Unicorn's Blood

by Patricia Finney

  LXXXII

  WE ARE COME TO a caesura in the tale, not the end. For Becket it was a time of great agony, although the pain he suffered was the coward’s pain of anticipation and fear, not fact. Anthony Munday had all a courtier’s instincts and a great deal of cold common sense. He was quite certain that there had been more going on that his master had told him or indeed knew himself, and without Ramme to talebear he was powerful enough to decide for himself how to treat his prisoners at the Tower. For Simon Ames, he called a doctor and a surgeon again, supplied him with medicines and books to read and saw that his cell was clean, dry and warmed with a fire. After a thorough and humiliating body-search, Becket was decently treated, although kept in solitude and should have been well enough had be not been furnished now with too vivid a memory. Ramme’s corpse was retrieved with great complaint by an undertaker’s servants and taken to the same crypt of St Mary Rounceval whence Bethany’s mortal dross had been carried to her grave only the day before.

  After Thomasina had told the Queen the truth of what Davison had done, her first reaction was to put him forthwith in the Tower and rescind the warrant of execution. However, on second thoughts, that would have revealed too much of the Queen’s mind and she doubted not that her stern councillors who would have arranged the execution would find some way of ignoring her orders. She made it a policy never to give orders that she knew would be disobeyed.

  She spent the day after the fight in the Privy Gallery hushing up what had occurred. Carey was sent back to his father’s chambers with the assurance of her favour once all had been cleared up, and the two men from Berwick were rewarded. As she said to Thomasina, she could not move against Davison until she knew for certain the whereabouts of her testament and confession, for she was quite sure he would use them against her if he did find them. He might yet do so. Until the papers could be found she must act with as great circumspection as she had when the Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour was arrested and she herself had been interrogated.

  She was still desperate to avoid being seen to execute Mary Queen of Scots, and fixed on the idea of making the woman die a few days earlier. Upon the Sunday she even wrote to Mary’s gaoler Sir Amyas Paulet, requiring him to do as he had pledged in the Bond of Association, and stifle Mary quietly in the night. Paulet wrote back a letter that was magnificent in its stiff-necked legalistic refusal to do what he conceived as evil, and the Queen raged and swore that the silly man could not see that it mattered not at all how the bitch of Scots died, so long as she did so in such a way that her cousin of England did not get the blame. She even let out to Davison that she had dreamt of running him through with a sword, which might have warned him that his hold was not quite secure, if he had paid any attention to the vapourings of women’s imagination.

  And so, as she had done many times before, the Queen waited, not calmly, not patiently but grimly, until events showed her what God desired her to do.

  In the morning of Wednesday the eighth of February, in the year of our Lord 1587, a plump, stooped, middle-aged woman who had once been the tall and willowy Queen of Scotland walked – all in black satin and a veil of white – to the hall of the castle of Fotheringay. There an audience of three hundred of her worst enemies were waiting to see how she died. Her women disrobed her, to show her now all in dark red, the colour of blood, of courage and martyrdom – red bodice, red petticoat and red sleeves. Her eyes bound with a white cloth embroidered with gold, she knelt to the block as she prayed in Latin, against the yammering of heretic Divines determined not to leave her soul in peace even at death. Then she stretched out her arms, confided herself to God, and the executioner took off her head with two strokes and a little sawing.

  Thus Davison had his great victory.

  LXXXIII

  IT WAS AS IF the Court were holding its breath. The Queen remained outwardly impassive, troubled, as she admitted, with her old pains, and she did no business of ruling.

  A couple of days after that Wednesday, Thomasina went in some state to the laundry to find out how Pentecost was faring. Mrs Twiste had taken her in for the moment, rather than send her back to her scandalous aunt at the Falcon.

  Although she knew nothing of Davison’s burning of Pentecost’s Madonna, Thomasina brought with her the fashion doll she had often played with in front of the Queen, for Her Majesty seemed not to like that game any more. This she presented to Pentecost and bade her keep it safe in case somebody stole it, and Pentecost squealed and laughed with happiness in the usual faithfulness of the young, clasped it to her breast and declared that never in all the world had there been such a beautiful puppet.

