Saint Antony's Fire

by Steve White

  "Probably not. Or, if you do, I'll be so old you'll hardly recognize me. So perhaps it is best that you leave now, before all our memories overcome your resolve."

  From behind him, among the Heron's company, Winslow heard Shakespeare say, "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly."

  Riahn bowed deeply to the Queen. She inclined her head in turn. Then she walked up the hill. All the others followed, except Virginia Dare. She paused for a last look. Then she took Winslow's hand and followed as well.

  The world that now belonged to the Eilonwë again faded away. Then it vanished altogether, and for the second time Winslow found himself in the empty, silent, immaterial aloneness of the Deep Void. But he somehow knew that he was still holding Virginia Dare's hand.

  He found he was holding it when Croatoan Island began to emerge in shades of gray.

  Eighteen

  It was dusk on Croatoan, so the change when they emerged from the Near Void wasn't as startling as it would have been in broad daylight. They were in the same unnaturally regular area of thin second-growth vegetation from which they had departed.

  Looking around him at the thicker forest that surrounded them, Winslow saw almost at once a dozing figure sitting propped against a tree trunk. And his features broke into a grin, for he recognized the Heron crewman who had inadvertently passed through the Deep Void.

  "Morris!" he called out. "I'd know you anywhere—asleep as usual!"

  Amid the laughter of his shipmates, Morris jerked awake and scrambled upright, only to fall immediately on his knees at the sight of the Queen, who motioned him to his feet.

  "Your Majesty! Captain! You're back already! But of course—I keep forgetting about the time magic. What happened? How went the battle?"

  "We won, and the power of the Grella in that world is broken. They're little more than a handful of fugitives now, and the Eilonwë are hunting them down like trapped rats."

  "God be praised! If only I'd been there . . ." Morris came to an abrupt halt, and his exultant expression dissolved into a mask of embarrassment. "As God is my witness, Captain, I never sought to—"

  "Of course you didn't," Winslow assured him, clapping him on the back. "You were as eager as any of us to come to grips with the Grella. No one thinks ill of you. We expected to lose some of our number to the Deep Void. All taken with all, we were lucky to lose only the two of you. And you did exactly as you were told, letting the tides of the Deep Void carry you back here and waiting for our return."

  "Aye, Captain. It's only been a couple of days here, you understand, and the two of us have spent them standing watches here."

  " 'Standing watches'?" queried Shakespeare archly, occasioning a fresh gale of laughter.

  "Well, we're back now," said Winslow, rescuing Morris. "And we've brought a rare booty of hell weapons." He indicated the components of alien technology that festooned them all. "We'll return to England and see how the Gray Monks like being roasted in their own unholy fire!"

  Once again, Morris' face fell. "Well, Captain, as to that . . . The fact of the matter is, there's been no sign of Heron or Greyhound here. Manteo has mounted watch on the coast, but nary a sail has been sighted."

  Winslow's eyes met Virginia Dare's for an instant. Then he turned to face the Queen and Walsingham. No one could think of anything to say.

  * * *

  Manteo had a great deal to absorb all at once—joy at the return of Weroanza Elizabeth, and sorrow at the death of his old friend John White, along with much else. But he dealt surprisingly well with the sight of Ambrose Viccars as a graybeard and Virginia Dare as a young woman. His capacity for bewilderment simply shut down from overload, and after listening to Dee's attempt to explain he simply filed it away under the heading of Beyond understanding; to be accepted on faith. Since the day—not long ago to him—when he had watched the English party fade from sight, he had been inured to the uncanny. And the rest of his people were more than willing to adopt the same practical philosophy. So was Dick Taverner, who had once seen his fellow colonists vanish into nothingness.

  Besides, everyone could appreciate a good story. So after the welcoming feast, they all sat around the fire in the village's central pit and listened avidly, far into the night, to the tale of the returnees' adventures in a world so remote that, as Dee put it, one could walk until Judgment Day and not reach it.

  "And so," Dee concluded, "the Gray Monks are without hope of aid from their fellow Grella in other worlds, although they don't know it yet. And we've brought back the means to deal with them. Only," he concluded anticlimactically, "we have to get at them."

  "Yes," Manteo nodded. "We have watched the horizon every day, but your ships have not appeared. I fear that when we do see sails, they will be those of the Spaniards. I am surprised they are not here already."

  "I'm not," Winslow declared. "First of all, they'd cross the Atlantic in their old, slow, lubberly way of letting the winds and currents carry them, swinging far to the south. Then they'd stop in Florida where the Grella flying ship crashed, so the Gray Monks can pick up the instruments that enable them to find portals. And then they'd work their way slowly up the coast, beating past Cape Fear the way we did. And they'd proceed very cautiously all the while—we're even further into hurricane season now."

  "Nevertheless," said the Queen, "we know they're coming, sooner rather than later. Dr. Dee, we must be ready to receive them."

  "Indeed, Your Majesty. I will begin without delay to assemble the anti-matter weapons. I promise you the Spaniards and the Gray Monks will have a surprise in store."

