She smiled and became gracious. “Master Gallimari, your only fault is that you interpret disapproval when all you find in me is sadness.” She was brave. “I look to you, Master Gallimari, to improve my humour. Make your best efforts. They shall be appreciated by us.”
Relieved, the handsome Neapolitan swept, bent and backwards, from her presence.
The Queen saw Una, Countess of Scaith, in summer silks and swinging farthingale, crossing the lawn in the company of a listing Lady Lyst who widened blue eyes at the heavy reptiles and clutched, with comical gesture, at the Countess’s arm. “Dragons, in faith!”
“They guard the Queen,” Una was saying lightly, “as the dragons of old guarded Queen Gwynifer.”
“She needs ’em.” Lady Lyst straightened. “We’re all in danger. Women especially. There’s more femicide planned. Wheldrake thinks it, too.” She exchanged a glance with a cold-eyed lizard.
“You’ve heard something?”
“Sensed, that’s all.”
“Unlike you, Lady Lyst, to trust to a feeling only.”
“These are not days for trusting to logic. The greater one’s intelligence, the greater the confusion. And my poor brain is ever confused, at the best of times.” Lady Lyst smiled self-mockingly, then curtseyed when she saw the Queen emerge into the garden. “Your Majesty.”
“Lady Lyst. Una. A lovely day.”
“Too hot for me, I fear,” said Lady Lyst, adjusting cuffs and collar, straying honey curls. “One thirsts so.”
The three moved in the direction of a marble fountain: King Alexander the Great at the Court of Queen Hecate of Iberia, with water-nymphs and dolphins. They lifted their faces to the spray.
“It is our hottest summer.” The Queen brushed moisture from stomacher and skirts. “It seems to infect the whole palace, arousing strange passions, unsuspected passions in the most unlikely persons.”
“Your Majesty believes it is only the weather creates the mood?” Lady Lyst spoke as one who hoped for hope.
“Weather has a great deal to do with everything.” Gloriana turned her eyes towards the blue sky, shading out the sun with a lace-sheathed hand. “That’s always been my strong fancy, Lady Lyst. You’ll see. As the weather grows milder, so shall our sensibilities find better balance.”
Lady Lyst tripped upon a small step and ran forward, with arms flailing, before she righted herself. “I am encouraged, madam.” She cast about her, as if for a seat, or perhaps a bottle.
There came a yell from behind a large dodo, a carved bush, and a long-legged creature, apparently armoured in chequered plate, ran into view, across the path, through another hedge and onto a lawn. The Queen and her ladies stopped dead in astonishment, for now came a trio of guards, with ruffs and tabards flapping, caps askew, swords drawn, giving chase to the armoured, flashing figure, while behind these, panting, imploring, in stained smock and velvet cap, Master Tolcharde cried, “Hold! Hold! Do not harm him!”
“Master Tolcharde!” The Queen’s voice brought him to a stumbling halt which he turned into a ragged bow, though his eyes still followed the soldiers and their quarry.
“Who’s that, sir?” The Queen was imperious, by habit and, perhaps, to amuse her two friends. “Whom do they chase, Master Tolcharde?”
He tried to speak. He flapped his hands. He was in agony, a quandary. “Madam. A minor adjustment’s all that’s necessary. Forgive me.”
“Some servant of yours? Some captive of the Thane’s?”
“No, Your Majesty. Not quite a servant. Oh, dear!” He was eager to continue the pursuit. He cast anxious eyes after the flashing, chequered figure who now ran round and round a large yew bush, cut to resemble a castle, flattening a bed of pansies, knocking over one of the soldiers.
“I thought at first,” said Lady Lyst, “that it was Sir Tancred escaped from the Tower.” She regretted her lack of tact and shut her glorious lips.
“Who is it, sir?” asked the Queen.
“A harklekin, madam.”
“A comedian? What has he to do with you?”
“He’s mine, madam. Made by me, madam. A mechanical creature, madam. I meant to present him to you in a-I’ll present him later. Only, I beg you, madam, tell your guards not to harm him. The machinery is delicate.”
