“I will not ask if Virginity is the treasure you hide, since ‘yes’ is the only answer any of you may give,” said the Queen lightly.
The maids of honour looked at each other and tried not to giggle.
She established that it was not made of diamonds nor of silk and asked if it might be a book. They all shook their heads and looked at each other sidelong, while the gentlemen called out suggestions as ribald as they dared.
The only one none of them looked at was Bethany and the Queen began to smile. She passed up and down the line again, tapping her mouth with her fingers.
“Now it is not a man, I hope,” she said.
More giggling, more sidelong looks. There was no mistake, they all avoided looking at Bethany. So she stood in front of the girl and smiled at her.
“Well, Bethany,” she said. “And what have you got for me?”
The cream of the girl’s skin coloured suddenly, like strawberry juice poured in a fool of sugared cream. The gentlemen cheered and prayed her to lift her skirts so they could see her treasure, which made Elizabeth turn and wag her finger at them. Felipe, one of her little dogs, took offence at the cheering and barked defiance, until a chamberer picked him up and held his nose.
The girls had devised a way to avoid embarrassment. They made a pretty dance of it and circled Bethany as if they were playing The Farmer Wants a Wife, so that, modestly screened by bouncing black kirtles, Bethany could lift her farthingale. Our rolled a tiny figure in gold and black, tumbling head over heels into the clear space.
In a high, piercing voice she sang a song of Arcadia while she danced and turned somersaults in the air until she sat down on her knees in front of the Queen, making herself tinier still and hailed the Queen as the greatest treasure of all.
The Queen swept her into her arms, kissed her face and settled her on her knee.
“Thomasina, sweeting, you must have been stifled under all of Bethany’s petticoats.” She laughed.
Thomasina put her wise little face on one side and nodded.
“It was very dark and what I could see was like a pavilion with rather plump tentpoles,” she announced and the men laughed again while Bethany blushed.
“Did my dance please Your Majesty?”
“Of course it did, my heart,” cooed the Queen. “It was a wonderful dance. However do you turn yourself over in the air?”
Thomasina laced her fingers and looked up at the Queen. “You leap as high as a volta leap and then dive,” she said, jumping from the Queen’s knee. “Look, this is how.”
She stood on her tiptoes, making herself a few inches more than a yard high, stretched up her arms, leaped, tucked and turned in the air, coming down on her feet with a flushed face and her miniature farthingale bouncing like a struck bell. “There,” she said in triumph. “Now you try, Your Majesty,” she added cheekily.
“But I am not a flea, Thomasina,” laughed the Queen. “And not a frog neither.”
“Well, nor am I. Will you dance with me instead? Please?”
With Thomasina the Queen danced a volta, leaping high and disposedly as she had twenty years before and occasionally usurping the man’s part and hurling Thomasina up by her stays to watch her turn in the air. Sometimes she turned twice. Even the musicians smiled at the sight until the Queen threw herself back on her cushions and gasped with laughter. Thomasina turned triumphantly to the clapping courtiers, bowed to them and settled herself down at her Queen’s feet like a kitten.
It would have been a perfect evening if that miserable bastard of a man, Davison, had not come in and stood quietly, waiting to be noticed at the back among the gentlemen, his melancholy suit blotting a whole candelabrum of lights behind him, a reproach to their elegant damasks and velvets. For a time, while three gentlemen lifted their voices in roundelays and Italian madrigals, the Queen tried to ignore him. Still he stood there, grating at her like a stone in her shoe. So she beckoned him over and he knelt beside her with his hat in his hands.
“Will you dance, Mr Secretary?” she asked.
“Alas, Your Majesty, I am too poor a dancer for your blessed eyes,” he said.
“Then you should have taken instruction in the art.”
“I have, Your Majesty, and my unfortunate teacher tells me that never has he met a more forward pupil.”
“Hmf.” She knew perfectly well he lied since he disapproved on principle of dancing, holding it like others of his doleful kind to be next door to dalliance and lewdness. Which, of course, was what made it fun. “They do say in Scotland: ‘Never give a sword to a man who cannot dance.’”
