Deeds of Men (6 page)

“Well, young master! Not entirely dead after all, I see.”

A chilling rasp, not the sibilant elegance of Valentin Aspell. A voice Deven feared, and Antony did not—because he knew almost nothing of the fae, and did not know the creature he had accosted was not their target, but a fetch.

As Deven fought with himself, whether to stay hidden or to leap out in Antony’s defence, the fetch went on. “Did you learn—” But then more footsteps echoed down the passage, and the words cut off. A whisper, almost too quiet to hear: “
This way.
”

Clenching his hands, swallowing down the curses he wanted to spit, Deven stayed where he was. The newcomer approached his hiding spot. The instant he was past, Deven slipped out, and saw Valentin Aspell crossing the Vault of Birds, a minion in tow. Antony was nowhere in sight.

They could not have gone down the passage, not with Aspell there. With a silent prayer, Deven chose a direction at random, dodging into the forest of columns that filled the soaring chamber. If Antony Ware died of this—

He rounded a thick pillar and found himself face-to-face with the fetch.

“Why, my lord Prince,” Nithen said, and gave him an ironic bow. “I didn’t think
you
would be behind this game. Did you think a glamour would fool me long—me, when I call death a personal friend?”

Behind him stood a sheepish Antony. No fear in his eyes; he did not understand Nithen’s words. “The ruse was not intended for you,” Deven told the fetch.

“Ah—for the one behind me, I’m guessing.” Nithen’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Who’s your friend, then? I’d like to see his face.”

“You shall not.” Now Henry’s face protected Antony. Surely it would not be an omen of death, if the fetch took on the appearance of a young man already gone. Deven said, “Those words you spoke, before you fled. You know something of Henry Ware’s death.”

Nithen bowed again, fawning. “Not
I
, my lord. My hand to my heart—I bore no such omen to him.”

Now Antony was beginning to understand. He backed a step away. “I am not accusing you of murder,” Deven said, leaving open the possibility that he might accuse Nithen of other crimes. “But what of the days before Henry’s death? ’Did you learn’—what might he have learned?”

The fetch squirmed, not meeting his eyes. “Oh, a great many things, my lord—he was a curious young man, seeking knowledge here, in Westminster—”

“—and in Coldharbour? If you prefer, we can go before her Grace, and
she
will compel you to tell me what you know.” Deven folded his arms. “Or we can do it without troubling her.”

No courtier, mortal or fae, wanted that sort of attention from his sovereign. Nithen sighed. “He bade me follow a man one night. Went to a house in Coldharbour, the fellow did, and that’s all I know—save that young Ware wanted to know what he was about. Which I couldn’t tell him.”

Antony gave a minute shake of his head; it meant nothing to him, either. “Who was the man?” Deven asked.

The fetch shrugged. “Some mortal. Well-dressed, neither old nor young. I don’t attend much to who they are, unless death walks at their heels.”

A mortal. Nithen would know had it been any of the favourites at court, and Deven did not think he was lying. Some stranger—but not to Henry.

“Which house?” Antony asked.

Nithen snorted. “They don’t have signs down among the tenements, Master Wearing-Another’s-Face. Go west three alleys from where they found his corpse, face the end, last house on your left. There was a dead dog on the front step when I was there, but I expect someone’s eaten that by now.”

Coldharbour. They had missed confronting Aspell…but this would gain them more than any number of ghostly ambushes, for it could tell them what Henry had been doing above.

A single glance at Antony told Deven which course the young man favoured.

“Very well,” he said to Nithen. “If you tell anyone of this—”

Nithen gave him an ingratiating bow. “Say no more, milord. I shall be silent as the grave.” Grinning at his own jest, the fetch departed.

Antony twitched like a man desperate to be rid of an uncomfortable garment. “Get this enchantment off me, and show me the way back above.”

Whitehall Palace, Westminster: 1 March, 1624

“God’s blood!” Henry exploded, hurling his unlit pipe to the floor. “How can the King
think
of it? How can he listen to more promises from the Spanish? After that farce in Madrid last year, all the reports from the Prince and the duke about the duplicity of the Spanish—”

Deven answered him in a single word. “Peace.”

“The whole point of the Spanish match was to gain us help for
war
in the Palatinate!”

Perhaps more than a single word was needed, after all. “Peace with
Spain
. Whom James views in a friendly light, as he has always been wont to do.”

Henry opened his mouth to reply, but stopped himself. The young man was learning to chart the winds of these storms; what he still struggled with was remembering to do so
before
he gave his mouth free rein. Deven waited, patiently, not prompting him with any clues. How much had Henry learned?

“The Commons,” the young man said at last. “James had to call a Parliament if he were to have any coin at all for war, in the Palatinate or otherwise—but the Commons would rather see us fight Catholic Spain. A war of religion, against an old enemy.”

“Whereas James,” Deven finished for him, “wants only to restore the Elector Palatine to his dominion in the Germanies—mostly for the sake of his daughter. Were she not wed to the Elector, this would be a much smaller matter.”

“But Buckingham is on the side of the Commons, is he not? Against Spain.”

“Not quite.” Deven kept sparse quarters here in Whitehall Palace, liking his ability to claim a room, but not often bothering to occupy it. The furnishings, however, did include a chess board. He fought the urge to place a piece in front of Henry and ask him to list the players in the question of Charles’ marriage, and the Palatine war. “Buckingham sees, not states, but something else. The Habsburgs.”

