Clare hastily collected the Mort Lake Glass. Viper heard the distant echo of voices approaching from the hallway.
The immortal placed her hand on Clare’s shoulder before she took the last crystal. “I hath strength enough to defend us from a few of the queen’s men. Our success depends upon our immediate departure. Lend me your aeir. With it, I will be your ears to hear and arms to fight.” Viper out her palm, unsure whether or not the human would be willing to offer up a portion of herself.
Clare’s aquamarine aeir curled around Viper’s arm, giving its consent before the young woman put her hand in the immortal’s. The Daoine Tor tilted her head back, enjoying the exquisite warmth that consuming human magic bestowed upon her. Viper’s rapture replaced the heat of the garen, but she had not forgotten the risk of the vile power. She gazed at the innocent mortal and lost herself in Clare’s trusting blue and green eyes. This girl didn’t deserve to die. Viper pulled herself away from the seductive magic. She had absorbed just enough of Clare’s aeir to face combat.
The soldiers closed in, mere steps away. “Be mindful,” Viper directed Clare to the back of the room as she hastened for the door. “I shall hide myself with my glamour. The soldiers are mole-blind of me without Elizabeth’s amulet to reveal my presence. They need not the eyes of a hawk to see you.”
The hallway had been narrowed by wooden crates removed from the dungeon to make room Viper’s cell. Service pipes and electrical cables ran the length of the hall. Viper, invisible to the soldiers, quickly assessed her attackers. A woman led two men in a triangular formation, their movement judicious, guns poised.
The Daoine Tor drove her shoulder into the female’s belly and knocked her to the ground. The human fired blindly before her skull impacted upon the rock floor. Her eyes rolled into her head, unconscious.
A ricocheted bullet grazed Viper’s leg and tore a hole in her trousers. Thick blood oozed along her leg. Her roar of pain encompassed the room so completely, that the soldiers didn’t know where to aim.
One of the men prepared to shoot at what he thought was Viper’s location. The immortal lashed out at him with talons of elldyr magic. She wrenched off his trigger hand. He collapsed, his body shaking with shock. The third soldier bellowed a war cry. He fired a spray of bullets over his fallen team members, littering the floor with fragments of shattered boxes and rubble.
Viper jumped up to avoid the bullets and clung to a broad pipe. She waited until he passed beneath her, then swung down and slammed her boots into the man’s back. He pitched forwards, arms out, and lost his rifle.
The immortal heard chains dragging on stone and Clare grunting from beyond the soldiers. She flicked dubious eyes towards the dungeon room. These armed soldiers may have been a decoy to draw her out and capture the girl she left behind.
Distracted, Viper didn’t notice the last man grab a fist full of debris from the floor. He rolled onto his back and threw it where he’d been standing before Viper kicked him. A layer of dust outlined Viper’s body. He grabbed his pistol from its belt holster and held it in two hands, ready to fire.
“Got you, now, you slag,” he muttered, oblivious to the movement behind him.
Clare wrapped an iron chain around the soldier’s neck before he pulled the trigger. He reached his gun over his head with one hand. Before he could pistol-whip Clare, Viper tackled him. She shoved the girl aside, grabbed the chain and twisted tight. The soldier clawed against Viper. His lips turned dusky blue as his body slackened.
“Don’t kill him!” Clare had pressed herself to the wall, pale and in shock at Viper’s violence. “He’s just doing what he was trained to do to protect his queen. I’m sure you can understand that.”
Viper’s ferocity buzzed around her like a hornet. The need to bring swift reprisal to the humans who captured her stirred the allure of the garen. Every muscle in her body yearned for the sadistic pleasure that the garen coaxed into her. The request of the terrified girl challenged Viper. The immortal bit her lip to stay calm. Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth. She didn’t know whether she or the solider had caused the wound.
Every moment since her emergence in London denied her gratification. The more she accepted this reality, the more she hated it.
With a grunt of dissatisfaction, Viper tossed the chain aside. The unconscious soldier’s aeir waivered, weak but steady.
“Fetch the sage’s crystals,” Viper barked. Her chest heaved as she pushed herself to regain composure. Clare ran back to the dungeon, past the man whose hand Viper had ripped off.
