Unicorn's Blood

by Patricia Finney

  Naturally I come to her and comfort my faithful liegewoman.

  VI

  TO KEEP CHRISTMAS DAY at Court is the pinnacle of ambition for a place-seeker and has very little to do with the feast of Christ’s birthday. Courtiers throng the palace of Westminster from before dawn and form long lines for admittance at the Court gate, snaking up and down between hurdles like the guts of a deer, to pack more precedence into a small space by a miracle of folding.

  The day begins with the service of thanksgiving and Communion in the Chapel Royal, roundly sung (to the disapproval of Puritans), by the lily-white boys of the chapel. The courtiers of rank high enough to attend pay not the slightest attention to this, nor to the prayers, nor to the sermon that has taken many weeks of agonised preparation to pile up a confection of rhetoric until not even the preacher could say what it was about. The courtiers, having beggared themselves for new doublets of velvet and gowns of figured damask, and the dyers run clear through their stocks of black and indigo to feed the fashion, are a heaving tide of moving, preening and parading shadow, like cockroaches. They mutter softly to each other and bow and curtsey and ask after each other’s tailor and bemoan the difficulty and expense of buying an heiress from the Court of Wards. Most of them are men, all of them desperate to catch the Queen’s eye; to be tall enough and well-shouldered enough and polished enough to take her fancy, as the greatly hated Sir Walter Raleigh was and still is, damn him.

  The Queen ignores all this desperate effort. Effort is not interesting to her, she sees too much of it. A kind of wild and witty nonchalance appeals to her, and for this reason she smiles and nods to Sir Walter, who bows lavishly back from his pew in the body of the chapel below her balcony. Raleigh is blazing in crimson satin and crimson velvet. There is his quality. If all the world is wearing black, in sheep-like homage to his own fashion, Raleigh must naturally wear shocking red and be like a drop of blood upon a field of pitch.

  Impossible not to suspect he had planned it that way, which amuses her greatly.

  Afterwards she walks like a secular goddess among the courtiers and receives their worship, accompanied by the strapping red-clad Gentlemen Pensioners of her Guard, and Raleigh, their Captain. Shadow-meadows of folk bend and sway before the wind of her sovereignty. She is gracious, chatting and laughing. She hears petitions, meets youngsters brought to see the wonder of Her Majesty, agrees affably to godmother at christenings, before she retires at last to her Withdrawing Room to catch her breath before the next round of pleasure. There, being what she is, she also attends to the papers that must still be signed in the great continual machine of her governance.

  At Christmas, however, no one has had the courage to present a Warrant for Putting to the Question to her. About half of the interrogations of Papists carried out in her behalf by Sir Francis Walsingham and Mr Davison are thus legally signed and warranted, but her protectors have wide leeway and use it. She prefers not to know officially about the chamber of Little Ease in the Tower, lightless, airless, fireless and comfortless, being damp from the Thames and too small for a man to stand or lie in. When Little Ease has a new tenant, it is, in her opinion, no one’s business save Mr Davison’s and the Yeomen Warders.

  VII

  CAPTURED UPON THE FEAST of Saint Thomas the Apostle, first put to the question in a hurry the day after, to no one’s satisfaction, the Queen’s new guest in the Tower lay in a stupor of pain and exhaustion, waiting for the attentions of the Devil.

  Not being theologically astute, it never occurred to him that he could hardly lament his sins if he could remember nothing at all. Hell would be better conducted than that.

  No, what weakened his conviction that he was dead was the steady growth within him of the sordid fleshly necessity to piss.

  Still, for a long while he lay there, shaking, sick and dizzy with fear and confusion, while his heart beat and his head pounded, and he could not get enough air. Because he was gasping for breath, he knew he could not be in Hell yet, for the dead do not need air. Therefore, alas, he must be alive.

  So he set his chattering teeth against the dragging of the chains, bent his elbows and brought his hands close to his face, felt them gently with his lips. Their skin was taut and trailed prickles like fireflies from the roughness of his beard.

