RIVER THAMES, LONDON: May 5, 1590
She had changed her appearance again, but Deven still recognized her. There were certain mannerisms — the way she walked, or held her head — that echoed his memories so powerfully it made him ache inside.
He followed the disguised Lune at a safe distance as she left the Beer House. Doing so required care; she was wary and alert, as if she might be observed or attacked. It was a tension that had not left her since he found her on Cloak Lane, wearing a bad illusion of Anne Montrose. The mere thought of living in such constant fear exhausted him. In comparison with life in her own court, masquerade as a human woman must have seemed a holiday for her.
Not that it excused a year of unending lies.
The crowds on London Bridge helped conceal him from her searching eyes. Disguised as he was, he blended in fairly well. So he followed her through the afternoon as she walked back and forth along the river’s bank: first to the Tower of London, with its water port of the Traitor’s Gate, then back westward to Billingsgate, the bridge, Queenhithe, Broken Wharf, pausing each time she passed a river stair, occasionally watching the watermen who rowed passengers from one bank to the other. Her feet at last took her to Blackfriars, on the far side of which the noisome waters of the Fleet poured out into the Thames. Deven, who had been wondering what manner of creature the spirit of the Thames would be, thought he would not want to meet anything that embodied the Fleet.
It seemed that Lune could not make up her mind where to make her attempt. Did it matter so much? Deven could imagine the Thames at its headwaters in the west might be a different being than the Thames where it passed London, but what might distinguish the Blackfriars Thames from the bridge Thames, he had no idea.
That was part of why he followed. Lune had not asked for aid, but his curiosity could not be suppressed. Though it was being sorely tested by all this walking; he had grown far too accustomed to riding.
Night fell, and still Lune delayed. Curfew had long since rung, and for the first time it occurred to him that his sober disguise might pose a problem; with neither horse, nor sword, nor finery, nor anything else save his word that might identify him as a gentleman, he had no excuse for why he might be on the street. The same was true of Lune, but remembering the befuddled guards at Aldersgate the night she fled the city, he was not concerned for her.
When the moon rose into the sky, she made her way back eastward, and Deven at last understood what she had been waiting for.
The tidal waters of the Thames, answering the call of the gibbous moon.
As the river’s level rose, he trailed her through the darkness, and mentally rewarded himself the groat he had wagered. Lune was heading for the bridge.
For it, and onto it. The Great Stone Gate on the Southwark end would be closed for the night, but the north end was open. Deven wondered what she was doing, then cursed himself for distraction; he had lost her among the houses, chapels, and shops built along the bridge’s length.
Only the scuff of a shoe alerted him. Peering cautiously over the edge in one of the few places it was accessible, he saw a dark shadow moving downward. The madwoman could have hired a wherry to take her there by water — well, perhaps not. Shooting the bridge, passing through the clogged, narrow races between the piers of the arches, was hazardous at the best of times; even the hardened nerves of a London waterman would be tested by a request to drop a passenger off along the way. But that might still have been better than climbing down the side of the bridge.
Lune reached safety below, on one of the wooden starlings that protected the stone piers from collision with debris or unlucky wherries. There was no way Deven could follow her without being heard or seen. He should give up, and he knew it, yet somehow his feet did not move homeward; instead they carried him to the other side of the bridge, one arch farther north, and then his hands were feeling the roughened stone as if this were not the worst impulse he’d had since the night he followed a faerie woman out of the city.
The first part was easy enough, where the pier sloped outward to a triangular point. The second, vertical part was the stuff of nightmares, clinging to crevices where the mortar had worn away, praying he did not fall to the starling below and alert Lune, praying he did not tumble into the Thames and ignominiously drown. But by then it was far too late to turn back.
And then he was safe, and tried not to think about how he would get off the starling again when this was done.
His cap had blown off in the river wind and was lost to the dark water. Shivering a little, though he was not cold, Deven crouched and peeked cautiously around the edge of the pier, looking across the intervening space to where Lune stood on the next platform over. No, not stood; knelt. The sound of the river had faded enough that her voice carried clearly to him.
“Father Thames,” she said, respectful and solemn. The glamour that had disguised her all day was gone, but the shadow beneath the arch protected her from prying eyes on the riverbank. Only Deven could see her, a silver figure with her head bowed. “As the moon calls to your waters, so I, a daughter of the moon, call to you. I humbly beseech the gift of your presence and counsel. Secrets lie within your waters, the wisdom of ancient times; I beg you to relate to me the tale of Suspiria, and the curse laid upon her. I ask this, not for myself, but for my people; the good of faerie kind may hang upon this tale. For their sake, I pray you hear my words.”
Deven hardly breathed, both from anticipation, and from fear of being overheard. The river licked the planks of the starlings, within arm’s reach of the top edges. Every flicker of motion caught his eye — what sign would be returned? A face? A voice?- — but it was never more than debris, floating through the narrow gaps of the races.
He waited, and Lune waited, and nothing came.
Then another sound laid itself over the quiet murmur of the water. Only when it recurred could he identify it: not speech, but choked-off breath, the ragged edge of fading control.
“Please,” Lune whispered. Formality had failed; now she spoke familiarly. “Please, I beg you, answer me.” The river made no reply. “Father Thames… do you wish her power to endure? Or do our acts mean nothing to you? She has warped her court. I can scarce remember where I was before I came here, but I know it was not this cold. I served her faithfully, beneath the sea, in Elizabeth’s court, anywhere she has bid me, and now I am hounded to the edge of my life. There is no safety for me now, except in her overthrow. Without your aid, I have nothing. I…”
The words trailed off into another ragged breath. Her shoulders slumped with weariness, abandoning the armor of purpose and drive that ordinarily held her together. Her hands clutched the edge of the starling, white-knuckled in the night.
He should not have followed her. Deven was watching something private, that she would not have shown if she knew he was there. And it stirred something uncomfortable within him, where resentment had lodged itself when first he saw her true face.
That was, after all, the crux of it. Her true face. The other was a lie. He knew it, and yet some part of him had still grieved, still resented her, as if she had somehow stolen Anne Montrose from him — as if Anne were a real person, kidnapped away by the faerie woman.
But Anne had never existed. There was only ever Lune, playing a part, as so many did when they came to court.
Yet the part she played was a part of her, too. There had been more truth than he realized to the words she said back then: she could be at ease in his presence, as she could not elsewhere. Perhaps the Lune who existed before the Onyx Court had been more like Anne.