Unicorn's Blood

by Patricia Finney

“He too was circumcised.”

  Becket did as much of a double take as possible to a man in the pillory and then laughed. “Ay,” he said, “no doubt He was. Good God Almighty. Must make it difficult to hide from the Inquisition in Spain, eh?”

  “For that reason it is not always done by Marranos.”

  Becket laughed again.

  “Why is it funny?” Ames demanded, very much annoyed.

  To be fair to him, Becket tried to stop. “Well,” he said, coughing, “to know a man’s religion by his cock . . .”

  “Christians may be known similarly,” Ames pointed out frostily. “In Turkish lands to be sure, for all the Turks do as we do. And perhaps in other ways. As I understand it, a Christian member ought to be known by its disuse, but rarely is, and I have often thought it curious that the mitres worn by Christian bishops bear such a striking resemblance to . . .”

  Becket was laughing again. “Ay, so they do,” he agreed, “so they do.”

  Ames was offended enough to sniff and turn his shoulder to Becket for a boor and an uncivilized gentile.

  “Well, but do not huff at me . . . Simon,” he said. “I was only surprised.”

  “How can you laugh when we are . . . we are like this,” said Ames.

  “What should I do? Pray? Mourn for my sins?”

  “Perhaps resolve . . .” Ames stopped himself from admitting that he knew what Becket had been up to. None other seemed to have noticed, or Newton would surely have flogged them then and there. “. . . not to be so quick-tempered next time.”

  Becket tutted at him and shifted his feet again. “What makes you think there will be a next time?”

  “I am glad to hear it,” said Ames pompously. “To spend a night in the cold like this for the pointless satisfaction of fighting Cyclops . . .”

  “Bah,” said Becket. It was too dark by then for Ames to see anything except the occasional flash of eyes and gleam of teeth from Becket when he craned his neck to look at Ames. “Nobody invited you.”

  Ames fell silent then, because it was true; he had interfered unasked. It seemed also unwelcomed. He was a fool to go seeking brotherhood in a gentile.

  Ames always was a chilly mortal although he had been born in England.

  The summers were hardly ever warm enough for him, and every winter that he could remember had been a long dark misery of chilblains and head colds. He was wearing no more than two shirts and a padded waistcoat under his doublet and the only times he had been truly warm in the prison had been late at night, curled up under the blankets next to Becket’s snoring bulk. Now the cold was striking up through his padded hose from the cobbles and down through the frigid air and he was tired and could find no way to be even slightly comfortable, which was of course the whole purpose of the stocks. When he looked sideways at Becket he could make out that the man had propped himself wearily against the pillory, turned his head so his Adam’s apples was not crushed by the wood, and somehow managed to doze off.

  Biting back his unreasonable envy of the man’s stoicism, Ames hunched over and shivered, clamped his teeth to stop their chattering and wondered how long it would be before dawn. He started to think about chess and from there in easy progression to a problem in Euclid. It had been proven that an equilateral triangle could only have angles of forty-five degrees. Or could it? Instinctively, Ames felt that perhaps it could and that if it could somehow be proved that it could, other interesting consequences would follow.

  The stars rolled slowly above them, only a little hazed by the smoke of London. Blurred by his short sight, the Milky Way wisped from horizon to horizon like pipe smoke of the Almighty. Orion strode after it, an archangel of bright sequins. He wished he had his spectacles. The scatter of diamond sparks on velvet was like a meadow filled with beautiful riddles. Why were some stars points and others smudges? What was the Milky Way made of, since plainly it could not be milk as the legend had it? Were there two different kinds of stars? Or were the points stars and the smudges something else? Where did comets come from? Did the Almighty send them to warn sinful men of His vengeance, as everyone said, or were they something else? Why could you not see the spheres that carried the planets? What were they made of? Truth? Or were the planets carried by their ruling Archangels, as the Hermeticists said? Or was there a different mystery going on, something subtler? He had been thinking about it when Becket’s riot had started: what was it now? What had he suddenly seen?

