Blood Ties

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘Isn’t that why we are here – to play?’

  ‘Perhaps. But I have a proposition for you, a secret to tell you, better than any game. Would you hear it? Come, return to your seat. Come. Let me share a secret known to maybe five people in this whole kingdom.’

  The door would not open until he commanded it. She had made her point, won it even. She sat again, as Renard moved around before the table.

  ‘You would share a secret, my lord?’

  The Ambassador leaned forward, fingertips resting on the table edge, his eyes beneath the heavy veil of his lashes fixed upon her.

  ‘The Queen’s pregnancy is false. Her desire for Philip’s child, for the heir to a Catholic throne, for the sign of God’s Blessing so long withheld in her years of hardship, this desire is so strong that she has conjured herself a phantom baby – a shade so powerful it brings her a swollen belly and milk to her dugs.’

  Elizabeth’s first thought, heaved with sadness into her heart, was, Oh, poor Mary. But she would not reveal that emotion to this man.

  ‘And how do you know this? How do you know for false what so many others believe to be true?’

  ‘Her closest lady-in-waiting is my … confidant, herself the mother of three. Her doctor tells the Queen what she wants to hear and then tells me the truth.’

  ‘And what of this? If it is true my sister will learn the sadness of it eventually. Within two months it is said.’

  ‘What of it, indeed. That is where my proposition comes in. Though now I think on it, maybe “ultimatum” is the better word.’

  ‘It is not a word I respond to, Ambassador.’

  Renard went on as if he had not heard her. ‘All that matters to the Queen is her belief in this answer to all her prayers. She is convinced she will deliver a healthy child. What would she do to the person who would harm that beautiful baby? If she believed, say, that witchcraft was being practised against her and her innocent unborn? Would anything save that person, no matter who?’

  Elizabeth almost laughed. ‘I have been accused of almost everything in my twenty-two years, Renard. But I have never been known as a witch!’

  ‘No,’ the Fox replied, ‘but your mother was.’

  It was as if those words stopped air from entering her body. She could not breathe in for a moment, and the words that forced themselves out seemed as if they were the last she would ever be able to speak.

  ‘My … mother?’

  He saw her pain, leaned in to savour it, his voice low and hard. ‘Anne Boleyn. A whore, certainly. A heretic, undoubtedly. The woman who stole Mary’s father’s love from her mother, breaking her heart, breaking the Church. You wonder that she will not see you? Every time she looks in your face she sees the cause of all her woes imprinted there. Sees that bewitcher in you.’

  Somehow, air came in again, and she used it, and the next breath to muster her defence. There had never been proof against her. No one had ever proved anything, it was why her head still sat on her body. This … absurdity could likewise not be proved.

  ‘What will you do? Take a poppet with “Boleyn” smeared in goat’s blood and a pin through its belly? Place it under the Queen’s birthing bed wrapped in my kerchief? My sister may have her great desire but she will not be blind to cozenry of that sort. She will not condemn a sister on such a falsehood.’

  Renard’s eyes had grown large as she spoke. ‘They say you have a good eye for archery, my lady, and you are so near the mark. But a poppet? Oh, I think we can do a little better than that. Something that can be placed there, under that bed, something so distinctive it could only have come from that whore, that heretic, that witch, your mother.’

  ‘What object so distinctive that it could condemn one of the Blood Royal?’ Elizabeth’s voice was strong again.

  The dark eyes gleamed. ‘Why, the very symbol of her magic. Her six-fingered hand.’

  Her stomach threatened to void through her parched throat. With it came disgust, outrage. Once more they were trying to use her mother, the woman she hardly knew, who yet lived in every pore of her body, filling now with fury.

  ‘You have violated my mother’s tomb, stolen her bones, to threaten me with this?’ She was out of the chair now, her face thrust up into Renard’s. Surprisingly, he leaned away.

  ‘The hand was not there. It confirmed a strange story we’d heard. Men have been dispatched to find the resting place of this unique … relic. As we speak, it is probably on its way to us. We hope to have it within the month. Within the time span of your sister’s remaining hope, anyway. And then, we can use it or …’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘You can agree, with oaths and papers signed, to prior contract to marry your sister’s husband, Philip of Spain, on the sad circumstance of the Queen’s death.’

