Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon (19 page)

He slowed. It seemed that he had spent his entire life surrounded by these dreadful hedges, that he would never see the horizon again. The green walls closed in on him. A branch snapped somewhere.

The air around him seemed to thicken. He could not concentrate. He forced his way along a path until it ended, and then turned right. Ahead of him, at a fork in the path, he saw the same statue he had seen three turns back.

Suddenly it moved. It was not a statue at all, he saw, but a small man, maybe one of the men he had seen his first morning in the palace. The man pointed left. He had the oddest smile on his face, almost as if he had proven some sort of point, though what it was Christopher could not imagine. He wore a circlet of green leaves in his hair.

Christopher went left. The path turned again. Someone moved on the other side of the hedge, and for a terrible moment he thought that it was the little man again, come back to plague him with false directions. Then he looked through the leaves and saw Nicholas Russell.

Russell stopped and glanced around him, looking lost. He began to head back. Christopher dropped behind a corner, waiting for him.

Could he overpower the other man? Russell did not seem to be aware of him; perhaps he could take him by surprise. He tensed, anticipating the moment when Russell would come into sight. Several seconds passed. Where was he?

Christopher moved carefully around the corner. At first he could not take in what he saw. The little man stood over Russell, tying his hands behind him with what looked like supple branches. He sang as he worked; Christopher could not imagine how he had failed to hear it before. The man looked up and smiled. His eyes were as green as the leaves around him.

He tied one final knot. Before Christopher could say anything the man turned and, more quickly than seemed possible, slipped away from him around a corner.

“Wait!” Christopher called. He took the corner after him, feeling clumsy next to the other man's swift grace. The green path stretched out in a straight line in front of him, but the little man was nowhere to be seen.

He went back to Russell. The conspirator was unconscious, breathing shallowly. The other man could wait; he had to get Russell outside the maze somehow, back to the queen's guard.

Looking up he saw a dying hedge, the roots exposed and withered. He lifted Russell to his feet and broke through the hedge, then—he was past caring—tore through another wall, this one whole.

The afternoon light, unfiltered by green, nearly blinded him for a moment. He had made his way out of the maze, and, incredibly, had found himself fairly close to the palace. He set down his burden with relief and went off to find one of the guard.

Once again the Presence Chamber was crowded with people. Christopher and Will sat near the front and watched as Queen Elizabeth thanked Sir Philip for the service he had done to the state.

“Let all men know that Sir Philip Potter, at great personal risk and undeterred by threats to his person, discovered and exposed a Catholic conspiracy aimed at taking our life and sowing disorder in the land,” the queen said.

“It was my pleasure, Your Majesty,” Sir Philip said, rising awkwardly from his bow. He seemed more reserved than usual, and Christopher wondered if Potter suspected this Queen Elizabeth to be an impostor as well.

No one would say anything about it during the ceremony, but everyone at court knew that Sir Philip had received his tax monopoly, and a gift of some land as well. There had been a certain amount of carping and ill-mannered jesting at this news, but none of the courtiers could say that Sir Philip did not deserve his good fortune. Potter, displaying the same flustered ignorance he had shown from the beginning, did not seem to notice the insults, and looked at everyone he met with the same expression of surprised joy.

Finally the ceremony ended. “The air's too close in here,” Will said. “Let's take a walk outside.”

Christopher showed Will the way he had taken following Russell: through the Great Hall, into the kitchen and finally down the corridor that led out-of-doors. “I've never seen this, in all the years I've been at court,” Will said. “How did you discover it?”

Christopher said nothing. The hedge maze had a gaping hole in it, he noticed.

“I heard you had something to do with the capture of these conspirators,” Will said.

The man was as innocent as Potter sometimes, Christopher thought. He looked around him carefully, making certain they could not be overheard. “Aye,” he said. “But if folks should hear of it they'll guess that I was something more than Sir Philip's secretary. I won't be sent out on any errands again. Have you passed on this rumor to anyone else?”

“Nay, I won't.”

He didn't, Christopher noticed, exactly answer the question. Still, it couldn't be helped if he had spoken to anyone. They began to walk through the formal plots of the queen's garden.

“The queen said these men were Catholic conspirators,” Will said. “What could they have wanted with Arthur? Or was he Catholic as well?”

“Nay, I doubt it. They wanted him because some people in London were willing to follow him, and were eager to see him as a king. Once he took the throne they would have been careful to keep any real power from him.”

“But what about those strange men you saw? Didn't they have something to do with Arthur as well?”

Aye, probably they had, he thought. What had happened to the little man he had followed to the conspirators' meeting? And what about the man he had overheard at the meeting, the one who had sounded so familiar? Christopher had heard the voices of all the conspirators and was certain this man had not been among them. And while he was asking questions, who was it who had helped him in the maze? And why had Geoffrey quoted the same line of poetry as one of the conspirators?

He had never told Will any of this, though, and he did not intend to start now. Will would laugh and start to talk about goblins again, and he was as tired of the subject as he had been when Tom had mentioned it. His task here had ended; he had discovered the conspirators and would be well paid for it, and then he would go home. To imagine that the supernatural had anything to do with it was folly.

“What must that be like, I wonder?” Will said.

He had been so deep in thought he hadn't heard the beginning of Will's question. “What must what be like?”

“Believing in something so strongly that you're willing to give your life for it, the way these men believed in the Catholic cause.”

“Don't expect me to understand a fanatic. To my mind there's little to choose between one religion and another. They could just as easily have become Mohammedan.”

He expected Will to object, the way Robin and Tom did when he made some statement they considered outrageous. But Will would not be drawn into a debate. “What will you do now?” he asked.

“Go home. Work on my play.”

“Do you write plays? And poetry as well?”