  Ames had a crick in his neck from looking up and the bony points of his elbows felt as if they were wearing through to the cobbles, but something about the stars drew his soul. Once, as a boy, taken to a lonely beach to meet a smuggler captain of his father’s on a warm night in summer, he had gasped at the sea. It was glowing with a strange green-blue light, and at first he had been afraid, thinking that the sea was on fire. His father had been busy talking, had brought him only so that the captain would know his youngest son by sight if their family had to escape from England . . . It had been in Bloody Queen Mary’s reign, so he must have been a child of five or so. The adults in the Ames family had been afraid for much of his smallest childhood; perhaps their fear had infected him with a chronic form of that wasting plague. Any Jew, and in particular a Marrano, understood that once the Queen ran out of heretics to burn, without doubt her inquisitors would turn to Jews, as they always had.

  The Almighty had been merciful and Queen Mary died, to be succeeded by her riddlesome sister Elizabeth, who chose to take the small colony of Jews in London under her protection. But a soft summer night under the stars had already lit the young Simon Ames with wonder. Seeing the waves shining with pale fire, he had simply paddled out in it, ignoring the damage to his shoes and hose, tried to cup the beautiful water with his hands, glorying at the chance to look at it. Then he realised that close up, the sea was not burning. Stars had come down to swim in it. They darted and flashing in the water, stars perhaps, but certainly animals. He had looked up at the other stars, his head floating and bursting with joy to think that he had learned their secret, that they were tiny burning creatures swimming slowly in the sea above the firmament.

  Even as his teeth clattered, Simon smiled at the memory. Joy had not come so often into his life that he was likely to forget its visits. Such happiness had been well-worth the scolding he got from his mother when they came dripping home, he and his father both. It was not so bad an explanation as all that either, and made more sense that the one his nurse had given him, which was that the stars were little holes in God’s robe that let you see through to God’s glory. This struck the prim small child as unlikely; nobody he knew had holes in their clothes, not even their meanest scullery maid was allowed by his mother to wear anything other than decent livery. Why would the Almighty (Blessed be He) have holes in his clothes then, as if He could afford no better?

  Something clattered on the narrow scrap of wall by Fleet Lane. Ames hallucinated a distinct thud as his soul came back to the present, turned his head to look. He had trouble seeing so far and his night-sight was not good enough to make out more than a black indistinct lump that moved at the top of the wall where the spikes and broken glass were.

  A different kind of revelation burst upon him. His mouth opened and he turned back to Becket, saw he was fully awake and showing his teeth again.

  There was a stealthy scrape, a very soft curse, another scrape and something long and thin rose up against the sky like Jacob’s ladder, then fed itself down again. In very truth a ladder. Obviously a ladder. In fact, he himself had helped Becket establish its proper length.

  LV

  BETHANY DAVISON LAY LIGHTLY on linen only a little whiter than her face and dreamt of being caught in a deep fiery swamp to her waist while the Queen scolded her for being a whore. Then the black fur of her lashes parted a little and she gasped, for she thought the Queen of her dreams was made flesh before her. And then she realised that Her Majesty had honoured her bedfellow by visiting her sick-bed. It was a kindness that the Queen bestowed only
on her best-loved servants. She had visited Burghley likewise. Guilt and weakness filled Bethany’s eyes and overflowed to trickle down her face.

  Very gently, like Bethany’s mother, the Queen patted away the tears with a soft cloth.

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” Bethany whispered. “So sorry . . .”

  This bed had proper curtains, beautifully embroidered with birds and spring flowers on damask. Framed by them the Queen’s face was a thing like a figure from Cipanga, enamelled white and red. Her lips tightened and the lines drew down familiarly with rage. Bethany shrank away.

  “Don’t be angry with me, please,” she said. “I am so sorry, so-“

  “Quiet,” said the Queen. “Who did this to you?”

  “The witch.”

  “Of course. The name?”

  Weakly Bethany shrugged and shut her eyes. She did not see the expression on the Queen’s face then, which might have comforted her.

