Unicorn's Blood

by Patricia Finney

  “Where is Mrs Twiste?” she asked.

  “At the end of the passage, dear,” said the woman clerk kindly. “Why do you want her?”

  “I have a message for her,” Thomasina said, flushing slightly. It always annoyed her to be taken for a child, unless the Queen did it, when it was a game between them. Many people looked no farther than her size and the roundness of her face.

  “Well, do not forget to knock.”

  Pulling her cloak about her, Thomasina picked her way along the tiled corridor, carefully avoiding the puddles. Before she came to Mrs Twiste’s office, she found the passage opened out into a room full of cloaks and pattens and kirtles hung on hooks, where a small gang of tired little girls were sitting on benches eating bread and cheese.

  “Excuse me,” she said politely to them. “Is this where I can find Mrs Twiste?”

  A couple of them nodded while the others stared at her curiously.

  She reached up to knock. A voice said, “Enter,” and she went in to find a small room lined with shelves for ledgers and laundry-books, with rush-matting on the floor and a high desk where a woman sat frowning as she wrote.

  “Mrs Twiste?” Thomasina said.

  “Yes?” She went round the side of the desk so that Mrs Twiste could see her. But again, what Mrs Twiste saw was a little girl. For a moment Thomasina was annoyed: I am the Queen’s Fool, you fat old cow, she thought, damn you, get up and curtsey to me. And then she started to smile inwardly and decided to have some fun with Mrs Twiste. She curtseyed and came forward shyly, holding out the ring and the purse of money.

  “Please, ma’am, the Queen sent you these.”

  Ann Twiste’s eyes swept over her a little curiously, then saw the ring and nodded. She took the purse of money, put it in a small heavy chest under the desk, and began drawing sheets of paper from another locked drawer.

  “Now,” she said briskly, “what is your name?”

  “Thomasina, ma’am.”

  “Well, Thomasina, the Queen has trusted you with an important office.”

  “Yes, ma’am. The Queen is very kind, ma’am,” Thomasina added artlessly.

  Mrs Twiste smiled indulgently. “Of course she is, providing you are a good girl and do as you are told.”

  And that is the truth, Thomasina thought, hiding her urge to snigger with a curtsey and a modest lowering of her eyes.

  The papers were being sorted, tapped into neat bundles and tied with tape before Mrs Twiste put them in a small canvas bag. She looked about her and frowned.

  “Run and fetch me a light for the sealing-wax, there’s a good girl,” she said.

  Thomasina dropped another curtsey and went through the door. She hesitated when she saw the group of girls and then went over to them.

  “Mrs Twiste wants a light,” she said. “Where should I go?”

  One of the little girls, wrapped in bossy consciousness of being the oldest, pointed to the smallest, an oval-faced sensible creature with pink-and-white skin and dark-brown hair hanging out of her cap.

  “You show her,” she said as peremptory as the Queen.

  The child jumped to her feet.

  “This way,” she said, took Thomasina’s hand and pulled her down the passage again. They got a candle from the woman by the door and then went into the big main room full of steam and water where women pummelled huge white table-cloths and bunches of napkins in vats of cold water. The copper in the fireplace was being stoked to a boil, as two broad women piled soaked and scrubbed napery into the water and another stirred with a long stick.

  “I am called Pentecost,” said the little girl. “What’s your name?”

  “Thomasina.”

  “Are you at Court, Thomasina?”

  She nodded, play-acting shyness successfully because she did in fact feel shy.

  “Mistress,” yelled Pentecost at one of the red-faced women, “may I take a light?”

  “Oh ay,” said the woman irritably, slung another armful of linen at the copper. She turned her head and gave tongue like the captain of a ship, “Mary!”

  Pentecost frowned unhappily. What had appeared to Thomasina as a pile of velvet rags, dangerously dropped by the fire, moved and became an old woman, her face weather-bitten and crumbled, her bloodshot eyes ringed with white in the iris. She muttered and heaved herself to her feet, came shambling over to the woman and stood there swaying.

  “Fetch me a taper, then give Pentecost a light,” ordered the woman, still briskly throwing table-cloths into the copper.

