Una led Queen Gloriana up a further, twisting flight and crawled along a little tunnel, cautioning her to silence, until suddenly there was dappled light ahead of them, with its source on their right, from the wall. Una turned with difficulty and crawled backwards so that, head to head, they could both look through the lattice at the room below.
Gloriana’s astonishment gave Una considerable satisfaction. They could see Doctor Dee himself, pacing the length of a room half-full of curling parchments, of simple furniture, scientific glasses, instruments of brass and polished hardwood, untidy shelves and cupboards, crystals, mirrors, geographical globes, orreries, phials containing richly coloured liquids and powders, all the paraphernalia and stimuli for his myriad intellectual investigations.
He wore a loose robe, nothing else, and as he paced it opened to reveal his firm flesh, grizzled hair and, to their shared astonishment, his disproportionately large private parts, which he fingered absently all the while, as if to aid his concentration. Queen Gloriana bit her lip and shook with amusement, then became ashamed, tugging at Una to come away.
Una, however, crawled further back, to another square of light, and Gloriana was tempted to follow. Here they could see into John Dee’s bedchamber. It was as littered with charts and books and pieces of alchemical apparatus as the other room. Only the bed, draped with black curtains bearing a variety of mystical and astrological symbols as befitted the couch of a follower of Prometheus, was free of paper. Gloriana frowned a question, but Una’s hand begged her to be patient and to continue looking. Very soon Doctor Dee paced in, his robe sailing back from his bare body, his manhood now much huger in his sensitive hand. Gloriana gasped.
“Oh,” they heard him groan, “if only there were an antidote for love. This exquisite poison! It fills my being. Some philtre which robbed the body of lust but left the mind clear. There is none. To dampen such desires is to extinguish the higher investigations of the brain. I must have both! I must have both! Ah, madam! Madam!”
Gloriana creased an unbelieving brow.
He drew the curtains of the bed gently and it seemed that there lay in shadow a figure, tall and giving off a very faint lustre, as a putrefying corpse might shine. They saw John Dee begin to stroke the object. He murmured to it. He lay down beside it and he flung his arms around it, flung a leg across it—twitch. “Oh, my beauty! Oh, my love. Soon your loins shall live—and throb to my pounding dork! Ah! Ah!”
Gloriana pulled at Una, retreating.
Eventually they stood upright upon the stair, their lanterns held loosely in their hands. Gloriana was leaning heavily against the wall, her mouth hanging open. “Una!”
“It shows us a mortal sage, eh?”
“We should not have watched! That thing he has—what is it? Is he in love with a dead creature? Is it human or animal? Or a demon, even? Perhaps it is a demon, Una. Or a corpse, waiting for the demon to inhabit it.” The rustle and murmur from the walls had begun to disturb her now. “Does my Dee dabble in necromancy?”
“Not at all.” Una began to lead the way down the stair. “That thing’s probably no more than a wax effigy of someone. No one. He loves you, Your Majesty, don’t you see?”
“I thought so. But then I denied it.”
“I’ve spied on him before. He speaks of you constantly. He is in a fever of wanting you.”
“But he has never hinted…”
“He cannot. He loves you. He fears—well, many things. He fears you will laugh at him. That you will be shocked by him. That you will become afraid of him. He is constantly in a quandary. And, it appears, he is incapable of satisfying himself with any other woman.”
“He seemed confident with that…”
“He pretended it was you.”
Gloriana began to smile broadly. “Oh, poor Dee. Should I—?”
“It would be poor politics, Your Majesty.”
“But excellent sport. And it would make him happy. After all, he has given so much to me and done so much for the Realm. He should be rewarded. There are few who could understand his pain as I understand it.”
“He does not suffer as you suffer.”
“To a degree, Una.”
“But not to the same degree. Be cautious, Your Majesty. Montfallcon…”
“You think it would be destructive. And so it would. It’s four years since I entertained a courtier. They grow ambitious, or melancholy, or wild, then strange humours fill the palace. There are jealousies.”
