Saint Antony's Fire

by Steve White

  Impulsively, he grabbed a megaphone of stiff leather. "Hold!" he called out in Spanish, his amplified voice crossing the intervening water. "We have weapons like yours—you just saw us use one. Fire on us, and we will reply in kind."

  A hurried colloquy ensued on San Martín's quarterdeck, with the small gray-clad figure expostulating to the splendidly cloaked man, who hesitated, shook his head, and turned to speak to someone else—the flagship's captain, probably. The latter took up a megaphone like Winslow's. "Surrender now and we will spare your worthless heretic lives. Otherwise, Saint Antony's holy fire will consume you before you can 'reply in kind,' Lutheran pig!"

  Winslow laughed scornfully. "We have two of the anti-matter weapons—and yes, we know all about them. If you fire first, you'll probably get one of them. But before the ship goes down, the other one will send you to your own papist Hell!"

  What followed was a moment, not of silence—there were too many survivors clinging to flotsam and crying for rescue for that—but of expectancy that was almost unbearable in its tenseness.

  Walsingham stepped to the rail and took the megaphone from Winslow's hands. "In the name of Her Majesty, I propose that we meet to settle this impasse."

  There was another hasty consultation aboard San Martín before the same man responded. "You lie! The heretic bastard you call your Queen is dead!"

  With an oath, Elizabeth snatched the megaphone and spoke in a voice that barely required it. "We are Elizabeth, by grace of God Queen of England, Wales, Ireland and France, and Defender of the Faith . . . and," she concluded without the slightest hint of irony, "Weroanza of Virginia—off whose coasts you are cruising without permission. And you, sirrah, will keep a civil tongue in your head! You will also turn the megaphone over to your admiral. I do not deal with underlings!"

  Even at this moment, it was all Winslow could do not to laugh at the flabbergasted commotion that arose aboard San Martín. The Gray Monk seemed even more agitated than before. But the grandee turned away from him and took the megaphone.

  "I am Don Alonzo Pérez de Guzmán el Bueno, Duke of Medina Sidonia and Captain General of the High Seas. If you wish a meeting, I grant permission to come aboard my flagship under safe conduct."

  Winslow didn't even bother to reclaim the megaphone. "What kind of simpletons do you take us for?" he shouted across the water with cupped hands. " 'Safe conduct!' The same kind of safe conduct Jan Hus had from you papists, I suppose—before you burned him alive!"

  "You have the word of honor of a Spanish nobleman!"

  Walsingham shushed Winslow before he could make a rude noise, then conferred in undertones with the Queen and took the megaphone. "To avoid any mistrust or misunderstandings, Your Grace, we propose that we meet at a neutral site. Wococon Island lies just to our left—I mean, to port. It is dangerous to try to pass the sandbars into the sound. But given the fineness of the weather, let us anchor just outside the inlet and take small boats to the beach—say, not more than ten people on each side. In the meantime, our flagships can continue to hold each other hostage."

  There was a long pause. Winslow could not interpret what he saw of the activity on San Martín's quarterdeck. But presently Medina Sidonia took up the megaphone again. "Very well. I agree. Come ahead."

  Twenty

  The English party was ashore on Wococon first, to Winslow's smug lack of surprise. Besides himself, it consisted of the Queen, Walsingham, Dee, Virginia Dare, a pair of the soldiers of the Queen's guard, and four crewmen who, with the soldiers, manned the oars of the longboat that brought them. Winslow couldn't recall what had made him decide to include Shakespeare among those crewmen, but the young actor pulled his oar gamely enough. They waited on the narrow sandy beach, against the backdrop of the loblolly pine forest, and watched as the Spanish party rowed ashore. Wococon's Indian inhabitants, if any, were not in evidence.