  For all their hugeness in his mind’s eye he felt they were only swollen, not crushed, not even bleeding. With great courage and some whimpering he could move them, flex the sausage-like fingers. But about his wrists were two pulsing swollen bracelets of flesh with a bruised and weeping furrow between. From these came most of his grief.

  Whoever had chained his arms had found the wrists too swollen and had put the irons higher up, close to his elbows. His chest ached already from the constriction to his shoulders.

  Some men might have surrendered to terror at once, but he tried again to remember. He shivered and sweated with effort, wrestling mentally with the void, even as Jacob did with the Angel of the Lord.

  Nothing. He knew nothing of himself. A man, to be sure, and not a maid, which was some relief to him. A man and not a beast; a child, rather, caught up in an aching body that seemed too large for it.

  Perhaps he was indeed dreaming. But how could he be asleep? His hip and shoulder ached from the rough stone and also his head – particularly his head. The back was monstrously sore and griped him every time he lifted it. His hands – now he knew what shape they were in truth – had deflated from their extravagant size to become only sources of pain. He tried flexing his fingers and gasped as new rivers of fire woke in the muscles of his forearms and his wrists. He gritted his teeth and tried again, desperate to know more of the place he was in.

  The void remained an ugly thing within him: the stump of an amputation, trees chopped down in an ancient wood, a lost tooth – like the familiar gap left by the loss of one of his dogteeth.

  “I am . . . My name is . . .” he said to himself from time to time and then stopped. His throat was sore, his mouth dry and his stomach cramped, adding to the cacophony of pain that sickened him.

  He flexed his fingers for a while, until they felt as if each were a separate swarming ants’ nest. On reflection he thought perhaps he should be grateful to feel pain from them; it would be far worse for them to be completely numb and dead. How did he know that? He had no idea, except that he knew the smell of gangrene and feared it greatly.

  At last his fingers seemed a little better. He moved them to his face, working to know himself.

  His hair was short, curly, staring and wild with tangles and filth, and his scalp itched. There was a familiar crawling behind his ears, and he grimaced.

  Around the trimmed margins of his beard was stubble, perhaps two or three days’ growth. Below came some mystery again; he had no ruff but his shirt was linen and tolerably fine. He had on a doublet, velvet lined with taffeta, elaborately carved jewelled buttons and loops to fasten them. The sleeves had been slit to the elbows to allow his swollen wrists to pass the cuffs, his shirt-sleeves were untied.

  One reason for his coldness occurred to him: his doublet hung open but he could not button it, his fingers were too clumsy. Nor was there a belt, something that surprised him not at all. They had taken his sword, of course.

  The watcher within grasped the thought of a sword and brandished it.

  “Of course I am a gentleman,” he said, “What else would I be?”

  With lice? said the homunculus mordantly and he answered himself, perhaps. Without a sword or with lice, why not? Then he stopped, because he did not known how he knew.

  “Nevertheless,” he muttered stubbornly and continued his awkward exploration, unbending his elbows. His hose were plain padded canions, also velvet, the points still mostly tied to his doublet points, and he still had his netherstocks but no boots.

  Only one of his codpiece points were tied and that badly.

  Cautiously he groped for a pot and found nothing save damp straw. Some of the stink is explained, said the homunculus smart
ly, although I cannot be the cause of all of it.

  His sides ached, as if he had been carrying heavy weights, and his legs were cramping. There was no single part of him that had not some report of abuse to make, and he was so tired. Cramps knotted hotly in his bent calves. He wriggled until his back hit the wall and then sat us carefully as far as he could, hunched over under the pressing stone roof. At least that gave him just enough space to stretch out his legs, which was some relief.

  This is not all of me, he told himself, nor is this all of the world. Men will come in time, if I wait, if I am patient, to . . . to . . .

  It struck him like a fist in the mouth that such folk as could put a fellow-creature chained in such a hole would hardly be his friends. In fact, they were likely to be the men who had hurt his wrists.

  Terror bolted from its lair in his heart and caught him by the throat, stopping breath and thought. He pressed his face against his useless hands and tried to stem shameful tears with his knuckles.