  “Keep it away from the fire,” Thomasina told her. “See the pretty pink face? It is made of wax and will melt just like a candle if you forget and let it get too warm.”

  Knowing how it was for a little girl, Thomasina had also brought a box to keep the doll in and this delighted Pentecost almost as much as the doll itself, for it was sturdy solemn box of black oak lined with red satin, and furthermore had a key which could be worn on a ribbon.

  “This will be my treasure casket,” Pentecost announced as she buried it in the pallet and pile of blankets where she slept.

  “You can keep letters from your lovers in there when you are older,” said Thomasina with a smile.

  “Or the Queen’s papers,” agreed Pentecost.

  Thomasina stopped on the way to the door, came back and sat herself down on the floor in front of Pentecost.

  “The Queen’s papers?” she whispered, hardly daring to breathe in case she frightened Pentecost with too much interest.

  “Yes,” said Pentecost. “Can you take the kirtle off? . . . Oh, look, yes, you can, and she has a farthingale and a-“

  “That your grandam had?”

  “Yes. And her shoes are velvet, and leather soles. Oh, I wish I had a pair of shoes so beautiful, and her petticoat all embroidered, she must be as beautiful as the Queen: look, see the embroidery –“

  “Pentecost, my dear. If you have the Queen’s papers . . . If you have them and can give them to me, the Queen will give you almost anything you could ask for.”

  Pentecost stopped fingering the doll’s petticoat and looked up. Her mouth dropped open.

  “Oh,” she said. Then cautiously, “Will she?”

  “Yes,” said Thomasina.

  “Mr Davison said he wanted the papers, but he was horrible and he burnt my Madonna because he thought it was a nidol, which she wasn’t and he said if I lied I would go to Hell and he said my grandam was a witch and she was in Hell and so I thought I would like to go there, so I lied to him and said my grandam had them when she . . . when she . . . fell in the river . . .”

  Tears threatened to flood again.

  “Mr Davison is a wicked man himself,” Thomasina said at once. “The Queen hates him. If you can find the papers and give them to the Queen, you will make her happy and you will make Davison very sad.”

  “That was why I lied to him, you see,” Pentecost added, pursuing her own thoughts. “So I could go and find my grandam again.”

  Thomasina put her arm around Pentecost and squeezed.

  “My dear,” she said, “none of us knows who will go to Heaven and who will go to Hell, but my own opinion is that Mr Davison will infallibly end in Hell and your grandam might well find herself in Heaven. And wherever she goes, when you die, if you want to, I expect you will go there too.”

  “Will I meet the Queen?” asked Pentecost.

  “Yes. If you have the papers to give her, yes, certainly.”

  “But I will not have to die first?”

  “No.”

  Pentecost laughed. She put the doll in its box, smoothing her down and tucking her up under a scrap of linen, and telling her to lie still and not kick and not snore and be a good girl as such length that Thomasina could have shaken her. Then she shut the lid and locked it and had Thomasina tie the ribbon for the key around her neck. Then at last she stood up and held out her hand to Thomasi
na and they went down the passageway, to the entrance of the laundry, where Thomasina’s two waiting-women were standing and gossiping with the woman behind the desk.

  Now a small procession formed and Thomasina and Pentecost walked through the woodyard, round the rearmost kitchens and in at the back of the Kitchens by the Great Hall. Pentecost took the back route of a night-soil woman and followed her grandam’s old path exactly so that after a laborious tour about the Court, watched curiously by many men and some women, she came to the Privy Gallery.

  Pentecost put her finger on her lips. “This is where the Queen lives,” she said. “Be quiet.”

  Thomasina nodded seriously, and gave the waiting women who sniggered a very black look. “You stay here,” she said to them, to their disappointment.

  Thomasina and Pentecost walked up the Privy Gallery with its roof that Holbein had painted, Pentecost on tiptoe. Past the Queen’s bedchamber, up to the other end where Carey had so narrowly missed dying of a halberd blade, and in at the door of the Library.

  Pentecost looked round at all the books.

  “My grandam could read,” she said in a self-important whisper, “she could even read Latin. She could read any of these books.”

