Gloriana

by Michael Moorcock

  Was this sorcery?

  The young girl spoke innocently and far too loudly for Una’s peace of mind. “Is it the place you sought, sir? Are we safe here?”

  “It has changed.” Una put herself between the rabble (which had fallen silent and was staring at them both) and the girl.

  The hooded creature raised a mysterious arm, apparently beckoning them towards him.

  “Whom do I address?” demanded Una, remaining where she was. She was full of fear now.

  Then the maid was running forward; running to the throne and through the parting crowd, up the steps, to kneel at the feet of the hooded figure, to huddle there, as if secure. Una pushed against the door through which she had entered. The door would not move.

  “I’ve been tricked. Lured by a witch, eh?” Una spoke with crazy irony. “What are you, all of you?”

  Again the apparition in the throne gestured and the mob began to converge upon her. She threatened with her sword. Rusty blades were produced. Diseased hands reached out for her. Faces corrupted with sores and boils leered at her. She feinted again. She cut the back of a wrist so that the owner howled and dropped its flencher. She stabbed. Her blow was blocked by a dozen swords and filthy fingers seized her in every private place of her body. She flailed. She screamed. She tried to break free. Beyond her attackers she saw the hooded figure stroking the head of its Judas goat, the cowering girl who, through eyes half-terrified, half-triumphant, watched as Una was wrapped about with thongs and strips of cloth and borne up on the shoulders of the mob, her sword flung away.

  Una, shuddering, babbling demands, was carried closer and closer to the throne to be placed, almost gently, on the lowest step. She glared and fell silent.

  The figure stood up, face and limbs still hidden, and looked down on her. It spoke to the young girl. “Excellently done. It is she, sure enough.”

  Una stared back, finding courage as she controlled her heart’s rapid beat. “You were expecting me?”

  “We hoped, that’s all, my lady. You are the Countess of Scaith, the Queen’s closest friend. Dark Una—the deceptive Truth—”

  “Truth, sir, is a mirror. Peer away.” Una disdained to struggle in her filthy bonds. She had become cool.

  Her captor seemed amused by her answer. “The best of all of them. Better than Montfallcon, even. An enemy to fear. Well, madam, we’ve a use for you. Not much, really. You might keep the old man quiet. Do you find madness embarrassing?”

  “What?”

  His question had been rhetorical. He signalled her dismissal and again she was picked up, carried through the shifting shadows of the hall, along a short passage. A barred door was opened. She smelt ordure, the stink of a human being who had been incarcerated for some time. She heard an animal noise—a shriek, a roar, a rattling of iron. The mob laughed as she was hurled into the room to land on rotting cloth, and one of them cried out with considerable relish:

  “Here you are, old man. Here’s what you need to calm you down! It’s a woman! All to yourself!”

  The door was shut, a key turned, and Una, in the darkness, listened to the inhuman noises issuing from the creature which now, through reeking straw, slowly advanced towards her.

  THE TWENTY-SECOND CHAPTER

  In Which Rivalries and Mysteries Bloom and Spread and Lord Montfallcon Sees the End of All His Victories

  NONETHELESS,” Lord Montfallcon maintained his stand, “the Accession Day Tilt must take place and thereafter the Queen must make her Annual Progress. Never has it been more necessary These ceremonies, Sir Amadis, are not empty ritual. Their function is to assure the people of the Queen’s majesty, her reality, her charity. Already rumours proliferate in the capital and must be spreading across the nation, across the very world. If the Queen does not appear, then the rumours will fatten like flies on dung and infect the Realm with an hundred moral diseases, weakening us in every quarter. We have dismantled the Rule of Might and replaced it with the Rule of Justice. That Justice is symbolised by the Queen. We maintain our provinces, our world empire, not by soldiers, but by means of a philosophy exemplified in the person of Gloriana. Mithras! Our own faith is implicit in her and how she acts.”