  The Spaniards also had six rowers: four sailors, and two men in cowled gray robes. Likewise gray-robed was a diminutive figure at the sight of whom Winslow's hackles rose. The remaining three were obvious Spanish noblemen, led by the one who had spoken from San Martín's quarterdeck. As he stepped ashore, Winslow saw that he was in his late thirties, of only medium height but neatly made and rather broad-shouldered. He had the look of a horseman rather than a seaman, which was consistent with what Winslow had heard of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. His neatly bearded face, with its dark, intelligent eyes, was obviously that of a sensitive and thoughtful man. Not quite equally obvious, at first glance, was that it was also the face of a courageous one.

  He ran his eyes over the eleven members of the English party. "I was under the impression," he said mildly, "that our agreement stipulated not more than ten persons for each side."

  Walsingham stepped forward and spoke with equal smoothness. "Naturally persons cannot be construed as including Her Majesty." He made a leg and indicated the Queen with a sweeping gesture.

  "Ah." Medina Sidonia looked perplexed—as well he might, Winslow thought with grim amusement. How does one behave toward an anointed Queen whom one's own Church has declared a usurper, her subjects released from obedience to her and absolved from guilt for assassinating her? It was a difficult question, especially when one had agreed to treat with her. The Duke resolved it by inclining his head fractionally lower than he would have for a lady of equal social rank and murmuring, "Madam."

  For an instant, Elizabeth's eyes flashed fire at the pointed omission of "Your Majesty." But she smoothed her expression out and gave a small, quick nod and a frostily correct "Your Grace" in return.

  "And I," Walsingham resumed, "have the honor to be Her Majesty's Principal Secretary." He ignored the startled glares he got from the Spaniards, to whom his name was all too well known. "And these two gentlemen are Dr. John Dee, a learned adviser to Her Majesty, and Captain Thomas Winslow of Her Majesty's ship Heron."

  "Ah, yes," nodded Medina Sidonia. "The noted charlatan and the equally noted pirate."

  "Privateer," Winslow corrected with a wince of wronged innocence. Dee, at his loftiest, did not deign to respond.

  "I have already introduced myself," said Medina Sidonia, ignoring them. He turned to one of his fellow nobles, distinguished-looking but elderly and walking like a man who suffered from sciatica. "This is Don Juan Martínez de Recalde, Captain General of the Squadron of Biscay." Winslow looked up sharply at a man whose name was known and respected by every fighting seaman. "And this is Don Diego Flores de Valdés, Captain General of the Squadron of Castile. And this," Medina Sidonia concluded, indicating the small gray-robed figure, "is Father Jerónimo of the Order of St. Antony of Padua."

  Winslow stared at the Grell, barely recognizable as such save for his size because his cowl hid most of the alien face. His two human acolytes, however, had their cowls down, and Winslow, looking at those ordinary Spanish faces, saw a look he had seen before on the faces of enslaved Eilonwë. For all the difference in race, it was the same look: a look too empty even to hold hopelessness, for hopelessness implies the ability to hope. These young men lacked that, because their souls had been stolen. At the sight of them—humans this time, not Eilonwë—Winslow's gorge rose.

  "Ah . . . Father Jerónimo," said Walsingham with a perceptible pause before the name. "I am glad the Duke included you in his party, for our business concerns you."

  "There could be nothing concerning me to interest heretics," came the sibilant voice from within the cowl. The Spaniards muttered in agreement.

  "Oh, but there could . . . Father Jerónimo." Walsingham's pause was now openly ironic. "Many things—and the answers to many questions. For example, how we English happen to know about the anti-matter weapons, and have them in our possession." As he spoke, Walsingham's head turned toward Medina Sidonia, and their eyes met.

  The Duke's expressive face was a battleground of emotions, as automatic denial warred with doubts and curiosity. "We had wondered about that," he conceded.

  "The answer is simple enough, Your Grace. I do
ubt if . . . Father Jerónimo has explained to you the purpose of your voyage here, save in generalities." Medina Sidonia's expression made it clear that Walsingham had guessed correctly. "The purpose is to find the way back into the world from which the inhuman abominations whom we know as the 'Gray Monks' came to infest ours."

  "Silence, heretic!" hissed Father Jerónimo.

  Walsingham swung away from the dumbfounded Spaniards and faced the Gray Monk. "You are too late. We have visited that world. There, we helped the Eilonwë free themselves from their servitude to your fellow Grella!"

