He was the best dressed man Lovegood had ever seen. Having, once again, the perspective of a tree, he couldn't make out distinct features of the face, but the outfit was clear enough: a midnight velvet jerkin with a high Spanish collar, ivory ruff nestling his jawline to his ears, satin sleeves perforated with the many cuts called pickadils, terminating in more ruffs at the wrists. A pair of heavy golden braids hung round his neck, their luster subdued but lovely in the forest's green light. Dismounting, his plump pumpkin hose bobbed from thigh to waist. He wore a wand on his left hip like a sword: sheathed on a leather belt. The horse had an ash-colored torso, a long russet face and a mane, tail and legs of charcoal. The man spent a moment caressing her while getting the lay of the land. Lovegood, who saw in all directions at once, did too.

Epping was enchanted. Mist steamed among stands of hornbeam and oak. Silence vibrated with the timbre of the fantastic. Hold still long enough and fayfolk would emerge from the crannies among beech roots, a startled stag would dash ahead of a royal party on horseback crashing through the undergrowth, highwaymen and blackguards would practice at murder and flight from the law. In Lovegood's time it had achieved notoriety: the eldritch core of many a ghost story, a refuge from plagues; the great wooded commons that peasants lived off of, London homicides were planted in and kings and queens hunted at their will, sticking game with arrows. But this was 1553. It wasn't even called Epping yet. It was Waltham, and its reputation was still making.

The man, who could only be Rybel deMille, dashing playboy, imminent suicide, gave the horse's behind a firm smack. She galloped away at speed. This was a surprise.

Lovegood recalled the muskrat—from the last time he was a tree—ambling around obliviously. A ghost no one noticed.

But even that hadn't been the first unexplained muskrat, had it?

He was eager to pursue the filament of this thought, to see if he could catch it in his teeth and tug, but something fundamental had changed. deMille had engaged him—him: the Executioner's Tree. He was boggled by the delicacy and oddness of grasping hands. The flimsiest tissue enshrouding muscles enshrouding twigs. deMille's soft boot found a likely purchase and Lovegood detected the gentlest tug upon his living hair, his various arms. It was like being tickled by walking mushrooms. Oh, give me birds! he thought. Give me nesting birds forever, as many as you like, but not this. deMille stood on him, amid him, crawling, probing. A person was so hot. It was uncomfortable for Lovegood but also terribly funny—being climbed by so well-dressed a gentleman. And then it was more. He realized he knew something of him. Somehow, through mingled breath or the tongues of leaves, Lovegood had the flavor of his days.

deMille was what trees weren't: free. Every moment of his life he was balanced on a rope in the wind. Accordingly, the meat fist of his heart pumped and sap churned through his veins. The pace thrilled Lovegood and exhausted him. A finch was too light—a figment—even a nest of them, even generations. A dizzy woodpecker admired its life's work and Lovegood said, Sorry, is someone there? But a man registered—a man was big enough. deMille was casual in stresses Lovegood couldn't imagine. But like a tree, he made plans. He laid in wait.

Something happened.

Afterwards, Lovegood teased it out to understand:

A witch appeared, swirling into being on the forest floor. Black robed. Smallish.

'Expelliarmus!' said deMille.

A wand flew from her to him.

deMille dropped, like Lovegood's own fruit. He had his wand out, aimed at the witch. Then he laughed. That is what was happening now, now that he'd had a moment to translate the pair of forms on the forest floor.

People were so quick!

'Thou art early, Susurro,' deMille chuckled, 'but I earlier.'

On the ground she was very small. She was on her knees. Every time I see her she's disadvantaged, Lovegood thought. deMille orbited and Susurro's eyes rotated in turn, trained on the aimed wand. 'Avast thy ambuscade, my lord. What have I done to earn it? Give back my wand!'

'Oh, this?'

'Rest, sir, relent, or own the consequence.'

'I have seen thy works with this wand. I'll keep it for now.'

'Thou hast seen my works—so thou said. What is it thou hast seen?'

'I have seen my Lord Castlemore bewitched—imperiused if that term is more to thy liking, my lady—in the Council Assembly this very day.'

