Unicorn's Blood

by Patricia Finney

  “Never mind Pentecost,” Julia interrupted, opening the door and going to fold back the red lattices. “Mind yourself, Grandam. That’s my last warning.”

  One of the younger whores by the name of Kate was coming down the stairs in her stays and petticoat, scratching at the sore on her face, a filthy habit.

  Ay, of course it is the pox.

  “Kate,” said Julia, very full of authority and key-rattling,” pick up that drunk and throw him out.”

  “He’s not paid us yet.”

  “Well, take his purse first, then throw him out.”

  Julia was hurrying to open the other set of lattices. Kate bent to the man, found his purse under his crotch, then took him under the armpits and heaved him through the door into the street, where she left him in an icy puddle.

  “Not gone yet, Grandam?” said Julia to Mary.

  To be fair, it was she had found the place at Court in the summer, when Mary first thought to hide from pursuivants. Her Majesty’s priest-finders only desired to know her business with a Jesuit who gave them the slip and later crossed the Channel in an almighty hurry, but Mary was not inclined to tell them and so required a bolt-hole. Julia’s bolt-hole was an excellent one, working out of the Whitehall laundry, which is beyond the pursuivants’ remit, being within the Virge of the Court and so subject only to the Lord Chamberlain and the Clerk of the Board of Greencloth. But God knows, that trade was hard on her poor bones, and her poor heart too, though perhaps better for her soul, being so humble.

  She beckoned to Pentecost, thinking grimly of the evil times when the grandam must be meek to the grandchild. Her darling put her Madonna toy in the pocket of her petticoat and came trotting over, shivering a little in her thin old kirtle and wiping her breakfast off her face onto her apron.

  She smiled at Mary and took her hand, plump living ivory in mouldy leather. “May we walk across the river again, Grandam?” she wanted to know and skipped and laughed when Mary said they could. To her it was a wonder to walk where the boats went, now the Thames was frozen. In general they had a longer walk to go round by London Bridge, to save the tuppence on the boat fare, through the City to Ludgate, down Fleet Street and the Strand and all the way round about the river to Whitehall, which was a walk of three miles and hard for Pentecost’s short legs. Sometimes, when Mary was not too weary, she carried the child on her back, as once she had carried Magdalen. But with the ice that bit her old bones came the blessing that now they could walk dry-shod on the water like Christ and Saint Peter, and laugh at the boatmen too who were begging and starving in the frost, and serve the greedy bastards right.

  X

  PRIDE IS SUCH A strange thing, so lacking in logic. The man that lay crippled by torture in Little Ease set his teeth and endured unnecessary extra pain in his bladder, rather than wet like a child where he must lie. Although he knew he must have done it before while unconscious, now he was awake he could not bring himself to it. Water might come from his eyes, but not from his cock; thus he buttressed what little was left of himself.

  Just as he thought despairingly that he must give way, there was a clatter of keys, rattling of bolts, and fiery daylight struck his face and blurred his eyes. An opening about a yard square had appeared.

  A man in a morion helmet pushed in a tray bearing bread, meats, a leather jug and a mug.

  “Sir,” husked the prisoner, swallowing painfully against the flooding in his mouth, “Sir, please, a pot for my necessity . . .”

  The man-at-arms turned his face as if to get permission from one in authority who stood out of sight. Then, blank-faced, he pushed in a small leather bucket.

  The prisoner grabbed for it, dropped it, caught at it with both hands and fumbled to use it. While he turned aside, the door slammed back into place and was locked again, with only a Judas hole open to give light for his meal. None answered when he called.

  Despite his hunger and thirst, he ate and drank as slowly as he could, made slower by his clumsy fingers. He was astonished at the quality of the food and wine. Why should they feed him such delicacies as white bread, only one day old, and roasted goose stuffed with chestnuts and apricots, ham basted with honey, cheese, and plum pudding with a hard sauce . . .?

  Suddenly it dawned on him what he was eating and what day it must be. Even inquisitors kept Christmas, it seemed, and he found himself sniggering. Such a cold nicety made him laugh until the stone echoed.

