Unicorn's Blood

by Patricia Finney

  By the year of Our Lord 1590, Philip will sit in what remains of London and England will be Catholic again, she thought bleakly. I will be dead, at least; but God’s blood, the ruin of it, the ruin to my people . . .

  Pity for the commoners who would die pointlessly fighting the veteran Spanish troops of the tercios and pity for herself welled up behind her nose, making it prickle and burn and bringing tears into her eyes.

  She bit her lip and swallowed it all down mightily. Temporise, play for time, see what you can do, she told herself, there may be a way . . . What? She had no idea, only Time had always been her friend. She had won many battles simply by refusing to act, by refusing to choose sides, by deciding only when it was forced on her and the choice had narrowed down to no more than two options. Time will be my friend again, she thought.

  So she would admit nothing. She waited until she could speak calmly, until the treasonous flood of tears had subsided again, and Davison waited with her, smug and confident with his lever to move the world.

  “Well?” she said haughtily, challenging him to name his price.

  “The Queen of Scots, Your Majesty,” murmured Davison, complacently and predictably. “When shall I bring the warrant for her execution?”

  So it began. First they would knock down the citadel gate, the better to send out troops to their co-religionists in the Netherlands. Very well. She would buy time with her cousin’s life.

  “Bring it to me with my other papers.”

  “Your Majesty will sign?”

  “I will decide what to do when you bring it,” she almost screamed at him. “Get out!”

  She picked up the goblet to throw at him, but then thought better of it. If Davison planned to be her secret master, let him think she was more cowed than she was. Let him continue to underestimate her. Davison rose, bowed and backed from the Privy Chamber as she drained the spiced wine to the last drop. Its heat did not make any impression on the sick wilderness inside her.

  Drury poked his head round the door.

  “Your Majesty, will you – ”

  With an incoherent shriek of rage she threw the goblet straight and true for his head. It rapped his skull and bounced to the ground and he yelped and grabbed at the place, then disappeared behind the door again.

  She got up, placed furiously past the stools by the council table, paced back again. The silver goblet was lying there, dented. She kicked it and it rang satisfyingly against the door panels.

  “Bastard. Bastard Puritan.”

  By the time the door opened and Davison reappeared she had carefully mopped the tears that had welled up as she thought out the ramifications, dabbing with the corner of her handkerchief so as not to disarrange her face-paint, and was standing by the window, looking out on the cobbles of the Preaching Place.

  She turned as he came in, bowed with exaggerated and ironic respect, laid a sheaf of papers on the table and then put out a selection of pens, an ink-pot, a sand shaker.

  In grim silence, she came and sat down. He moved her chair for her. She did not thank him. She took the papers; most of them concerned the public order preparations for the funeral of Sir Philip Sidney. A couple were for minor offices at Court, and one for a contract for composition of purveyance with Cornwall. Amongst them was the warrant for the execution of Mary Stuart, once Queen of Scotland.

  Her pen caught its drops of ink out of the ink-pot, she made the intricate flourishes, turning and turning again, forming the letters carefully as an exercise against internal dissolution. She could hear Davison breathing though his mouth beside her, excited, impatient, nervous. There it was, three papers down. No, she would not allow her hand to tremble. She was killing her cousin, executing an anointed Queen, instead of following sensible tradition and having her assassinated. This formal legalistic removal of a crowned head with an axe was in the way of a door opening; any fool who read history could tell that. Who else would they end up executing, if they could execute a monarch? Perhaps they would eventually execute her for the crimes of fornication and abortion; why not?

  The pen swept on, forming its loops automatically, steadily. I have killed before, the Queen thought; certainly I have killed many times by proxy – by signing warrants for execution, by sending men to fight. Any monarch’s hands are soiled wet with blood, but our anointing gives us dispensation from God. This is none so ill a death I am sending her to: she may be a martyr and wipe out her former sins and to die by the axe is not so very bad; you have warning, you may settle your affairs. To be sure there is the fear of it before . . .

