The Queen's Viper

by Lesley Donaldson

  “The garen alone threatens Our fate. If One finds answers, One will find Us.” The Sisters walked with unhurried steps to a curtain of moss, which parted and revealed an alcove. The Sisters invited Viper to join them. She shoved Turstin away and hurried inside, eager to break the fetters on her memory.

  A plain, rectangular slab of limestone slab as tall as Viper rose from the alcove floor. One sister touched the stone with her hand as the other blew across its surface. A raised circle appeared in the top third of the stone. A broken line comprised of four segments divided the circle on a sharp angle through the centre, with its highest point on the right-hand side, and the lowest on the left. The two farthest segments crossed the circle’s margin. A second circle formed, off-centre to the first, its perimeter connecting the two innermost segments on its right-hand side.

  Viper moved past the Sisters and placed a tremulous hand on the glyph. She read aloud words etched below the circle:

  Gawr Madoc lied to mankind

  When he was dethroned.

  Soft! His downfall stayed behind

  On Erta: the Oriel stone.

  V’Braed elldyr and human aeir,

  Be the same when day is done.

  Forgive, forget, do not despair

  The sacrifice of One.

  The Sisters studied her with expectation. Viper’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment. By the shock on their faces, something should have happened.

  “This V’Braed message speaks of long ago. The enchantment, its power, kept in rhyme.” The dual voices of the Sisters grated on Viper’s nerves. She hated that those who communicated in the most cryptic way knew more than she.

  Viper backed away from the monument. “You give unto me an answer which does little else than raise questions.” She resisted the urgency to run away from the pair of staring, swirling eyes. “Why I am fraught with such fruitlessness?” Tears dried in salty tracks on her hot cheeks. Ten years of a meager existence underground with the Sisters brought her no further understanding than when she had lived contentedly with Elizabeth.

  “One sought One’s past beneath the ground. This is not the future One sought.”

  Viper bolted from the alcove, nearly bumping into Turstin in the middle of the main room. He held his hammer tightly, poised to defend his Mistresses. Pity and disappointment mixed in his eyes. The dismay in Viper’s heart overcame the paralysis in her legs. She dashed away, Turstin shouting her name behind her.

  Viper heard him pursue her as she charged across the bridge of hewn rock and back up the staircase to the Seven Sisters stone circle at the surface. She climbed to the top of the widest of the sarsens and hollered into the rain until she was hoarse. Her resilience left her. Shattered, Viper rocked herself atop the stone, her legs tucked beneath her chin as she sobbed.

  Turstin walked up the staircase, the earth closing behind him. Drizzle made the white horse carving glisten upon the chalkstone hill before damp clouds obscured the full moon. The smell of dirt and stone permeated the air. Turstin shivered and wordlessly set about making a fire within the henge.

  “I hath wronged you, Turstin,” Viper said, her voice barely audible above the night song of the crickets.

  “If m’Lady would make amends, I would ask you for your help.” He gestured at his struggling fire.

  “I am no Lady.” Viper snorted at the honourific title he gave her. She straightened up and cupped the air. When she blew a wisp of elldyr fire at the soggy bundle of sticks, a bonfire ignited. She stepped off the stone and landed silently on the ground. “I stand afore you a creature; a thing unloved by humaines who is a questioning fool tolerated by her kin.”

  “And one indebted to by a Foundling for giving life to a dying fire,” Turstin added with a hopeful poke at the damp bundle before him.

  Viper’s laugh warmed her as much as her sizeable fire did Turstin. She settled beside him.

  “You art kind Turstin, and patient.” She mediated over the flames before saying, “Tell me, am I of unsound mind, so driven to volatility by the garen that I am whilst living with the Sisters?”

  “They speak of the garen and its dangers with frankness, for I hath seen it myself. In the year 1455, an abhorrent sickness haunted two branches of the Royal Plantagenet household, a miasma which made men tear each other limb from limb.”

  “I hath heard of it, the Wars of the Roses,” Viper said of the feud. “I lived in Cammerwelle with blithe indifference during those three decades. Many humaines flocked to Cammerwelle for respite from the Yorkist and Lancastrian forces, and I was replete.”