The aeir of the amputated man was a thready strand hovering over his face and shoulders, the colour of bleached sunshine. He would die if Viper didn’t intervene. For the first time, the immortal experienced the smallest pang of regret for harming a human.
She crouched beside the amputated man. His blood had splattered in Viper’s silvery hair. She bent over the soldier that was both victim and patient. Viper placed her hand on the stump of his forearm. Fire erupted from her hand. The smell of burning flesh filled the hallway as she cauterized his wound and staunched the bleeding.
Not Viper’s hunger, her revenge, nor the garen would be content with the outcome of this fight.
Viper sensed someone watching her. Clare had returned, the red coat and crystals in her arms.
“Thank you for not killing them,” the girl said, a nervous smile on her face.
“This humaine shall live, should surgeons tend to his wounds in quick order.”
“Lieutenant Thompson, report!” Captain Ellis’ voice pierced the hall from the fallen guard’s radio. Viper leapt to her feet, ready to run. Clare’s hopeful face vanished.
They sped away, Viper guiding Clare through the repurposed tunnels, both recognizable and new. The sound of soldiers came from the corridor ahead of them. Viper pulled Clare through a door marked Storage into a large room that didn’t exist during the Elizabethan era. Steel sheets reinforced the walls. Mismatched odds and ends from decades of tourism at the Tower cluttered the room. Viper closed the door behind them.
Clare fumbled about in the blackness until she flipped on a light switch, marked ON and OFF. “I’m deaf, not blind,” she admonished kindly. “Push this black knob to OFF when I’m hidden behind that stuff along the far wall.”
Viper turned off the light before soldiers ran past the room, Ellis’ orders in rapid fire over their radios. Magic glowed form Viper’s hands, ready to strike if anyone opened the door.
She was about to turn away when a trio of footsteps, two heavy and one lighter, paused outside the door. Viper tensed, barely breathing. Urgent human voices drifted through the door, markedly quiet. None of the humans speaking identified the other.
“They can’t have gone far,” said a male with an unusual twang in his voice.
“Ellis sealed off the exits. We’ll find the asset,” confirmed a second man, Mediterranean by Viper's guess.
“What about the queen?”
“She’s with Ellis. He won’t leave her.”
“Il ne sait rien faire de ses dix doigts, celui-là,” said a woman.
“Madame?”
“A French expression: he does not know what to do with his ten fingers. It means he is useless. Never mind. What about the machines?”
“Broken and secure with us. We should be able to retrofit our devices.”
“Très bien. Alpha One will reward your success,” she said, pausing for a beat, “and be terribly disappointed with you if you fail.”
The humans moved away without further discussion. Viper put her hand on the door handle, intending to follow the humans to prevent them from re-creating Dee’s devices.
“Wait!” The urgency in Clare’s hushed voice stopped Viper. “There’s a door back here and it's moving.” The Daoine Tor flipped the light on and Clare backed away from a metal door they had missed amid the clutter of the room.
They had nowhere to hide. Leaving meant potential discovery by roaming soldiers. Viper dashed past the girl
to the opening door and, retracting it, reached inside for the intruder.
Clare’s eyes brimmed with delight when Dhillon landed in a heap in the middle of the room. She threw her arms around him. He embraced her tightly, reciprocating her greeting with a long kiss on her forehead. They gazed into each other’s eyes in relieved contemplation.
Graeme swaggered through the doorway, arms open wide to Viper. “What? No such greeting for me?”
Amused by the man’s boldness, Viper raised a single eyebrow. “Thou would brave my kiss, Highlander?”
“I’ve seen Hell’s fury, and she wasn’t worth dying for.” Graeme puckered his lips and headed for Viper. “Unlike you.”
“I see that humaines enjoy sexual conquest as much now as they did in my day,” Viper said with unbridled sarcasm. She had never taken a human lover and she didn’t intend to start now.
“You’d be surprised,” he countered. Unlike a human, Viper was tempted by his robust aeir, inches away from her, and not the sculpted leg muscles he valued so highly.
