Gloriana Read online

  Captain Quire’s voice grows colder. “He has suggested I spy upon the Queen herself. He tells me that young Sir Launcelot Teale revealed to him a means of doing this.”

  “Ah!” says Lord Ibram loudly. “You know everything. I am trapped. Very well.” He makes to push the table back but Quire holds it. “I admit I attempted to make a spy of you, Captain Quire, and that it was a foolish attempt—since you are plainly already a professional. But I trust you are also a good diplomat and will understand that if I am captured, or tortured, or slain, it will have repercussions. My uncle is brother-in-law to the Emir of Morocco. I am also related to Lord Shahryar, ambassador to Albion, who arrives shortly I’ll leave now, admitting my folly.” He manages to stand at last. He lets his robe fall away to emphasise the fact that he is armed. He has made a further mistake, for Quire grins quickly and triumphantly at him.

  “But you have, after all, insulted me, Lord Ibram.”

  Lord Ibram bows. “Then I apologise.”

  “It will not do. I am a loyal subject of the Queen. She probably has few better servants than Captain Quire. You are not a coward, sir, I hope.”

  “Coward? Oh! No, I am not.”

  “Then you’ll allow me…”

  “What? Satisfaction? Here? You want to brawl, do you, Captain Quire?” With a dark eye cocked, the Moor draws on a jewelled glove and lets the gloved hand fall upon the ornate hilt of his curved sword. “You and your accomplice hope to kill me?”

  “I’ll make Master Tinkler my second and give you the opportunity to seek a second for yourself. We’ll find some private place to fight, if that suits you better.”

  “You intend to fight fairly, Captain Quire?”

  “I have told you, Lord Ibram. You have insulted me. You have insulted my Queen.”

  “No, I have not.”

  “You have made insinuations.”

  “I spoke of common gossip.” The Saracen realises he has betrayed his own pride and bites his lip as Captain Quire again grins up into his face.

  “It is unseemly, in a great lord, surely, to give such gossip credence? And as for reporting the tittle-tattle of the gutter, that is certainly dishonourable.”

  “I admit it.” The Moor shrugs. “Very well, I’ll fight. Must I find a second from this rabble? Are there no gentlemen upon whom I can call?”

  “Only Master Wheldrake. Shall we see how much liquor is left in him?” Quire makes no move around the table. Tinkler steps back to let Lord Ibram pass. Quire begins to walk along the gallery towards the passage where Wheldrake disappeared, but the Moor stays him.

  “The poor creature would not be capable.”

  “Then one of these.” Quire indicates the population below. “Any will do it, if you pay.”

  The Moor leans over the rail. “I require a second in a duel. A crown to the man who comes with me.” He displays the silver coin. The ruffler in leather, who lately went fighting through the door, has returned, presumably by means of another entrance. He is red-faced and there are two long scratches across his forehead, a bruise on his bald scalp, and his ear has been cut—he holds a sponge against it.

  “I’ll do it. I’d rather be a witness than a participant.”

  Quire smiles. “What became of your opponent?”

  “He ran off, sir. But he left this behind.” He reaches to the table nearest him and displays a severed nose. “I bit it off. He wanted it back so that he might find a barber to sew it on again. I won it fairly and refused to return it.” Laughing, he flings it towards the fire, but it falls short and begins to roast on the tiles.

  Lord Ibram turns to Captain Quire. “You know something of me? Sir Launcelot will have told you?”

  “That you’re a good swordsman?”

  “Then you reckon yourself a better?”

  Quire will not answer.

  The party leaves the tavern by the back entrance, moving along the river path to where a carriage still waits. It is the one that brought Quire and Ibram to the Seahorse. They are all shivering as they clamber in and Quire gives the coachman directions for the White Hall fields. Quire looks out once at the broad, black river. Snow falls upon it. It seems to move more sluggishly than usual. Through the snow he sees the faint outline, the lights of a good-sized ship, hears the splashing oars of tugs towing it in to the dock at Charing Cross. He glances at the glowering Moor, whose anger seems primarily directed inward, he winks at Tinkler, who grins a snaggletoothed grin, but he does not look at the soldier with the red sponge who begins, perhaps by way of earning his silver, to try to engage Lord Ibram in friendly conversation.

