured relations with Temair. But Feidelm’s attendants did not seem at all surprised when their mistress called for a bull to be slaughtered. In the end Lune sent a pair of goblins to steal one from a garden above, with Sir Prigurd to carry it back down, and to leave payment for the missing beast. Then the Irish set to work, and soon presented the ambassadress with meat and broth and a stinking, bloody hide. There in the night garden, without any embarrassment, Feidelm stripped off her finery and wrapped herself in the hide, then lay down beneath a hazel tree.

The attendants bowed and retired, leaving Lune alone with the poetess.

She had no idea what to expect, except that Feidelm had promised her answers to three questions. Lune pondered her choices while the sidhe lay silent in the trance of the
imbas forosna
. When the faerie’s emerald eyes snapped open, she twitched in surprise.

Feidelm said, “Speak.”

The words stumbled out, despite her preparation; the strange atmosphere of this entire affair had Lune off balance. “What—what do you see for my people?”

“I see them bloody; I see them red.”

Her heart skipped a beat. Warfare, or murder. Were the precautions she had taken not enough? Killing Leslic and his allies was too drastic a move; fae bred so rarely. Sending them back to Vidar was not an option. So she had placed them in cells beneath the Tower of London—but perhaps she must do more.

Vowing to double their guard as soon as she left the garden, Lune tried again. “What of my home?”

“I see it ashen, I see it gold.”

Less clear—unless the men who insisted the rule of their Christ would begin in eighteen years were right, and London to rise as the new Jerusalem, the fifth monarchy of Heaven. But would he cast down the City first? Feidelm’s answers were maddeningly cryptic, and far too brief.

Her third question came the hardest of all. This was the answer Antony wanted, the answer she feared to obtain for him. “What do you see for England?”

Feidelm took a slow, wavering breath; then the words flowed from her like a river, as if this one question released all the eloquence dammed up before. “I see a broad-shouldered man who takes the head and becomes the head, though he crushes the crown beneath his boot. In his hands he holds the ink that brings death: both for them who wrote it, and him it is written for. I see the churches cast down and raised up, and the people weep for sorrow and joy. Many are the wounds this land has suffered, and will suffer, and yet will go forward; I see it endure, and yet I see its end, that lies both near and far. The Kingdom of England will die twice ere long, and you will see those deaths.”

Hope and fear warred in Lune’s heart, and fear had the advantage. Nothing endured forever, not even fae; they could be slain, or become weary of life and fade away. The great empire of Rome had spanned the world, but where was it now? Fragmented and gone, its Italian heartland languishing under Spanish rule. She knew, if she was honest, that some day England, too, would pass. But when? What was
soon
to a faerie?

Feidelm shuddered, and Lune thought the trance ended. But the sidhe’s gaze shifted to Lune, unfocused yet piercing, as if seeing through her flesh to the spirit beneath, and her voice still held the resonance of the
imbas forosna.
“What is a king, or a queen? For whom does one such rule, and by what right? What shall be the fate of sovereignty? These are the questions the land asks, the people, the heart. But you have not asked, and so you must answer them yourself.”

Her eyelids sagged, pale lashes brushing her skin. When Feidelm opened her eyes once more, the fog of her trance had lifted from them, but she seemed to have no awareness of the words she had just spoken. For a moment, Lune met that emerald gaze, and wondered.

Did she invent her answers, as a subterfuge to gain some advantage?

She might wish it so, but she thought not. The Irish seer had spoken truly.

What lay hidden in her words—that, Lune would have to discover for herself.

The sun crept above the horizon, hidden behind a veil of thick clouds and blustering winds. The only sign of its presence was a muted brightening, a gray pallor replacing the blackness of night.

The doors to Westminster Hall swung open, and out filed a line of weary men: the two-hundred-odd members of Parliament who had doggedly persevered, in a session that lasted all day and all through the night, to surmount the obstacles of acrimony and fear, and to answer the question put to them.

The men agitating for the Army’s outrageous wishes had wanted that question put thus: whether the King’s answers to the treaty, brought to them at long last, were satisfactory. But every man partisan enough to the Royalist cause to say yes had long since been driven from the Commons; that vote was designed to fail, and so those who sought peace had diverted it away. Satisfaction was not needed. After the long struggles, the near misses and dashed hopes for reconciliation, all the Commons wanted to know was this: whether the King’s concessions were enough to be going on with.

The question passed without a division. They would accept the treaty, and move on to restoring peace in England. The wars were done at last.

Antony ignored the abusive language flung by the Army officers who pursued the members down the stairs and out through Westminster Hall; he could barely hear them through his jaw-cracking yawn. Soame, at his side, had declared that walking normally was not worth the effort; he staggered as if drunk. “Somewhere in Hell,” the younger man said, ramming the heels of his hands into his eyes, “there is a circle where men are forced to listen to Prynne go on for three hours without pause. And when I am sent thither, I’ll tell the Devil I have been there already, and ask for something new.”

It sparked a weary laugh, tinged with exhausted relief. “And in Heaven is a feather mattress, well fluffed and warm. I’m for home,” Antony said. “I will see you tomorrow.”

He fell asleep like a man who has been clubbed over the head, and woke only for supper. “It passed?” Kate asked; she had waited the whole night for him, knowing they debated England’s fate. And Antony said, “Pray God we will find some peace now.”

The race that preceded the vote had drained him as badly as the unending debate. From St. Albans the Army had marched, drawing nearer every day, into Westminster itself, until the fear that Ireton and his soldiers would forcibly dissolve Parliament had frayed every man’s nerves. To do so would destroy the Houses’ last shreds of tattered credibility; anything after that would have no claim to legitimacy. But they might have done it.

