Whitehall Palace, London

“You’re not Brutus,” she said. “You’re not Brutus.”

There was a slightly hysterical ring to her voice, and Jane had to forcibly shut her mouth lest she babble those words over and over.

Charles sank down on his haunches before Jane, his eyes watchful. Louis, Marguerite, Catharine and Kate moved close about him, their eyes similarly on Jane; Louis had his sword drawn.

Jane found it difficult to breathe. Any moment she knew she would feel the blade of that sword through her neck.

Wielded by Brutus. Gods, somehow Coel and Brutus had swapped identities! The “why” of it Jane could understand—this way Brutus had free rein to do whatever he needed while Weyland, the fool, watched Coel-reborn like a hawk. But how? How?

“You are Coel-reborn,” she said to Charles, using every ounce of courage she possessed to utter those words. “You are not Brutus.” You are the Lord of the Faerie.

Aye, he responded, but of that we will not speak for the moment.

“Aye,” Charles said aloud. He was studying her face, noting its new abrasions, the broken nose, the closed eye, and he frowned at them.

“Jane,” he said, “is Weyland still ignorant of this deception? Does he think me Brutus-reborn?”

She nodded, the movement jerky and slightly uncoordinated.

Louis moved in closer, so close that Jane could smell the steel of the sword. He made a sudden movement, which made Jane flinch, then squatted down so he could look her in the face.

“I won’t tell him,” she said, garbling the words in her fear. “I won’t!”

“You want us to believe you?” said Catharine. “You? Lady Snake?”

“Don’t trust her,” said Marguerite. “She was always the lying bitch.”

Jane averted her eyes again, and she hugged her arms about herself, crouching a little lower to the floor. “I will not tell him,” she whispered. “Please, believe me.”

“You have spent hundreds of years teaching us not to believe you,” said Louis, his eyes burning into her huddled form. “You would be better dead for all you have done to Coel, and to Cornelia-reborn. Dead, we can surely trust you. Alive? I am not so sure.”

He shifted a little, only to readjust his balance, but Jane cringed at his movement.

Charles stood. “I want to speak with her alone,” he said. “If you could leave us, please.”

“Charles,” Louis said, rising also. “I should be here. I—”

“Leave us, Louis!” Charles said. Then he added, softer, “She is terrified, Louis. I will do better on my own than with this circle of vehemence about her. Sisters, please, leave us. I can accomplish what we need.”

Louis looked at Catharine, Marguerite and Kate, and nodded. He glanced once more at Jane, then shepherded the women towards the door. Charles paced slowly about the chamber until the door closed, then walked back to where Jane knelt, and extended his hand to her.

Very slowly, tremulously, Jane took it, and rose.

Almost immediately she sank into a curtsey again.

“I do not,” she said, looking up to him, “honour you as King of England, for which I care very little, but as—”

“I know,” he said. “Jane, do not speak of the Faerie here. Not now. When next you go to Tower Fields, then we shall speak when you meet me by the scaffold. But not here.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Charles burst into laughter. “’My lord?’ Oh, that I should hear that from your lips! Hark, is that the sound of Genvissa and Swanne turning over in their cold, cold graves?”

Jane smiled apprehensively. He was teasing her again, as he had when they’d met in dream.

“In the realm of the mortal, you may call me Charles when we are alone, and any variety of honorifics of your choosing when we are in public. But when I come to you in the Realm of the Faerie…then…” he paused, his brow creased as he thought. “Well, when we are alone there you may call me Coel.”

Again that apprehensive smile, and a little nod.

“Good.” He still held her hand, and now he raised her to her feet, and he pulled her close. His fingers touched her cheek.

“When did he do this?”

“Last night. He was not well pleased that my face had healed. He wanted me ugly for you.”

“Ah, gods, Jane, I am sorry. I had not thought he would punish you for that.”

“You have not lived with him these thirty and more years.”

Charles reached out a hand, and she flinched.

“I will not hurt you,” he said, and very gently ran his hands over her swollen cheekbone and then her nose.

“Oh, gods…” she said, the breath shuddering in her throat. “Don’t.”

He withdrew his hand and let her go, standing back a pace. “You are sure that Weyland thinks I am Brutus?”