'In a basilisk's eye thou did.'

Again deMille chuckled. He was confidence only. He paraded, acting out the part, apparently, of someone who'd spoken that day at the Assembly: ' "Complaints from Anglia, my Lord Castlemore: they say Glorio Wren is healing Muggles of the sweating sickness. Whole houses of them! The Duke of Norfolks' house. The Duchess of Suffolk. They say he is—" ' but here deMille halted abruptly, theatrically, seemed to adopt a different posture, reached to the back of his head, said, with a thick lisp: ' "My dear Susurro, why dost thou prick me thus? Mark thee not that deMille can see?" '

'Thou hallucinates. Thou wasn't even there.'

'I was late to the session—more's the pity for thee. I do not hallucinate—but I do embellish for dramatic effect. None marked my arrival, none saw me see, but see I did. You put a spell on him. You put a spell, and thereupon he dismissed the charges against Glorio Wren, the Anglian healer. Those were grave charges, my Lady, yet you had him treat with them as trivial gossips aired by envious neighbors. Thou art obvious. So obvious indeed I wondered, has Susurro not been controlling my Lord Castlemore quite a long time? Has she not grown lazy at it?'

'If thou art certain why not reveal me? Why lead me here in privacy?'

'I will know why you shield Glorio Wren.'

Susurro chuckled darkly. 'Thou would sniff something out to hold over him. It suits thy purposes better to leverage iniquity than discover it. Thou art a cad, deMille, as ever.'

'If it pleases ye to think so. I care not. Now the story.'

'Let me stand.'

'Let you stand? You put me in mind of a memory from our school days, Ann. After one of thy endless duels, my Lord Day stalked growling from the testing ground: "Susurro is either on her knees or at your throat." Methinks I prefer the former.'

'If I answer—'

'Don't bargain, Ann. You aren't the only one fluent in dark curses. You have no power here.'

'Give me something, sir.'

'I give thee thy life if you would have it. If not, I shall take it and leave thee a corpse in the wood.'

A beat elapsed. It surpassed strange to follow dialogue without facial expression, but Lovegood was learning how evocative a body was: its tenses and slumps, its crackling energy. He as good as saw Susurro cave in.

'I did it,' she confessed, 'I imperiused him.'

'Of course you did!'

'But it isn't true I'm lazy from repetition. My Lord Castlemore is of fierce independence—thou knows it well. It taxes one, to master such a mind. It is little wonder thou detected the device.'

'But you had to chance it—to try, even with all the Assembly in attendance.'

'I thought so, yes.'

'Why?'

Her face had been tilted down, now it came up and Lovegood could feel her eyes resting calmly on deMille's. 'Because the day of decision is nigh.'

'What day? What decision? Do not speak in riddles, woman.'

'The ground bruises, my Lord. Let me stand and I'll say.'

'Say or meet thy maker.'

Her voice had a cold smile in it. 'That is no threat to me.'

'Fine. Rise—keep thine hands at thy sides! But rise and get on with it.'

'Many thanks, my Lord.'

'Don't thank me. Only talk.'

The witch climbed to her feet and composed herself. To Lovegood it appeared something significant had occurred, but he couldn't guess at what.

'Thou knows who Mary Tudor is,' Susurro prompted.

'The late king's bastard. I am not simple.'

'She is the eldest of his bastards and the one with the likeliest case for the throne should an ill fate befall her half-brother, King Edward.'

'What are these Muggle affairs to ye? What are thou about, Ann?'

From the way she stood and her cadence, the quality of her voice, Lovegood was sure she'd survived the afternoon's direst stress and reached a calm. He observed her observing him—the tree—and registered an attention there. He felt, for an instant, exposed. 'Two years ago the Princess Mary retreated to East Anglia on suspicion that her brother the king conspired her arrest. She has powerful allies there and a castle in Framlingham. But the Princess has never been strong, and the flight overthrew her tender constitution. In desperation, her people sought out healers. Glorio answered.'

'So it's true: he's healing Muggles, currying favor with their royals. But why?'

'Summon thy horse,' said Susurro. 'Thou didst arrive on horse?'