  XI

  BLACK VELVET KIRTLE SWINGING, Mistress Bethany was going at the half-trot down a narrow whitewashed corridor towards the Queen’s chambers away from the tiny room she shared with two other maids of honour. She had told Blanche Parry she had left her needlework bag there, which she had, but not by accident.

  A tall young man unfolded himself from a window-seat and fielded her neatly, with his arms around her waist to imprison her. Far from screaming and boxing his ears in defence of her honour, Mistress Bethany only giggled disgracefully and wished him Merry Christmas.

  “At Christmas, the only roses to be seen are the ones blooming in your snowy cheeks,” he whispered in her ear, a phrase he had carefully practised. Bethany’s roses bloomed redder and she looked down at his hands.

  “I have only a few minutes before I must be back,” she hissed as he sat her beside him on the window-seat, checked to make sure that the winter Privy Garden outside was empty, and kissed her forehead. She shut her eyes as his kisses progressed over her eyelids, across her cheek, until they landed on her mouth where he kissed again, more dangerously. Her heart thundered beneath her stays until she was sure that the Queen ought to hear it. And then she rebelled against shamefastness. Why should she not enjoy his kisses, since she loved him? The needlework bag dropped to the floor.

  “Have you written to your father?” she asked eventually, and did not allow herself to notice his infinitesimal check.

  “Yes, but he has not written back,” he said, “No doubt the rider was delayed with the snow.”

  “Do you think he will say yes?”

  “I’m sure of it, sweeting, he’s never denied me yet. Besides, we are already handfasted. What about your father?”

  Bethany nodded, although she had not in fact written to him at all.

  “He may take a while,” she said, “but once we are married, he’ll pay my dowry over in the end, rather than argue about it. He hates to see me unhappy.”

  “And so do I.” There were more kisses and an expert exploration of the geography of Bethany’s petticoats.

  She stopped him at last, wriggling deliciously.

  “I must go back or Parry will come searching for me,” she said, jumping up ready to return.

  “Let me give you your New Year’s gift.” He fished in a pocket in his sleeve and took out a little box wrapped in a scrap of cloth-of-gold. Bethany’s eyes shone as she opened it, and she squealed over the little enamelled gold locket, delicately wound with dog roses of pink enamel on a midnight-blue background with sparks of diamond. But then she frowned to find there was no miniature within.

  “I will have one painted when the Queen gives her permission. Until then it’s too dangerous.”

  Bethany nodded, the frown almost gone. Then she grinned impishly, dived in amongst the tangle of her work-bag and produced her snips, caught a short lock of his hair and cut it off before he could protest.

  “There,” she said, as she put the golden strands carefully into the locket and shut it. “Now I have something for a token.”

  Her lover made shift to smile. “You need none of my hair to make your enchantments,” he said. “Only your own beauty.”

  She laughed at him then, for being so solemn, kissed his cheek and trotted on down the corridor.

  XII

  I MADE YOU WHAT you are, the Queen thought as she stared at Lord Burghley during the Privy Council meeting the day after Christmas, on the Feast of Saint Stephen. I knew you when you were plain Sir William Cecil, and saw your quality. I made you Lord Burghley, I trusted you to make you
r fortune in such a way that it would not damage me. If Queens may have friends, then you are my friend. Why are you betraying me?

