Gloriana's Torch

by Patricia Finney

  I shrugged.

  ‘Can you call a wind like they say?’ he demanded. ‘We need a wind to get us out of the doldrums. Can you call one?’

  ‘If I witch, you kill me,’ I said, for I had heard them talking and even understood some of what the ship’s priest had said during one of his brief sober moments, when he had darkly advised Anriques to throw me overboard before my devilish evil, as shown by my sin-stained skin, could poison his ship and himself. Mr Anriques had listened respectfully, pointed out that his wife was a great deal better of her flux, and poured the priest more spirits with his own hands.

  The sailor shook his head. ‘Eh? No, we won’t kill you,’ he said, lying.

  ‘Burn me, eh?’ I laughed.

  ‘No.’

  I looked at the sky, empty, sniffed the air, lifeless. Power was there, I could feel it.

  Well, I did not like to drink only half a pint of green water in a day either. ‘If master say, I go up.’ I nodded up at the crow’s nest, then lifted my hands and feet and stamped to make them jingle.

  The man went to his chief and the chief to Anriques, who came and took the iron jewellery off.

  ‘I personally do not believe you can do such a thing as call the wind,’ he said to me, slowly so I could understand, in the crimson and indigo speech of the Portingales. ‘There will be no punishment if you fail. But some of the crew from your country say you might be able to do it and we are in a bad enough case that it’s worth the attempt. Take her up but keep watch on her, Michael,’ he added, to the barrel-shaped crewman. ‘And you do what he says, Merula.’

  I bowed to him, then kilted my skirt, stepped up to the rail and climbed, with the ropewebs thrumming under my feet and hands, wrists and ankles itchy where the metal had bruised me, but wonderfully light and free now. The soft air did not so much as brush my cheek, the Lion Sun’s mane covered the sky. Michael followed me, his face creased with determination and worry. Meanwhile, the priest my enemy lay unconscious, full of aqua vitae, nothing in his godspace save sleep.

  I stood on the upper cross-trees and looked about and all the sea lay like a table, all the sky like an upturned cup, the Lion Sun was lord of all. To be thirsty is no bad thing for dreamsight. Where are the gods then, I wondered, where do they dance? I had had no dreamsight for days.

  ‘Tie me here,’ I said to Michael. ‘I wait.’

  ‘What?’ Michael scowled.

  Sometimes they punish crewmen by tying them to the crosstrees for a day until they are nearly thirsty and hot enough for the dreamsight to make them crazy. That had given me the idea.

  ‘Just do the spell,’ Michael added.

  I sighed, shook my head. ‘Tie me here,’ I told him. I wished to ask him if he thought that gods are called for nothing, like a dog home to supper? I had taken no bitter herbs, I had eaten that day and drunk a little. Further, the beer they drink constantly and the firewater thay call aqua vitae in particular are death to the dreamsight. So I had seen very few gods, hardly any, only glimpses.

  In the end, after I had got tired of saying it, he did as I asked and bound me against the mast as I stood on the lookout place, but with my arms free and my head bare. I stood with my arms out and waited, welcoming the paw-pats of the Lion Sun on my head, waiting patiently for it to come.

  Soon the Lion Sun lay down to rest and the Leopard Moon came to smile at me and all the great glory of her children, shining in the night. I waited and waited, the Lion Sun woke and grew from cubhood and bullied his way over the desert of the sky and lay down to sleep in his bed of blood. Again the Leopard Moon came with her throngs of bright children. They sang and comforted me in the pain of my body, of my arms, of my mouth full of swollen salt longing for water, my head banging like a gong from the sun, my sickness spinning like a soul. When you seek out the gods, pain is the shortest way to go.

  And at last it came, at last as the Lion Sun returned again and roared across the empty sky, I broke free of my body and went to walk in the dreamtime, searching for the gods who had deserted us …

  Deep in the heart of a temple that is also a fortress and a palace, a hollow-eyed clerk bends over stacked piles of papers, a prisoner of his power and his god. His robe is dark velvet, his candles flicker the memory of bees into the air, and from beyond the wall comes the soothing iron chant of his priests praising his god. They sing beautifully, the black-robed shavenheaded men, singing of blood and mercy in a different tongue, the father of their own, a tongue of rust-red and purple.

