This is the doing of men.
A frozen, silent instant—then Charles stretched out his arms.
The axe flashed through the air, and a groan wrenched free of the crowd, horror too great for words.
The disguised executioner lifted up the severed head of the King by his hair, the nightcap tumbling to the boards. Weeping and praying filled the air as the soldiers dragged the body clear and loaded it into a coffin draped with black velvet.
Before they were even finished, a clatter broke the grief. Horsemen advanced from the far end of King Street and the interior side of Holbein Gate, not too fast, but with enough deliberate menace to achieve their aim: the people broke ranks and scattered as best they could. Some brave few dodged beneath the scaffold to dip their handkerchiefs in the blood—a few even dared the soldiers by vaulting the railings—but most began to flee.
Even the rooftops were not safe. Shouts arose from the gate; turning, Antony saw soldiers climbing over the leads. They paid little notice to the people around them, though, instead moving forward with purpose.
His hand moved without him thinking, closing around Lune’s arm like steel. Then he realized she was looking the other way, toward the buildings that fronted the Privy Garden behind them—toward a second troop of soldiers, approaching from the other direction. And they, like the others, caught his eye in a way he had come to recognize.
Even before one of them pointed and called to his men, Antony knew their target.
“They—” Lune began to say, but he cut her off.
“Run.”
The Banqueting House rose to their right, but that would only trap them on the roofs. Discarding propriety and her pretense of age, Lune kilted up her skirts and leapt forward. Antony didn’t let himself think; he just followed her. For an instant he felt weightless; then the artillery platform below rushed up with terrible speed. White heat flared through his right knee as he hit and rolled to the side. It was more by accident than design that his momentum carried him off the boards and onto the street before the soldiers could recover from their surprise.
Lune heard his cry of pain and moved to help him. Antony shoved her forward. “Go!” She needed no second encouragement. Around the base of the scaffold, through the scattering crowds—a horse blocked their path and they dodged right, into the arch of the Court Gate and the Palace Court beyond it.
“Sir Prigurd—” Lune said, twisting to look back.
“Will buy time for us to get away. Those were fae, Lune, and I do not think they were yours.”
The Palace Court wasn’t empty. Nor were he and Lune the first to come through; ahead they saw other onlookers being wrestled aside by the soldiers stationed there. Antony swore a blistering oath and hurled himself left, into a narrow passageway that ran past the Comptroller’s rooms. Whitehall Palace was a God-forsaken maze; when the passage ended, they had to go right, into another courtyard.
One glance at Lune told him it had been too long since she came here; she was more lost than he. Praying his own memory served him correctly, Antony went left again, through an even narrower passage that twisted almost back on itself before ending in yet another courtyard.
But this one opened back onto King Street. They were far enough from the scaffold now that the soldiers paid them little mind, and the convolutions of Whitehall did them one service; their faerie pursuers had lost them for the moment.
He would not count them safe, though, until they reached the Onyx Hall. “The river,” Antony said.
Lune shook her head. “A wherry would make us easy targets. They’ll watch for that. Can you continue?”
“I will,” Antony said grimly, and limped toward Charing Cross.
WESTMINSTER AND LONDON: January 30, 1649
Something ached beneath Lune’s breastbone, deeper than grief or despair. She felt as if the ground beneath her might fall away at any moment, as if the world had lost some fundamental solidity.
The King is dead.
She hurried through the streets with Antony at her side and her eyes burned, dry and unblinking.
The King is dead.
It shivered through her marrow. The King is dead; long live the King—But no. By decree of Parliament, young Charles did not yet succeed to his father’s place. The throne was empty. It had sat empty before, between the death of one sovereign and the coronation of another, but that was a different suspension—the hesitation between one breath and the next. This was purgatory, without a promised end.
It meant nothing. The news would reach the Prince, the new King, soon enough; people would declare him regardless. He was King by the grace of God, not Parliament. Their law meant nothing.
And yet it meant far too much.
England had no King. And on some deep level, the spiritual bedrock of the land, that absence rang like a terrible brazen bell.
She could not afford to think on it, not until they reached safety, and they were not there yet. Despite the fierce cold, sweat stood out in beads on Antony’s face. She hadn’t stopped to think when she leapt from the roof; he was human, and no longer young. His limp worsened with every furlong, but he forced himself onward—now that she had made it clear she would not leave him behind.
The closest entrance was the only one to breach the City’s boundaries; the tunnel opened inside the wall, but gave out into the filth of the River Fleet. Even were she willing to brave that sewer, the hag of the Fleet might not let them pass. They would have to go through Ludgate to the Fish Street arch—
No. Feidelm had been unable to guess the purpose for which the Red Branch was sent to London, but it seemed clear they intended to strike at either Lune or Antony. Or both. Which meant, if they were clever, they would place a force at Ludgate, where the Queen and Prince would be most likely to pass.
How many knights had Conchobar sent? There had been eight at King Street. But the oak man might have seen only one group; there could be more. Surely, though, they could not be enough to guard all the entrances, or the gates into the City.
They were already on Fleet Street; she had to make a decision. Glancing at Antony, seeing his clenched jaw, Lune knew he could not make it to Islington and the Goodemeades. They would have to risk it.
“Follow me,” she said, and turned north on Fetter Lane. Passing the lesser Inns of Court, they crossed the Fleet at Turnagain Lane and came in through Newgate. The skin between her shoulder blades crawled, expecting an arrow at any moment, but none came. They reached the butchers’ shambles, and Lune helped Antony down the steps into a cellar that ceased to be a cellar as they traversed it.
Her breath came back in a great, relieved gasp when they reached the safety of home. The iron wound stabbed with new pain, and she had snapped the busk of her bodice in her landing; its broken ends ground into her stomach. Antony sagged against the wall, dead white save for the hectic flush in his cheeks, and did not even manage to straighten when the door banged open and admitted two armed knights.
Lune leapt in front of him, dropping her mortal guise. The pair who faced her stared in astonishment; she spoke before they could overcome it. “Come. Lord Antony needs help, and we are under attack.”
She blessed Valentin Aspell for disturbing her with news of the Red Branch; the Onyx Guard was prepared. These two, Essain and Mellehan, were newly recruited to its ranks, but they responded with alacrity. Mellehan helped Antony upright, supporting the mortal man’s bad side. “We’ve heard disturbances, your Majesty,” Essain said. “Your knights are gathering in your greater presence chamber—”