While Viper fed upon the inhabitants of surrounding villages, inhabitants fully enriched by Elizabeth’s aeir, Mouse scavenged clothes and food for himself. He followed Viper’s instructions without question. Mouse also insisted upon gifting something back to those from whom they looted, such as fish he caught or wool fleeces he had liberated from a rich merchant or Lord.
The immortal knew Mouse liked these trips to towns the most, when he could venture among the thriving English marketplaces with his invisible protectress keeping him from harm. Elizabeth and her country flourished in Viper’s absence. A rising merchant class with access to abundant resources drove England’s economy, best known for its wool export. Across the Atlantic Ocean, Sir Walter Raleigh, another of Elizabeth’s favourites, founded Roanoke Colony. He named the new world Virginia in honour of his virgin queen. Elizabeth’s people enjoyed a time of wealth and prosperity such as they’d never known.
Viper’s Towyr promise had come to pass.
Viper and Mouse reached the first set of traps lain in a shady eddy yesterday. He hoisted one into the boat and water splashed around his feet. With a wary tension that made her muscles hurt, the Daoine Tor maintained her surveillance. The thought of an immortal existence wracked with mistrust played upon her mind. She didn’t know how long she needed to continue having an intense distrust of the natural elements. Annys would not have forgotten her.
Viper relaxed, but only marginally, as Mouse emptied the second basket. Two muddy brown eels slithered out. Long and muscular, they propelled themselves to the low-lying gunwale. Mouse grabbed the slime-coated fish and plopped them in a damp sack of coarse linen. Later, he would behead them and pull their tough skin from their tubular bodies. The tanned skin made useful straps for belts and satchels. Mouse impressed Viper with his increasing self-sufficiency.
At the second location, each of the three traps held two or three eels. As Mouse put the fish into his sack, one wriggled out of his hand and back beneath the water. He squealed delightedly at the sensation across his palm.
Viper smiled, despite her jitters. Mouse’s pure joy in life enchanted her. He deserved protection from the horrors caused by humaines for as long as possible. She hoped, in busying himself with the task of wrangling live animals that he had forgotten his request.
He did not.
They hid the boat in deep brush beside the river, then started walking back to the one room cottage they shared in a thick copse an hour’s walk away.
Mouse cleared his throat. “Mistress, you hath had time aplenty to stew upon my question. I wish to meet my parents. You say they are alive, yet withhold their identity. In Dudcotte, I hath heard people speak of faerie changelings. Am I one of these? Did you exchange me with thy natural-born babe?”
As before, Viper kept mum. Even with his young years, Mouse tolerated her long periods of silence better than did Elizabeth. Where Elizabeth’s impatience brewed into unrelenting anger, Mouse bided his time until he found the next opportunity to discuss his point.
Viper picked her way through along an overgrown path forgotten by humaines and Mouse followed. At one time, there had been a settlement on this hill. She couldn’t remember its name or the people who had lived there. Too many centuries of bodies crowded her memory.
“You art as much my child as any humaine’s. Why would you ask this of me?” Viper chose a different trail with every visit to the river, ensuring that no one could trace them back to their home.
Mouse selected his words as carefully as Viper did her route. “I resemble them more than I resemble you. ’Tis obvious that I am not Daoine Tor. Would you not want to be with your own kindred, were our positions reversed? I do not seek a new life. I simply wish to know the history of the life I have.”
Her hasty decision on the summer morning of Mouse’s birth tormented Viper. She had been protecting Mouse from her own past, from the threat of her kindred, and from the expectation of Britain’s future. He had every ounce of his mother’s zest for life and his father’s loyalty. Viper succumbed to the earnest hazel eyes she sensed watching her.
“Your father was, until last winter, in the Netherlands. By the queen’s command, he led troops in support of the Danish Protestants against the Catholic Spanish.”
“He is a soldier?”
“The queen prefers to place him in command, farther afield from the infantry. He faced the Spanish Armada from the shore in July.”
Viper hesitated. Her Foundling was born of royal blood, and the politics of his birth right could ruin his innocence. The religious conflict begun by Elizabeth’s father, that infected each of his children’s reign, threatened to destroy the country’s future. Elizabeth had not married herself to Spain, nor converted England back to Catholicism. Pope Pius V of Rome gave King Philip II of Spain sanction to overthrow Elizabeth and name the next Ruler of England. The Spanish came to conquer, and the English feared the worst.