“And expenses,” said the Countess of Scaith. “You have had to marry so many of them off, bestow estates. Your kindness to those who have loved you…”
“My guilt.” Gloriana nodded to agree with Una. “But you’re right, dear heart. Dee must burn on and I must do my best to continue to treat him as I have always treated him.”
“You still maintain respect, surely.”
“Of course. But it will be harder to milk humour from him, knowing his pain, by setting Montfallcon off against him, as I love to do. It’s poor sport for me and none at all for Dee.”
They crossed a low-ceilinged room and found a broken door through which to enter the tunnel they had left, but, as they stooped, torchlight flared from another door, to their right, and they turned, straightening, afraid.
A small man peered from beneath his upraised hand. He seemed to have a humpback or some other growth upon his shoulder. He wore a leather jerkin and britches and a dark shirt, its collar folded at the neck. He had large eyes and a wide mouth, giving him something of the appearance of an intelligent frog. They raised their own lanterns, assuming the poses suitable to their disguise.
“What’s this?” Una, lounging on the wall, was arrogant. “The dungeon keeper, left behind?”
She saw now that the man’s shoulder carried a small black-and-white cat which sat very straight and still and looked at her with yellow, candid eyes.
“What’s this?” echoed Jephraim Tallow, mocking her. “Two play-actors who’ve lost their way?”
“We’re gentlemen, sir,” said Gloriana boldly. “And might resent your insult.”
Tallow opened his huge mouth and laughed. Una believed in her heart that she and the Queen had been recognised, but such thoughts were scarcely logical here. She stepped forward. “We’re exploring these tunnels on Lord Montfallcon’s business. Looking for traitors, renegades, vagabonds.”
“Aha. Well, you’ve caught one, gentlemen.” Tallow’s smile was insinuating. “Or two, if you like. Me and Tom. Vagabonds the pair of us. Confirmed rogues. Scavengers. But not traitors, nor are we renegades, for we serve no one and therefore can turn against no one. We live on our own account, Tom and myself.” He bowed. The cat clung on. “You’ll see I’m swordless, sir, so cannot offer you the duel you desire.”
“I spoke hastily.” In return Una made a short bow. “We were startled by your sudden appearance here.”
“And I by yours.” Tallow found a stone bench in the darkness and seated himself, crossing arms and legs and staring up at them. “Well?”
“You know these passages, then?”
“They’re my home for the moment. Until I grow tired of them and move on. But I’ve a poor understanding of the real world, which is why I prefer to be separated from it, as one is, of necessity, here. Though I’m fascinated by it, also. This is the ideal habitat for a fellow of my persuasion. And you are Lord Montfallcon’s men, eh? On the Queen’s business, then?”
“Indeed,” said Gloriana with an irony Una felt was dangerously obvious.
“I guessed you to be some of the large palace beasts at first,” said Tallow. Una suspected this remark to be pointed failure to sense Gloriana’s meaning.
“Beasts?” said the Queen.
“They hibernate in the winter. A few of them are beginning to rouse. Creatures of all sorts. They make life dangerous for the rest of us. Now, tell me the truth, gentlemen. Montfallcon will have no one in the walls. It does not suit him. You are escaped from some imprisonment, or threat of it, and seeking
a hiding place, I’d guess.”
“Montfallcon knows…?” Gloriana hesitated.
“Of the darker places of the palace? Oh, aye. Some of ’em, at least. But Tallow knows ’em all. Shall we be friends? You’ll have me for your guide.”
“Aye,” said Gloriana, rather too readily in Una’s opinion. “Friends it is—and a guide, Master Tallow.”
