Gloriana

THE TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER

Lord Rhoone came, perspiring and in confusion, grinning to the Queen’s Withdrawing Room, to sink J-Jupon a footstool and with grateful lips kiss the comforting hand of Gloriana.

“Saved,” he said. “Some seer, some apothecary of Dee’s.”

“Not Dee himself, dear Bramandil?” She used his given name to assure him of the depths of her affection just then.

“He could not. As they died, he admitted it. Then Tolcharde brought in this other. After you had gone, Countess. You recall? To tell the Queen.”

He addressed Una’s weary back. She nodded.

“A sniffing of my dear ones’ breath and an antidote was created to revive them. They recover now, in our lodgings.”

“The seer?” asked Gloriana. “Who’s he?”

“Perhaps a traveller. Dee said he came from another world.”

“Ah. A captive of the Thane’s.” She restrained her scepticism.

“Possibly.”

Una moved from where she had been contemplating the Great Yard and the azure lake through the tall, half-opened window. She was very pale and breathing deeply, wearing dark blue with cornflowers stitched on petticoats, pearls and light blue lace. “They’ll live?” Her voice was small.

Lord Rhoone rose to take her hands. “Countess. You, too, are unwell, I fear. You must forgive me.” He squeezed. “Anxiety turned me blind to all other considerations.”

She smiled, but was close to madness at that moment. “I thought we had a plague of murders. When Doctor Dee was so certain…”

“We were all infected by the suddenness of it, and by suspicion based on past events.”

“We must forget Mary,” said Queen Gloriana importantly.

“We must forget so much nowadays.” Una glared about her as if suspecting attack, her hands still in Rhoone’s. “Should that be so?”

“Whether it should or should not, we’ve scarcely choice in the matter.” Gloriana rose, informally splendid in mellow gold and red gold coronet. “There’s no more murders. Bad kidneys were the cause of your family’s calamity, eh, my lord?”

“This heat, madam, turns all tripes foul, faster than any other meat. We should not have eaten them, save I thought them fresh-cut from a newly slaughtered beast.”

“We have already sent word to our Butchery. And to the Larder, also.”

“They were not deliberately poisoned, then?” The Countess removed her hands and returned to a pretended contemplation of the brightly painted panels overhead: Cupid and Psyche, Jupiter and Semele, Titania and the Weaver, Leda and the Swan, all at odds in mood and style and no consolation to a chaotic mind.

“The evidence is against it.” Lord Rhoone stood between reassuring Queen and despairing Countess, anxious at once to be soothed and to soothe. The solution was natural and cheered him. “I must return to them.”

“May we meet this seer and reward him?” The Queen smiled as Rhoone bent his leg, preparatory to leaving.

Lord Rhoone scratched his head. “He’s gone-perhaps back to his own sphere. He did not linger for thanks. A good man. A true follower of Asclepius.”

The Queen frowned. “Let us hope he comes again. I’ll speak to Doctor Dee. Have him invited, Una.”

“I’ll enquire,” promised her Private Secretary, grateful for a duty to perform. “I’ll speak to Doctor Dee today, Your Majesty.”

Lord Rhoone bowed twice while behind him a footman opened the door, then closed it gently on the two women.

“Lady Castora and her children’s escape has excited your blood and put you in poor humour.” Gloriana came to her friend. The Queen was evidently also weary.

Too much nobility all round, thought Una, created over-refined sensibilities, pitched like tight-strung instruments and prone to snapping. And yet she could not confide her fears to the Queen, for all that her silence produced unspecific yet significant pauses in the conversation which gave Gloriana doubts and thus increased her own imaginings. So she replied: “It has, madam.”