“And easily displaced?” The Queen was amused.
“At present. That will all be made right. If I may continue, madam.”
“Try not to destroy our whole garden, Master Tolcharde.”
The inventor bowed rapidly, gratefully, and was on the run again, crying out to the remaining guards, “Hold! You’ll harm him further. Let me just reach the lever and he’ll stop!”
The three women seated themselves upon a stone bench and laughed with a spontaneity none had enjoyed for many weeks.
Yet it was this laughter which reminded poor Gloriana of her duty once more, for she wished to bring back to her Court that certainty, that happy faith, which now was threatened. Montfallcon, lost in dark suspicion, no longer exerted his will in the cause of tranquillity, though he swore his ambition was unchanged. Lord Ingleborough, steadily growing more sickly, could not support her, and half her Council seemed abstracted, self-involved. Even Doctor Dee’s enthusiasm for his investigations had waned, though he spent most of his hours in his lodgings. Seeing herself as Lady Mary’s betrayer, she in turn felt betrayed by her Council, though it might be she expected too much of them. She determined that it was to be by her effort alone that optimism and good will should return to the Court. She must fire her men. She must whip them from their bad humours. She must be Albion, and act an imperial part for them. There was none, at present, upon whom she could rely, save Una-and Una was primarily a private friend, with Gloriana’s private needs her paramount concern. Gloriana gathered herself from laughter and from the seat and bade farewell to them. “I have convened my Privy Council and it awaits me now,” she said. The Countess of Scaith became serious and began a question, but Gloriana was moving between hissing iguanas and trumpeting peacocks, back to the doors of her apartments.
In the Privy Chamber, their sweating faces dappled with burning colours from the grandiose glass above, their bodies clad in hues to rival that window’s glory, magnificent in their summer finery, the Queen’s Council assembled somewhat tardily.
On a chair, made with poles into a litter, Lord Ingleborough was carried in by servants. His heart still faltered; there was gout, now, in all his limbs, so that he could barely sign his own name on his documents, and he was in considerable pain, relieved a little by a variety of potions, but none satisfactory. He still wore his full, formal dress, his robes and chain of office, his air of authority, but his intelligent eyes frequently clouded with pain. The gout had spread so suddenly, as if carried on the same air which brought murder to the Court, that Sir Amadis Cornfield, prone sometimes to superstition, considered the thought that Lady Mary had been a sacrifice to a demon, summoned by one of Doctor Dee’s profession, and that the demon itself moved unchecked everywhere, bringing madness, sickness, grief. He looked across at Doctor Dee, who seemed older, frailer, almost as weak as Ingleborough, yet oddly animated. Sir Amadis pushed the thought away and dwelt on pleasanter things: his little mistress, who had come to relieve all his burdens, just in time. This moment was soon gone as Sir Amadis recalled Lord Gorius Ransley’s ruthless attempts to woo the girl away from him, even hinting, recently, that Sir Amadis’s wife would be informed. Lord Gorius, a widower and courted by many unwed ladies, sought, in Sir Amadis’s opinion, to seduce his girl from mere spite. In the old days he would have been tempted to settle the matter with a challenge. He regretted the passing of some of Hern’s customs. He glared across the table at his would-be rival. Lord Gorius pretended to ignore him.
Elsewhere Master Florestan Wallis sat, composing verses upon his paper, a look of almost ludicrous serenity on his thin scholar’s features, while beside him Master Orme hummed a tune and sniffed at a posy, apparently as content, in his way, as his fellow Councillor. Master Gallimari was busy with his arrangements. Sir Vivien Rich grumbled a little about the heat and dropped perspiration on table and tools, with many apologies. Masters Palfreyman and Fowler both yawned and chatted over Sir Vivien’s head, their subject being the sapping nature of the heat which made them wish to sleep all day.
Lord Montfallcon, resting himself in his chair, his face darkened with care, looked down the long table at the Privy Council and wondered how he had ever come to assemble such a gutless rabble of fops and flapmouths. He determined to begin to replace them all, even Lisuarte Ingleborough, who grew too frail for duty. He recalled how