A protector and a lover; one false, one true. Viper wondered which man was which.
“We hath not the leisure for this banal pursuit,” she chastised with greater effort than she had intended. Graeme stopped and tucked his thumbs in the top of his kilt, an amused smirk on his face. Dhillon separated from Clare abruptly. His eyes peered at Viper from beneath his tumbled bangs. His glasses steamed up where they met his blushing cheeks.
Clare clasped his hand. “We’re good to go,” she said to Viper, a gentle reproach on her face. Viper felt snubbed by the young woman’s attraction to Dhillon.
She suppressed her feelings and focused on the task at hand. “How did you find us?”
Graeme’s face sharpened with open distress. “You mean you weren’t coming out this way?” He removed his pistol from its holster.
“I knew not of this room.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Dhillon said with academic authority. “This was an air raid shelter made during the bombing raids in World War II, when you were in captivity. Owain connected it to the Underground and his network of tunnels. That’s how we got here.”
Viper marvelled that she hadn’t seen the disguised entry. The seams around Owain’s entrance made it appear as part of the reinforced walls. The technique reminded her of the hidden panels and passages in King Henry’s palaces.
“My clever little Mouse,” Viper beamed with pride.
Graeme added, “You’ll be pleased to know that Owain is alive. He has cameras everywhere and after he saw that you’d been brought to the Tower, he sent us to rescue you.”
“’Twas Clare who saved me from the queen’s jail cell,” Viper said, guiding the girl to the forefront and away from Dhillon.
“If we don’t disturb anything in here, they’ll never know we were here,” said the young man. He headed for the mouth of Owain’s tunnel and extended his hand to Clare.
He was nothing if not determined, Viper thought.
“Then ’tis high time we depart.” She squared her eyes at him, challenging him to deny her. “Lead the way, young Master Dhillon,” Viper said with the most respectful sarcasm she could muster.
Graeme secured the locks from inside once they had passed into Owain’s tunnel and they fled to safety. London Tower kept her secrets buried beneath the throng of visitors on her skirts.
24: Homecoming
August 7th, 1582.
Nonsuch Palace, Surrey.
Viper lasted two additional years living underground with the Sisters before she set her pride aside and sought out Elizabeth. The immortal found her estranged friend at Nonsuch Palace, the luxurious home built by King Henry. He didn’t die here, but this is where he had left his heart.
As Viper approached the palace, she was amazed at the gall of the man who broke with Rome, only to re-create its ambience in his proverbial back garden, with himself as the king of gods. Two five-storey turrets flanked the front face of Nonsuch, with spires that pierced the clouds. The white exterior of the building cut through the night’s drizzle like a beacon of hope. Viper, dressed in a loose, crimson wool dress, her hair plaited down her back, hearkened to its signal. Nonsuch displayed mythological allegories of strength and wisdom unlike that of any of Henry’s other palaces. Six-hundred and ninety-five stucco panels in the Italian Renaissance style adorned the exterior walls of the double quadrangle building, and both of its interior courtyards. Gold painted slabs of slate, six inches across and etched with intricate, repeating guilloche patterns, filled in the gaps between each tableau.
Viper ascended the steps through the rectangular gate house between the courtyards, surprised to find Elizabeth in the inner yard, a pale statue in the bleak night. There was no need for Elizabeth to be outdoors. King Henry had installed fireplaces in each of the five magnificent palaces he created in order to keep his guests comfortable in the renowned damp English weather. Three ladies-in-waiting watched Elizabeth from the arch of an entryway through fatigued eyes.
The immortal kept her body invisible to Elizabeth’s audience, and her emotions sheltered from the woman who might deny her. Hanging around Elizabeth’s neck, the Parhelion glimmered a brilliant white. Its luminescence gave her simple nightgown an angelic shimmer.
“I am surprised at your presence, though not by your presence am I surprised,” Elizabeth said under her breath. She didn’t relocate her focus from the statue of her father and Edward, her half-brother, which dominated the royal entrance to the palace. Statues of Roman emperors lined the inside walls of the courtyard on the same side as the Henry’s effigy, equating him with the Holy Rulers. The opposite walls, on the royal consort’s side of the building, hosted the goddesses of antiquity. They cried for the queen below who could not confess her tears.