  She had not seen her mother die, had not been old enough to know anything but whispers and looks and the rumour of disaster. Her mind could form things she had not seen, though, and the picture of Tower Green and the swordsman hacking at her mother’s neck had ripped her from her sleep many times until she became Queen. At least as a regnant Queen, she had thought she would be safe from it. She could only pray the silly cautious lawyers on her council did not realise it. Now Davison moved restlessly, unable to bear the tension as her pen swept through its ceremonial loops.

  “Your Majesty has a great many calls upon your time,” he murmured, watching greedily. “It may be worth considering the making of a signature stamp, as the Scots King does.”

  Pure rage made the pen wobble in her hand. Oh yes, she thought, a signing stamp, for you to hold, Mr Davison, and use to destroy your enemies; yes, I am sure you would like that very much indeed. Over my dead body, Mr Davison. She said nothing aloud. Let the ambitious weevil dream his dreams of power.

  There, it was done, fully formed, a triumphal expression of the power of her name. Davison let out a soft sigh of triumph. She looked up at him steadily, comforting herself with the image of him screaming for mercy as the executioner disembowelled and castrated him. It was a pleasant thought but she was too realistic to think it could ever be true. He was not, strictly speaking, a traitor, but something more subtle and more dangerous.

  “There you are, Mr Davison,” she said. “Take that to Walsingham. No doubt the joy of it will go near to killing him outright.”

  LXX

  LORD BURGHLEY WAITED FOR Davison at the end of the Privy Gallery, looking out of the diamond-paned window on the graceful curves of the Holbein Gate. He was lame with gout again, but had hopes that summer weather would ameliorate it.

  A door banged farther down and Burghley turned to look. There was Davison, an extraordinary sight, one fist high above his head in victory, the other fist clutching a sheaf of papers, and his legs doing a quick clumsy jig on the matting.

  Burghley smiled at the sight and then became grave again. It would not do to laugh at the man when he was happy. Davison came towards him, pacing fast, face shining.

  “Hm?” Burghley asked.

  “Habeo.” said Davison. “I have it. Look.”

  He held out one of the papers, formally written over in secretary hand except for the commanding flourish of italic at the bottom. It gave orders for the execution of a Queen.

  “Thank God,” said Burghley fervently, “you did it. Mr Davison, you are marvel. My congratulations, a coup indeed, a veritable coup.” He pounded Davison on the back, and Davison for once in his life accepted the familiarity without bridling. Then, remembering who he was and where they were, Burghley coughed and stopped.

  “We must set it all in train at once,” he said. “Lord knows how soon Her Majesty will change her mind . . .”

  “This time I think she will not.”

  “She might. She might well. You do not know her as I do, Mr Davison; it has been a veritable cross to my back. How did you manage it, how did you persuade . . .”

  “I brought her stronger arguments and in the end she yielded, as all women must,” said Davison sententiously.

  “Quite so, quite so,” said Burghley. “And these arguments were . . .?”

  “Forgive me,” said Davison. “I had rather not run through them again just yet, my voice is hoarse with it.”

&nbs
p; “Hm,” said Burghley, wondering a little. There had been none of the dramatic sounds he had come to expect from the Queen’s being persuaded to do something against her will, only Drury retiring with blood on his head from something she had thrown. Davison himself seemed completely unscathed, not a drop of ink on him anywhere.

  Never mind. It was done. They had the warrant and could extirpate the serpent.

  “I will send Beale with it at once, and we must go immediately to Seething Lane to consult with Sir Francis,” he said. “He will be delighted. Truly, Mr Davison, you are a valuable addition to Her Majesty’s councillors; any man who can persuade her to make a decision, any decision, never mind such a one as this, is valuable beyond pearls. I believe Sir Francis has found a man who is willing to do the office of executioner, and if we move quickly we may see the serpent dead by next week.”

  “Not sooner?”