Christopher nodded.

“Good,” Will said. “I'll be your patron when I come into my inheritance. I've always wanted to be a patron.”

Christopher laughed. “How do you know they're any good?”

“I don't, really. I don't know anything at all about poetry. You'll have to teach me—you seem to know something about everything.” Then, to Christopher's great astonishment and delight, he drew him close and kissed him on the mouth.

There remained one final task before he could go home; he had to say farewell to Sir Philip Potter. The next day he visited the man in his rooms, watching as his servants packed up his belongings. There was a great tear in the tapestry between the windows, Christopher saw; he seemed, all unknowing, to have left a trail of destruction behind him in his short stay at court.

“There you are,” Sir Philip said. “I wanted to thank you for all you've done. You were the one who exposed the plotters, not I—don't think I don't know that. I tried to tell the queen that—”

“You didn't!”

“Aye, I did. Why shouldn't I? You deserved the credit as much as I did. But her councilors said that they would take care of everything. And did they?”

“Aye.”

“Good. Well, I'll miss you. We had some merry times together.”

Christopher smiled. Merry was not a word he would have chosen.

“I'll never forget seeing those guards come out from behind the tapestry,” Potter said. “Remember how anxious I was for them to arrive? But why in God's name didn't they tell us they were here?”

“They didn't trust us.”

“What?”

“They didn't trust my story. It sounded too implausible—they thought it was something you and I had invented to revenge ourselves on the court, on these men.”

“Revenge?” Potter said. “Revenge for what?” His face was as round and guileless as a pocket watch.

Christopher sighed. “They wanted to eavesdrop, to see what we would do if we were left alone.”

“Nay, you're too suspicious. I think they wanted to make a grand entrance, like the knights of Order overcoming the vices. And so they did.” He looked around him. “I think I'm done here. Don't forget the letter of recommendation I wrote you. You were the best secretary I ever had.”

12

Alice had spent the night unable to sleep. Why had she sent Walter away? Nay—why should she want him with her? What would the Stationers' Company say if she had spent the night with him? A woman cleared of charges of immoral living could not give in to her whims so easily. It was good that he had gone. But wouldn't it be better to have him here? She could tell him the truth about her son, and he could help her think what to do about Margery's note.

By morning she had decided to go to Margery. The message she had sent had sounded pressing. And by avoiding the churchyard she would be able to avoid Walter, too, to gain one more day in which she could decide what to do about him.

It was snowing as she left the house, an unseasonable snow after a winter of mild weather. She went back to get her woolen cloak and continued on to her assistant's house. He was home, God be thanked, and willing to work for her that day. Then she walked through the falling snow to Margery's cottage.

As she went up the path to her friend's house she saw that Margery had built up the fire; a thin gray thread of smoke drew up from her chimney into the sky. “Come in, come in!” Margery said, opening the door to her before she could knock.

After the cold Margery's house seemed almost hot. The fire sounded loud in the small house. She shook off her cloak with relief.

Margery handed her hot cider and pushed a protesting black and white cat off a stool. Alice sat. “You remember Agnes, don't you?” Margery said.

Alice nodded, trying not to feel annoyed. She had hoped to talk to Margery alone, to ask her pressing questions about her son and Walter. What business did the other woman have here? It was true she had delivered Arthur twenty years ago—but nay, that hadn't been Arthur at all but his counterfeit, the boy she had raised, the Prince of Faerie. Did that old tale give this nosy gossip the right to pry into her affairs?

But Agnes's presence would not stop Alice from telling her news. “I must tell you,” she said. “George has had dealings with the man in black, the one who's been asking after Arthur.”

Margery frowned. “This is ill news indeed. How did you come to learn of it?”

She told Margery the whole story—how George had denounced her to the Stationers' Company, how Edward Blount and Walter James had risen in her defense, how Blount had mentioned the alchemist and counterfeiter who had spoken with George. Margery looked horrified at the charges that had been brought against her, and Alice wondered if someone had once accused her friend of necromancy as well. She realized, not for the first time, how little she actually knew about the other woman.

Through it all Agnes watched her with undisguised interest. Because of Agnes, Alice passed over the play she had seen with Walter and the sleepless night she had spent afterward. When Agnes was gone she would confide in Margery again.

“What can we do?” Alice asked when she had finished her tale. “If these men are truly counterfeiters perhaps we should tell the authorities, one of the queen's men.”

“Nay. We must not allow information about your son to come to the queen.”

“Why?”

“Why? Haven't you heard the news? There has already been one plot against the queen. Someone tried to kill her, and I heard stories that Arthur might have been involved. What—”

“Arthur wouldn't plot against the queen,” Alice said quickly. But would he? What did she know about him, after all?

“Maybe not. But Arthur is important to a great many people. Imagine what the queen would do if she heard of a man in her kingdom who had been born into the old race.”

“Would she use him in some way?”

“Perhaps. But probably she would have him killed, especially if he made claims to the throne.”

“Then what can we do?”

“Do? Just now we can do nothing but wait.”

Margery lit her pipe and sat back. Why had her friend sent that urgent note if they could do nothing? Alice wanted to shake her, to force her into action. If the weather cleared she should go back to the churchyard. Why had she come?

“We must wait until evening,” Margery said finally, smoke blowing from her mouth. “There will be a battle tonight, in Finsbury Field. As I said, they have decided not to wait for your son.”

Did Margery read her thoughts? “Battle? But what does that have to do with us?”

“Arthur may be there. We know that he is drawn by these folk, and rightly, since they are his true heritage. And your son may be there as well.”

She felt as if she had been stabbed to the heart. Would Margery never stop surprising her? To see her son, after all these years …“And what then?” she asked. “Will they let me speak to him?”