“These rooms go down deeper and deeper,” Tallow told them. “To natural caverns where blind, white beasts blunder and devour one another. To halls so ancient they were hewn from living rock before the first Golden Age. To strange cloisters inhabited by dwarfish men who were here before true men walked the Earth. All this lies below the palace which lies below the palace. These haunts are modern in comparison, a few hundred years old. The true antiquity is so alien to us that it plays tricks upon our minds should we merely be witness to it. And yet, I know, there are those who dwell there, no longer sane, in our eyes, though eminently sane in their own—men and women, once. They breed, some of them, I think.”
Una lifted her shoulders back. “You seek to frighten us, Master Tallow?”
“No, gentlemen. I receive no relish from alarming others. I speak of it as a curiosity, that’s all.” He reached up and stroked his cat. “It’s cold here.”
“Aye,” came Gloriana’s small voice.
“I’ll take you to the warmer parts,” Tallow said. “Come. You can meet a few of your fellow exiles—those who have no objection to being met, that is. Most of the folk who dwell here are inclined to be reclusive. It is why they choose to live between the walls.”
“How many?” Gloriana whispered.
“I’ve never counted ’em, sir. A hundred or two, maybe. We live, most of us, by scavenging. And there’s superstitious servants to rely upon, too. Those who think us devils or faeries and put out tidbits for us. But they misjudge our size. A strapping fellow like you, sir, needs meat every day to maintain such a huge frame. You have an unusual figure, sir.” Tallow spoke casually as he led them on. “There’s only one other I know who possesses such size.”
“We’d best return,” said Una urgently. She stopped in her tracks, taking Gloriana by the arm. “No time for further exploration now.”
But Gloriana had shaken her off and advanced. Una was forced to follow.
The passage widened, opening upon a very large hall, like a covered market. Flickering torches illuminated the place and an unruly fire burned in a grate at one end, while around the walls, in changing flame-cast shadows, as nomads might camp, small tents or groups of tents: tiny territories marked out by means of ropes, or rubble, or pieces of half-rotten furniture, or blocks of stone torn from the very foundations of the hall. And white faces stared from shawls and hoods and hollows: thin faces, for the most part, with large eyes, as if already these people adapted to the glooms: another race.
Gloriana stopped dead when she saw the scene and was bumped against by Una, who, lost in her own rapid thoughts, noticed it a few seconds later.
“Who are these?” the Queen whispered.
A great figure had risen from beside the fire and stood in silhouette, pausing as if to confront the newcomers. Then it had dashed into deeper darkness and was gone.
Una, full of dread, gripped the Queen’s arm. “No,” she implored. “We must return.”
Tallow was amused. “She is shy, the mad woman. Of all of us. But you shouldn’t fear her.”
There was no curiosity in the faces of this lost gathering, and Tallow greeted none of them. It seemed that he did not regard himself as part of the tribe. He displayed it with a distant, proprietorial air, in his self-chosen role as their guide. “There are gentlemen here, like yourselves. And well-born ladies. Most, of course, claim to be a little nobler than they actually were. But why should they not? Here they create themselves and their surroundings afresh. It is all they have.”
But Gloriana had at last broken free from the fascination and, in obedience to Una’s terror, was in retreat.
Tallow called out from behind them. They ignored him. They ran through the passages, back to where they had first encountered the little man. They climbed and scrambled up passages and flights of steps, half afraid that they were lost, though the way was familiar: through the carven gallery, which now seemed to threaten, and along the narrow corridors to Una’s rooms, to squeeze through the panel, and slam it shut.
Gloriana was paler than the nomads of the walls. She leaned, in dusty gallant’s guise, panting against the wall. She attempted to speak, but failed. Una said to her: “It must be forgotten. Oh, Your Majesty, I have been so foolish! It must be forgotten.”
Queen Gloriana stood upright. She recalled the great silhouette in the hall and her head filled with terror again. Her face was without expression. Tears ran from her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “It must be forgotten.”
