Unicorn's Blood

by Patricia Finney

  The coffin was closed because the manner of her death had taken most of her beauty and her skin was no longer the velvet cream that had once enchanted the Queen.

  In the crypt Mr Davison found one of her room-mates, another maid of honour, crying softly by a mourning candle. She was a pretty little thing, with pale-yellow hair and pink-and-white skin. Davison had need of a new spy among Her Majesty’s women if he was to be sure of his power over her, and so he smiled at the girl with as much sympathy as he could muster.

  “Can I help you, sir?” she asked politely.

  “Do you know who I am?” Davison asked.

  “Yes, sir, I think you are Mr Davison, Sir Francis Walsingham’s deputy.” She curtseyed to him prettily. “I am Alicia Bradbelt.”

  “Just so. Also I am Mistress Bethany’s cousin.”

  The tears began spouting anew and Alicia twisted her hands together.

  “Oh, it is a tragedy, sir, it is so sad. Poor Bethany. If only we had known.”

  “Hm. I am at a loss to know how she took the fever that killed her,” lied Mr Davison. “Was it the plague?”

  Alicia blushed beet root and looked at the worn painted tiles on the floor. “No, sir,” she muttered.

  “What was it? I heard a rumour she was with child; was that the trouble?”

  “Oh, sir, she went to a witch.”

  “And how do you know that, Mistress Alicia?” said Davison severely. “Surely any unfortunate sinful girl that is with child may lose it and die of it.”

  “No, sir, it was the paper, the message we found when we came back from helping the Queen to dress for meeting the Scottish ambassadors.”

  “What message?”

  “I have it here, sir. I was going to put it in the coffin with her, so she could explain it to God at Judgment Day, but the lid is on, sir, and I was going to burn it in the candle.”

  “Give it to me,” said Davison instantly, out of mere curiosity, for he had no reason to think it was anything more than a simple message. Perhaps he thought it might be Bethany’s will.

  Reluctant but accustomed to obey, Alicia handed over the message Mary had left under the goblet on Bethany’s bedside chest. Davison read it, his chin folded to his ruff and his mouth drawn into a tight line of disapproval.

  On it Mary had written, “This child has been lightened of her burden by a witch that has bungled it. Fetch a doctor.”

  “Whence came this?” he rapped at Alicia.

  She began clasping and unclasping her hands. “Sir, I am sorry, I do not know. I know nothing of it. It was by her bed.”

  “Who could have been in her chamber? One of the gentlemen?”

  “No, sir, of course not; none of them would dare.”

  “So it was a woman. The Mistress of the Maids?”

  “No, sir, she would have called a doctor herself, not left a message about it. Any one of us would, if we had known; we did call a doctor once we understood and he was very angry; he said the message was right and he wanted to know who left it for he said it takes a witch to know what a witch has done. But he could not save her, though he bled her and put a dead pigeon on her feet and everything.”

  “It takes a witch to know what a witch has done,” muttered Davison. “Hm.”

  Mary had left a dirty thumbprint on the edge of the paper and Davison examined it carefully, held it up to the light, turned it over, then sniffed delicately at the print. His nose wrinkled at the smell, and he frowned in puzzlement.

  “Who else could have been in her chamber? Her servant?”

  “No, sir, we all three share Kitty for our tiring-woman and she was fetching our ruffs from the laundry. That was why Bethany was all alone, poor thing, poor baby, all alone and – ”

  “Control yourself, Mistress Alicia. Think. If there is a witch at Court, that is a serious thing. Do you know what it says in Scripture: ‘thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’? She could enchant the Queen, or poison her.”

  “Oh, sir, I never thought of that.”

  “Well, think of it now. Who else could have come into Bethany’s chamber?”

  Alicia’s smooth white brown wrinkled as she forced her mind into unaccustomed exercise. The Queen treated most of her maids of honour with contempt because there were, in fact, foolish feather-headed girls who only served her to catch a husband.

  “Well only the night-soil woman . . .”

  Davison let his breath out. “Ahhh,” he said. “What does she look like?”