“Do they?” prosed Davison, “Then how fortunate that although I am Scots by descent, I was born in England. We all have need of swords to protect Your Blessed Majesty.”
How did he do it? the Queen wondered furiously, how could he take a perfectly proper and flattering thing to say and fill it up with untraceable menace?
“Well, what is it then, Mr Davison?” she said. “What urgent thing have you come to me about?”
“We have been searching for a woman,” he murmured. “A witch who claims to be prophesying about you, Your Majesty.”
What in hell had that to do with her?
“So?”
“She claims that Your Majesty will know no peace until you have found your Book of the Unicorn and destroyed it.”
His face was as blank as ever. If he ever takes up primero he will make a dangerous opponent, she thought distantly. For a moment as she watched him, she felt that all her blood had turned to ice in her veins and stopped their flow like the Thames that winter. She could not speak.
“The Unicorn, of course,” he went on, not seeming to notice her silence, “is the badge of Scotland.”
She found her voice again. “It is also the name of a bawdy-house! Really, Mr Davison,” she added in tones which had reduced other men to tears, “you bother me with this? Some old fool hag’s presumptuous gabblings? I had thought better of you than that. Do you take notice of the sayings of an old witch?”
“We intend to arrest her, of course.” If anything, his smugness had increased. Why? What had she let slip?
God damn it, she had said “old witch,” she had told him she knew the woman was old, and therefore knew more about her than his information. Davison had carefully said only that she was a prophetess. A witch could be any age.
“Wherefore arrest her? To give her garbage the respectability of imprisonment? Has anyone published the prophecy?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“Well then, see to it that they do not,” she told him, compressed malice in her voice. “Evidently you do not have enough work to do. I shall take steps to mend it.”
At last he was silent, although his face gave no sign that he was abashed.
“Go on, get out of my sight,” she shouted. “Get out, get out!”
He scrambled to his feet, backed between the silent gentlemen, bowed, backed again. She threw her muff at him and was pleased to see him trip on it as he went through the door.
All her courtiers looked at her, wondering what she would do next. She clicked her fingers as the musicians and nodded at the gentlemen.
“Come,” she said in a false sprightly voice, “sing it again.”
They did, but the evening was ruined.
XV
CLEARLY MARY WAS DAVISON’S old hag. If she had but known it, Julia had good cause to rate her grandam. Even little Pentecost had the sense to scold her for gabbing when once she had sobered up, but by then it was too late. Some maggot of a pursuivant had got wind of Mary’s words and passed them on to Davison.
It must have been in the days before that evil Christmas that she spoke my prophecy and boasted her boast. On the day of the Christ’s Birth itself, when she had finished her rounds at Court, Mrs Ann Twiste, the Queen’s Laundress, stopped her and gave her the Queen’s bounty, which was two mutton and currant pies and some broken meats, a bottle of ale posset and a piece of the great plum pudding that
was served in the Hall. Pentecost and her grandma drank all the posset to keep them warm on the ice and ate the pies as they slid giggling like girls over the Thames and made three attempts at the Paris Garden steps before they had the victory. And then they judged that Julia should suffer for her arrogance. They hid the meats and the cake under their skirts and swallowed their mirth as they crept in by the back door.
They went to bed in all their clothes because of the difficulty of taking them off, and the emptiness of the fireplace. Pentecost put her arms about Mary’s neck and snuggled close and warm. She smiled ale into Mary’s face and slurred that “To be sure, Grandam, you must not fear, the Queen will come one day, riding the clouds and wearing her crown of stars and give us all our desires.” For Pentecost prayed daily to her that she would and now look how kindly she had given us a posset (hic) and the pudding for our breakfast . . . And so she fell headlong into sleep, while Mary slipped her bottle of aqua vitae from under the pillow and gave the ale some stronger help.
She told herself she needed it to sleep in the Falcon with Christmastide brawling above and around them. And there is this blessing to aqua vitae: it is, at first, a prime executioner of dreams.
