Invidiana.
The cold, merciless Queen of the faerie court, who could no more love a mortal — love anyone — than winter could engender a rose. Who kept Tiresias as the most tormented of her pets, bound by invisible chains he could only break in death. That Francis Merriman might once have loved her, Lune could almost believe; mortals often loved where it was not wise. But Rosamund said Invidiana loved him in return.
Gertrude said to her sister, through her sniffles, “I told you. He remembered her. Even when his mind was gone, when everything else was lost to him, he did not forget.”
Deven was staring at them all, clearly lost. Lune was not certain even she followed it. “If this is true — why did you not speak of it before? Surely this is something we needed to know!”
Rosamund sighed and helped Gertrude onto a stool. “You are right, my lady. But last night, we had no time; we had to get you back to the Onyx Hall, before someone could suspect you of Francis’s death. And you were distraught, Lady Lune. I did not wish to add to it.”
Lune thought of her confrontation with Invidiana that morning. “You mean, you did not wish me to face Invidiana, try to regain her goodwill, knowing the man who died at my feet had once loved her.”
The brownie nodded. “As you say. You are good at dissembling, Lady Lune — but could you have done that, without betraying yourself?”
Claiming a seat for herself, Lune said grimly, “I will have to, now. What have you not said?”
Deven leaned against the wall, arms folded over his chest and that shuttered look on his face; it was a mark of Rosamund’s own distress that she did not try to coax him into sitting down, but perched on the edge of one of the beds and sighed. “’Tis a long story; I pray you have patience.
“Gertrude and I once lived in the north, but we came here… oh, ages ago; I don’t remember when. Another inn stood on this spot then, not the Angel. The mortals had their wars, and then, when a new king took the throne, the first Henry Tudor, a woman arrived on our doorstep.
“She…” Rosamund searched for words. “We thought she was in a bad way when we saw her. Later, we saw how much worse it could be. Suspiria was cursed, you see, for some ancient offense. Cursed to suffer as if she were mortal. ’Twasn’t that she was old; fae can be old, if ’tis in their nature, and yet be very well. She aged. She sickened, grew weak — suffered all the infirmity that comes with mortality, in time.”
Deven made a small noise, and the brownie looked up at him. “I know what you must think, Master Deven. Oh, how terrible indeed, that one of our kind should suffer a fate every mortal faces. I do not expect you to have much sympathy for that. But imagine, if you can, how it would feel to suffer so, when ’tis a thing not natural to you.”
Whether he felt sympathy or not, he gave no sign.
Rosamund went on. “She told us she was condemned to suffer thus, until she atoned for her crime. Well, for ages she had thought her suffering was atonement, like the penance mortals do for their sins. But she had come to realize that she must do more — that her suffering would continue until she made up for what she had done wrong.”
“A moment,” Deven said, breaking in. “How elderly was she, if she had suffered ‘for ages’? There’s a limit to how old one can become. Or was she turning into a cricket, like Tithonus?”
Gertrude answered him, her voice still thick. “No, Master Deven. You are quite right: it cannot go on forever. She grew old, and when the span a mortal might be granted was spent, she… died, in a way. She shed her old, diseased body and came out young and beautiful once more, to enjoy a few years of that life before it all began again.”
Lune felt sick to her stomach. It was one thing to don the appearance of mortality, as a shield. To sicken and die like a mortal, though — to crawl out of rotting, degraded, liver-spotted flesh, and know to that she must come again—
“We helped her as best we could,” Rosamund said. “But her memory suffered like a mortal’s; she could not clearly recall what the cause was for which she had been cursed. She knew, though, that her offense had happened here, in the place that became London, and so she had returned here, to seek out those who might know what she should do.” The brownie laughed a little, more as if she remembered amusement than felt it. “We thought her mad when she told us what plan she had formed, to lift her curse.”
A hundred possibilities sprang to Lune’s mind, each madder than the last. More to stop her own invention than to prod Rosamund onward, she said, “What was it?”
The brownie shook her head, as if she still could not believe it. “She vowed to create a faerie palace, beneath all the city of London.”
Lune straightened. “Impossible. The Onyx Hall — she cannot have made it.”
“Oh?” Rosamund gave her a small smile. “Think, my lady. Where else in the world do you know of such a place? Where else is faerie magic so proof against the powers of iron and faith? Fae live in forests, glens, hollow hills — not cities. Why is there a palace beneath London?”
Rosamund was right, and yet the thought stunned her. Miles of corridor and gallery, hundreds or even thousands of chambers, the Hall of Figures, the night garden, the hidden entrances… the magnitude of the task dizzied her.
“She had help, of course,” Rosamund said, as if that somehow reduced it to a manageable scale. “Oh, tremendous help — but one person especially.”
Gertrude whispered, “Francis Merriman.”
Her sister nodded. “A young man Suspiria had come to know. She met him after her body had renewed itself, and she was desperate to keep him from ever seeing her old, to lift her curse before it came to that. But I think he knew anyhow. He had the gift of sight — visions of the future, or of present things kept secret.” Her expression trembled, holding back tears. “She often called him her Tiresias.”
Deven looked on, not comprehending. Of course: he did not understand how that name had been warped. It wasn’t just that Francis Merriman had been obliterated; the man had become one of a menagerie of human pets, a term of love become a term of control.
“So she lifted her curse,” Lune said. Gertrude was sniffling again, making the silence uncomfortable.
To her surprise, Rosamund shook her head. “Not then. She created the Hall, but when it was done, Suspiria still aged as she had before. She hid behind glamours, to keep Francis from knowing. And oh, it pained her — seeing him stay young, living as he did in the Onyx Hall with her, while she grew ever older. But he knew, and a good thing, too; ’twas him helped her lift the curse at last, one of his visions. Not long after that Catholic woman took the throne, it was.” The look of sorrow was back. “We were all so happy for her.”
Deven shifted his weight, and the tip of his scabbard scraped against the plastered wall. “Four or five years later — if my sums are right — you say she formed this pact.”
Rosamund sighed. “She did something. In one day, not only did she become the only faerie queen in all of England, she erased Suspiria from the world. After her curse was lifted, she had begun to gather a court around her; that, Lady Lune, is when Vidar came to the Onyx Hall. Before she was crowned. But he would no more recognize the name Suspiria than he would remember the court he once belonged to. To him, as to everyone else, there has only ever been Invidiana: the cruel mistress of the Onyx Hall.”
Attempting to dry her face with a mostly soaked handkerchief, Gertrude whispered, “But we remember her. And that is why we do not help the Wild Hunt. They would tear down the Onyx Hall, every stone of it, scatter its court to the four corners of England… and they would kill Invidiana. And though she is lost to us, we do not wish to see Suspiria die.”