Gloriana's Torch

by Patricia Finney

  ‘I still have need of an attendant.’

  I smiled and bowed to her.

  * * *

  The Salamander of London, two masts, was moved to the lower Pool of London, to have the sails rerigged. But at dead of night on the ebb tibe, with Rebecca and myself and Becket and little Thomasina de Paris on the bridge, she slipped her anchor and drifted out, silent as a ghost with a friendly wind to push at her lateen sail, down the Thames, past Tilbury Fort and Gravesend and so in to the Narrow Seas.

  We sailed as quick as we could, afraid of the flyte-boats that would take us as a pretty prize, and came into the Hague two days later, another city like London except that their streets were made of water, and the people sounding and looking much the same to me only more guttural. We had crossed so quickly that Rebecca and Becket were still puking when we came to the quay.

  Rebecca stayed with her father’s Factor there, an elderly close-faced man with a richly furnished house who treated her with great respect and the rest of us with none.

  Particularly me. He had me sleep in one of the outhouses, empty at that time, but there were ring-bolts in the stone walls and a door that locked on the outside. I lay on the straw pallet Rebecca had insisted I be given, and sniffed the air full of sorrow, and tried not to be enraged. Once perhaps I might have invited my Leopard Lady to ride me and take a terrible revenge, but by then I was well-mired in the hairy ghost stupidity of good sense. After all, Rebecca would be asking for news of my son, as she had promised.

  The next day I went shopping with Rebecca to buy Dutch clothes for all of us. She had a moneybelt and she passed up and down the great second-hand clothes market, muttering her list to herself.

  We met Becket at a boozing ken where she and he spoke only Dutch and so I was left marooned by words again, not understanding what was said.

  Everything about Becket smelled of weariness and fear.

  At last the thing he had feared came about, for he brought it. I was attending my mistress to her chamber for the night, following her up the stairs. Thomasina she had sent on some errand. Becket came after me suddenly.

  ‘Merula, a word,’ he said and drew me onto a landing. ‘I’m sorry…’ he began and while I waited to hear what he was sorry for and my Lady Leopard turned her back on me, he brought his fist up and hit me on the chin.

  I went down like a poled ox, for he caught me right on the point and I felt only the thud of his fist connecting and then the floor hitting me and a black hole and then his boot in my gut to be sure I stayed there. The air became my enemy as I fought it for breath.

  Rebecca spun on the stairs, stared.

  ‘Mrs Anriques, you will do as I say.’

  And then I heard her little footsteps running on up, her skirts lifted, the slam of a door as she rushed through it, and then she was back out again, a wheel-lock dag held in both her hands.

  Fireflies fluttered round the two of them as they faced each other, for blackness was coming over me again. I had got to my hands and knees and waited gasping, but Becket saw and kicked me again. I thought the planks of the landing a better way to rest, and collapsed.

  ‘I have been commissioned to see to it that you do not risk yourself in the dungeons of Inquisition. When I have done the Queen’s mission, I will make full search for Simon…’

  ‘Mr Becket,’ said Rebecca, cold and furious. ‘Whatever my uncle may have paid you to keep me out of harm’s way, you may not do it.’

  Becket went up one stair. ‘Put the gun down,’ he said coaxingly. ‘Please, Mrs Anriques, for your husband’s sake I had rather not lay hands on his wife, but if you try to shoot me you will find it jumps in your hand and breaks your wrist and further you will probably not hit me even at this distance … So give over this foolishness and let me lock you safely in your room until I have gone to the ship.’

  ‘He said you would do this, he told me you would play me false.’

  Becket went up one more step, but Rebecca stood firm. I rather thought she might shoot him in fact, or at least try to because he was telling the truth, it’s hard to hit anything with a handgun.

  ‘Who did?’

  And that was when the road through time we were walking upon suddenly split, for out of the shadows below the stairs stepped a tall, grey-haired man I did not know, backed by other men of his own affinity, and another handgun held in his right hand. He had long lost his left arm: his sleeve was pinned to his shoulder and he was grim with satisfaction.

  And now Becket was afraid, truly afraid. ‘By God,’ he said, ‘you knew.’