XVI
YOUNG BETHANY HAD FALLEN asleep in the Queen’s bony arms upon the night of the Feast of Saint Stephen. In her dreams she clutched the broad strong shoulders of a muskier lover than the Queen, revisiting the weight and warmth of her sin. In her dreams her passion rose until it compassed the world, and she was swooning and moaning with it when she was catapulted from her sleep by a horrible shrieking beside her.
The Queen was sitting up in the bed, both hands clutched to her belly, eyes staring, screaming like an Irish banshee.
Oh, living God, Bethany thought selfishly, she has been poisoned and I will be blamed. Stark terror froze her in place, her mind yammered at her to do something, help in some way, stop the terrible noise, but she could think of nothing to do while her mind was battered by the screams.
Footsteps beyond the curtains: Parry was up, the thunder of feet in the Privy Gallery, a man’s voice shouting.
Icy air fell through the gap as Parry swept aside the curtains, took in the scene.
“Up,” she snapped at Bethany. “Run, tell the gentleman to fetch the doctor.”
“Y . . . yes, Mrs Parry,” Bethany gasped, unfrozen by the order. She scrambled out of the bed and ran to the door to the Gallery, heard her own hysteria wobbling in her voice as she shouted the words, drowned by the banging of a male fist on the door.
“Nooo,” skirled the Queen, eyes still staring like a madwoman’s. “Do not let him in, Kat, never let him in.”
Bethany fumbled with the bolts, got the door open a crack, found herself face to face with the handsome Robert Carey and gasped for breath.
“The . . . the Queen . . .” she whimpered.
A warm hand pressed on her own. “Mistress Bethany,” he said, “is there an assassin?”
“N . . . no. Nobody but us.”
“Is there blood, sweeting?”
He was calm and methodical and she was desperately grateful to him. She gulped down some more air.
“No. Her . . . her stomach hurts.”
His lips thinned and the blue eyes narrowed. “Give her nothing to eat or drink that is in the room,” he said. “I will run for the doctor.”
The other gentleman on duty in the Privy Chamber was at his elbow, rubbing sleep from his eyes, sword in hand. Both had been sleeping in their clothes on truckle-beds by the door, as always ready for just such an emergency.
“Guard the door, Drury,” Carey ordered him as he hopped about pulling on his shoes. “Wait for me.”
Bethany saw him turn and run, shut the door and leaned her head against the wood.
The Queen’s screaming has subsided to a short series of gasps. She was still not awake, but lost in the half-world between dreams.
“Kat, Kat,” she moaned. “It hurts.”
Parry had wrapped a dressing-gown around the Queen’s shaking shoulders and was feeling Her Majesty’s stomach gently.
“No, no!” cried the Queen, slapping her hand away. “It stabbed me, Kat, it stabbed me, the unicorn stabbed me . . .”
The two exchanged knowing looks.
“Well, do not stand there like a yokel, Bethany,” ordered Blanche Parry. “Stoke up the fire.”
She moved to obey, finding her knees gone soft as sugar-plate left in the sun.
“And fetch some wine.”
“M . . . Mr Carey said we should not give her anything that is in the chamber,” she said.
Blanche Parry frowned, then nodded. “Yes, he is right.” She had her arm around the Queen, stroking her back as she shuddered.
“Shh, shh, Your Majesty,” she said. “The doctor is coming.”
Two more creaking breaths and then the Queen’s eyes focussed suddenly on Parry.
“Blanche,” she said.
“Thank God,” said Parry. “Your Majesty, do you know me?”
“Of course I do. Ahh.”
“Where is the pain, Your Majesty?”
“In my guts,” said the Queen, rocking with it and biting her lip. “In my guts as usual.”
“We have sent for the doctor, Madam.”
“What for?”
“When your Majesty screamed we were afraid you had taken poison,” said Parry matter-of-factly.
“Screamed? When did I scream?”
“A few moments ago. We were . . . we were afraid.”
The Queen squinted in the rising firelight at Bethany, who was trying to weep silently. Never in her life had she thought she would hear the Queen crying out like that, like a woman in labour.