  The hag focussed on Pentecost and smiled, showing a couple of insecure brown teeth.

  “Now, sweeting,” she said, and her voice was surprising. Old to be sure, but not harsh. “How are you, poppet?”

  “I am well, Grandam,” said Pentecost gravely, and dropped a curtsey. “Are you better now, Grandam?”

  The old woman shook her head. “Not well, sweet, not well. It’s desperate dry work here.”

  “Hah,” said the other woman, who had stopped throwing table-linen and was now stirring the copper with a long wooden stick. “Fetch some wood as well, Mary, and I’ll give you a nip.”

  There was a momentary flash of anger across the ugly face, and then Mary shrugged and struggled to the wood-box by the door. High above it was another box. Pentecost trotted after her, helped her fetch out sticks.

  “The taper, Grandam,” she whispered and Mary grunted, reached up and fetched down a good taper from the box on the wall, gave it to Pentecost, who picked up the logs that Mary had dropped all over the floor and carried most of them in her skirt to the woman by the copper. Mary followed, holding a log in each hand and one under her arm. As she passed Thomasina, a many-layered wave of stenches went with her; the smell of feet and old teeth and bad bowels, overlaid with a powerful stick of piss, and on top of that bad aqua vitae. The woman with the copper had opened the fire-door underneath and was piling the logs in from Pentecost’s apron, flapping her own apron at the fire to get it to catch, opening a lower door to let air in. Gravely Pentecost lit her taper from the flames and gave it to Thomasina, who used it to light the candle which she held like an acolyte in the Queen’s chapel.

  “Pump the bellows, Mary,” said the woman.

  “How can I do that, when I’m dry as your cunny,” demanded Mary rudely.

  The woman sighed, fetched a bottle out of the ample front of her bodice, gave it to Mary and watched hawk-eyed while she drank, sighed and wiped her mouth. The woman snatched back the bottle and sullenly the old woman set herself to pump the bellows by the lower door. Her bony hands were chapped, age-spattered and red with work, but fine-boned.

  The candle successfully lit, they went back down the passage, carefully cupping it with their hands.

  “Why does she smell so bad?” Thomasina asked, taking advantage of the nosy freedom of all small children.

  Pentecost frowned. “She does not,” she said, not asking whom Thomasina was talking about.

  “She does,” said Thomasina.

  “Well, she is the night-soil woman for the Court,” said Pentecost. “How can she help it if she splashes herself sometimes?”

  Thomasina nodded and kept to herself her thought that the old woman might splash less and smell better if she drank less. On the other hand, what other help did she have? It was a frightening picture, to be old and poor and despised by the young; why should she not drink? Thomasina shuddered a little and comforted herself with thoughts of the gold and silver plate she had at the goldsmith’s, the houses she had brought in London for their rentals, the small estate she had managed to prick up from one of the Babington plotters.

  “Are you a princess?” Pentecost wanted to know.

  Thomasina shook her head.

  “Why do you have such beautiful clothes if you are not a princess?”

  “The Queen gave them to me. I . . . I am her tumbler; I turn somersaults and dance for her.”

  “Ohh.” Pentecost’s eyes were round. “The Queen. You dance for the Qu
een? What does she wear? Does she like it? Is she tall? What do you do when you dance? Show me.”

  For a moment Thomasina wanted to temporise, but then she found herself slipping her feet out of her pattens, pulling her cloak around her as she found a dry piece of floor, and bounced a couple of times on her toes before springing up and turning a somersault in the air. Pentecost stood sheltering the candle with her mouth open and lights in her eyes.

  Thomasina put her pattens back on. “Mrs Twiste will be waiting,” she said a little breathlessly, pushing her cap straight again.

  “Ohh,” Pentecost said, a flush in her cheeks, “that was wonderful. How do you do it? Could you show me? Would the Queen like another little girl to dance for her?”

  “It is very hard to learn,” Thomasina said gravely, “but it is easy when you know.”

  Pentecost nodded. “No wonder the Queen gives you such beautiful clothes,” she said as they came to Mrs Twiste’s office again. “Do you have a dowry as well?”