  “’Twas not a civil war among cousins for the English Crown as many believed,” Turstin said. “Annys made the men turn on each to satisfy the lust of her garen. The Sisters feared Annys, yet would not stop her, though I did beg of them to intervene. So, I took a V’Braed amulet from my Mistresses and gave it to a courtier named Owain Tewdwr. I wanted to help Owain entrap Annys and stop her bloodshed.” Turstin’s confession grew darker than the shadows generated by the flames.”

  “You purloined the Parhelion,” Viper whispered in awe.

  “I did what I thought was best.”

  “Then ’twas not a Plantagenet King as Annys hath said?”

  “No, Owain Tewdwr was not a king, but the Parhelion begat him a king. His grandsire was Henry Tudor, who became King Henry VII.”

  “Elizabeth’s grandfather!”

  Turstin’s nod added fuel to the fire of his story. “I could not leave my Mistresses for long, so I left the Parhelion with Owain. His grandson sequestered Annys between worlds, thus stopping her perversion of men’s ambition. For it, he was named King Henry I of England. Regretfully, ’twas only for a short time.”

  “Shorter a time than I hath endured dwelling with your Mistresses?” Viper’s sarcasm spilled out before she could stop herself.

  Turstin chuckled, his dimples showing. “You remind me of my twin sister, Gwynllian. She, too, did find our life with the Sisters tedious. We moved betwixt Biddenden and Maidstone, disguising our extended life span, as the centuries commanded.” Tears brewed in his eyes. “Gwynllian wished to travel the rest of the England, and the lands beyond. She wanted a lover and children. The Sisters refused her, on account of the unnatural manner of our being. Perchance they were afraid of what they had created; of what the offspring of a Foundling might become. I am convinced that it is one of the reasons they kept the Parhelion hidden from Annys.”

  “Did Gwynllian ever return to you?”

  “For a time she lived in Biddenden, happily married to an apothecary. I wish my Mistresses had seen her children, before the Black Death came.” Turstin dried his eyes on his sleeve and Viper let the soothing sounds of the night comfort his sorrow. “Only one of her children survived the plague: a girl with chestnut hair curly as a pig’s tail. Of Gwynllian we found no trace.”

  “And what of her daughter?”

  The melancholic shrug of Turstin’s shoulders broke Viper’s heart. “The records that you and I hath obtained o’er this last decade are unclear. The girl was orphaned. Mayhap she was taken to a poor house, worked as a servant in a tenant farmer’s field, or served the appetites of men who purchase women. We may never know.”

  “Yet you persist in your search for Gwynllian and her children, who are, most likely, dead?”

  “So long as my heart beats, I hath hope.” Turstin laid a gentle hand on Viper’s arm. “Viper, go to Elizabeth. The taciturn nature of my Mistresses did drive my sister away. They will not impart much information unto you, or if they do, ’twill take a hundred years. On the continent, a hundred young Catholic men are being trained as martyrs to kill your Elizabeth. I hath told you that the Pope Pius V’s Papal Bull of Excommunication says any action, no matter how violent, taken to unseat the queen has the blessing of Rome and of God. Elizabeth is not safe without you.”

  “When last Elizabeth and I parted…” The words turned to ash in Viper’s mouth. The bitterness of renouncing Elizabeth stung. “I would stay with yo
u and the irksome Sisters afore I take my wounded pride back to Elizabeth’s capricious tongue.”

  Dawn’s light bleached the colours of the flames. Turstin came to his feet and stretched with a groan. When he looked down upon her, Viper saw no judgement upon his face.

  “Gwynllian’s absence taught me that one cannot be whole with a heart full of resentment,” he said softly. “And if your heart is not complete, you cannot love.” He bowed to Viper, set his pouch straight on his belt, and left the Daoine Tor pondering her future among the standing sisters.

  23: Escape to the Tube

  The Tower of London.

  June 5, 2012: late morning.

  Each receding footfall hammered coffin nails into Viper’s head. The immortal extended her powers and tried to smash one of the restrictive contraptions. Her elldyr power exploded in a shower of sparks against the barrier surrounding the cage. John Dee’s Mort Lake Glass rotated, intact, beyond Viper’s reach. A ghostly memory of Elizabeth laughed at her from the mysterious wooden throne at the far side of the room.

