Lune said nothing.
“Such conspicuous interference would threaten your safety as well,” he went on. “For you cannot charm so many men so entirely without it being marked. It might draw attention to this very Hall, and even if not, accusations of witchcraft would dog the King to the end of his days.”
Then he opened his eyes, and she saw the agony he had tried to conceal from her. “And in the end,” he said, “it would only confirm Charles’s invincible certainty that Heaven is on his side. The Almighty, not the people of England, has made him King, and no lesser force may deny him. He believes his failure in war is Heaven’s punishment for acceding to Strafford’s death, against his own sworn word. Last-minute salvation of such supernatural kind would be a sign that his penance is done. Once restored, he would thereafter reign in the absolute assurance that his power is divinely ordained. And he would be worse than ever.”
Laying her hands in stillness on her skirt, Lune said, “What is your wish?”
It surprised a bitter laugh from him. “My wish? For sanity and reason to return to this land. A King who heeds those below him, as well as the One above. And these past six years erased, as if they had never been. But you cannot offer me that; you can only offer this. And as generous as it is…” His breath came out in an anguished grunt. “No. We cannot rescue the King.”
Tears pricked her eyes unexpectedly. It was the sensible choice, the realistic one; the cost of acting would be too high. But some part of Antony had died when he made that decision, and she suspected it was the dreamer in him, the man who believed that working with the fae would help him transform his own world for the better.
They did not always rule in harmony, but she called him friend—and she grieved to see him change.
She rose from her chair and would have reached for his hands again, but he stepped away, armoring himself in stoicism. “We will continue to watch,” she said. “If a chance offers itself…”
“Indeed,” Antony said, but there was not much hope in his voice. “If it does, we shall be ready.”
WESTMINSTER HALL, WESTMINSTER: January 20, 1649
They could have held it at Windsor Castle, in far greater safety. But men who believed they enacted God’s will would not be satisfied with a circumspect execution of justice, out of the public eye; instead, they brought the grand delinquent of the kingdom to the very seat of his power. In the knife-edged cold of a Saturday morning, Antony, Kate, and Soame took a coach upriver to Westminster Hall, to witness the trial of the King.
Soldiers stood watch on the rooftops, repelling those who would have climbed up to peer through or even break the windows. A great mass of people waited for access to the floor of the hall, but Antony directed his coachman to a house abutting the eastern side. There he paid for the three of them to pass through onto one of the hastily constructed galleries inside the hall itself.
On the floor of the chamber, they had knocked down the partitions customarily separating the various courts that met there. Instead of claiming the middle of the hall, this great affair was wedged into the southern end, normally occupied by the Court of King’s Bench and the Court of Chancery. It weakened the spectacle—the common folk crowding in behind the wooden barriers would hear little and see less—but Antony, alert to possible dangers, understood. Ireton’s men had eschewed the safety of Windsor, but controlled what they could here. Few galleries meant fewer opportunities to shoot the participants.
Yet no one seemed to be weighing that threat today. The soldiers certainly knew where the gallery entrances were, but they made no move to search those who passed through. I could smuggle a pistol up here—even a musket—and no one would be the wiser.
If he believed it would do any good, he might have brought one.
They had come early, to ensure a place; now they waited, through the morning and into the afternoon. Kate, white-faced, made little conversation. Soame’s attempts at jests fell flat. Antony, for his own part, found himself praying—but for what, he did not know. Inarticulate pleas filled his mind.
The bells had just rung two when at last the doors were flung wide, admitting twenty halberdiers and officers bearing the ceremonial sword and mace. Behind them…
Scarcely half of the Commissioners had even come. Antony counted sixty-eight in total, though it was hard to be certain. They arrayed themselves on benches beneath the great south window, and one, in a black barrister’s gown, took the Lord President’s raised chair in the front row. “Bradshaw,” Soame muttered, and Antony nodded in recognition. The man used to be a judge in London, but he was hardly one of the great lights of English law. Every detail spoke the low character of this trial.
He hardly listened as the opening rituals were observed. While the halberdiers went to fetch the King, one of the clerks rose and droned through the roll call of Commissioners. Those who were present stood. But when the man called out, “Thomas Fairfax, Lord Fairfax of Cameron,” movement came, not from the Commissioners’ benches, but from the gallery in which Antony sat. A masked lady rose and shouted back in a furious voice, “He has more wit than to be here!”
Shocked murmurs rippled outward. On the floor, it seemed she had scarcely been heard; the clerk went on with the names. The lady shoved her way free of the crowd and vanished. “Lady Newburgh, I think,” Soame said in an undertone.
Antony shook his head. Lady Newburgh was an unabashed Royalist, true, but he knew that voice; he had approached her two weeks before, hoping through her to persuade her husband to denounce the actions of his Army. The speaker was Lady Fairfax, the general’s wife.
And then the hall fell silent—as silent as such a crowd could be—for the entrance of the King.
He did not come the length of the hall; they brought him through a side door, safely behind the barriers. From above, Antony could see little more than his black cloak and hat, and the radiant star that was the badge of the Garter. A red velvet chair had been set out for him, which he took with calm dignity, baring his face to his accusers and the spectators in the galleries.
The years of strife had been no kinder to Charles than anyone else. His hair and beard were solidly gray, and his eyes bore the shadows of a man who has not slept. But he showed no weariness as Bradshaw read his self-consciously formal statement. “Charles Stuart, King of England: the Commons of England, assembled in Parliament, being sensible of the great calamities that have been brought upon this nation and of the innocent blood that hath been shed in this nation, which are referred to you as the author if it; and according to that duty which they owe to God, to the nation, and to themselves, and according to that power and fundamental trust that is reposed in them by the people, have constituted this High Court of Justice before which you are now brought, and you are to hear your charge upon which the court will proceed.”
At Antony’s side, Kate shivered. He moved to put his arm around her, but she shrugged it off with stiff pride.
Below, they read out the charges. Charles was a tyrant and a murderer, and had subverted the fundamental laws of the realm; he had committed treason against his own people, all to glorify and exert his own will.
To which the King of England merely laughed.
His cause for humor was plain enough. When they finally gave him leave to speak, he replied clearly, without any hint of the stammer that normally impeded him. And with his first words, he cut straight to the heart of the matter. “I would know by what power I am called hither,” he said. “I would know by what authority—I mean lawful. There are many unlawful authorities in the world, thieves and robbers by the highway…”