Unicorn's Blood

by Patricia Finney

  Parry had put the overwrought Bethany into her own truckle-bed to sleep and sat by the fire, stitching at a nightcap for the Queen. Occasionally the elaborate curling leaves and roses blurred together in her eyes and her hand would drop and her chin fall on her chest as she dozed.

  She was up at once to help the Queen to the Stool and give her watered wine brought in by a yawning chamberer. Then the Queen returned to her bed and curled like a cat under the covers, but ordered her to leave the curtains open a little so she could see the fire.

  Bethany was already asleep and snoring again. Still the Queen lay staring at the fire, watching the outline of Parry against the glow, the fingers sometimes busy and sometimes slack.

  At last the Queen’s eyes drooped shut and her breathing deepened. But once again, there was my unicorn, forming himself of the firelight, pawing and prancing about the room, where strange lilies grew in a soil of manna, planted in pots of gold. In the far reaches of her mind, the Archangel Gabriel winded his horn and his hounds bayed for her blood, for the hounds are named Mercy, Truth, Justice and Peace. And here also was the rightful Queen of Heaven to ride upon the unicorn. I wore my raiment of blue and gold and my crown of stars; the serpent, my friend and victim, not crushed by my triumphant heel but wrapped about my arm, a living bracelet. Here is no meek and simple maiden of the Italian daubers; here am I, Holy Wisdom, terrible as the forest, mounted on moonlight, my hair flying black and wild behind me, laughing reproach at my mere mortal usurper.

  Unicorns may mean more than Scotland. Tears began forcing themselves between Elizabeth’s shut eyelids and dropping on the pillow until her cheek lay on dampness and she awoke, still weeping.

  “Oh, Your Majesty,” said a voice beside her. “Tell me what is wrong.”

  If only it were Kat Ashley’s voice, the Queen thought greyly, she would know already. But Ashley is dead.

  So she pushed Blanche Parry away, turned her back on the room and hid her face under the covers while her shoulders shook with sobbing.

  It was impossible to stop. The sobs followed each other, one after the other, only pausing for breath, like carts on progress, and soon there was another damp patch on the sheets. Somebody gave her a clean handkerchief and she blew her nose, trying to regain her composure, but then the helpless misery rose up in her again and the sobbing started once more, endless, endless, rivers of tears dammed up for too long to stop now there was a breach in the dyke.

  Behind her she could hear whispered consultations between her women as they arrived fully dressed, ready to begin the business of the morning once again. There was no end to it, no escape, only a long, slow leaking of water from her soul.

  One of the maids of honour took a lute and began to play softly in the corner, she played well enough, she was a good musician, but the rippling notes only deepened the Queen’s sadness and the tears flowed faster.

  They tried to coax her to drink more tincture of laudanum, but her throat was stopped and her stomach cramped with sorrow. Another visit to the Stool and no wry jokes between herself and Parry, only more helpless sobbing and the shame of being seen by her women in such weakness.

  Parry shut the lid and called for a chamberer to take the pot to Dr Nunez for his inspection.

  For God’s sake, Elizabeth berated herself, what is it, why am I weeping like this, what is it about? This is no new hurt, in Heaven’s name. Parry and Bedford occasionally besought her to tell them, but she could not since she did not know herself. Or perhaps she did, but still could not tell them.

  After half past seven had gone, Lady Bedford and Blanche Parry between them made the decision and passed the announcement to young Carey where he still stood guard at the door, hollow-eyed and worried.

  By a quarter of eight on the Feast of Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, the proclamation had been made in the Presence Chamber that the Queen, being sick with distemper in her stomach, would keep to her chamber that day. All her meetings and consultations were hereby cancelled.

