Beneath Ceaseless Skies #50 Read online

  * * *

  Gothurst, Northamptonshire: September 17, 1605

  “His father left behind tremendous debts,” Anne Vaux said quietly, walking along the moonlit terrace of Gothurst with her hands clasped at the small of her back. “Poor Francis’ inheritance is not at all what he hoped.”

  She could not possibly have meant the words as an accusation against her hidden listener, but Magrat winced anyway. This was the cost of her absence: she’d missed the death of Francis Tresham’s father, and the funeral. If she had a duty in these church-less times, that was it; but she had missed it, because she was chasing this secret instead.

  At least she’d found Father Garnet again. The pilgrims had returned from Wales and were dispersing once more to their homes, scattered across the midlands of England. Since the Treshams were in mourning at Rushton, Garnet had come here, to the home of Sir Everard Digby, with his dear companion and protector Anne Vaux.

  Mistress Vaux was no fool. She’d concealed Garnet from searchers for ten years and, through her family, was related to half the Catholics in England. She could not see death as Magrat could, but trouble was plain enough to her sharp eyes. “I noticed Robin was not at Rushton to comfort his cousin,” she said, as they came to the end of the terrace.

  “He is... much occupied with his affairs,” Garnet murmured.

  Hah, Magrat thought, from her uncomfortable perch in a tree. Jesuits were not permitted to lie outright, but they had many ways of avoiding the truth. That one wasn’t even particularly subtle. Catesby was planning something.

  Mistress Vaux noticed it, too. “Affairs that might explain the horses I saw being gathered at the houses of my cousins and friends? Horses fit for war.” She’d come outside without gloves, but Magrat didn’t think the twisting of her pale hands was born from cold. “Father... I feared these wild heads had some scheme in mind, and now you confirm it. I beg you, for Heaven’s sake: you must speak to Robin.”

  “I have,” Garnet said, clasping her hands in his own. From another man the gesture might have been intimate, but Magrat understood; Anne was his sister in Christ. Deep as the bond between them ran, it held nothing impure. “You needn’t worry, my dear. Robin merely seeks a military commission in Flanders. He’s made friends with a soldier named Guy Fawkes—or Guido, as he calls himself, as he’s been fighting for Spain. With this peace between England and Spain, ‘tis legal enough; Robin’s even asked me to write a recommendation for him, to the Archduke.”

  Magrat missed Anne’s response, distracted as she was by the sudden whirl of her thoughts. Flanders? That would never have put Garnet into such desperate prayer. But perhaps she was wrong; it might not have been Catesby’s confession that Tesimond heard. She’d just assumed it, because of what the man was like.

  Even if his intent was for Flanders, it did nothing to help Garnet. And Magrat doubted the story anyway.

  As did Mistress Vaux, she saw. “And what of the horses?”

  Garnet shook his head. “Perhaps others are planning to go with Robin. They might do better abroad, exercising the heat out of their blood—though I would hate to lose any in war.”

  He wanted to believe it. They’d held a secret Mass a few hours after midnight, and now, a little while before dawn, the peace of it remained with him. At moments like this, with the practice of his faith fresh and his beloved sister at his side, Henry Garnet was a happy man, and Magrat didn’t want anything to darken that.

  But a shadow moved across the face of the moon, eclipsing its light, and Anne Vaux shivered when she looked up at it. When her hands slipped free of his and she went two steps away, still looking upward, Garnet said, “Shall we go inside and pray for them?”

  For a long moment, Anne did not answer. Then she said, distantly, “No. I had rather hear you sing, Father. I fear we’ll have little time for it, soon.”

  Magrat’s own skin tingled at her words. Anne might just mean the end of their pilgrimage, the return to the demands of everyday life, which did not often leave time for Garnet to exercise his fine voice and skill with the lute. But it took on a more ominous cast, because Magrat saw all too clearly the death that still haunted the priest’s steps.

  It lay some months away yet. But still there. Waiting. To silence forever that delightful voice, the music in those dextrous hands, and chill all the warmth of his heart.

  Garnet smiled at his protector. “We will always make time for song. And I will write to Lambeth. If any wild head does plan something foolish, I shall persuade Robin to tell me of it.”

