Gloriana

THE TWENTIETH CHAPTER

And that night the mood of the Court was lighter than it had been for many weeks. There was a dance, at which the Queen led her courtiers in the Escalad and the Vatori, and the musicians played merrily the best and most complex compositions, and for many hours there was laughter in the corridors and apartments when the official entertainments were completed; then Gloriana, weary and solitary, made her way to her secret halls to find reward for the brilliant part she had performed to cheer the Court and lift the cloud. She sought the clever attentions of her dwarves and children dressed as fanciful creatures of mythology; the caresses of her geishas and their soft, thrilling words; the scented, yielding bodies of her youths; the harsh hands of cruel women who instructed her in every indignity; the brainless bestial men of the jungles; the cold harlots, male and female, in their skins of white silk; the quivering girls who whimpered at her whips. From room to overheated room she went, hopeful that, her duty so splendidly done, she might now find escape from her body’s craving: but no escape came. Limp with weariness she returned at last to her own bed. Alone, she closed the heavy curtains and in darkness sorrowed at the injustice of her fate.

Lord Montfallcon, more carefree and easy since Gloriana had risen to her challenges and thus assured him that the Dream would yet be sustained, awoke to hear her distant weeping voice, while beside him his wives stirred, half-fearful but yet asleep. He was astonished that she did not feel as he now felt. His new mood could not dissipate at once. He thought, without much fervour:

Ah, Albion, still unfulfilled, as the fullness of my purpose is unfulfilled; and are the two so closely linked? This collection, these creatures she maintains are distractions only and bring her more grief, yet her duty to them tells her she must keep them, though they fail her. They go unpunished, these wanton, depraved, distorted monsters, because she is too generous. Instead they are rewarded with every luxury. She would be happier free of them, free of all these private responsibilities-retainers, entertainers, children-but she continues to accumulate them. This is not the quality of conscience I instilled in her from girlhood. It is mere sentimentalism. She is exhausted by all of that. Who benefits? Not Albion. Marriage must surely be the answer-but to whom?

Hern had destroyed so many of his own relatives that there were few in the Realm who could claim large amounts of royal blood. Montfallcon considered the counts, the dukes and the earls of Hibernia, Eire, Valentia or Virginia. Would that Scaith had had a son and not the girl who acted husband for the Queen so well that Gloriana felt no loss. The Grand Caliph was too greedy for power and would not be controlled as consort; besides, there was a strong chance he would not produce an heir, and it was an heir Albion most lacked. Casimir of Poland could not be wed without giving offence to the Caliph. Elsewhere there were princes too old and princes too young, princes mad or princes diseased. The Queen of Corinth had slain all her brothers just the previous month. In Venice, as in Genoa, Athens and Wien, some form of Republic existed and royalty was killed or exiled and therefore useless for matchmaking. The Aethiopes were all crazed. Prince Henri of Paris lay dying even now. No, it must be some noble of Albion, perhaps one who could be elevated first. Her voice came to him again and, as always, he drew his wives to him, to muffle the sounds.

“This blood-all rhythm and fractured melody-and never a resolution!”

The Countess of Scaith heard the desperate words and awoke from a deep and pleasant sleep in which she dreamed she explored a simpler, more innocent world-one of John Dee’s other spheres.

And John Dee himself, in his dark bed, also heard the Queen, but answered her lustily as he drove his body into that of the creature beneath him. “Here! Rise! Sing! Crescendo and then climax come!” And his bizarre paramour joined him in delicious consummation as he shouted: “Gloriana!” and flung himself shuddering from her. “Gloriana…” He stroked her auburn hair, her strong, lovely features, her shoulders, her breasts, her thighs and her belly. “Oh, Gloriana, you are mine and we are both fulfilled.”

And Sir Amadis Cornfield, on his way to the old Throne Room, there to keep his illicit tryst with his own nymph of the night, his darling, laughing beauty, paused at Gloriana’s distant, whispering voice in the corridor and frowned.

“I am betrayed by my body’s cravings and yet my body refuses respite…. Oh, this burden, this burning, shameful burden…” The voice faded as Gloriana slept at last.

Sir Amadis padded on, leaving his wife and his own duty behind, his brain pounding with lustful anticipation, for it must surely be tonight she would consent to give him more than her kisses….

