Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon (37 page)

“Where are we?” Alice asked.

“Oriana's court,” he said, and walked forward.

She had no choice but to follow him. They entered through a small door and she looked around her in amazement.

The place was as Agnes had described it in her story. Light came from the walls, from the jewels on the people's fingers and from their faces. In the center of the room stood a long table where the people feasted, and serving-men moved up and down, carrying silver trays filled with food. The music she had heard the night of the revels came to her; though she had forgotten the melody, and had tried countless times to remember it, she recognized it immediately.

But Agnes had not mentioned the empty places at the table, the seats of all the men who had fallen in battle. Surely Oriana could claim fealty over more than this handful, far fewer than the ones Alice had seen the night of the revels. And those who were left seemed to have dwindled somehow, their light less strong, their music sadder. But still they feasted and sang and called for the serving-men to fill up their glasses. Don't they mourn at all? Alice wondered.

Oriana sat at the table's head. Alice looked for her son and for Arthur, and finally saw the King of Faerie at the other end of the table. They had crowned him with a circlet of crystal like the one Oriana wore. He was listening to two men near him and drinking from a goblet made of silver. He looked grave, concerned, but when he glanced up and saw her she thought he smiled.

“You made it back, my brownie,” Oriana said. “Come—sit with us. Join our feast.”

“Aye,” Brownie said. He took an empty place at the long table and motioned to Alice to sit next to him.

“Why did you linger? The roads were nearly closed.”

“I know. I had to find Alice, and bring her here.”

“Alice?” The queen turned in her direction for the first time, as if only now aware of her presence. “Why?”

“I hid her son here.”

“Oh, aye, the boy.” Oriana made a dismissive gesture. “Was he so important to you? Important enough to be worth exile?”

Alice looked at Brownie sharply. What did she mean? Had he nearly missed the closing of the roads because he had stayed to look for her? Had he risked his place with Oriana for her?

“Nay, my queen.”

Oriana sat back in her chair. She's jealous, Alice thought in astonishment, jealous that Brownie might have preferred me to her. But nay—they don't feel human emotions. Who could know what Oriana thought?

A serving-man came up to them and set his tray before her. She saw apples and pomegranates and other exotic fruit she did not recognize. “Take one,” the man whispered, but as she reached for the tray Brownie grasped her hand and held her back. She remembered how strong he was, remembered too what he had said the night of the revels, that she was not to touch either food or drink. The queen watched them with what looked like amusement.

“The boy is hardly important to me at all,” Brownie said. “It's Alice I care for. She would be unhappy without her son.”

“Would she? Well then, we must give him to her.” The queen clapped her hands and someone brought out Alice's son. “Take him and go,” she said to Alice. “You will not see us again, I assure you.”

Alice moved closer to Brownie. Was she to travel the dark roads alone? How could she possibly find her way back? Her first thought must have been correct: the queen was jealous. Oriana could not understand why Brownie and Arthur cared for her.

“Would you like to go with her, my brownie?” Oriana said. “You may, if you like. But if you leave you will not be able to come back. Already the roads are drowned deep in mystery and confusion.”

Brownie looked from Alice to his queen. Finally, slowly, he nodded.

“Nay!” Alice said. “I won't let you do it. Your place is here, with these people. I won't have you go into exile for me.”

“I have no choice, Alice,” Brownie said. “How will you find your way back alone?”

“I remember the roads you took,” Alice said, lying.

Brownie smiled sadly. “Did you think the roads are the same every time?”

“There is another way,” Oriana said. “I will give her a guide.” The queen clapped her hands again and a cat, black as the forest Alice had come through, walked sinuously through one of the doors.

“I accept,” Alice said quickly, before she could change her mind, or Brownie could convince her otherwise.

“Nay, Alice,” Brownie said. “You will not be able to see this creature in the dark.”

“It's the only way. You can't leave your place here. I'll be safe—truly I will.”

