Gloriana

He dropped his gaze.

“You may go,” she said.

“Eh?”

“It is bad diplomacy to have you here.” She was demonstrating her power over him. “It incensed Montfallcon. It might incense others. Tell me, do you think the expedition into the walls will save us?”

“Several might. Led by a variety of your nobles, given important tasks.” He was sullen.

“Then you find my statecraft good.”

“I have never doubted it.” He did not want to leave. On the other hand he needed to see Alys, and Phil, to contact Tinkler, if he could. They must all be warned and set to work. He made a show of dignity. He stood up, bowing. “When does Your Majesty desire me to return?”

“We’ll keep you from the public eye today, I think. We’ll meet tonight. In my bedchamber?”

Quire was dry. “I’m to be the secret lover, then, am I? Because I seem a villain.”

She shook her head. “Because you are a villain, clever little Quire. It is your nature. I understand that now.”

“You punish me?”

“Why so? I love you still.”

Baffled, Quire made his way from the official rooms, back to the private apartments, doing his best to order his thoughts and scarcely able to understand how, since Wallis’s suicide, their roles had reversed in this subtle way. He would, in the past, never have allowed himself to be placed in such a position as this. He must immediately consider ways of reestablishing his authority. He went first to the seraglio and found Phil, taking him away and punishing him for his foolishness. Then he told Phil to find Alys Finch at once and send her to meet him in the maze. Then he gave a messenger a note to take to the Town in the hope that Tinkler would be found. He was frustrated, needing to take action, but not possessing sufficient information, as yet. He went to see Doctor Dee, who received him reluctantly, staunching a wound in his arm. “She grows fiercer. The philtres no longer function. You must make me a new one soon.” Doctor Dee was too weak to visit the Audience Chamber and be Quire’s ear.

Quire considered entering the walls and going through familiar routes, where he would be able to overhear almost everything, but there was too much danger of meeting either the Tatars or Montfallcon. He did not wish to betray himself by admitting a connection with the rabble which would soon be blamed for so many crimes. So he fumed.

He went to the maze and Alys Finch did not come to him. Was she, too, in the walls? With Oubacha Khan and Sir Orlando Hawes? Misleading them, as he had told her to do? Was half the Court in that province he had only lately claimed as his own? Tinkler was not found. There was no one else to work for him. He had lost three useful Councillors in a single night and suddenly had no allies on whom he could call. Dee was useless. The Queen, having cleansed herself of all sentiment, would be of no help at present. He brooded on this problem, which was central to his cause. How could he again tap the huge well of feeling that lay within the woman?

He spent the day waiting. He had never known a more terrifying one. He was impotent. And when, at last, she joined him in the bed, she talked of all her efforts to unite the Realm, to pacify the world, and wondered why he had no praise for her. She told him that Montfallcon had gone, probably into the walls, and that she feared the old lord, suddenly. She told him of her efforts to send messages to the Perrotts, begging them not to sail. She told him of a brief meeting with Oubacha Khan and Sir Orlando Hawes, and he became more interested. But the pair, it seemed, had said nothing of their plans to the Queen. She made love to him and he was passive, barely able to respond at all. She gave him up and readied herself for sleep. He wondered if he should go again to the maze and hope that Alys was there. He watched her, stroked her absently, as she began to breathe more deeply.

He was unable to interpret his own state of mind; for this unexpected mood of hers had thrown him entirely off balance. He realised, with some astonishment, that he feared the mood, that he would do anything, pay almost any price, to lift it. And yet he had weathered worse humours in his time; why should he be so discomfited now?

It dawned on him, then, that he cared for her good opinion of him-or that, at any rate, he desired her to exhibit some kind of opinion. The desire was new. He sat up in bed and was considering waking her when, from several rooms distant, there came a shriek.

Gloriana was awake. “Eh?”

