Despite his resolution not to draw her attention to his dead master, Deven found himself looking at the tomb that held Walsingham’s body. Puritan belief was strong against them, Lune had said; Puritan, and Catholic. He was not on good terms with any Catholics. And he could not possibly ask Beale for help with this.
No, not Beale. The realization came upon him like a blessing from God.
“Angels,” Deven said. “To break a pact with the devil… one would need an angel.”
Lune’s face paled as she followed his logic. “Dee.”
The old astrologer, the Queen’s philosopher. How many of the stories were true? “They say he speaks with angels.”
“Or devils.”
“I do not think so,” Deven replied, soberly. “Not from what I saw of him… he might have feigned piety, of course. But can you think of one better?”
She wanted to; he could see her trying, calling up and then discarding names, one by one. “No.”
Now Deven regretted his contrived visit of a few weeks before; how would he look, a supposedly lovestruck fool, coming back and asking for aid against a faerie queen? His audience with Elizabeth would seem simple by comparison. But Dee had been a faithful supporter of Elizabeth since even before her accession; it should be possible to convince him to act against her enemy, however strange that enemy might be. And Walsingham had set him on this road — though the Principal Secretary could not have guessed where it would lead.
“I’ll go to him,” Deven promised. “Without delay. You… ”
“Will warn the Goodemeades.”
He could not quite suppress his ironic smile. “They have set a few pigeons to shadow me; one should be at my house. ’Twill carry a message, if you can find paper—”
Her own mouth quirked, and he remembered what lay outside the cathedral doors.
“’Twill carry a message to them,” he finished lamely.
Then they stood in awkward silence, the shared tomb of Sidney and Walsingham a mute presence beside them.
At last Lune said, the words coming out stiffly, “Be careful as you ride. They know who you are.”
“I know,” he replied. They stood only a step apart; the intervening space was both a yawning gulf, and intimately close. He would have taken Anne’s hands, but what would Lune make of such a gesture? “Have a care for yourself. ’Tis you who must go into the viper’s den, not I.”
Lune smiled grimly and moved past him, heading for the cathedral doors. “I have lived with the viper for years. And I am not without my own sting.”
QUEENHITHE WARD, LONDON: May 6, 1590
Only after Lune was gone did Deven realize he had left his sleeves behind at the house. No wonder the canon had stared.
He needed to put himself together properly if he was to visit Dee. He needed Colsey; he needed his horse. The previous day had left the pieces of his ordinary life scattered around London like debris after a storm.
Assembling himself again took until the afternoon. Colsey was mutinously silent while tending his master, no doubt anticipating what would come; he did not even blink when Deven said, “I must go alone.”
“Again.”
“Yes.” Deven hesitated. How much could he say? Not much. He laid one hand on Colsey’s shoulder and promised, “This will be over soon.”
Ranwell had readied his black stallion for some reason; the warhorse stood rock still as he mounted. The day was half-spent. He would spend the other half getting to Mortlake, and hope Dee granted him an audience at the end of it. At least he would be out of London, with no faerie palace lurking beneath his feet.
The congestion of the city’s streets had never irritated him so much. He should have gone west, made for the horse ferry at Fulham, but by the time he thought of it he was halfway to the bridge, with no point in backtracking. A cart in the process of unloading had mostly blocked Fish Street ahead of him; standing briefly in his stirrups, Deven scowled at the ensuing knot, as people tried to edge by. Then he cast a sideways glance at a narrow, lamp-lit lane whose name he did not recall. If memory served, it ran through to Thames Street.
Turning the black stallion’s head, he edged behind a heavily laden porter and into the lane.
Lamplight marked his way through the shadows. The lane brought him into a small courtyard, not Thames Street, but on the far side there was an archway, and his horse paced toward it without needing to be nudged. The lamp hovered above that arch, but did nothing to touch the darkness within….
“Master! Don’t follow the light!”
Irritation seized him. What was Colsey doing, following against his orders? He turned in his saddle to reprimand the servant, and found himself crying out instead. “Ware!”
Colsey leapt to the side just in time to dodge the grasping hands of the man behind him. A strange man, clad in nothing more than a brief loincloth and sandals, but broad-shouldered and muscled like a wrestler. He was unarmed, though, and in the close confines of the courtyard, he would be easy enough to ride down.
Except that Deven’s horse stood like a rock when he jerked at the reins, heedless of his master’s command.
And when he tried to swing his leg over the saddle, to go to Colsey’s aid, he found himself rooted as if his feet were tied to the stirrups.
The strange, eldritch light hovered and pulsed as he fought to free himself. Across the way, Colsey slashed out with his knife at the half-naked stranger, who parried his blows and stalked him with hands spread wide. Christ above, the horse wasn’t his; how had he ever mistaken it for his own stallion?
Christ. “In the name of the Lord God,” Deven snarled, “release me!”
The animal bucked with apocalyptic force, hurling him through the air and into the wall of a neighboring house. All the air was driven from Deven’s lungs, and he crashed heavily to the dirt below. But he untangled himself and lurched to his feet in time to see the creature shuddering and writhing into a two-legged shape, a man with a shock of black hair and large, crushing teeth.
The stranger fighting Colsey was blocking the exit to Fish Street — Deven no longer felt the slightest urge to go through the black archway at the other end — and as he looked, the man seized Colsey’s knife hand and twisted it cruelly. The servant cried out and dropped his dagger.
Deven charged toward them, but his sword was only half-clear of its sheath when something cannoned into him from the side. The horse-thing knocked him into the wall again, and Deven gasped for air. Reflex saved him; he kept drawing and now had three feet of steel to keep the creature from him. It danced back, suddenly wary.
Colsey had broken free, but now he was unarmed. “Get to the street!” Deven shouted, or tried to; the words rasped painfully out of him. If Colsey could rouse some kind of aid—
Except that Colsey shook his head and backed up two steps, retreating toward Deven’s side. “Damn your eyes,” Deven snarled, “do as I say!”
“And leave you with yonder two? With the greatest respect, master, shove it.” Colsey made a swift lunge, but not toward their opponents. Deven’s own knife whisked clear of its sheath, into the servant’s hand.
They had another weapon, though, better than steel. “By the most Holy Trinity,” Deven said, advancing a step, “by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—”
He got no farther. Because although the horse-thing shrank back and the hovering light snuffed out as if it had never been, the strange man charged in without flinching.
His bulk bowled Colsey away from Deven’s side, dividing them again. Deven lunged, but retracted it as the stranger whirled to grab for his arm; he dared not lose hold of his sword. Then the horse-thing was there again, kicking out and getting stabbed for his pains, and Colsey circled with his opponent, slashing with the knife to keep him at bay.