  Sir Amadis Cornfield felt discomforted by the surroundings of Lord Montfallcon’s oppressive rooms, which were, as ever, unaired and overheated. He felt that it might be possible to catch a very ordinary disease of the body here. Yet he was reluctant to go without convincing his fellow Councillor. “The Queen mourns,” he said. “She is enfeebled by so many terrible events. With her greatest friend suspected of murder…”

  “She’s free of an enemy.” Montfallcon was glad and grim. “The Countess of Scaith’s influence threatened the security of the Court and the Realm. It is evident that she plotted with Sir Tancred to murder Lady Mary, that she killed Sir Thomas Perrott in her own rooms—the blood has been discovered, on floor, bed, tapestry; there is blood everywhere. Doubtless Sir Thomas’s body will be found anon.”

  “This is evil gossip, my lord.” Sir Amadis was shocked.

  “Then why has the Countess fled the palace?”

  “Could she not also be a victim?”

  “She is not the kind to be a victim, Sir Amadis.”

  “I did not know, my lord, that victims were chosen according to their temperaments.”

  “Your knowledge, sir, is not informed by my experience.”

  “Nonetheless, the Queen grieves, half-mad with uncertainty.”

  “Public business will steady her.”

  “And who’s to replace the Countess at the Tilt? First Tancred’s gone, now her. It’s as if Fate takes any who would be the Queen’s Champion.”

  “Lord Rhoone has agreed to play the Peasant Knight.”

  “Then let’s hope he survives until Accession Day.” Sir Amadis looked at the clock, all brass and polished oak, above the fireplace. The hand stood near to the half-hour. He had no time for further pleading. “I’ve spoken my mind on it.”

  “So you have, sir.”

  “It could be put out that the Queen is ill.”

  “And make matters worse? I have steered this ship for many years. I know what is good for Albion. I know the tides—the powerful tides of the common will. I know the shallows and the reefs. I know what cargo to carry and when to hold it, when to dispose of it. That is why the Queen relies on my judgement. Why she will do as I suggest. Why she must not be weak or be thought to be weak at this time! At the Tilt every important noble will be watching her, to take news of her mood across the world.”

  Sir Amadis shrugged and, with the curtest of nods, was off.

  He made his way swiftly to the disused suite of rooms behind the old Throne Chamber, where his little mistress—minx, trollop, virgin innocent—had agreed to meet him and, at last, be fully his. Her decision had been taken at the instigation of a gentleman, her guardian, who had pitied Sir Amadis in his discomfort, his distraction and his grief, and informed the girl that her interests would be best served by kindness to a Queen’s Councillor.

  Sir Amadis felt warm gratitude towards this courteous gentleman who had concerned himself with the relief of the heart’s ache, the frail body’s pain, and Sir Amadis also felt a pleasant sense of victory over Lord Gorius, his rival, who would now be thwarted.

  As he reached the half-deserted East Wing he came suddenly upon Master Florestan Wallis fancifully attired in floral reds and yellows, in deep conversation with someone Sir Amadis took for a kitchen doxy. Master Wallis peered around (a guilty flash), then took a dignified defiant stance, his back to the girl. “Sir Amadis.”

  “Good morning, Master Wallis.” Cornfield was careful to pay the girl no attention, but he was amused, for he had never visualised the Secretary as anything but asexual, a celibate. To see him thus (gaudy, embarrassed) added further to Sir Amadis’s cheer, though he felt no malice. Rather he enjoyed something of a sense of conspiracy with his fellow Councillor.

  He passed on, leaving them murmuring. He dismissed a very small susp
icion that crossed his mind, linking kitchens with kidneys.

  Lord Montfallcon glowered up from under his heavy brows, and Master Tinkler, scratching a head that was the chosen field of warring tribes of vermin, shifted his feet, cleared his throat, rubbed his nose, before settling.

  Lord Montfallcon re-read his list, knowing that the longer he kept Tinkler waiting, the more rapidly Tinkler would answer his questions and therefore have less of a chance to colour his information with pointless interpretation.

  “No Quire?” It was his usual opening.

  “Dead, sir, for certain.” Tinkler was helpless. “And I was not the only one who hunted him. Six months have passed, sir. We must give him up.”

