Gloriana

THE THIRTY-FOURTH CHAPTER

Albion, with war banished and the Arabian fleet dispersed even before Tom Ffynne and the Perrotts could meet with it, knew optimism again as Chivalry was at least restored. The Queen made plans for a Progress, regretting only that the Countess of Scaith could not accompany her. Sir Orlando Hawes proposed marriage to Alys Finch and was accepted. He had found the innocent in her, now that Quire’s influence was gone. Sir Amadis Cornfield and his wife were invited to the palace and came, to receive token recrimination, though the Queen’s main purpose was to offer this new, sober Sir Amadis the position of Chancellor, which carried with it an earldom. Sir Amadis begged leave to return to Kent. He said he had lost his taste for statecraft. And Gloriana was alone, as she had never been alone before, and every night she pined for her villainous lover, and her voice was heard through the emptied tunnels and vaults of the hidden palace, the deserted seraglio, as she wept; though she never mentioned his name, even there, in the darkness of her curtained bed.

The autumn grew gradually cooler, but the year was still unnaturally warm. Tatary drew back from foreign borders. King Casimir was re-elected Poland’s King. The Lady Yashi Akuya, having lost hope of Oubacha Khan, returned to Nip-ponia. Hassan al-Giafar was accepted as bridegroom by the Princess Sophie, sister of Rudolph of Bohemia, and Lord Shahryar was recalled to Arabia for execution, seeming distressed when he was reprieved. The last leaves began to fall from the trees and lie in drifts on the paths. Sir Orlando Hawes was made Chancellor, head of the Privy Council, and Admiral Ffynne became, with him, the Queen’s chief adviser. Master Gallimari and Master Tolcharde arranged a further popular display, in the great courtyard, of the mechanical Harlekinade, attended by Queen, nobles and commons. Sir Ernest Wheldrake proposed marriage, in maudlin verse, to Lady Lyst, who drunkenly and cheerfully accepted him. The Thane of Hermiston, who had unwittingly encouraged Montfallcon’s final vengeance, disappeared in Master Tolcharde’s roaring globe and never returned to Albion. Doctor Dee remained in his apartments, refusing visits even from the Queen herself. His experiments, he said, were of major importance and should not be witnessed by the uninformed. He was humoured, though he was by now considered entirely mad.

There was speculation about the fate of Montfallcon, whom most thought a suicide, and of Quire, who had evidently fled through the Spider’s Door and returned to the underworld before escaping abroad. The Queen would not speak of either. The Countess of Scaith, as she had promised, said nothing of Quire and refused to accuse him. Sir Thomas Perrott maintained the firm belief that Montfallcon was the villain who had imprisoned him. Sir Orlando Hawes kept silent on the matter for two reasons-his natural tact and his need to protect his bride’s reputation. Josias Priest emigrated to Mauretania.

The Court resumed its old merriment, and Gloriana presided over it with grace and dignity, though her laughter was never anything but polite and her smiles, when they came at all, never more than wistful. She was as loved as she had always been loved, but it seemed that the passion, which had led her to aspire to fulfillment, was now gone from her. She had become a goddess, almost a living statue, a steady, gentle symbol of the Realm. She took to walking at night in her gardens, unattended, and would spend much of her time in her maze, walking round and round until it became absolutely familiar. Yet still she inhabited it. Sometimes servants, looking from their windows, could see in the moonlight her bodiless head and shoulders drifting as if by levitation over the tops of the yew hedges.

Time went by for Gloriana, hour by slow and lonely hour, and she took no lovers. Her private time was spent with Sir Ernest and Lady Wheldrake and with her surviving child, Duessa, whose son, many years hence, would come to inherit the Realm. She counselled Duessa towards a moderation she had never herself experienced, to balance Romantic faith against realistic understanding.