“You’d best return to bed and rest. It’s my intention to do the same. My night…Well.” A stiffening: further recourse to Lethe. Una had no more sympathy. Her fears for the Rhoones had exhausted her for the moment, though she felt guilt from being unable to console the human creature she loved most in the world. It was best for her to leave, for she suspected her mood drained the Queen. “I will, madam. I thank you and pray we’ll both be recovered by this afternoon. Then I’ll make enquiries of Doctor Dee and seek out this foreign philosopher. I’ll bring him to you, if I can. With all speed.”

“Mayhap we can encourage him to divine some of our other mysteries.” Gloriana spoke seriously. She kissed the Countess. They parted.

Una of Scaith returned to her apartments, noting how merrier was the general mood of the Presence Chambers as she went through, and wishing that she could share in the atmosphere; resisting her impulse to warn them of the danger she guessed threatened the whole Court but which she could not name. She saw the outer palace as the surface of a sunny lovely pool in which bright little goldfish swam, unaware of the lurking predator in unseen weedy deeps.

Now that Lord Rhoone, from mercy, could not be recruited to help flush the monster, she yet feared to seek allies elsewhere; none at this moment could be trusted for silence. And discretion, though her temperament hated it as that which destroyed more than it protected, was of the greatest necessity until Tallow’s murderer and, she was certain, Lady Mary’s was identified. She must have perfect proof and knowledge of where to strike, or he’d be lost again, in those secret, unwholesome tunnels; escaped forever. She took the wide curving Queen’s Staircase, on which courtiers, including sir Amadis Cornfield and Master Auberon Orme, passed the time of day, wittily and cheerfully, down to her own lodgings’ lower floor, there to dismiss Elizabeth Moffett and her other maids, changing into the costume she had come to associate with her foreboding and her fresh-discovered melancholy: her hose and doublet, her sword and boots. The weapons could be used (she added two daggers to her belt), for she had been trained in arms as a girl in Scaith and more than once, an Amazon in full armour, had entertained the Queen in the Accession Day Tilt. This year she was to play the Peasant Knight in Sir Tancred’s stead. She dismissed these expectations, went to her writing desk, considered a note, then left quill on empty paper, and pushed the chair to the place it had occupied when Tallow came through. There were bloodstains to be seen, still, on the tapestry, if the eye sought for them. She pulled away the grille, considered putting it on the bed, then remembered discretion.

From a basket brought by a maternal Elizabeth Moffett, the little black-and-white cat mewed, as if to warn her. She stroked his head, pondering the problem of leaving an unwanted trail. She took a long cord from one of the bed curtains and tied it to the grille, looping the other tasselled end about her wrist. Then she returned to the chair, a candle and flint and tinder in her purse, to stand there, to put her hands upon the ledge, to scramble, feet snagging in the tapestry so that, to her dismay, it came partially loose from its moorings. But she was up and would have to risk the tapestry’s clue. She squeezed through the hole, the grille bumping and following behind on the cord, to clatter against the gap as she passed down the tunnel. In dust and rubble she wriggled on until the passage widened and she could turn, drawing the cord to close the panel and securing the loose end to a piece of jutting beam which stuck from the stones. Her means of entry disguised and her means of return assured, she continued in darkness for a while, moving by memory along the route that last night brought the dying Tallow to her.

She lit a cautious candle and found herself in the narrow passage, able to stand upright. She wished she had thought to bring a dark lantern, for the candle could betray her. She crept on a short distance, then drew her sword. This action reassured her. The balance of the steel in her hand gave her the illusion of invulnerability, and thus she progressed on lighter feet until she reached the gallery with its little prison chambers off to one side, where the carvings seemed no longer quaint, but menacing. More tunnels, another gallery and then, leading from this landing, a stairway into a wide, dark, deserted hall which might, two or three centuries earlier, have led to an outer door. Mistaking this for the hall to which Tallow had led her and the Queen, she descended the stair to a midway landing, then peered over. The hall was smaller than she had imagined, and unused. Albino rats rose on hindquarters to stare at her with pink, unfrightened eyes.

