Midnight Never Come (34 page)

“Yes.” He deserved honesty. “They would kill you, to make themselves safe.”

“Well.” Deven’s fingers brushed over the vines embroidered on one sleeve, then stilled. “My Queen has commanded me to break her pact with yours. Even if that is a separate thing from this other one we are chasing, we need each other’s aid. But I do not know how one might escape a curse.”

The door was behind Lune, a silent reminder that she should leave. Doing so would only slow their progress, though; the only true safety lay in completing their task. Hoping she was not making a terrible mistake, Lune sat.

“Nor I. A curse may only be ended on its own terms. But Suspiria tried that, and failed. I do not think anyone could absolve her of it. The man who laid it might have lifted it, but he is long dead. And Tiresias — Francis — believed it still bound her.”

“He had some vision, the Goodemeades said. Did he never speak of it to anyone else?”

Lune shook her head, more in bafflement than confident denial. “If ’twere part of the binding she laid on him — she has this jewel, that she can use to place commands on others, so they must obey or die. She might have bound him not to speak of that vision. But even if she did not . . . he died before he could tell me.”

“And he never mentioned it at other times.”

“How could I know?” Frustration welled up; Lune forced herself not to turn it on him. “You must understand. Dwell among fae for long enough, drink our wine, eat our food . . . it changes a man. And he had been there for years. He raved, he lived in dreams; nine-tenths of what he said was madness, and the other tenth too obscure to understand. He might have told a dozen people the content of his vision, and we would never know.”

“Did he never say anything else?” Deven leaned forward, elbows on knees, face earnest and alert. “Not of the vision specifically. Anything touching on Suspiria, or curses, or the Onyx Hall . . . he would not speak entirely at random. Even madmen follow a logic of their own.”

It might be true of ordinary madmen, but Tiresias? Under Deven’s patience gaze, Lune disciplined her mind. When else had he spoken to her of the past?

When he told her to find him.

“He remembered his name,” she murmured, recalling it. “Before I came to Elizabeth’s court. He bade me find Francis Merriman; not until later did I realize he had forgotten who he was.”

“Begin with that,” Deven said. They had not worked together like this, piecing together an image from fragments, in months. And this time she was on his side. “He wanted you to find him. When you did . . .”

“He died.” Deven had never known Francis; she could tell him what she could not tell the Goodemeades, who had loved the mad seer. “I forced him. He was afraid to speak, but I would not let him back away; I thought finding him would better my position in the Onyx Court.” Quite the opposite, and the memory left a bitter taste in her mouth. “I demanded he tell me what he knew. And so he died.”

She could not look away from his intent blue eyes. Speaking softly, Deven said, “Did you rack him? Put him to the question? Of course not. You kept him from fleeing at the last, perhaps, but unless there is something you have not told me, he chose to speak.”

She would not cry. Lune turned her head away, by sheer force of will, and studied the linen-fold paneling of the wall until she had her composure again.

Deven granted her that space, then spoke again. “Go back to when he bade you find him. What precisely did he say?”

What
had
he said? Lune tried to think back. She had been wondering how to regain Invidiana’s favor. Tiresias had been in her chamber. She had mortal bread. . . .

“He spoke of Lyonesse,” she said. “The lost kingdom. Rather, he looked at my tapestry of Lyonesse, and spoke of errors made after it sank.” Or had he been speaking of other things? The Onyx Hall, perhaps? She could see him in her mind’s eye now, a slender, trembling ghost. “He did not want to dream. I know he thought of his visions as dreams . . . then he said something about time having stopped.”

This made both of them sit more sharply upright. “So it had, for Suspiria,” Deven said. Excitement hummed in his voice, held carefully in check.

But there had been something before that.
If I should find this Francis Merriman, what then?

He had sounded so lucid, yet spoken so strangely. Lune echoed his words. “ ‘Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven. . . . ’ ”

Deven’s breath caught. “What?”

She had not expected such a reaction. “ ’Tis what he said, when I asked him what I should do. ‘
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven —
’ ”

“— that time may cease, and midnight never come.”

“He did not use those words. But ’twas then he said time had stopped.” Deven’s expression baffled her. “What is it?”

He answered with half a laugh. “You never go to the theater, do you.”

“Not often,” she said, feeling obscurely defensive. “Why? What are those words?”

“They come from a play.” Deven rose and went to the cold fireplace, laying one hand on the mantel, chin tucked nearly to his chest. “The man who wrote them . . . he has served Burghley in the past, but he’s more a poet than a spy. Sir Francis’s cousin is a friend of his. I met him once, at dinner.” He turned back to face her. “Is the name Christopher Marlowe familiar to you?”