  VIII

  THERE IS ALWAYS MASQUING before Her Majesty on the afternoon of Christmas Day, supposedly a relaxation for her after the great feast for all the Queen’s servants and attendants, packed like herrings in a barrel into the Westminster Hall. This year’s masque was the fruit of many weeks’ anxious rehearsal and dealt with a beehive wherein were two Kings, one rightful and one a usurper, and the whole very prettily danced and recited by the youngsters about the Queen, their mourning velvets lightened with tawny for the bees’ coats, with wings of wired cobweb gauze, and the Queen of the Fairies coming in the nick of time to make peace.

  “A pretty parable,” the Queen said tartly as she clapped, “though I see no drones nor grubs among these bees.”

  Sir Walter smiled at her. “Perhaps they have removed to another hive, Your Majesty, where the honey is sweeter.”

  The Queen snorted. “Is there some parable to sermonise from this masque?” she asked, knowing perfectly well that there was, since the usurper King had ended miserably by execution and the true King had been crowned anew by Titania.

  “I am afraid there is,” said Raleigh, eyes dancing. “If Your Majesty is not yet sufficiently melancholic, I may parse its meaning for you, so well as I understand it myself.”

  The Queen groaned and then smiled and nodded graciously at Alicia, the nervous new maid of honour, whose wings were a little lopsided from a collision in the dance. The child curtseyed and shakily offered her a tray of honey-cakes. She took one, bit and winced. Smoothly, Sir Walter handed her a cup of wine to clean her mouth, disposed invisibly of the cake.

  “Parse it pithily then, Walter,” she snapped. “If you must.”

  “To be utterly brief, they desire that you should execute the Queen of Scots,” he said, not bothering to keep his soft West Country voice low, “and I conclude that your subjects are as ignorant of beekeeping as they are of animal husbandry, sheep-keeping and tact.”

  “Hah!” said the Queen.

  IX

  YES, I RECALL WHAT my faithful servant did upon Christmas Day 1586. Before dawn she was sitting by the fire in the Falcon’s common room, sipping her breakfast and shivering while all the church bells clanged through the iron air of London. Over in the corner, ignoring the drunk huddled up by the wall, was sweet Pentecost, her great-granddaughter. Mary had forgot how old the child was, since she often blurred in Mary’s mind into her mother and even her grandmother, but she was a fair little maid somewhere about six or seven, with brown hair and an oval face that tended to be solemn. No beauty yet, for which Mary gave thanks to me. Pentecost slept in her great-grandam’s bed to keep her warm, but generally woke before her and went down to lay the fire and light it. We were careful that she should be useful, Mary and I, for May greatly feared that the little girl might catch some man’s eye and be ruined as her dead grandmother Magdalen was, and as her own mother was, Magdalen’s daughter, who died giving birth to her.

  Her aunt the junior-madam, that Magdalen had named Julia, had already hinted to Mary that Pentecost could go to the Falcon’s Chick, where the child-lovers seek out fresh meat. Julia herself was broken in at nine years of age by an upright man who was wapping Magdalen as well, so she saw nothing strange in it.

  Mary would rather die than give her sweet Pentecost to such men, ay, and kill her too. But Julia . . . The junior-madam was puzzled and offended when Mary slapped her face and screamed at her, and put it down to drink and senility. No doubt Julia’s mind was as poxed as her cunny. Little Pentecost was the last of Mary’s brood, and the last to be in her innocency and Mary was in fear and trembling for her great-granddaughter that she should be ruined by some drunk and go into the same trade as her mother, her aunt and her grandmother, and then die also of the pox or of childbed. If there had been convents in England still, Mary would have put her in one at once, to protect her from ravening men, but alas, the men had destroyed our refuges.

  Well, sir, if you had seen men as I have seen them, as they come begging and confessing to me on their deathbeds, you would not be so affronted at what I say. Men revered the Virgin for they knew how much they need mercy, and they suspected that my Son, who was Himself a man, will have less truck with their excuses. To be sure, there are decent men who love women and consider them to be more than a warm moist place inconveniently supplied with legs to run away. Mary had never met one, however, and no reason why she should, since such a chimera would scarcely seek out the strumpets on the south bank of the Thames.