'I never go anywhere without Sasha.' He put fingers to his mouth and issued a piercing whistle. 'What does Glorio Wren hope to gain by making a friend of the Muggle king's sister?'

'The king has the wasting disease and is not long for the world. When he goes the Princess Mary will ride into London with all of the east behind her. She will be crowned Queen of England. It has been foreseen.'

'Still,' deMille looked towards the sound of thumping hooves as they drew nearer, 'what is that to us? Do you hope to surround her with acolytes? Bend her to thy will? Do you think the Muggle Court won't notice witches in their midst? Recall what they did to Mimsy-Porpington? Ye would be piled on a bonfire and burnt to ash. Ye would be wayleighed with Porpington's dull axe.'

'But it isn't witches doing the work, my Lord. When in the presence of the Princess and her people, Glorio Wren is not a wizard. He is a Catholic monk. So are his helpers: nuns and monks hiding from their Protestant oppressors, secretly doing the bidding of the Pope in Rome, endowed by him with powers heaven-sent, charged with giving succor to his best hope in England: the Catholic Mary Tudor.'

deMille laughed with disbelief. 'I see. Imperiusing the crown of wizardry isn't enough. You would own Muggledom, too. What will you do with it once you have it, thee and thy magical monks? Restore the "true faith"? All that Brindlestick foolishness?'

'Mock me, my Lord, if it brings thee comfort. But there is a true faith. It is neither Popish nor Anglican, Mohammedan nor Hebrew, and it instructs that the witch has a duty to her lessers. Now let me see thee mount thy lovely bay.'

deMille took the saddle in hand and swung up with grace. 'You mean your little cult. You wish to install Merlinism in the heart of Muggle power. You're mad.'

Susurro pointed at Lovegood. 'That's a likely bough, is it not, my Lord? About the right height?'

'It'll do,' he groused.

'Trot thither, if thy would, and I shall give thee a glimpse of the future.'

Lovegood watched as the now mounted Rybel deMille trotted into his shade. Susurro had turned him, somehow, somewhen. She was in charge. She was also, Lovegood thought, conscious, in some impossible way, of him.

She said, 'It is not a matter of installation, my Lord deMille. My religion tasks me with using my powers for the good. The partition between Wizardry and Muggledom must weaken and finally crumble. We must reveal ourselves in our entirety to the brute world and do our duty by them. What's an angel that isn't doing its job?'

'A demon.'

'Just so, my Lord,' said Susurro. 'Couldst thou fashion a noose from thy golden braids?'

'Why on earth would I try?' said deMille, lifting the braids from his neck and going to work on them.

Susurro approached man and horse, idling beneath Lovegood's long, level arm. She pressed her small palm on the horse's muzzle and stared into its liquid eyes. 'We mustn't leave any witnesses, deMille. I suppose thou understands that.'

deMille finished working the noose. 'How's this?'

'Try it on. Now loop the other end round the limb and…yes…tie it. Perfect. How hangs it?'

Lovegood felt the tug. 'Stout enough, methinks.'

'And the fit?'

He cinched the knot up to his throat. 'Snug.'

'Dost thou wear a blade?'

'Naturally.'

'Take it, my Lord, and cut thy horse's throat.'

'…I can't do that.' But he'd fetched the dagger from behind his belt, gripped it in a trembling fist.

'It won't be easy, my Lord deMille, but it must be done.'

'Ann, please…'

'Cut Sasha's throat.'

Something happened.

Lovegood could try to tease it apart afterward—people being so quick—but he'd rather forget forever the noises that spilt out of horse and man, then. The sounds of riven beings, their lives pouring from them, nixed in an instant of violent betrayal. He'd rather ease away from the sense of having abetted a crime, the awful rigidity which kept him from lowering his long arm and the man suspended there gently to the ground.

Susurro grabbed his ankles. 'Forgive me, Rybel.' She yanked hard. A wet snap sounded from within deMille, like a fat carrot sundered. A last spitty sputter wheezed from his mouth, thick with tongue.

'Accio brindlestick,' she said. The wand flew into her hand.

Around her, 'til all he could see of the world was the small blur of her face, the day fell apart.