She looked down at Humphrey Taylor and his burning, hate-filled eyes. It would be easiest to kill him—easiest, but wrong. The Onyx Court did not behave thus anymore. What she would send him to, though, might amount to the same thing in the end.
“Put him on a ship for the colonies,” she said. “Let him make a new life for himself there, where he cannot threaten us.”
GUILDHALL, LONDON: April 14, 1640
Despite the headache and sour stomach that were mementos of the previous night’s celebration, a smile kept warming Antony’s face as he approached the soot-stained front of London’s Guildhall. Soame and other friends had dined with his family last night, and together they drank to the opening of Charles’s fourth Parliament. It had taken longer than Antony expected, but the House of Lords and House of Commons once again met in their chambers in Westminster Palace.
In fact, the Commons was sitting at that very moment, and Antony regretted his absence. When he and Lune agreed he should secure one of the four seats for London, he had not realized how much time it was likely to consume. A foolish oversight on his part; it would run him ragged, he feared, juggling his responsibilities in City government with those of Parliament, and trying to maintain his trade interests as well.
Not to mention, his guilty conscience whispered, your duties down below.
But he could do little enough to address Lune’s problems, especially since Eochu Airt cordially detested him. Antony had little or nothing to do with London’s contracts to plant Ireland with English settlers—many of those agreements were formed when he was a child not yet in breeches—but as far as the sidhe was concerned, his place in the City’s government tarnished him with that guilt.
Parliament, however, was a different battlefield entirely, and one where he had great hopes of victory. Now that Charles had retreated from his declaration of personal rule, the old balance could be restored. Antony hurried through the doors, hoping he could dispose of this business quickly and get himself to Westminster. The chamber where the Commons met was too small; he would likely find no seat at this hour. But even if it meant standing, he was eager to attend.
Inside, the Great Hall teemed like an anthill with councilmen, clerks, petitioners, and more. He should have chosen a better hour, when men with grievances were less likely to be lying in wait. Antony ducked his head, letting the brim of his hat conceal his face, and slipped through the crowd, hurrying through the hall and upstairs.
Once free of the press, he discovered he was not the only person absent from the Commons that morning. Isaac Penington greeted him with a degree of cheer not warranted by their usual relationship. The alderman for Bridge Without was a much more vehement soul than Antony in matters of both politics and religion, and they had clashed on several occasions.
“Not in Westminster?” the other man said, deliberately jovial. “I hope you haven’t tired of Parliament already.”
Antony donned an equally deliberate smile. “Not at all. Merely addressing some business.”
“Good, good! We have some grand designs for these next few weeks, you know. I would not want you to miss them.”
Grand designs? That sounded ominous. And Antony suspected that we had a rather more specific meaning than the Commons as a whole. He sorted hastily through the names in his head, trying to remember who out of the hundreds of members might be in alliance with Penington. Antony’s own father had sat in Charles’s last Parliament, and though most of the leaders from that age had died or moved on, at least one was back again. The man had led the attempt to impeach the King’s old chief councillor, the Duke of Buckingham, and his political ambitions did not stop there. “Yourself and John Pym?” Antony hazarded.
Penington’s smile grew more genuine. “More than just us. Hampden, Holles—quite a few, really. We finally have an opportunity to make a stand against the King’s offenses, and we shall not waste it.”
Antony’s unease deepened. Hidden in the King’s opening speech the day before was the very real concern of an impending second war with the Scots. Charles had buried it in a morass of platitudes about the zealous and humble affection the Commons no doubt felt for their sovereign, but the simple fact was that he had called them because he needed money to put down the rebellious Covenanters, as he had failed to do the previous year. “Which offenses?”
“Why, all of them, man!” Penington laughed. “Religion first, I should think—Archbishop Laud’s popish changes to the Church, surplices, altar rails, all those Romish abominations. We will have the bishops out before we are done, I vow. Or this policy of friendship to Rome’s minions; bad enough to have a Catholic Queen, but the King tolerates priests even beyond her household. He would sell England to Spain if it would gain him some advantage. Or perhaps another approach; we may speak first of his offenses against the liberties of Parliament.”
“The King,” Antony said, choosing his words carefully, “will no doubt be more inclined to consider those matters once the venture against Scotland is provided for.”
Now the smile had a wolfish cast. “Oh, the King will have his subsidies—but not until we have had our voice.”
That was in direct contravention of Charles’s instructions. Antony caught those words before they left his mouth, though. Penington could hardly have forgotten that speech. He flouted it knowingly.
To some extent, he could see the man’s point. Once Charles had his money, there was a very real risk the King would feel free to ignore his Parliament, or even to dissolve it entirely, considering its business done. Those subsidies were the only advantage they held.
And the offenses, he had to admit, were real. Ten years without a Parliament—more like eleven, by now—were only an outward sign of the problem. The real contention was Charles’s philosophy, supported by his judges and councillors, that the sole foundation of all law was the royal will and pleasure, and by no means did that law bind that will. Unjust taxation and all the rest followed from that, for how could it be unjust if the King decreed it necessary?
Penington was watching him closely. “We shall make time for you to speak, if you like,” he said. “There must needs be some debate, though we hope to have bills prepared for voting before much longer. They will stall in the Lords, of course, but it’s a start.”
The unspoken words hung behind the spoken, with more than a little menace: You are with us, are you not?
Antony did not know. He was no lapdog to the King, but what he knew of Pym and the others Penington had named worried him. Puritan zealots, most of them, and far too eager to undermine the King in pursuit of their own ends. Ends that were not necessarily Antony’s own. Fortunately, over Penington’s shoulder he saw the clerk he needed to speak to. With false humor, he said, “If I do not finish my work here, I shall never make it to Westminster in time to do anything. If you will pardon me?”
“Of course,” Penington said, and let him by—but Antony felt the man’s gaze on his back as he went.
THE ANGEL INN, ISLINGTON: April 23, 1640
Accepting a cup of mead with a grateful smile, Lune said, “I know you two keep yourselves informed. No doubt you can guess what has brought me here today.”
Rosamund Goodemeade blinked innocent eyes at her and said, curtsying, “Why, your Majesty, we thought you just wished our company!”