Saint Antony's Fire

by Steve White

  "In the meantime, Your Grace, what news of the response to your secret couriers?"

  "All reports from our garrisons are favorable. Fortunately, there were never more than a very few Gray Monks in England. Once the couriers informed the local commanders of the true facts, those few and their acolytes were taken by surprise and dispatched with relatively small loss, despite the weapons which—by means beyond my understanding, although you assure me that they do not involve sorcery—turn light into an instrument of death."

  Dee looked troubled. "I wish it were possible to spare those acolytes. As I have explained, they are not responsible for what they do, for their wills are not their own. And, with the help of the Eilonwë, it might someday be possible to win their souls back from darkness."

  Parma made a gesture indicating small interest in the matter. "At any rate, Dr. Dee, we have captured more of those weapons—of which, I am told, you have some understanding which you can impart to us. We will have still more of them when my other couriers—the ones I have dispatched to the Netherlands—have also done their work."

  "Have you also sent word to Spain?" Walsingham inquired.

  "Not yet. I feel I should make sure of my position in the Netherlands before presenting the King with the facts. I hope those facts will speak for themselves. So should the fact that his fleet is with us. And arguably I have won his minimum demands! But he can be . . . difficult." Parma turned to Dee, clearly disturbed. "Is it possible that the Gray Monks have made him . . . as their acolytes are?"

  If they had, would anyone have noticed the change? Winslow wanted to say.

  "It is possible," Dee said judiciously. "But I would be inclined to doubt it. That kind of enslavement destroys the mind in the end, and an obvious madman would be of no use to them. They probably preferred to do as you yourself suggested earlier: encourage the ambitions he already harbored, and make themselves indispensable for the attainment of those ambitions."

  "Yes," said Parma grimly. "They probably had no difficulty doing the same in France with the Duke of Guise. As you probably know, they've been effectively in control of the Holy League for some time." His tone was eloquent of a professional soldier's disdain for religious zealots, even those ostensibly on his side, with their uncontrollable and unpredictable enthusiasms.

  "At the same time," Dee continued, "I think it not impossible that they may have made such a slave of the Pope, keeping him in isolation save for occasional, tightly controlled public appearances and issuing commands in his name to his underlings."

  Parma, Medina Sidonia and all the other Spaniards shuddered and crossed themselves. "Well," Parma finally said briskly, "be that as it may, there must be a housecleaning, of the Church as well as of Spain. And we ourselves must set our own house in order."

  "Of course," acknowledged Walsingham. "However, at the same time, the Grella in Florida must also be dealt with. And the hurricane season in those seas is now drawing to a close, so the voyage can be safely attempted."

  Medina Sidonia spoke up. "When we stopped there on our way to Virginia, I saw relatively few of them—they must be spread thin, here in Europe. Also, I had the impression that their capacity for mischief-making is limited, at least for now. As the one we knew as Father Jerónimo said, they have never repaired their flying ship. Partly this is for the reason he gave: they have been awaiting the rediscovery of the portal through which it can take them. But in addition, it is evidently a daunting task even for them."

  "Still," Dee cautioned, "remember what we told you of the devices by which they can send their voices winging across great distances. We dare not assume they will remain unaware of what is happening to their fellows in Europe."

  "I know," Parma nodded. "But consolidating the Netherlands and Spain must come first. And yet who knows what devilment they may hatch in Florida if we give them time?"

  "May I propose a solution, Your Grace?" offered Walsingham. "We English can deal with this problem while you are, as you put it, setting your own house in order." He hastily held up a hand. "Be assured that we have no designs on Florida. As regards those lands, we recognize the claim of Spain . . . whoever is speaking for Spain at the time." He and Parma exchanged a meaningful look. "But, as we are now agreed, the Grella are the enemies of us all. We will soon be in a position to mount an expedition while you are attending to the Grella in Catholic Europe. And," he added, turning to Winslow, "we have just the man to command it—a man with some experience in fighting the Grella."