She began to return up the shivering staircase, to find her bearings. There came some scufflings, which she ignored, ascribing them to the rats. She heard a whisper which could be either human or bestial in origin, but it was of a sort she had detected on previous adventures, so she was not discouraged. However, she made the light of the candle fall on her blade, in case malicious eyes watched and considered attack. She noted another glint at the top of the stair and then she felt her heart’s beat increase.

“Eh?”

She raised her flame. A glimpse of silver. Her voice echoed from below, as if changelings mocked her, readying themselves to replace her. Then blackness was utter again.

She paused, realising the foolhardiness of this venture into the walls. She should have slept first. She should have sought advice, if only from Wheldrake and Lady Lyst. They would have accompanied her, too. But she could trust neither to be level-headed: one too imaginative, the other too drunk. This need to know what had killed Tallow could betray her to her own death. Yet there was nothing to fear from the wretches she had seen. What if one had murdered Tallow? What if another, or the same, had killed Lady Mary when detected, as Una thought, in some crime? Her head, like a mine-stream, ran clear and then cloudy again, moment by moment. She began to tremble. She considered her danger: Tallow had not been armed as she was now armed; Lady Mary had not been armed at all. The nomads of the walls would be in awe of a gentleman with a sword. They were not courageous, on evidence, for why else would they be in hiding here?

“What?”

The echoes seemed to increase. More shadows gathered at her back. She was at last upon the boards of the gallery again and moving forward. She felt the presences fall away and she was alone once more, calling herself a fool, panicked by childish fancy.

Then a slender, ragged figure was revealed by her candlelight, shielding eyes, gibbering as it retreated. “No!”

It was gone. A creaking hinge sounded from somewhere.

If this were a fair example of the enemy, she was much encouraged. She moved more swiftly through the passages, ignoring doors on either side of her as she sought the large hall again.

The passage opened out and she saw that she stood in a stairwell. The staircase zig-zagged up, storey upon storey, and through the rococo railings faces peered, as prisoners from bars, regarding her with frank but neutral curiosity. The faces were oddly distorted, not by the filigree of the banisters but in keeping with their bodies. She realised that she was observed by a large tribe of dwarves, male and female, children and youths, which she had disturbed in some progress between the floors, for they all bore bundles and packs. She became relaxed and smiled up at them. “Good morrow to you!”

Her voice’s echoes were high, now, like tremolo’d viol notes, and were sweet to her ears. Several of the dwarves grinned back at her, revealing their teeth. She saw that the teeth were filed and her own smile faded. She bowed farewell and moved on as quickly as she thought prudent. But she was not to be their prey, for even as she continued her own progress, they continued theirs, up the endless stairway, shuffling and muttering.

It came to Una, as she passed through into another gallery, that the dwarves had something of the characteristics of an evicted people, and she was reminded again of her own image-of a struggle for power, partly territorial, partly philosophical, within the walls. She recalled Tallow’s only phrase: He has killed me. I resisted him.

This chamber had a painted ceiling: the adventures of Ulysses depicted with such artistry that Una was forced to pause and detect as much of them as dust and candlelight permitted. She was awed. She had never seen painting to match it, yet it had gone out of fashion, evidently, and been forgotten as another part of the palace was added and all this built around, built over, buried by changing tastes and embarrassment with a previous era’s art, no matter how consummate or enduring it seemed. Una reflected that very few monarchs possessed the finer sensibilities the world might reasonably expect to find in them. As a race they were vulgar and their ostentation and grandiose pomp, even their simpler pursuits (such as riding to hounds and gaming), were in such perfect accord with the general taste of their subjects that they symbolised and represented the majority far more satisfactorily than any body of elected republicans. She was reluctant to leave these paintings, but she must.