Art was watching them with his perpetually astonished look, as if he expected miracles. Did he understand why she had come? She stood and went to the boy's side. Brownie followed her. “Fare well, Alice,” he said softly.

She embraced him. At first he tried to pull away, startled, but then he stood calmly, as if waiting for her to finish. He was warm, and she could feel the hard cording of muscles under his fur. He smelled of dirt and sweat and leaves, a wild-animal smell.

She broke away. “Come, Art,” she said. The cat went before them, its tail held high, and together they left the court of Faerie.

The darkness of the forest had not lifted. After she had taken a few steps even the light of the faerie hill disappeared, and she reached out to take Art's hand. Brownie had been right: she could barely see the cat in the dark, a shadow among shadows. It was sleek and whip-thin, unlike Margery's fat contented cats, and it moved with a grace she had never encountered outside of Faerie. Perhaps it was not a true cat at all.

At the first choice of roads she nearly blundered past the cat, but the spark of gold from its eyes warned her to turn back. After that it became easier: she had only to look for the glow of its eyes to tell her which path to take. It seemed patient, turning back several times during the journey to make certain she was following. She had assumed it would share Oriana's dislike of her, but now she wondered if it was on her side after all. Or perhaps she had only imagined the queen's jealousy. She knew that she would never understand these folk, that even Margery did not understand them.

But she had not imagined Brownie's concern for her. She grinned in the dark, remembering it. She had taught him to care for something; Oriana could not take that away from her. And Arthur had changed too, had become stronger, more certain. She laughed, and Art turned to her in puzzlement. But she could not tell him what she had found so amusing. It had been only that afternoon that Hogg had called her a poor mother, and she had agreed with him. But how many mothers could claim to have called up affection in the stony breasts of the Fair Folk?

She went forward with a lighter step, not minding the strange calls and rustling sounds of the forest around them. And the cat didn't seem to heed the noises either; it paused only a moment when the howl of the wolf drifted through the trees.

After a time the forest thinned. To her surprise she saw Aldergate ahead, and from there it was only a short walk to Paul's. She went down Aldergate Street, the stars lighting her path.

A tree stood near the gate to Paul's. Its branches were thick with fruit of all sort, growing indiscriminately among the leaves—apples and oranges, pears and plums—and the stars' shone among them, fruit of a different kind. It had to have come from Faerie, she thought, a final sign to mark the place where their country ended and the everyday world began.

She studied it for a long moment. Was this the tree Margery had touched the day they had exchanged Arthur for her son? And did she only see it plain now, or was it hidden under the faeries' glamour, its true form what Margery had shown her?

Beside her Art stirred with impatience; probably he had become used to miracles. She took one last look and then led him to her house on Paternoster Row.

She was surprised when the cat followed them inside. She built up the fire and sat near the hearth. The cat jumped into her lap and she stroked its smooth fur, getting used to the idea of it. It arched back and looked at her with its rich gold eyes. “Oh, Art,” she said, “how will we manage without Brownie?”

22

King Arthur sat amid the green grass of a field in Faerie. He had gone there to be alone, but now he became aware that some of the winged creatures had followed him. They flew around him in circles and then scattered across the field, singing and laughing. He could not bring himself to tell them to leave.

So few of the creatures had returned from the battle, perhaps only half a dozen. A handful of the horned soldiers had survived, and almost none of the twig-people. Some of the Fair Folk had stayed in the world when the roads had closed, either out of choice or because they could not find the way back.

He remembered how he had felt when he had seen his mother—nay, not his mother but Alice—fight her way across the churchyard toward where he stood with Oriana. Darkness had fallen over the battleground, but when she spoke to him it seemed the darkness in his mind had lifted; he knew who he was and what he had to do. He understood then that all his wandering through the world—through many worlds—had been a prologue to this. All the battles he had fought and all the strange sights he had seen had been necessary to teach him to use his power.

