were happy for several months. Happier than they had ever been before. And she killed Dr. Dee, do not forget.”
“You could have saved her.”
He shrugged. “Why?”
“You are still the old cruel Quire, then.”
“I am still a practical fellow, I know that. It is others who put these definitions on me. My name is Captain Arturus Quire. I am a scholar and a soldier of good family.”
“And the mightiest, most evil rogue in Albion.” She mocked him. “You’ll have no kiss from me, Quire. You are a deserter! You fled. You removed your support.”
“What? With all those witnesses accusing me? I was tactful, certainly.” Quire took another pace forward.
She smiled. “None accuse you now. There’s the real irony. Your victims forgive you or refuse to believe you the cause of their distress!” She retreated.
He stopped. He put his hands on his hips. “I see no point in playing hero. I was always told that when one saved a fair lady from death one received a favour.” His tone became serious. “I want you, Glory.”
“You cannot have me, Captain Quire. I am Albion’s Queen. I am not mortal. Besides, you taught me how to hate. I was innocent of that emotion before.”
He began to lose his temper. “I have waited for you. I have been patient. I taught you strength. And I learned love from you. Name your terms. I’ll accept ’em. I love you, Glory.”
“Patience has no reward save itself,” she said, still full of fear. “I used to give myself to anyone whose loins ached a little, because I knew what it was to ache. I ached so, Quire. Then you soothed it away and I lost myself. Now I ache again, but I have no sympathy for you or anyone at all. I would rather ache than satisfy another’s lust, because always, when that lust is satisfied, I remain-aching still.”
“Romance is ever attended by Guilt,” he said casually. He drew his sword again. He motioned. “Come to me, Glory.” He glared.
“You threaten me now. With the very death from which you saved me, and so proudly, too. Very well, Captain Quire. I’ll return to the block for you.” She began to descend.
He snarled and he took her with both his hands, abandoning his blade. “Gloriana!”
“Captain Quire.” She was stone in his grip.
He dropped his hands.
She walked past him, through the cold, haunted corridors, and into the gardens. They smelled of warm autumn, still.
She crossed the gardens and went through her private gate. She passed her maze, her silent fountains, her dying flowers. She entered her own bedroom.
He had not followed.
Recalling her anxiety, she thought, for her daughter, she entered her old secret lodgings and faced the door to the seraglio.
She passed, on yielding carpet, through into the soothing dark. None lived here now. She recalled that her daughter had been sent to Sussex. She made to return, but paused. Suddenly a thousand bloody images came to her. “Oh!”
In the absolute darkness of the seraglio she fell upon her cushions and began to weep. “Quire!”
Quire spoke from somewhere. “Glory.”
A delusion. She looked up. Beyond the archway into the next vault there was a candle burning. It moved towards her, revealing Quire’s tortured face, floating.
She stood up, stone again.
He sighed and put the candle into the bracket on one of the buttresses. “I love you. I shall have you. It’s my right, Glory.”
“You have none. You are a murderer, a spy, a deceiver.”
“You hate me?”
“I know you. You are selfish. You have no heart.”
“Enough,” he said. “It was no wish of mine. I betray all my own faith. But you taught me to believe in love, to accept it. Won’t you accept mine? And love yourself, too.”
“I love Albion. Nothing but Albion. And Gloriana is Albion.”
“Is Gloriana never mere Self?”
For the brevity of an insect’s memory this notion gave her pause, placing thought where only blazing impulse ruled. Then she shook her fiery head and blood spoke: “We are the same. Gloriana and Albion are One. That is our destiny, Captain Quire.”
“It is your doom, madam.” A beast moved beneath his skin and then was immediately harnessed. His voice bore all the innuendo and amusement which had charmed her and sought to charm her still. “Shall I, then, rape Albion?” He drew his sword and as if in play placed the point to her throat. In her turn, she pressed towards it, challenging him to kill her; and her smile bore all the deadly power, all the reasoning sincerity he had seen on no other face but his own.
“Albion is not commanded by brute force, Captain Quire.” She stroked her neck like a cat’s against his rapier, her playfulness in imitation of his own, her voice a soft purr, its note as accurate as a Ludgate chorister’s. “Albion is not raped.”
The beast took control of his eyes. He reached and twisted a fold of her gown in his fingers, his shaking fingers, and he tore it away from her. The beast took control of his breath, his noises. She did not move as he tore with both his hands at her shift and tore and tore at every scrap of cloth until she was naked. And still she did not move, but now stared with contemptuous dismay into his face. She was a vibrant lioness to his thwarted lion. He dropped his sword. He seized her breasts and her buttocks, her womb, her mouth. She would not move, save to sway a little when he threatened to make her fall. He reached, half-clambering up her thigh, towards her head.
He pulled her down to the cushions. He spread her legs. He ripped away his breeches to reveal what she had seen so many times before.
It was then that a sudden determination came upon her. She refused to weep for the love he meant to destroy; she refused to plead with him not to reduce himself and her to this. She became filled by an overwhelming sense of outrage-an outrage that this should
She felt as if she were awakening at last from a trance only a shade less deep than her mother’s, and one which had like origin; a trance half Terror, half Divine Power. A burden of unseemly responsibility.
Now she understood the only way in which she might stop Quire’s terrible deed from taking place. She could not let that deed occur, be it in the name of Albion, in the name of Peace, or Revenge-or any name that disguised or brought spurious Chivalry and false Romance to the brutal actuality of his intended crime.
Now, by the medium of her furious certainty, all her emotions were brought in check. She studied his well- muscled arse as it arched to plunge. Over his shoulder she saw the knife, sheathed at his belt, its hilt easily within her reach. She found it. She took the silk-bound bone in her hand and pulled the weapon from its scabbard as he grunted and cursed and kissed and prepared for his important heave.
She raised the dagger, looking beyond him into the candlelight and a sudden image of blood-washed stone, sharp and hard, as it appeared so frequently in her dreams. The image brought burning tears, yet served only to strengthen her resolve.
She could have struck him easily, slain him almost before he knew the truth. But there was no hesitation in her actions. She had set her course and would not falter. For the first time in her life she acted with a sureness born not of physical terror but of psychic dread. Her anger grew as she thought of Montfallcon, training her like a bird, to know the fear of failing in her duties so that he might then place the burden of her blood upon her and then, again, teach her the ways not of losing that burden but of bearing it. And thus Hern’s daughter was made Albion and tranquillity enforced upon the Realm.
“No!” she cried. “No! You shall not rape