  The question was so expected it twisted Thomasina’s heart in her ribs.

  “I . . . no,” she said at last. “No.”

  Kindly Pentecost patted her back. “Never mind, Thomasina,” she said, “I expect the Queen will give you one when you grow up and need it. My grandma says she is the kindly one.”

  Pentecost slipped back among the other little girls and was clearly telling them all about her. Thomasina took a moment to recover her composure before she knocked and went in with the candle.

  Mrs Twiste made an elaborate business of sealing the bag with the Queen’s blue signet ring, and another one she wore on her forefinger. Then she gave the bag to Thomasina and told her to tie it safely under her petticoat.

  “Now there is one piece of news I have not had time to write down,” she said. “Are you listening carefully, Thomasina? I want you to remember this.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “A guest arrived at Dr Nunez’s house today. He was short, slender, well-dressed, his hair was dyed black. He had a strong look of the Ames family and Dr Nunez called him Simon and embraced him like a relative. He brought with him six attendants, a manservant and four pack-ponies bearing bolts of cloth with a Bristol merchant’s mark on them. Did you hear all of that?”

  Thomasina nodded.

  “Repeat it for me.”

  She did, getting it right after only one repetition.

  “Off you go then, Thomasina,” said Mrs Twiste kindly. “Oh, attend one minute, child.”

  Thomasina turned at the door. Mrs Twiste had risen and taken something from a jar on her desk. She handed it to her. “This is for you.” It was a ribbon of sugar-plate, twisted and patterned with red sanders and yellow primrose juice. Thomas smiled and curtsied.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Once outside the door, she sighed and felt suddenly old. Once upon a time she had loved sugar-plate and gorged herself with it at every banquet. Now she had two teeth missing and could not longer crunch sugar with abandon.

  “Pentecost,” she said to the small flock of loudly arguing children in the corner, and Pentecost came over, followed by all the other little girls.

  “Is it true you can jump in the air and spin?” they all wanted to know.

  The tall imperious girl at the back said contemptuously, “I bet she can’t. Pentecost is telling stories about queens again.”

  Why did she care what the little girls thought? But she did and also cared that Pentecost was looking flushed and unhappy. Once there had been children who were vicious to her as only small girls can be, asking her pointedly when would she start to grow, when would she have breasts, when would she have babies? Their brothers had thrown stones which hurt less.

  “Here,” Thomasina said roughly and gave Pentecost her bag of dispatches and the sugar-ribbon to hold. “You,” she said to the girl who had sneered, “clear a space for me.” Her voice had suddenly taken the tinge of London to it which she had lost at Court.

  Cloaks and pattens were shoved back, leaving a clear stone-flagged space with gutters for water. Thomasina slipped her feet out of her pattens again, dropped her cloak behind her, causing a satisfactory gasp as the girls saw her damask kirtle and farthingale sleeves. Then she took a short run, stretched her arms and did a cartwheel, a flip-flop and a jump, tuck and double-twist, landing on her feet, facing them with her arms out. They squealed with amazement and some of the clapped. With dignity, Thomasina put on her cloak and pattens again, took back the bag and nodded to Pentecost who was still holding the comfit, her eyes shining.

  “You have that, Pentecost,” she said a little breathlessly. “Share it, if you so wish.”

  And then she walked out, leaving them open-mouthed behind her.

  XXIX

  NUNEZ EXPECTED TO SPEND several days in the delicate pursuit of an audience with the Queen. Now she was recovered of her stomach cramps he had no reason to consult with her, and in any case he would not have confused the therapeutic relationship by using such a time to ask something of her. Besides, she would have regarded it as impudence.

  However, the following morning a summons to the Court came to his house, carried by a young Gentleman of the Privy Chamber named Gage who looked harassed and in need of bleeding. The summons itself was in Secretary hand and peremptory in tone.

  Wondering uneasily how he could have offended her, Dr Nunez combed his beard, changed his shirt and put on his gravest and soberest brocade suit and velvet gown. Ames insisted that all he was to do was ask the favour of an audience for Ames himself.