In Master Wheldrake’s darkened chamber Lady Lyst took a heavy glass goblet of wine in one hand and a thin horsewhip in the other and moved her nightgown a fraction so that her poor, panting, naked poet could press lips to shoe and murmur “Your Majesty” to her, for she must, as always when these moods were on him, be the Queen for him. “Your Majesty’s punishment is just, for I am wicked and unworthy. Let your whip inspire me to virtue and drive me closer to the muse so that my verse can once again aspire to the ecstasy it possessed when I first beheld your picture and determined to present myself at your Court, your feet…Your Majesty!”

“Now, Wheldrake?” Lady Lyst lifted the whip. Her voice was slurred.

“Aye. Now! Now!”

The whip fell.

Lady Lyst winced. She had thrashed her own left leg.

The Countess of Scaith began to return to sleep as the Queen’s voice died at last, but she was alerted again by another sound, from overhead, as if a rat negotiated some hollow in her roof. A groan, not Gloriana’s distant note, but much closer to hand, caused her to sit up, seeking the dagger with which, by habit, she had slept since Lady Mary’s murder. She found it, gripped it, drew back her curtain and found a candle on the little carved table beside the bed. Flint sparked, tinder drew, and the candle was alight, making the room more sinister for the shadows thus created. In heavy linen, the Countess stood upright, dagger poised, candlestick lifted, and looked about her.

The groan came again, from above. She remembered the grille and looked up. Did this one also lead into the walls? Was there movement there? A glitter, as of eyes?

“Who?”

The groan again, distinct but weak.

“What do you want?”

The groan.

She took a chair, thinking to investigate. Then she paused. “Begone!”

A mewling sound.

She placed the chair against the wall, against the tapestry, blue and green, of Tristram and Isolde, the castle and the sea, and stood upon it, daring herself to stare into the grille with the candle. The same glittering, the same faint groan. And now a word: “Help…”

“Who are you?”

“Please, I beg…”

She thrust the point of the dagger into the side of the lattice panel and prised. It fell away suddenly, as if it had always been imperfectly secured. It fell with a clatter first upon the chair and then to the carpeted floor.

A tiny, piteous sound. She thrust in the candle and her first sight was a small black-and-white cat, its yellow eyes glaring with pain. It sprang towards her, not to attack, but for security, and she almost toppled. It clung to her shoulder and she saw that it was wounded-a terrible gash in its side, its fur all matted with blood. Carefully, she carried it down and put it on a tallboy where stood a jug of water and a bowl. She had begun to bathe away the blood when she realised that the cat could not have spoken.

She turned and, looking upward, saw a white, stark face staring down at her. The mouth was a crooked gash, bubbling with blood. She could not move. But, as she watched, it thrust more of its body through the gap until it lolled, a stranded frog, still staring at her, still gasping, half-free of the hole, its body hanging down upon her tapestry to reveal the round-pommelled dagger quivering in its back.

“Tallow!” cried the Countess. She recognised the one who had elected himself to guide her and the Queen through the depths.

Then the body fell, arms limp, down to the chair, which skidded across the room, crumpling the carpet, down to the floor to lie upon its back to show how the dagger’s point poked through the patched doublet, to admit further blood. Tallow tried to arch himself, to roll, but he was dying too rapidly. She ran to him and helped him sit, causing more blood to gush, like vomit, from his mouth.

“He has killed me. I resisted him.”

“Who has killed you, Tallow?”

But Tallow’s head had fallen and he no longer breathed. The flow of blood gradually slackened and then stopped, and Una, Countess of Scaith, stood upright, staring down in horror on Jephraim Tallow’s corpse, while his wounded cat mewled from the bowl in which she had placed it.

She stroked the cat. She bathed it as best she could. She dragged a sheet from her bed and threw it over Tallow. She seized the lattice panel and pushed the chair to the wall again, to replace the panel, as if she feared more corpses would come squeezing through into her room. She took another sheet and wrapped the cat in it, laying the little beast on her pillow. She dragged on a robe while Elizabeth Moffett knocked at the door. “Madam! My lady?”

“Back to your bed, Elizabeth!” The Countess would not involve that simple girl. “’Tis nothing.”

“You are safe, my lady?”

“Safe.”

There were political matters in Una’s mind. Another death, and this one even more mysterious, for the victim would not be known, and the Court would be aflame, worse than before. Sir Tancred was blamed, imprisoned. The affair was over, and everyone relieved. She drove out a thought that somehow Tallow had been sent to her, as a warning. She could not involve the Queen. She could not remind Gloriana of what lay beyond the walls, not now. And yet she must have help.

The robe buttoned, she left her room and locked it behind her. Elizabeth was no longer in the ante-chamber. She unbolted the door into the corridor. Elaborate lanterns illuminated the passage. Guards moved through the corridors, but none challenged her as she made her way swiftly to Master Wheldrake’s rooms. She tapped on oak. She heard a murmur and a yell from within. She waited.

