Andre Norton & Rosemary Edghill - Carolus Rex 1 - The Shadow of Albion

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The Shadow of Albion

Carolus Rex 01

Andre Norton

Rosemary Edghill

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

EPILOGUE

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen

property. It was reported as „unsold and destroyed“ to the publisher, and neither the author nor the

publisher has received any payment for this „stripped book.“

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the

author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE SHADOW OF ALBION: Carolus Rex: Book I

Edited by James Frenkel

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10.010

www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN: 0-812-54.539-7

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-43.790

First edition: April 1999

First mass market edition: February 2000

Printed in the United States of America

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank Sherwood Smith for help and quick answers to tough research

questions involving the France of 1805; Andrew Sigel for settling thorny questions

of proper address; the rest of the SFRT1 gang (of fond memory, alas) for the usual

hijinks (hi, Esther! hi, Lois!); Jennara, for putting up with the usual fuss; Jane

Emerson, for Lt. Stephen Price of the Royal Engineers; and (of course) The Lady

herself, Andre Norton, for her endless patience and graciousness during the long,

drawn-out, and sometimes downright baffling process of writing a collaboration. It’s

been a privilege to work with her and learn from her.

– Rosemary Edghill

Hence, horrible shadow!

Unreal mockery, hence!

– Macbeth

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD:

A Regency That Never Was

The „If Theory“ of history is that oftentimes in world history distinct and radical

changes rest upon a single event or person. From that particular point two worlds

then come into existence, one in which the matter goes one way and one wherein it

goes the other.

The point of divergence here is the affair of the Duke of Monmouth in the days of

Charles II. The majority of the English people at that time were bitterly opposed to

the return of a Catholic ruler. Unfortunately, Charles II had not been able to produce

a living heir by his Portuguese wife, though he had a number of illegitimate children

by various mistresses, upon whom he settled dukedoms and other major honors.

Charles’s brother and heir presumptive, James, was a Catholic and was

narrow-mindedly determined to return England to the Catholic fold. James was a

severe, arrogant man, unlike Charles, who had all the Stuart charm in rare abundance.

There has always been a rumor that the Duke of Monmouth, the eldest known of

Charles’s by-blows, was actually legitimate – that Charles, while in exile, did marry

Mistress Waters, the Duke’s mother.

Monmouth had much of his father’s charm and was strongly Protestant in his

religious views. In the real world, following Charles’s death Monmouth led an

uprising against his uncle, King James II, failed, and was beheaded.

In this „If-World,“ Charles II, during his protracted dying, realizes that James’s

inheritance of the throne would mean trouble for all, and finally admits to a selected

body of his strongest council that the rumor was true, that he had in fact made a

marriage (there was no Royal Marriage Act in those days!) with Mistress Waters and

thus the Duke of Monmouth was the legitimate heir of his body. Thus, upon Charles

H’s death, the Duke of Monmouth is crowned Charles III.

The new king has difficulties with a diehard group of strong Catholic lords, and

with James, his uncle, who believes the throne of England should be his. This will

have a bearing on the events of later years – even centuries – but immediate events

are similar to those in the real world. The strongly Whig-Protestant English fight

against France. The Duke of Marlborough comes to center stage as a military leader

– he is also a bosom friend of the Duke of Clarence, the late king’s illegitimate

second son and Charles His half-brother. (The Stuarts continue their merry custom

of producing bastards and granting them tides so the highest grades of the English

peerage are frequently expanded.)

After the reign of three more Stuart kings (Charles IV, James II, and Charles V)

we reach the 1800s, and a world like – and unlike – our own. The English

government is strongly Whig and the King depends on that party for backing.

Without the weak and unpopular Hanovers on the throne, political relations with the

American colonies have never degenerated into warfare; in 1805 America is simply

the westernmost of England’s possessions. Its citizens are English citizens with full

representation in Parliament. It is governed (similarly to Ireland) by a Lord Protector;

in 1805 the Lord Protector of America is Thomas Jefferson, the Earl of Monticello.

Like Irish tides, American tides are considered „second-class“ titles, but many of the

nobility holds both English and American titles, and America is a popular destination

for land-hungry younger sons. The ties between the mother country and her vast

colony are becoming thinner with time, and political theorists predict that someday

America will govern itself practically free of any strong supervision from the

motherland.

One major divergence from history as we know it in this alternate 1805 is that the

Louisiana Purchase does not take place, and the thirteen colonies’ western

expansion is halted in vicinity of Kentucky (or, as it is known in this world,

Transylvania).

The French Revolution pf 1789 – which occurs in both worlds – is a shock to

both England and her New World colony. There were suggestions in our world at

the time that England intervene, which she does not do in either world. In 1795

Napoleon Bonaparte begins his climb to power and France’s ambitions become

imperial. England goes to war once more. Though plagued by civil and religious

unrest at home, it is Britain’s funding that keeps the Triple Alliance – England,

Prussia, and Russia – in the field against Napoleon. The simmering discontent at

home might break out into full-fledged civil war, however, were England suddenly

left without an heir.