THE FIFTEENTH CHAPTER
In Which Lord Montfallcon Is Dismayed by His News and Begins to Regret His Poor Diplomacy
LORD MONTFALLCON lay alone in his substantial bed while his wives in the next chamber rubbed ointments into one another’s wounds, whispering and gasping. He was miserable, unreconciled, self-loathing that morning, for Gloriana’s voice had sounded through the night, pathetic and full of grief, and he had awakened his wives so that their cries would drown the Queen’s. Montfallcon moved his strong old body in the bed and rebuked himself for his lack of vigour, and wondered if, at this time of delicate crisis, his brain, which had held so much, controlled so much, was at last about to fail. The Queen was recently more melancholy than ever, and he could not name the cause. She had cleverly avoided the question of marriage when he had raised it. Lord Montfallcon had also received news of Tom Ffynne’s capture in the Middle Sea. The old pirate, growing short-sighted, had mistaken an Arabian barquentine for an Iberian barque, and now Arabia complained loudly and at length, ritualisti-cally, though the mistake was obvious. Then in the middle of all this, Sir Christopher Martin had died, poisoned, apparently by his own hand, as if he felt dishonoured. This was a bad omen to nobles and to commons. There were rumours of a quarrel between King Casimir and the Grand Caliph; other rumours of a pact between them. There were rumours out of Tatary, rumours from the German and Flemish States, from Iberia and the High Countries, from Africa and from Asia; and Quire, his eye, his hand, his weapon in the world, was missing.
Whether Quire, offended by Montfallcon’s undiplomatic response during their last encounter, played doxy-on-a-high-horse to further his own ends, whether his pride was genuinely wounded, whether he had taken a notion to visit foreign lands or even seek foreign employ, or whether he had paid a price, at last, for his crimes, Montfallcon did not know. And of all things, Lord Montfallcon hated ignorance. It was his impulse, his necessity, to be omniscient. Now not only was his main well of knowledge run dry, but the very location of that well was lost. Frustrated, having no news on which he could base further actions, Montfallcon knew a kind of terror, as a warrior in the heat of battle might feel to receive a hint of imminent paralysis and blindness. It seemed to Montfallcon that unseen enemies were creeping closer and that all he could sense of them was their unspecific malice.
He had failed to understand his tool, Quire, with sufficient complexity; he had imposed a view of the man’s strange character upon the truth; he had broken a rule of his own, which was never to assume, always to interpret. And, because of one lazy failure to interpret Quire, he might have lost his control over the man. Quire worked for the love of his art, as Montfallcon worked for the love of his Ideal, represented in Gloriana. Their partnership, Montfallcon realised, had depended upon that understanding. But he had resented Quire’s suggestion that they were equal, that they collaborated as poets collaborate upon a play In the past Montfallcon had trained himself to deny any expression of pride which might be false or which might threaten his goal, but, in his last interview with Quire, he had let his anger, his arrogance, dominate him and so clash with Quire’s own pride. He understood now that if
Quire had attacked him on like grounds—accusing him, say, of base motives in his work for Albion—he might have felt the same fury. And yet Montfallcon respected Quire’s intelligence. It did not seem typical of the man that he should sulk this long. A day or so, certainly. Even a week. It had been a month. It occurred to Montfallcon that Quire might be planning some form of vengeance against him, but Quire’s particular nature was not of the sort to turn to petty revenge. More likely Quire proved himself, performing some complicated espionage, the results of which he would present to Montfallcon by way of a challenge.
Montfallcon, however, could be sure of none of this. Because he had misjudged once, he had lost some of his faith in his own judgement: he could misjudge again.
With a groan he floundered from sheets which stank of lavender and sweat. He must prepare himself for the day.
The snag-toothed knave, Quire’s lieutenant, in his coney cap and his overlarge leather greatcoat, his gallooned doublet, his puffed hose and turned-down jack-boots, who waited for Lord Montfallcon in the small chamber, striking a pose with longsword and cocked leg, was a sight to encourage Montfallcon that morning, so that he greeted Tinkler almost merrily, enquiring after his health and his fortunes. He bustled, in his usual grey and black, to his desk, where, it seemed, more paper than usual had gathered. He frowned.
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