The man behind Antony whispered, “Sweet swiving Jesus.”
“Mr. Speaker,” the King said, his tone mild, “I must for a time make bold with your chair.”
Lenthall staggered belatedly out of the way. Once arranged in his seat, Charles surveyed the chapel and its occupants with a curious eye. As well he might: no monarch of England had ever intruded on the deliberations of the Commons. They were—or had been—inviolate.
Charles had dressed with great splendor for his intrusion, in a doublet of well-tailored taffeta, a broad collar of finest lawn edged with point. They gave his body bulk, but not height, and he looked small in Lenthall’s chair.
But his presence was larger than he. “No person,” he said into the silence, “has privileges, when charged with treason. I am come among you to know if any of those so accused are in attendance.” He waited, but no one spoke. “Is Mr. Pym here?”
Not a soul breathed in reply.
Irritated, he turned to Lenthall. “Are any of those persons in the house, who stand accused of treason? Do you see them here? Show them to me!”
The Speaker lacked a spine of his own; he was a creature of the strongest authority about him. In that moment, he showed how truly the winds had changed. Swallowing convulsively, Lenthall fell to his knees. “May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your Majesty’s pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this is, to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me.”
A few men gasped. A few more chuckled in malicious pleasure. Antony did neither. Having come late, he sat near the chapel entrance; now, hearing sounds in the lobby, he turned and looked into the gap between the benches. The Earl of Roxburgh lounged in the entrance, propping the doors open, so that Antony and anyone else who cared to could see what awaited them.
Armed men filled the lobby. Elegant courtiers, many of them the Queen’s men, but not a one of their number less than skilled in the use of the pistols they held. One met Antony’s gaze and grinned insolently, cocking his weapon and aiming it toward him—saying, clear and cold, I wait only for the King’s word.
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.