Just as in the Real World, many European nations considered making a „separate

peace“ with Napoleon. A key flayer in this political arena is Denmark, which, as a

member of the Baltic League, vacillates between neutrality and a pro-French

position. A French-allied Denmark would cause Russia to withdraw from the Triple

Alliance.

In the Real World, England sent fleets to Denmark in 1801 and 1806 to keep

French sympathies at bay. In our world, the widowed King Henry DC of England

hopes to accomplish the same thing by betrothing his only son, James Charles Henry

David Robert Stuart, Prince of Wales and Duke of Gloucester, to Princess

Stephanie Julianna, granddaughter of the weak and vicious King Christian VII, whose

eldest son, Prince Frederick, is currently his Regent. This marriage, to one of the few

Protestant royal houses in Europe, will link Denmark firmly with the Allied cause.

And our story begins….

– Andre Norton

Chapter 1

A Lady Bought with Magic

(Wiltshire, April 1805)

The house had always been called Mooncoign, though it had passed through

several families before becoming King Charles III’s gift to the first Marchioness of

Roxbury over a century ago. The Roxburys had reigned at Mooncoign for longer

than living memory ran, and to those within their domain, it seemed they always

would.

Even in that bygone generation there had been no one left who could say how the

house had come to be so named – or if there were, they deemed it wiser, in a climate

of uncertain political and theological tolerance, to keep the knowledge to themselves.

For while Charles II, that merry monarch, had often said that the witches of England

should be left in peace, the temper of his son, the once-Earl of Monmouth, was a

chancier – and far more Protestant – thing.

But the time of both merry father and ambitious son was long past now. It was

early in April, on a morning of no particular note in the calendars of alchemists and

philosophers: a day much like any other day on the Wiltshire downs for every

inhabitant of the great house save one.

The room’s furnishings were opulent and old; heavy walnut pieces that might

have occupied this very chamber when Charles Stuart had used it to shelter from his

Roundhead persecutors some one hundred fifty years before. The oak wainscoting

glowed golden with long and loving application of beeswax and turpentine even in

this pallid early spring sunlight, while higher upon those same walls fanciful

plasterwork ornamentation spread its delicate lacelike tracery against the darker

cream of the lime-washed background. The room was oven hot, heated by the

blazing fire of sea-coals upon the hearth and by the tall bronze braziers the doctor

had prescribed.

Now that same physician regarded the luxurious scene with disapproval, although

it was not the elegant Jacobean room itself which had earned his censure. He turned

to the waiting servant and, reluctantly, said what he must say.

„You ought to have called me earlier. Her Ladyship’s condition is very grave. In

fact – “ He hesitated, choosing how best to break the hateful news.

„Speak louder, Dr. Falconer; I cannot quite hear you.“ The mocking young voice

was hoarse with coughing and breathless with its owner’s affliction, but it still held

arresting power.

Dr. Falconer straightened from his colloquy with Lady Roxbury’s

formidably-correct dresser and returned to the ornately-caparisoned bed of state.

Pulling back the bedcurtains with one well-manicured hand, he gazed down at the

bed’s occupant. His patient stared back with brilliant unflinching eyes.

Sarah, Marchioness of Roxbury, had never been a beauty – her eyes (quite her

best feature) were grey, her hair was silk-straight rather than fashionably curled (and

light brown rather than guinea-gold or raven-black or any of the other unlikely hues

so beloved of the romancers), and she was tall and slender – but she had always

carried herself with the arrogance and style of the Conynghams. Now, however, even

the animal vitality that had lent her passable plainness an aura of glamour was gone:

the Marchioness of Roxbury looked exactly like what she was. A plain woman, and

a dying one…

„As bad as that, is it?“ she whispered. „You had best tell me, you know; Knoyle

is a treasure with hair, but she will only cry.“

The Marchioness’s mother, the second Marchioness of Roxbury and illegitimate

daughter of James the Second, the present king’s grandfather, had died in childbed

along with the babe who would, had he lived, have been the two-year-old Sarah’s

younger brother and heir to the Marchionate. Now mother and son slept in the small

family burial ground at Mooncoign, and from the moment of their deaths, Sarah

Marie Eloise Aradia Dowsabelle Gonyngham had become Lady Roxbury,

Marchioness of Roxbury in her own right. And each year, since her presentation to

the Polite World at the early age of sixteen, the young Marchioness of Roxbury had

anticipated the Season with a houseparty at Mooncoign. The entertainment was

lavish and theatrical, and in this year of Our Lord 1805, ten days since, during an

enactment of the Battle of the Nile upon Mooncoign’s ornamental water, her

ladyship’s craft had accidentally been sunk, even though it was meant to represent

Admiral Nelson’s .flagship, the Victory.