  “I meant,” said the Queen very softly, “who was the man who got you with child?”

  Even muzzy with fever and being bled, Bethany knew what the Queen was offering: revenge for her dishonour, the blame to fall upon her lover. But it had been her fault, after all; she was the fool who believed what John Gage had said of handfasting. She had wanted to believe him, had wanted an excuse for sin.

  “He never . . . forced me . . .” she started to explain, breathless and anxious, “It was . . . I loved him . . .”

  “Let me tell you how it was,” said the Queen, bleakly staring at a point on the headboard, not at Bethany. “He was tall and strong and broad and his beard tickles your ear and his lips made prints of fire all down the side of your neck to your breast. And he said to you, ‘Have pity on me, I burn, have pity, great lady, sweet one, glorious beauty,’ and you felt how he burnt and you burned yourself so that you could hardly stand. And he told you how all would be well, he would take care and spill his seed and that you were handfasted in the sight of God and moreover he would marry you, and you wished to believe, so you believed. After all, we are creatures made for passion. And in the flurry and glory of the game of the two-backed beast, he forgot and you forgot because when two become one there is a melting and annealing and alloying into one golden instant and why in God’s name should either of you remember? Even the first time, when it hurt you, even then you understood why we are misers with such gold, why we lock up our daughters to keep them pure as we lock the dogs out of the wet-larder, for if once you begin to feed upon desire, it only deepens your hunger.”

  Bethany gaped at the Queen, whose ruff creaked as she tilted her head to look full in Bethany’s eyes.

  “But then come the wages of sin,” said the Queen. “At first you told yourself your courses were only late and then you convinced yourself they would come at any moment, and then, when your breasts were sore and your belly began to round out, you knew . . .”

  “I was afraid,” Bethany said.

  The Queen nodded. “And you were desperate and so you went to a witch.”

  “How did you . . .” Of course, the doctor had told her. The Portuguese doctor with the grave angry face and the gentle stubby fingers. “Yes.”

  “Do you know her name?” Bethany shook her head, slowly and wearily, “Nor where she lives? Where did you go?”

  Her breath was coming short. “They were . . . kind.”

  The Queen snorted. “And your lover?”

  Bethany shut her lips. It had not been his fault, truly, she should have known, should have held fast to her virtue; her fault, her fault, her grievous fault.

  The silence stretched out. “Yes,” said the Queen, answering Bethany’s thoughts, “yes, I am angry, of course. You were under my protection and . . . this happened. But I never understood my stepmother’s anger, either, so why should you?”

  Stark astonishment made Bethany open her heavy eyelids again. The Queen smiled, a very grim and frightening smile.

  “That woke you, I see, and no wonder. Do you think I know nothing, child?”

  As Bethany had in fact thought precisely that, she only stared.

  “Tell me his name.”

  Obstinately, Bethany closed her lips. She was too tired to explain why, with the wings of fever lying before and behind her. The Queen sighed.

  “If you could only see . . . My dear, young men are all alike in this, whatsoever their differences otherwise. When they say they burn, they speak the truth; when they make tragical rhymes of how you have taken them to desperation and beyond, when they say that all they desire is the glory of you, ay, they tell the truth. But when they say they love you . . . They might believe it themselves, but they lie. What they love is the treasure under your skirts, and for the owners of the treasure they have very little interest, if any. How else do you think they can go to whores?”

  More annoying tears welled up and flowed into Bethany’s black hair and the Queen tutted and mopped them up. “They believe they love, my dear, but their desire for your flesh burns too hot for them to see anything but that flesh. I am reliably informed that once married, and their need assuaged, then they can learn to love as well as any woman, but before . . .”

  “I do not hate him,” Bethany protested.

  “No, no, my dear, nor do I. Not any man. The world without men would be a sorry place, a world without fire or metal, without song, truly without any salt or spice, without meat. Who would live in such a world, willingly?”