  Burghley’s pouched clever face showed no sign of any warlock’s ability to read minds. His power came from the Queen and his value to her came from his unrivalled administrative intelligence. He sat on his padded stool at the long meeting table in the great Council Chamber and prosed on at length and in detail with his reasons for desiring the Queen of Scots’ death. Opposite him sat Walsingham, occasionally his rival but on this occasion more in the way of his puppeteer. The whole damned garboil was Walsingham’s, from start to finish. Walsingham’s face was as different from Burghley’s as a blade from a legal deed: a lean, dark face, black hair a little frosted with silver, eyes so dark a brown as to be black, skin sallow to the extent that she jokingly called him her Moor – especially when he had a jaundice as he had now. Walsingham’s intelligence was more like her own, she thought, as he chimed in respectfully to support the Lord Treasurer Burghley. Now, he had powers of phantasy – politic rather than poetic. His mind was a sword, sharpened by the Bible and the classics and wielded ruthlessly. Unfortunately he also had a dangerous mental flaw, like too many others in these benighted times. One of its symptoms was in the dress: Walsingham wore black brocades and velvets, unrelieved by colour or jewels, and a snowy-white ruff. He was also in mourning for his son-in-law, for whom he was truly grieved, as the black shadows under his eyes and the pallor of his skin attested. However, he always appeared in this stark cloth parable and the world through his eyes was much the same: all black and white, with no saving colours in it at all.

  God rot you, thought Elizabeth as the Earl of Leicester chimed in, did you not know that the dyers and tailors have half a dozen names for white alone, as in burnt-lead white, and ivory white, and cream white, and alabaster white and marble white; each seems to be a whiteness itself on its own but, placed one against the other, they are as different as men’s faces. But then perhaps to Walsingham they would still be all white, until he saw a flaw or spot in them, at which point they would no longer be regarded as white but relegated to the blackly damned nine-tenths of Creation. The thought brought fear with it. She was afraid of such a world. How many times had she hidden behind ambiguities much more subtle?

  “Your Majesty?” said the Earl of Leicester delicately. “Are you offended with my plain-speaking?”

  With a little effort Elizabeth reeled back to the last few words of his speech in her mind and found a lot of charm, much flattery but hardly any plain-speaking. Leicester too was in mourning, and quite unlike his peacock self to be so sombrely clad in black velvet and brocade, even trimmed as his was with crimson: Sidney had been his nephew.

  “In short, you desire that I should execute my cousin Queen,” she said flatly. He bowed humbly from the waist.

  “For your own protection, Your Majesty. Every single Papist plot has had as its end and object her usurpation of your throne –“

  “Oh, give over your pleadings,” she snapped. “God knows I have heard them all before, in multitudes and overplus. Has not a single one of you anything new to say?”

  “Parliament, Your Majesty . . .” bleated Hatton, opposite Leicester.

  Her headache worsened. “Parliament has been prorogued,” she growled, “for meddling in matters it does not understand. Namely, these matters.”

  A decade or two ago that would have been the signal for some jewelled fool to pipe up the old tune: “If Your Majesty would but marry . . .” No longer. First they had learned to bridle their advice and the Time, her friend, had rendered the whole tedious subject irrelevant. And so they pounced on a new obsession.

  “The people, Your Majesty,” put in a new voice.

  My Court is ageing with me, she thought again, but here is a new face at least. She thought of him as a young man but he was in his thirties and had spent his whole adult life in her service. Unlike the others, he could barely remember a time when she had not been Queen.

  “Yes, Mr Secretary Davison,” she said, her voice deceptively mellifluous. “Teach me about my people.”

  Walsingham shifted surreptitiously on his stool and looked sideways in warning at his protégé, only admitted to the Privy Council the previous summer. Williams Davison had spent most of his career in the Netherlands and his dress betrayed how much the Calvinists had influenced him. Like Walsingham, he too wore black relieved only by the icy whiteness of his plain ruff and cuffs.

  Davison bowed a little. “Your Majesty,” he said, “I would not presume to teach you anything.”

  “Such as sucking eggs?” Her voice was tart. His face remained smooth and respectful and he answered without a pause. “That least of all. Only permit me to bring you facts.”

  “Well?”

  “At the news that the Scottish Queen had been condemned, the people of London lit bonfires in the streets and let off fireworks.”

  “Firearms too, so I heard,” she said sardonically. “Were many wounded?”

  “By the grace of God, not many,” Davison answered, still straight-faced.

  “Letters are brought daily to the Court from every county of the realm, beseeching Your Majesty to end the Scottish Queen’s life. Ballads are written, Your Majesty, printed and sold in their thousands, that call curses down on the mermaid’s head. A number of pamphlets have been written and likewise published that –”

  “Oh.” She shrugged. “So your paid scribblers and printing presses have not been idle.”