  "So, Will, I understand they're already rebuilding the theaters in Southwark. I imagine you'll be resuming your career as an actor."

  "Or perhaps," Virginia Dare added, "pursuing your ambition to be a playwright."

  "Perhaps so, Mistress Dare. I've even received some new inspiration in that field. Before the Spaniards departed, I met a young ensign of my own age—a certain Lope de Vega. He also has aspirations in that field. We had some stimulating conversations."

  They stood on Heron's quarterdeck, amid the squadron that stood ready to depart Plymouth for Florida, awaiting the Queen's arrival amid the captains and various dignitaries—including John Dee, whom the Queen and Winslow had granted leave to accompany the expedition to Florida. Winslow was beginning to fidget, because the tide would soon be out and the wind was favorable. He wasn't quite sure how Shakespeare had worked his way into the group, but he wasn't particularly surprised.

  "Yes," Shakepeare continued, "London is an exciting place to be, with all the rebuilding. And yet . . . Captain, do you remember when I saved your life, during the attack on the Grella fortress?"

  "Of course, Will. How can I forget?" Shakespeare, it seemed, had forgotten that the feat had consisted of tripping and falling.

  "When I think back on all we've been through and done, I wonder if I've mistaken my true calling. Perhaps I should make my way in the world as an adventurer rather than as a playwright."

  Winslow placed his hands on Shakespeare's shoulders, looked into his eyes, and spoke with quiet but intense earnestness. "Will . . . be a playwright!"

  Shakespeare brightened, as though hearing what he'd more than half wanted to hear. "Do you really think I'd make a better playwright than a sea dog?"

  "I think you'll make a great playwright!" Winslow diplomatically left it at that.

  "You think so?" Shakespeare brightened still further. "Well, if you're sure you won't need me . . . Devise, wit! Write, pen! For I am for whole volumes in folio!" He gave a more than usually satisfied nod.

  He's himself again, Winslow thought, with ambivalent feelings.

  At that moment, a fanfare of trumpets sounded and a line of carriages began to turn onto the pier. The array of luminaries who alighted from them was wondrous to behold. Sir Walter Raleigh was resplendent in silvery parade armor, especially in contrast to Walsingham's Puritan black. White-bearded William Cecil, Lord Burghley, had managed the journey despite his age. A multitude of lesser courtiers followed. But they all feel to their knees when the last carriage halted and the first foot that descended from it touched the pier. So did all the crowds. So did Winslow. But he raised his head and peered at the apparition—all farthingale and pearl fringes and red hair dye and white makeup—that descended from the carriage to the lowly cringing earth. And he remembered the weathered, determined queen who had braved an alien world. He missed that queen. But this was what England expected. This was what England needed. This was what England required of her. And she could not withhold it, for she and England were one—now more than ever.

  On Raleigh's arm, she came aboard, proceeded through the mass of kneeling sailors in the waist, and ascended the stair to the quarterdeck. "Arise," she said, and looked around. "So, Captain, have you acquainted yourself with your Spanish counterpart?"

  "Indeed, Your Majesty," said Winslow, relieved to find himself in the world of practicalities. The Spaniards had insisted on being represented in this expedition, claiming that honor required them to have a hand in purging their Floridian possessions
of the Grella. Winslow suspected that a desire to share in any captured weapons and equipment might also have influenced them. At least the captain they had assigned seemed a good man, and his galleon, the San Pedro, seemed a well-found ship. "Allow me to present Captain Francisco de Cuellar."

  "Your Majesty!" Cuellar, a handsome man of considerable Latin charm, bowed with the kind of almost languid courtliness that often caused the English to dismiss Spanish gentlemen as fops. But Winslow had sensed the toughness underneath. This man, he felt sure, would survive in almost any imaginable situation.