  “Who else hunted him?”

  “Fathers of daughters, and of sons, he’d wronged. Kidnapped or killed. Who knows now?”

  “The mood in the town?”

  “Quire’s forgotten by most.”

  “Fool. I meant the Queen.”

  “Loved, as always, my lord. Revered.”

  “Gossip?”

  “Unimportant.”

  “Aye?” A sceptical twitch of the eyebrows.

  “Not…” began Tinkler awkwardly. “Not worthy…”

  “What’s the gossip, Tinkler?”

  “Of several murders, of a return to the days of Hern’s mad Court, of a Queen driven insane by her…”

  “Unfulfilled lust?”

  “You might say”

  “What else?”

  “Sir Thomas Perrott imprisoned by you, my lord, and tortured. The Perrotts banished and planning rebellion. And the Queen’s favourites ravishing any virtuous girl they can find.”

  “Worthy of Quire, that gossip.” Lord Montfallcon’s short laugh was horrible. “The old days, in truth. What’s the remedy suggested in the ordinaries?”

  “Every man and woman has a different one, sir.” Tinkler began to warm to his subject now that he knew what was expected of him.

  “But in general.”

  “There’s a common belief Her Majesty should marry, my lord. A strong man, they say. Like yourself.”

  “They’d have me marry her?”

  “No, sir. Well, not many.”

  “Because I’m not trusted, eh?”

  Tinkler blushed. “They think you too grim, sir, and too old.”

  “So who?”

  “A suitor, you mean, my lord?”

  “Who does the mob think the Queen should marry?”

  “A King, sir.”

  “Poland?”

  “No, sir, for Poland’s King is not considered strong enough for a hard-willed woman. As consort, many think that the Saracen monarch, who was much admired during this winter’s visit for a handsome, manly, martial King, would be the proper candidate.”

  “Why? We are not at war.”

  “The broadsheets. The street songs. I brought you some, my lord. All speak of it. Do they not? Of civil war. Of war with Arabia. Or war against the Tatars.”

  “Where there’s a will to war, a war will always follow,” mused Montfallcon. “That intent must be changed.”

  “I didn’t hear you, my lord, I regret.”

  Montfallcon studied Tinkler. “So the Queen shall marry the Grand Caliph, who will master her, lead Albion to victory…”

  “Many sympathise with the Perrotts, sir. The murder of Lady Mary sparked their imaginations.”

  “Such murders always do. And that contained all the proper elements. Innocence destroyed!”

  “So they believe the Perrotts will rise, my lord, and that many will join them. They think that the Perrotts will support the Queen and clear the palace of…” Again Tinkler paused.

  “Of Hern’s old men?”

  “Aye, my lord.”

  “The Queen is virtuous. But not her servants?”

  “Aye, my lord.”

  “She’s too weak to rule alone?”

  “Pretty much what they do say, my lord.”

  Montfallcon lowered his head, fingered his lip, nodding slowly. “And they fear that a weak Queen means a weak Albion.”

  “A strong-willed woman badly advised is closer to the mark.” Tinkler moved his dented velvet hat upon his head. “This is not shared opinion. Some disagree.”

  “But Faith weakens, eh?”

  “Not too much. Save for the murders, all would be forgotten in a day. Even the murders will be forgotten in time. If there had been no more—but I heard.”

  “There have been no more murders.”

  “The Countess of Scaith fled, I heard, after attempting to poison Lord Rhoone, killing his children.”

  Lord Montfallcon waved a hand. “Nonsense. She fled for other reasons.”

  “Some say you had her incarcerated, my lord. In Bran’s Tower. With Sir Tancred. Sir Tancred was popular, too.”

  “And I never was.” Lord Montfallcon smiled. “How easy it is to give them heroes and villains. And I was content it should be thus, until that murder. If only I had Quire. What a beautiful ferret. What a golden-tongued spreader of tales. Well, it’s up to you, Tinkler. You must tell them how the Queen is strong, that she considers dismissing me, that I am close to the end, that my health fails, as does Lord Ingle-borough’s.”