  Here and there on the papers leafed methodically before him, from one pile to another, the Kingly clerk writes in firm, rounded, tiny strokes an order, a request, a mordant comment. Every so often a respectful attendant comes carrying boxes of papers and goes away carrying more boxes. Out flow the papers, bubbles on the stream of power, and all over the cold northern lands of the hairy ghosts, armies march or hold, ships sail or dock, men live or die at the direction of the clerkish King’s words. Or so he believes, devoutly. It is a desperate responsibility, one that exhausts him and has dried his face and body to a collection of luxuriously robed sticks.

  Upon his wall hangs an idol of his god, a figure of a man tortured to death, most cunningly wrought, cross of silver, flesh of gold, agony delicately made with rubies for blood, a horrifying thing to worship. No wonder the hairy northern ghosts are so savage. The King looks at it without flinching, accustomed to such sights, reverencing the dreadful price paid for his rescue and the rescue of all his people from Hell. It is a rescue that must continue every day, he feels, never can he relax. In his mind echo the insistent demands that he believes come from his Suffering Jesus god: ‘You must restore the heretic English to the rightful worship of My one and only True Church. (Thereby we shall also gain a populous kingdom and heal the running sore in our empire caused by the revolting Netherlanders.) Your cause is holy, because it is Mine. The English have been lured into the worship of Satan by their Witch-Queen and her minions, and you are the only one who can save them by the destruction of this Queen and the conquest of their cloudy, wet land. It is a crusade against wickedness no less than when you broke the Turks at Lepanto, no less than when your grandparents Ferdinand and Isabella, destroyed the Moors and ejected the filthy Jews. Why do you delay in the face of My suffering? The English crucify me over and over again with their sin. When will you save the English from themselves?’

  Of course, he has never visited the dreamtime, never found the rightful voice of his god: all he hears is the insistence of his own fear. Under the nagging words is a quietness, a breath of the heart, saying, Be gentler, my son.

  Of course, he thinks it is the voice of a demon and ignores it.

  All King Philip of Spain’s dreams are of burning, of autos da fe where he himself burns, screaming eternally in the fires of his terrible sins of omission, of caution, of insufficient zeal. Poor creature, wherever did he get such a terrible god?

  The rubies in the tortured man on his wall suddenly bulged and dripped as real blood down the gold. Then came my Queen Moon to find me, in a new guise, no leopard or zebra, but a woman in white and blue, standing on the serpent of wisdom, wearing the moon and stars on her brow to show who she is. She came in the scent of roses and took one of her pearl-white breasts and poured milk over the thing of horror and the white milk glistened and washed away the rust-red blood.

  The Kingly clerk raised his head and blinked at his crucifix for a moment. He had seen something: blood and milk? He blinked again, shook his head, rubbed his eyes, returned to his marks on the paper. I sang a small song of pity for him and praise for this new shape of the Queen Moon.

  She smiled at me and kissed me on the cheek and beckoned me to follow, and so I did, walking through the wall like mist, for the dreamtime has no spaces in it, to another mistier land where another clerk sat in another study, surrounded by papers, only this one wore black and white, most rich and clean, his black hair greying, his stern, intelligent face yellowed by his battle with the kidney stones that tortu
re him. He scribbled and plotted, a great Queen’s servant. This mirror clerk had no beautiful jewel of horror on his wall, nor any images at all of his god; also his language is not the descendent of the rust-red and purple one, this is the pale blue and green that Mr Anriques had spoken to me also. It was colder in his room and rushes not tiles on the floor. Upon a small shelf by his elbow was his god, glowing in his sight: a stern, black book, marked with a simple cross, much thumbed.

  And there in his godspace, bulged a great, a most mighty thundergod, an angry old man, ghost-white like his worshippers, his great white beard whipped and wracked by wind and storm, full of fury and caprice, all about his shoulders shone the bright orange light of storms, the blue-silver crackle of lightening. He rose like smoke out of the black-bound book and in his hand was the same book and from it came the great bolts of his lightning. Now here was a useful and interesting god, Thundering Jehovah, the god of the blue-green English.