Henry paled. “Spain—
and
Austria.”

“And anywhere else they have extended their influence. Which is much too far, and that is why Buckingham hopes to check them.”

“Hence courting France,” his friend said, comprehension dawning. “The French can be Catholic all they like, so long as their sovereign is not a Habsburg. Though isn’t his Queen one of theirs?”

Deven scratched behind his ear, grimacing. “Yes, Anne of Austria. Sister to King Philip of Spain. Round and round the kinship goes, and that is why Buckingham fears the House of Habsburg. Henrietta Maria, by virtue of being Louis’ sister, is clean of that taint—and if this French match Buckingham desires goes through, it will bind France into alliance with England. First for the Palatinate, and then, perhaps, for more.”

Henry’s breath blew out in a long, impressed sigh. Then he said, “No wonder James quails.”

“Precisely.” The Scottish King had always been a peacemaker, detesting war. It must be a bitter pill in his old age to see Europe crumbling into chaos, the Protestant corners of the Holy Roman Empire against those that remained Catholic.

Deven let Henry consider it in peace, rising to stoke the fire against the day’s damp chill. The young man knew the details of the Armada’s defeat; he might well wonder what aid the fae could lend, if it came to war against half of Europe. That was the question Deven and Lune had debated for many long hours, with no answer offering even a semblance of satisfaction.

But when Henry spoke again, he chose quite a different tack. “This marriage with France, Buckingham’s attempts to ally with the Dutch—all of it will come to nothing if James crawls back to Spain’s empty promises.”

“Buckingham will convince him,” Deven said. “That worrisome influence does have its uses.”

“Enough to bring James to war with Spain? And Austria, too? I have not known him as long as you, but Robin says he will never turn on them, not after so many years of seeking alliance.”

Penshaw might well be right. Spain was too canny to give James serious offence, of the sort that would drive him to war. And the King was ailing, his good days fewer and further apart. What old man would accept the death of the policy to which he had dedicated his life, so close to that life’s end?

Charles was another matter. Here in Whitehall, Deven dared not speak openly of the succession, but he said, “The Prince has begun to feel his strength since returning from Spain, and he is more of Buckingham’s mind.”

“Good,” Henry said feelingly, and Deven thought,
he
is
young.
Henry, like Penshaw, like many of the Gentlemen Pensioners, wanted a war. Against Spain, for preference, but they would take what they could get, so long as there was glory to be had. James’ peace had lasted too long for their taste.

But it seemed Henry was thinking closer to home. “So what can we do?”

“We?” Deven asked, unsure who he was including in the word.

“You more than me, I suppose. To push matters in the direction they need to go. Isn’t that your responsibility? To do things on behalf of…a certain lady?”

Lune. Henry had not needed reminders to be discreet outside the Onyx Hall. “To consult with her,” Deven corrected him. Then he grinned. “Mind you, when I was a younger man, I indulged in my share of action—running across rooftops, lying to astrologers, and generally risking my neck. But I am old and sedate now, if not precisely wiser.”

Scandalised, his friend said, “You are not old.”

The grin became a laugh. “Flattery never loses its appeal. But I am happy to leave such vigorous pursuits to younger men, I assure you. Regardless, the time has not come for me to do anything. England cannot go to war without allies, and the Dutch are not enough. If you want to take action, then pray with me that nothing provokes us against Spain before we have France on our side.”

Henry looked faintly disappointed, but he nodded. Deven breathed an inward sigh of relief.
You have years before you, my young friend. Do not race to meet a war that will come to us soon enough.

Coldharbour, London: 9 June, 1625

The tenements that crouched where once the great house of Coldharbour had stood were, despite Nithen’s words, not quite so desperate a place that their inhabitants resorted to the eating of dogs. But neither were they civilised enough that anyone had bothered to move the carcass; it still rotted on the doorstep of the building the fetch had named, adding its reek to the general foulness of the air.

It was obvious, long before they reached the alley in question, that Antony Ware had never been in any part of London half so poor. The boy looked appalled—and it was a good thing, Deven reflected, that he was not the sort of young gallant who gave the City and Court a reputation for excess in apparel, or he would make of himself even more of a target than his manner already did.

The awareness of that danger had delayed their investigation a day while Deven secured a guide and guard. He and Ware were both armed, but could use someone to watch their backs, and Mungle knew this area well. Without the bogle, Deven might spend half the day finding his way back to the right alley.

“That the house?” their goblin guide asked, jerking one thumb at the door.

Deven peered around the corner and nodded. “I believe so.”
If Nithen did not lead us astray.

“Now what?” Antony murmured, shifting with unease. They could hear voices through the thin walls of the buildings, but stood alone in the mud of the lane, the jettied upper storeys almost blocking out the sky overhead. “I hardly imagine we can knock on the door and ask who has visited of late.”

Mungle gave an ostentatious sigh, puffing out his chest. Even disguised, he made an ugly man; he considered it a great insult to his kind to put on a more handsome face. And in a parish like this, where few could afford the services of a physician, his hard-used face stood out less than either of the two gentlemen. “You’d break your well-born legs, like as not, trying to sneak in by the roofs. I’ll go—but I want bread. A whole loaf.”