  Alicia’s wrinkles furrowed deeper. “I do not remember. She comes muttering round with her pails in the morning.”

  “Is she old, young?”

  “Old, sir. Very old. Old and dirty, she looks like an empty leather bag.”

  Davison smiled in satisfaction. “And where does she live?”

  Alicia shook her head. “Well, sir, I do not know. She is only the night-soil woman.”

  “Then where does she come from? Where does she take her pails?”

  As it had never in her life occurred to Alicia to wonder what happened to the gallons of waste produced by the Court, she could only shake her head again in bewilderment.

  “Never mind,” said Davison with unwonted patience. “You have helped me greatly, mistress; I am indebted to you.”

  “Yes, but what does an old woman matter, sir?”

  “Think of what the doctor said. That it takes a witch to know a witch’s work? Surely the night-soil woman is the witch that left the message about Bethany.”

  “Oh.” Alicia’s eyes and mouth were three round Os, as if she were singing in chapel. “Ohh. Yes, I see. She certainly looks very evil and she mutters all the time, not words but spells.”

  “Quite. Any witch is a danger to all our souls.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do not trouble yourself with this any more, Mistress Alicia. You have unburdened yourself very properly to me, and that is all you need to do. I will see to it that the witch does not come to Court any more.”

  “Yes, sir. Will you burn her, sir?”

  “Unfortunately she is more likely to hang in these irreligious times.”

  Alicia nodded, her eyes still very wide. “How terrible,” she said.

  Davison walked swiftly to his lodgings, which were in Whitehall. To be sure, he had not made the leap that connected Mary with the Book of the Unicorn; only he found the idea of a night-soil woman who knew how to read and write an interesting anomaly. He desired to question her. Perhaps he thought her a spy as well as a witch. In any case, his men were quartering London in search of an old woman that had slipped away from the Falcon two nights before and this one would not escape him, if he could find out where she went. He could do nothing that night, but he was patient. He would find out from the Clerk of the Board of Greencloth where the night-soil went and then he would arrest her and question her about her activities. He had no doubt that Mary would tell him all he wished to know.

  He was also searching for Becket and had likewise drawn a blank, since Becket was clearly keeping well away from his former haunts. Not even Laurence Pickering, the King of London, knew where he was. But Davison had faith that his God would bring Becket to him.

  LXXVII

  CAREY PUT HIS HEAD round the door of the bedchamber and whispered urgently to the two men his father had left to guard him who were sleeping in the outer chamber. By that time his manservant was also blinking awake and demanding to know what was happening.

  All four of them crowded into the bedchamber where Carey spoke rapidly, in a voice tinged with Berwick, telling them that although the Queen had ordered him banned from her Presence, he had got wind of a deadly plot against her, and as her loyal subject he could not sit back and let her be assassinated. Therefore he proposed to break into her bedchamber that night.

  The two men-at-arms exchanged glances and looked deeply unhappy.

  “Well, but sir,” said one, “my lord said you was to stay here and we was tae keep ye here and not let ye get in any more trouble.”<
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  “For God’s sake, Selby,” Carey snapped, “you know I would never take a risk like this for anything less than the Queen’s life. You know that.”

  “”Ay sir, but – ”

  “Ye’ll get in no trouble yourself. I’ll make it clear I ordered you to help me.”

  “Ay sir, but – ”

  “But what, Heron?”

  “How are we tae get in tae see her, sir?”

  “You’re not, and nor am I. We are going to clear Davison’s men away from her door and then Mistress Thomasina here is going to talk to her. We hold the door to stop anyone interrupting them. That is all. Do you think Mistress Thomasina could hurt the Queen?”

  The men looked at her uneasily, and probably understood for the first time that she was not a child.

  “Nay, sir, but – ”

  “But what, Selby?”

  “How are we to dae it, sir? Ah mean, clear the guards away? Cut their throats, d’ye mean, sir?”

  Carey winced. “No,” he said forcibly. “Under no circumstances are you to cut their throats. Understand? No blood is to be shed.”

