“Father’s victories were the worst part about him. If he were to have died at Agincourt, or somewhere along his French campaigns. .” Henry was lost in wishes and thoughts he dared not speak.
“And he saddled me with a nation falling apart, piece by piece, like a castle of sand washed into the sea. I was never a warrior. I was not the man he was. I have walked the battlefields of England and seen Lancastrian fathers weeping for Yorkist sons. A man was brought to me for the crime of looting the battlefield. He was distraught, inconsolable. While rummaging through one of the stiffening bodies, he prised a golden bauble from cold hands that he himself had once owned and given to his son on his marriage. It wasn’t until he held it in his own hands that he recognised the form of the body beneath him. What is a rational man’s response to this madness? And what is a king’s? It is the curse of the king that the curse of the nation be visited on his body. My own subjects war against me, just as my mind wars against my body. I loved my father, I truly did, but I have often wondered, if he had lived to see me grown, would he have even known me for his own? What do you think?”
“The old king was religious, in his own, direct way. He owned a warrior’s piety. He would have recognised that in you.”
“And you? What do you think?” He turned his gaze up, this time a young child looking for approval. Ealdstan felt sick.
Weak, he wanted to say. Weak in mind and body. He could almost spit bile at the limp, pathetic lump of flesh that had once owned the throne and yet now rotted in prison.
“I know what you think,” Henry said, bowing his head. “You think I was just unlucky. Some days I think God torments me for a purpose, in order to teach me and the kingdom; other times I think He just does it to prove how powerless we all are before His magnificence.”
“There’s still a chance for you. The people still love you-you can unite them. But you must follow my lead!”
“No,” Henry said, shaking his head. “No, I know where you would lead me. I know the cost you would extract from something the Lord knows is only too poor.”
“Please, I ask you for your sake.”
“Never. I will never give you what you ask of me-it goes against every nature of my spirit. It was never I who weakened these isles-it was you. Only ever you.”
Ealdstan frowned. And that frown became hard and set. How dare he?
“So be it,” Ealdstan said. “You brought this on yourself.” He raised his staff high, almost to the ceiling, and then brought it down on King Henry VI’s head.
The king groaned and rolled onto the floor. Ealdstan restrained himself from issuing more blows and knelt beside the figure, pressing a hand to the prone man’s chest and whispering an incantation of stopping.
Henry grimaced in pain. Or was he smiling? Was that a gasp or a laugh? His lips were moving. Ealdstan halted his incantation. “What is it?”
“I see. . I see. .” the king whispered.
“What do you see, old man?”
Henry swallowed, throat dry, almost choking. “I see. .”
“What? What?”
His eyes swivelled sightlessly. “Golden skies.” And then he died.
Ealdstan rose and looked out the window. It was dark.
“God save me from pious kings,” he said.
Save me, in fact, from all kings, he thought.
He knocked on the door and the guard let him out.
III
Freya’s head dropped and it almost knocked against the table before she jerked it back up again. “How long this time?” She unclenched her hand and let her pen drop. Her fingers ached. She began massaging her palm.
Vivienne, standing at a bookcase, wrangled with the books in her arms and checked her watch. “Five hours.”
“Five? This is taking forever, and it’s so exhausting. Please, no more.”
“But we’re getting valuable material.”
“Vivienne-I didn’t get to tell you about the mirrors. There’s a room in this tower, and it-”
“Contains mirrors that allow you to see past, future, and possible versions of yourself. Yes, I am aware.”
Freya was stunned. “How?”
“I told you, I’ve explored the Langtorr before,” Vivienne said, flipping open a book.
“How many times?”
“Just once. I didn’t come too far-just down to this room, in fact. I took only the briefest of looks around and heard a noise, which I now know must have been Frithfroth. I got spooked and ran back up the tower. Ecgbryt was there-he was the only one who could keep the doorway open past dusk-”
“What else is here that you haven’t told me about?”
“Let’s keep cracking on, shall we? Come on, these are from the seventeenth century.”
Freya rubbed her eyes. Using the pansensorum was mentally exhausting, but not physically. “Okay, in a second. But, Vivienne-if what you’re not telling me about is important. . you’d have let me know, right?”
“Correct. I believe this is the best way we can help our cause right now. Far more than further exploration of the tower.”
“Okay,” Freya sighed. “Start it up again.”
IV
London, Whitehall Palace
1 December 1653 AD
Ealdstan paced the corridors of the massive palace. It truly was enormous. More than fifteen hundred rooms meant it could hold the population of a town. It was not as magnificent as his own realm, he reminded himself, but it represented an idea that had been growing in the surface world over the past few hundred years. An unconscious desire, more than an idea-a desire for separation, which was now becoming assumed and ingrained. The magnificence of the palace existed in sharp contrast to the poverty of the citizenry around it. There was none of that in Ni?ergeard, he noted with pride. The smithies lived in rooms as fine as his own-much better, in fact.
He wondered what it meant. He couldn’t imagine all these rooms were actually needed or vital to the running of the nation. They were an excess, and an excess meant things were running inefficiently. It was good, then, that he had found Cromwell. Indeed, if he hadn’t come across Cromwell, then it would have been necessary to invent someone. As a rule, Ealdstan hated instability and revolution, but the nation had been wobbling on its axis for the last couple hundred years. Kings were hard to control, even in the best of circumstances. Republics had potential, though they’d need more attention.
It was then that Cromwell found him. He walked into the courtyard where Ealdstan sat, his ruddy face beaming, his oddly unmilitary build-narrow shoulders and protruding gut-gangling into view.
“Ealdstan, you old relic, how are you this morrow?” He clasped the wizard on his shoulder as he stood, giving it a vicelike squeeze.
“I am well, and seem to have found you in high spirits.”
“I tell you, man,” Cromwell said, “these are-” He was interrupted as a door into the courtyard burst open and a flock of harassed-looking men-armed soldiers as well as politicians and a couple clergy-entered.
“My lord-”
“Sir, if I may-”
“Your honour-”
“Permission to-”
“Out! Out you beasts, all of ye!” Cromwell shouted at them. “Quit the doorway! Shut that! Quit my presence and my sight. Give me peace for just a half of an hour or I’ll loose dogs upon ye!”
Faces blanched, a few arms saluted, and a penitent clerk closed the French door. Faces peered in at them from behind the rows of glass panes.
Cromwell shook his head. “A bevy of badgers.”
“Let us walk this way. . eh?” Ealdstan faltered. “I seem to be at a loss for a title for you.”
“For me?” Cromwell turned back to Ealdstan with a grin. They began to walk a path in the courtyard. “Why, I am just a lowly MP in the service of his country. Call me Oliver.”
“Not just that, also a general and. . more, if I am to believe what I hear of the feelings in the Parliament.”