  ‘Of course, I knew,’ snapped Rebecca. ‘Do you think I’m blind or deaf or do not know my uncle? He gave in far too easily. Go down the stairs ahead of me and take your black bitch with you.’

  Becket hooked his fingers in my collar and dragged me until I wobbled myself up to my feet, still panting for breath, still bent, my head banging like a gong and the hinges of my jaw hurting.

  ‘Mr Fant, we shall do as we planned.’

  ‘It would be better to kill him,’ said the one-armed man. ‘He’s a coat-changing traitor and he’ll betray us.’

  ‘No,’ said Rebecca. ‘No noise and no corpses. In there, Mr Becket. And you, Merula.’

  I had known nothing of it, but it seemed she thought I did and had not told her. Becket’s nearly breaking my jaw had no effect on her.

  Indeed I should have seen it coming, the Lady Leopard should have warned me, but the booze had dulled me until I was no more than the hairy ghosts. I may be able to speak to the gods, but I have no gifts of prophecy.

  Becket blinked at the man who hated him, whose last remaining hand was steady to hold a dag and was backed by henchmen who looked quite able to deal with both of us. ‘You don’t understand, Fant,’ he said, ‘You have completely mistaken—’

  ‘I saw Haarlem fall because you betrayed us, I saw all the garrison butchered, I saw … You cloak your treason and most people are fooled by you, but not me and now not Mrs Anriques.’

  Becket looked at him considering, then spoke directly to Rebecca. ‘Who will be the gunner for you, to give you countenance among the Spanish?’

  ‘I will,’ said Fant. ‘Do you think I learned nothing about gunnery during the siege? I know Dutch as well as you do, if not better. And at least I will not sell her to the Inquisition the minute we’re safely in Lisbon.’

  ‘And the other, the Queen’s mission?’

  ‘I shall find it out better without you to hamper me,’ said Rebecca. ‘The innkeeper has orders to let you and your black whore out tomorrow morning when we will be safely gone. Then you can shift for yourself. I have already written to my uncle.’

  Becket nodded. That was all. Once he might have thought of something to try; now he made no more protest, for his heart was filled with a great black weariness. As for me, among the fireflies from being struck and the sick breathlessness, I could just make out the shadow of my Lady Leopard, twitching her tail in the shadows of the room full of barrels and hanging hams that we were led to, and locked inside in the dim light and the pungent smell of pickles and salt beef and salt cod.

  Becket sat down on a barrel and put his face in his hands. I squatted down in the pungent dimness, rested my back against the swell of another barrel and looked up at the little barred window. At least in that place, if they forgot us, we would not starve although we might die of thirst since everything was so salty. My mind was spinning strangely, most dizzy, most split from one thought to another. It took a long while for me to be able to think more than two thoughts in a row. And my face hurt.

  Rebecca had called me Becket’s black whore. It is their word for a woman who lies with men for money. To them any woman who does so unwed is a whore, they are as bad as the Arabs for it. When I had lain with Becket, I had done so for the pleasure of it – even when I first became upside-down, there were men who came to me in the forest that I did not geld or kill, although they were few because the warriors feared me and there were plenty of other less d
angerous, more willing and younger girls after all. To be sacred to a god, it is not necessary for us to be chaste, only to listen. It was not lying with Becket that had made me deaf to the Lady Leopard.

  But I had never thought it would make Rebecca jealous enough of me to hate me. How strange that she should think I must be faithful to her in that way as well.

  Becket was silent for an hour before he lifted his head and blinked at me. I smiled at him, ate some of the ham I had cut from the nearest hock and offered him a slice off my knife. He offered me some of his little flask of aqua vitae, which warmed my throat.

  ‘Who is the old enemy of yours?’ I asked him.

  His grey eyes chilled as he stared straight ahead. ‘Anthony Fant. We were friends once, when we first went to the Low Countries to fight the Spanish.’

  ‘Is it true you betrayed a city?’

  ‘Yes.’ He spoke in a voice that was lead-coloured. ‘In a way. At the siege of Haarlem, I was carrying a message about the relief force and the Spaniards captured me, put me … questioned me. I … was fooled by one of them I thought was a friend. I was tired and stupid and … weakened and I believed him when he said he would help me get the message to the city. So yes, when Haarlem fell and the Spaniards massacred the garrison, it was my fault.’