  By nine of the clock the Queen was still weeping and had eaten no breakfast. Rumours were flying into the City that she had been poisoned and was lying near death. The traders at the Exchange instantly began buying gold and silver and there was a quiet rush to the armourers. Gunpowder tripled in price. Some of her councillors began wondering privily if it would be so impossible to contact the Queen of Scots at Fotheringhay and ingratiate themselves before the Protestant Queen died and the Catholic Queen succeeded. Others laid plans to carry out the terms of their Bond of Association, which promised death for anyone who profited by the Queen’s killing. Ships bound for the Netherlands found a surprising number of gentlemanly enquirers after berths, particularly divines. And the special Scottish Embassy woke to discover themselves under a very polite house arrest. After frantic questioning of servants they began to wonder if they could find a man willing to ride for Scotland with the news if the Queen died, so that King James might invade and take the English throne from his Papist mother.

  At eleven of the clock, Thomasina marched up to one of the gentlemen still on duty at the bedchamber door and tapped him peremptorily on the leg. As generally happened, he looked round, frowned and then down. He smiled a little on seeing her, as people did, finding her charming in her miniature velvet gown and seed-pearl necklace. She had a fashion doll clutched under her arm and a determined expression on her face.

  “Mr Carey, let me in,” she said in her high childlike voice.

  “Have you been sent for, Mistress Thomasina?” he asked, politely squatting down to her so that their faces were on a level.

  “Not exactly,” she admitted. “But if the Queen is melancholic and sick, she had need of me. I am, after all,” she added proudly, “the Queen’s muliercula, the Queen’s Fool.”

  His eyes became shrewd. “I have orders to admit nobody but her physician.”

  “Which surely applies only to full-sized bodies,” Thomasina answered. “I am simply not included because my body is too small. Have the lap-dogs been let in?”

  “Yes, Mrs Parry thought they might comfort her, but they have been sent out again because one of them ate a bowl of wet suckets and was sick on the mat.”

  “I have the same purpose as Her Majesty’s lap-dogs,” said Thomasina firmly, “so let me in.”

  He was looking worried and reluctant, full of responsibility and fear for his future, and, to be fair to him, concern for his aunt, whom he genuinely seemed to like.

  “Come, Mr Carey,” she said. “If the Queen had children, you would give them entry.” His mouth had opened and he was staring at her in astonishment.

  “I am the nearest thing the Queen has to a daughter and I can help her.”

  “Well, I . . .”

  “And further, if I am not wanted, I will be ejected just like the lap-dogs. So let me in, Mr Carey.”

  He stood up, swept her a bow, knocked and opened the door for her.

  “Her Majesty’s Fool,” he announced as she marched past him, her head held high a little above the level of his knees, and shut the door behind her.

  The women were whispering near the fire in the still-curtained and shuttered room. The sound of sobbing still came from the bed.

  Thomasina clicked her tongue against her teeth. As usual, their habit of obedience to Her Majesty’s hauteur left them utterly rudderless and silly if Her Majesty could no longer command. If I were you, Madam, she thought to herself, I would order them about less and expect more intelligence of them. It is a policy that works well with your councillors; why not try it with your women?

  She dropped a curtsey to the couple of ladies who had noticed her entrance, trotted to the bed, took off her shoes and jumped up beside the Queen. Then she sat there, humming softly to herself and taking the clothes off her beautiful little fashion doll, waiting for the Queen to notice her.

  XVIII

  THE PURSUIVANTS HAD DINED well enough at the Old Swan beside London Bridge. James Ramme was careful to tuck a napkin under his ch
in; he thought himself very fine in a new black grosgrain suit slashed with tawny taffeta, his pointed black beard newly scented and curled by his barber in the fashion invented by Sir Walter Raleigh.

  Elaborately neither he nor Anthony Munday mentioned their work of the day, but discussed the wicked ways of fighting cocks and the further scandalous vices of the bear-baiting men. Munday told ribald tales of the whores in Rome, of their striped petticoats and teetering high shoes. He had spent a year as a spy for Walsingham at the English Catholic Seminary there. Now he was claiming that the Pope made a personal inspection of the whores every week. Ramme laughed, willing to believe it, but wary of Munday’s liking for improving a tale.