  And there it was. A simple sentence, simply spoken, the core of the complex web. Strangely, instead of being more enmeshed, Elizabeth felt almost free. She had plucked out the heart of the mystery. England, her England, locked through her in the Imperial-Spanish embrace, within the bosom of the Holy Church. This was the ultimate. There was no greater danger to be faced. Her breathing began to grow normal, a trace of a smile appearing, as it often did, when the mask returned to her face.

  ‘Well, Ambassador, you would have me think on this?’

  If Renard was disconcerted by the change in her, he did not show it. ‘Of course, my lady. You have a little time. As I said, the relic should be with us soon. And your sister still has her hope. The game, for the moment is paused. It is your move.’

  Elizabeth looked down then, to the tiny warriors below in their ivory and black ranks. ‘Of course it is. And I may take this board away with me?’

  ‘It is my present to you, my lady, as I said. I have this game on another board at my lodgings.’

  Elizabeth reached down, moved a piece to cover her knight.

  Renard leaned forward. ‘Your queen? Is it wise to bring her out so early?’

  Elizabeth smiled. ‘As you said, I only have a little time. And the queen is the most powerful piece on the board, is she not?’

  The door opened to three raps of Renard’s hand, her hooded guide beyond, beckoning her to follow. She kept her eyes fixed ahead, her head high, ignoring the stares of the kitchen lackeys. When they reached the dark stable yard she clutched the chess box tight to her bosom, as if to ward off the night breeze. Yet the cold was not outside her but within, where Renard had laid it. She felt it spreading, pulled the wood even harder into herself, so that a sharp corner gouged through her dress and marked her skin there. Focusing on that pain helped her stave off the other that threatened to overwhelm her. If she was in her quarters she might have let it burst from her, where others would not see her weakness, report it. She had between there and the west wing to master herself, to begin to plan. The game was not yet over.

  After Renard had closed the door, he went immediately to the opposite wall. Running his hand down the panelling his fingers encountered a catch which he flicked. A door swung open and a man stepped out, short of stature, richly dressed, pulling at the small white ruff around his neck that hung over the gold brocade doublet.

  ‘Christ’s Wounds, Renard. We cannot breathe in there any longer.’

  The man fell gasping onto a chair, while Renard stooped into the little chamber and pulled the door partly to, just enough so that he could look out through the mirror. The room seen, from that side, through slightly convex glass, spread away from him, outer objects blurry, the King at the table perfectly clear.

  ‘A marvellous device is it not, Majesty?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Philip had regained his breath, moved back to stare into the mirror, scratching at his trimmed, pointed red beard. ‘It’s remarkable. One really can see nothing from this side. She was looking straight into our eyes. It was … disconcerting!’ The series of ‘esses’ came out on that Castillian lisp that Renard found ‘dithcontherting’ himself. The English mocked their ‘Thovereign’ relentlessly for it behind hi
s back.

  ‘Italian, you say.’

  ‘Venetian, Majesty. Though it is said they learned the craft from the Turk.’

  ‘Really.’ The King moved around to look out through it again. ‘We tell you what else disconcerted. Her eyes! Extraordinarily fine, eh? And her skin – like a milk maid’s, is it not? Eh? Eh?’

  ‘Indeed. So your Majesty will not find his part in the game too tedious?’

  There was no hint of mockery in the voice, but Philip of Spain looked at Renard sharply before moving back into the room.

  ‘We wish you would stop referring to it as a game. We are dealing here with affairs of the highest order. The preservation of the Faith in this island. An alliance against the treacherous French. And we do not like the way you speak to … to our future consort. We still think that our wooing would be enough. We do not think these threats made against her, with their taint of sorcery, are necessary. She is a princess, my future Queen. You must remember this.’

  Renard made an elaborate bow. ‘Your Highness is right in this as in all things. The one sister, your sad Queen, dotes on you as on some Greek hero. How can the other sister resist you?’

  Philip, King of Spain, heir to the Holy Roman Empire, uncrowned King of England, again looked for something behind the words. In his entire time in this rough kingdom, he and his court had been subjected to the barbarous native ‘wit’, and he was sensitive to it. But Renard was his ally here, his subject and servant. Someone he had to trust, even if he didn’t particularly like the man from Franche-Comte.

  ‘Well, we shall see. We will do our duty.’

  Renard saw the smile come again into the Spaniard’s brown eyes. Philip was nobility incarnate, courteous, charming and, to a woman, not unhandsome. He could see why poor Mary so adored him. He could see Elizabeth, beset so with her enemies, desperate for any friend, falling too. Goaded on with a push from a six-fingered skeleton.