One night, as she undressed for bed, a palace servant came to her door with a message. She read the wavering words. It was from Doctor Dee. He wished to see her alone, he said, because he was dying and there was that on his conscience he would communicate. She frowned, wondering whether to go at least part of the way with attendants, but then decided she wasted time, if indeed he was dying. So she drew a huge and heavy brocade gown over her shift, put bare feet into slippers and went to the East Wing, towards Doctor Dee’s apartments, taking with her a candle. The way to Doctor Dee’s lay through the chilly old Throne Room, still known as Hern’s Chamber, which she had always refused to enter. She began to shudder, hating the place and its memories. She had not been here since her father’s death. In common with most of her generation she disliked the pointed or “Saracen” style of architecture, found it barbaric and inhuman. It was almost as if she entered the walls again, and only her regard for her old friend led her on. Save for a single shaft of moonlight, which struck the block and the surrounding mosaics of the floor to form a pool, the chamber was in darkness, dominated by the huge anthropoidal statues, the irregular, vaulted ceilings. She paused. There was nothing to fear now that the rabble had been transported to the new Oriental lands of the Empire, save imprecise memories. Yet, as she crossed near the brooding throne dais, she thought she heard a noise from near it and raised her candle to let yellow light fall upon the steps.

She had seen too much blood since the spring, particularly in the seraglio that dreadful night. She recognised the ragged, ruined face of the magus, the toothless mouth opening and closing, the eyes screwed tight shut as the light struck them. There was blood on his beard, blood on the torn nightshirt he wore, blood on hands and legs.

“Dee.” She climbed the dais and rested the candle down on a step so that she could take his head in her lap. “What is this? Some seizure?” But now she could see the little wounds all over him. He had been bitten as if by a whole tribe of rats. “Can you stand?” He must have been experimenting with animals, she decided. The animals had escaped and attacked him in the night.

He whispered. “I was coming to you. She is no longer in my control. With Quire gone…I feared that she would kill you, too.”

“What is it has done this? I must warn the palace.”

“You…she is you…”

Gloriana tested his weight to see if she could carry him. He was a heavy old man. Now he raved and would not be lifted. She smiled as she tried to get him to his feet. “Me? There is only one me, Doctor Dee. Come.”

He was sitting up, an arm about her shoulder. He opened his eyes and she saw in his expression the look of a lover who was intimately familiar with her expressions. She became afraid. He said: “She was you. But she went mad. She was so docile at first. Quire made her for me. Flesh. She was just like flesh. He was a genius. I tried the same experiment-in metal-but failed, as Master Tolcharde failed. Then Quire vanished. I could no longer pay him, I suppose, with potions, with poisons….”

“Quire made what?”

“He made her. The simulacrum. I was ashamed. I wanted to confess. But I was drawn in too deeply. She consoled me so well for so long, Your Majesty. I could not have you, but she was almost you.”

“Almost?” She remembered his passion. “Oh, dear Doctor Dee, what have you done and how has Quire ruined you?”

“She was mad. Attacked me. I stunned her. The philtres Quire gave me for her ran out and I was afraid to experiment, though I tried. She was already unstable. Now she wishes to murder me. For using her, she says. Yet she was made for that use. It was as if she woke up-became truly alive….”

“Where is she?” Gloriana did not attempt to follow his ravings.

“She followed me down. She is over there.” He made a movement with his head. She lifted the candle, saw a dark shadow on stone behind the anthropoidal statues. He began to shiver. “Come,” she said. “Rise.”

“I cannot. You had best go now, Your Majesty. I have given you my confession. Think not too ill of me. My mind was good and, until the end, always at your service, as you know. The poisons. I regret the poisons. I allowed Quire to convince me.”

There came a great noise, as if something heavy and metallic were dragging itself across the mosaic flagging, but the shadow remained where it was.

Gloriana could see nothing of the source until, of a sudden, into the shaft of moonlight which fell upon the familiar stone block, came an old man clad in iron, in antique armour, an enormous black sword, made for two hands, upon his shoulder. His red eyes were hot with the habit of rage. His grey face and beard were thin and his cheeks were hollow. It was Montfallcon, wearing the war-suit of his youth.

“He invented for me the most perfect simulacrum,” continued Dee, scarcely aware of the newcomer. “A soulless creature. I could worship it, however-have my way with it-and no guilt. Or hardly any…”

“Simulacrum!” Montfallcon’s frigid, heavy voice was loud in the hall as he turned to observe the shadow, which now, at the sound, began to stir. “You old fool! ‘Tis a real woman.”