She had been rescued by the Vicomte Saint-Lazarre and, though her crew had

deserted to the house to repair their soaked toilettes, Lady Roxbury had remained to

fight the engagement to an English triumph. She had ignored a steadily-worsening

cough to mastermind the entertainment of her guests all the following week; the cost

of that mock sea-battle was something she had not counted until today.

Outside the windows, pale April daffodils pushed up through the rich loam of the

downs. Dr. Falconer studied Lady Roxbury for some moments before he spoke. „It

is a galloping consumption, Your Ladyship. You will not see out the month.“

Lady Roxbury’s mouth tightened and the teasing light vanished from her eyes.

She had suspected as much; only a fool would not, once the blood began to appear

on her lawn kerchiefs.

There was a strangled sob from Knoyle.

„Hush your howling,“ Lady Roxbury rasped hoarsely. „Anyone would think you

were to be turned out without a character! It was only a chill,“ she said to Dr.

Falconer, hating the note of pleading she heard in her voice.

„It has settled on the lungs.“ His voice was gentle, but her ladyship heard me

death sentence in it. Dr. Falconer was no country horse-leech after all, but King

Henry’s own physician, His skill was preeminent; there were few he would, have left

Town for, but the Marchioness of Roxbury was one.

„I… see,“ she said. Each breath was a struggle. A greater struggle was to resist

the feathery unsoundness in her throat and chest that brought the wracking spasms

of bloody coughing. „Thank you for coming, Doctor,“ Lady Roxbury said. She

held out one slender jeweled hand, and Dr. Falconer bent over it with courtly

punctilio.

„Please consider yourself my guest for as long as you care to – and assure my

other guests I will be joining them soon,“ she said.

Dr. Falconer hesitated a moment before replying. „Of course, Your Ladyship. I

shall carry out your wishes to the letter.“ He hesitated over her hand a moment

longer, as if there were something he would say, then turned and left.

Lady Roxbury turned to her abigail.

„Knoyle.“ The one word was all she could manage; the tainted brittleness in her

chest was rising into her throat, choking her. She reached out blindly, grabbing the

abigail’s broad warm hand with chill fingers of surprising strength.

„No one! Tell – no one!“ she gasped. Then the treacherous creature in her chest

woke to willful life and spasm after spasm shook her slender body, until she lay

weak and trembling beneath a coverlet starred with her life’s blood.

It is not fair, she thought to herself some hours later. The pop and hiss of the

burning coals and the measured ticking of the long-case clock in the dressing room

were the loudest sounds in Lady Roxbury’s world. She did not doubt that all was

being done within Mooncoign’s walls just as she would have it done, but she

realized unwillingly that the time was coming when she would no longer be able to

enforce her wishes – when, in fact, she would have no wishes at all.

And then Mooncoign and the Marchionate, which was entailed upon the heirs of

her body, male or female, would revert to the Grown, and someone not of her blood

would walk Mooncoign’s galleries of age-mellowed stone.

It is not fair! Though the side-curtains of the bed were closed, Lady Roxbury had

ordered the curtains at the foot drawn back so that she could see the portrait over

the fire. Within its frame of gilded plaster, the painted visage of Lady Roxbury’s

grandmother Panthea, the first Marchioness, gazed mischievously down at her

descendent, magnificent in satin and lace. Panthea’s bejeweled hands toyed with a

key, a dagger, and a rose, in sly allusion to the Roxbury arms and their motto: „I

open every door.“

Oh, if there were only a door for this, away from the cruel weakness of her body

and the knowledge of duties unfulfilled –!

„A visitor for you, my lady.“ Knoyle’s voice trembled – as well it might, since

she was acting against her mistress’s express orders to admit no one.

Lady Roxbury struggled upright against her pillows, anger deepening the hectic

color in her cheeks. „Who – “ she began, before the inevitable spasm of coughing

took her. As she clutched her handkerchief to her lips, she felt strong cool hands,

against her back, supporting her and pressing the worst of the pain away.

„Who dares?“ she demanded at last, when the paroxysm passed.

„I dare,“ a voice said calmly. „As Your Ladyship knows, there is little I do not.“

Lady Roxbury’s eyes widened fractionally as she caught sight of her visitor for

the first time.

Dame Alecto Kennet had been a great beauty in her day, and was still a woman of

commanding and formidable presence. In her time she had been actress and

confidential agent, mistress to two Kings, and more. In later life she had chosen

obscurity as the companion of the Dowager Duchess of Wessex, herself a woman

who shunned the limelight. Even so, only the veriest of green-heads would hold

Dame Alecto at naught.