  “Ay, but they may not be sae nice about ourn, sir.”

  “Are you scared, Heron?”

  “Nay, sir, not me, sir.”

  “If you are you can stay here and deny you knew aught about it.”

  “Nay, sir, Ah’m no’ scared, only a bit canny.”

  “Nothing wrong with that, so long as you do as you’re told. Now Mistress Thomasina, is there not a door from the Lesser Withdrawing Room into the Queen’s bedchamber?”

  Thomasina thought. “There is, but it’s locked and bolted from inside her chamber at night. Also there is a lock on the Lesser Withdrawing room’s door to the Privy Gallery. It’s very solid, we could never knock it down in time.”

  Carey sucked his teeth. “A pity. Oh well, it was not likely we could do it the easy way. Right, unless Davison has changed the pattern of the guard, there will be two men here at the junction of the Stone Gallery with the Privy Gallery. Another two at the other end of the Privy Gallery and then two gentlemen on truckle-beds in the alcove by her door.”

  Heron and Selby nodded, their eyes narrowing in a businesslike manner.

  “Sir, sir,” said Carey’s manservant. “What am I to do, sir?”

  “You lie low, Michael. Stay out of trouble. If you hear a lot of shouting and clattering, hide somewhere. The same if you hear I’ve been arrested. Whatever happens, if I don’t come back, in the morning you get out of the Court, ride to Fotheringay and fetch my father.”

  “What can he do?” asked Thomasina.

  Carey smiled at her under hooded eyes. “Call out his tenants and deal with Davison that way. He will have help. I think the Council will not like Davison’s way of proceeding.”

  “But that is civil war.”

  Nobody answered her for a moment.

  “Best of all is if we stop Davison now,” said Carey. “Which we are going to do, just as soon as we have devised the means. Right. So, the main problem are these two at the entrance of the Privy Gallery. Once past them, I suspect I can manage the other two at Her Majesty’s door, especially with the Queen’s Fool at my side. With luck, if it all goes smoothly, the men up the other and of the Privy Gallery won’t have time to do anything. Trouble is, the ones at the Stone Gallery entrance are standing up, they will be awake. We need some kind of distraction.”

  Thomasina smiled secretly and tugged at one of the panes of his hose.

  “Now, Mr Carey,” she said impishly, “you are forgetting me.”

  A little while later a strange procession marched down the Stone Gallery, lit by the half-moonlight coming through the diamond panes on one side. On either side were the painted cloths of the Trojan War and the tale of Achilles, bought at hideous expense by the Queen’s father. They were not as costly as the tapestries put up for important foreign embassies, which shone with gold and silver thread and twisted with allegorical meaning, each one worth of a galleon fully fitted and armed. But even so there were concentrated in that gallery at least two or three monasteries’ worth of woven and painted cloth.

  Those who have designed entrance and egress from the Queen’s apartments have thought much like fortress engineers, for the Queen must live, as it were, in a subtle fortress. And so the passage that led from the Stone Gallery to the Privy Gallery was too narrow for more than one man to pass at a time. It was formed by boarding up part of the Withdrawing room, from one door to another.

  Carey had decided that stealth was pointless if the two men guarding the lower end of the Privy Gallery were awake and unnecessary if they were asleep. And so he strode ahead, carrying a candle in one hand and a silver plate with a covered silver goblet on it in the other. Just behind him trotted Thomasina, trying not to look terrified.

  The two men were awake, but they were not Her Majesty’s usual men-at-arms. Carey wished they had been, for Sir Walter Raleigh was above all else loyal to the Queen, which was why she had promptly made him Captain of her Guard. He too had scurried north to Fotheringay to gawk like a street-child at the Queen of Scots’ beheading.

  However, this meant that the men were not familiar with the routine of the Court, nor were they sure what was normal and what was not. They saw a gentleman and a child coming towards them, the gentleman’s clothes and bearing shrieking that he was a courtier with every stitch and button. How could a man carrying a candle and a goblet and a towel over his arm be up to no good?