  Dee set to work the next day, with the help of the assistants he had trained before departing the world of the Eilonwë. He understood the why of what he was doing little if any more than they did. But he had committed to his formidable memory the details of connecting this to that, with the aid of the picture diagrams Riahn had supplied. And so the partially translucent, strangely harmless-seeming assemblages began to take shape.

  In the meantime, everyone debated the best way to employ them. Walsingham was the voice of caution, arguing that they should be emplaced ashore to surprise Spanish landing parties. Winslow disagreed; he wanted to make catamarans out of the Indian canoes and carry the weapons out to attack the Spanish ships directly, which was precisely the way the Gray Monks had used them off Calais. To use weapons of such fearsome destructive power against individual enemy soldiers would be, as he put it, like "swatting flies with a sledgehammer." And after that power had been demonstrated, he hoped to use the threat of further such demonstrations to force the surrender of ships in which they could return to England.

  They were still debating when, one day, one of Manteo's lookouts ran into the village shouting and gesticulating frantically. "Ships," Manteo translated.

  "The Spaniards—already?" gasped Dee.

  Manteo put a series of questions to the tribesman, who drew a rectangle in the dirt with his finger. Then he walked over to a framework where the village women had hung fruit they had gathered. He crushed a red berry, rubbed his finger in the juice, and drew the red cross of St. George on the rectangle.

  The whoops of joy from the English startled him.

  Little time could be spent bringing Jonas Halleck, Martin Gorham and the others who had been at sea up to date on all that had befallen the shore party. The tidings the ships brought back were of more immediate urgency.

  "The hurricane carried us less far than I'd feared," Halleck told the gathering in Manteo's longhouse. "But when it was over, we found ourselves well to the east, and a fairly stiff south-wester was still blowing. So we had to swing well east and south working our way back to the coast before turning to starboard and coming back around. We raised the coast south of Cape Fear. Closer inshore than we, and further south, we spotted the Spanish sails."

  "How many?" Walsingham demanded.

  "We were too far and too hurried to count them, your lordship. But it's a fair-sized fleet."

 
Dee looked pale. "So they must be following close behind you."

  "I think not. Just after we sighted them, a fresh gale came up. We ran before it, and it carried us past Cape Fear."

  It was Winslow's turn to blanch, as he tried to imagine the risk Halleck had taken, riding a gale past that treacherous cape.

  "But before we lost sight of them," Halleck continued, "we could see that the Spaniards were scattering. They were close-hauled off a lee shore, and their admiral probably ordered each ship to claw off as best it could. Now they're probably reassembling, and will have to work their way around the Cape Fear shoals the way we did when we first arrived."

  "Except, of course, that it will take them far longer," Winslow finished for him. "That gives us time."

  "Why will it take them longer, Captain?" inquired the Queen.

  "Because their ships are high-charged, Your Majesty, while ours are race-built." Seeing a blank look, Winslow explained. "To the Dons, the purpose of warships is to carry soldiers into battle and put them in the best position to board the enemy. So their ships are built the old way, with fighting castles fore and aft, to give their soldiers the advantage of height. This doesn't matter with the wind astern—which is why they always make their voyages that way—but to windward, the size and windage of the castles causes the ship to blow down to leeward, even when they're as close-hauled as they can go." Warming to his theme, Winslow failed to notice that his listeners' eyes were beginning to glaze over. "In the meantime, we English have designed our ships for fighting at a distance with long-range guns rather than for boarding. So we've stripped the castles off, and our ships are long and low, lying snug to the water. We've also begun to cut our sails flatter, so they can be set closer to the wind. Why, Heron can make a good two point to windward! At the same time—"

  "Thomas," Dee interrupted gently, "why don't you just say that our ships can sail into the wind better than theirs?"

  "I did," Winslow said, puzzled. From Virginia Dare's direction came a sigh of exasperated resignation.

  "At any rate," said Walsingham, taking charge with his usual understated firmness, "we now know for certain that the Spaniards are coming. So we must settle our earlier debate on how best to receive them, and set about the preparations for which God has granted us time. Thomas, I could always appreciate your argument that our captured Grella weapons are best employed against ships—large, flammable targets—as we English learned to our sorrow earlier this year. My reason for rejecting your proposal was that, given the conditions in these waters, the Spanish ships would not approach the shore to within the weapons' range. And I feared to entrust those weapons to flimsy craft improvised from the local canoes. I mean no offense, Lord Manteo," he added hastily. "But any misfortune to those craft would leave our only advantage lying at the bottom of the sea."

  "Yes, Mr. Secretary," Winslow admitted. "That was always a danger."

  "Now, however, your sturdy ships have returned and we can mount the weapons on them. So my one objection no longer obtains. I therefore say: go out and meet them!"

  A general noise of agreement arose.

  "So be it." The Queen's voice brought the hubbub to a sudden silence. "Captain Winslow, on the advice of our Principal Secretary and Privy Counselor, we command you to seek out the Spanish fleet and engage it." It had been a while since Winslow had heard her use the royal we, so the impact was all the greater. Then, with the sudden shift back to the first person singular that she had always used to such good effect: "And I will accompany the fleet."