  Now Pentecost was playing her usual game. From the long-ago wreck of her nunnery, Mary had taken away only her rosary beads and a precious image of myself. I was cunningly wrought about eight inches high in ivory, crowned with stars and standing on the moon, and if you were to open a little door in my belly, there was also the image of my Son, a carved ivory baby. The inner wall of His hiding place was painted delicately with the Cross of His Passion on Golgotha. There had been many such figures once, before the Reformers got to work at burning them, and this had been as old as the buildings of the nunnery itself, carved for the sick daughter of the man that endowed it and given to the chapel when the little girl died, two hundred years gone. Now the ivory was cracked and worn and yellow, although my face was as gentle and Queenly as ever. First Magdalen, the child of Mary’s shame, had played with it; then the girls of Magdalen’s brood, Martha and Julia, and at length it had come, though all vicissitudes of famine and wandering, to Pentecost.

  First she set me upon a bench and came curtseying to me with a little horn-cup of wine, which she tipped carefully against my carved face, so as not to spill or mark, and then tossed down herself. Then she knelt as she had seen her great-grandam do, and she prayed as her great-grandam had taught her, gabbling a little: Heavy Maria, grass a plenty, dominoes take ‘em. Then she caught me up and cuddled me, and opened my door and brought out the Babe to kiss, put Him very reverently away again and began to tell me her longings and delights, while I smiled back at her, my lips a little reddened with the wine. I am the Queen of Heaven and many times she had prayed that I would come to her as I did to her grandam and cover her with my mantle.

  Her grandam never listened to what she said, but she was asking her invariable boon, which was to be summoned to meet me, the Queen of Heaven and to be my little girl, my foster child. It was her dream: she had seen the Queen Elizabeth in the distance at the Accession Day tilts and, like many others she had become confused between that Queen and me. But her grandam never knew that then. Why should she pay attention to the notions of children?

  Julia came hurrying in, making a great fuss with her new turquoise satin kirtle. She dared to frown impatiently when she saw how Mary wobbled on the stool by the fire. At her belt she had a bunch of keys, her badge of office, and very self-important it made her.

  “Grandam,” she said, with not even a curtsey, “what is this I hear about you speaking with Jesuits again?” Mary muttered and would not look at her. “Is it true?”

  Mary shrugged and gave no answer. Ju
lia rustled over, pounced and snatched the bottle from her.

  “Are you mad?” she hissed in her grandam’s face, the impudent bitch. “I told you last summer what would come of this. You must not speak to these Papist priests, you must keep away from them.”

  Mary flinched. “I must make my confession,” she mumbled. “I must shrive my sins before I die.”

  Julia spat like the urchin she once was.

  “Oh, a fig for your confession, Grandam, it’s too late for that. If the pursuivants get word of you speaking to a priest, they will arrest you for it and then where will you be?”

  “You can find another witch,” said Mary. “And I’ll be dead. What joy, eh? No more drunken old grandma to sermonise, and you can send poor little Pentecost to the lecherous perverts at the Chick.”

  Pentecost looked up briefly at the mention of her name and then went back to her play, since she had heard both these arguments before.

  Julia rolled her eyes and rattled the keys as was her habit.

  “All you need to do is keep your mouth shut and away from Papist priests,” she said, “Otherwise, out.”

  “You would put your own grandma on the street?”

  “If necessary,” she said, cold as the cobbles. “If I must do it to keep my place here, yes. Not Pentecost. But if you bring the City corporation down on our necks, out you go, Grandam, be sure of it.”

  Mary stood up and stretched her poor aching back which was barely soothed by the booze. She was in haste, for sunrise was only an hour away and she must go to her work and so must Pentecost.

  Do you think work has surcease on Christmas Day? Think again.

  “I’ll never leave Pentecost where you could put your greedy claws on her,” said Mary stoutly if indistinctly. “I know you –”