Viper knelt in the muddy gravel in front of Elizabeth. Mud seeped through Viper’s dress. Like Elizabeth’s sleeping smock, Viper’s clothes lay slack upon her body in the rain. Viper beheld her friend with fragile humility.
Elizabeth tightened a wool shawl around bony shoulders. Her voice had aged with her body, although she didn’t sound frail. Grey streaked through Elizabeth’s thinning hair from her plucked, high forehead. Viper could tell that the intense auburn of her hair, for which Elizabeth was famous, lacked its lustre. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes were as stiff as her greeting. Fine lines worried their way across Elizabeth’s brow. Rain washed away the ceruse Elizabeth used to hide the imperfections in her skin. The scars on her throat from Annys’ attack had faded to a silvery-pink. Their memory burned in Viper as harshly as ever. Elizabeth’s golden aeir remained unchanged, outshining the Parhelion.
Viper hoped her silent greeting showed her sincere wish to be forgiven.
“My father demonstrated his love through his buildings,” Elizabeth said, at length. “He built Beaulieu for his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. For my mother, Father constructed Whitehall, the grandest and most robust of his palaces. For Edward, Nonsuch.” Elizabeth sighed heavily. “What love did he show unto me?”
Swollen raindrops landed with loud plops on the slate roof tiles.
Viper had learned of King Henry’s extravagances, and of his intense yearning for a male heir. “You hath said that you were favoured of his daughters,” Viper offered. If she eased Elizabeth’s melancholy, perhaps Elizabeth would be amenable to resurrecting their friendship.
“I was his favourite bastard,” Elizabeth said. The heavier rain hid her tears. “Father always got what he wanted, and he wanted a son, which he could not get from my mother. So, when Edward was born, Father evicted the entire village of Coddington and built this hunting palace in its place. He named it Nonsuch, for no such place like it exists on Earth and there was no such greater joy to him as a male child. And ’twas all for naught, for Father never saw the completion of this palace, this epitome of his legacy built for his perfect heir, an heir who died without a legacy of his own.”
One of the shivering attendants clustered under the drier
porch called out, “Your Majesty, please, this weather is most foul. You shall catch your death of cold.”
Elizabeth wiped her nose, a futile effort in the rain. “Lady Anne,” she said, setting her shoulders back, “Go within and awaken my Court. Tell them their queen will arise Apollo from his bed and bring an early end this irksome night.” She would not hear any protest from her attendants when she insisted on being left alone. Elizabeth headed towards the chapel saying, “Let us hasten to speak in private, for ’tis a building separate from the main.”
They crossed a short bridge over a creek to the small chapel at the rear of the property. The air inside was no warmer than outside. Viper lit the candles in the chapel with a flick of her wrist.
Here, Elizabeth’s father displayed an arrogance grander than the Vatican itself. In each of the stained glass windows, the king, his last wife, and his son danced in costly pigments of purple and blue. Oil on canvas portraits and alabaster statues of biblical figures adorned the walls, mostly naked, like the art of the Italian masters. Behind the altar, a single portrait dominated the wall.
A stout, straight-faced King Henry VIII, resplendent in ermine-trimmed hunting clothes, straddled a white steed. A white church with a Tudor rose in its main window, representing the Church of England, crested a rolling hilltop in the background over his right shoulder. On this same side, a youthful Queen Jane, Henry’s last wife, reclined semi-nude on river rocks, baby Edward to her exposed breast. White lilies blossomed around her. The artist painted a trick of Henry’s eyes to follow the observer as the person moved in the room. The king’s right hand rested on a partially drawn longsword, implying potency in war. In the distance behind Henry’s left shoulder, a thunderstorm tormented a domed cathedral on dried-up hills. The building represented St. Peter’s Basilica, the seat of Catholic worship, and the religion Henry ousted from England for the sake of Elizabeth’s mother, and his own lust.
The daughter King Henry did not want, the Prince that he dreamed of having, stood with her hands pressed against the altar. Her seelie wicht waited on the barren floor for Elizabeth to speak.
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