Lune’s brow furrowed. “I have heard it. But I do not know him.”

“Nor his work, ’twould seem. The lines are from his play
Doctor Faustus.”

She shook her head; the title meant nothing to her.

Deven’s jaw tensed, and he said, “The story is of a man who makes a pact with the devil.”

Lune stared up at him, utterly still.

“Tell me,” Deven said. “Have your kind any dealings with Hell?”

She spoke through numb lips, as if someone else answered for her. “The Court of Thistle in Scotland tithes to them every seven years. A mortal, not one of their own. I do not know how they were bound into such obligation. But Invidiana — Suspiria — surely she. . . ”

“Would not have done so?” Deven’s voice was tight with something: anger, fear, perhaps both. “By what you said, your own people would have no way to restore her beauty without lifting her curse. And she is still cursed. Some other power
must
have aided her.”

Not a celestial power; an infernal one. What had she offered them in return? Any kindness she had once possessed, it seemed. And to fill that void, she craved power, dominion, control. She made of the Onyx Court a miniature Hell on earth; Tiresias had said often enough that it was so.

And he had told her what to do.

“Sun and Moon,” Lune breathed. “We must break her pact with Hell.”

Act Five

Ah, Faustus,

Now hast thou but one bare hower to liue,

And then thou must be damnd perpetually:

Stand stil you euer mouing spheres of heauen,

That time may cease, and midnight neuer come!

—Christopher Marlowe

The tragicall history of D. Faustus

T
he long gallery is lined from end to end with tapestries, each one a marvel of rich silk and intricate detail, limned in gold and silver thread. The figures in them seem to watch, unblinkingly pitiless, as he stumbles by them, barefoot, without his doublet, his torn shirt pulled askew. His lips ache cruelly. There is no one present to witness his suffering, but the embroidered eyes weigh on him, a silent and judgmental audience.

He spins without warning, shoulders thrown back, to tell the figures in the tapestries they must leave him be — but the words never leave his mouth.

The scene that has arrested his attention might depict anyone. Some faerie legend, some ancient lord whose name has escaped his mind, slipping through the cracks and holes like so much else. But his eye is transfixed by the two central images: a lone swordsman in a field, gazing at the moon high above.

His bruised lips part as he stares at those two. The broken spaces of his mind fill suddenly with a barrage of other pictures.

He sees another Queen. A canopy of roses. A winter garden. A stool, alone in a room. Lightning, splitting the sky. A loaf of bread. A sword, clutched in a pale hand. Two figures on a horse.

Shattered crystal, littering the floor, and an empty throne.

He presses one hand to his mouth, trembling.

He has seen it before. Not these same images, but other possibilities, other people. They have not come to pass. But who knows how far in the future a vision may lie? Who is to say whether one might not yet become true?

Some of those he has seen lie dead now. Or so he thinks. He has lost all grip on time; past, present, and future long since ceased to hold any meaning. He does not age, and neither does she, and it is always night below. There is no anchor for his mind, to make events proceed in their natural order, first cause, then effect.

It may be nothing more than the desperate hope of his heart. But he clings to it, for he has so little else. And he will bury this new one with the others, so deep that even he will not recall it, for that is the only way to keep such things from her.

She has gotten some of them. Or will get them. That is why those people are dead, or will be.

But not him. Never him. She will never let him go.

He tugs the tattered remains of his shirt about himself and hurries away from the tapestries. Must not be seen looking at them. Must not give her that hint.

Someday, perhaps, he will see one of these visions come to pass.

S
T
. P
Aul’S
C
ATHEDRAL
, L
ONDON
:
May 6, 1590

Deven thought, a little wildly,
God have mercy. I’m bringing a faerie woman to church.

By her expression, Lune might have been thinking the same thing. Mindful of how the stone would carry her voice, she murmured acidly, “Do you expect some priest here to stop her?”

“No. But at the very least, we are less likely to be overheard within these walls.” One hand on her elbow, he pulled her farther down the nave. Outside, the churchyard echoed with its usual clamor, booksellers and bookbuyers and men looking for work. The vaulting interior of the cathedral somehow remained untouched by it all, a small island of sanctity in the midst of commerce.

“We can still come inside, when prepared; you yourself have seen me at chapel.”

“True. But I doubt your kind wander in idly.” Deven broke off as one of the cathedral canons passed by, giving him an odd look.