  Tinkler’s eyes were widening. “This cannot be, my lord.”

  Montfallcon threw down gold. “Your pay’s safe, Master Tinkler. Tell them the Accession Tilt may be witnessed as usual, for a week from walls and roofs, by the commons, that the Queen will appear and that, shortly thereafter, she’ll begin her Annual Progress through the Realm. Tell them Sir Thomas Perrott was almost certainly murdered by the Countess of Scaith, who has herself fled Albion—that’s the truth—and that when the Perrotts realise this they’ll become wholly loyal and obedient again. We’ll not say, yet, if the Queen plans marriage, for that’s the best counter-rumour we have, and it would be foolish to use it too soon, before suitors were selected.”

  “The Queen receives suitors, my lord?”

  “Tell them that, if you wish.”

  “I think it will cheer the commons to know all this,” said Tinkler soberly.

  “Aye, it might.” Lord Montfallcon put a quill to his teeth and picked. “You may go, Tinkler.”

  The obsequious quasi-Quire padded away. Lord Montfallcon rang his bell and the little page Patch, in green velvet, entered, doffing his cap and bowing low. “My master’s without, sir. With Sir Thomasin Ffynne.”

  “Let them enter.”

  Patch signed and stepped aside. Lackeys came slowly forward, with the poles of Lord Ingleborough’s litter upon their shoulders. In his chair, dreamy with pain, left hand on weakening heart, Ingleborough swayed as he was lowered. He reached out a knotted fist to Patch, who ran forward. There was love—father and son, husband and wife—between the two, and even Montfallcon was touched by the affection they displayed. Ingleborough was so consumed by gout that there was hardly a muscle free of some degree of agony, but his brain remained good, when he did not attempt to drug himself with drink or opiates. Behind him hobbled Sir Thomasin Ffynne, serious of face, in dark velvets and black linen. Patch closed the doors on the departing lackeys and, at a word from Lord Montfallcon, locked them.

  Lord Montfallcon sighed. He offered Sir Tom a chair, which Sir Tom took, lifting the weight from his ivory foot. “It’s hot.” He massaged the joint above the foot. “Like the Indies.”

  “Would that you’d gone there, Tom,” grumbled Ingleborough. “The diplomacy involved in freeing you! The Moors have been tardy as a matter of policy. Neptune knows why! They’ve ambitions…”

  “We can be sure of that,” said Lord Montfallcon.

  “It all smells of war.” Ingleborough winced, for he had clenched his hand too hard. Patch stroked the pulsing knots. “I’ve never known it more imminent, since Hern’s time. What’s the answer, Perion?”

  “The Queen must marry.”

  “But she won’t.”

  “She must.”

  “But she won’t.” Lord Inglebor
ough laughed. “Gods! She’s worse than Hern, for she can’t be deceived and flattered as he was. She knows us too well—we three in particular. She’s been privy to our casual talk since she was a child. She knows all our tricks.”

  “But she also loves us and will follow our advice,” said Montfallcon significantly. “Now, Tom, what have you to say concerning Arabia’s and Poland’s rivalry?”

  “Since New Year’s this was hatching.” Tom Ffynne’s ruddy cheeks seemed to shine the brighter as, smiling, he reported his heavy news. “Casimir and Hassan left here deadly rivals, each thinking that with the other dead the Queen would be his. A familiar tale—the woman or the man is never asked, the rivals develop their feud as fully as the lack of facts permits. The fewer facts, the greater the development. The less interested the courted object, the more the rivals are certain she pines for one of them and will be his, if the other’s gone.”

  “We know these failings, Tom.” Montfallcon was impatient by nature and, of late, had begun to lose the self-control he had for so long maintained. “But the specific rivalry…?”

  “There’s to be a duel between Poland and Arabia.”

  “No!” Montfallcon was amused, disbelieving.

  “I have it from the Emir of Babylon, who’s close to the Caliph.”

  “Where do they fight?”

  “On a ship. A Turkish ship. In the very middle of the Middle Sea.”