  Magrat almost missed it, in the preposterousness of thinking that man would be persuaded to anything. Garnet had, quite casually, given her the answer she’d been seeking all this time: where Robin Catesby could be found.

  If either the priest or the gentlewoman remarked on the sudden shaking of a nearby tree, Magrat did not hear it, for she was already gone.

  * * *

  Lambeth: October 2, 1605

  At first she thought it was Thomas Percy all over again. Magrat found the house Catesby was renting, but he wasn’t there. She recognised the gentleman who was, though: Robert Keyes, another Catholic, and another man beneath the shadow of death.

  How far did it reach?

  Any doubts she had were erased when Keyes received a visitor from across the river. Percy’s man Johnson came by one afternoon, and Magrat, listening from the roof above, heard Keyes call him Guido. This, then, was the soldier Garnet had mentioned, Guido Fawkes. Whatever he was doing in Westminster, hiding under a false name, it had nothing to do with military commissions in Flanders.

  So she stayed, trusting that her quarry would come to her eventually. It wasn’t pleasant waiting; she’d spent enough bread paying Gommuck and his friend Scalliock, and protecting herself on the trip to Northamptonshire and back, that she couldn’t afford to eat any now. As it stood, she could either pay someone to read dreams, or hoard the remainder to use once she had her answers; she could not do both. Fortunately Lambeth, across the Thames from Westminster, was thinly settled enough that she could mostly avoid iron—and it would be a sorry day indeed when a church bell knocked a grim unconscious.

  She waited, and her patience was repaid. Robert Catesby rode in shortly after noon on the second of October, just as the light changed.

  Gommuck and Scalliock had babbled about this, when she gave them their payment; something about asking the Queen and her consort for permission to try a charm on their tunnel during an upcoming eclipse of the sun. But she’d clean forgotten, even after that night at Gothurst. Magrat was watching the street from behind the house’s chimney, leaning out every time a rider approached; and so intent was she upon her target that it took her a moment to realise the sun’s light was growing dim.

  It seemed to split Catesby in two, the man and his shadow—and not the shadow he cast upon the ground. A church grim could gaze upon the souls of the dead and know whether they were destined for Heaven or Hell; now, in these peculiar moments of eclipse, it was as if that sight applied also to the living. She saw the bright Catesby of glory, tall and strong, the man whose cousins and friends looked to him for hope; while Father Garnet might be content to wait for Providence to rescue the Catholics of England, this man would forge Providence with his own hands and the white-hot fire of his faith. But she also saw the Catesby of shadow, whose desperate devotion to that cause respected no boundaries, not even those of Christian decency. That man would endanger not just himself but everyone around him, as he flung himself from the precipice of chance.

  She was right. He stood at the heart of it. This was the mortality Magrat had sensed around the others; if they died, it would be because of Robert Catesby, and whatever madness he planned.

  The light brightened once more. If Catesby had even noticed the eclipse, he gave no sign. He dismounted, then led his horse around to the back, calling out quietly for Keyes. Magrat, shaking off her paralysis, scrambled forward until she hung perilously over the roof’s edge; but the two men inside spo
ke too quietly to overhear.

  And she couldn’t approach. Not without bread. Forget Jesuits; the passionate faith blazing in Catesby now was worse than any priest. He could burn away a charm of concealment without so much as a word, just by the thoughts that possessed his mind. There would be no reading his dreams, not for the heart of Mab herself.

  Magrat pulled back, her stomach churning even from that brief encounter, and withdrew to a stack of firewood a safe distance away. Keyes was too close to Catesby, with passionate faith of his own. What she needed was someone less devout, someone trustworthy enough to share Catesby’s secrets, but unreliable enough to betray what he knew.

  She thought of the interwoven trees of Catholic families in the midlands, and a fierce smile curved her lipless mouth.

  She needed Francis Tresham.

  * * *

  Clerkenwell, London: October 24, 1605

  She finally ran him to ground in Clerkenwell, after chasing him halfway to Northamptonshire and back. Tresham had been in the city, but gone home to fetch his mother and unmarried sisters, bringing them down to London.