Without realizing it, he had led them to an all-too-familiar spot. Lune was not paying attention; she did not seem to notice that the magnificent tomb nearby contained not just Sir Philip Sidney, but his erstwhile father-in-law Walsingham.

Deven pulled up short, turning her to face him. “Now, tell me true. Do you think it mere chance, that your seer spoke that line? If you have
any
doubts . . . ”

Lune shook her head. She still appeared a common maidservant, but he no longer had any difficulty imagining her true face behind it, silver hair and all. “I do not. I even thought, at the time, that he sounded sane . . . I simply could not make sense of the words. And I know of no power our kind possess to effect such a change, against the force of the curse.”

He had hoped she would say it was a lunatic idea. Hoped for it, but not expected it.

“How do we break such a pact?” she whispered. She looked lost, stumbled without warning into a realm alien to her faerie nature. “Mere prayer will not do it. And I doubt she would stand still for an exorcism — if such would even touch her.”

Despite his resolution not to draw her attention to his dead master, Deven found himself looking at the tomb that held Walsingham’s body. Puritan belief was strong against them, Lune had said; Puritan, and Catholic. He was not on good terms with any Catholics. And he could not possibly ask Beale for help with this.

No, not Beale. The realization came upon him like a blessing from God.

“Angels,” Deven said. “To break a pact with the devil . . . one would need an angel.”

Lune’s face paled as she followed his logic. “Dee.”

The old astrologer, the Queen’s philosopher. How many of the stories were true? “They say he speaks with angels.”

“Or devils.”

“I do not think so,” Deven replied, soberly. “Not from what I saw of him . . . he might have feigned piety, of course. But can you think of one better?”

She wanted to; he could see her trying, calling up and then discarding names, one by one. “No.”

Now Deven regretted his contrived visit of a few weeks before; how would he look, a supposedly lovestruck fool, coming back and asking for aid against a faerie queen? His audience with Elizabeth would seem simple by comparison. But Dee had been a faithful supporter of Elizabeth since even before her accession; it should be possible to convince him to act against her enemy, however strange that enemy might be. And Walsingham had set him on this road — though the Principal Secretary could not have guessed where it would lead.

“I’ll go to him,” Deven promised. “Without delay. You. . . ”

“Will warn the Goodemeades.”

He could not quite suppress his ironic smile. “They have set a few pigeons to shadow me; one should be at my house. ’Twill carry a message, if you can find paper —”

Her own mouth quirked, and he remembered what lay outside the cathedral doors.

“ ’Twill carry a message to them,” he finished lamely.

Then they stood in awkward silence, the shared tomb of Sidney and Walsingham a mute presence beside them.

At last Lune said, the words coming out stiffly, “Be careful as you ride. They know who you are.”

“I know,” he replied. They stood only a step apart; the intervening space was both a yawning gulf, and intimately close. He would have taken Anne’s hands, but what would Lune make of such a gesture? “Have a care for yourself. ’Tis you who must go into the viper’s den, not I.”

Lune smiled grimly and moved past him, heading for the cathedral doors. “I have lived with the viper for years. And I am not without my own sting.”

Q
UEENHITHE
W
ARD
, L
ONDON
:
May 6, 1590

Only after Lune was gone did Deven realize he had left his sleeves behind at the house. No wonder the canon had stared.

He needed to put himself together properly if he was to visit Dee. He needed Colsey; he needed his horse. The previous day had left the pieces of his ordinary life scattered around London like debris after a storm.

Assembling himself again took until the afternoon. Colsey was mutinously silent while tending his master, no doubt anticipating what would come; he did not even blink when Deven said, “I must go alone.”

“Again.”

“Yes.” Deven hesitated. How much could he say? Not much. He laid one hand on Colsey’s shoulder and promised, “This will be over soon.”

Ranwell had readied his black stallion for some reason; the warhorse stood rock still as he mounted. The day was half-spent. He would spend the other half getting to Mortlake, and hope Dee granted him an audience at the end of it. At least he would be out of London, with no faerie palace lurking beneath his feet.

The congestion of the city’s streets had never irritated him so much. He should have gone west, made for the horse ferry at Fulham, but by the time he thought of it he was halfway to the bridge, with no point in backtracking. A cart in the process of unloading had mostly blocked Fish Street ahead of him; standing briefly in his stirrups, Deven scowled at the ensuing knot, as people tried to edge by. Then he cast a sideways glance at a narrow, lamp-lit lane whose name he did not recall. If memory served, it ran through to Thames Street.

Turning the black stallion’s head, he edged behind a heavily laden porter and into the lane.