  He bowed slightly in acknowledgement, his flow of rhetoric momentarily dammed.

  “And?” she snapped when he hesitated.

  “And they commend your womanly mercy, your feminine unwillingness to shed blood – this is seemly, Your Majesty, and praiseworthy, but they fear that Your Majesty will pay for your gentleness and kindness with your life. And so do we.”

  It was almost funny how the other men at the table all winced in unison at Davison’s patronising talk of her womanly mercy. The Queen looked in silence at him, considering. The others were bracing for a thunderbolt. She thought she would play with them a while.

  “Do you know chess, Mr Davison?” she asked, still gently.

  “No, Your Majesty. I abhor all games of chance as immoral.”

  She nodded gravely, wondering if he knew how often she liked to play primero. “But you know,” she said, “if you do not throw dice when pieces of equal power meet, but hold that each skirmish is won by whichever is in place and may move, chess becomes a very different thing. It becomes a game no longer of chance but only of skill and logic, and in such a game you may learn many wonderful subtleties. For instance, a chessman rightly placed may hold in thrall a great attacking array.”

  His face was respectful and blank. “Indeed, Your Majesty. If you tell me so, I shall study the matter more closely.”

  “I advise it, Mr Davison,” she said. “I advise it indeed.”

  “Your Majesty, in the matter of the Queen of Scots . . .” began the Earl of Leicester, presuming on their old friendship to nag her still further.

  “In the matter of the Queen of Scots, the subject is closed.”

  “The death warrant?” said Walsingham, deliberately misunderstanding, “Shall we bring it to you, then?”

  That impudence, finally, broke her patience.

  Her fist hit the table and bounced. She stood up so fast, the two gentlemen behind her were not quick enough to move her heavy chair and she barked the backs of her calves on the carvings.

  “No,” she roared, “you may not bring it! You may not speak of it. I will not sign it. Do I speak plain enough, my lords, gentlemen? The man that brings it to me will never serve me again.”

  Perhaps if loyalty would not keep them off her back, ambition might. They were standing politely as well, exchanging covert knowing looks. The Queen was often thought to use witchcraft to know the minds of men, but in fact she had no need for it for men are, beyond all things, transparent. They were weary and not a
t all put off, convinced that the poor frail woman must see their sense in the end. Damn them all for fools. She looked around for something to throw at Davison, and found nothing, not even a goblet.

  “Now get out and leave me in peace!” she shrieked and they bowed, field to the door, bowed again, backed from her presence.

  She sat down and clicked her fingers for one of her gentlemen to bring her spiced wine. But he was there, kneeling at her elbow already, holding a tray with a steaming goblet on it. She took it, drank and smiled at her handsome young cousin, Robert Carey.

  “What would you do, if you were Queen, Robin?” she asked him and he smiled back.

  “Your Majesty,” he said. “If I had been born to woman’s estate, and further if I had been you, the Queen, I would have married twenty years ago.”

  Her smile stiffened and chilled. He was among the closest of her relatives, being not only her cousin through Mary Boleyn, his grandmother and her aunt, but also, unofficially, her nephew, since the man who had given him the name of Carey had not been the King who actually sired his father. However, this was perilously close to impudence as she defined such things.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” His hooded blue eyes crinkled at the corners and danced, perfectly aware of his gamble and enjoying it. “I should make a very poor monarch since I have so little virtue and far too much . . . er . . . sinfulness and so I would have married in order not to burn and the question would not have arisen.”

  “And it would furthermore have been your husband’s decision.”

  “Precisely, Your Majesty. But then, if I were born a woman and a Queen, perhaps the Queen of Scots might have been born a man and a King, and so I could have married him and solved the problem entirely.”

  She had to laugh at the way he had given her perilous question the slip.

  “It seems you are leaning some Courtly talk at last, Robin. You used to be more plain-spoken,” she said with a little edge, putting the goblet back on the silver tray.