Dee began to breathe rapidly and shallowly “No, no, Montfallcon. There could not be a twin. There was never any story of a twin or I should have heard it. And all witnessed the birth, did they not? Ah,” he smiled, “perhaps-from another world, as I once dreamed? Is that where Quire obtained her?”

“There is only this world.” Montfallcon clanked a few steps more, to lean himself against the block. “Dolt! It is the mother!”

“Flana?” Dee’s voice grew faint. “Flana died in childbirth.”

“She did not. I witnessed her rape and I witnessed the result of that rape nine months later. She was thirteen when she bore the Queen. We were all made to watch-both events. Hern was proud of himself. After all, it was the only time, up to then, he had been able to penetrate a woman. For some reason Flana, who was my daughter, was able to attract him. Flana?”

The shadow groaned.

Gloriana began to rise. She did not wish to hear this tale. And she was terrified of all of them now. Montfallcon spoke wearily:

“It was on this stone he raped my daughter, and on this stone he raped my granddaughter. Twice in his life was he capable of committing the act. I watched both. The blood was always bad, on all sides. I know that now. I sought to burn the knowledge from me. I willed Gloriana to her position. But the blood was bad. Now it is all over. And I am destroyed, hated by all now, because I loved Albion. History will remember your most loyal servant, Your Majesty, as a villain.”

The shadow stood up, muttering to itself. Gloriana was frozen. Her mouth went dry and her eyes refused to close.

Montfallcon gestured to the mad woman. “Come, Flana. Come to your father and your daughter.”

Flana moved with peculiar grace into the light. She looked youthful, as mad people sometimes do, though her face was ravaged and her hair, auburn like her daughter’s, was dyed in places.

“Here she is,” said Lord Montfallcon. “She ran into the walls after you were born, Gloriana, and was there until Quire snared her, drugged her, gave her to Dee in exchange for his secrets and his philtres. I would have known, but I refused to have the walls investigated for the same reasons as you. I hid the fact of Flana from myself. She loved you. Perhaps she still does. Do you love your little girl, Flana?”

“No,” said the mad woman in a thick, terrible voice. “She has been bad. She banished her only true suitor.”

“She saw Hern rape you. She watched from her hiding place within the walls,” said Montfallcon. “He waited until you were exactly the same age, and raped you on your birthday. Do you remember, Gloriana?”

“While the Court looked on. That leering Court.” She said: “I remember. Mother…”

The mad woman ran towards Montfallcon, who took her by the arm. He said: “Kneel.”

She was passive with him. She looked into her father’s eyes. Into her hero’s eyes. She smiled and knelt.

Her head was resting on the block and Montfallcon’s sword was lifting before Gloriana could cry out. “No!”

The broadsword fell. The auburn head burst free of the shoulders. Dee whimpered and then he, too, died.

“Your own flesh,” said Gloriana. “Why?” She left Dee and began to crawl up the steps, one by one, away from the corpses.

“Corrupt flesh,” Montfallcon equably explained, putting the sword on his shoulder again and looking down at his victim. “She should have died when the rest of the girls died. But she agreed to Hern’s proposal. To save her life. I could not stop her then. When you were born, I hoped that you would come to redeem all that had taken place here. But you followed her to corruption, soon enough. My wife and the boys went next. I would not let him have the boys, you see, or my wife. He had a poor imagination, your father, like most monsters. What it was, to be in the power of an all but mindless beast! Yet I waited. I made my plans, developed my ambition. I wanted you to be the golden creature who would give point to all my suffering. You and Albion. And for almost thirteen years it seemed my work, my sacrifices, proved worthwhile and that together we achieved the Age of Virtue. Then you, too, gave yourself to a monster. And now I shall kill you and be done with it.”

She had expected this. She could make no appeal to him. She began to scramble up the steps, one by one, faster and faster, as he came after her, in creaking iron, his eyes fixed upon her throat. She reached the throne, was seated in it before she knew it. He paused. “It can begin again soon,” he said. “With the bad blood extinguished once and for all.”

She began to fear for her surviving child.

“Come,” he said, and gestured towards the block. “You shall die where you were born. You should never have existed. You are a nightmare.”