  Viper’s stalwart legs failed. She slid down the bars, fingers pressed to her temples. Her hunger sang out in harmony with nagging apprehension. She wasn’t afraid of starving while imprisoned beneath the Tower of London. Viper had survived four hundred years without consuming human aeir. A more grievous fear gripped her heart.

  Viper didn’t want to lose herself in the garen.

  The Sisters had warned her about the seductive enmity that lurked within. “This power is the lover who hurts. ’Tis the hurt that loves.” She didn’t understand the full meaning of their words until Annys had locked her away from the human world for hundreds of years.

  In the emptiness of Annys’ confinement, Viper couldn’t see or feel her body. When she had shouted for help into the void, no sound emitted from her mouth as her lungs bled air. She would have torn Annys’ prison apart until her hands bled, if she could have sensed her hands or any solid surface.

  Love and compassion were the first feelings Viper abandoned in that magical darkness. Rage at her captors replaced her need to feed. Thoughts of revenge sustained her. When malice was the only emotion Viper had left, the garen found her and pacified her. Faced with unending bleakness, Viper gave into temptation.

  At first, the garen was a teasing sound just out of reach, like a blacksmith’s hammer upon an anvil heard from the edge of town. The brief rhythm promised life and industry in the same beat.

  When she sought its source within Annys’ prison, the music of the garen vanished.

  Viper had held her breath, intangible as breathing was in the emptiness, and listened for any audible clue. The garen remained elusive. This cycle of glimpse and search enhanced Viper’s thirst for the sound. When the garen was absent for extended periods, Viper had urged herself to mimic its rhythm, to be the living heartbeat in the dead space around her. She didn’t sleep, nor did she have any concept of time except for the painful stillness between the garen’s pulsating kisses.

  When Viper invited the garen into herself, the garen thrived upon her hatred. The rhythm intensified. Viper had no clemency from the exhausting power. Waves of reverberation carried off her protests before she could speak. She felt like hiding, but had no legs to move, and nowhere to run. Annys’ vast and empty prison constricted Viper until she no longer welcomed the garen’s forceful pressure upon the body she couldn’t feel.

  The day Viper had escaped into modern London, she had sensed an intermittent, low-pitched hum. She imagined herself struggling through the ether towards the new noise. The garen thrust her aside, its shock waves preventing her escape. The immortal didn’t know what caused the exotic sound, or whether or not it was safe. She didn’t care. Viper wanted to get away from the garen at any cost. She pushed herself towards the unknown.

  Then, Viper felt solid ground beneath her fingers for the first time in centuries. She tasted the real world at the back of her throat and with it, her salvation. Dawn had warmed her body as she escaped from the sinkhole to the sounds of cars on the road next to the hotel. Viper had claimed a foothold on the land from which she had been expunged.

  Momentarily defeated, the garen had shied away from the softer emotions Viper had felt when she re-united with Mouse under the Thames. She knew that horrible essence dwelt within, woven into the fabric of her vengeance. In Queen Elizabeth’s prison, the garen’s invigorated undercurrent dragged Viper’s thoughts into the recesses of her hostility. Her mind reeled with consequences. If she allowed herself to tumble into its maw now, the garen would consume her.

  Viper put a trembling hand to her mouth to stop herself from crying. The fast-paced rhythm she heard above the rush of blood in her ears made her freeze. A whisper crawled up the back of her neck.

  “Succumb.”

  Panicked, she retreated into a corner of the cage, only to be repulsed by Dee’s contraption. Viper landed in the middle of the cell with a thump. She pushed herself up in search of the voice. The garen never uttered any words to her before. Her ears ached for the sound her heart dreaded to hear.

  “Let me alone!” Viper implored of the empty room, almost against her will. Her words echoed uselessly upon the rough stone.

  The voice that was not a voice repeated its command.

  “Succumb.”

  Viper blanched, her empress purple fading to the faintest lavender. She wrapped her head with her arms, trying to shut out the next behest. Her runes glowed red next to her face. Her wail couldn’t drown out the sound of the pulse, faster now, and faster still.