  I looked to see the Queen Moon and she was smiling, then she melted and became again my own darling Lady Leopard, who swished her tail and clicked her teeth at her scowling fellow god.

  Yes, I thought, I have use for a god of storms. So I sang softly to the Thundering Jehovah and at last he took my scent, followed to see where I went. And as we loped back over the sea, the sea turned grey and the sky went to plush blue velvet, and the waves made slaps together to catch the white feathers of foam between them.

  Since every inch of canvas was spread to catch the breeze, the sailors were running to take in sail. I was sick with so much dreamsight, with thirst and hunger and heat. I could not even lift my head and none came as high as I was. The sailors hung over the yards so I could see their pale backs between their shirts and their breeches. With frantic haste, they folded the sails and tied them tight, and turned the yards and lashed them hard to the mast, as the sea took the ship and flung it up and down and there was I left to be the storm’s prey, high above the deck, every part of me shaking and juddering with the hard ending of god-hunting, my tongue swollen for lack of water and the lightening crackling around the mast tip.

  Truly, it was glorious. Their fierce Thundering Jehovah was not angry, only playing and stamping about his sea like a boy in a pond. But the ship danced across the waves with the wind slapping my soaked shirt across my shoulders. I opened my mouth to catch raindrops and sucked the cloth, and cheered to see a god at play.

  They are simple creatures, gods, in the main, simple and easily pleased, only dangerous because men make them so important.

  Once when the wind howled and the lightning came too close, feeling for the sharp points of the mast, my own Queen Moon came galloping across the sky as a zebra to chase away the danger for me, and stayed to dance with the clouds.

  The morning came again and the wind settled to a fresh easterly. At last, they remembered me as I slept quite peacefully, slumped against the ropes, and they came up to fetch me and bring me down in a bosun’s chair, for I slept like the dead.

  My mistress told me later the priest advised again that I be thrown overboard since I manifestly was a witch to call a storm like that. Anriques frowned at him and spoke sharply. He rated the man for superstition, to think that any creature, woman, witch or even Satan, could control the weather, which was, after all, the kingdom of the Almighty. A storm had come while I was tied to the mast and had blown us all out of the doldrums. It was mere chance, the throw of the dice, that was all.

  I had never meant to frighten them so. Poor hairy ghosts, they are so afraid of real people.

  With reason, of course.

  David Becket

  Essex, Early Spring 1588

  Spring away from the fragile wooden ship bobbing on the swell, step forwards in time now, for we shall visit an old friend.

  David Becket goes doggedly about his duties as Deputy Clerk of the Ordnance for Sir Francis Walsingham. It’s a come-down for him. He has been Sir Philip Sidney’s swordmaster, but owing to a most unfortunate mistake he was tortured by the manacles in the Tower and believes he can no longer be a swordmaster. The blow to his head that robbed him then temporarily of his memory, has left him with what we would call mild temporal lobe epilepsy and what he calls the falling sickness, or fits of prophecy.

  And who is to say that such subtle damage to the marvellously complex jelly that is a human brain could not cause its possessor to think past the barriers of time and space and see into a possible future? Or perhaps it is no more than a phantasy from too much phlegmatic humour.

  Swoop through the clouds to the sodden eastern fringes of London where everything that stinks industrially must be sited, where the tanneries and soap-boilers war to pollute the air and water. At the edge of a still worse place is a post-inn where they keep horses ready for use by the Queen’s servants, with a dormitory below and small stale rooms above, each overwhelmed by old beds with lumpy mattresses. In one of them lies Becket in his shirt, the blanket thrown off and fingers of moonlight slitting the shutters to touch his face as he whines in his sleep like a dog.

  A dream is whipping through his skull like a hurricane, making him shake. In his dream it is already the autumn of 1588 and he has become, by some unknown means, Sir David Becket, Captain-General of the hard-bitten West Country army, looking for the Duke of Parma and his Spanish tercios to bring him to battle and stop him reaching Bristol …

  * * *

  They were a little to the south of Dorchester as they came in the late afternoon upon the unmistakeable signs of Parma’s army, slowly eating its way across the land like a vast bloodthirsty slug. Trodden fields, shattered hedges, chewed-up lanes and the small fat unfortified English villages, pillaged and burned.