  At first, Winslow was without the power of speech. "Your Majesty," he finally managed, "I must point out that were are going into battle, against unforeseeable dangers. I cannot permit—"

  "By the bowels of almighty God!" The daughter of King Hal surged to her feet, and everyone else must perforce rise with her—except Winslow, who went to one knee. "Permit? Do you forget, sirrah, that you once told me your claim to authority over your ship was 'only under God and Your Majesty'? Will you next be setting yourself above God, Captain?"

  "But Your Majesty—" Winslow began, only to be overridden.

  "We will sail with you, Captain, in this venture on which the future of our realm depends! And besides," she continued with a disconcerting shift from imperiousness to matter of factness, "if you lose, what will become of me, waiting here on this island for the Spaniards to arrive? I would rather go down with your ship than be taken alive and paraded before my people as the final proof of their subjugation."

  "I believe, Thomas," said Walsingham, "that I, too, would rather take my chances with the sharks than with the Inquisition."

  "And I, of course, must come," Dee interjected. "I believe I can, without fear of contradiction, claim a better understanding of the anti-matter weapons than anyone else." He naturally failed to add that that was saying very little. "But Thomas, since we do, after all, have those weapons, aren't you exaggerating the danger to Her Majesty and the rest of us?"

  "Perhaps I am, Doctor—assuming that the Spaniards, and the Gray Monks who surely accompany them, haven't brought similar weapons of their own. But what if they have?"

  Dee paled a shade or two. He wasn't the only one.

  "Surely, Thomas," ventured Walsingham, "they'd feel no need for such power, to deal with nothing more than Raleigh's colonists and perhaps some fugitives such as ourselves." There was a general, relieved nodding of heads.

  "I devoutly hope that's true, Mr. Secretary. If they don't have the weapons, then our prospects are very good. If they do, then our only advantage will be their surprise at our also having them."

  "Not our only advantage, Captain," said the Queen. "We also have England's ships—and the men who sail them."

  "I hope you're right, Your Majesty. And whatever I can do to make you right, I will do." Winslow looked around and saw Halleck and Martin Gorham swelling with pride. And out of the corner of his eye he noticed Virginia Dare. Her face wore an odd expression, as though she wanted to speak but was uncharacteristically hesitant.

  The Queen, following Winslow's gaze, saw it too. "Have you anything to add, Mistress Dare?" she prompted.

  Still Virginia Dare hesitated. Growing up in the exile society of the lost colonists, an infinity away from the fixed social hierarchies of England, she had never had the reticence to speak out in any kind of company that would have otherwise been expected of someone of her origins. But now something else seemed to be constraining her. "Your Majesty won't be offended?"

  "I'll be offended if you deny us the benefit of your counsel," said the Queen briskly. "After all, you have more experience fighting the Grella than any of us here."

  "That's true, Your Majesty: I've spent my life fighting them, and I know what they are. So all the talk of English and Spanish means little to me, for the Grella are the enemies of all humans—of all life besides themselves, in fact."

  There was a general silence of blank incomprehension.

  "But," Winslow finally protested, "the Spaniards are their puppets, manipulated by them through the Church of Rome!"

  "My parents, while they were alive, tried to teach me to be a proper daughter of the Church of England. And I do try to be a good Christian. But I have to say that the talk of Catholic and Protestant doesn't mean much to me either." Before the incomprehension around her could solidify into shock, she hurried on. "Your Majesty, as little as I know of these matters, I do know the Grella. The Spaniards may be their unknowing servitors, but it will win them no gratitude—the Grella have none to give. To them, the universe holds only themselves and slaves. Slavery will be the Spaniards' fate in the end, as soon as they've lost their usefulness. Which means the Spaniards are natural allies of ours—they just don't know it yet. So maybe our aim should be to let them know it, and wean them away from their allegiance to the Grella."

  There are ideas so outlandish that they cannot even arouse indignation. That seemed to be the general reaction, as the silence continued. But Winslow, looking around the array of faces, not
iced two that were thoughtful rather than blank.

  One was the face of Elizabeth Tudor, whose policy of tacit toleration of law-abiding Catholics among her subjects had always scandalized her Puritan supporters. The other was that of one of those Puritans' leaders, and Winslow would have expected him to be having a stroke. But this was a Puritan who was a student of Machiavelli as well as of Calvin. And Mr. Secretary Walsingham looked very thoughtful indeed.

  Nineteen

  Using easy sail for beating against the southwest wind, Heron and Greyhound, race-built ships both, needed only five tacks to clear the sound and gain the open sea. Four hours after departing, they were a dozen miles south. Winslow, expecting compliments on the ships' ability to windward, was crestfallen at the Queen's and Walsingham's obvious impatience at what they considered a tedious back-and-forth process. Virginia Dare, who had never seen an ocean or set foot on a sailing vessel in her life, was too fascinated by it all to notice.