  Thomasina nodded, hoping Pentecost could not hear the hammering of her heart. The little girl tiptoed round the room, trailing her fingers on the shelf that was just the right height until she stopped and took a book from the shelf. It was a slim volume, though magnificently bound in red calf and gold leaf. She nearly dropped it as she tried to open it, and Thomasina sprinted over and helped her take out the two stained and folded pieces of paper that had caused the Queen so much grief.

  The muliercula was so overwrought, she stood and held them in her hand for several minutes together, shaking with emotion. Shall I look at them? She wondered. Shall I read what the Queen wrote when she was a child of fourteen and thought she was going to die?

  No, came the answer. You have no right to go burrowing about in her confession.

  Thomasina gave the papers back to Pentecost and told her to hide them in her bodice. Through the closed library door she heard the distant trumpets and the press of feet which announced that the Queen was returning from chapel. She knew that Her Majesty was due to meet with her Privy Council, who would be following behind her in the procession, and receive the confirmation of the Queen of Scots’ execution. Brimming with mischief and triumph, Thomasina told Pentecost to wait where she was and do nothing and then slipped out into the Privy Gallery to await the Queen.

  The men-at-arms in front of her lined up on either side of the gallery and as the Queen turned to go into the Council Chamber, she caught sight of her muliercula. True to her promise when she asked Thomasina to undertake the quest, she had not blamed her for her partial failure and had received her as gladly as before. Now she stopped and paused.

  Thomasina ran forward and sheer lightness of heart made her take a hop and a jump and turn two somersaults in the air as she went, before plumping down breathlessly on her knees in front of the Queen.

  “Your Majesty,” she said. “Please, my I pray for an urgent private audience?”

  “Now, Thomasina?” asked the Queen wearily, who was not looking forward to this Council meeting.

  “Oh yes, Your Majesty. Now.”

  The Queen’s eyes narrowed and after only a fragment of hesitation, while the Privy Councillors behind her exchanged irritate glances, she nodded.

  “Where?”

  “In your bedchamber, Your Majesty. Alone.”

  The Queen nodded curtly, turned about and went to the door of her bedchamber, causing a flurry amongst her maids, who were not prepared to open the door for her. At last they had sorted themselves out while the Queen waited patiently, with only one growl at the girl who nearly upended herself in her haste to reach the handle. Then the door closed. Thomasina went back to the Library, took Pentecost by the hand, led her to the door, stopped, used spit and the end of her apron to clean a small milk moustache and some crumbs left over from breakfast, and to straighten the now grubby embroidered biggin, and then brought her into the Privy Gallery.

  The buzz of gossip and speculation died as Thomasina quietly led Pentecost past all the high gentlemen and ladies to the Queen’s door. At the back of the Privy Councillors, Davison saw Pentecost in the midst of his triumph and began to wonder.

  Thomasina waited until a maid of honour had opened the door for her and brought Pentecost inside, kicked it shut again herself with her heel.

  The Queen was standing by the window, looking out on the Privy Garden, where the fountain lay silent with frost. She was again in black velvet and black satin, wrought with pearls and silver-thread embroidery, with pearls in her ears and a great rope of them round her neck, the false-front of her petticoat a foaming maze of cloth-of-silver brocade, and her ruff and standing cobweb lawn veil as near to a halo as a mortal can come. Watery winter sunlight caught sprinkled rainbows from the diamonds in the small crown she had pinned to her red wig.

  Pentecost looked up at her and found everything she had hoped to find when she met the Queen of Heaven. The room smelt sweet, the bed was curtained in solemn tapestry and cloth-of-silver, the floor was covered with white matting and the walls with tapestry and Turkey rugs. It was interesting that the Queen liked animals, since there was a basket full of three snoring hairy lap-dogs, but that was only to be expected. And the Queen of Heaven herself, although nearly as old as Pentecost’s grandam, was tall and straight and as glorious as a picture in a church.

  Pentecost dropped her mouth open and took a long deep breath of awe.

  “Ohh,” she whispered to Thomasina, “she’s so beautiful, she’s even more beautiful than I thought.”