“Who’s there?”

“Scaith.”

“Is that you, Una?” Lady Lyst was drunk.

“Admit me.”

There was hesitation. Una grew impatient. At length the keys were turned and two dishevelled figures stood there, “Wheldrake shamefaced, Lyst tipsy, hiding something behind her back. Both wore night-gowns.

“Wheldrake and I…” began Lady Lyst. Whatever she held, it now clattered down behind a table. “We…”

Master Wheldrake helped his mistress to a chair and signed for the Countess to seat herself, but Una continued to stand. “There has been a murder,” she whispered.

“Another?” Lady Lyst frowned and sipped from a nearby decanter. “Mithras!”

“Here in the palace?” squeaked Wheldrake, becoming serious. “Oh, Countess! Who is it?”

“A stranger. Happily, I suppose. I know him slightly.” She noted Lady Lyst’s expression. “I did not invite him to the palace. He-crawled here. Evidently murdered in the gardens. At any rate it seemed to me that if the palace is not to be alarmed further, we must hide the corpse.”

“You did not, you were not protecting yourself?” asked Wheldrake.

“If he were dead by my hand, sir, I should have said so.” The Countess was sharp.

“I apologise.”

“I need help in burying him, however. I thought of the disused gardens. You’re familiar with them? Near the foreign embassies.”

“Now?” Master Wheldrake looked doubtfully at the hiccupping Lady Lyst.

“It must be. You know what a shadow Lady Mary’s death cast. Suspicion, talk of revenge. Let’s have no more. If Tallow, the dead man, is buried, he’ll not be missed. And there is no way the Court can discover the murderer, I assure you.”

“He was some kind of thief, eh?” said Wheldrake. “From one of those taverns…”

The Countess knew that Wheldrake was familiar with the riverside taverns. “Aye,” she said. “He was that kind. A messenger. He brought me news sometimes. You’ll forgive me if I say no more.”

“Of course.” Wheldrake mistook her for a fellow nightbird and was glad to be discreet. “Come, Lady Lyst, let’s to the Countess’s apartments.”

Valiantly, Lady Lyst staggered upright. “Lead on.”

She required aid from them for only a few yards of the corridors and then she was steady again, almost sober, as ever.

They slipped into the Countess’s rooms and she showed them the blood-soaked sheet in which Tallow was wrapped. “We must carry him. You and I, Master Wheldrake. Lady Lyst, the lantern.”

From her pillow the cat mewed. She looked at it, studying its wound. It was not bad and would heal readily. Its concern seemed entirely for its own fate. It made no attempt to approach the body of its dead master.

“He’s light.” The small poet took the feet and Una the shoulders. They left her apartment by the outside door, carrying Tallow’s body in moonlight, while Lady Lyst led the way to the old gardens where, a few months since, Tallow himself had occupied the balcony high above and seen Oubacha Khan and Lady Yashi Akuya in conference there.

It was now that Una realised she had brought no spade. But Wheldrake indicated the broken rim of a well and poor little Tallow was pitched down into it, while the three of them rested against the stonework, panting and anxious if they had been seen. But no lights glowed from any of the nearby windows and they were able to return, whispering and tripping, as Lady Lyst lost herself twice and led them through shrubberies, until they were once more in the Countess’s room.

“I am obliged to you both,” said Una. “You understand the necessity?”

“How did he come here?” asked Lady Lyst, sitting on the bed and stroking the cat. “There seems a great deal of blood about. On you. The floor. The bed.”

“Murdered bringing a message.” Una was happy for them to think she had a city lover. “Some thief sought his purse.”

“And found it,” said Wheldrake. “For he had none upon him I could feel.” He added: “And no weapons, save the dagger in his back. Poor devil.” He became thoughtful. “You are sure the murder was not performed in the palace proper? There has been speculation that Lady Mary’s murderer still goes free amongst us. Or Sir Thomas Perrott? Was this messenger of yours the murderer? Did Sir Thomas find him?”

“It was to forestall such speculation I asked your help, Master Wheldrake,” said the Countess of Scaith.

He smiled. “Forgive me.”

Lady Lyst was breathing heavily, as if realisation came that second. “A murder!” Her voice was unusually loud and Una flinched.

“I beg you, Lady Lyst…”

Lady Lyst lowered her face. She seemed to sleep. “She is tired,” said Wheldrake.

“You were the only people I felt could be trusted.” The Countess gestured. “It was important to me to remove the corpse. I hardly thought. Perhaps I acted hastily…?”

