Aspell shook his head. Six years. The least of them had gone for decades longer. She would have expected more time, to find and educate a suitable successor.
Was Galen really the best she could do?
“I have said too much,” Aspell murmured, shaking his head again. “Such matters are the Queen’s affair, and none of mine. I thank you, Dame Irrith, for speaking honestly with me. Uncomfortable as it may be to consider such matters, I feel it’s vital to face them, and to consider possible solutions.”
Like replacing the Queen. The wounded mistress of a wounded realm. Irrith shuddered inwardly. She didn’t want to see Lune deposed, but with the Hall fraying…
Aspell reached into one pocket and pulled out a small mother-of-pearl box that he laid atop her cabinet. “For your aid, Dame Irrith. Good day.”
She ignored the box for hours after he left, before curiosity finally overcame her reluctance and spite. Inside lay two items: a locket containing a miniature of some fellow’s beloved and a snippet of her hair, and a piece of mortal bread.
Irrith shut the box, shoved it into her cabinet, and wondered if she’d done the right thing.
Islington seemed much closer than it had been. The Aldersgate entrance was still just as far from the Goodemeades’ home as ever, but the land in between had changed; the streets now stretched well beyond Smithfield and the Charterhouse, before suddenly giving way to the market gardens and green grass Irrith expected. After that, Islington was only a brief walk. It didn’t seem right—as if someday she would leave the Onyx Hall and walk past houses and shops, churches and manicured little parks, and find herself at the Angel Inn without ever having left the city at all.
Her mood didn’t help with such discontented thoughts. Ordinarily a visit to the Goodemeades was a happy occasion, for they were always eager to feed guests. Today, however, she had a purpose in mind, and it was not a happy one.
Only the Queen herself knew why she’d chosen Galen St. Clair as her Prince. But if there were two souls in London who could guess at Lune’s reasons, their names were Rosamund and Gertrude.
The brownies had guests when she arrived, two apple maidens and an oak man from the fields around London. They welcomed Irrith, though, settling her down with a plate of food and a mug of their excellent mead, and perhaps it was a good thing; the hospitality loosened her tight muscles and made her questions easier to face. By the time the tree spirits were bid farewell, Irrith felt prepared for whatever the Goodemeades might say to her.
“Now, my dear,” Rosamund said, as Gertrude whisked away the dishes. “You came in here with a face as long as a week of mourning, and though it’s brightened up since then, I’m guessing you didn’t come just for cakes and mead. What troubles you?”
Irrith licked crumbs from her fingers. “Something I have no right to ask, but I will anyway. It’s about the Prince.”
“And the way he’s in love with Lune?” Gertrude asked, coming back in. Her plump hands tugged her apron straight. “Poor lad. He’d make a fine ballad, but it must be dreary living.”
“Did Lune know how he felt before she chose him?” The brownies nodded in unison. “Is that why she chose him?”
Gertrude went still. Rosamund busied herself with brushing the last few crumbs from the tabletop. Glancing from one to the other, Irrith said, “I promise, I’m not malicious. I just—I don’t understand. He isn’t political, and he doesn’t have connections in the mortal world, not like some of the men before him. I know the previous one died awfully fast; is it just that Lune expected to have more time to educate Galen?”
Rosamund pursed her lips, then tossed the crumbs into the fire. “Well, for questions one has no right to ask—but that’s hardly ever stopped us, now, has it? Irrith, my dear, a little whisper has reached our ears that you’re sharing Lord Galen’s bed.”
If she’d stopped to consider it, she never would have believed they could keep it secret, not in the Onyx Hall. But she hadn’t, and so the mention surprised her. “I am. I didn’t think the Queen would mind.”
“She doesn’t. He’s hardly the first Prince to enjoy a little dalliance among her subjects. It’s more a matter of how it affects you. Do you love him?”
Irrith laughed, incredulous. “Love? Can you really imagine me shackling my heart to some mortal who will be dead in a few years? Not hardly. He interests me, certainly.” That mild description fell far short of the truth. Fascinated would be closer. Entranced.
The brownies exchanged one of their usual inscrutable glances. After untold ages of practice, they were very good at them. Rosamund said, “But you’re on his side.”
With Valentin Aspell’s oily concern fresh in her memory, Irrith didn’t have to guess what she might mean. “Well, he seems determined to hurt himself with this adoration of the Queen—but no, I don’t want to add to it.”
“Good,” Gertrude said, with unexpected firmness. “Because the truth of the matter is something Galen must never learn.”
Irrith’s eyes widened. Rosamund laid a reassuring hand over hers and said, “Now, Gertie, it isn’t so bad as all that. Just that things have changed, Irrith, and they’ve made new problems for Lune, that none of us ever foresaw.”
“Isn’t that always the case?” Irrith asked sourly, thinking of the comet.
The sisters sighed in rueful agreement. “The problem in this case,” Rosamund said, “is that there have usually been three requirements for the Prince, and two of them don’t fit together very well anymore.”
Three requirements? “He has to be someone Lune likes.”
“And he has to be a gentleman,” Gertrude said.
“And,” Rosamund finished, “he has to be born within the walls of the City.”
Gertrude held up a cautionary hand. “Might be within the sound of the bells. But no one’s quite dared test that yet.”
Irrith thought of the City as it had become—not London as a whole, but the City of London, the central part, and specifically the part within the increasingly broken wall. Galen, when he told her where he lived, said Leicester Fields was no longer as fashionable as it had been, that the better sort of people were moving farther west. No one wanted to be within the narrow, twisty, dirty lanes of the City, which had scarce been changed even by the Great Fire. There was a broad new street cutting up from the river to the Guildhall, called Queen Street south of Cheapside and King Street north, but that was the biggest difference. Most of the City was still as it had been these hundreds of years, and that was not good enough for fashion.
She murmured, “So he was the only gentleman who fit?”
“There have never been all that many gentlemen in the Onyx Hall,” Gertrude reminded her. “Well, there aren’t that many gentlemen at all, are there? Not compared to ordinary folk. Peers are even rarer. So most of the ones who get brought below are common. Lord Hamilton was the grandson of a viscount; for all that he wasn’t what anyone would call wealthy, and that was good enough for them as cared. But then he died, and Lune had to choose someone new.”
“Galen was a bit of luck,” Rosamund added. “His mother went into labour without much warning, and they couldn’t move her; so he was born in the house where she’d gone to have dinner.”
Irrith just kept blinking, trying to absorb it all. No, they hadn’t foreseen that—who would expect that London would grow so much, and all the wealthy people would move out to its western edge? “She’s going to have to stop choosing gentlemen. The place of birth has to do with the Hall’s enchantments, doesn’t it, and we can hardly ask her to work with someone she doesn’t like—but the rank, that’s just because no one wants their Queen to be paired with a commoner.”