She nodded. “I don’t understand. You feel like him. You have the aura of the kingship bands about you, and only Brutus has that. How can this be? Dear gods, Charles, you had me fooled as much as you have Weyland.”

“It was a simple deception, but a much needed one,” Charles said. “Louis and I were conceived at the same moment, born the same day. Our souls are thus easily confused, especially when we are together.”

“But the aura of the bands.”

“In our last life, when I had died at Hastings—”

Jane winced. She had caused his death.

“—Caela stopped me on my journey into the afterlife. She gave me two of the bands to take with me to the Otherworld. They and I are close, now. I cannot use them, or wield their power, but their aura clings to me. That has made the deception possible.”

Jane wondered again how Charles could allow her to live having told her so much.

“I am not going to kill you, Jane.”

She started to cry. “Why not? Why not? I have killed you twice over, and you have taken my life but once. You are owed a death.”

“I am sick of death,” he said, very gently, “and I think you have suffered enough in this life to settle whatever lies untallied between us. I meant what I said in Tower Fields. There is no score to settle. Jane, I do not hate you.”

“You should.”

He studied her a moment before continuing. “Jane, you may owe me nothing, but you do owe the land.”

Of course, Jane thought. I knew there would be revenge somewhere.

“You tried to murder both Mag and Og, and all but succeeded. For that I’m afraid you shall have to do reparation. Not death, but some degree of penance. The land itself demands it. It is why the Faerie sent me to you in the field. The magpie came and demanded it.”

Her face twisted, and she looked away.

“Bitterness does not become you,” Charles said.

“It comforts me,” she said, very low.

“Well,” Charles said, “of how the Faerie might judge you we will not speak within these man-made walls.”

It will be a windswept moor, Jane thought, or a forest. There I shall be judged. She trembled, thinking of how harsh that judgement was likely to be.

The silence grew longer, and Jane grew more uncomfortable. Then, suddenly, she remembered why she was here.

“Oh gods, Charles, Weyland has sent me here with messages for you, and I have forgot them completely!”

“Then relay your messages, Jane.”

“He has sent you three messages. One, Weyland offers you his hearty congratulations on gaining the throne. He thinks you must be very pleased.”

Charles quirked an eyebrow, but said nothing.

“Two, Weyland says that you must not attempt to locate the bands, for he has Noah, and he will do to her what he has done to me should you attempt to find your kingship bands. He says he will slaughter Noah; not kill her, but steep her in such humiliation and degradation that she will wish herself dead, should you so much as lay a hand to those bands.”

“Really. And what is the third message?”

“That if you go near the forests, if you so much as eye a single tree, or step within its shade, he will make sure that Noah suffers for an eternity.”

“Then I had best keep away from both bands and forest, hadn’t I?”

She looked at him, then suddenly laughed. It was weak, but it was a laugh, and somehow it lifted a great weight from Jane’s heart. “My God, Charles, if Weyland ever realises that you’re not—”

“He must not realise, Jane.”

“And he will not from me.”

Charles nodded. “I know. Noah? How is she? We did not speak of it overly when we met in dream.”

“She is well now. Weyland…Weyland healed her, and I. Not my pox, that is your doing alone, but the wounds I suffered in birthing the imp.”

Charles frowned. “Why? Why would he do that?”

“Perhaps he wants us to believe he suffered from guilt. I do not know the true reason, but I am sure it is malicious.”

Charles’ frown deepened, then he gave his head a slight shake.

“Jane, I know what kind of a house Weyland runs. Noah…has he…”

“Prostituted her? He tried. But something happened. I don’t know what, for Noah has not spoken of it to me, but,” Jane could not help an ironic twist of her mouth, “be assured, your lover has not yet been tarnished with that same brush which has blackened me.”

“She is not my lover,” Charles said mildly, “but be assured I am pleased to hear she has not suffered your fate.”

Jane’s face hardened a little.

“For the moment,” Charles continued, “I am but grateful to hear that both of you are well…although your face…”

Once more his fingers touched it.

“Don’t heal the marks,” she said, standing back. “If Weyland sees, he will know that you are—”

“He will merely think that Brutus has more power than he’d thought,” said Charles. “Here, let me take from you the pain.”

