She should not have addressed him so formally, but her own temper was frayed beyond any chance of courtesy. As was his own, no doubt. Antony said through his teeth, “I give no commands, madam. I merely advise you that to leave your realm and go into such danger is unwise in the extreme.”
“I was once accounted quite good at this,” she said with some asperity, trying to make light of it. “You need not fear I will be found out.”
“Good or not, you propose to expose yourself to that which is anathema to you, with nothing to gain for it!”
A spark of rage flared in her heart. Did he think her entirely motivated by gain? Incapable of concerns beyond the betterment of her court? Amadea entered the room, bearing a crystalline coffer, but recoiled from the glare Lune laid on her. Free for the moment from her attendants, Lune turned to face her consort.
“I promised,” she said, forming each word precisely, “to protect England. Instead I have let her fall into the hands of a militant faction who discard her well-being in pursuit of their own interests. And so today they will cut the head from her King—a reigning monarch, tried and put to death by his own subjects.” Words were insufficient to contain her horror. Kings and queens had died before—deposed, abdicated, murdered without warning—but never like this. Never while on their thrones, under pretense of law.
Disguising what she felt was impossible; instead she used it as a weapon, letting Antony see. “I will not let this pass unwitnessed.”
He argues to preserve this realm—out of fear that something may befall me, and so both realms will crumble into chaos together. Robbed of his seat in Parliament, his position as alderman, his influence in his own world, Antony fought all the harder to preserve his other sovereign. She understood.
But I must do this.
At last Antony bowed his head. “Then come. The time grows short.”
WHITEHALL PALACE, WESTMINSTER: January 30, 1649
Silence reigned over King Street. Here and there a tearful, murmured prayer rose from hesitant lips, but the hundreds of people packing the road, leaning out of windows, perching on the roof, waited in grim and unnatural silence.
The Italianate expanse of the Banqueting House formed the background of the scene, a classical limestone island in the midst of Tudor brick. Black cloth draped the railings of the platform in front, concealing from those in the street the low block at its center, and the staples hammered into the boards around it. Should it prove necessary, they would chain the King to his scaffold, like a dog.
Tower Hill and Tyburn were both too large and open, too difficult to control. A vast mob had gathered to gloat over Strafford’s death; the men who now held England’s reins could not risk a similar mob turning against them. The confines of Whitehall Palace could be controlled, with the Banqueting House marking one side of King Street, the Tilt-yard the other, and Holbein Gate capping the southern end. An artillery platform left over from the wars, wedged in the corner by the scaffold, kept black watch over the street, and mounted soldiers ringed the scaffold, armored and armed. They would kill Charles outside his monument to beauty, Inigo Jones’s elegant architecture and Rubens’s transcendent ceiling within: an added twist of the knife.
The spare, ascetic woman at Antony’s side showed her years in her gray hairs and the worn lines of her face, and a hint of stiffness in her joints betrayed the encroachment of age. Lune had not exaggerated; she counterfeited humanity so well, he could not have told her for a fae. The three who accompanied her were easier to identify: Sir Prigurd Nellt was the enormous fellow with shoulders as wide as an axe handle, and the other two served in the Onyx Guard. Even now, dressed as humble tradesmen, they stood like knights—and faerie knights at that. The sober, Puritan dress they all wore was a thin mask. But no one’s eye would be on them today.
Kate had called Antony monstrous for attending, as if the grisly spectacle were his reason. The truth was that he could not let Lune come alone.
It was easy to think the elfin woman careless, even heartless. Together they had played the game of politics for so long he had lost sight of the truth: that Lune did care, as deeply as he. And this day might even hurt her more, for her dedication to the monarchy was born in a time when the monarch deserved the love of her servants.
Now, they might not have even an undeserving monarch. Earlier, one of Ben Hipley’s beggar-children informants had found Antony where he and the others waited on the steeply gabled roof above the artillery platform, overlooking the scaffold. The execution was delayed because the Commons was rushing a bill through, rendering it illegal for anyone to proclaim a new king. It was a defensive tactic, a futile attempt to protect themselves against Charles, the Prince of Wales, who was young, energetic, not hated as his father was, and roaming free on the Continent. But Antony feared they intended something more permanent.
Movement drew his eye. Men were filing out onto the scaffold: soldiers, a couple of fellows with inkhorns and paper, and the executioner, who along with his assistant was heavily disguised. The noble windows of the Banqueting House had mostly been blocked up, but one in the annex on the north side had been torn out and enlarged, and it was through this they came.
Whispers ran through the crowd, rippling the deadly tension. And then a gasp, as the King stepped into view.
He dressed plainly, his only jewel the George, the insignia of the Order of the Garter. He seemed composed, but asked one of the soldiers something with a nod toward the block. Though the crowd was fearfully quiet, a sharp wind blew, bringing winter’s bite and carrying Charles’s voice away. Even from his nearby position, Antony could only catch stray words; the rest of the onlookers, held back by the thick ring of mounted troops, would fare little better. When Charles drew a small paper from his pocket, he addressed his final speech to the men on the scaffold, the only ones who could hear him. But the men with the inkhorns took notes, and it would not be long before the King’s last words were published all over London.
I must get their notes, Antony thought, biting his lip. If they censor anything out—the people must have the truth.
With the help of the bishop who had accompanied him out of the Banqueting House, Charles donned a nightcap and tucked his hair inside, leaving his neck bare. What the bishop said to Charles was inaudible, but the King’s reply came in a stronger voice, carrying to the now almost perfectly silent crowd. “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown, where no disturbance can be—no disturbance in the world.”
Antony’s stomach twisted in agony as the King removed the George and handed it to the bishop. “Remember,” Charles said, and Antony thought, Yes. I will remember forever this moment—when a man convinced that God has ordained his authority is murdered by men convinced that God has ordained theirs.
Always they laid it at the feet of the Almighty. Charles believed his defeat proof of God’s punishment. Parliament’s leaders believed their victory proof of God’s favor.
Or was it simply proof of Cromwell’s military genius, and the effectiveness of the New Model Army? What if all of this, every bit of it, was the work of men alone—their choices and mistakes, their dreams and ideals—and God watched it all play out, letting them rise and fall with neither aid nor hindrance?
Someone had to be wrong; God could not be on both sides. And watching Charles remove his doublet and cloak, watching him raise his hands in prayer and then lay himself flat with his head over the low block, Antony felt with cold certainty that both were wrong. God watched, nothing more. His hand was nowhere in this day—nor any other.