  "What babbling is this?" spluttered Diego Flores de Valdés. But he quickly fell silent and, along with the other Spaniards, stared at Father Jerónimo. The Gray Monk had staggered back as though from a physical blow, and his cowl had slipped partially back, exposing more of his lipless, almost noseless face with its huge empty eyes. He had never looked more alien.

  "What do these unfamiliar words mean, Father?" asked Medina Sidonia in a level voice.

  "Yes!" said Walsingham mockingly. "Tell them what it all means, if you dare. Tell them what you are, Grell!"

  "Be silent!" Instead of the usual hiss, it was a ragged rasp that, Winslow decided, must be a Grella shout. The Gray Monk turned to the Spaniards. "What are you waiting for, you cowards? In addition to these lesser scoundrels, we have in our hands the arch-fiend Walsingham—Satan in human form! Have you forgotten that he sent the martyred Mary Stuart to the scaffold with his forged letters?"

  "If memory serves," Walsingham interjected mildly, "even the so-called Queen of Scots herself abandoned that line of defense at her trial."

  "And better still," Father Jerónimo went on, ignoring him, "we have the bastard whelp of the whore Anne Boleyn—probably sired on her by her own brother!" The Queen flushed beneath her makeup at being reminded of the most scurrilous of the trumped-up charges against her mother, whose real crime had been her failure to give Henry VIII a male heir.

  "Father," said Medina Sidonia coolly, "leaving aside the practical matter that there are no more of us than of them on this beach, I promised them safe conduct."

  "A promise to a heretic means nothing! I absolve you from it."

  "The word of honor of a Guzmán el Bueno means a great deal, no matter to whom it is given. Furthermore, their ship and San Martín still hold each other under threat of—how to put it?—mutually assured destruction."

  "Your ridiculous, primitive ship does not matter!" Father Jerónimo brought himself under control with a visible effort. "What I meant to say, my son, is that we, unlike they, have ships to spare. The important thing is that you convey me onward to complete my holy quest."

  Winslow barked laughter. "We can help you with your 'quest.' What you seek is on Croatoan Island, just northeast of here. And you won't need your instruments to find it. Oh, no! We'll be glad to show you the way! And once you use your flying ship to go through the portal, you'll be just one more bit of vermin for the Eilonwë to eradicate, along with all the other Grella still defiling their world."

  Virginia Dare stepped forward. She hadn't understood the exchange, for they had all been speaking in Spanish. But she grasped what was happening. And now she stood before the Spaniards and the Grell. Walsingham hadn't included her in the introductions, and it had never occurred to the Spaniards to ask to have her introduced. In their world, a plainly dressed young woman in these circumstances could only be a servant to the Queen. So they had never noticed her. Now they noticed—and stared at the sword strapped to her back. Their stares grew even more round-eyed as she faced Father Jerónimo and spoke in the Eilonwë language.

  Again, the Grell recoiled backward in shock. Then he rallied and hissed furiously at her in the same language. She laughed and spoke a few more Eilonwë phrases, which reduced the Grell to a state of glaring speechlessness.

  "Father," said Medina Sidonia in a voice that was now quite hard, "I do not know this tongue. But you evidently do. Perhaps you can explain."

  Dee chuckled. "I picked up a smattering of the Eilonwë language while we were among them. I believe she just reiterated what Captain Winslow had already told him, but phrased a trifle more strongly."

  "I require an explanation, Father," Medina Sidonia said, more firmly than before.

  A quivering ran through Father Jerónimo, and something seemed to awaken in his strange eyes. Winslow had thought those eyes to be holes through which nothing was to be glimpsed but an infinity of emptiness. Now he saw that there was something there after all: a contempt so utter and abysmal that it passed beyond contempt and became an emotion for which no human language had a name.

