“It would be a start. But I had in mind a great deal more than that.”
She blinked. “Such as?”
He stepped closer, until only the crown of his hat separated them, so his voice would not carry. The passion in him had faded, leaving behind something less easily read. “You have more at your disposal than simple plague orders and medicines.”
“Magic?” Lune, too, kept her voice low. “Antony…our enchantments have no power over this sickness.”
“None?”
She let him see the honest regret in her eyes. “Disease is not something we know. We may speed the closing of wounds, a little; there are tales of greater things, that have more power to heal. But none in our possession. And none, so far as I know, that can banish the plague.”
Frustration hardened his features anew. Deven had asked this once, too; the plague was a frequent visitor to London. Lune had expected it from Antony during the last great visitation, some years before the war. It might have been easier for him to accept back then, before his own age made him so aware of his inevitable death.
Or not.
The Prince half turned away, jammed his hat back onto his head. Then he said, “There are other possibilities. Some of your stealthier folk could watch shut-up houses. The watchmen assigned to keep them closed are sent away on errands, and then the people escape; or else they threaten their watchers outright, hold them off with pistols or swords while their families flee, carrying the plague with them.”
“Antony—”
“Or the gentler ones, they could bring comfort to those in confinement, and perhaps keep healthy those who have not yet fallen sick.”
“Antony!”
Her call silenced him for just an instant, and into that gap came the sound of a bell. It did not ring the hour, which had passed just short while ago, but tolled six times: the death of a woman.
It might not be plague, but she knew they both thought it.
As the holy sound washed harmlessly over her, Lune said, “How often are the bells heard? Too much for safety. You will tell me I should not have spent bread on this visit to the theatre, and you will be right. But even without that—Antony, we cannot afford to be in the streets, not such as you ask. Not with people praying constantly for deliverance; not with crosses painted on the doors of the sick.”
“We said we would protect London,” he said, with ragged determination. “If not all of England, then at least the City. Lune, you have to try!”
Something black and desperate curled in her stomach, shortening her breath, making all her nerves hum. The bell was still sounding, ringing out the age of the unknown dead woman. Somewhere nearby, a parish servant pulled on the rope, fearing that soon someone else would ring the bell for him.
“I cannot,” she said, through the thickness that made her tongue stumble. “This is not something I can affect, Antony. I am sorry.” And without waiting for his reply, she fled back into the desperate frivolity of the theatre.
ROSE HOUSE, ISLINGTON: June 20, 1665
“Oh dear,” Rosamund said, somehow communicating a world of concern and frustration in that short exhalation.
The new rose bush planted behind the Angel was yet a slender thing, but the house below had been more than restored; one of Lune’s first actions after retaking the Onyx Hall had been to lend the sisters aid in improving their home. The bedchambers were enlarged, and each had its own hearth, until the place had the feel of a sumptuous little inn that just happened to be underground. The courtiers were calling it “Rose House” now—a name that caused Gertrude endless vexation.
As a concession to her, the upholstered chair Antony rested in was embroidered with daisies, instead of her sister’s endless roses. The two sat in their own small chairs, having listened to his frustrated account of the argument with Lune, while food sat untouched before him. He had no stomach for it, not with the problems he faced.
Gertrude nobly did not comment on his refusal, though her eyes followed the dish as he pushed it aside. “She’s right, I’m afraid. We have no charm to simply banish disease. Not once it’s taken hold in the body, and we are none of us great powers of Faerie, to bless the whole City of London.”
“But that is not what I asked for!” Antony sighed and clenched his fists. “Very well, it is—but I understand why you cannot. What of my other suggestions, though? Why will she not even consider those? She all but ran from me when I asked!”
The sisters exchanged a glance—an ingrained habit that today only made Antony’s useless anger worse. His ill temper was not for them, and not even, he thought, for Lune; but it was hard to be anything like calm, when every day brought news of more parishes infected. The further it spread, the dimmer his hope of doing anything to combat it.
Their silent conference seemed to pass the responsibility for answering to Gertrude. “She’s afraid,” the little brownie said.
“Of church bells, yes, and crosses on the doors, but there are ways to shelter oneself—”
“Not of those,” Gertrude said. “Of death.”
Antony’s brow knitted in confusion. “Death? By the plague? She told me herself, fae are not vulnerable to it.”
“That isn’t the point,” Rosamund said softly. “The point is death itself. To see humans in such a state—not just one or two, but dozens, hundreds, and all the rest living in fear. Mortality. Some of the crueler goblins find sport in it, but not Lune.”
Gertrude nodded. “She’s touched mortality too closely, with all the bread she’s eaten, and loving one of your kind. She understands it just enough to fear it even more than most. But you’ll find few fae who would like the thought of being surrounded by the dead and dying.”
“No one likes it,” Antony said, staring. “No one with any spark of compassion in them. That does not prevent us from caring for those in need!” Except that it did. Already, those who could afford to were retreating from London, the wealthy going to their country estates, or imposing themselves upon cousins. He could understand the King leaving; they could not afford the risk of him dying. But others fled, too—even doctors, who of all people should stay to help.
People fled, though, because they feared the danger to themselves. What the brownies were trying to say was that fae feared the thing itself: death, stark and omnipresent, as incomprehensible to them as love.
They could love. And they could die. But it came rarely, and few of them understood either one.
He tried to have sympathy, without much success. He had greater concerns than to coddle the fragile feelings of immortal creatures who were in no immediate peril. But sympathy or no, at least now he understood the source of the Queen’s reluctance. And knew, too, that it would go beyond Lune alone, if he tried to seek help elsewhere in the court.
He would just have to find a way to move them past that reluctance.
It could start here, in Rose House. “Will you, at least, do what you can to help?”
“We always do,” Gertrude answered him stoutly. “Though it’s little enough, I fear.”
Antony sighed. “It will be no worse than mere mortals can do.”
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: July 16, 1665
Someone was stealing Irrith’s bread.
The realization annoyed her; then, a few moments later, her annoyance surprised her. The mortal food was a gift from the Queen—more like wages, really, given over the years both for reward and practical use, as Irrith played messenger to the Vale and other faerie courts. Despite seven years in Berkshire, where such protection was rarely necessary, Lune had soon reverted to the assumption that one could not set foot in the mortal world without being armored by their food.