  They looked towards him, had their halberds ready crossed to bar his path. The child slipped under the staffs and began slowly somersaulting and flip-flopping down the Privy Gallery.

  “What’s your business, sir?” asked one, civilly enough.

  “Hey, you,” hissed the other. “Stop there.”

  Thomasina ignored him and carried on tumbling.

  “I am bringing Her Majesty’s night-time posset,” said Carey, putting all his considerable acting ability into looking dense and aggrieved, a functionary prevented from doing a perfectly normal duty. Perhaps he pitched his voice a little higher than normal, gave it a stronger University accent.

  “Nobody said anything to us about it,” said the man-at-arms.

  “Why would they?” said Carey. “Her Majesty always has a posset at this time.”

  “She didn’t before.”

  Carey looked daintily appalled. “Do you mean to tell me no one has been bringing it to her while I have been sick?”

  “Hey,” said the other man in the strangled tones of someone trying to shout in a whisper, “you, little girl, stop that.”

  Thomasina stopped and stood straight, looking down half the length of the Privy Gallery.

  “She never asked for it,” said the first to Carey, plainly worried now.

  Carey shook his head and tutted. “You had best let me through quickly, before she puts you in the Tower.”

  “Might be poison,” pointed out the man-at-arms who had called to Thomasina.

  “You are a loyal subject, I see,” said Carey with a smile. “And a quick-thinking man. Of course it is not poison, but look, I will prove it to you.” He gave the men-at-arms the candle to hold and, after taking a sip from the goblet, offered it to him to taste.

  The man-at-arms watched critically for signs of collapse, then shook his head. “Ay, well. If you drank from it, I believe you. Go on.”

  Carey took back his candle and marched between the halberds, back stiff and straight and prickling with the urge to turn round, knowing they were turned to watch him. There were two soft thuds, a muffled clatter. He looked back at last to see Selby and Heron grinning at him and giving him the thumbs-up sign from over the prone bodies of the men-at-arms. Selby dragged each one into the Withdrawing Room and then the two of them took up the halberds and stood to attention.

  Carey expected more trouble from the gentlemen sleeping at the Queen’s door. He hoped very much that at least one would be someone he knew, like Drury or the Earl of Cumberland. On
e of them had woken up already and was sitting up on his truckle-bed across the Queen’s bedroom door, blinking in Carey’s candle-light.

  Unfortunately, it was a gentleman who knew Carey but was not a friend.

  “What the devil are you doing here, you’re not supposed –?”

  Thomasina moved like a little cat pouncing on a dog. She jumped up by his head, put her hand over his mouth and let him feel the little knife she was pressing to his neck artery.

  “Stay still, or I’ll cut your throat,” she hissed, in the accents of a London footpad. The man froze, his eyes showing white all around the pupils.

  The other sleeping gentleman grunted and turned over. Cary put down the candle and the tray and goblet on the floor, stepped to his bed, turned him on his stomach with his face in the pillow and put his knee in the man’s back, then tied his hands with ropes cut from the Lord Chamberlain’s curtains. As the man was beginning to buck from suffocation, he lifted him off the pillow by his hair, stuffed a handkerchief in his open mouth, twitched the pillow out from under him and let him fall back again on the mattress.

  The other gentleman’s eyes were rolling wildly. Thomasina could feel him juddering under her hand, which was slick from his spit. Suddenly he bit her, and when her grip loosened, managed to let out a half-strangulated yell. One of the Queen’s lap-dogs began barking from somewhere near.

  Carey grabbed him, punched him hard in the gut to quieten him, then shoved another handkerchief in his mouth. A moment later he too was trussed and lying on his stomach, pillowless, gasping through his nose.

  “I apologise to both of you gentlemen, truly I do,” said Carey formally. “You may both demand satisfaction of me afterwards . . .”

  Thomasina hissed at him. All three of the Queen’s dogs were barking like miniature Cerberuses. The two men-at-arms at the Holbein Gate end of the Privy Gallery were running towards them with their halberds.