Viper lost her train of thought in guilty memories. When Viper had heard rumours of the Armada’s arrival at the Eddystone Rocks, the mouth of the Channel, she experienced a pang of remorse. The immortal had abandoned Elizabeth and taken her son. Now, her friend faced her most serious challenge. Viper had rushed to London, where she encountered Elizabeth rehearsing a speech at Whitehall Palace.
Elizabeth, draped in an ermine-trimmed cloak, paced in a walled garden by herself, late at night. “Let tyrants fear,” she had said. “Betwixt all of my decisions hath I consistently placed the safeguard and fortitude of the loyal hearts, and good-will, of my subjects as my chiefest concern. Therefore, I am come among you, not for my amusement, but resolved, in the midst and heat of battle, to live and die alongside you.”
Her words had moved Viper as they would stir the love of those who took up arms for her. The immortal was about to remove her concealment and reveal herself when her Faerie Queen stunned her.
“Viper!” she beckoned, turning this way and that as she appealed to the seemingly empty night. “I am most needful of your power. Without the Parhelion, I do seek you out each night but hath not found you, withal. I rehearse my speech for the troops at Tilbury. In truth, I have no faith in it. I am heart-sore for my kingdom’s future.” The fountain bubbled beside Elizabeth, her only responsive audience. “My fleet outnumbers the Spanish, although, dare I admit, it is less powerful and under-manned. We shall be defeated by Philip’s Armada. You promised unto me a fruitful kingdom. When the Spanish invade my waters and o’ercome my army, that land and my life will be forfeit. I demand that you go forth to Spain and kill King Philip! ’Tis the least you should do for absconding with my child,” Elizabeth yelled.
Angered that Elizabeth had reduced their relationship to master and assassin, Viper did not heed the mortal’s call. She also feared that if she left Mouse in Elizabeth’s care, Elizabeth would never release him. War threatened Elizabeth when Viper lived at peace with herself the first time since she had met the red-head. Viper had left her Faerie Queen begging for help, without answering.
After a summer of skirmishes, treacherous weather in the Channel devastated the Spanish fleet as if Elizabeth herself ruled the water. Greater numbers of Spanish men perished at the hand of unsavoury weather and the Tilbury shallows than did those who died fighting the English. After a final engagement at Grave’s End, the last war-torn ships of the Spanish Armada had retreated.
“Then he is strong?” Mouse’s eager inquisition plucked Viper from her forlorn reverie.
“He hath more strength of character than of muscle, for long hath he negotiated the craft of Elizabeth’s Court and her bedroom with much success.” Viper exhaled slowly before the words crossed her lips, as if the breath would be her last. She stopped in the thigh-high grass and faced the boy she might lose when she confessed, “Your father is the Earl of Leicester, Lord Robert Dudley.”
“Why, ’twas said he visited Dudcotte the same day we were there, on his way to the Buxton baths!” Twitching in Mouse’s shoulders matched the crescendo and diminish in his v
oice when he realized that his opportunity to meet his father had passed. “He sought remedies for cramps in his stomach. You said nothing.”
Bile rose in Viper’s throat. “Buxton is not far afield from here. If his is a malady within my power to remedy, then so will I do this for you.”
Mouse threw his arms around her from behind, throwing her stride off balance. His joyful hooting stirred pheasants from the underbrush. Viper’s dolor broke upon the waves of Mouse’s laughter.
Two days later, they came upon Cornbury Park, Robert’s property within the Unton family’s landholdings. At the old stone guards’ gate, occupied by watchmen with drowsy heads full of ale, Viper held Mouse back. She checked the main road, wide enough for a stately carriage, for potential hazards. Tudor expansions of red brick to the hunting lodge clustered among the original white buildings. Robert had built two-storey residential quarters with twisted chimneys, a kitchen wing, and servants’ accommodations.
Servants and livery staff busied themselves around the grounds. Smoke drifted in a straight line from the scullery stack in the calm afternoon. The smell of roasting meat wafted towards them. To the side of the main building, the doors of the stables propped open. Younger pages and squires mucked out the stalls, occasionally throwing fistfuls of straw at each other.