  The carriage bumps over frozen ruts and is swallowed.

  On board the ship coming so late and with such difficulty up the Thames, Sir Thomasin Ffynne stamps one foot of flesh and one of carved bone upon the timbers of his bridge and thinks his breath must freeze before his eyes. He hopes the dawn will come before the ship reaches her dock, for he mistrusts the tugmen hauling her. There are not too many lights burning and those he can see are obscured by the weather. Heavy snow coats the whole ship, yards, rigging, rails and decks. It settles upon Tom Ffynne’s hat, his shoulders; it threatens to slip between boot and stocking and freeze his remaining foot so that it will also have to be removed (it was frostbite took the other, on his famous voyage into the Arctic Circle).

  Tom Ffynne is back from his pirating—toll-gathering, he calls it—in the Mexican Sea. He had hoped to be back for the Yuletide Festival, then for the New Year’s Masque, but has missed both and so is in poor temper. Yet he looks gladly at his London, at the distant great glistening palace, and he even thanks the lad who brings him a tin cup of hot rum from the galley. He sips, the metal burning his bearded lips, and grunts, and stomps, and sings out in his sharp falsetto at the tugboats whenever it seems to him that the ship moves too closely to the high embankments of the riverside. Diminutive, plump, ruddy-faced and twinkling, Sir Thomasin Ffynne’s appearance disguises one of the shrewdest brains in all Albion. An admiral at twenty-six, he sailed with the war fleets of King Hern, in the old days of conquest and pillage, and it was under Hern that he became known as Bad Tom Ffynne, in an age that had many bad men in it. Yet his love for the Queen is as strong as Lord Montfallcon’s, one of the few others who survived Hern’s reign with some sort of honour, and one of the few still to hold office under Gloriana. It was Tom Ffynne’s uncle who took the Moorish Caliphates for Hern, but it was Tom Ffynne who held them, made them almost totally dependent upon Albion for their defence, their survival. Two revolts in the great continent of Virginia were also put down by Ffynne, assuring his nation’s power; and in Cathay, in India, in all the kingdoms of Asia and on the coasts of Africa, Tom Ffynne has fought, with absolute savagery, to maintain Albion’s dominance over these lands which are now Gloriana’s protectorates and which she does conscientiously protect, forbidding violence, demanding justice for all those for whom she accepts responsibility. Baffling days for Ffynne, who once possessed a reasonable trust in terror as the best instrument for maintaining Order in the universe; who saw all this new Law as an unnecessary expense, a wasteful business that was, moreover, abused by those it was intended to benefit; yet he has come to respect his Matriarch’s wishes, maintains a grudging inactivity where the Queen specifically forbids his movements, and contents himself with exploratory journeys involving a little incidental piracy, so long as the ships involved are not under the protection of a far too generous monarch. The holds of his tall ship, the Tristram and Isolde, are currently full, half with the treasure of some West Indian Emperor, whose cities Tom Ffynne visited on a voyage along a broad river which took him hundreds of miles into the interior, and half with cloth and ingots taken off two Iberian caravels after an engagement lasting five hours near the coast of California, that most westerly of Virginia’s provinces. Tom Ffynne intends to deliver all to his Queen, but retains an educated hope that the Queen will let a large share be kept back for the Tristram and Isolde’s officers and men. He is anxious to be gran
ted an audience for another reason: He has news which he knows will interest Montfall-con and possibly alarm the Queen.

  Ffynne realises that the dawn has come without his noticing it, the snow is so thick. Gradually the horizon grows pale, revealing a palace like some gigantic alpine peak, a London half-buried in snow, a Thames on which ice is forming even as the ship moves through it.

  All is white and silent. Tom Ffynne stops his stamping to stand in wonder at the sight of Albion’s capital on this New Year’s Day, beginning the thirteenth year of Gloriana’s peaceful reign and, according to old Doctor Dee, the Queen’s astrologer, the most significant both in her life and in the history of the Realm.

  Tom Ffynne lets out a huge, billowing breath. He claps mittened hands together and shakes little icicles from his dark beard, grunting with pleasure at the sight of his home port, in all its proud, frozen glory; its temporary tranquillity.