  “Certainly sooner if we can, but the thaw has begun and the roads to Fotheringay will be very bad. I doubt anyone can reach the place in less than two days, though he ride like the wind; it is off the route of the regular couriers and very isolated. Yes, certainly, we shall send Beale, and perhaps Shrewsbury and Kent can be witnesses. The local gentry must be alerted so they can witness it

  LXXI

  THE WEATHER HAD SUDDENLY turned warmer with the clouds from the west. Not, to be sure, exactly warm, in fact it felt colder because of the rain, but the hard grip of frost on London was broken. Thomasina and David Becket were the last to be able to cross the Thames dry-shod, and they had to skip lightly and quickly while the ice groaned and cracked under them. Neither of them spoke while they crossed, needing to concentrate on keeping their feet, and unwilling to mention to each other the sounds of hunting and dogs from Southward where Ames was playing his part of decoy. The sound of a hunt is hard to resist; as they had hoped, the men-at-arms set to bar the Thames to them had come excitedly up the steps and plunged southwards into the Lambeth Marsh, eager to be in at the kill. In a couple of minutes the coast was clear and they had hurried down the steps. Endearingly, Becket put out his hand to hold hers, to reassure her, and then coughed and looked embarrassed when he remembered she was not really a child.

  “Do you have children, Mr Becket?” she asked him as they climbed the Whitefriars Steps.

  “As far as I know, only one.”

  The cautious answer made her grin. “Not married?”

  Becket’s voice had a single-noted dole to it. “No.”

  “And the mother of your child?”

  “Married someone else who could better support her.”

  “I am sorry to hear it.”

  “Well, I am not a very good catch, as Eliza pointed out, and the man who offered for her was a rich merchant who was also sick with the stone and unlikely to trouble her much.”

  “Ah,” said Thomasina wisely, and nodded. They walked up Temple Lane companionably enough, past the cloisters of the old Dominican monastery, through the little gate to the yard at the back of Crocker’s Lane. There Thomasina left Becket to hide by the jakes while she trotted softly up the stairs to check for pursuivants. Moments later she came down, smiling, and they climbed the stairs to Father Hart’s lodgings.

  Becket produced a key and opened the door and they went in. Thomasina turned and looked warily at him.

  “What did you want to tell me?”

  Becket poured himself some aqua vitae, then looked at her, and poured her some as well. She took it with a grateful smile.

  “How long shall we wait for Father Hart?” she asked.

  “No time at all,” said Becket, sighing yet again and making a stool creak under his bulk. “I only wanted to speak to you in private.”

  Thomasina climbed onto the bed and sat there cross-legged, sipping occasionally.

  “Mistress Thomasina,” he said, taking the deep breath that betokens bad news unwillingly delivered. “Mistress Thomasina . . . I am sorry, I lied to Ames at the mill.”

  “Oh?”

  “In the fight by the Falcon, I am certain sure I saw Father Hart take a halberd in the back. At the very least, Davison has him and also the Book of the Unicorn.”

  She almost dropped her little horn-cup, then put her face in her free hand and wailed, “Oh no.”

  “Wait, mistress, this is not so very bad – ”

  “Oh, but it is, Mr Becket, it is. Oh, poor lady, poor lady . . . If it’s true what you say is in it . . . My God, they will crucify her.”

  “Wait . . . Listen to me.”

  She was crying and rocking herself. “They will depose her like they did the Queen of Scots . . . Oh my God, what will she say to me . . .”

  “Mistress Thomasina,” bellowed Becket, too tired to be patient. “Act your age and listen to me.”

  Thomasina’s head jerked up and she glared at him. Nobody had ever said that to her before.

  “Now,” Becket continued quietly, pouring more aqua vitae, “it is true that Davison has the Book of the Unicorn. However, we did not buy it sight unseen. The first time we saw it, there was the Queen’s will and confession in it. The second time, after we bought it, I checked again and both pages had been cut out.”

  Thomasina’s mouth dropped open. “You mean . . .?”

  Becket was smiling cynically. “Yes, mistress, the old hag coney-catched us. She still has the will and the confession with her somewhere. It suited me that Father Hart should have the book and not the confession, so I said nothing about it and let him think that it was complete.”

