Deeds of Men (9 page)

But there was the pageantry to consider. Henrietta Maria slept in Dover Castle, her first night on English soil. The King was on his way; together they would journey to Canterbury, there to consummate their marriage, and to crown Henrietta Maria as Queen.

It would be easier to reach her later, when confidence and use had slackened the guard about her, but it seemed that was a delay Penshaw could not stomach. Or perhaps it was the thought of a Catholic Queen of England that he could not endure.

Either way, Henrietta Maria would die just as her husband came to claim her.

No,
Deven vowed,
she will not.

He could have left the task to Lune’s hand-picked group of fae: two elf-knights, three goblins, and more than enough to take care of one murderous Spaniard. But no power under Heaven could stop Antony Ware from riding to Dover, and so Deven went as well, to watch over him and keep him from folly—assuming he could keep the young man from
anything
.

They rode faster than the Spaniard could, on faerie steeds that knew no weariness, and arrived in Dover in the small hours of the morning on the thirteenth. Deven, unlike Penshaw, had no need for pageantry; to rescue the French princess publicly would cause more trouble than it was worth. They would stop Quijada without delay. “Track him,” he said to Dead Rick, the black dog that ran at their heels, and threw down a scrap of cloth from Quijada’s bed in Coldharbour. The skriker sniffed it, growled softly, and ran off into the night.

Speaking for the first time since they had departed London, Antony Ware asked, “Once we find him—what then?”

“My first concern,” Deven murmured back, “is preventing this murder. After that…what would you see done?”

The moon was a bare sliver in the sky, often hidden by clouds; Antony was all but invisible in the darkness, and his voice gave little hint of what was in his mind. “We have no proof we could bring before a judge, to convict Quijada of murder.”

“A knight and a baronet’s son, against a Spaniard? We would not need much in the way of proof.”

Antony did not answer that, but sat waiting for the skriker’s return.

Dead Rick was gone for some time, though, while the moon played chase with the clouds. Deven kept himself occupied by trying to guess Quijada’s plan. Tomorrow the royal party would ride out from Dover Castle to Canterbury, along the same road that had brought the fae from London. Deven and his companions had paused outside the port town, close enough to smell the salt air, but not to catch the attention of the constables. They might be in the very spot from which Quijada intended to shoot.

No sound warned of the skriker’s approach. A blackness simply melted out of the shadows and writhed upward into the form of a man. “By the docks,” Dead Rick said, and Deven nodded. Where a Spaniard would excite less comment. “I’ll lead you.”

A mounted company of armed men descending upon a dockside inn ran too much risk of alerting Quijada; they left their horses outside town and proceeded on foot. Soon the buildings closed about them, warehouses and forges and carpenters’ shops, all the attendant facilities of a major port. These were dark in the night, but up ahead was light, for the docks did not sleep with the sun.

No more did the men who worked them. Sailors and labourers were in the streets, some working, some drinking away their pay. After the clean air of the Kentish countryside, the reek was like a physical assault. Deven hoped they could subdue Quijada quietly. It was a coin-toss whether the Dover constables would ignore the sounds of a brawl, or wade in to arrest them all.

“In there,” Dead Rick said, nodding toward a three-storey inn that leaned dangerously over the street. The sign was too battered to read in the lantern light. “Don’t know what room; I came back for you first.”

Deven set his jaw.
Sixty-two years old, and charging into a Dover hell in the middle of the night.
This was a game for younger men.

He turned to say as much to his companion—and found Antony gone.

For one blank heartbeat, his mind would not work. Then it jerked into motion once more. What had waylaid Antony did not matter; none of the possibilities were good. Whirling, Deven saw his companions had arrived at the same conclusion. “Find him,” he snapped, and Dead Rick went, not even pausing to conceal himself. Between one stride and the next, the faerie man dropped to all fours, and then the black dog ran back the way they’d come, the others at his heels.

Scarce two houses down, the skriker’s keen nose led them off the street into an alley, into the warren of Dover’s dockside. It was black as pitch in those back ways, and Deven could not see in the dark as the goblins did; he slipped in the mud, stumbled over things invisible to him, falling further behind.

But suddenly the buildings gave way to open grass. Deven, after an instant’s disorientation, realised the shadowed hulk in the middle distance was Dover Castle. Dead Rick had led them eastward, parallel to the docks and past the town’s edge. And in the scant light of the moon, he saw why.

Two figures struggled on the slope leading up to the castle, dancing to the music of steel. Gritting his teeth, Deven trusted the ground and ran, wrenching his sword free as he went, knowing the fae would beat him there and that none of them would be in time.

For he recognised Antony, even in the darkness, even at this distance—and the young man was losing.

Retreating hastily from the other’s blade, Antony’s heel caught against something and betrayed him to the ground. He parried one thrust, rolling desperately, but lost his sword to the second, and as his opponent struck for the third time—

Dead Rick’s flying leap carried him clear across Antony’s body, and his jaws closed on the other man’s throat.

Deven arrived last of them all, gasping as he had not for years. His pretence of age and infirmity had robbed him of his wind in truth. “Are you hurt?” he asked. One elf-knight stood over Antony, while the other had followed the goblins to Dead Rick.

“N-no,” Antony stammered, sitting up. Even allowing for the light, he looked deathly pale. “My ankle twinges a bit, is all.” He flexed it in his boot, but refused help in standing.