Quire began to scramble from the bed, pushing back the curtains. His long shift tangled his feet. He found his sword and went to the door to listen: a babble of women’s voices, coming closer. “Some maid,” he said. “A fit.” He opened the door. There was light in the rooms beyond-lamps, candles, torches. Shadows moving; women everywhere, like hens about a fox. A giant stumbled through a door. He staggered between the ranks of night-clad ladies; he was almost naked and blood pumped out of him from three or four wounds, falling on the writhing body of the little girl he held in his arms. It was the albino twin, the guard from the seraglio, and he was dying. Quire ran towards him. The girl was one of Gloriana’s children, perhaps the youngest. Gloriana took the child from the giant and said: “Do they fight? In there?”

Quire darted past the guard even as the man fell to his knees, then sprawled as the last of his blood burst from him. The little figure in his encumbering shift, the long Iberian sword in his right hand, ran into the semi- private rooms. He pulled back draperies, sought for the door to the seraglio and found it partly opened, broken by the giant’s weight, and he was squeezing past, running up the steps, hearing the screams ahead; through the dark gem-studded caverns he ran, with the deep carpets hampering his naked feet, to reach the door where the two guards had stood. The black twin was not at his post. Quire pushed through and was in the main seraglio, looking down at the giant’s corpse. “Arioch!”

Lurking bloodletters swarmed through the low-ceilinged vaults, slaying any that showed life. Even as Quire watched, the shrieks became fewer and fewer.

It was the rabble from the walls. They were slaughtering the entire seraglio. Already most of the poor, soft creatures were dead. A few ran here and there or hid themselves, whimpering; all the dwarves and geishas, the cripples and youths Gloriana had protected here in this menagerie of sensuality. A bewildered, lumbering ape-man crashed against a jewelled fountain and fell into the bowl, two long pikes sticking from his hairy back. A little boy ran past Quire, waving the stump of a severed arm. Elsewhere was butchery even more obscene: a hellish shambles.

The rabble had come through two or three of the secret entrances Quire thought only he had known about. He looked down the long central walk to the apartments where the children had been kept. There were corpses here, too, small and large: the girls and their guardians. Eight of the Queen’s nine children. Quire had known battlefields, ship-fights, massacres a-plenty, but never one as appalling. He was overawed by the scene. He moved through the knee-deep fresh-killed bodies, trying to speak.

Phil Starling came running towards him, all his bangles jingling on his oiled and painted body. “Oh, save me, master! Save me, Captain! I did not mean to let them in. I sought Alys!”

Quire made a movement to draw back, then realised Gloriana was behind him. He shrugged and went forward. “Phil-go through-quickly.”

But a scrawny swordsman had pounced, cutting Phil from the back of his neck to the base of his spine, opening him up as an expert fishmonger might open a sole. Phil fell forward, cloven, and was dead.

Phil’s killer stood over the body. He was panting, intoxicated by the terror of his own actions, searching for further eyes that might accuse him. He wore a fur cap, askew on his head, to match a twisted, snag-toothed face. His silk coat was all blood, as were his britches. Quire recognised him and cried:

“Tink!”

Tinkler blinked, motioned with his sword, looked hard through the semi-darkness. “Captain?”

Quire gathered himself. “Is it you leads this rabble?”

“In your name, Captain,” said Tinkler from force of habit. “In your name.” He began to gasp, as a man will who is plunged suddenly into cold water.

“Mine?” Quire moved his mouth in a horrible grin. “Mine, Tink?” Slowly he approached his servant. His voice was flat. “You brought them here and did this in my name?”

“Montfallcon gave me my instructions. He knew you had left me in charge of the mob-or guessed it. I don’t know. But you said to obey him. I could not find you, Captain. It was too dangerous to look for you. And then Montfallcon said that the Queen had ordered us to do it. That you agreed. It seemed he spoke the truth.” He looked past Quire to Gloriana. “He said that you desired the seraglio destroyed, Your Majesty. Did I do wrong?”