“Wisely,” said Wheldrake. “The Court just recovers. This would make life intolerable for all. As long as you are certain that Lady Mary’s murderer was not that fellow’s murderer, too.”

“I cannot be certain.” The Countess of Scaith looked at the small black-and-white cat, which was licking its wound. “But I assure you, Master Wheldrake, I shall attempt to discover the truth and shall act upon it.”

“Surely” said Lady Lyst, “Lord Rhoone at least should be informed. Or Montfallcon, eh?”

“Perhaps. I must consider the implications.”

“You keep silent to protect the Queen?” Lady Lyst stood up. “Is that it, Una?”

“I suppose that is much of my motive.”

“A worthy one,” said Wheldrake.

“Aye,” said Lady Lyst a little doubtfully.

“You think silence leads to suspicion. That I could make matters worse?” the Countess of Scaith asked her friend.

“I am too drunk to think.”

“I respect your logic.”

“I have no logic. My logic leaves me daily. It never helped.” Lady Lyst moved away. “Wheldrake.”

“Coming.” A sympathetic nod to the Countess of Scaith and Wheldrake was skipping backwards, in his mistress’s wake.

When they had gone Una found that she was looking again at the grille. It seemed to her that blood still oozed from it and down the wall, as if a hundred corpses lay behind it. Until now she had never considered the possibility that Lady Mary’s murderer might be from within the palace depths-perhaps Tallow himself. Yet it was, of course, the most likely explanation. She determined to investigate-perhaps taking Lord Rhoone into her confidence and going with a detachment of sturdy guards. It could even be that war of some sort was being fought in the old tunnels and halls-rival nations squabbling for supremacy of those dark and dreadful subterranean corridors, those rotting rooms, those ruined apartments and abandoned grottoes. The notion began to seem reasonable.

She spent the rest of the night nursing the cat and staring frequently towards the grille, but no more sounds came from behind it. When it was light she cleaned as much of the blood from the carpet as she could and bundled up the sheets. There was a good deal of blood on the tapestry down which Tallow had slid. She used water to wipe the worst of this away. If Elizabeth Moffett noticed, then Una would have to swear her to silence and make up some story of gentlemen fighting here-the kind of tale Elizabeth would wish to believe.

And then, dressing herself, she once more left the apartment, going now to Lord Rhoone, whom she had decided to recruit.

The doors of the Rhoone apartments were open as she knocked. To her surprise she heard Doctor Dee’s flat tones and Lord Rhoone’s boom, full of tension.

A maid came. “My lady?” The maid was weeping.

“What is it? I need to see Lord Rhoone.”

“Lady Rhoone. And the children!”

The Countess became weak with horror. “What? Dead?”

The maid led her into the dining room. There, laid upon the floor, was stout, red-cheeked Lady Rhoone and the plump boy and girl of thirteen and fourteen years, their joy.

Doctor Dee knelt beside the girl, his ear to her heart, while a distracted, terrified Rhoone hovered. “The kidneys,” he said. “It must be the kidneys.”

“They are most certainly poisoned,” said Dee, nodding to Una as she entered. “And you had none of the kidneys?”

“Not quite. Almost.”

“Who?” said Una. She was helpless. Had there been a massacre in the night? Were Tallow and the three Rhoones only a portion of the victims?

“Bad meat,” said Doctor Dee. “The stomachs must be cleared.”

“They’ll live?” begged Rhoone.

“Have your servants bring them to my apartments. No,” Doctor Dee became almost shifty, “to Master Tolcharde’s. There is a physician I can recruit. Antidotes I can try. Stretchers, now!”

Una was unnoticed as Lord Rhoone and Doctor Dee supervised the servants bearing the woman and the two children from the room. She continued to follow, uncertain why she did so.

She became part of a procession behind the stretchers. They went through the old sections of the palace, through the Throne Room, up the broken staircases, along the galleries, to Master Tolcharde’s evil-smelling laboratories. Dee knocked loudly. It was some time before an apprentice answered. Dee turned. “No one in here,” he said. “No one but Rhoone. Secrets.”

Una paused. John Dee looked at her curiously, then pulled her into the musty chambers before shutting and bolting the door. “Countess? You heard of this? You came quickly.”

She shook her head. Rhoone and the stretchers were moving on into the mystery of Master Tolcharde’s chambers. Dee made a decision to continue with them, but held Una’s arm to keep her back. “You think foul play, do you?”

“What’s your analysis, Doctor?”

He sighed. He spoke reluctantly. “Foul play.”