The Queen's Viper

by Lesley Donaldson

  Owain took the crystal from Clare, raised it to eye level and turned it over in his hands. He hobbled to the glass table. Refusing Graeme’s help, he eased himself into the chair

  “If Queen Elizabeth, or Annys, or,” Owain paused, “whomever, can utilize the Mort Lake Glass then we have a serious problem facing us.” He placed the elongated crystal upon the table on its narrow edge. The Mort Lake Glass righted itself and spun vertically above the tabletop, maintaining its velocity without tumbling over or losing speed. Viper squinted at the crystal with trepidation.

  “We have another problem,” Clare said in a tiny voice. With bleary eyes and shaking hands, she placed the red coat on the table and splayed it open. “I only have three crystals.”

  26: The Sage and the Medium

  August 8th, 1583.

  Hampton Palace.

  “Again!” Elizabeth ordered. She drew her longbow to its fullest, her well-trained muscles rigid. In the distance, a man slapped the rump of a horse. Guided by its rider, the charger galloped down the thirty-nine metre length of the tilt yard. Elizabeth adjusted her position as she tracked her target.

  “Bess,” one of her older ladies-in-waiting breathed the queen’s name in caution. A select group of courtiers watched Elizabeth from rugs and pillows strewn upon the grass. She had chosen the women because they were aged or ugly and the men because they fawned on her.

  Viper had been banned from feeding upon any of the sycophants who thrived on the queen’s favour. She skulked behind a tree wishing she could use her enchantment of concealment to hide the lemony satin gown she donned to appease Elizabeth from herself. A French farthingale, a stiff reed frame stuffed at the hips with cotton and cloth, jutted the ornately embroidered fabric outwards from her waist. She looked like her legs had been shoved into a glazed sweet bun. Viper couldn’t conduct herself with her usual lithe precision. Elizabeth’s Courtly fashion reduced Viper’s supernatural movement to that of a simpering humaine.

  “Patience,” Elizabeth murmured. The jousting horse thundered closer to her. Her eyes never left her prey. With her extra layer of ceruse and her corseted white dress, Elizabeth was a living alabaster statue.

  “Majesty,” the Dutch Ambassador, Noël de Caron began, the linearity of his face worsened by his frown, “you need not hold the tension so long.”

  The waxed bowstring blanched lines into Elizabeth’s lead-painted fingers and the sinew cord pushed into her nose as firmly as her right thumb did against the side of her face. Her left arm remained taut. The small dangling straps of her leather vambrace fluttered in the gentle breeze.

  “One more word of advisement, Lord Noël, and I will let loose my arrow into you.”

  The steed had progressed over half of the jousting field. Its unarmoured rider spurred the horse farther with his heels.

  Elizabeth opened her fingers around the knock and string. The arrow zipped through the air towards her objective, striking soundly. The rider pulled upon the reins, forcing his horse to a stop.

  “Huzzah!” the jousting marshal joined in the crowd’s cheer. He ran for Elizabeth’s target and raised it aloft. “A better landing could not be made, Majesty.” The marshal held a simulated badger, consisting of a leather ball stuffed with hay, dressed in black and grey striped fur, which had been dragged behind the horse on a wheeled platform.

  “’Tis a wondrous contraption that your Master Dee hath designed, Majesty,” de Caron said after adorning his hostess with congratulatory kisses. “And what skill you hath shown that you did not hit the man or his mount.” A wooden fence split the tilt yard in half lengthwise with a rope and pulley system running along its middle, attached to the horse’s harness. An older squire, chased by a group of children, ran with the pretend animal to the far end of the rectangular yard. Horse and rider trotted, unharmed, back to their starting point. The man patted his steed horse on its neck, crooning equally flattering words to the animal.

  “Yes,” Viper sneered, her sarcasm heard by Elizabeth’s ears alone. “Dee is a man of many a talent. What other mechanisms hath he devised of late?” Embers of her sullen mood tainted the warm sun and sunnier entertainments of the day.

  “Would you draw once more, Majesty?” Lord Robert Dudley held out an arrow to Elizabeth. Viper scoffed aloud at the man whose eyes twinkled above his elongated moustache and moderate, triangular beard. The Earl of Leicester remained among Elizabeth’s favourite courtiers, if not her closest, and Viper didn’t question Elizabeth’s choice. Swarthy and virile, Robert kept his health in good state and his relationship with his queen in a healthier state. In lieu of marrying him, Elizabeth had endowed him with titles, political duties and personal privileges.