  After being kept waiting for three quarters of an hour while the Queen walked in the garden, Dr Nunez at last knelt before her as she sat under her Cloth of State in the Presence Chamber. She was fully dressed and not in bed, so this was not a professional consultation. However, it was private: she ordered all her gentlewomen and gentlemen out, leaving only her muliercula reading quietly on a cushion in the corner, looking something like a large stiff puppet in her pale blue damask garded with cloth-of-gold.

  “Doctor, how is that nephew of yours?” The Queen demanded after she had stared down at him for fully five minutes.

  Nunez blinked stupidly for a moment. How had she known? How did she . . . Who was the spy in his household? For a heartbeat he felt angry that she should have information on him and flaunt it and then he thought more carefully. Naturally she would have a spy upon him, given his activities. It was by way of a compliment that she was letting him know it.

  In case it should actually be a matter to do with one of his many other young nephews, Nunez asked hesitantly, “Your Majesty? Williams? Francis?”

  She waved a long white hand. “No, no, Doctor,” she sniffed, “I can hear about either of them from Walsingham. I mean the run of the Ames litter, the valiant little scrawny one with the running nose. The one that protected me from the Papist assassin, four years ago.”

  “Er . . .” said Nunez unhappily, wondering which tale Walsingham had told her: the one for general consumption which said that Simon had died of lung-fever four years ago, or the secret. Surely he had not kept her in the dark. Or had he? Walsingham was extremely close-mouthed about his counter-intelligence operations.

  Nunez lifted his head and looked at the Queen. Considered dispassionately, she was an extraordinary sight: quite a small red-haired woman, as it were, almost eaten alive by the extravagant heraldic beast of her kirtle and gown, and her face rayed like saint in an old picture with the delicate cambric lawn of her veil. It was an elaborate confection, a carapace like a hermit crab’s and designed deliberately to hide the fact that beneath it all was only the soft flesh of a woman; a compound of four humours, wetted with some divinity and a great deal of unwomanly intellect. And yet the time he had attended her for her stomach cramps, she had still been very much the Queen, despite being in bed and in pain. Turn her from her realm in her petticoat, as she had boasted once, and she would still be a most formidable lady.

  Hoping it was not true – as he had heard –
that she could read minds, Nunez cleared his throat again. She was waiting patiently for his answer. Whether Walsingham had told her the truth or not, it was not his business to lie to her.

  “He is well, Your Majesty. He has married . . .” The high arched eyebrows came together. The Queen was extremely averse to any of her servants’ marrying.

  “. . . as we are enjoined very strictly by our religion,” Nunez added, and wondered at the stickiness of his mouth and the heat generated by the furnace of his heart, which made him sweat. “He has . . . ah . . . moved to Bristol and changed his name, the better that the Spaniard should believe him dead.”

  She laughed. She kept a wardrobe of laughter as well as of gowns and kirtles; she could tinkle merrily like bells when flirting with an ambassador, but this was a deep and humourless sound.

  “Walsingham is fixed in his belief that truth will grow from a sowing of lies,” she said. “In this case, it seems he was right.”

  Nunez coughed delicately. “The ploy has been successful.”

  “Then why is Ames endangering it by coming back to London?”

  “Your Majesty, I would have sought audience with you anyway,” Nunez said hurriedly. “I was intending to ask you the favour of audience for him, as he has a matter of extreme urgency to discuss with you.”

  “And what is that?”

  “He has asked me most particularly that I not broach the subject without him.”

  “Hmm,” she said consideringly. Her eyes held his for a while and then suddenly the weather of her face changed for the better. She smiled and beckoned him.

  “Come, Doctor, off your knees. Come and take my pulses.”

  Nunez creaked to his feet and waited for a minute to let the blood go back down his legs. It was a hard thing for a man as well-stomached as he was to kneel for a long time, and growing harder. Soon he would have to bring a cushion, like Burghley.

  He approached her throne smoothly, putting on a grave professional face. Her Majesty held out her slim jewelled hand again and he took it, spreading his blunt fingers to sense the little pulses that whispered of the balance of her humours. There was silence for a while, he standing with his eyes half-shut, concentrating, she watching him, head on one side, her perennial restlessness briefly stilled.