„I had thought you in Bath with Her Grace of Wessex,“

Lady Roxbury managed to say. She lay back against the mounded lace-trimmed

pillows, trembling with the effort of showing an untroubled countenance to her

visitor.

„And so I might yet be, did you not need me more,“ Dame Alecto replied. She

unpinned her wide, plume-trimmed scarlet bonnet and set it upon the bench at the

foot of the bed next to a slightly-battered hatbox done up in coarse string. Her hair,

titian in her youth, had faded almost to pink with age, but was still elaborately

dressed beneath its rich lace cap. She studied Lady Roxbury intently through eyes

that Time had washed to silver as she unclasped her wool traveling cape and laid it

beside the bonnet.

Lady Roxbury managed a bleak smile. „I shall soon need nothing at all,“ she said

wryly, „or so my physicians tell me. I wonder who shall have Mooncoign when I am

gone?“

„You would be better employed in wondering who will do that which you ought

to have done, when you are not here to do it,“ Dame Alecto snapped. „Who will

take your place, Lady Roxbury?“

Such plain speaking was not something her ladyship cared for at any time, and

still less at a time like mis. Ignoring the effort it cost her, she forced arch indifference

into her voice as she replied.

„I dare say Wessex will find someone. But you have not come to tease me

because my dying releases your mistress’s grandson from his betrothal?“ – It

suddenly occurred to Lady Roxbury that, though Bath was a. day’s journey away,

she had received her death-sentence from Dr. Falconer only hours before. Even if

the doctor had talked, there was no way that the Dowager Duchess could have

known of it and dispatched her henchwoman hither. Lady Roxbury struggled upright

against her pillows, groping for the tasseled cord that would summon Knoyle to her.

„Your betrothal is a minor matter, beside the Great Work that you have left

undone. Or do you forget who you truly hold these lands of, Lady Roxbury?“ Dame

Alecto’s gaze was silver and ice; a formidable thing to face. But it was a formidable

woman who faced it.

„I hold them of the King. I am Roxbury,“ the bed’s occupant replied. But the

bellpull slipped unrung from her pale jeweled fingers. Whatever was afoot, she

would face it herself, and not spread gossip to the servants’ hall.

„And have you sworn no other oath?“ Dame Alecto demanded, still standing at

the foot of the great bed as if she would summon Lady Roxbury from it.

It was on the tip of her ladyship’s tongue to end this wearisome interview when

sudden images rose up unbidden behind her eyes: Midsummer’s Eve four years ago.

She had been one-and-twenty, and Mooncoign’s steward had summoned her from

Town – had brought her, over her protests, to the Sarcen Stones that lay at the edge

of her land, to show her to the Oldest People, and to take her promise that Roxbury

and Mooncoign would always do what must be done for the People and the Land.

She came back to herself to meet Dame Alecto’s gaze. There in the moonlight she

had promised, but who would take care of her people and her land once she had

gone? For the first time Lady Roxbury regretted her death as more than her own

loss. It was a mystery no longer as to why Dame Alecto was here or how she had

known to come. The Oldest People had avenues of information unknown to the

human world – but even they could not change the appointed time of one’s dying.

„If you can tell me how I may fulfill that oath, I shall be indebted to you,“ Lady

Roxbury said dryly.

„You must summon another to take your place,“ Dame Alecto answered.

She moved from the foot of the bed to its side, to fling back the heavy velvet

coverlet and draw Lady Roxbury from her deathbed. She tottered and would have

fallen without Dame Alecto’s strong support The room spun and reeled about

Mooncoign’s mistress, and the young Marchioness trembled as if in the grip of an

arctic chill. The edges of her vision darkened and curled like the edges of a painting

thrown upon a fire to burn. She barely noticed as Dame Alecto half-led, half-carried

her to a chair before the fire and seated her in it, wrapping her in her heavy winter

chamber-robe, its silk velvet folds still smelling faintly of cedar and lavender from its

months in the clothes press.

„Mooncoign is not in my gift,“ Lady Roxbury protested. Dame Alecto had

poured out a cup of the cordial that Dr. Falconer had left her, now Lady Roxbury

held it to her lips and breathed in the strong scents of brandy and laudanum. She

sipped at it and felt the pain in her chest recede.

„Nevertheless, you may choose your successor – if you dare. Look into the fire,“

Dame Alecto commanded, „and tell me what you see.“

Gypsy foolishness, Lady Roxbury thought scornfully, but spellbound by the force

of the older woman’s personality, made no overt demurral. She stared obediently

into the pale translucent flames on the hearth. At last she was warm, no, more than

warm, hot, burning, a creature of fire –

„Creature of fire, this charge I lay – “ There were others in the room, standing

about them in a circle, chanting, their voices blending into the thin music of the

names –

Andre Norton & Rosemary Edghill - Carolus Rex 1 - The Shadow of Albion

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