He was, as he had thought, a king: to how many children was it given to realize their childhood fantasy? But with this realization had come a responsibility he had not foreseen. Oriana had not explained it to him because to her it had been obvious; she had been raised as a queen and had never understood that it had been otherwise with him. It had taken Alice, a mortal woman, to show him his task.

Now he looked out over the field and laughed harshly. He had finally taken his place as king over these people, only to find that they had dwindled almost to nothing. After he had fought their battles what was there left for him to do? He could lead the Fair Folk in their revels, perhaps, and sit at the head of the table at their feasts, but nothing more. There had been one last important decision to make, the command to close the roads, but Oriana had taken it upon herself without consulting him.

If she'd asked him, though, he would have said she'd made the right choice. It was true that the Fair Folk needed the people of the world, that they were drawn somehow by their mortality. The people died so early they seemed to shine with life, as if they concentrated hundreds of years in one brief span. But he saw that mortals carried danger with them as well, that within the past few years mortal and immortal had grown far too close. It was possible to lose oneself in serving them. Look at Brownie, pining because he had had to leave Alice. And what had he done in her house, after all, but wash her plates and sweep her hearth! And what of himself? He had felt it too, this pull toward them, as if he could be warmed by the fire of their mortality. Was this love? Was it what Alice had called love?

The winged creatures sang around him. “Change and go, change and go. Twirl your partner, change and go.”

Aye, the creatures were right. He remembered his other life, the long talks in smoky taverns, and he knew that the Fair Folk had lost their place in the world. A new day had come, one in which they would dwindle into legends, stories. He felt happy that he would not be in the world to see it.

He stood and went back to the hill. It had been given to him to preside over the twilight of his people, and he would have to do the best he could. “Change and go,” the creatures sang, circling in flight above him. “Change and go. Twirl your partner, change and go.”

The task of cleaning up the churchyard took longer than the stationers expected. Weeks after what some called the great battle and others a monstrous wind they were still at it, hammering stalls, carting away trash, sorting out the books and ballads scattered all over the yard. The stationers' fund had been almost exhausted by the repairs, and in the meetings some called for higher dues and charitable donations.

Alice worked side by side with her neighbors in the yard. In the hours left to her in the evenings she tried to take care of her household tasks. It was in those moments that she found herself missing Brownie most of all, wishing that he had come back with her through the maze of roads, and she would stop herself, angrily. His place is in the queen's court, she would think. Do you imagine he would willingly leave her to be your servant? Then she would sigh, and wipe the dust off her hands, and wish she could teach Art to boil water or wash a dish. What would become of the boy?

During those weeks she barely saw Walter at all, though once or twice she thought he had looked up at her from across the yard. She wanted to talk to him, but always something stopped her. Had he seen her speak to Oriana? What did he think of her? The stationers no longer avoided her but their behavior now was very nearly worse: they treated her with deference, asking her opinion on every question. Perhaps they still thought she was a witch, but if so they seemed to want to be on her side, whatever side that was. But she had no answers to give them; though she might know more than they did about the great battle she felt that she understood very much less.

She did not see Margery at all. There was no question in her mind that Margery was some sort of magician, and that she had used her art to raise the wind and light over the churchyard. Sometimes Alice thought that she might lose her immortal soul if she talked with the woman, but usually she knew that that was not what kept her from her visits.

The truth was that Margery had terrified her. She had thought she had known the other woman well, she'd had a hundred comfortable conversations with her, but what she had seen in the churchyard still made her shiver to think of it. How could she sit in the woman's crowded house and drink her mulled wine, all the while knowing she was capable of—of that?

A few months after the battle nearly all the booksellers reopened their stalls. Alice, like her neighbors, had lost most of her books in the destruction of the churchyard, and she was straightening up the sparse piles before her when she saw Tom Nashe turn in at the gate. The sight of him cheered her; perhaps he would say something amusing to lift her spirits.