What he said after that, Antony could not catch; there was noise and movement in the hall below. His heart leapt into his mouth, and he realized for the first time just how frightened he was. It seemed impossible that such events as these could proceed without dissolving into sheer anarchy and bloodshed.
But this was no hotheaded attempt to rescue or kill the King. Cries of “Justice!” arose in the crowd, as if by chance. “They planned that,” Antony murmured in Soame’s ear, and his friend grunted in agreement. The Puritans despised theater, but what was this if not a staged play?
The King, however, refused to follow the script. Batting aside Bradshaw’s weak counters, he hammered the point again and again, questioning the authority of the court, and asserting his right to ask that question.
Tom scowled. “Why does he not plead?” he demanded in an undertone. “Every time Bradshaw asks for his answer, he deflects it with more arguments—but a man who does not plead is assumed to be guilty!”
“Because to plead innocence or guilt is to grant legitimacy to this court,” Antony said.
“But it seals his fate. He could win on points of law, if only he would defend himself !”
Kate’s bitter laugh answered him, from Antony’s other side. “Do you think these men are concerned with the law? They answer to God, and none other. No defense would save him.”
Soame’s answering noise was pure, inarticulate frustration. “At least it would show how nonsensical these charges are!”
Nothing Antony had seen that day brought home the injustice of the trial more than hearing Soame—no friend to the King—condemn its conduct. Much of the behavior they named, Charles was guilty of, though perhaps not to such exaggerated extent. Yet it could not be termed criminal under the structure of English law; in prosecuting his transgressions, these men committed their own.
Kate was right: it had little or nothing to do with the law. “The people would not understand,” Antony said. “If Charles pleads his innocence, they will spend the next three days describing all his sins in exquisite detail. That is what the crowd would remember. He will not give them that opportunity.”
What they would remember, instead, was the King’s unflappable eloquence, not in his own defense, but in demolition of those who faced him. When Bradshaw called him “elected King,” Charles reminded him of the inheritance of English monarchy; when he asserted the authority of the Commons, the King pointed out the absence of the Lords, who were essential to the constitution of a Parliament. “You have shown no lawful authority to satisfy any reasonable man,” he said, and it was true.
A tight knot formed in Antony’s throat as he watched. He saw Charles with clear eyes; the events of the war had established all too clearly the man’s duplicity and arrogance. When he claimed to defend the liberties of the people, it was laughable—and yet, he might lay a greater claim to that defense than the men who now held England at the point of a blade. A tiny spark of respect flared in Antony’s heart, and he despised himself for it. But there it was: the man faced his judges, overriding their attempts to interrupt and silence him, with all the unshakable confidence of the martyr resigned to his fate.
He will not avert it, Antony realized, as Bradshaw finally lost his patience and ordered the soldiers to remove the King. And he knows it. But he will sell himself dearly, with words alone.
With the prisoner gone, the day’s work was ended; people began to depart. Kate stood unmoving at his side, her lips pressed tightly together, her eyes blazing with rage. “It’s a disgrace,” she said, when she saw Antony’s eyes on her.
“Yes,” he agreed, and took her arm gently. “And more disgrace to us, that we have fallen to such a state.”
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: January 26, 1649
Dejection weighed down Lune’s spirit like iron shackles, dragging at her steps as she paced restlessly from one side of the library to the other. The fae who frequented this room—scholarly sorts, uninterested in the active amusements of most courtiers—had been startled to see their Queen appear, and had ceded the chamber to her without pause. Lune herself rarely came here, and that was why she sought it now: for the unfamiliarity, for surroundings bare of all her usual comfort.
I have failed.
Failed Antony, failed England. Failed the promise made to an old woman decades ago. Not a vow, sworn on an ancient name of Faerie, but Lune had tried to behave as if it were. Yet it was just as well she had not so sworn: she could not defend England from itself. From a King so unworthy of his people; from subjects so unworthy of their land. Or from the faerie enemies who found and exploited those cracks, hammering at them until the whole of the state shattered.
In nearly sixty years on her throne, she had never faced a test such as this. And now that it had come, she failed.
So she came here, to keep company with her guilt. She could not share it with Antony, who bore so great a burden himself. Michael Deven, who would have comforted her, was dead—and a part of her was grateful he was not here to see this fall.
A knock at the door brought a snarl to her lips. Fae did not weary as mortals did; she’d shunned all attempts to bring her food, to make her sleep, until her ladies and her advisers understood that all she wished for was solitude. “Leave me be!”
Despite her command, the heavy oaken door swung open, admitting Lord Valentin Aspell and Sir Prigurd Nellt. They both went to their knees immediately, and her Lord Keeper said, “Your Grace, I most humbly beg your forgiveness for this disturbance.”
“You shall not have it,” she snapped, dashing wetness from her cheeks before it could be seen. “We wish to be left alone.”
“Madam, it concerns the safety of your realm.”
It might have been a leash, pulling tight about her neck. Lune’s body jerked, caught between a desire to strike him, and an impulse to flee. To go somewhere they could not find her and burden her with such news.
But duty was a bridle she had put on herself; she could not cast it off. Digging her nails into her palms, Lune said, “Tell me.”
Aspell visibly inhaled with relief. “An Islington lubberkin has brought word from an oak man north of the City. There were fae in his grove last night—foreigners. Perhaps as many as a dozen.”
Chilling as the words were, they concentrated her mind wonderfully. “The Scots.”
“I do not think so, madam. The oak man said they wore red armor.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, madam.”
Faerie knights painted and lacquered their armor, but according to their own tastes—usually. Red armor, in a group, pointed unerringly to one source. “Knights of the Red Branch,” Lune whispered.
Not Scots, but Irish. Ulstermen. The elite of King Conchobar’s warriors, as the Onyx Guard were of Lune’s. Ulster—the place to which Eochu Airt had returned so suddenly, not long ago. She doubted the two were unconnected.
But what purpose did they aim at? Lune’s eyes had been so firmly fixed on Scotland, she’d given Ireland little thought of late. Could it be—
Her heart leapt for one brief, foolish instant. Could it be they come to rescue the King?
Charles had been willing to promise the mortal Irish many things, in order to gain their aid in war. How much more might he give, in gratitude for his liberation?
But common sense asserted its leaden weight, reminding her of the obstacles that blocked the Red Branch, even as they blocked her. And surely Conchobar knew as well as she how little the King’s promises could be trusted. And—