  Munday ate and drank heartily, his appetite never affected by anything, so far as Ramme could tell. He was a short, round man, already greying, though he was about the same age as Ramme. He refused to wear silks and velvet, citing the sumptuary laws that everyone else in London ignored to the best of their ability, and went soberly in grey worsted and a plain white falling band. Ramme found this obscurely offensive.

  “Why should I try to cut it the gentleman?” Munday demanded pugnaciously of Ramme, when Ramme spitefully recommended him his own tailor. “My father, may he rest in peace, was a draper, which is an honourable trade, and the most of his profit was made on fine silks and brocades, which I can assure you, Mr Ramme, are not worth a quarter of the money you fine courtiers pay for them. What did you pay for that?” He was offensive enough to grasp Ramme’s sleeve and rub the cloth between thumb and forefinger.

  “To be sure I cannot recall,” said Ramme loftily, although the outrageous price was printed on his brain in letters of fire.

  “Well, you should.” Munday was impossible to sub, impossible to offend. “Where’s the good of money if you throw it away to put duds on your back?”

  “They show men what I am.”

  Munday laughed uncouthly and picked some shreds of boiled salt-beef out of his teeth with his fingernail.

  “They do that. They shout ‘gentleman’s younger son that never did a stroke of honest work in his life and knows not the value of money, nor even the worth of his suit’.”

  “Fifty pounds,” growled Ramme, stung with irritation and cutting the amount by half.

  “Lord, Lord, paid that, did you?” Munday clicked his tongue and shook his head in wonder.

  “Of course.” Ramme was curling his moustache between finger and thumb. “I am not educated in the ways of cheapening at market.”

  Munday guffawed, reached for the wine flagon and emptied it out into his leather mug before draining it down.

  “And so you must hunt Papists at Christmas for Davison to pay your tailoring debts.”

  “Why do you do it then?” Ramme demanded.

  “To make my fortune,” said Munday passionately. “To have the chance of taking possession of some traitor’s estate. To collect a little acorn of money that I may then grow into a large shady tree and take my ease thereunder evermore.”

  “Very poetical,” sneered Ramme as he put down the money for his half of the meal. Munday looked disappointed, but Ramme had learnt quickly that Munday never returned a reckoning.

  Munday looked up at the sky and then at the Thames scarred with bonfires and the stalls of the Frost Fair.

  “Will Mr Norton be at the Tower?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “How should I know?” said Ramme, although he did, it being a matter of some valuable Dutch tulips in Norton’s garden needing protection from the frost. Munday liked to hear tales of the Court, which Ramme perversely preferred not to tell him. Suddenly beset with annoyance at his ill-bred colleague, Ramme came to his feet. Munday bounced to his and they put on their cloaks, went up the alley and around the bridge, down the steps at the other side to call for a boat.

  On their way downriver Munday sat in the stern and dabbled his fingers in the dark-brown water, which was too salty and dirty to freeze, winced and withdrew them. The wind was still but the sky roofed with slate clouds and the promise of more snow.

  “Mr Secretary Davison is coming to watch the interrogation this afternoon,” said Ramme casually and Munday cocked any eyebrow at him.

  “Is he now? I own I am surprised,” he said. “I would not have said this one was a Jesuit. More of a soldier, if you ask me, from the way he was cursing.”

  Ramme looked away at the bridge and an expression of deep satisfaction crossed his face. “Whatever he was, he is clearly a traitor from the company he keeps.”

  “Of course, that could have been an accident,” said Munday reasonably. “Could have been bad luck.”

  Ramme shrugged. “Mr Davison is particularly anxious to hear his tale.”

  “Jesuits hardly ever swear,” Munday continued thoughtfully. “And they don’t curse, neither, or at least not until they are further gone than he is. Speak the name Jesus a lot, of course, but not cursing. Mind you, he was hardly in his right mind last time, even before we started. You hit him a mighty blow on the head, you know, Mr Ramme; it’s a mercy he’s still alive.”

  Ramme was still looking very pleased with himself. “It was he commanded the traitors’ defence, what else could I do? He would never have let us take him alive else.”

  “Can’t say I blame him, big heavy man like that.”

  Ramme shrugged and smiled.