  “So then . . .” Thomasina was laughing with relief. “So then, all Davison has is a book of recommendations to the-“

  “State of virginity, yes.” Becket laughed with her. “I am sure he will find it very edifying. But he had not gotten the Queen’s confession of fornication, adultery and abortion.”

  Thomasina reached out and touched his arm.

  “Do not judge her too harshly,” she said softly, recognising the condemnation in Becket’s tone. “To be sure, she has sinned, but I think she has paid for it since.”

  Becket moved his bulk on the stool. “I’ll say nothing of it,” he rumbled. “Lord knows, I am not one to sit in judgement of mortal sin.”

  Thomasina finished her drink and jumped off the bed.

  “Where are you going, mistress?”

  “Back to the Falcon, to find the witch.”

  Becket shook his head. “She is gone. I looked for her, under cover of finding the jakes; she must have scuttled off as soon as she had the money and the cut pages with her.”

  Sheer dismay made Thomasina sit down again. “She did. I saw her go. Why in God’s name did I not . . . Pffft. It is all to do again.”

  Becket nodded ruefully. “We must find one old woman among all the old women in London.”

  “But . . . but where shall we start?”

  Becket shrugged and poured more aqua vitae. “God knows, mistress, only I think we wait for a while.”

  “Why?”

  “Davison will know the important pages went missing. He will look for her as well.”

  “So we should move faster, before he discovers her.”

  Becket shook his head. “No,” he said, “because his pursuivants will be out in force, ripping London apart to find her. And us. She knows it too. Depend on it, she will go to ground somewhere, avoid the Falcon like a plague-house, stay away from her usual haunts and hide. Let Davison’s search cool, and then she might come out to spend her money and then we might catch her.”

  “What if Davison finds her first?”

  “I doubt that he will. One old woman in London town? No. Even if he does, what can we do about it?”

  Thomasina nodded and put her horn-cup down on the floor.

  “Well, certainly, I can do something about it,” she said. “I think it is time to talk to the Queen. Once she knows that Davison has the book but not the confession, she can take steps herself. Will you stay here?”

  “No,” said Becket wearily, rubbing his eyes. “Fa
ther Hart will tell Davison where his base is. If he has not done so already. In fact, we should move at once, before the pursuivants arrive to search the place.”

  “There is gold in the chest that Ames broke open.”

  Becket grinned. “Excellent,” He opened it, took the bags and hid them under his shirt. “Once the search dies down, I will find the hag,” he said.

  “Why could you do it when Davison cannot?”

  “Because I know where old witches are likely to go to get drunk on their ill-gotten gains.”

  “How will I contact you?” Thomasina asked.

  “While you are talking to the Queen,” Becket said, speaking across her words, “make sure she finds Ames and gets him out of whatever dungeon Davison throws him into. I think he could not survive an interrogation.”

  “No, indeed. Of course I will. How will we pass messages?”

  “Do you know Dr Nunez?”

  “Yes.”

  “Through him then. He is trustworthy, and Simon’s uncle.” If you want to find me, you must ask my lord the Earl of Leicester’s major-domo, Mr Benson.”

  “And he will have me thrown out for troubling my lord’s household.”

  “Mmm.” She went to Hart’s chest, found paper and pen and ink, wrote swiftly for a while. For all his misery at the return of the black mountain of fear in his heart, Becket hid a half-smile to see her childish head in its grubby biggin cap bent over paper, and the woman’s writing flowing from her pen. But he took the paper without unseemly comment, found it to be a letter of introduction proudly signed “Thomasina de Paris, muliercula, the Queen’s Fool.”

  “Are you French then?” he asked, tapping the name.

  Thomasina laughed. “No, Paris as in Paris Garden. I was one of the tumblers there before I can to the Queen.”

  “And found your fortune.”

  “Certainly,” she said, her chin tilted with pride. “The Queen has been my most kind and loving mistress.”

  “Is it true she throws things at courtiers when they annoy her?”

  Thomasina grinned impishly. “Certainly. I myself have seen my lord Burghley with an ink-pot upended on his head.”