“Robert must be a-hunting in Wychwood,” Viper said and pointed at the dense forest beyond. “You should learn to ride. Both your parents are proficient.”
Mouse nodded distractedly. He kept his eyes trained on the house, as if expecting his father to appear with open arms.
“Remember,” Viper continued, “what I hath taught you about humaines. They do not see and hear that which is around them, e’en though they hath eyes to see and ears to hear. Your skill of evading detection is as effective as my concealment. Let us await your Lord-father in his rooms. When he is alone, we shall reveal ourselves to him.”
Unseen, Viper and Mouse slipped past the gardens and stables. They entered the house through the kitchen with its bare, worn floor. Inside the main building, wool carpets warmed the house and tapestries blocked drafts from the walls. The narrow stairs of Buxton-on-the-Hill were made of carved oak, with squared corners, and ornamented posts at the end of each railing.
Mouse dashed into a cupboard under the stairs when two women descended from above, one older and one younger. Glamoured, Viper protected the door of the cubby space.
“I did not forget,” the younger woman protested. “I delivered Master Leicester’s letter for Her Majesty and the parcel with it, as was I instructed. Only, I did not mention it upon my return for his poorly condition shocked me so.”
The older woman crossed herself and held up a finger, until they reached the main floor. “Enfetter not thy brow, Abigail.” Her face was a lean as her lips were thin. “The man in that room hath not the robustness of our dear Lord Leicester. I do hope the willow tisane from Dudcotte helps him. I am afeared for his life, so bold is the fever in him. He may ne’er reach Buxton’s healing springs.”
A chill trickled along Viper’s spine. She had heard such talk among humaines before. Robert’s body flirted with Death.
“I am glad we propped him upright against the pillows.” Abigail tucked a lock of hair under her coif. “Lying flat is the repose of the dead.”
“The final dance finds us all, no matter how grand or small. Now, come along. We shall gather cress and Alexanders in the kitchen garden for his Lordship’s evening salad. E’en poorly, Lord Leicester will not eat much meat, nor drink a drop of wine, as he hath ever done.”
Viper could tell the woman believed herself well versed in the way a man should behave, and be cured. The older lady clucked about the negative effects of eating too many green leaves and not meat as the humaines walked away.
“Mistress? I do not hear any voices. Shall I come out?”
Viper’s curled hand poised above the handle. She squeezed her fingers tighter, then pressed her fist along the ridges of her temple.
If Mouse asked her to heal Robert, he would stay by his father’s side. She considered using elldyr magic to put Mouse in a sleeping state, sequestered in the cupboard, then easing Robert to his death. Viper imagined herself racing upstairs with supernatural speed to steal Robert’s aeir before she brought Mouse to his father. If Robert died before Mouse met him, Mouse could not ask her to heal him. Surely, Mouse would grieve for the man, yet Viper concluded that the boy would recover quickly, having never known Robert or his paternal love. It would be a calculated risk.
If Mouse should ever find out what she had done, he would never forgive her.
There were too many ways Viper could lose Mouse forever.
Viper opened the door, her face a blank slate. “Quickly now. Your father is gravely sick.”
They entered Leicester’s bedroom prepared to encounter his household staff. However, Viper and Mouse were the only ones present, except for what remained of the once vibrant Robert Dudley.
Vapours from rosemary stems burning in braziers beside Robert’s bed infused acrid smoke into the room. A suspended rectangular canopy overlaid his bed, attached to the wall at the head; over the foot, by chains from the ceiling. The servants had closed the drapery and the end of the bed, and along his left side. Herb-smoke wafted over Robert’s body from his right, past the open bed curtains.
Robert’s face hung slack, his mouth open like the letter O. The sheen on his skin exacerbated its pallor. His breathing, shallow and rapid, felt hot to touch when Viper caressed his cracked lips. His short beard was grey and tatty, a far cry from its usual comeliness.
Viper barely made out his feeble aeir through the heavy layers of bedding heaped upon him. Deeply orange, his energy swirled in a counter-clockwise vortex over his stomach. At its epicentre was a fiery red ball of aeir. This fragmented portion indicated that a cancer devoured both his body and aeir from within. The tumor would not be cured by tinctures and inhalations.
