She should have come to the Goodemeades sooner. She should have asked them about Francis Merriman.
They lied too well, convincing everyone that they stayed out of such matters. But if they did not, they would never have survived for so long.
Lune realized there was something she had not said. The words came awkwardly; she spoke them so often, but so rarely with sincerity. “I thank you for your kindness,” she whispered, unable to face Rosamund. “I will be forever in your debt.”
The brownie came over and took her hands, smiling into her eyes. “Help us set this place right,” she said, “and the debt will be more than repaid.”
A lantern glowed by the door of the inn, and light still showed inside. Lying as it did along the Great North Road, the Angel was a major stopping point for travelers who did not gain the city before the gates closed at dusk, and so there was always someone awake, even at such a late hour.
Deven led his horse toward the road in something of a daze. The part of him that was accustomed to following orders had for some reason decided to obey the little brownie Gertrude, but his mind still reeled. Faeries at court. How many of them? He remembered the rooftop chase, and the stranger that had vanished. Perhaps he had not imagined the flapping of wings.
He mounted up, rode into the courtyard of the inn, and dismounted again, so that anyone inside would hear his arrival. Looping his reins over a post, he stepped through the door, startling a sleepy-eyed young man draped across a table. The fellow sat up with a jerk, dropping the damp rag he held.
“Sir,” he said, stumbling to his feet. “Needing a room, then?”
“No, indeed,” Deven said. “I have some ways to ride before I stop. But I am famished, and need something to keep me going. Do you have a loaf of bread left?”
“-Uh — we should—” The young man looked deeply confused. “You’re riding on, sir? At this hour of the night? The city gates are closed, you know.”
“I am not going into the city, and the message I bear cannot wait. Bread, please.”
The fellow sketched a bad bow and hastened through a door at the far end of the room. He emerged again a moment later with a round, crusty loaf in his hand. “This is all I could find, sir, and ’tis a day old.”
“That will do.” At least he hoped it would. Deven paid the young man and left before he would have to answer any more questions.
He rode away, circled around, came back to the rosebush. Gertrude had provided him with a bowl; now he set it down by the door of one of the inn’s outbuildings, with the loaf of bread inside, and feeling a great fool, he said, “Food for the Good People; take it and be content.”
The little woman popped up so abruptly he almost snatched out his blade and stabbed her. The night had not been good on his nerves. “Thank you, dearie,” Gertrude said with a cheerful curtsy. “Now if you could pick it up again? We have some of our own, of course, a nice little supply — we so often have to help out others — but if Invidiana finds we’ve been giving Lady Lune mortal bread… well, we aren’t giving it to her, are we? You are. So that’s all right and proper. Never said anything about mortals giving her bread or milk, and not as if she has any right to tell you what to do. Not that it would stop her, mind you.”
Bemused, Deven picked up the bowl and followed the still chattering brownie back to the rosebush, which opened up and let them pass below.
Lune was still in the hidden room, washing her feet in a basin of clear water. She glanced up as he entered, and the sight made his throat hurt; the motion was so familiar, though the body and face had changed. He thrust the bowl at her more roughly than he meant to, and tried to ignore the relieved pleasure on her face as she took the bread. “I shall have to think where to hide this,” she said. “You are clever, Gertrude, but Invidiana will still be angry if she learns.”
“Well, eat a bite of it now, my lady,” the brownie said, retrieving the bowl from Deven. “You could use a good night’s sleep here, but we can’t risk it; you need to go back as soon as possible. Has Cheepkin returned?”
“While you were out,” Rosamund said. “No one has found Francis yet. I’ve made sure Sir Derwood knows to leave.”
“Good, good. Then ’tis time you went back, Lady Lune. Are you ready?”
Deven, watching her, thought that she was not. Nonetheless, Lune nodded her agreement. Holding the small loaf in her hands as if it were a precious jewel, she pinched off a bite, put it in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. He watched in fascination, despite himself; he had never seen anyone eat bread with such attentive care.
Rosamund said to him, “It strengthens our magic against those things that would destroy it. Traveling through mortal places is dangerous without it.”
As he had seen, earlier that very night. No wonder Lune treated it as precious.
“Now,” Gertrude said briskly. “Master Deven, would you escort her back to London? ’Twould go faster riding, and unless Lady Lune makes herself look like a man, she should not be traveling alone.”
The comment about disguise brought him back to unpleasant matters with a jolt. Lune was toweling her feet dry with great concentration. He very much wanted to say no — but he made the mistake of looking at Gertrude and Rosamund. Their soft-cheeked faces smiled up at him in innocent appeal. His mouth said, “I would be glad to,” without consulting his mind, and thus he was committed.
Lune stood, dropped the towel on her stool, and walked past him. “Let us go, then.”
By the time he followed, she was gone from the main room upstairs. He found her outside, waiting with her back to him. Words stuck in his throat; he managed nothing more than a stiff, “My horse is this way.” His bay stopped lipping at the grass when Deven took hold of the reins. No footsteps sounded behind him, but when he turned, he found her just a pace away.
Except it wasn’t her. She wore a different face, a human one. Not, he was desperately relieved to see, the face of Anne Montrose.
“Who is that?” he said, and could not keep the bitterness out of it.
“Margaret Rolford,” Lune said, coolly.
Deven’s mouth twisted. “Once a waiting-gentlewoman to Lettice Knollys, as I understand it.”
Margaret Rolford’s eyes were probably brown in sunlight; at night, they looked black. “I congratulate you, Master Deven. You followed me farther than I realized.”
There was nothing he could say to that. Steeling himself, Deven put his hands around Margaret’s waist — thicker than Lune’s, and Anne’s — and lifted her into the saddle; then he swung himself up behind her.
He had not realized, when he agreed to Gertrude’s request, that it would mean riding the distance to London with his arms around the faerie woman.
Deven set his jaw, and touched his heels to the flanks of his gelding.
The tiny sliver of a moon had set even before he returned from Mortlake; they rode in complete darkness toward the few glimmering lights of London. Margaret Rolford’s body was not shaped like Anne Montrose’s — she had a sturdier frame, and was shorter — but still it triggered memories. A crisp, sun-washed autumn day, with just enough wind to lift a maiden’s unbound hair. Both of them released from their duties, and diverting themselves with other courtiers. The young ladies all rode tame little palfreys, but Anne wanted more, and so he put her up on the saddle of his bay and galloped as fast as he dared the length of a meadow, her slender body held safely against his.
Silence was unbearable. “Doctor Dee,” he said, without preamble. “He has nothing to do with it, then?”