She took a large doorway and crept through a number of apartments-withdrawing rooms, bedchambers and the like-whose rotting silks and linens were evidently still in use. Once she went by a bed and saw that a man and a woman, gaunt and filthy, both wearing plush-padded golden crowns, lay asleep in it. She stepped aside for a procession of musty lords and ladies, whose crumbling trains were supported by the hands of blind children, and she stared, making no attempt to stop them or ask directions from them, until they were gone. They were flesh and blood, as was evident from their smell, but she could not see them as anything but ghosts; as if the original rulers of Albion continued to maintain their Courts, as layer was heaped on layer.

The Countess of Scaith knew that she must, sooner or later, make enquiries of some denizen, or she could be lost in the walls for the rest of her life, sharing the fate of these insane creatures. She found herself upon a back staircase, narrow and winding and somewhat comforting in its scale. She descended, ignoring the doorways she passed on the landings, until she reached the very bottom of the stairs. She moved on, but her foot struck bulky flesh, and she lowered her candle, expecting to find another corpse. Instead the mild, alien eyes of a huge reptile contemplated her, blinking very slowly in the light. A hiss, the opening and shutting of the long red mouth, once, then the thing was on the move, heavy, confident and, Una thought, amiable. She considered following it, as a lost traveller might follow a friendly dog, but it had taken a tunnel too low and too narrow for her to progress in any comfort, and she did not think it wise to risk meeting a herd of the creatures. As she turned away, seeking another door, she saw a girl dressed in the simple, cleanly garments of a country maid, standing close by and staring at her in wonder.

The girl was, in contrast to all others Una had seen here, so ordinary as to seem abnormal. “Sir? Do you come to help me?”

“Help you?” Una hesitated. “You need it?”

“Aye.” The girl lowered her eyes. “I hoped…But there’s none in this frightful place who has the courage….”

“I’ll help you if I can.” Una stepped up to her, to peer into the features, to find that they were real. “But you must help me, too. How do you come to be here?”

“My father brought me, sir. To escape creditors. He thought we should be safe. He had heard of the entrance from his grandfather.” The girl began to weep silently. “Oh, sir, I have been here a year, at least!”

“Where is your father?”

“Dead, sir. Slain by the infamous Lords Evius and Picus D’Amville.”

“Hern’s henchmen? Alive?”

“Old, sir, but surviving here, by retaining habits learned at Court.”

“Montfallcon sent them to Lydia, to fight in the war. They were killed by brigands.”

“They returned, in secret, after King Hern’s death, and have been here ever since.” The maid dropped her voice. “They have men at their command-a few, but bloodthirsty-and rule a great territory.”

“This is part of it?”

“No, sir. This was once the kingdom of another disgraced knight, lately slain.”

“You know a great deal of what goes on within the walls. If I help you escape, you’ll be my informant?”

“Willingly, sir.”

“There is a hall somewhere-I think nearby, but I am lost-where families camp. Do you know it?”

“I think so, sir.”

“You’ve heard of Jephraim Tallow?”

“Aye, sir. He’s his own master. He was kind to me.”

“Well, Tallow inhabited this hall. Or so I’d guess.”

“Then I know it, sir.” The maid took Una’s hand. “Come. It’s safe to go that way.”

“I can find our way back from there.” Una felt that it might, for the moment, be enough to save this young girl from death and return her safely to the outer palace. There, too, she would have a witness to what might be found within the walls-enough evidence to make Gloriana agree to send in expeditions, to arrest the tyrants, to save the persecuted. But even as she thought this she wondered at the enormity of it. And would Gloriana accept the need? Perhaps, for generations, her family had allowed this microcosm to exist, the denizens of the walls being some sort of sacrifice to the dead ancestors who had built the original houses; courtiers to attend so many royal ghosts.

The young girl led Una swiftly and surely through the twisting corridors, to pause at a door, to bite her lip and look enquiringly up at her benefactress. “Here, sir, I think.”

