Gloriana

“Who else?” They walked slowly, side by side through the silent, golden halls.

“A servant? Who tried to seduce her and failed, taking vengeance?”

“Unlikely, Master Poet.”

“Another lover?”

“She had none.” Lord Montfallcon licked his lips. “Her father must be told. I’ll send a messenger to Hever. I am full of doubt, Master Wheldrake. I suspect a portent. Once this palace ran with innocent blood. It stank of blood, you know. Blood boomed on tapestries, stained walls, crusted guilty blades. Girls like Lady Mary died almost daily- stabbed, poisoned, strangled. It was a time of dark madness, and Fear drove Virtue into hiding. It was Albion’s Age of Iron. I would not have even a hint of its return.”

“One murder is not enough to call back tyranny.” Master Wheldrake was comforting, though he also felt the chill, as of an ominous wind. “If Sir Tancred committed the crime then he’ll be tried, found guilty, and we’ll all be sad for a month or two, no more.”

“If?”

“Aye. If.” Wheldrake was confident. “The true murderer shall be found, however, if it be not Tancred. Lord Rhoone and Sir Christopher’s successor, working together, will question any suspect person. There are so many who cannot be suspect, for so many attended the May Day ceremony.”

“So you think a servant?”

“A mad servant, aye-for it’s a madman’s work, sure enough. If calculated, the crime could have been hidden. Poison, stifling, imitation suicide. A madman, without a doubt.”

“But Sir Tancred seems mad.” Montfallcon shrugged.

“With grief.”

“Just that?”

They stood now outside the Queen’s apartments.

“It’s my instinct,” said Wheldrake, “and I cannot give you rational explanation.” He bowed, his feathers dripping, and made his adieux.

Lord Montfallcon knocked upon Her Majesty’s door. He was brooding, for he could only agree with Wheldrake, and he did not wish to do so. Sir Tancred was, at least, a convenient and uncomplicated culprit, with no surviving family. His own suspicions lay towards certain foreign envoys domiciled at Court. Oubacha Khan, for instance, was coldblooded but determined and hated to be thwarted. Also his vow of celibacy would make him all the more tense. And the blow had been struck once, skillfully, by someone used to handling a large blade. Or there was the warlike ambassador from Bengahl, who, Montfallcon knew, had once killed two girls of Lady Mary’s age when he had caught them together in his palace bed-chamber. Or secretive Li Pao, who had courted more than one mistress here and who had revenged himself on Maeve ap Rhys by branding his family mark upon her buttocks. Or the Icelandic envoy, who had been Lady Mary’s sister’s lover until she had been married to Sir Amadis Cornfield. Or the envoy from Peru, a land notorious for its casual letting of blood, its human sacrifice. Montfallcon would investigate them all, and again he regretted Quire’s absence, as he regretted Sir Christopher’s death. But more he regretted the darkness, the confusion in his brain, a familiar Chaos he had fought daily in the reign of Hern.

Wearily, he knocked again upon the Queen’s door.

He hoped that Tancred was not innocent. It was better to have a culprit, cut and dried, than a Court which simmered with speculation. Rumour, gossip, suspicion and fear. He could sense them now, threatening his Golden Age, his Reign of Piety, his Age of Virtue.

For a third time he knocked and at last the doors were opened by a white-faced maid of honour, still clad in the flimsy costume of a dryad.

“My lord?”

He pushed through. “The Queen? How is the Queen?”

“She weeps, my lord. She loved Mary Perrott.”

“Aye.” Nonplussed, Montfallcon stalked to the window and stared moodily at the lawns, the fountains and the fanciful shrubs. It was raining forcefully now. Great drops splashed from an uncertain sky through which the sun flashed an occasional ray. Montfallcon scowled and put his back to the window. The room, with its flower-scents and its thick curtains, was in half-light, occupied only by the nervous dryad.

“Announce me,” he said.

“My lord, I was instructed to leave her in complete peace for an hour.” A curtsey.

Montfallcon, his face like furious rock, marched grumbling from the room.

“You’ll say I was here, girl.”

“Of course, my lord.”

She closed the door on the terrifying Chancellor and began to shudder. From through the other door there came the sound of weeping, imploring cries, as Gloriana mourned her protegee, her sweet, happy lover, her child….

For Gloriana recalled the jealousy she had felt of Lady Mary’s happiness and, in a brain confused by the day’s chivalry and fantasy, had conceived the notion that she had by some charm brought death to the girl, had secretly willed it, had somehow, by frustrating Sir Tancred’s enthusiasm for arms, arranged it. Perhaps denied satisfaction for his passions, yearning to use his monstrous blade, he had turned it upon the creature he loved….

Moreover, this miserable logic was sustained by her training. For she knew she represented the whole Realm, that she held responsibility for all that occurred in the Realm and that if this terrible crime had taken place then it was because she had not been assiduous in anticipating it and therefore preventing it. And if such horror could come about in her own palace, how much more horror must exist throughout her Empire, how much unseen injustice, hidden cruelty…?

Is all this Golden Age a myth to hide a darker truth? Merely a cleverer disguise protecting an actuality as bad as my father’s dreadful Age of Iron? Worse, for this also has hypocrisy. Montfallcon since I was a child convinced me that the dream, if followed and believed, must soon become the truth. Yet Tancred, most of all, believed that dream, and most of all, has been destroyed by it, might even have used it to justify his deed. I allowed Montfallcon to make me his chief Symbol. I accepted the necessity. And Albion prospered, became more joyous, attracted the envy of all other lands, brought scholars and their wisdom, merchants and their trade. Or is it mere gilding that soon must crack to reveal the rotten wood beneath? Are we all enchanted by this charming fancy of Montfallcon and his fellow dreamers? My father’s eye sustained the Myth of Cynicism, denying piety and virtue. Does my own sustain a Myth of Happiness, denying crime? Is the succession of the seasons of Man no more than a pretty tale, to encourage us, to offer us empty Hope, an attempt to give the lie to a grimmer truth than we’ll allow? Do we impose this shape on Chaos, as a child imposes shapes upon a pond’s weedy surface and is surprised when he returns to find that weed and water have joined together, mutable and never firm? Or do we frame a turbulent sky with our fingers and believe that, because we have narrowed our vision to that small sphere, we have captured and contained the elements? Or is it Gloriana who is at fault, unworthy to represent the Age…?

“Oh, Mary! Mary! Mary!”

Instantly, the Countess of Scaith was upon her, bearing down on her with her strong, boyish body, gripping her, kissing her.

“Hush!”

“Oh, Mary!”

“Hush, my dear.”

“I was her mother. Sir Thomas Perrott entrusted her to me. I swore she would be protected. I took her virtue, her virginity. I took her innocence. I allowed her this assignation. I encouraged it. I relished it. And I hated it, as well, but could not deny her that affectionate Sir Tancred, for she seemed so happy, and I had taken-”

“You took nothing. You gave. You were generous and she loved you for that generosity. Like all of us, she would do anything for you, not because you are the Queen, but because you are Gloriana.”

“Tancred shall hang.”

“No!”

“Hang!”

“He shall not.”

“He should-”

“Where’s the proof he murdered Mary? None.”

“His sword.” Gloriana raised red eyes.