  Munday’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Here,” he said suddenly. “You don’t know him, do you?”

  Ramme looked away, shrugged again. “Certainly not,” he said. “Why would I know a traitor?”

  “We meet a few,” Munday pointed out. “I’m always coming across fellows I met at the Roman Seminary, unluckily for them. You could have missed catching him some other time.”

  Ramme sniffed. “It is possible,” he admitted, “but I really do not remember.”

  You lying slug, thought Munday to himself, delighted as always to find a new deceit; now what’s going on here?

  Aloud he said, “I wonder what he will tell us today/”

  “Do you think he will?”

  It was Munday’s turn to shrug. “Of course.”

  XIX

  THE QUEEN HAD FINALLY emptied her eyes of tears and lay exhausted from them, staring into space. At last she noticed Thomasina cross-legged beside her. She stared at her midget for a long time, as if considering her.

  Now how shall I play this? Thomasina thought to herself. Shall I be her child again, or what? She had thought that would be the part she should play, which was why she had brought her doll, but now she hid the puppet behind her and stared steadily back at the Queen.

  “Ah, Thomasina,” sighed the Queen and turned her face to the pillow again. More tears were leaking from her reddened eyes. Thomasina leaned over and closed the tapestry bedcurtains against the prying frightened eyes in the room. Then she untied the strings of Her Majesty’s nightcap, which was half over her ear, and began stroking the cropped greying red hair. A lump came in her own throat and she wondered what she would do if the Queen died. But then surely there would be war and soldiers trampling the land and she could always return to her first trade of tumbling if she must. You could get a living by making soldiers laugh, just as you could from queens.

  “The ladies think I must have taken poison.” The Queen’s voice was muffled and choked. “They have been feeding everything I ate yesterday to the pigs in Saint James’s to see if they take sick.”

  “This is no bodily poison, I think,” said Thomasina. “They say you have been dreaming of the Queen of Scots. Some say she has bewitched you and made a wax doll of you to stab with needles in the guts.”

  The Queen laughed through the drying tears on her cheeks. “She might as well, the grief she bring me,” she said. “Though I am afraid the bitch is too religious a woman for it. I am surprised Walsingham and Davison between them have not come up with such a thing to accuse her of.”

  “Will you tell me the dream?”

  “Why
, Thomasina.” The Queen rose on her elbow. “Are you a soothsayer as well as a tumbler.”

  “Yes,” said Thomasina. “You know I was first sold to the Egyptians who came by my father’s house and they taught me to tumble and many other things as well. I can interpret dreams and tell the future from cards and bones, if I want.”

  “Is that not witchcraft?”

  “No, Your Majesty.” Thomasina smiled cynically. “Nor is it a science like astrology. It is a very profitable game. Say you were to come to me for a reading. I would look at you while I talked of spirits and hobgoblins and whatnot, and see the rings on your fingers and the quality of your clothes and the paleness of your skin, and I would say you were a great lady of much power, either now or to be – and you would think me very wise and if it were not true yet then you would still be flattered that I predicted it. And perhaps, by prognosticating your power, I may make you think differently and it may become true. They you would think me wiser still.”

  “Hmmm,” said the Queen, looking at her differently. “How old are you, Thomasina/”

  “Thirty-four or thirty-five, I think.”

  “Such wisdom in one so young.”

  “I have had good teachers. And I am not so young as I look.”

  “No indeed.”

  “Will you tell me of your dream, Majesty?”

  “Well, it was the Unicorn of Scotland.”

  “How do you know? Did it bear a crown?”

  “Now you ask, no. But the unicorn is Scotland’s badge . . .”

  “Your Majesty, any such beast may mean more than one thing: a lion can mean kingship, true, but it can also mean strength and, further, sweetness.”

  “Hm. Yes.”

  “What did the unicorn do, Your Majesty/”

  “It stabbed me with its horn, in my belly, here.” The Queen’s hand moved to show her where.

  “That was Mr Davison’s message last night, was it not? That a woman was prophesying of a unicorn you must destroy.”