Enough so that when the door opened, unheralded, letting Antony into the chamber, she offered him an easy smile. He held a folded sheet in one hand—no small scrap of paper, but fine vellum, sealed with wax. Lune could not see the impression from where she sat, but a ribbon dangled from the seal; it was something formal. “What is that?”
“A letter I fear will damage your good spirits,” he said, extending it to her. “From Nicneven.”
The vellum perched loosely on her slack hand as Lune stared at him, taken utterly by surprise. Not once since her accession had the Queen of Fife deigned to communicate directly. Why now? And why did Antony have it?
“As to the second,” he said when she asked him, “it is because I found Valentin Aspell pacing outside your door, trying to devise a means of presenting it to you that would not result in him running for his life. I offered to hazard myself instead. But for why she has written to you—we must read it to know.”
She did not want to know; she wanted to throw the letter in the fire unread. Instead Lune settled into a chair by the hearth and cracked the seal with her thumb.
The missive was addressed to Lune alone, but that was no surprise; Nicneven would hardly wish to acknowledge a mortal as her co-ruler. She turned so Antony could read it with her, from the chair he pulled to her side. The script inside was sharp and unadorned, and its message unmistakably clear.
“Heaven and earth,” Antony said. “He is not in Fife?”
For his betrayal of our trust and goodwill, we lay claim to the life of Ifarren Vidar. Should you or any of your court apprehend him, surrender him to us at once, or we shall once more make war upon your realm, and destroy it utterly.
A breathless laugh escaped Lune, born more of disbelief than amusement. “It would appear not. And for good reason.”
During the long years in Berkshire, they had tried to encourage Nicneven’s disaffection with Vidar. It seemed she no longer needed prompting. Vidar was not in Fife; he had squandered any goodwill there by his failure in London.
Then where was he?
Antony sat back in his chair and raised his eyebrows. “Well, that is a weight off your shoulders, I should imagine. Let the Gyre-Carling dispose of him.”
“She must find him first,” Lune murmured.
The Prince knew her too well; he gave her a curious look, leaning forward once more. “You do not seem pleased.”
Lune folded the letter carefully, along the original lines. The seal was too battered now to make out—presuming it was Nicneven’s at all. Did the Gyre-Carling often send letters? Or had she borrowed someone’s seal, in an attempt to follow civilized standards? “It is blackmail, Antony.”
“But it would buy the security you have sought all this time.”
“Would it?” The words came out sharp. “Nicneven despises this place. She will not cease just because I help her kill Vidar. But that is not the point, Antony: the point is the threat itself.”
He paused, then said, “You do not wish to be seen bowing to it. I understand. But no one knows of it save us two. Aspell did not read the letter. If Vidar were found quietly, and sent north—”
“You do not understand.” Lune rose from her chair in an angry burst, the letter crumpling in her hand. “She threatens my realm. Not myself, not my subjects; the Onyx Hall itself. The very foundation of my sovereignty. If I bow to that—” Even speaking the words made her bones shiver. It was the same instability she had felt when they cut the head from Charles in King Street, the tremor that preceded the earthquake.
“If I bow to that,” Lune repeated, almost too faintly for herself to hear, “then I will be Queen no more.”
Antony shifted behind her, uneasy. “How so?”
She shook her head. “I—Sun and Moon. I cannot explain it, but I feel it. Beyond question. I know I ceded the palace to Vidar when I fled, but that was not the same…” Her breath caught. Lune swallowed painfully. “It would be as if, in his trial, Charles had renounced the divine, in order to spare his life. Or no—that is not it at all—” Frustration closed off her throat. She had never been a philosopher, to seek out the reasons for faerie customs, much less to explain them to others. “I do not have the words. But if I allow Nicneven to use my realm to force me to my knees, I will lose that realm. Likely to her.”
Lune turned and found Antony now standing as well, confused and worried in equal measure. “We must find him first,” she said, her determination hardening with every word. “Find him first, and dispose of him quietly, so that he cannot threaten us again. And if Nicneven does not like it—then we shall answer her as befits a Queen.” And she flung the letter into the fire.
LONDON: May 29, 1660
The City had burst into bloom, the warm spring sun calling out all the colors and gaiety the long, cold winter had suppressed—a winter that had, in some senses, lasted for more than ten years. Everyone wore their brightest, and banners hung from every jetty and balcony along the processional route. The fountains in the streets ran with wine. The roar was deafening, but above it all, trumpets rang out in brazen triumph as the procession made its way up London Bridge.
At the heart of all the pageantry was a tall, smiling man, his black hair hanging in thick curls past his shoulders, receiving with benevolent goodwill all the accolades of the City his father had fled nearly twenty years before. Antony knew well that Charles Stuart, second of that name, had no particular illusions about the circumstances of his restoration, but he was willing to accept the fiction thus offered. Indeed, the King laughed that it must be his own fault that had kept him away, for everyone so clearly desired his return. These smiles and jests were the bandages that would hold England’s wounds closed—to heal in time, they hoped.
“God save the King!” echoed from every window, when not long before those same voices had sworn never to accept a single person at the head of their state, be he King or Lord Protector. But here came this merry man, thirty years old today, with splendid display the likes of which had not been seen since Puritan rule began, and it was excuse enough for rejoicing. The trouble could come later.
Tears prickled in Antony’s eyes. So little of it made sense! The struggle now ended was not the one they had begun so long ago. The issues that troubled men back then were all but forgotten now. Few concerned themselves anymore about the Anglican episcopacy, or ship money, or control of the militia; though the New Model Army was far more dangerous a weapon, Parliament had ceded it to the King without a quibble. Half the names that led the fight twenty years ago were dead now, or retired from the field of political battle. After so many wars and risings, the restoration of the monarchy was achieved not by arms, but by a few simple votes in the Commons.
It was the greatest of all ironies. Old Charles had rightly disputed Bradshaw at his trial, when the lawyer tried to call him “elected King”; a sovereign was not chosen by the people, as if he were a member of Parliament. Yet this celebration today was a triumph for those who held that sovereign power arose from below, rather than being bestowed from above; though the people of England had not chosen their King, they had chosen to have a King. All the divine right in the world had not brought young Charles home, until his people willed it.
Henry might be right. Charles the Second was a dissolute man, given to wenching and drinking, and he might be a bad king. Riding with his fellow aldermen in the bright May sun, Antony could not guess what the future would bring.