  Elizabeth brightened, pointedly ignoring Viper, as she often did in Robert’s company. “Oh, sweet Robin, if it is your intent to pierce me with Cupid’s arrow, I suggest you aim a little higher.” She took the tip of the arrow and placed it to the plumpness of her breast, above her corset, easing it gently into her skin. Men guffawed and woman giggled. Elizabeth glanced at the crowd, her eyes briefly making contact with Viper’s. “Or,” Elizabeth said with a sultry smile at Robert, “perhaps you should set yourself a loftier goal?” She pointed the end of the arrow to the elongated tip of her corset, nearest her crotch. Robert didn’t hide his carnal grin.

  “Lower!” a younger Lord of the Court cajoled. “Be sure to shoot hard!”

  “And straight,” barked another.

  Viper rolled her eyes in her head and stormed away.

  In words heard by everyone, which Viper knew were meant for her, Elizabeth heartily said, “Let not it be said that the Virgin Queen of England hath not the full measure of a king’s appetite.” She broke into a song written by her father, in the early years of his rein.

  Past time with good company

  I love and shall until I die.

  Grudge who lust, but none deny,

  So God be pleased thus live will I.

  For my pastance, hunt sing and dance

  My heart is set.

  All goodly sport, for my comfort

  Who shall me let.

  The courtiers joined Elizabeth in the rest of the well-known ballad. The verses’ echoes taunted Viper even after she retreated under the heavy canvas flaps of the crimson and gold tent set up on the lawn beyond the jousting yard.

  By the time Elizabeth retreated to her tent, Viper had removed the lavish gown and threw it onto the floor. She wore a white smock, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and her red taffeta petticoat. The farthingale lay in tatters, strewn across the carpeted ground.

  A gust of wind escorted Elizabeth into the dimly lit room. It stirred the stems of lavender displayed in a Chinese glazed porcelain vase mounted in English silver. The rare Wanli porcelain, with blue birds nesting in ornate trees on a white background, was finer than any English pottery.

  “I cannot bear that outfit any longer!” Viper crossed her arms over her chest. Her skin fluctuated its shades of purple beneath her smock. “Shall I hide the Trojan army beneath my skirts?” Fluffs of cotton batting from the farthingale rolled in front of Elizabeth.

  “May I enter, Majesty?” came the voice of the handmaiden Emma before Elizabeth answered.

  Viper mouthed, No.

  Elizabeth said, “Of course, child.”

  Viper scowled with fury and undertook her glamour, unwilling to yield her place in Elizabeth’s tent for the sake of mortal visitors.

  Emma entered, followed by two younger girls. Now a woman in her 20s, she had risen to the head of Elizabeth’s personal attendants. As usual, the maidservant kept her braided hair up under a coif and the front of her dress closed high under her neck. She expected the same of her underlings. The two younger maids had much less appealing complexions. They saw the gown and shredded farthingale but not the invisible Daoine Tor. Confused, they fussed about the damaged item.

  “Hath there been some assault?” Emma asked, face worried. “Shall I fetch Lord Burghley?”

  Elizabet
h waved her off. “I am sure, ’twas a harmless animal. There is no threat here.” As Emma and the girls gathered the tatters of the gown and farthingale, Elizabeth said, “My Ladies make their way here to attend upon me. Tell them that I neither sleep, nor wish for company. I shall read at my leisure. The guards shall mind me from a distance. My Ladies should take their rest, for I expect them in the Grand Hall this evening to dance several Galliards.”

  Emma nodded and ushered the other servants from the queen’s tent.

  “Do you recall her?” Elizabeth said of Emma, unclasping the clasps of her vambrace. “The girl hath remained faithful to me. ’Tis why I keep her about me. Her youthful appearance tempts many a man, and she remains a virgin to honour me. On top of everything, she has ne’er lied to me, which is more than I may say of you.”

  The immortal scorned her friend’s latest tactic of addressing Viper with the same contrived rhetoric Elizabeth used on her politicians and courtiers. “I hath agreed to dress as one of thy flatterers, but I do not show the fig such as they. My words hath always been honest.”