  I wrinkled my eyes, trying to see what was happening in his godspace. Did he have a city-full of ghosts following him? It seemed not, though I could not be sure with the doors of my mind closed. So I drank more aqua vitae, gave him the flask back.

  ‘And that man was in the city?’

  ‘It’s where he lost his arm. He’s more angry with me than ever now. He even believes I betrayed my own brother to his death. His sister Eleanor was my own sister-in-law and he knows how she sorrows for poor Philip. Whatever happens, you know, Merula, whatever I do, no matter how I try, it seems I must destroy the people around me.’ His voice was soft and flat.

  I leaned over and patted his arm. ‘Not me,’ I told him. ‘I am very hard to destroy. You are more likely to be destroyed by me, truly.’

  He looked at me properly at last and tried to smile. ‘Well, at least it would make a change.’

  We slept on the uncomfortable stone flags of the wet-larder, curled into each other like fish packed in a barrel, his head on my flank and my head on his.

  Once more I went dream-riding with him …

  * * *

  This time he was the Queen. I saw him twist and turn within the dream-carapace, not to be such a thing, and yet the dream carried him on, the sharp knife of its prophecy breaking through his mind, wielded by the Queen Moon in her hairy ghost guise, pale and dressed in blue, crowned with stars, dancing with the serpent between her feet. She smiled when she saw me there, as if at last I had done something that pleased her well.

  I was the hairy ghost queen along with Becket.

  And the Queen sat in the tower of one of the Oxford colleges, blinking like a ginger cat through the window, waiting for Ralegh to return.

  He had scraped up every fighting man he could, woken Becket from his exhausted sleep to command the Vanguard. Among the arquebusiers there were some of the stronger women of the town, they were so desperate for men who were able to lift one. The Queen had tried to forbid it, considering it an abomination that women should try to wield a weapon in the dirt and reek of fighting. It was the business of men to protect women, she had said. The goodwives told her with flinty respect that they had heard the townswomen in the Netherlands had done as much and more, which Becket confirmed. They added that they had rather die honestly in battle than be raped by Spanish soldiers. Elizabeth had said this showed how little they knew of the matter. Then Ralegh himself had pointed out that most of the men knew no more of fighting than they did and so long as the women could hold their nerve at least as well as the men, and fire off their arquebuses at least once, that would be all he asked.

  Reluctantly she had given her permission and watched the broad-armed wide townswomen shoulder muskets and march off with the men, their skirts hooked up out of the mud and their petticoats swinging.

  They were still pitifully few. Perhaps three thousand untried foot and a thousand horse against Parma’s tercios, fresh from the sack of London. Thanks to Becket they had some ordnance and even some powder, newly made in Wales. But still …

  That was the day before. She had sat in Magdalene tower all the afternoon, just as she was now, and when Philadelphia Carey came to coax her down for some food and rest, she had sworn at her and thrown a slipper.

  This morning there had been sounds from down the London Road. Banging from the guns, clattering from the arquebuses, a low roar, all of it thinned and made inconsequential by distance.

  She stared and stared, as if she could punch holes through the miles by the simple intensity of her eyes. Trees waved in the wind. It was quite quiet now, though she thought she had heard cheering. Whose? The Spaniards?

  She waited, fear trickling through all her body, like a silver thread of ice, knitting up every humour into a knot that sat in her belly as if she had swallowed a stone. A crow came in because the tower was so quiet, and was hopping across the floor when she moved and it flurried off, cawing angrily at the outrage of a glittery statue being alive. Still she sat, no sounds, no movement on the road. No sign of an army victorious, whether English or Spanish. Nothing. As the afternoon wore on, perhaps her eyes glazed. She knew she had felt like this before and remembered after some effort. When she had been in the Tower, in her sister’s reign. Then she had felt like this.

  A puff of movement, somebody on horseback galloping up the road. A result.

