Gloriana

continue their debate in terms of honour, virtue and idealism.

Only Lord Ingleborough, drowsy in his chair, looked after her and understood what generosity and what courage she had displayed that day.

THE TWENTIETH CHAPTER

In Which the Queen Continues Her Search for Consolation and the Countess of Scaith Makes a Dreadful Discovery

And that night the mood of the Court was lighter than it had been for many weeks. There was a dance, at which the Queen led her courtiers in the Escalad and the Vatori, and the musicians played merrily the best and most complex compositions, and for many hours there was laughter in the corridors and apartments when the official entertainments were completed; then Gloriana, weary and solitary, made her way to her secret halls to find reward for the brilliant part she had performed to cheer the Court and lift the cloud. She sought the clever attentions of her dwarves and children dressed as fanciful creatures of mythology; the caresses of her geishas and their soft, thrilling words; the scented, yielding bodies of her youths; the harsh hands of cruel women who instructed her in every indignity; the brainless bestial men of the jungles; the cold harlots, male and female, in their skins of white silk; the quivering girls who whimpered at her whips. From room to overheated room she went, hopeful that, her duty so splendidly done, she might now find escape from her body’s craving: but no escape came. Limp with weariness she returned at last to her own bed. Alone, she closed the heavy curtains and in darkness sorrowed at the injustice of her fate.

Lord Montfallcon, more carefree and easy since Gloriana had risen to her challenges and thus assured him that the Dream would yet be sustained, awoke to hear her distant weeping voice, while beside him his wives stirred, half-fearful but yet asleep. He was astonished that she did not feel as he now felt. His new mood could not dissipate at once. He thought, without much fervour:

Ah, Albion, still unfulfilled, as the fullness of my purpose is unfulfilled; and are the two so closely linked? This collection, these creatures she maintains are distractions only and bring her more grief, yet her duty to them tells her she must keep them, though they fail her. They go unpunished, these wanton, depraved, distorted monsters, because she is too generous. Instead they are rewarded with every luxury. She would be happier free of them, free of all these private responsibilities-retainers, entertainers, children-but she continues to accumulate them. This is not the quality of conscience I instilled in her from girlhood. It is mere sentimentalism. She is exhausted by all of that. Who benefits? Not Albion. Marriage must surely be the answer-but to whom?

Hern had destroyed so many of his own relatives that there were few in the Realm who could claim large amounts of royal blood. Montfallcon considered the counts, the dukes and the earls of Hibernia, Eire, Valentia or Virginia. Would that Scaith had had a son and not the girl who acted husband for the Queen so well that Gloriana felt no loss. The Grand Caliph was too greedy for power and would not be controlled as consort; besides, there was a strong chance he would not produce an heir, and it was an heir Albion most lacked. Casimir of Poland could not be wed without giving offence to the Caliph. Elsewhere there were princes too old and princes too young, princes mad or princes diseased. The Queen of Corinth had slain all her brothers just the previous month. In Venice, as in Genoa, Athens and Wien, some form of Republic existed and royalty was killed or exiled and therefore useless for matchmaking. The Aethiopes were all crazed. Prince Henri of Paris lay dying even now. No, it must be some noble of Albion, perhaps one who could be elevated first. Her voice came to him again and, as always, he drew his wives to him, to muffle the sounds.

“This blood-all rhythm and fractured melody- and never a resolution!”

The Countess of Scaith heard the desperate words and awoke from a deep and pleasant sleep in which she dreamed she explored a simpler, more innocent world-one of John Dee’s other spheres.

And John Dee himself, in his dark bed, also heard the Queen, but answered her lustily as he drove his body into that of the creature beneath him. “Here! Rise! Sing! Crescendo and then climax come!” And his bizarre paramour joined him in delicious consummation as he shouted: “Gloriana!” and flung himself shuddering from her. “Gloriana…” He stroked her auburn hair, her strong, lovely features, her shoulders, her breasts, her thighs and her belly. “Oh, Gloriana, you are mine and we are both fulfilled.”

And Sir Amadis Cornfield, on his way to the old Throne Room, there to keep his illicit tryst with his own nymph of the night, his darling, laughing beauty, paused at Gloriana’s distant, whispering voice in the corridor and frowned.

“I am betrayed by my body’s cravings and yet my body refuses respite…. Oh, this burden, this burning, shameful burden…” The voice faded as Gloriana slept at last.

Sir Amadis padded on, leaving his wife and his own duty behind, his brain pounding with lustful anticipation, for it must surely be tonight she would consent to give him more than her kisses….

In Master Wheldrake’s darkened chamber Lady Lyst took a heavy glass goblet of wine in one hand and a thin horsewhip in the other and moved her nightgown a fraction so that her poor, panting, naked poet could press lips to shoe and murmur “Your Majesty” to her, for she must, as always when these moods were on him, be the Queen for him. “Your Majesty’s punishment is just, for I am wicked and unworthy. Let your whip inspire me to virtue and drive me closer to the muse so that my verse can once again aspire to the ecstasy it possessed when I first beheld your picture and determined to present myself at your Court, your feet…Your Majesty!”

“Now, Wheldrake?” Lady Lyst lifted the whip. Her voice was slurred.

“Aye. Now! Now!”

The whip fell.

Lady Lyst winced. She had thrashed her own left leg.

The Countess of Scaith began to return to sleep as the Queen’s voice died at last, but she was alerted again by another sound, from overhead, as if a rat negotiated some hollow in her roof. A groan, not Gloriana’s distant note, but much closer to hand, caused her to sit up, seeking the dagger with which, by habit, she had slept since Lady Mary’s murder. She found it, gripped it, drew back her curtain and found a candle on the little carved table beside the bed. Flint sparked, tinder drew, and the candle was alight, making the room more sinister for the shadows thus created. In heavy linen, the Countess stood upright, dagger poised, candlestick lifted, and looked about her.

The groan came again, from above. She remembered the grille and looked up. Did this one also lead into the walls? Was there movement there? A glitter, as of eyes?

“Who?”

The groan again, distinct but weak.

“What do you want?”

The groan.

She took a chair, thinking to investigate. Then she paused. “Begone!”

A mewling sound.

She placed the chair against the wall, against the tapestry, blue and green, of Tristram and Isolde, the castle and the sea, and stood upon it, daring herself to stare into the grille with the candle. The same glittering, the same faint groan. And now a word: “Help…”

“Who are you?”

“Please, I beg…”

She thrust the point of the dagger into the side of the lattice panel and prised. It fell away suddenly, as if it had always been imperfectly secured. It fell with a clatter first upon the chair and then to the carpeted floor.

A tiny, piteous sound. She thrust in the candle and her first sight was a small black-and-white cat, its yellow eyes glaring with pain. It sprang towards her, not to attack, but for security, and she almost toppled. It clung to her shoulder and she saw that it was wounded-a terrible gash in its side, its fur all matted with blood. Carefully, she