  THE SECOND CHAPTER

  In Which Queen Gloriana Begins the First Day of the New Year, Receives Courtiers and Learns of Certain Alarming Matters

  FROM WHITE SHEETS, in a huge ivory gown trimmed with silver lace, her hair enclosed in a cap of plain linen, her pale hands decorated by nothing but two matching rings of pearls and platinum, Queen Gloriana pushed back bleached silk bed-curtains, rose and crossed to the window. On snowy lawns albino peacocks paced between carved yew hedges which this morning were like marble. A few flakes still fell to cover the darker tracks of the birds, but the milky sky grew lighter as she watched and there was even a trace of the faintest blue. She turned to where her little maid of honour, Mary Perrott, stood beside the breakfast tray with its heavy burden of silver. “You’re very pretty this morning, Mary. Good colour. Womanly. But tired, I think.” In affirmation, Lady Mary yawned. “The festivities…” “I fear I left the masque a little early. Did your father like it? And your brothers and sisters? Was it enjoyable to them? The entertainers? Were they amusing?” She asked many questions so that none might be answered.

  “It was a perfect night, Your Majesty.”

  Seating herself at the delicate table, Gloriana lifted covers to choose kidneys and sweetbreads. “Cold weather. Are you eating enough, Mary?”

  As her mistress began to devour the food, Mary Perrott seemed to quiver slightly, and Gloriana, detecting this, waved a fork. “Return to your bed for an hour or two. I’ll not need you. But first place another log on the fire and bring me the ermine robe. That dress is a new one, eh? Red velvet suits you. Though the bodice seems too tight.”

  Lady Mary blushed as she leaned over the fire. “I had intended to alter it, madam.” For a moment she left the chamber, to return with the ermine, placing it across her mistress’s broad shoulders. “Thank you, madam. Two hours?”

  Gloriana smiled, finished the kidneys and started quickly on her herrings, before they should grow cold. “Visit no swain and let none visit you, Mary, but sleep. Thus you’ll be able to fulfil all your duties.”

  “I will, madam.” A curtsey and Lady Mary slipped from the Queen’s austere room.

  Gloriana found that the herrings were not to her liking and rose from them suddenly. She walked to the mirror on the wall beside the door, grateful for unanticipated privacy. She investigated her long, perfect face, her delicate bones. Her large green-blue eyes contained an expression of faint, objective curiosity. The cap gave a starkness to her features. She removed it, releasing her auburn hair, which curled immediately against her cheeks and on her shoulders; she unlaced her gown, threw off her ermine, so that she was naked, soft and glowing. She stood a full six inches over six feet, yet her figure was ideally proportioned, her flesh unblemished for all that, like some lover’s oak, she had been carved, in her time, with a dozen initials or more; struck, since girlhood, with almost every sort of whip and weapon, tortured with fire, scored, bruised, scratched—first by her father himself or by those who, serving her father, sought either to educate or to punish her; secondly by lovers whom she had hoped might rouse her to that single important experience still denied her. She stroked her flanks, not from any narcissism but abstractedly, wondering how such sensitive flesh as this could be so thoroughly stimulated and yet refuse to reward her with the release it had afforded the majority of those she lent it to. A little sigh and the robe was re-donned, the fur drawn around her, in time to call “Enter” when a knock came and in walked her closest friend, her private secretary, her confidante, Una, Countess of Scaith. The Countess wore a grey brocade marlotte, its high collar completely enclosing her neck and emphasising, with its short puffed sleeves, her heart-shaped face, flaring to reveal her gown’s hooped skirt, dark red and gold. Una’s grey eyes, intelligent and warm, looked into Gloriana’s—a brief question already answered—before they embraced.

  “By Hermes, let there be no further doctors like those that were sent to me!” The Queen laughed. “They pricked me all night with their little instruments and bored me so, Una, that I fell solidly to sleep. They were gone when I awoke. Will you send them some gift from me? For their trouble.”

  The Countess of Scaith nodded, being careful to share her friend’s deliberate mood. She left the bedchamber and entered an adjoining room, unlocking a small writing desk and taking from it a notebook, calling back: “The Italians? How many?”

  “Three boys and two girls.”

  “Gifts of equal value?”

  “It seems fair.”

