Hunsdon looked dubious when he heard Deven’s request. “I do not know… Easter will be upon us in a week. ’Tis the duty of her Majesty’s Gentlemen Pensioners to be attendant upon her during the holiday. All of them.”
Deven bowed. “I understand, my lord. But never in my time here has every single member of the corps been present at once, even at last month’s muster. I have served continually since gaining my position, taking on the duty periods of others. This is the first time I have asked leave to be absent for more than a day. I would not do so were it not important.”
Hunsdon’s searching eye had not half the force of Walsingham’s, but Deven imagined it saw enough. He had not been sleeping well since the Principal Secretary’s death — since his rift with Anne, in truth — and only the joint efforts of Colsey and Ranwell were keeping him from looking entirely unkempt. No one could fault him in his performance of his duties, but his mind was elsewhere, and surely Hunsdon could see that.
The baron said, “How long would you be absent?”
Deven shook his head. “If I could predict that for you, I would. But I do not know how long I will need to sort this matter out.”
“Very well,” Hunsdon said, sighing. “You will be fined for your absence on Easter, but nothing more. With everyone — or at least most of the corps — coming to court, finding someone to replace you until the end of the quarter should not be difficult. You have earned a rest, ’tis true. Notify Fitzgerald if you intend to return for the new quarter.”
If this matter occupied him until late June, it was even worse than he feared. “Thank you, my lord,” Deven said, bowing again.
Once free of Hunsdon, he went straightaway to the Countess of Warwick again.
She had taken Anne on as a favor to Lettice Knollys, the widowed Countess of Leicester, who had last year married for the third time, to Sir Christopher Blount. A question to her new husband confirmed that his wife, out of favor with Elizabeth, was also out of easy reach; she had retired in disgrace to an estate in Staffordshire. Blount himself knew nothing of Anne Montrose.
Deven ground his teeth in frustration, then forced himself to stop. Had he expected the answer to offer itself up freely? No. So he would persist.
Inferior as Ranwell’s personal services were to Colsey’s, the newer servant could not be trusted with this. Deven sent Colsey north with a letter for the countess, and made plans himself to visit Doctor John Dee.
THE ONYX HALL, LONDON: April 18, 1590
Lune’s own words mocked her, until she thought she heard them echoing from the unforgiving walls of the palace: No fae who cannot find a way to benefit herself while also serving the Onyx Throne belongs in your court.
It was true, but not sufficient. Lune did not believe for an instant that Invidiana was angry at the lie she had given Madame Malline; that was simply an excuse. But the Queen had set her mind against Lune before that audience ever happened — before Lune ever went to the Tower. Would anything have changed that?
Ever since she went undersea, her fortunes had deteriorated. The assignment to Walsingham had seemed like an improvement, but only a temporary one; in the end, what had it gained her?
Time among mortals. A stolen year, hovering like a moth near the flame of the human court. A lie far preferable to the truth she lived now.
Living as an exile in her own home, hiding in shadows, trying to keep away from those who would hurt her for political advancement or simple pleasure, Lune missed her life as Anne with a fierce and inescapable ache. Try as she did to discipline her mind, she could not help thinking of other places, other people. Another Queen.
Elizabeth had her jealousies, her rages, and she had thrown her ladies and her courtiers in the Tower for a variety of offenses. But for all that her ringing tones echoed from the walls of her chambers, threatening to chop off the heads of those who vexed her, she rarely did so for anything short of genuine, incontrovertible treason.
And despite those rages, people flocked to her court.
They went for money, for prestige, for connections and marriages and Elizabeth’s reflected splendor. But there was more to it than that. Old as she was, contrary and capricious as she was, they loved their Gloriana. She charmed them, flattered them, wooed them, bound them to her with charisma more than fear.
What would it be like, to love one’s Queen? To enjoy her company for more than just the advantage it might bring, without concern for the pit beneath one’s feet?
Lune felt the eyes on her as she moved through the palace, never staying long in one place. A red-haired faerie woman, resplendent in a jeweled black gown that spoke of a rapid climb within the court, watched her with a sharp and calculating eye. Two maliciously leering bogles followed Lune until to escape them she had to dodge through a cramped passageway few knew about and emerge filthy on the other side.
She kept moving. If she stayed in one place, Vidar would find her. Or Halgresta Nellt.
Without mortal bread, going into the city was impossible. But when she heard a familiar, heavy tread, she ran without thinking; the nearest escape lay in the Threadneedle Street well, one of the exits from the Onyx Hall.
Luck afforded her this one sign of favor; with no sense of what hour it was in the mortal city, Lune found herself above ground in the dead of night. She wasted no time in flinging a glamour over herself and dodging into the shadows of a tiny lane, where she waited until she was certain the giantess had not followed.
It was a dangerous place to be. One of the nearest things to an inviolable rule in the Onyx Hall forbade drawing too much attention among mortals. Night allowed more freedom of movement than day, but without bread or milk, she would be limited to a goblin’s skulking mischief.
Or she could flee.
Like a needle pointing to the north star, her head swiveled unerringly to look up Threadneedle, as if she could see through the houses to Bishopsgate and the road beyond. Out of London.
Invidiana wanted her to stay and suffer. But did she have to?
Wherever Lune had been before she came here, London was her home now. Some few fae migrated, even to foreign lands, but she could no more leave her city to live in Scotland than she could dwell among the folk of the sea.
She looked back at the well. Dame Halgresta lacked the patience to lie in wait; whether she had been chasing Lune, or simply passing by, she would be gone now.
Lune stepped back out into Threadneedle Street, laid her hand on the rope, and descended down the well, back into the darkness of the Onyx Hall.
MORTLAKE, SURREY: April 25, 1590
Deven rode inattentively, his eyes fixed on the letter in his hand, though he knew its contents by heart already.
I arranged a position for Mistress Montrose with Lady Warwick at the request of her cousin, a former waiting-gentlewoman in my own service, Margaret Rolford.
Colsey was no fool. He knew why his master had searched London from one end to the other; he asked the next logical question before he left Staffordshire, knowing that otherwise he would have to turn around and go back. The answer was waiting in the letter.
Margaret Rolford lives now in the parish of St. Dunstan in the East.
The manservant had that answer waiting, too. “No Rolfords, either. Not there, nor in Fleet Street. I checked already.”
No Margaret Rolford. No Anne Montrose. Deven wondered how Margaret had come into Lettice Knollys’s service, but it wasn’t worth sending again to Staffordshire to ask; he no longer believed he would uncover anything useful by that route. Anne seemed to have come from nowhere, and to have vanished back to the same place.