“Is he going to die?” Mouse’s voice sounded smaller than the squeak of his namesake.
Viper spoke quickly, drawing up the sleeves of her blouse. “If I remedy him, then I shall take on his malady, for a length of time that I cannot predict. He will awaken and be shocked at your presence in his room. Perchance, he shall see me as I perform this task. I do not know.” She took Mouse’s face in her hands, trying to keep her voice calm. “I do this for you, Mouse. If he does harm unto me and you do not stop him, then you shall rue the day you asked it of me.”
At her direction, he barricaded the door. Viper knelt beside Robert’s bed. Mouse stood behind her. She extended her arms and the runes lifted above her scars, hovering interlinked over his body. Silver recuperative elldyr drifted towards the angry whirl of aeir. When her power touched the cancerous area, the red zone repulsed her magic. Her runes retreated and she turned her arms over in disbelief at her failure. Mouse put his hand on her shoulder, his hope coursing through Viper like lightening.
She turned her head up to him, the infant who trusted her implicitly, now grown into a youth worthy of the respect she held too close to her heart. Without realizing it, a branch of her elldyr extended itself and brushed away the tears on Mouse’s face.
Viper summoned every strand of willpower in her body. She thrust her elldyr-charged hand into the rotting part of Robert’s aeir and clamped her claws around the ball. Red bulged between her purple fingers. She wrenched the cancerous aeir away from the rest of his matrix. The red energy roped itself up her arm until it soaked into her runes. Her arm felt icy and stiff. Knives of pain spread from her scars to her torso.
Robert gasped and bolted upright as Viper doubled over, clutching her stomach. He stretched heartily, then caught sight of the Daoine Tor and the boy.
Mouse cowered on his knees, hands held out in supplication. “We will not harm you,” he pleaded. “I beg of you, hear me.”
“Hear us,” Viper muttered hoarsely. She reached out for the mattress. Robert pushed her off the bed with revulsion. The immort
al tumbled to the side, where Mouse caught her fall. Viper regained her breath and held out her palm. “We come with due sincerity,” she said with a gasp, left hand pressed to her belly. “I hath only enough strength to show you the truth.” Elldyr silhouettes of Elizabeth and Robert formed in her right hand. His eyes widened when the phantasmal figures made love, as they had under Elizabeth’s tree four years ago.
“These are the ghosts of my dreams,” he said. The Robert figure threw his head back its head in orgasm. The real Robert shifted awkwardly under the bedding.
“Not a dream, but a memory, of sorts.” Viper considered how much to tell him. “I enacted a magic upon you and Elizabeth, much with her permission.” His replenished colour heightened as she spoke of that summer’s day.
“Bess told me about a spell she cast with a seelie wicht four years ago.” He untangled himself from the blankets and let his legs dangle. He watched the figures embrace before they fizzled away. “She did say unto me that we hath a son. I… I never did believe her.” Elizabeth’s lover took Mouse by the torso and set the lad on the mattress. Studying Mouse, Robert saw Elizabeth’s eyes within the face of his younger self. “I thought you were another of Bess’ manipulations to keep me at her side. How could I be so wrong?”
Viper eased herself away and slumped into a chair along the paneled wall. Robert clasped his arms around Mouse. Her Foundling’s smile eased the gnawing ache in her stomach.
“My son,” Robert cried with joy. “You are the boy I wanted.” He held Mouse at his arm’s length, and placed a hand against Elizabeth’s auburn curls on Mouse’s head. “Bess’ son. Hath you met your mother? No? Then we shall go unto her together. How pleased will be my Titania!” He swung Mouse around with unadulterated delight. Boy and father laughed with mutual affection, mirrors of each other.
Robert stopped without warning. He set Mouse down abruptly, then doubled over, hands on his knees. “This cloudy air, ’tis too smothering.” His eyebrows knit together with anxiety. “It makes a great heaviness in my chest.” Hand over his heart, his shallow breaths became hungry gulps for air. His face drained of colour. Fear doused his forehead. “The window. Open the window,” he said between gasps, anxiously scanning the room for some measure of comfort.
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