  Bowing to usher the king out, Renard lingered on that image and smiled. The game was advancing, with pieces of power nearly ready to be brought into play. He just had to clear a few pawns out of the way first. Yet pawns, as every chess master knew, were important. Vital even. Following Philip from the chamber, he wondered where some of his pawns were now.

  SIX

  BROTHER SILENCE

  In the walled garden of the Jesuits, scents assaulted the Fugger’s nostrils like waves of soldiers storming a breech. His back was against one of the dozen cherry trees, blossom heavy, thick bulbs of petals shedding some of their number to float by his face, settle on his hair, his clothes. In the earth beds before him, herbs released their unique fragrance, each struggling to outdo its neighbour. On one gentle breeze, lavender would predominate, the swathes purple and prominent; then would come the softness of camomile or the barest hint of clary sage. There was tangy citrus, a bergamot tree in bloom. Nearer the house, all he could see were the bushes of rosemary, their delicate pink flowers bursting forth and when that savour reached him he turned his face away again, tried to resist his overwhelmed sense. Rosemary was for remembrance and, if he and his were going to survive, he had to force himself to forget.

  Suddenly, the wind changed, swept now from the town below, bearing its different aromas, more fitted to the cast of his mind; for under the salt of the sea was the corruption of the harbour, rotted wharves, rotting fish, rotten humanity. He had arrived in Tuscany here, at the harbour of Livorno, nearly twenty years before. It had been a fetid stew then and was still despite this demi-Eden hidden behind its Jesuit walls.

  Nothing changed. He’d arrived then in search of Anne Boleyn’s hand, and he was leaving on the same quest. When the tide turned, in a few hours, they would be sailing for France.

  They let him sit there, no manacles to hold him, one soldier dozing in the shade of the doorway the only precaution against a man with barely half a hand climbing the high walls. Gianni had come out just once in the afternoon, glanced at him, said something to the guard and gone back inside, busy with his preparations. He had his father’s certainty, that was clear, and he had decided that the Fugger was barely worth the watching. And he was right – for as long as that locket swung at Gianni’s neck, Maria faced terrible harm and the Fugger was as powerless as he had ever been in his life.

  He had attempted to talk to the boy he’d once taught Latin and Greek, but Gianni had walked away, wanting no news of his family, giving no reason for his actions. Only his other captor, the Jesuit, Thomas, would listen and the Fugger had poured out much of what he’d wanted to say to Gianni, about family, about loyalty and love, until he came to the story of the hand and he realized that the Englishman’s smiles and his eyes focused softly ahead, were weapons and the listener was on the side of the enemy.

  As the sun finally dipped below the wall, a bell sounded in the little tower. The gardeners laid down hoe, fork and spade and made toward the house. Thomas appeared in the doorway, sought the Fugger, beckoned.

  ‘I know you have little appetite, friend, but eat you must. We will sail with the night tide and I think our days at sea will not be so well-fed.’ He took the Fugger’s mangled half-hand. ‘But let me first change this bandage. The herbalist here has distilled a new compound from a plant sent from our missionaries in India, blessed by the hand of Francis Xavier himself. He says this “jasmine” has a beneficial effect on the blood. We need to get more into your hand if we are to save it.’

  The Fugger allowed himself to be led away from the stream of people moving into the food hall, to a little table where a tincture was applied to his wound, the whole wrapped in fresh linen. Thomas’s gentle questions he ignored. The bandaging done he followed the black-cloaked figure into the hall.

  Though their men ate with the rest of the Brothers and their lay counterparts, Gianni, Thomas and the Fugger joined the leader of these Jesuits, Nicholas, a garrulous Neapolitan, large of body, short of hair, at the small separate table reserved for honoured guests. Thomas’s papers, from the Emperor and the high offices of the Society of Jesus, granted them this special favour. One that Thomas felt he could have done without as Brother Nicholas was starved of conversation, far from the intrigues of Rome, and wanted to give his opinions on all that was wrong, all that should be done. Thomas would have preferred to listen to the lessons from the Bible being read at a lectern at the room’s end, but out of politeness he nodded in agreement, made the occasional comment. Gianni ate sparingly, drank little, said nothing, listened to everything. The Fugger merely stared at the plate before him, until admonished in a whisper to eat by Gianni.