Falling prey to his relief would be easy. Their vote yesterday, however, had not sent their problems up in smoke; the Army was still quartered all over Westminster, still capable of trouble. Antony had not heard from Ben Hipley in days, not since the soldiers left St. Albans. He went by coach the next morning, and heard the measured beat of boots on cobblestones. Lifting the curtain, he saw soldiers patrolling the streets—not the Trained Bands of the City, but New Model men, loyal to Henry Ireton.

Then he descended from his coach in the Palace Yard, and saw it was worse.

Two companies, one of horse, one of foot, were stationed around the edges of the courtyard. They stood at attention, not menacing anyone—but again, where were the Trained Bands, whose task it was to guard this place? Antony stood, staring, unblinking, until from above he heard a whisper from his coachman. “Sir...”

Glancing up, he saw fear in the man’s eyes. “Go,” he said, as if there were nothing amiss. “I will be well.”

Or if I be not, you can do nothing to help me.

With his coach rattling away behind him, he settled his cloak and advanced. The soldiers let him pass without comment, and he breathed more easily—but did not release his fear. Their presence must portend
something
ill. He worried at the question as he hurried through the vaulted, crowded space of Westminster Hall, past the legal courts that met there, into the Court of Wards that lay in a set of chambers off its southern end. He was almost at the stairs leading up to the lobby of the Commons when he heard a disturbance.

“Mr. Prynne,” an unfamiliar voice said, “you must not go into the House, but must go along with me.”

Heedless of the looks from men carrying on their business around him, Antony stopped just shy of the doorway and listened.

From the stairs came William Prynne’s defiant tones. “I am a member of the House, and am going into it to discharge my duty.”

Footsteps, then a sudden scuffle. Despite his better judgment, Antony peered around the corner—and what he saw turned his blood to ice.

Soldiers, more New Model men, blocked the stairs to the Commons. Antony recognized one fellow, a grinning dwarf of a man called Lord Grey of Groby; but the rest were unfamiliar, and among them was a colonel who directed his men to drag the struggling Prynne bodily back down the steps. Prynne fought them, his ugly, scarred face red with effort, but he stood no chance. Recognizing that, he employed his favorite weapon, that had served him so loyally during the debate. “This is a
high
breach of the privileges of Parliament! And an affront to the House of Commons, whose servant I am!” Antony leapt back as the soldiers hauled the man through the doorway. All pretense of business in the Court of Wards had stopped, and Prynne’s bellows rang from the walls; he knew how to use his voice. “These men, being more and stronger than I, and all armed, may forcibly carry me where they please—but stir from here of my own accord I
will not!
”

His own accord mattered not a whit; will he, nil he, they forced him through into the Court of Requests, and came out a moment later, breathing hard, but some of the men laughing.

By then Antony had faded back amongst the bystanders, where they might not see him. He could taste his own pulse, so strongly was his heart pounding. What criteria formed that list, he didn’t know, but by any standards the Army might use, he would not be allowed through.

If the Commons will not vote against the King, as the Army wishes it to—why, then, they will purge it until it does.

He had known for months—years—that the power in England had shifted once again, into the hands of the Army’s officers, both in and out of Parliament. But he had never imagined they would exert it so nakedly, against all the laws and traditions of the land.

Fear curdled the blood in his veins.

So long as the contrary members did not sit, that might satisfy them; it might be enough for him to return home, and not try to enter the Commons. But what if it were not? If they came after him...

They were arresting members of Parliament. They might do
anything.

He could flee to the safety of the Onyx Hall, had he warning enough, and no soldier would find him there.

But he could not take Kate with him.

Whether Lune would allow her in was not the question. Antony could not so suddenly reveal to his wife the secrets of all these years. But—
Hell,
he snarled inwardly, and cursed his wandering thoughts, which flinched from the real question: whether he should advance or retreat.

Advance, and he would find himself held in the Court of Requests with Prynne—and, no doubt, others from the Commons. Retreat...

Antony thought of Kate. The hard set of her jaw when she insisted she be permitted to lend her aid in the writing of secret pamphlets. Her disdain for his sober clothes and trimmed hair, disguising his body as he disguised his principles—all to maintain his position in the Commons and Guildhall, where he might do some good.

But I haven’t,
he realized.
Not enough. Not to prevent this catastrophe.

A clerk stood nearby, still gaping. With scarcely a word, Antony claimed a pen and scrap of paper from the man and scribbled a quick note, spattering ink in his haste. The clerk handed over sealing wax without being asked, and after Antony had pressed his signet into the soft mass, he gave the paper back, followed by the first coin that came into his hand—a shilling, and more than enough. “Take this note to Lombard Street—the house under the sign of the White Hart. Do you understand me?” The clerk nodded. “Go.”

With the man gone, Antony took a moment to straighten his doublet and settle his cloak on his shoulders, before he turned and ascended the steps.

Groby whispered in the colonel’s ear, pointing at the list. When Antony reached them, the officer swept his hat off and greeted him with hypocritical courtesy. “Sir Antony Ware. I am Colonel Thomas Pride, and my orders are not to permit you within the House, but to take you into custody.”

Antony met his eyes, then Groby’s, willing some doubt to be there. But he found none. “You have no authority save that which your swords and pistols make. By barring me from my rightful place, you trample upon the very liberties you swore to protect.”

Groby said, “We are liberating Parliament from a self-interested and corrupt faction that impedes the faithful and trustworthy in the conduct of their duties.”

He sounded almost as if he believed it, and perhaps he did. If there was one thing Antony knew from all these struggles, it was that men could come to believe in anything, no matter how absurd.

Pride said merely, “Do you refuse to go?”

The eager-handed soldiers wanted another fight, but Antony would not give them one. He would be ruled by choice, not by the sword. “You will not need your weapons,” he said. “Under protest, I will go.”