  Una returned. “Tom Ffynne is just come home. The Tristram and Isolde docked at Charing Cross not three hours since and he’s eager to see you.”

  “Alone?”

  “Or with the Lord Montfallcon. Perhaps at eleven, when your Privy Council meets…?”

  “Discover from him something of the nature of his anxiety. I should not like to offend the loyal admiral.”

  “He has no loyalties but to you,” agreed Una. “These old men of your father’s place a higher value on you than do the young ones, I think, for they remember…”

  “Aye.” Gloriana became distant. She misliked memories of her father or comparisons, for she had loved the monster increasingly as he grew older and sicklier and, at the end, had learned to sympathise with him, knowing that he had been too weakened by the burden she herself was barely strong enough to shoulder. “Appointments, today?”

  “You wished an audience for Doctor Dee. That is arranged to follow the meeting of the Privy Council. Then there is nothing until after you have dined (at twelve until two) with the ambassador from Cathay and the ambassador from Bengahl.”

  “They dispute some border?”

  “Lord Montfallcon has a paper and a solution. He’ll tell you of that this morning.”

  “After we’ve dined?”

  “Your children and their governesses. Until four. At five, a ceremony in the Audience Chamber.”

  “The foreign dignitaries, eh?”

  “The usual presents and assurances, for New Year’s Day. At six, the mayor and aldermen—presents and assurances. At seven, you agreed to consider the case of the new buildings by Greyfrairs. At eight, supper: the Lords Kansas and Washington.”

  “Ah, my romantic Virginians! I look forward to supper.”

  “After supper only one thing. Sir Tancred Belforest requests an audience.”

  “Some new scheme of chivalrous daring?”

  “I think this is a private matter.”

  “Excellent.” Gloriana laughed as she entered her dressing room, ringing the bell for her maids. “It will make me happy to grant at least one boon to the poor Champion; he yearns eternally to please me, but all he knows is battle and gymnastics. Have you any inkling of his desire?”

  “I would say he asks your permission to marry Mary Perrott.”

  “Oh, gladly, gladly. I love them both. And I’d grant any boon to distract his noble concentration!” The maids of honour entered. Pretty girls, every one had been a lover of the Queen and had been employed as a result, for she could not dismiss any who had tried to please her and who did not wish to be fr
ee. “So the day is relatively light.”

  “Depending on Tom Ffynne’s news. He could bring reports of wars—in the West Indies.”

  “We are not concerned with the West Indies. Save for Panama, they do not come under our protection, thank the gods. Unless they should attack Virginia—but which of their nations is powerful enough?”

  “With Iberian help?”

  “Oh, with Iberian help, aye. But I think the West Indians mistrust Iberia now, so many of their peoples have been sent to the slaughter. No, for danger, we must needs look closer to home, dearest Una.” She leant to kiss her secretary as maids tugged at her stays to produce the conventional peasecod-bellied figure demanded of her station. She grunted as the wind left her. “Ugh!”

  “I’ll go to tell Sir Tancred he is blessed.”