“Well, do not sniffle child,” the Queen said gruffly to her. “I am sorry that I frightened you. It was no more than a nightmare and a bellyache.”
Bethany came to the side of the bed and dropped to her knees, unable to stop the tears rolling down her cheeks, as if her eyes had turned to conduits. Absentmindedly the Queen patted her head as she winced and bent with another cramp.
“Put your gown on, Bethany,” said Parry. “The doctor will be here soon.”
Even as Bethany rose to obey, there was a knocking at the door. The Queen stiffened, wrapped the dressing-gown more tightly about her, tilted her chin. From an old woman in pain on her bed, she suddenly became the Queen again, as if her queenship were music that should play or not play as she chose.
“Enter,” she said.
Carey was at the door and opened it, his head politely averted. The doctor came in, portly in his dark-blue brocade gown and his round skullcap on his head.
Tensing against the cramps, the Queen held out her hand to the doctor as he came to her bedside and genuflected over it.
“Dr Nunez, how kind of you to come at this unseasonable hour,” she said coquettishly. Dr Nunez watched her shrewdly as Carey drew the door shut after him and then rumbled something in Latin which made the Queen smile ruefully.
“Off your poor knees, Doctor, and sit down.”
Parry waved her fingers at Bethany, who realised what she wanted and brought a stool.
The doctor nodded at her, then stopped her with his hand on her sleeve. “Gather together all that the Queen has had to eat and drink which is in this room,” he said, his voice flavoured with Portuguese. “Wash nothing that the Queen has used.”
“Oh, stuff,” said the Queen. “This is only my old trouble.”
The doctor was holding her hand and wrist delicately, feeling the twelve pulses there.
“Breathe on me, Your Majesty,” he said and she did, still talking.
“I tell you, this is nothing new. When I am harassed by loyal and stupid subjects, then all my evil humours fly to my belly and fight there.”
“Mmm,” said the doctor, “this may indeed be the case, but permit me, Madam . . .”
Gently and methodically he examined her, prodded her stomach, felt behind her ears.
At last he sat b
eside her and asked what her dream had been. She flushed.
“Clear enough in all conscience,” she said, “I dreamed that the Unicorn of Scotland charged at me and stabbed my belly with its horn. That is all.”
Nunez had his fingers in his beard. “The warrant for the Queen of Scots’ execution is still unsigned?”
“It is.” The Queen’s tone was frosty.
Nunez spread his large white hands. “I am your doctor, Majesty, not your councillor. I care nothing if it is signed or unsigned, only that such uncertainty may indeed cause the melancholy humours to fly to the gut. Also it may have an effect on the . . . ah, upon the women’s parts.”
“If you are about to tell me that my womb is wandering . . .”
“Never, Your Majesty; rarely have I found a more fixed and stable womb. We speak only of the humours which, being carried out of their proper places by uncertainty, may cause such symptoms as these. However, we must also exclude poison. Have you . . .” He raised his eyebrows delicately in the direction of the Stool.
“No.”
“No vomitus, nor flux, unnatural voiding? Constipation?”
“No. None of these. Only cramping pains.”
“Still?”
“They are fading as we speak.”
“Hmm. I will prescribe for you a lenitive dose which will open your bowels.”
“Oh God, must I purge?”
“A little, I fear, Majesty. And also a dose to help you sleep.”
“Bah. You know how I hate to take physic.”
“Yet I think we should not take such nightmares and cramps lightly.”
“Very well. But I will not be bled; I have not the time for it.”
“And of course it is not the season. But I see no signs that Your Majesty’s sanguine humour is in any way unbalanced, only that perhaps the melancholy humour is in excess, for which I fear we must purge a little.”
“God damn it.”
“The Almighty (Blessed be He) is always Your Majesty’s best physician.”
XVII
DR NUNEZ HAD GONE, the Queen had reluctantly taken physic and half of the sleeping draught and lay on her side, her eyes staring ahead of her unblinkingly.
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