Lamplight marked his way through the shadows. The lane brought him into a small courtyard, not Thames Street, but on the far side there was an archway, and his horse paced toward it without needing to be nudged. The lamp hovered above that arch, but did nothing to touch the darkness within. . . .

“Master!
Don’t follow the light!”

Irritation seized him. What was Colsey doing, following against his orders? He turned in his saddle to reprimand the servant, and found himself crying out instead. “
Ware!
”

Colsey leapt to the side just in time to dodge the grasping hands of the man behind him. A strange man, clad in nothing more than a brief loincloth and sandals, but broad-shouldered and muscled like a wrestler. He was unarmed, though, and in the close confines of the courtyard, he would be easy enough to ride down.

Except that Deven’s horse stood like a rock when he jerked at the reins, heedless of his master’s command.

And when he tried to swing his leg over the saddle, to go to Colsey’s aid, he found himself rooted as if his feet were tied to the stirrups.

The strange, eldritch light hovered and pulsed as he fought to free himself. Across the way, Colsey slashed out with his knife at the half-naked stranger, who parried his blows and stalked him with hands spread wide. Christ above, the horse wasn’t his; how had he ever mistaken it for his own stallion?

Christ. “In the name of the Lord God,” Deven snarled, “release me!”

The animal bucked with apocalyptic force, hurling him through the air and into the wall of a neighboring house. All the air was driven from Deven’s lungs, and he crashed heavily to the dirt below. But he untangled himself and lurched to his feet in time to see the creature shuddering and writhing into a two-legged shape, a man with a shock of black hair and large, crushing teeth.

The stranger fighting Colsey was blocking the exit to Fish Street — Deven no longer felt the slightest urge to go through the black archway at the other end — and as he looked, the man seized Colsey’s knife hand and twisted it cruelly. The servant cried out and dropped his dagger.

Deven charged toward them, but his sword was only half-clear of its sheath when something cannoned into him from the side. The horse-thing knocked him into the wall again, and Deven gasped for air. Reflex saved him; he kept drawing and now had three feet of steel to keep the creature from him. It danced back, suddenly wary.

Colsey had broken free, but now he was unarmed. “Get to the street!” Deven shouted, or tried to; the words rasped painfully out of him. If Colsey could rouse some kind of aid —

Except that Colsey shook his head and backed up two steps, retreating toward Deven’s side. “Damn your eyes,” Deven snarled, “do as I say!”

“And leave you with yonder two? With the greatest respect, master, shove it.” Colsey made a swift lunge, but not toward their opponents. Deven’s own knife whisked clear of its sheath, into the servant’s hand.

They had another weapon, though, better than steel. “By the most Holy Trinity,” Deven said, advancing a step, “by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit —”

He got no farther. Because although the horse-thing shrank back and the hovering light snuffed out as if it had never been, the strange man charged in without flinching.

His bulk bowled Colsey away from Deven’s side, dividing them again. Deven lunged, but retracted it as the stranger whirled to grab for his arm; he dared not lose hold of his sword. Then the horse-thing was there again, kicking out and getting stabbed for his pains, and Colsey circled with his opponent, slashing with the knife to keep him at bay.

But not well enough. The stranger stepped in behind a slash, closing with the servant. A swift kick to the back of the leg dropped Colsey to one knee, and then the broad, hard hands closed around his head.

The crack echoed from the walls of the small courtyard. Deven crossed the intervening space in an eyeblink, but too late; Colsey’s limp body dropped to the ground even as his master’s blade scored a line across the back of his murderer. And the stranger did not seem to care. He turned with a feral grin and said, “Come on, then,” and spread his killing hands wide.

The horse-thing faded back, clutching his wounded side and seeming glad to leave this fight to its partner. Deven focused on the man before him. The tip of his blade flickered out, once, twice, a third time, but the stranger dodged with breathtaking speed, more than a fellow of his size should possess. “Drop the sword,” the stranger suggested, with a grin of feral pleasure. “Face me like a proper man.”

Deven had no interest in playing games. He advanced rapidly, trying to pin the man against a wall where he could not dodge, but his opponent sidestepped and moved to grab his arm again. Deven slammed his elbow into the other man’s cheek, but the stranger barely blinked. Then they were moving, back across the courtyard, not so much advancing or retreating as whirling around in a constantly shifting spiral, the stranger trying to close and get a hold on him, Deven trying to keep him at range. He wounded the man a second time, a third, but nothing seemed to do more than bleed him; the grin got wilder, the movements faster. Jesu, what was he?