She made a gasping sound, pleading not so much for her own life, but for his soul, for the life of the great-granddaughter he did not, at this moment, know had been saved from his revenging mob.

“Sin upon sin,” he said. “I should have stopped it then. It went on for too long and Albion was almost brought to ruin by it. Come.”

“No.”

He reached out his grey, gauntleted hand and he took her almost gently by the wrist. “Come.”

Her great strength was all gone. She became reconciled. She rose slowly and was obedient. At her feet the candle began to gutter.

She reached the circle of moonlight. With his hand still on her, Montfallcon pushed her mother’s headless body away from the block. Gloriana, swooning, fell to her knees. Fell into blood.

From the gallery a cool, amused voice called out to her. “Aha, Glory. I see you’ve found your old friend.”

Montfallcon growled and forced her head towards the granite.

“Here I am,” said Quire. He spoke conversationally, as if to Gloriana. “He’s been searching for me for weeks. “Tis a game we’ve been playing, Mont and me, in the walls.”

“Ah!” She broke free and began to crawl back towards the dais.

Montfallcon stumbled over the corpse of his daughter, regained his footing and slowly began to raise his broadsword as he pursued her.

Then Quire was flitting down the steps, his own rapier in his little hand, his black cloak flying, his sombrero thrown clear, his thick hair bouncing around his long face, darting towards Montfallcon as a terrier at a bear, until he stood grinning between them. “Here I am, Mont.”

The broadsword swept down, whistling, to crash with all its weight on Quire’s guard. Montfallcon voiced frightful glee as Quire went down. Quire steadied himself with his free hand and tried to reach for the dagger in the scabbard on his hip, but it had slipped too far around his waist. He ducked, instead, and came up behind the turning Montfallcon, who sideswept with a blow that would have cut Quire in two at the thigh. But Quire had danced back, aiming his riposte at Montfallcon’s only unguarded flesh-his grey face. The sword touched Montfallcon’s cheek, just below the eye, but was knocked back with an iron arm. The broadsword rose again.

Gloriana cried to them: “No!” She could tolerate no more killing. She would rather die herself.

Quire was smiling as his thin blade struck into Montfall-con’s right eye and pierced the head.

The crash of the grey lord’s falling echoed and echoed in Gloriana’s brain. She covered her ears. She closed her eyes. She was weeping.

Through the darkness Quire approached her and again she began to climb backwards towards the throne, as afraid of him as she had been afraid of her grandfather.

Quire paused. “I have saved you, Glory.”

“It does not matter,” she said.

“What? No gratitude left? No love?”

“Nothing,” she said. “You taught me well. You taught me to love only myself.”

He was pleased with his victory over Montfallcon. He advanced with his old swagger. “But I am a hero today, not a villain. Surely I have reprieved myself a little? A kiss, at least, Glory. For your Quire, who loves you dearly and always shall.”

“You are a liar! You cannot love. You are a creature made up entirely of hate. You can imitate any emotion. You can feel very few.”

He considered this. “True enough,” he agreed. “Once.” He came on again. “But I love you now.” He sheathed his sword. “I’ll go. Only thank me first.”

“How long were you there? How long were you watching? Did you let the drama run its course to maximum effect until you acted? Could you not have saved that poor creature’s life-my mother, whom you used so badly?”

“Dee found her pleasant and, while her mind was soothed by what I gave her, she was pleased by Dee. They were happy for several months. Happier than they had ever been before. And she killed Doctor Dee, do not forget.”

“You could have saved her.”

He shrugged. “Why?”

“You are still the old cruel Quire, then.”

“I am still a practical fellow, I know that. It is others who put these definitions on me. My name is Captain Arturus Quire. I am a scholar and a soldier of a good family.”

“And the mightiest, most evil rogue in Albion.” She mocked him. “You’ll have no kiss from me, Quire. You are a deserter! You fled. You removed your support.”

“What? With all those witnesses accusing me? I was tactful, certainly.” Quire took another pace forward.

She smiled. “None accuse you now. There’s the real irony. Your victims forgive you or refuse to believe you the cause of their distress!” She retreated.

He stopped. He put his hands on his hips. “I see no point in playing hero. I was always told that when one saved a fair lady from death one received a favour.” His tone became serious. “I want you, Glory.”