  The Queen looked around at the familiar sights of Heron and drew a deep breath of salt air. "At times I almost miss this ship. I see, Captain, that you have elected to stay aboard her, even though you now have larger ships to chose from."

  "Aye, Your Majesty. Size in a warship is no particular advantage in itself. As long as she can carry a useful outfit of guns, the smaller the better, because she'll be handier."

  "Drake used to say much the same thing." The Queen's eyes took on a faraway look at the thought of Drake. "Captain, I recall when I stood on another quarterdeck—that of Drake's Golden Hind, after he had returned from his voyage around the world and put 160,000 pounds into my treasury, and King Phillip wanted his head for piracy. You'll have heard the tale."

  "Of course, Your Majesty. Who hasn't?"

  "But you've probably heard it wrong. Everyone thinks I said I'd take his head with a gilded sword, and then knighted him. In fact, I handed the sword to the Sieur de Marchaumont, envoy from the Duc d'Alençon, with whom I was then engaged in certain negotiations." Marriage negotiations, Winslow recalled, part of the endless diplomatic game she'd played while childbearing had still been a possibility for her. "I asked him to do it, because it is for a knight to bestow knighthood." She paused. "I have no gilded sword here, Captain. But that's a rare one strapped to your back. Give it to me."

  Wonderingly, Winslow drew the slightly curved Eilonwë sword and handed it to her hilt-first. She held his eyes. "Kneel!" she commanded.

  As though in a trance, he did as he was bidden.

  "Sir Walter," the Queen said to Raleigh, "will you do the office?"

  Raleigh examined the strange sword fastidiously. "It is hardly a knightly blade, Your Majesty."

  Elizabeth glared. "Is it not, sirrah? Deeds have been done with it that are knightly beyond common conception. But if you're disinclined . . . well, perhaps this time I'll actually do it as everyone merely thinks I did it with Drake." And she turned to the kneeling Winslow who could barely hear her for the roaring in his head. But the words in the name of God, St. Michael and St. George penetrated his consciousness, and he felt the touch of the flat of the sword. It was as though that touch broke the spell, for he heard her quite distinctly when she said, "Rise, Sir Thomas."

  He got to his feet amid general applause and the sound of cheering from Heron's crew in the waist. The Queen smiled as she returned the alien sword.

  "And now, Sir Thomas, I know you are impatient to be at sea. 'The wind commands me away,' Drake once said. But before I depart, ask a favor of me. I'll grant anything within reason."

  Winslow reached out a hand and drew Virginia Dare forward. She had already drawn some stares from the dignitaries, and now those stares grew blatant, for she was dressed in her tunic-and-trousers garments of Eilonwë style, scandalous here.

  "Your Majesty, you've already broken one tradition today by knighting me yourself. I ask you to overturn another. Allow Mistress Dare to accompany me, returning to the New World where she was the first English child to be born."

  A tittering arose among the courtiers, but it died a quick death as everyone saw that the Queen was not even smiling. And de Cuellar, whom Winslow had expected to be among the most amused at the idea, wasn't smiling either. He knew a warrior when he saw one.

  The Queen remained serious as she met Virginia Dare's eyes. "Are you certain this is what you wish, Mistress Dare? I would have thought your desire would have been for my leave to marry Sir Thomas."

  For the first time in Winslow's experience, Virginia Dare blushed, and her gaze brushed against his. "The thought is there, Your Majesty, and has been for some time. But however I turn the matter over in my mind, the need to cleanse my birth continent of the Grella comes uppermost. Everything—even my dearest wishes—must wait upon that."

  The Queen met her eyes, and for a moment it was as if no one was present except the two women.

  "It is in my heart, Mistress Dare, that in you the Grella have forged a weapon for their own destruction. I would not keep that weapon sheathed even if I could. And . . . I know what it is to be a woman with a Purpose and a Power within her, in a world where such things are supposed to be the province of men. Oh, yes, I know a thing or two about that! It is what bearing a child must be like—it cannot be withheld. Yes, you have my leave."