His fingers rubbed gently, and miraculously all the pain and ache vanished.

“It still looks red and swollen,” said Charles, “but you shall not suffer from it.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Now, what else? What other news?”

Jane thought. “The imps,” she said after a moment. “They are now incarnate. Did you know?”

“Dear God,” Louis said much later, when Charles rejoined him and Catharine in the royal bedchamber. “You let her leave? You told her the one secret that—”

“She knew,” Charles said mildly. “There was no need to tell.”

“But to let her go,” said Catharine. “I hope you did not also reveal to her your faerie crown!”

Charles gave her a sharp look. “Misery has changed her. I do not think she will tell Weyland.”

Louis grunted. “Did you ask her about Noah?”

“Aye. She is well enough.” He paused. “Weyland healed both Jane and Noah after that horrific day. I do not know why.”

Louis, as everyone else present, visibly relaxed in relief.

“Thank all the gods of creation,” said Catharine. “But…I know he runs a brothel. He hasn’t—”

“Set Noah to work for him?” Charles said. “Apparently he tried, without any success. Noah is not yet entertaining the masses of London, and not likely to. Jane said Weyland has decided to cease his whoremastering.”

Louis said nothing, but Charles could see by the tightness of his jaw and the glint in his eyes that he was angry.

“Weyland sent me a message,” Charles said. “Of three parts.” He briefly related them.

“He knows that the Stag God is to be reborn?” said Marguerite.

“Aye,” Charles said. “Weyland is not to be underestimated.”

“Anything else?” said Louis.

Charles shook his head. “That was it. Stay away from the kingship bands and the forests, or else Noah suffers. But I learned more from Jane. That agony we felt during our procession through London. It was the imps, tearing themselves free of Noah’s and Jane’s bodies.”

Catharine gave a slight cry, her hands rising to her mouth in shock, while Louis cursed, low and cruel, and looked away.

They talked of what Jane had said for some time, then Louis left, claiming to be tired, although the others knew that he needed to be alone for a time.

Once the door had closed behind him, Charles looked to the three women.

“To all the celebrations that we shall attend this week,” he said, “I think I shall add one other. A very private celebration, I think.”

Catharine, standing closest to Charles, raised an eyebrow.

“I shall hold a Council of England,” said Charles, and as he spoke his features altered imperceptibly, his face becoming slighter and darker and assuming the aspect of the Lord of the Faerie, “using the magic of the Circle, and convening atop The Naked. I shall summon the faerie folk, and the water sprites, and the Sidlesaghes, and even Louis’ hated giants.”

“And Noah?” said Catharine.

“And even Noah, if she is able,” said Charles. “Jane, too, if she can manage.”

Marguerite hissed. “You trust her way too greatly, Charles. Gods, man! She has murdered you twice!”

“And will not again, I think,” Charles said. “If anything, Genvissa, in all of her lives, has hated to be predictable.”

Later that night, when Charles and Catharine had gone to bed, they lay a while talking over the events of the day.

They did not make love.

Catharine felt a remoteness in Charles, and wondered at it. In her previous life as Matilda she had married William, Brutus-reborn. In this life she had married Charles, Coel-reborn. These successive marriages had been the closing of a circle, a circle that bound Coel-reborn and Brutus-reborn even tighter together (the sharing of a much-loved wife), that had bound Matilda closer to the land and into Eaving’s Sisterhood, and it had also been necessary in order to strengthen the deception that Charles was Brutus-reborn—“Brutus” was gathering back to him the accoutrements of power and privilege he’d enjoyed in his previous life. In her former life as Matilda, Catharine had loved William deeply, but was also attracted greatly to Coel (or Harold as he had been then); her marriage in this life to Coel-reborn had been no difficulty to her. Indeed, it had been a joy.

But tonight, as never before, Catharine sensed a new distance between herself and Charles. Catharine was an intuitive and powerful woman, and she understood very well that there was only one reason this distance could have so suddenly yawned open.

Jane.

Somehow Jane touched something within Charles that she, Catharine, could not.

Lady Snake, Catharine thought, echoing once again what, as Matilda, she had once spat at Swanne. Now, unlike then, there was no malice in the epithet, only a quiet resignation.

Catharine sighed, and rolled away from Charles to sleep.