  Thomasina smiled and almost laughed. The Queen smiled as well.

  “Shh,” said Thomasina, “you should kneel to the Queen, you know, and wait for her to speak first.”

  “Oh yes,” gasped Pentecost, dropping to her knees with an ungraceful thud. “I am sorry. Ohhh, look. She has a crown of stars.”

  The Queen smiled again, more pleased that she would admit by such uncalculated admiration. Thomasina genuflected much more neatly and then helped Pentecost up, who had tangled herself in her new petticoat, and led her forwards.

  “Give Her Majesty what you have.”

  Pentecost fumbled the papers out of her bodice and help them up, smiling shyly.

  “Thomasina said if I gave you these you would be happy,” she said, forgetting she should wait for the Queen to speak first.

  The Queen slowly took the papers, opened them, read a few words and then crumpled them against the hard prow of her bodice. Her face was flushed and her eyes suddenly glittered and she paused before she spoke.

  “Is that right?” asked Pentecost anxiously. “Are they what you wanted?”

  The Queen was folding the papers small, with fingers that shook, and she put them inside her own bodice.

  “Yes,” she said, smiling and blinking. “They are what I wanted.”

  Pentecost smiled back. “Thomasina said you would give me whatever I wished, Your . . . Your Majesty.”

  The Queen looked amused at this. She held out her hand to Pentecost, who took it, although it felt strange, being dry with white powder and heavy with rings. Together they walked to the Queen’s carved and brocade-padded chair by the fire, where the Queen sat down carefully and Pentecost stood next to her, twiddling a lock of hair that had escaped from her cap.

  “Now, Pentecost, I am not the Queen of Heaven, only the Queen of England,” said Elizabeth. “I can give you many things, but not your heart’s desire.”

  “Can I have a dowry?” said Pentecost quickly, not paying any attention to this nonsense. The Queen looked sad and also angry, so she hastened to explain. “Only, my grandam always said I must have a dowry so I could marry an old man with lots of money and then I would not have to be a strumpet like my aunt Julia at the Falcon.”

  The Queen coughed and said that a dowr
y could certainly be arranged.

  “And could I have a beautiful gown of tawny satin and with pink and purple velvet and embroidery of birds, to look like a sunset in?” said Pentecost, growing in confidence.

  “I expect so,” said the Queen. “I can have my tailor make you one from the Privy Wardrobe.”

  “And Noah’s Ark made of sugar-paste with marchpane animals, all two by two and coloured and a house made of marchpane with sweetmeats and a diamond crown like yours and a white pony with a gold bridle and a real bed with curtains and another gown made of white satin and a red velvet bag and a book that has pictures in it and a puppy and a ball and a fur cloak and a palace and a prince and a box of kissing comfits and another box of sugar-plate made like animals and an orangeado and –”

  The Queen laughed and stopped her. “My dear,” she said, “if you had such a lot of sweetmeats, would you eat them all at once?”

  “As many as I could,” said Pentecost, worried now. “But I would keep some for later and eat them tomorrow,” she added with unconvincing maturity.

  “I would not wish to give you presents that would make you sick or cause you to be too greatly envied. So here is my boon for you, Pentecost. Because of the great service you have done us today, we shall give you your gown and also your dowry, which you have so very wisely requested, and we shall see to it that you are found a good man to marry when the time comes, which it will not for many years. Until then we shall look after you as we do all our faithful servants. And you shall go with Thomasina now and our women shall serve you and bring you food and drink, and you shall make a list of all the things which you desire and which Thomasina considers it is seemly for you to have, and then we shall give you one more from the list. For if you have all your heart’s desires, what will you do afterwards?”

  “Enjoy them,” said Pentecost stoutly, who was not at all philosophical.

  “No doubt you shall,” said the Queen. “Now you are a good child and have made me more happy than you can understand. Kiss my hand and then go with Thomasina to make your list, whilst I am busy with my councillors.” There was a certain grim turn to the last word which Thomasina understood, but which passed by Pentecost, who was annoyed with herself that she had not asked the Queen of Heaven for her grandam to come back from Hell.