He had sounded so lucid, yet spoken so strangely. Lune echoed his words. “‘Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven….’”
Deven’s breath caught. “What?”
She had not expected such a reaction. “’Tis what he said, when I asked him what I should do. ‘Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven —’”
“—that time may cease, and midnight never come.”
“He did not use those words. But ’twas then he said time had stopped.” Deven’s expression baffled her. “What is it?”
He answered with half a laugh. “You never go to the theater, do you.”
“Not often,” she said, feeling obscurely defensive. “Why? What are those words?”
“They come from a play.” Deven rose and went to the cold fireplace, laying one hand on the mantel, chin tucked nearly to his chest. “The man who wrote them… he has served Burghley in the past, but he’s more a poet than a spy. Sir Francis’s cousin is a friend of his. I met him once, at dinner.” He turned back to face her. “Is the name Christopher Marlowe familiar to you?”
Lune’s brow furrowed. “I have heard it. But I do not know him.”
“Nor his work, ’twould seem. The lines are from his play Doctor Faustus.”
She shook her head; the title meant nothing to her.
Deven’s jaw tensed, and he said, “The story is of a man who makes a pact with the devil.”
Lune stared up at him, utterly still.
“Tell me,” Deven said. “Have your kind any dealings with Hell?”
She spoke through numb lips, as if someone else answered for her. “The Court of Thistle in Scotland tithes to them every seven years. A mortal, not one of their own. I do not know how they were bound into such obligation. But Invidiana — Suspiria — surely she… ”
“Would not have done so?” Deven’s voice was tight with something: anger, fear, perhaps both. “By what you said, your own people would have no way to restore her beauty without lifting her curse. And she is still cursed. Some other power must have aided her.”
Not a celestial power; an infernal one. What had she offered them in return? Any kindness she had once possessed, it seemed. And to fill that void, she craved power, dominion, control. She made of the Onyx Court a miniature Hell on earth; Tiresias had said often enough that it was so.
And he had told her what to do.
“Sun and Moon,” Lune breathed. “We must break her pact with Hell.”
Act Five
The long gallery is lined from end to end with tapestries, each one a marvel of rich silk and intricate detail, limned in gold and silver thread. The figures in them seem to watch, unblinkingly pitiless, as he stumbles by them, barefoot, without his doublet, his torn shirt pulled askew. His lips ache cruelly. There is no one present to witness his suffering, but the embroidered eyes weigh on him, a silent and judgmental audience.
He spins without warning, shoulders thrown back, to tell the figures in the tapestries they must leave him be — but the words never leave his mouth.
The scene that has arrested his attention might depict anyone. Some faerie legend, some ancient lord whose name has escaped his mind, slipping through the cracks and holes like so much else. But his eye is transfixed by the two central images: a lone swordsman in a field, gazing at the moon high above.
His bruised lips part as he stares at those two. The broken spaces of his mind fill suddenly with a barrage of other pictures.
He sees another Queen. A canopy of roses. A winter garden. A stool, alone in a room. Lightning, splitting the sky. A loaf of bread. A sword, clutched in a pale hand. Two figures on a horse.
Shattered crystal, littering the floor, and an empty throne.
He presses one hand to his mouth, trembling.
He has seen it before. Not these same images, but other possibilities, other people. They have not come to pass. But who knows how far in the future a vision may lie? Who is to say whether one might not yet become true?
Some of those he has seen lie dead now. Or so he thinks. He has lost all grip on time; past, present, and future long since ceased to hold any meaning. He does not age, and neither does she, and it is always night below. There is no anchor for his mind, to make events proceed in their natural order, first cause, then effect.
It may be nothing more than the desperate hope of his heart. But he clings to it, for he has so little else. And he will bury this new one with the others, so deep that even he will not recall it, for that is the only way to keep such things from her.
She has gotten some of them. Or will get them. That is why those people are dead, or will be.
But not him. Never him. She will never let him go.
He tugs the tattered remains of his shirt about himself and hurries away from the tapestries. Must not be seen looking at them. Must not give her that hint.
Someday, perhaps, he will see one of these visions come to pass.
ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, LONDON: May 6, 1590
Deven thought, a little wildly, God have mercy. I’m bringing a faerie woman to church.
By her expression, Lune might have been thinking the same thing. Mindful of how the stone would carry her voice, she murmured acidly, “Do you expect some priest here to stop her?”
“No. But at the very least, we are less likely to be overheard within these walls.” One hand on her elbow, he pulled her farther down the nave. Outside, the churchyard echoed with its usual clamor, booksellers and bookbuyers and men looking for work. The vaulting interior of the cathedral somehow remained untouched by it all, a small island of sanctity in the midst of commerce.
“We can still come inside, when prepared; you yourself have seen me at chapel.”
“True. But I doubt your kind wander in idly.” Deven broke off as one of the cathedral canons passed by, giving him an odd look.
Without realizing it, he had led them to an all-too-familiar spot. Lune was not paying attention; she did not seem to notice that the magnificent tomb nearby contained not just Sir Philip Sidney, but his erstwhile father-in-law Walsingham.
Deven pulled up short, turning her to face him. “Now, tell me true. Do you think it mere chance, that your seer spoke that line? If you have any doubts… ”
Lune shook her head. She still appeared a common maidservant, but he no longer had any difficulty imagining her true face behind it, silver hair and all. “I do not. I even thought, at the time, that he sounded sane… I simply could not make sense of the words. And I know of no power our kind possess to effect such a change, against the force of the curse.”
He had hoped she would say it was a lunatic idea. Hoped for it, but not expected it.
“How do we break such a pact?” she whispered. She looked lost, stumbled without warning into a realm alien to her faerie nature. “Mere prayer will not do it. And I doubt she would stand still for an exorcism — if such would even touch her.”