  "You 'require,' do you, you filthy breeding animal?" Before anyone could react, the Grell reached within his gray robe and whipped out a pistol-shaped object. Winslow recognized it as a small hand-held version of the weapons which shaped and intensified light into a deadly immaterial rapier. At a hissed command in the loathsome Grella tongue, the two acolytes, moving like the automata they in fact were, drew similar weapons with grips modified for human hands. One of them pointed it to cover the English party, including Virginia Dare, who froze into immobility at the sight of a weapon she knew only too well. The other did the same for the Spanish sailors who stood, mouths agape, by their longboat. Father Jerónimo himself leveled his weapon at the group of Spanish nobles, aimed directly at the Duke's chest.

  He made no move to fire it. But Recalde, who happened to be in the best position the interpose himself, shouted "No!" and, moving as quickly as his age and infirmity permitted, threw himself between his captain-general and what his half-century of warlike experience told him was a weapon of some kind.

  The crackling, searing line of light that Winslow remembered speared Recalde through the chest. He fell backwards in a burst of superheated pink steam.

  With a cry, Medina Sidonia went to his knees in the sand beside the man who had been his mentor in the lore of the sea. But the gallant old admiral was already dead.

  With cold deliberation, the Grell fired his weapon again. Diego Flores de Valdés died.

  "Any usefulness they may have had to the expedition," said Father Jerónimo, still holding his weapon steady, "was outweighed by the value of their deaths, in demonstrating to you how little any of your lives mean, except to the extent that you are useful to us, your natural masters."

  Medina Sidonia looked up from where he knelt, and his face wore a look obviously foreign to it: a look of cold, murderous hate. But he, like everyone else, remained motionless under the sights of those unnatural weapons.

  "And now," the Grell continued, "to my inexpressible relief, I need no longer pretend to take your tribal superstitions and absurd metaphysical hairsplitting seriously—except, of course, to your subordinates, who will be told that the heretic Elizabeth has seen the error of her ways and joined our expedition. Thus we will avoid the destruction of the useful weapons aboard the two flagships. And she can be held as a hostage for the good behavior of the rest of the English as we proceed to this Croatoan Island."

  "Are you insane?" Dee blurted, heedless of the light-weapons. "There's nothing left for you on the other side of that portal. Your dominion over the Eilonwë is over. The great arch that allowed easy passage to your other worlds beyond is a pile of wreckage. Haven't you been listening?"

  "Yes, I have been listening to your pathetic attempt to deceive me. It is, of course, all nonsense. The Eilonwë, while somewhat more knowledgeable than your humans, are equally products of random natural processes. As such, they could not possibly have overcome a higher, consciously self-created form of life. However, your lies contain one element of obvious truth, which requires further investigation. Your knowledge of the Eilonwë language proves that you humans did indeed blunder onto the portal—and passed through it, in some fashion that does not require artificial aid. This must be studied. Perhaps we can make use of it."

  Winslow smiled tightly. "You're welcome to try."

  "It is of no particular importance if we do not.
We will simply complete the repair of our scout craft, for which we have been awaiting the rediscovery of the portal. In the meantime, your Queen will be a hostage against any foolish attempt by you to use your ability to pass through the portal when you show me its location."

  Through all this, Virginia Dare had stood in uncomprehending silence, remaining absolutely still. Perhaps it was for that reason that the Grell seemed to have forgotten her presence—or perhaps because he had absorbed the attitudes of the Spaniards among whom he had lived. It was probably the latter, for when she slumped down in an apparent swoon his alienness could not disguise his attitude of exasperated but unsurprised contempt. He spoke a command to the acolyte who was covering the English party. The latter stepped forward in the machinelike way of his kind, still holding his weapon level while reaching down with his other hand to haul her out of the way.

  With explosive suddenness, she lashed out with a kick from her crouching position, connecting with the acolyte's right knee and causing him to stagger. At the same instant, she surged to her feet, grasping the wrist of his gun hand and forcing it down. He reflexively got off a shot, searing the sand into a steaming puddle of molten silica. Then she wrenched the arm up while grasping him around the neck from behind with her other arm. While he was still off balance and unable to bring his weight and strength to bear, she swung him around to face the being who had been known as Father Jerónimo.