“You cannot have me, Captain Quire. I am Albion’s Queen. I am not mortal. Besides, you taught me how to hate. I was innocent of that emotion before.”

He began to lose his temper. “I have waited for you. I have been patient. I taught you strength. And I learned love from you. Name your terms. I’ll accept ’em. I love you, Glory.”

“Patience has no reward save itself,” she said, still full of fear. “I used to give myself to anyone whose loins ached a little, because I knew what it was to ache. I ached so, Quire. Then you soothed it away and I lost myself. Now I ache again, but I have no sympathy for you or anyone at all. I would rather ache than satisfy another’s lust, because always, when that lust is satisfied, I remain-aching still.”

“Romance is ever attended by Guilt,” he said casually. He drew his sword again. He motioned. “Come to me, Glory.” He glared.

“You threaten me now. With the very death from which you saved me, and so proudly, too. Very well, Captain Quire. I’ll return to the block for you.” She began to descend.

He snarled and he took her with both his hands, abandoning his blade. “Gloriana!”

“Captain Quire.” She was stone in his grip.

He dropped his hands.

She walked past him, through the old, haunted corridors, and into the gardens. They smelled of warm autumn, still.

She crossed the gardens and went through her private gate. She passed her maze, her silent fountains, her dying flowers. She entered her own bedroom.

He had not followed.

Recalling her anxiety, she thought, for her daughter, she entered her old secret lodgings and faced the door to the seraglio.

She passed, on yielding carpet, through into the soothing dark. None lived here now. She recalled that her daughter had been sent to Sussex. She made to return, but paused. Suddenly a thousand bloody images came to her. “Oh!”

In the absolute darkness of the seraglio she fell upon her cushions and began to weep. “Quire!”

Quire spoke from somewhere. “Glory.”

A delusion. She looked up. Beyond the archway into the next vault there was a candle burning. It moved towards her, revealing Quire’s tortured face, floating.

She stood up, stone again.

He sighed and put the candle into the bracket on one of the buttresses. “I love you. I shall have you. It’s my right, Glory.”

“You have none. You are a murderer, a spy, a deceiver.”

’You hate me?”

“I know you. You are selfish. You have no heart.”

“Enough,” he said. “It was no wish of mine. I betray all my own faith. But you taught me to believe in love, to accept it. Won’t you accept mine?”

“I love Albion. Nothing but Albion. And Gloriana is Albion.”

“Then shall I rape Albion?” He drew his sword and placed the point at her throat. She pressed towards it, challenging him to kill her.

“You have already failed in that,” she told him.

He glowered. He took a fold of her gown and he tore it away from her. He found the shift below and tore that. He tore and tore until all her clothes were gone, and still she did not move, but stared with hatred into his face. He seized her breasts and her buttocks, her womb, her mouth. She would not move, save to sway a little when he threatened to make her fall.

He pulled her down to the cushions. He spread her legs. He ripped away his britches to reveal what she had seen so many times before. She refused to weep, though tears threatened. He entered her. Over his shoulder she saw the knife, sheathed at his belt. She reached for it and found it. She drew it forth as he grunted and cursed and kissed and heaved. She raised it, looking beyond him into the candlelight and a sudden image of blood-stained stone, sharp and black and hard as it appeared so frequently in her dreams. The image melted. She cared for nothing but herself. And then she began to tremble, thinking that the whole palace quaked, that the roof must fall. And she gasped. Little, surprised, childish sounds came from her throat. Her body was filled with stinging heat. “Oh!” Wondering, she kissed him. “Quire!”

She shook so mightily and knew so much joy as if she received recompense for every failure she had ever known, that she screamed a high wavering scream which filled the roof and rang throughout the entire palace, perhaps through Albion, as she came.

And the dagger she still held in her hand was brought down with tremendous force, to pass through soft silk and to snap upon the stones of her seraglio.

Quire jumped back, careless of his own unfinished pleasure, and his face was suddenly quite innocent; it seemed every sin had been removed from his soul at once. And he laughed loudly, into the dying echo of her cry. “Ha! Gloriana!”

Then she began, with such utter happiness, to weep.

“Oh, Quire. We are both redeemed.”