“Lady Feidelm,” Lune said, “we welcome you to the Onyx Court, and tender our thanks to our royal cousin Nuada.”
The new ambassador’s voice was rich and finely trained. “His Majesty sends his greetings, and begs your kind pardon for calling away Lord Eochu Airt, whose services are needed in Emain Macha, serving King Conchobar of Ulster.”
Lune smiled pleasantly at the old ambassador, who stood mute and unreadable. “We shall sorely miss his presence at court, for he has been an unfailing advocate on Temair’s behalf, and an ornament to our days, with poetry and song.”
A lovely mask of courteous speech, laid over the simple truth that Eochu Airt had asked to go. He could not be quit of them soon enough. What remained to be seen was what Feidelm’s appointment signaled. If the lady were amenable, Lune hoped to negotiate for aid against Nicneven.
But that would have to wait. Lune beckoned to Lord Valentin, who came forward with a parchment already prepared. When the revocation of Eochu Airt’s diplomatic status was done, and Feidelm proclaimed in his place—then she would see the dance Temair followed now.
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: November 21, 1648
The feasting and presentation of gifts ran through the night, with music and dancing and a contest of poetry between the old and new ambassadors. Eochu Airt begged leave to retire when it was done, though, and soon after Lune withdrew to walk with Feidelm in the garden.
The sidhe hailed from Connacht, and spoke as openly of King Ailill and Queen Medb as she did of the High Kings of Temair. The different perspective was useful to Lune, after years of Eochu Airt’s Ulster-bred sentiments. More useful still was the lack of hostility; Feidelm might not be an ally, but she clearly intended to form her own opinion of Lune, rather than adopting her predecessor’s. It was as close to a tabula rasa as Lune would get, and with Nicneven temporarily set back by the removal of Sir Leslic, Lune had the leisure to try and mend her relations with Temair.
“Lady Feidelm,” she said as they wandered the paths, “I know from the branch you bear that you are a poetess. Yet for you to be called ‘the Far-Seeing Eye’—are not such matters the province of your druids?”
“The imbas forosna is the province of poets,” the sidhe replied in her rich lilt, trailing her fingers over the flank of a marble stag that stood along the path. “For my skill at that, I am so named.”
“We have no seer at this court,” Lune said, and did not have to feign the regret in her voice. “And we live in most unpredictable times, when all the world seems upside-down. Might I prevail upon you to see on our behalf, and give some sense of what lies ahead?”
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.
PALACE YARD, WESTMINSTER: December 5, 1648
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.