  Una departed while Gloriana continued to suffer the somewhat comforting constrictions of her costume as she fitted, tight and tidy, like some man-o’-war, for her day’s duties: stomacher and farthingale, a starched wired ruff, stockings of silk and tall-heeled shoes, embroidered petticoat, gown of golden velvet set with jewels of a dozen kinds and little stitched flowers, cloak of dark red velvet trimmed with ermine, hair bound with pearl strands and topped by a coronet, face powdered, gloves on hands, rings on gloves, mace and sceptre held to left and right, until she was ready to glide about her business, surrounded, a frigate by gulls, by her little pages and maids (some of whom took up her train), on her way to the Privy Chamber where her Councillors awaited her. She sailed down corridors hung with silken flags, with tapestries and paintings; corridors decorated with glowing panels showing scenes of Albion’s glories and vicissitudes, beasts, heroes, pastoral scenes, scenes of exotic Oriental, African or Virginian landscapes. And she passed courtiers, who bowed to her, or curtseyed to her, who complimented her, and with some she must share a “Good morning” or an enquiry as to health; she passed squires and ladies-in-waiting, equerries, stewards, butlers, footmen, servants of every description. Her feet trod on carpets, mosaics, tiles, polished wood, some silver, a little gold, marble and lead. She took a corner, gracefully, through the First, Second and Third Audience Chambers, her skirt’s hoop swaying, where courtiers and petitioners awaited her favour and Gentlemen Pensioners, her personal guard, Lord Rhoone’s men, in scarlet and dark green, saluted her with their pikes while footmen pushed open the doors of the Audience Room, which she crossed without pause to enter the Privy Chamber, where her Councillors rose, bowed, waited until she seated herself in her chair at the head of the long table before resuming their own positions, those twelve gentlemen in gowns of rich materials, with golden chains upon their chests. Through the splendid window at Gloriana’s back came light filtered by the thousand colours in the huge stained scene of Emperor and Tribute: Gloriana’s father pictured as King Arthur, with London as New Troy (legend’s citadel of that Mystical Golden Age Britannia, founded by Gloriana’s ancestor, Prince Brutus, seven thousand years before), with representatives of all the nations of the world bringing gifts to lay upon the ninety-nine steps of the Emperor’s throne where maidens, Wisdom, Truth, Beauty and Mercy, flanked a radiant crown. Privately Gloriana considered the window to be in poor taste, but respect for tradition and her father’s memory demanded she retain it. Six to a side of the dark table, with silver-chased ink-horns, goose quills, sand-shakers and paper in order before them, her Privy Councillors sat, twelve familiar faces, according to their rank. On her immediate right, Lord Perion Montfallcon, in his blacks and greys, and his great grey leonine head half-bowed, as if he slumbered, her Lord Chancellor and Principal Secretary; on her immediate left, pensive, aquiline, with a long, square-cut white beard, in brown cap and cloak, a belted doublet and a golden chain made up of six-pointed stars, sat Doctor John Dee, her Councillor of Philosophy. Next to Lord Montfallcon, Sir Orlando Hawes, the blackamoor, thin and pinched, in plain dark blue, with a parsimonious collar of lighter blue lace, a chain of silver, small black eyes upon his papers, her Lord High Treasurer; opposite him, stiff as stone, controlling the pain of gout, a ruddy-faced and stern old man, Albion’s most famous navigator, Lisuarte Armstrong, Fourth Baron of Ingleborough, Lord Admiral of Albion, in purple velvet and white lace, his chain heavy, like an anchor’s, on his neck, his eyes blue as the palest northern oceans. Next on the right was Gorius, Lord Ransley Lord High Steward of Albion, in ruff and cuffs of pale gold, quilted doublet of deepest russet, his chain of office embellished with rubies; then Sir Amadis Cornfield, Keeper of the Royal Purse. In white and blue striped silk, turned back at neck and wrist to display a crimson lining, over which was laid a large loose collar and broad cuffs, his linen, and in his silver chain, thin and delicate, made to match the silver buttons of his coat, he was a handsome, sardonic, wide-mouthed, dark-haired gallant, taking his duties seriously. He appeared to be studying some aspect of the window he had not noticed before. Facing Sir Amadis was Sir Vivien Rich, plump and hairy, in country-woven clothes making him resemble some yeoman farmer, this Vice Chamberlain to the Queen. Seated almost primly beside Sir Amadis was Master Florestan Wallis, the famous scholar, all in black, sporting no chain, but a small badge on his breast, his thin, straight hair covering his shoulders, his strong lips pursed; he was Secretary for the High Tongue of Albion, the language of official proclamations and ceremony, and he was a writer of small plays performed at Court. The next pair: Perigot Fowler, Master of the Horse, in dark browns, and Isador Palfreyman, Secretary for War, in blood-red. Both bearded, almost twins. Lastly on the right Auberon Orme, Master of the Great Wardrobe, in somewhat unseasonal lilac and Lincoln green, with a huge ruff from both these colours, emphasising the length of his nose, the smallness of his mouth, the suggestion of crimson in the whites of the eyes; and, on the left, Marcilius Gallimari, a dark, amused Neopolitan, his doublet slashed, puffed and gallooned to reveal almost as many colours as those of the window; his hair was waved and there was a diamond in one ear, an emerald in the other; he had a thin, pointed beard and just the trace of a moustache, this talented Master of the Revels.