  It made little sense. His family was all in mourning still for his father. Why bring them to the city, where death’s grip slowly tightened around all the men of his circle?

  Of course he could not sense that death; but he knew his cousin was up to some mischief. Magrat was sure of it the moment she crawled through his window and heard him tossing in his sleep.

  She took care to move silently. Tresham was not alone, when she pulled back the bedcurtains; his wife was a dark, unmoving lump at his side. But her husband’s thrashing did not wake her, nor the moans and whimpers that issued from his throat, and so Magrat decided to proceed. She might not get another chance.

  Closing her eyes, Magrat summoned the image in her mind.

  She’d decided, after much internal debate, to leave Tresham’s dreams untouched; it did her no good to spend all her remaining bread on knowing his mind, only to have no way to act on the knowledge after. And what if Catesby had not confided in him? Deception was cheaper, and worth trying first.

  When the illusion of her glamour was in place, Magrat hissed, “Francis.”

  Tresham jerked as if at a gunshot. But memory served her well: he was a poor sleeper, easily caught on the boundary between dreaming and waking. That was where he hung when he opened his eyes and saw the figure of his cousin, standing at the foot of his bed.

  “Robin,” Tresham mumbled, somnolence slurring the word. “What—”

  “You were screaming, Francis,” Magrat said. “Why?” Her mimicry of Catesby’s posture and manner of speaking was imperfect, but the more nightmarish this encounter, the better. Poor Tresham—there was no uncertainty in the darkness that marked him. This man would die, and soon. No matter who won: the Catesby of glory, or the Catesby of shadow.

  Tresham’s eyes were open, staring; he’d drawn his knees up, like a child, until he hunched against the pillow. Next to him, his wife breathed quietly on. “‘Tis damnable, Robin—we’ll be damned for it—”

  “Damned for what? What are we going to do?”

  Too direct. His throat worked convulsively. “Wait, Robin, please. At least until we know what they’ll do. To strike on the first day—perhaps ‘twill not be so bad as you fear—”

  Who? What first day? Magrat gritted her teeth, searching for a better tactic. “We do know, Francis. I’ve told you before: this is the only way.”

  “At least let me warn Will. And Ned.” Tresham clutched at the blanket, as if trying to rein in a runaway horse.

  Will—that was likely William Parker, Lord Monteagle, husband to Francis’ sister. Which made Ned Edward, Lord Stourton. Another brother-in-law. “What warning would you give them?”

  “To stay away!” It had the sound of a shout, strangled down to a bare whisper. “They mustn’t be there when the King comes.”

  The King. Two lords—the first day—

  Tresham was talking about Parliament, which James would reconvene in less than a fortnight. On the fifth of November.

  Thoughts flashed through her head, of rebellion, prisoners, hostages. Magrat had to try the words three times before they would come out. “And what of the King?”

  His shoulders drew inward: a small boy, cringing under the harsh gaze of the cousin he’d adored since childhood. “I’ll do as you bid me, Robin. No matter how far it goes.”

  Tresham’s wife was stirring; Magrat didn’t dare stay. She moved swiftly to Francis’ side, looming over him. “Then I bid you be silent. Or you will suffer for it.” And she let her glamour slip, revealing the horror of her goblin face beneath.

  He screamed and flinched back. In that instant, Magrat vanished into the shadows; then, while Tresham’s wife thrashed into wakefulness, she slipped through the window and closed the shutters behind her. Let him think it just a nightmare, brought on by his fear.

  Fear born of a very real cause.

  “I’ll do as you bid me, Robin. No matter how far it goes.”

  She could guess at how far. Not for nothing would Catesby have gathered such men around him: staunch Catholics, good swordsmen, and soldiers like Guido Fawkes. And he would lead them to salvation, or into Hell itself.

  This was the secret Father Garnet knew, and could divulge to no one. Robert Catesby would strike at the King during the opening of Parliament. How he expected that to do any good, Magrat couldn’t guess; whether they threatened James, or took him prisoner, or—her stomach curdled—killed him, it could only poison everyone’s hearts against the Catholics. But she’d seen that bright aura during the eclipse; somehow, there was the chance of glory.

