And you have put the hounds in front of their prey, running madly off to nowhere. She had no reason to believe their intentions good, and more than enough caution to fear otherwise.
Aspell and Prigurd waited silently, breathing more easily now that she had not lashed out in anger. Strangely, her misery had subsided; it waited for her, too, but could not compete with the thoughts now racing through her mind. I must try to discover what the Red Branch intends in London—and in the meanwhile, prepare for the worst. “Lord Valentin,” she said. “Bid Lady Feidelm attend me in my privy chamber. Do not, however, say anything to her of the oak man’s message. Sir Prigurd—” The giant twitched, head still down. “Make certain that all entrances are under guard, by knights you can trust. If the Red Branch plans some assault or infiltration of our realm, we shall defend if necessary. But do not offer battle first. We may yet settle this peaceably.”
Peace was unlikely when the Ulster fae came in secret, not informing Temair’s ambassadress of their approach. But Conchobar was not Nicneven, and Lune would avoid having two such enemies if she could.
WESTMINSTER HALL, WESTMINSTER: January 27, 1649
Sunday was a day of rest; Monday and Tuesday were more of the same mockery as before. Bradshaw, it seemed, could not bring himself to believe that Charles would cling so stubbornly to his position, refusing, as always, to plead. Time and again they removed him forcibly from the hall, and with every repetition it proved the King’s point more: that their only authority lay in force of arms.
Antony’s words to Soame proved prophetic. On Wednesday the High Court summoned witnesses to testify before a committee, enumerating all the King’s sins, and the following day their statements were made public—but in the Painted Chamber, where the Commission met to debate, not in Westminster Hall. They could not conduct the trial as a trial. The King had barred that door.
Kate did not go with Antony to hear the session in the Painted Chamber. I should never have given her access to the printing press, he thought ruefully; in a few short months she had become a more prolific author of pamphlets than ever he was. London seemed snowed under by the competing publications, many of them openly against the trial. Yet it was still nothing more than words, and they held no more force than the ink used to print them.
On Saturday the High Court convened again, to pass sentence on the unrepentant King.
Antony saw Lady Fairfax slip into the gallery, masked once again, with a friend at her side. The declaration made against disturbances on the second day did not seem to have deterred her. When Bradshaw claimed once again to speak in the name of the people of England, she cried out once more: “Not half, not a quarter of the people of England. Oliver Cromwell is a traitor!”
“Down!” Antony snapped to Kate, almost before he registered the sudden move of the soldiers; half the gallery quailed as the Army men brought their muskets to bear. Half-crouching himself, he forced his way to the speaker’s side. “Lady Fairfax—”
She snarled a curse that never should have fouled the mouth of a lady, and desperate, he took her by the arm. “They will shoot!”
Lady Fairfax went with him, but not willingly. Outside, she lifted her chin and insisted, “I care not for their guns—but I would not endanger those around me.”
“I would your husband had your principles and courage,” Antony said, meeting her eyes, blazing like fire in her mask. “Had England more like you, she would rest far easier at night.”
The lady’s mouth wavered. “My husband is a good man.”
But rendered powerless by forces that had escaped all control. The Army no longer answered to him. Antony had no comfort to offer Lady Fairfax, and none for himself.
Back inside, he found confusion. The Commissioners were filing out, in less order than was their custom, and the people were muttering amongst themselves. “What’s going on?”
Tom shrugged. “The King requested a hearing before the Lords and Commons. Claimed he had something that might bring peace. Bradshaw refused it, and then the Commissioners began arguing; Cromwell himself went after the man who started it. Didn’t hear what they said, though. And now Bradshaw has called for a withdrawal.”
It lasted half an hour—an uneasy span of time. Antony had some experience of Oliver Cromwell in the Commons; the man was good at intimidation. And while he had not joined Ireton in purging the House, once Cromwell agreed to participate in this trial, his support had been steadfast. Whatever objection his fellow Commissioner might have raised, Antony doubted it would survive the confrontation now going on in private.
He was right. When the assembly returned, Tom muttered that the dissenter was missing, and Bradshaw denied Charles’s request for the hearing.
His address to the prisoner went on interminably, through a thicket of legal arguments and historical examples, most of which Antony could have dismantled in a heartbeat. Only one thing Bradshaw said struck him.
“There is a contract and a bargain made between a King and his people,” the red-robed Commissioner said. “The one tie, the one bond, is the bond of protection that is due from the sovereign; the other is the bond of subjection that is due from the subject. Sir, if this bond be once broken, farewell sovereignty!”
Such a world once existed, Antony thought sadly. But it is broken indeed.
Charles tried to interrupt, to respond, to answer the charges Bradshaw laid. After three painful days of his attacks, though, Bradshaw was not going to repeat the mistake of letting the King gain any footing. Rushing through his final points, he declared the prisoner guilty, and a clerk rose to read the sentence from a paper already prepared.
“The said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public enemy, shall be put to death, by the severing of his head from his body.”
In a solemn wave, the Commissioners rose, silently declaring their assent.
The words fell into Antony’s heart like drops of lead. Not deposition. Not imprisonment.
They will execute him.
From his seat on the floor of the hall, the King of England said mildly, “Will you hear me a word, sir?”
But Bradshaw would not. Sentenced to death, Charles was already dead, in the eyes of the law. A dead man could not speak. Heartsick, Antony saw the growing dismay on the King’s face as he realized his miscalculation. He had not understood; he had expected to have one more chance—not to change his sentence, but to give one last statement. His voice rose, higher and more desperate, as the guards closed around him like an iron gauntlet, as the Commissioners ignored his cries.
Grim in this, his ignominious defeat, Charles had his final word. “I am not suffered for to speak: expect what justice other people will have.”
THE ONYX COURT, LONDON: January 30, 1649
“You cannot go,” Antony said, his voice flat and weary. “You cannot.”
Lune’s ladies were utterly silent as they carried out the task of dressing their mistress. They were not all needed—not for the plain gown Lune had ordered them to clothe her in—but they all stayed, the better to radiate their disapproval in harmony with the Prince. “Your authority, Lord Antony, extends to mortal affairs—not those of fae. Where we choose to go is our own concern.”