  She rose, very stately, a little stiff, smoothed down the black damask of her kirtle and started down the stairs of the tower, to go out and stand on the bridge, ready for whatever Fate should send. She had agreed with Ralegh that if it all went wrong, she would break Magdalene bridge and leave artillery at the top of the tower, then withdraw behind the ramparts and make terms with Parma if she heard nothing from Robert Carey and Lord Hunsdon in a week.

  She knew she could do that, but Oh please God, let Ralegh not be killed, let him survive …

  She waited on the London side of the bridge.

  It was a boy, not a man, mud-caked from head to foot. The autumn rains of 1588 had begun early, melting into the foul storms of late summer that had done such damage to the English fleet beating up and down outside Calais. No matter now, Ralegh said the rain was excellent for it would hamper the Spanish ordnance and give the Papists flux and foot rot.

  The lad tumbled from the saddle like an avalanche before running over to her and kneeling very clumsily.

  ‘Oh Queen,’ he panted, ‘he won, he won it, Ralegh won it.’

  All the silver lump of ice inside her suddenly burst like a seedpod and filled her head with sunshine. She laughed. ‘Thank you for riding to tell me of God’s bountiful mercy, but you really should make attempt to call me Your Majesty.’

  He went pink, scrabbled off his cap, and said, ‘I forgot, see. I’m sorry. Your Majesty. Only it was such a great victory … We waited for them, see, in ambush I suppose, and when they come up to us, Ralegh … I mean, my lord Earl of Sherborne, he says, very quiet, “Hold boys, wait.” And then cavalry come galloping straight down the road and hit them – CRASH! like that, missus, and there was a great big fight and we shot at them from the hills. He rolled ’em up, horse, foot and guns, he pounded them, and hit them with the horses, he shot them to bits and they was all bloody and broken and then when they ran, we all got to chase them and kill them. Look, missus! Look what I got!’

  It was unmistakeably an ear, already starting to dry.

  Elizabeth stopped smiling and swallowed. ‘Many congratulations,’ she said. ‘And is my lord Earl of Sherbourne well?’

  ‘Oh yes, Majesty, he sent you this letter and he says not to tell you of his leg, it’ll be well soon, he’s sure of it.’

  ‘His leg?’

  ‘He took a musket ball in it, but the ba
rber’s seen to it and searched it and it’ll be right as rain soon…’

  Her heart had turned back to grey ice. That sounded too much like Sidney.

  She opened the letter, which had been dictated. It told the tale of the victory, more eloquently but less vividly, and it said that Parma was alive but utterly routed, and the great tercio of Lombardy utterly shattered. The Spaniards had run and Sir David Becket had taken their entire siege train, many horses and any quantity you like of food and weaponry. Ralegh signed it with his old nickname of Water and added a drawing of a bucket, just to make a point. She smiled again. There was no mention of his wound. But at the bottom, in a very unclerkly scrawl, was a note that read: ‘Your Majesty, in God’s name order my lord of Sherborne for to have his leg cut off or he will end like Sidney, which I saw. Your loyal and obedient subject, Sir David Becket.’

  And so the Queen put on her cloak and called for the whitest horse from her stables, which she mounted astride because most of the sidesaddles had been left in Whitehall. It was very uncomfortable and insecure but she put up with it.

  Then she gathered all the wagons she could, commandeered oxen out of the fields and some of the students to guard them and they set out down the road to meet the victorious troops.

  They met in an hour. At the head of the raggedly happy army rode the Earl of Oxford, white from the jail fever still, and transparently thin. There were few of them and utterly weary, and they were bringing in the heavy guns before the road was made worse by the return of the rest of the army of Oxford.

  Elizabeth gave them the yokes of oxen she had brought and continued on to the camp Ralegh had made. She told the alarmed young men that they were to gather up all those who had fought and she would speak to them directly.

  In the centre was a makeshift lean-to walled with canvas and inside it, as she swept aside the men of her lifeguard who knelt to her and muddied their velvet even further, lay Ralegh. He was sleeping, propped up in bed, clammy and white with pain. She sniffed carefully, found a smell of the hunting field but no scent of the midden nor the mousehole that predicted gangrene. So she sat down beside him on the camp stool and waited patiently. There was a heavy squelching and Sir David blocked the light as he came in, then knelt to her.