Cautiously, Una pulled back the door. It creaked; there was familiar firelight behind it. She opened it a foot or two and recognised the huge hall. But it had otherwise changed, for in the centre there was now erected a dais, made of slabs of granite and marble which had been hauled from a dozen disparate sources, for some were plain while others bore sections of elaborate bas-reliefs. And mounted on this crazy dais, the components of which formed irregular steps, was a barbaric ivory chair, evidently of East Indies workmanship, intricately carved with scenes of martial glory and amorous conquest. And there was a figure lying back in the chair, its face hidden in a hood, its hands hidden by long black sleeves, its feet hidden by the folds of the skirt. And fitted over the hood was a tall, spiked crown-a crown of steel and diamonds and emeralds; a war-crown, of the sort one of Gloriana’s distant ancestors might have taken into battle with him. And, replacing the nomads Una had first seen here, there was now a noisy concourse of ragamuffin gallants and fantasticos, painted whorish women, who, with trays of gold and silver, waited upon this hooded monarch of the dispossessed, who might have been Death himself and who certainly possessed Death’s power over the posturing rabble. In their filched finery their antique, mouldering costumes which looked to have been stolen from corpses, they might have been corpses themselves, raised by the lord in the ivory throne.

Was this sorcery?

The young girl spoke innocently and far too loudly for Una’s peace of mind. “Is it the place you sought, sir? Are we safe here?”

“It has changed.” Una put herself between the rabble (which had fallen silent and was staring at them both) and the girl.

The hooded creature raised a mysterious arm, apparently beckoning them towards him.

“Whom do I address?” demanded Una, remaining where she was. She was full of fear now.

Then the maid was running forward; running to the throne and through the parting crowd, up the steps, to kneel at the feet of the hooded figure, to huddle there, as if secure. Una pushed against the door through which she had entered. The door would not move.

“I’ve been tricked. Lured by a witch, eh?” Una spoke with crazy irony. “What are you, all of you?”

Again the apparition in the throne gestured and the mob began to converge upon her. She threatened with her sword. Rusty blades were produced. Diseased hands reached out for her. Faces corrupted with sores and boils leered at her. She feinted again. She cut the back of a wrist so that the owner howled and dropped its flencher. She stabbed. Her blow was blocked by a dozen swords and filthy fingers seized her in every private place of her body. She flailed. She screamed. She tried to break free. Beyond her attackers she saw the hooded figure stroking the head of its Judas goat, the cowering girl who, through eyes half-terrified, half-triumphant, watched as Una was wrapped about with thongs and strips of cloth and borne up on the shoulders of the mob, her sword flung away.

Una, shuddering, babbling demands, was carried closer and closer to the throne to be placed, almost gently, on the lowest step. She glared and fell silent.

The figure stood up, face and limbs still hidden, and looked down on her. It spoke to the young girl. “Excellently done. It is she, sure enough.”

Una stared back, finding courage as she controlled her heart’s rapid beat. “You were expecting me?”

“We hoped, that’s all, my lady. You are the Countess of Scaith, the Queen’s closest friend. Dark Una-the deceptive Truth-”

“Truth, sir, is a mirror. Peer away.” Una disdained to struggle in her filthy bonds. She had become cool.

Her captor seemed amused by her answer. “The best of all of them. Better than Montfallcon, even. An enemy to fear. Well, madam, we’ve a use for you. Not much, really. You might keep the old man quiet. Do you find madness embarrassing?”

“What?”

His question had been rhetorical. He signalled her dismissal and again she was picked up, carried through the shifting shadows of the hall, along a short passage. A barred door was opened. She smelt ordure, the stink of a human being who had been incarcerated for some time. She heard an animal noise-a shriek, a roar, a rattling of iron. The mob laughed as she was hurled into the room to land on rotting cloth, and one of them cried out with considerable relish:

“Here you are, old man. Here’s what you need to calm you down! It’s a woman! All to yourself!”

The door was shut, a key turned, and Una, in the darkness, listened to the inhuman noises issuing from the creature which now, through reeking straw, slowly advanced towards her.