  A piece of wood in the fireplace cracked and sank. Bethany could feel the waiting waves of fever surging back over her, pounding and crashing in her eyes and ears like the sea, swirling around the rear Queen and turning her into another Queen, a Queen of shadows and smoke. Well, I am also the Queen of Hell, as the theologians attest, Queen of the dawn and the day and the dusk.

  “What was his name, child?”

  Bethany relaxed happily into my shadow-waves, relieved she had kept John Gage safe to marry the ward his father had bought for him. Far in the distance she heard the Queen muttering that Bethany had more honour to her than the swinish pillock that had ruined her and smiled to know the Queen thwarted by her. Then she let herself fall into my arms and I carried her until she should be strong enough to go through my portal herself.

  She did not hear the door open quietly, nor see the Queen turn upon her stool as the broad Portuguese doctor came in soft-footed.

  He bowed. “Your Majesty,” he said.

  “Nothing,” said the Queen. “She told me nothing.”

  “Not even the name of the evil witch that committed this abortion?”

  “No.”

  Dr Nunez was very angry himself, at the crime that had taken two lives at once.

  “She is worse than a murderess,” he said to himself in Latin, not remembering the Queen knew Latin as well as he did.

  “Oh, indeed?” said the Queen sharply in that language. “We are very quick to condemn, are we not, Doctor?”

  “This child has sinned gravely,” rumbled the doctor, stern with rectitude, “I pity her, but I cannot condone-“

  “Condone? Who asked you to judge her, Doctor?”

  He was astonished to find a woman arguing with him on the point, even the Queen. “It is beyond question she has sinned greatly,” he intoned, his Latin more fluid than his English. “Firstly in fornication and secondly in doing away with the consequences of her fornication. This is sorrowful, but it is the judgement of the Almighty upon –”

  The Queen was standing, facing him now, quite a small woman rigid with a mysterious rage. “Ay,” she hissed, “the consequences of her fornication. And what consequences for her lover, eh? Has he suffered for his fornication?”

  “He did not commit the wickedness of inducing an abortion, Your Majesty.”

  “No. Why should he? Was he the one who fell with child? Was he the one who faced shame and misery for it? No, Doctor, depend on it, he sinned no less, enjoyed himself no less, and then passed on, unmarked, untroubled. All the consequences of sin, of both their sins
, fell upon this poor girl-child, as they always do, as they always do, Doctor.”

  Shocked and frightened by this vehemence, which he did not at all understand, the doctor went to the other side of the bed, gently loosened Bethany’s fingers from their grip about a trinket on her neck, and felt her pulses. The fleshy folds of his face straightened as he interpreted the news they gave of her humoral balance, which was very bad.

  “She fades fast,” he rumbled, still in Latin.

  For a moment the Queen said nothing, her eyes fixed on the thing Bethany had been holding, a pretty locket of midnight-blue twined with roses and stars.

  “She has repented of her sin,” she said. “Please fetch a priest to pray for her. I will sit by her until you return.”

  Thinking better of any further argument, the doctor bowed and left the room again.

  LVI

  AME’S HEART BEGAN TO thud as Becket’s henchman creaked his way cautiously down the ladder, paused at its foot to inspect the courtyard for guards and then hurried quietly over to the pillory. His first emotion was grateful happiness: they would be freed, he would be able to stand up and stamp his feet and flat his arms and warm up a little and then . . .

  He and all his family would be expelled from England, as the Queen had threatened.

  The dark shape was inspecting the pillory. Ames could not make out who it was.

  “Good evening, Mr Strangways,” said the man.

  “And good evening to you, Father,” said Becket. “What kept you? I’m perishing with cold.”

  Ames saw the priest’s shoulders go up as he spread his hands helplessly.

  “What can you do if a party of whores entertains a party of gentlemen in Fleet Lane? Would you have me climb the wall as they watch?”

  The priest was unbolting the pillory, lifting the upper half. No need for it to be padlocked, with Newton’s authority on it. Becket backed out of the pillory’s grip still hunched and then slowly straightened up with a long groan. He rubbed his neck and dug his fingers at the cramped muscles in his shoulders, rotated his head and grimaced.