  The courtiers' looks went from amused to stunned. But Walsingham, Puritan though he was, gave only a wise smile. And a thunderous cheer erupted from the ship's waist, led by those crewmen who had passed through the Void and fought beside Virginia Dare.

  The Queen departed and the ship began to clear. Winslow caught sight of Shakespeare giving the ship one last, half-wistful look. "We'll kill some Grella for you, Will!" he called out.

  "Kill them?" Shakespeare looked at Virginia Dare, then at Winslow. "I believe, Captain, they're already dead. They just don't know it yet. But the two of you can do me one favor."

  "What's that, Will?" asked Virginia Dare.

  "You've already given me the makings of a play. Bring me back another!"

  She went to his side and kissed his cheek. He beamed, and was gone.

  Orders rang out, and the sailors went to the rigging. The wind began to fill the sails.

  Author's Note

  In recent years there has been some controversy about just exactly where on the east coast of Florida Juan Ponce de León first made landfall. I have gone with the traditional view that it was near St. Augustine, just north of the beautiful and evocative Shrine of Nuestra Señora de la Leche, about where the modern tourist trap known as the "Fountain of Youth" is located. Aside from this concession to romanticism—and, of course, the ambiguously successful denouement I have given it—everything in the Prologue about Ponce de León's 1513 expedition to Florida is true to real-world fact. This includes all the individuals I have named (a fascinating lot, unaccountably neglected by historical novelists), so don't blame me for the fact that there are so many Juans. In fact, except for Thomas Winslow and the rest of the ships' companies of the imaginary Heron and Greyhound, all the humans named in this novel actually lived. Even St. Antony of Padua (not to be confused with the better-known St. Anthony the Great) is an authentic saint, and for the fictive use to which I have put him I may need the intercession of St. Francis de Sales, patron of authors, who must already have his hands full.

  My portrait of the Duke of Medina Sidonia may come as a surprise to some readers, brought up on his image in popular history as a ridiculous poltroon. They may be assured that it has been half a century since any serious historian has bought into that view of him. I hope to have done my part to counteract this and various other entrenched misconceptions about the Spanish Armada. On that subject, everything I have written—except, of course, matters relating to "Father Jerónimo"—is as reliable as conscientious research can make it. The only liberties I have taken with the known facts about the Armada campaign are trivial ones. For example, I cannot prove that Martin Frobisher was not present for the English council of war on the morning of August 7, 1588. But his absence from the next such council, following the Battle of Gravelines, is attested, and it was probably for the reason I have suggested: that he and Drake would very likely have done King Phillip of Spain a service by killing each other.

  As to why the colonists led by John White (no known relation) were in effect marooned on Roanoke Island, I am indebted to Lee Miller, author of Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony, who
se conspiracy theory I have adopted for narrative purposes despite certain reservations. (Giles Milton's Big Chief Elizabeth, published in 2000 like Ms. Miller's book, reaches very different conclusions, which should give an idea of how contentious the whole subject of the Lost Colony still is.) Stephen Budiansky's Her Majesty's Spymaster should be read as a corrective to Ms. Miller's Snidely Whiplash-like characterization of Sir Francis Walsingham. In fact, it should be read, period. Both views of Walsingham agree on his loyalty to England—and to Elizabeth, even though her chronic vacillation nearly drove him to vice, Puritan or no.

  Some would dismiss John Dee, who may or may not have had the right to style himself "Doctor," as a con man—or, worse, as a dupe of the undoubted con man Edward Kelley. But his linguistic and mathematical abilities, not to mention his services to the Walsingham organization in cryptography and other fields, cannot be honestly denied. There is also no denying his mystical and occult susceptibilities. Like many Renaissance geniuses, he still had one foot in the Middle Ages. (Also some post-Renaissance geniuses—I cite Newton and Goethe.)