  The world lurched beneath her, as though she was being swallowed. The garen would find her and vanquish her self-control. Viper would die freed from Annys’ prison, and lost in the depravity of the garen.

  Viper flung her head up when she felt a sharp poke in her calf. Clare knelt on the other side of the cage holding the hanger she had used to get the immortal’s attention. The old uniform lay discarded on the floor.

  “Shh!” Clare gesticulated for silence, somewhat out of breath. Her hands signed as she talked. “I told the soldiers that I’m deaf and pretended that I couldn’t lip read,” she explained. “So, they didn’t hide their faces from me when they talked. I faked being asleep, and they left to get some kind of counsellor to talk to me.”

  Viper faced Clare. “You were not under guard?”

  “I’m not the bad guy,” Clare said with a sly grin. “I’m just her helper. I’m under a spell, don’t you know.” The girl pulled at the locked door of the cage. “I saw them take you into this room when they brought us here. I ran here as fast as I could.” Her adrenaline-fuelled face glowed proudly. “How do I get you out?”

  “The devices,” Viper said, her body sagging with relief, “at the corners. Stop the spinning crystals.”

  Clare nodded with understanding. She rushed to the apparatus nearest her and reached for the stone, then hesitated. “There’s a huge vibration coming off this thing.” The crystal spun too quickly to grab it safely. Clare swung the hanger into the box beneath the crystal until it toppled over. The crystal immediately ceased moving and floated with a pulsating glow.

  “Stay your hand,” Viper called out, waving her hand at Clare to catch her eye as the girl moved to retrieve the glowing stone. “First destroy the others.” Clare kicked over the boxes, one by one. Glass shattered and gears flew. Four crystals levitated in mid-air. The girl watched them with curiosity, head tilted. She turned to Viper to ask a question but halted upon seeing the immortal.

  A cyclone of elldyr creft magic surrounded Viper. With Dee’s barrier disrupted, the steel bars couldn’t hold her. She blasted the prison door across the room. It smashed into the blanketed display cabinet. The adjacent portraits toppled over.

  Viper moved between the remnants of the cage and separated a frame leafed with gold from the others. Her heart needed to see the portrait before she could progress on her quest.

  “Do you recognize it?” Clare asked. She signed as she spoke, her thoughts and h
ands acting as one. The crystals floated inactive in the air behind her.

  Viper traced the graceful curves of the carved roses in the frame, remembering the day when Turstin presented her with the painting. “’Tis the gift I commissioned for my Elizabeth,” she replied, her voice as distant as her memory. “At least, it once was.”

  Viper’s supernatural eyesight distinguished between the overlying pigments and those of Turstin’s original painting underneath. Elizabeth, the Queen of Propaganda, had replaced Turstin’s portrait, representative of her friendship with Viper, with a solitary image of herself.

  This newer version of Elizabeth, an older and unattractively gaunt queen, dominated a black background. The words Semper Eadem floated above her head. Elizabeth wore a satin gown, embroidered with gold threads and precious stones. She had pearls set throughout a sheer veil, a further mark of her kingdom’s wealth and stature. In her right hand, Elizabeth held a small bouquet of bending white roses between her thumb and extended fingers. Viper knew the lead-white paint obscured the image beneath, one symbolic of herself.

  The final change in the portrait filled Viper with monumental disgust. With simple flowers, Elizabeth had painted Viper out of existence. The immortal hissed at the portrait, as if Elizabeth herself were in the room, fingers around Viper’s neck instead of the flowers. She was so appalled at the audacity of her Faerie Queen that Viper let the picture tumble to the floor.

  The immortal held Clare’s shoulders in a way that the young woman could lip-read Viper’s pressured words. “We must make a hasty retreat. No Queen of England can be trusted. Your queen hath a cunning that I did not, at first, accredit her.” Viper pointed to the wall-mounted camera. “There are eyes through the walls of this dungeon keeping a-watch, and I do not doubt the queen’s men will be upon us.” She retrieved the red military coat and gave it to Clare. “Gather the floating crystals. I am afeared to touch them. If the stones bear magic to restrain me, so may I use them against Annys.”