  “You tell me that my Court likens me to Diana to my face, yet say I am haggard when I am not present. I do not deny that I am older of years. Nevertheless, I conduct myself as youthfully as ever. No soul herein matches my daily pace. I hath no proof of their deception, save by your word, which you hath broken.” Elizabeth plopped the vambrace on a table with a loud thump.

  “Speak not in riddles and roundabouts, Elizabeth, for I hath not the stomach for it, so made ill am I at your egregious preening in the tilt yard.”

  “I forbade you to interfere with Master Dee, did I not?”

  Viper lounged on the rope bed, set up in the tent for Elizabeth’s rest, or for when she entertained Lord Robert. With a sombre shrug of her shoulders, the immortal confessed, “’Twas only his obsidian I hath damaged. The man himself is, regretfully, wholly sound.”

  The day before, Viper had ambushed the caravan of wagons bringing Dee’s instruments and belongings for an extended stay at Court. She had startled the horses and upturned the carts, hoping to injure the man. He wasn’t there. His servants currently prepared his guest room, despite Viper’s attempt to thwart his arrival.

  Elizabeth poured herself a glass of sekanjabin, an over-sweetened drink of mint and honey mixed with wine vinegar. “He is due on the morrow. What am I to tell him of his broken obsidian?”

  “I care not,” Viper responded flatly. She had shattered the polished volcanic glass into which Dee gazed for hours ascrying for Viper and her kind. “Your sage’s interest in the V’Braed is unnatural. I am thusly compelled to deter him by any means necessary.” The thought of the man made Viper’s skin prickle with distaste.

  “I sparked his studies when I consulted him to seek you out. Master Dee did not act against you or the other Daoine Tor, of that put your mind at ease.” Elizabeth emptied her drink, followed by the involuntary ahh that accompanied her gulping the sour drink. She poured a glass for Viper.

  Viper shook her head, for she preferred the bite of whisky. She thought back to the night when Dee transported her from Dugan’s Bode to his house on Mort Lake, the last time Elizabeth drank wine in any notable quantity. Viper abhorred the sensation of helplessness Dee had created with his apparatus. If he continued his experimentation, his success threatened Viper’s autonomy. She would never be free.

  To Elizabeth, the man was a tutor and mentor, a mage who helped shape her Coronation and guided her through the years of Viper’s absence. If Viper had known how dangerous the sage would become to her wellbeing, she would have killed him when Elizabeth asked him to cast her horoscope in the Towyr.

  “Do you trust me?” Elizabeth occupied the high backed chair across from Viper. The immortal sought some sign in the woman’s face of the intimate friendship they once shared.

  Viper’s eyes misted over as she descended into the depths of Elizabeth’s hazel ones. “I trust your devotion.”

  “Master Dee hath advised me in matters of politics when you would not intervene. He comes to Court to propose a change in our calendar, and to gift unto me a new throne, one he hath devised for my protection. I shall hold a private audience with him, whereupon you may ask of him about his ascrying. If his answers are not to your liking, then I shall have him desist in matters related to his search for the V’Braed. If he doth prove himself innocent, as I do judge he will, then you must let him alone.”

  The misgivings in Viper’s chest refused to be eased by Elizabeth’s soothing words. Viper and Elizabeth stared at each other in uncomfortable silence, the fate of the sage suspended amid the splendid comforts of Elizabeth’s kingdom.

  John Dee arrived by the River Thamys two days later than expected. Miserable weather and a heavy blanket of fog made travel by water next to impossible. Viper had spent the anxious days skulking through the interior corridors of Hampton Palace. The hallways protected Elizabeth’s Court from the inclement weather but did little to shield them from the storm raging within Viper.

  Tonight, Elizabeth and her guests frolicked in her Privy garden under the first quarter moon. The newly formed acting company, Queen Elizabeth’s Men, finished performing the stage play A Looking Glass for London and England. The crowd hooted and hollered with glee.

  During the performance, a young servant from the dock whispered to Lady Anne, one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting that the lights of John Dee’s barge approached. Before Lady Anne shared the information with her queen, Viper raced from Elizabeth’s side.