  It was like the worst parts of the Netherlands in his youth. Worse, because this was country he knew. Had ridden across many times.

  Sir David sent out scouts to be sure they did not find any of Parma’s tercios by walking into them and also because he was wondering … He couldn’t help it. He had not been home since that night his father broke his nose, threw him out and disinherited him for reasons that had seemed wholly ridiculous when Becket was a lad of twenty, but now seemed cogent and sensible to the thirty-five-year-old man of authority.

  One of the scouts clattered back at the gallop in the late afternoon, whey-faced, stammered something reluctant. Sir David Becket looked at him, shook his head. He had to go and see.

  He thought there was no likelihood of meeting Parma anywhere near, from the reports of the other scouts. Perhaps the Spaniards had withdrawn back to London for the winter. Becket was praying for a good hard one and so far the autumn had looked promising, setting in wet and with bitter nights. He had some ideas about uses to which you could put a frozen Thames.

  But first he had to see for himself what had happened to his family.

  Hand easing the small of his back, which was aching, he told his second-in-command where he was going, listened to the remonstrations and then repeated where he was going. His second-in-command was not happy and said so; Becket swore at him and then allowed the man to order up a bodyguard of forty riders, which he felt he had no need of at all. The rest of the column would make camp where they were. In the morning they would turn north, to be sure Parma was not feinting north for Bristol and incidentally, perhaps, draw some of Medina Sidonia’s besiegers south-westwards from Oxford. This might then make it easier for Sir Robert Carey to relieve the Queen there, supposing he got through in time with his father’s motley Borderers.

  Becket had been in the saddle since two hours before dawn and had eaten on the move. His stomach was rumbling, as it usually was, but at least he had not got the piles or the squits like many of his men. Permanent tiredness was a normal condition of war, after all.

  The forty lads of his guard sorted themselves out eventually, jostling to be nearest the Queen’s Captain-General, trying to impress him with their smartness and hardness. He sighed. He was now surrounded by a pack of twitchy young gentlemen with no sense, on nervy young horses
with no brains. By God, he knew he stood a better chance on his own with one outrider.

  Becket’s shoulders and wrists were aching, his hands buzzing as they often did when he was tired and also in wet weather. The ugly white scarring on his wrists seemed to make his hands colder. He rubbed them, trying to get the blood flowing and his sleeping body did likewise, a habitual gesture, awake or not.

  Then, in the world of his mind, he turned his horse’s head south, took the road he remembered, despite its churned-up state, and pricked the animal to a canter on the bits that were passable.

  It took them two hours to reach Middleton, passing two other burned villages on the way. Somebody witty had dressed a sheep in a stolen hat and cloak and then amused themselves shooting at it while it tried to run away. This Becket took as a good sign, in terms of Parma’s grip on his chronically unpaid troops, and a bad sign for himself and his house.

  The village had been burned, of course, the lychgate broken, the cottages ransacked. Here and there lay corpses; Goody Brownlow had made a fight of it, seemingly, since she was pinned to her cottage door with a pike through her and a woodaxe still in her fist. Over a fire made of pews from the church, now without its lead roof, hung the charred remains of a pig.

  The forty lads of his guard looked at each other and sideways at him. They knew where they were, why they had come.

  ‘Half of you keep watch,’ he said wearily. ‘Half see if you can find anything worth keeping.’

  Becket turned his horse, who snorted in protest, and carried on up the trampled lane towards his father’s house, built from the ruins of the local priory. His expert eye fell on some small and inadequate ditches dug in the ruined orchard and herb garden, ludicrous attempts made at fences and traps. Oh Lord God, had his brother tried to make a siege of it?

  Becket House had been burned and still smelled of smoke, still occasionally crackled as another beam dropped. Becket walked in slowly through the door his father had booted him out of fifteen years ago. It was now drunkenly off its hinges and shattered by axes. He went through the lobby and into the small hall, once proudly hammer-beamed, now open to the sky.