  And also the chance of disaster. The black hand of death stood ready to take them all. If Magrat wanted any Catholics to emerge from this unscathed, let alone one Jesuit priest, she had to take steps toward that end now.

  * * *

  Hoxton, London: October 26, 1605

  My Lord out of the love I beare to some of youere frends I have a caer of youer preservacion therfor I would advyse yowe as yowe tender youer lyf to devys some exscuse to shift of youer attendance at this parleament for god and man hathe concurred to punishe the wickednes of this tyme and thinke not slightlye of this advertisement but retyere youre self into youre contri wheare yowe maye expect the event in safti....

  A few rambling lines, written in Magrat’s best handwriting. Too little, and yet too much; anyone who could be proven to have known of this plot in advance would be in a great deal of danger. But it was the best she could think to do. Garnet would need a protector, someone who could hide him or even spirit him out of England; Mistress Vaux would not be enough. And so Magrat lurked in the shadows, trying to muster the nerve to approach Lord Monteagle’s house.

  He, at least, was likely to survive whatever came next—so long as he stayed clear of it.

  Hesitation turned out to be useful policy. A man was approaching along the street, a servant she recognised from her previous visit to Monteagle’s house. Before fear could trap her, Magrat hurried out into the street.

  The servant stopped, warily, one hand hovering as if to draw a knife. Magrat had disguised herself in a tall man’s seeming and a cloak; too late, it occurred to her that she looked like a cutpurse.

  She spread her hands wide as she approached, displaying the letter she held. “A message for your master,” she said in a low voice once she drew near. They were alone on the street, at least for the moment, and in principle there was nothing wrong with delivering a letter; but fear had half stolen her voice.

  She offered the folded paper. The servant eyed it, still wary. “From whom?”

  “A friend,” Magrat said. Still he hesitated, until she said, “Take it, man. ‘Tis only a letter, and meant to do him good.”

  He snatched it with a quick hand, keeping as much distance as he could. Magrat said nothing, and neither did the servant; he merely jerked his head in a quick nod and continued on his way. And she let out a long, ragged breath, hop
ing her meddling would pass unnoticed.

  When five figures melted into view around her, she knew it had not.

  Magrat whirled, seeking an exit that wasn’t there; any of the five would grab her before she got far. The goblins were unfamiliar, a barguest and a thrumpin, but she recognised the other pair: Gommuck and Scalliock. And the fifth, to her surprise, was a mortal man.

  He appeared young, but some of that was a lie; just as she could feel the shadow of death’s hand, so too could she feel its absence. A touch of faerie kept age from this man. He might be years older than the thirty or so he appeared to claim. His doublet was as dark as his carefully-trimmed beard; the dull colour helped the charm that had hidden him and the others. But it was cut of good cloth, with decorative stitching unnecessary to its purpose, and the sword at his hip marked him a gentleman.

  In quiet, measured tones, the man said, “What was in that letter?”

  “I don’t have to tell you that,” Magrat said, even though she suspected she did.

  The goblins were drawing closer behind her. The man, not blinking, said, “I am Sir Michael Deven, and you have spent enough time in the Onyx Hall to know what that means. I ask you again: what is the content of your letter to Monteagle?”

  Thrusting her chin belligerently forward, Magrat told the Queen’s consort, “I warned him away from Parliament next week.”

  “Why?”

  He asked as if he didn’t know the answer, but Magrat had heard far too much about the Queen’s spies to believe it. In which case, why not tell the truth? They’d have it from her, one way or another.

  “Because Francis Tresham wanted it,” she said. “To keep him safe. I have letters for the others, too—Stourton, Northumberland, all the rest of the Catholic peers, or the ones sympathetic to them. It’ll be better if they aren’t there.”

  With every nerve drawn tight as a bowstring, Magrat was alert to the smallest movements: the shift in the barguest’s weight, the indrawn breath of the knockers, and the curling of Deven’s left hand into a fist. His right hand remained loose, ready for the hilt of his sword. “So you knew of this,” he said flatly. “You knew, and chose to warn the Catholic peers—but not to warn me.”