They both looked down the slope to where the skriker and his victim had rolled. Dead Rick shifted back, spat into the grass, and said, “Spaniards taste like shit.”

“Quijada?” Deven asked.

“I believe so,” Antony said. “He was on the street in town—I would have thought nothing of it, for how am I to know his face? But he saw mine, and ran.”

Because of his resemblance to Henry. Deven walked down the slope to the body. Dead Rick had taken no chances, but had torn the Spaniard’s throat out. One of the other goblins searched the corpse and found a brace of pistols, with powder and shot, a dagger, and a coil of rope. “He must have thought his chances of escape better if he struck during the night,” Deven murmured. Was his assessment of Penshaw wrong? Or had Quijada made his own plans?

Either way, the man was dead, and Henrietta Maria was safe.

Antony had followed him, and stood hesitating a small distance from the group. He was seventeen, and he had lost his brother; he might resent being robbed of his vengeance. But he squared his shoulders, drew near, and thrust his hand out toward Dead Rick. “I owe you my life,” he said, voice rough. “My thanks—though they are little enough to repay you with.”

The skriker took it readily enough. “Buy me an ale,” he suggested. “To wash the taste from my mouth.”

The young man mustered an uncertain smile. “And a loaf of bread?”

“Wouldn’t go amiss,” one of the others said, and something tight inside Deven eased at last. The hostility with which Antony had first greeted him had not, in truth, been intended for the fae, but the revelation of Henry’s secret life could still have made an enemy of this young man.

One of his secret lives, at least. There was still Penshaw to deal with.

After nearly dying on Quijada’s blade, Antony could have been forgiven for not thinking of such matters. But as the group made its way back into town, to report the dead Spaniard to the local watch, Antony fell back to speak with Deven.

“Penshaw is a gentleman himself,” he said. “A judge
would
need proof for him.”

They were close enough to the docks now for the occasional lantern to be hung out. Deven took advantage of the light to watch Antony’s reaction as he said, “Must it be a trial?”

“I would not sully my brother’s name by calling him out,” the young man said flatly, confirming Deven’s evaluation of him that day in Westminster. But then he followed Deven’s gaze to the disguised goblins ahead of them, and guessed his true meaning. Antony set his jaw, then said, “Yes. It must be a trial.”

And not a second murder in the night. Deven said, “Then we shall find a way.”

The Onyx Hall, London: 27 March, 1625

Soon enough the Gentlemen Pensioners would be called to attend upon Charles, but not yet. For tonight, they were left to their own devices, while in the streets of London men said in tones varying from horror to satisfaction,
The King is dead. Long live the King.

And occasionally, in hushed tones,
Buckingham has poisoned the King.

It was arrant nonsense: whatever his political ambitions, however close his friendship with Charles, Buckingham had loved James. And it needed no poison to kill an elderly man who had been ill for months, even years. But the Duke was the most hated man in all of England, and an easy scapegoat for the upheaval that attended the death of a monarch, even with the succession assured to be peaceful.

“Now what?” Henry asked Deven, as they walked through the passages of the Onyx Hall.

“Now Charles will be crowned,” Deven said. “And Buckingham will go to fetch Henrietta Maria as soon as may be—though this will delay it a little.” The new King had no living brothers; he needed an heir. Until he produced one, the crown would not rest secure.

Henry gestured at the black stone of the walls. “I meant for
this
court.”

Deven shrugged, perplexed. “As before. They need not change when the mortal crown does, and there is no cause for Lune to interfere.”

The young man went a few steps away, staring at a tapestry on the wall. They stood in a long gallery of such tapestries, and Deven did not know whether that particular image had caught Henry’s eye, or whether he would have stared blindly at whatever hung before him. It showed a swordsman in a moonlit glade, gazing up at the silver disc above.

“You want me to succeed you,” Henry said, not facing him. “As Prince. Don’t you.”

Deven found himself glad he had waited for Henry to broach the subject. It meant the young man was ready to address it. “Only if you wish it,” he said, resisting the urge to cross his fingers. “I would not force you to it, if your desires lie elsewhere.”

Henry’s long-fingered hands curled, then relaxed helplessly. “I—not that I do not wish it, but—” A long pause, and then his shoulders slumped and he turned. Unhappiness and fear chased across his face. “I do not think I
can
do it. I know you’ve been teaching me, and I’ve tried to learn, but I’m not ready—”

What could Deven say to that? He took his young friend by the shoulders, stopping the words. “You need not be ready, not today. I am hale enough, thanks to this place. You have time to finish learning.”

Still Henry would not meet his eyes. “But surely there must be someone better.”

“Who? Henry, you’ve seen the other men in this place. Half of them don’t have the birth and position to be of use to Lune, and the other half can’t be trusted out of sight. Which is not to damn you with faint praise: I
chose
you, knowing you needed time to grow into the responsibilities of the Prince. As indeed you are doing.”

Henry scrubbed at his eyes, dislodging one of Deven’s hands. “You do not think me a coward, for what I have said?”

“I would rather a man honest enough to admit his fears, than one who lies out of bravado.”

It made Henry straighten. “You are sure?”

Deven smiled and gripped his shoulder more tightly. “I am.”

“Then I will find a way to be worthy,” Henry said, with fervent determination. “I will prove to you that your trust is not misplaced.”

I already believe it,
Deven thought, watching the young man walk away.
But when you believe it, too—then, Henry, you will be fit to bear the title Prince of the Stone.