  ‘You won’t cheat us that way, Fugger. If you die from lack of food, who will take the locket to Rome to free Maria from those guards who must be so amusing her by now?’

  Brother Nicholas had despaired of stimulating conversation. ‘I was in a silent order once.’ His voice was plaintive. ‘Three years, on the coast of Denmark – of all the places I have visited in this world the most barren and isolated. The ignorance of the people there was astounding, in everything, that is, except fleshly sin. Even within the monastery. No, especially within the monastery. I’ve disapproved of mute observation ever since. With words, at least you can accuse people of their sinful acts. That’s why here, I encourage talk, debate, discussion. We need words. Do you not agree?’ He was speaking, pointedly, straight at Thomas.

  The younger Jesuit smiled. ‘I think there is a time for words, certainly. How else are we to spread the knowledge of God’s love, of his forgiveness of humanity, demonstrated in the sacrifice of his only Son, the Redeemer?’

  ‘With actions.’ Gianni’s voice was quiet, intense. ‘Words are weak tools, too easily misinterpreted. Actions – decisive, bold, true – they are unmistakable. The sinner ignores the words that urge him to repent his sin. He can’t ignore the firebrand thrust into the pyre at his feet.’

  Brother Nicholas was surprised at the torrent his own words had produced and not displeased. Debate at last!

  ‘Well, Pope Innocent the Third agr
eed with you, young man. “Action ranks higher than contemplation,” he said.’

  Thomas’s eyes had not left those of the young man opposite, for the cleansing fire Gianni talked of burnt there, the first time he’d revealed any such flame.

  ‘Forgiveness is an action too, is it not?’

  ‘Forgiveness … is a word.’

  The fire had disappeared, eyelids snuffing it. Thomas noticed that the Fugger had looked up from pushing food around his plate, was now staring at Gianni intently. Behind him, behind Brother Nicholas, one of the lay brothers was reaching forward to refill his master’s wine goblet. Thomas had noticed this man in the simple wool cassock before, among the herbs, a hood pulled down well over his face. Noticed him because he seemed not to want to be noticed … no, desire was not part of it, he simply wasn’t present unless you chose to single him out with a look. It was the sort of oddity Thomas noted, a large man who moved like a small and stealthy one. He’d tried to speak to him, to question him about the jasmine. A finger had pointed an answer, the only reply he received. To forestall the next esoteric point bound to be coming from their talkative host, Thomas gestured to the man pouring the wine.

  ‘And yet within your domain some have chosen a wordless world, Brother Nicholas.’

  The Neapolitan looked around, started a little. ‘Ah, he always does that to me. You can be quite certain you are alone in a room, maybe testing out its acoustics, eh? And he is standing there like that. Yes, yes, pour my wine.’ He held up the goblet. ‘He has earned his name well, for in my five years here and, I am told, in the fifteen before that, he has never uttered a single sound. He hears, he obeys, he … treads around. Softly. But he does not speak. Can’t, probably.’

  ‘And his name?’

  ‘Not very original, I’m afraid. They call him Brother Silence.’

  The goblet rose beside the Fugger and his eyes rose with it to the hood that had opened somewhat so that the face within was partially exposed. Not much of it, the right side, and he thought, at first, not even that because it did not seem to bare any aspect of man. Where the eye should have measured the pouring, there was a puckered depression, a socket of old scar tissue with a darker red slash from the missing eyebrow to the top of the cheekbone. The nose looked as if it has been partly burned off, a nostril that was little more than a flap of skin resting atop a gash of a mouth. As the man bent, the hood opened to the other side and a solitary eye gleamed there, as blue and pale as ice on a carp pond. It was a ruin of a face and in a moment, the Fugger saw again another face, laughing in a roadside tavern in Bavaria as he chopped off the Fugger’s hand, howling in a dungeon within a kaleidoscope in a palace in Siena, finally shrieking his death agony at a crossroads in the Loire – the same crossroads that the Fugger was leading these men to now. At each encounter there had been terrible pain and it had ended only when that ruined face was punctured by the Fugger’s dagger. He had killed a man called Heinrich von Solingen at that crossroads, finally, certainly, nineteen years before. But gazing at this silent brother’s hideous scars and the blue eye, he could almost believe he hadn’t. That thought, of nightmare beyond words, brought him to his feet, crashing the chair to the floor behind him, had him running for the door before the meagre contents of his stomach could void his body.