  The immortal stalked the queen’s sage from the top of the octagonal gateway on the River’s side. The predatory Daoine Tor clothed herself in snug britches with a striped doublet in contrasting shades of blue, open from her neck to her waist, beneath which she wore a sheer silk shirt. A Court gown wouldn’t curtail her tonight.

  Dee strolled from his modest barge at the dock towards the palace, unaware of Viper. His arms punctuated the air with fervor as he conversed with another man. Like twins, they dressed in matching black scholars’ robes, with wild, sparse hair and long, grey beards. Behind them, house servants heaved an oak chest secured with an iron lock up the path. Dee’s other belongings had arrived by road yesterday, after the repair of the cart Viper had upended.

  “We shall put it to Elizabeth,” Dee said, the volume of his words barely decipherable between the swell of the Thamys and the raucousness of Elizabeth’s celebrations. “If she sees what we hath accomplished, ‘twixt my alchemy and your adept handling of the ascrying orbs, she may continue her patronage of our research.”

  The other man clutched a thick book to his chest. He kept his voice lowered. Through the din, Viper barely made out his words, except the final one, which made her heart shudder: “capture.”

  “My dearest Kelley, in the year we hath known each other, we hath progressed so far in understanding the Daoine Tor which plain men cannot see. The Nobles Albertus Alasco and Robert Dudley did hang on our every word when we dined with them in Dudley’s chambers. Would Alasco invite us to call him Lasky, as do his friends, if he did not entrust our wisdom? Lasky would have us travel to the Polish Royal Court with him and show him. I reckon our wives would rather stay here.” Dee stopped and placed his hands on Kelley’s shoulders.

  They faced each other like a reflection. One held the book of their faith and the other preached it. Even the details in the aeir of the two men were mirror opposites.

  “We are not plain men, Edward. Our eyes hath been opened to another world, a world which we can, and will, find, mark me well.”

  Kelley’s mouth moved, his quiet, mumbled words obscured to Viper by Dee’s body.

  “You are correct,” Dee answered. “I will petition the queen to receive Atticus, too. Mark my words,” the sage continued, resuming his path to the gatehouse, “Burghley and Walsingham fear us not because we hath too much power, but because we hath too much knowledge. I have the highest confidence that Lord Dudley believes in our work, and he is near enough the king consort
.” He patted the wooden chest affectionately when the panting servants caught up with them. “When Elizabeth’s Council sees what we hath brought, all will be forgiven and forgotten, rest you assured.”

  Dee and Kelley paused at the gate for the steward to permit their entry. They stood immediately below Viper, these humaines who planned her abduction. She was so irate, her heartbeat drowned out the sounds of the men. Viper compelled herself to keep her breathing paced as she tried to make out the rest of their conversation.

  If she killed them right now and disposed their bodies into the river, it would be as if they had never arrived. She would release the barge and overturn it farther downstream, then kill the humaines who bore witness to the arrival of these dark men with a darker purpose.

  The garen sang its rejoice within her.

  Viper lowered herself along handholds in the wall, avoiding the windows which banked the upper and lower floors of the building. She reached the top of the entrance and held her breath, preparing to let go of the wall and descend upon John Dee.

  An empyrean light grew from beneath the arch. “Master Dee, you hath finally arrived!” Elizabeth’s voice froze Viper’s movements. “And you hath brought a guest?”

  Viper couldn’t see Elizabeth, protected beneath the tower’s arch. The rustle of other gowns indicated she had a number of attendants with her.

  Dee bowed deeply towards the entryway. “Queen Elizabeth, may I humbly present unto you Mister Edward Kelley, my medium and, I hope, future adventurer into a brave, new world.” Kelley likewise genuflected.

  Viper pictured Elizabeth standing ahead of her women in taffeta, herself in a courtly gown, under which lay the damned farthingale. The dress would be bedecked with jewels and pearls. She would have her right arm extended, ringed fingers draped downwards, expectantly waiting for either Dee or Kelley to place his forearm under her palm.

  Elizabeth asked, “Why do not you both join me?” Viper recognized the gentle command that couldn’t be ignored. “My acting company is about to present a new Interlude for the start of their winter season. The play is The Lady and the Snake and they hath assured me that it is a most arousing performance.” The Ladies muffled giddy laughter at her double entendre.