The Queen's Viper

by Lesley Donaldson

  Delta One regained himself. “High and low! Fire at will!” he ordered. The Deltas formed two lines across the platform, five standing and five on one knee. They fired blindly towards the far end of the station. The sounds of battle exploded in the station. Stray bullets ricocheted off the walls. Tile fragments peppered anyone nearby. With a barked order from Delta One, he and his men dove through the smoke towards the stairwell.

  Clare and Owain rushed to assist Dhillon. Graeme rubbed his hand on the back of his head with a moan as he gained consciousness. Viper managed to stand up and grip the station floor. Fatigue and vertigo overwhelmed her. She started to sink back towards the tracks.

  “I’ve got you.” Confident hands eased her onto the platform. “We’ve got them on the retreat,” Ellis said, face grim. “We could use your help, if you’re up to it.”

  Viper braced herself against his offered arm. She filtered through the noises around her, gunfire, hand-to-hand combat, and the footfall of the queen’s men running up the stairs, until she singled out the sound of Delta One’s radio communications.

  “The leader hath ordered his men into a branching tunnel,” she said, in short gasps. “They doth travel to the East. Recall thy men from the stairs. That escape route is a rouse.”

  Ellis repeated the instruction to his second in command and took a step towards the escaping attackers. “You coming?” he asked Viper. She moved to follow him.

  “Mistress, wait,” Owain implored, voice broken. He knelt beside Dhillon and cinched a belt above his gunshot wound. Dhillon’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, barely responsive. Beneath the tourniquet, Owain had used his shirt on both the entry and exit wounds as meager bandages. Clare had thrown herself across Dhillon’s chest, begging him to live.

  “You can’t leave Dhillon like this,” Owain croaked out. Scars from being whipped criss-crossed his exposed torso. Something other than the irritant in the gas caused the bleariness in Owain’s eyes. “By the time the medics arrive, he will have bled to death.”

  “With all due respect, Mister, without her assistance, we could lose the men who attacked you,” Ellis insisted. Shots echoed from the tunnel as Ellis’ men clashed with the Deltas.

  “Dhillon is my son,” Owain confessed. Tears rolled down his cheeks. His hands pressed into the saturated, makeshift compress on Dhillon’s thigh. “Save him, Mistress. Please.”

  The simple request weighed upon Viper’s heart. When her Foundling had asked Viper to meet his parents, Fate had forsaken her. Owain’s plea for his son’s life was as naked and heartbreaking as his torso. His scars reminded Viper of the tortures he endured when she was imprisoned.

  Viper would not fail her Mouse again.

  She knelt beside Owain and cupped his hand to her cheek. Dhillon’s blood trickled from Owain’s palm onto Viper’s face.

  “Marry, ’twill take a great deal of my magic to heal your son,” she said. “My body may not withstand the demand, given my current state. Should I die from this wound, forget not how I cared for you. There is as much of me in you as there was her.” The immortal moved her hand to Owain’s disfigured chest. “If I could hath saved you from this persecution…”

  “You owe me no apology,” Owain uttered, his eyes searching hers. “My scars are in the past. Restore my boy and save me from a trauma from which I cannot recover. I cannot bury my son.”

  Owain moved out of the way and Viper settled alongside Dhillon’s body. His skin had the same sick, grey hue as the gaseous blanket around them. He had the faintest trickle of aeir. Viper applied firm pressure on Clare’s shoulders. The girl wouldn’t be deterred until Owain cradled her against himself.

  Viper inhaled, shallow and hesitant. She didn’t know if she had enough magical strength to prevent Dhillon’s death after being crippled by the Delta team’s mysterious weapon. Not even a hint of the garen roused within her.

  One hand hovered over Dhillon’s sternum, the other above his bleeding thigh. Ellis muttered shocked obscenities under his breath as Viper’s elldyr surrounded her body. Her runes floated above her arms. Feeble at first, they drifted, unorganized, above Dhillon. His barely perceptible aeir didn’t respond to her magic.

  The immortal closed her eyes and concentrated. In her mind, she saw the Mort Lake Glass that had lodged itself in her chest. The imagined crystal pulsed with the warmth of the stone deep within her. Viper felt herself being guided further into her body. The sounds of the skirmish and of Clare’s crying evapourated.

  Viper entered a nirvana, unable to feel herself or the ground supporting her. Her turmoil, her pain, and every sense of her self departed.

  A low-pitched, rhythmic sound framed the nothingness. Dwindling and increasingly erratic, it was Dhillon’s heart thumping. Viper remembered the enlivening, metronomic beat of the Joyssans Galliard, one of Elizabeth’s favourite dances. The immortal hummed the tune, and Dhillon’s pulse embraced the song’s driving cadence.

  In the space that was not space, Viper sang to the heartbeat that was music to her ears.

  32: Fish Out of Water

  June 12th, 1601.

  Ald Gate, London’s city walls.

  The English countryside fed the city of London damp bodies and heavily loaded wagons. The sinuous progression through the twin arches of London’s Ald Gate stirred the layers of brown muck created by the morning’s incessant rainfall. Despite the cold and wet morning, people eagerly anticipated the upcoming Michaelmas Fair. Cart upon cart of geese, food, fabrics and market supplies surged into the city unhindered by the persistent drizzle. Residents of the stout, three storey gate crowded at their windows, gaping at rows of tents that had sprouted in the fields beyond London’s walls.

  No one noticed Viper and her Foundling. If they had, they would only see a common lad with uncommonly keen hazel eyes and soggy auburn hair. Viper and Mouse crouched like gargoyles, elbows resting on splayed knees.

  The Daoine Tor wore only the outer layer of a black Merchant wife’s dress and a red satin petticoat. The coat snugged around her torso, showing her bare midriff where she had left the buttons open beneath her breasts. She plaited her hair in double herringbone rows. Beneath his chestnut brown wool coat, Mouse’s buttocks, clad in trews of matching colour, barely touched the top of the crenelated stones that crowned the gate.

  “Mistress,” Mouse asked, taking in every detail of the traffic below, “why are the Ald Gate entryways barely wide enough for a cart? Behold the people crowding together to pass through, just there.” He stood as tall as his warped spine allowed. The serpentine curve started the day Robert died. Mouse believed it was a punishment for killing his father. Nothing Viper could say changed his mind.

  “A narrow entryway clusters the enemy in one spot,” she answered, pleased that he valued her insight. “Thus, ’tis easier to pour boiling oil on an invading army. The mechanics of its defence are as old as the gate itself. Anglo-Saxons built the first Ald Gate closer to where the city centre now lies. ’Twas smaller, then, as once was London. The Ald Gate was the Easternmost of three entryways into Londinium from bygone Roman-time, till the days of your great-grandfather, King Henry I.”

  Mouse thought about this a moment, his pink tongue sticking out. “Surely London was not lesser a city than this? The great jewel of the English Empire?”

  Viper smiled inwardly, relieved at, rather than annoyed by, the return of his inquisitive nature.

  In the four years after Robert Dudley died of a heart attack, Mouse didn’t speak of his parents. He believed that meeting with his father had killed the man, and he abandoned his quest for lineage. Mouse appeared twelve years old, however, his self-assurance and maturity had relapsed into the behaviour of a boy of seven.

  When Mouse became sullen and withdrawn, Viper brought him to London, a city fecund with diversions. By the constant beam on his face, and the increasing hours he spent hidden among the books at the library in Westminster Abbey, Viper knew Mouse thrived.

  “London hath stood here long befor
e thy birth, and many times hath she been conquered. Her soul is as old as the land itself. The farther back in time, the more diminutive London’s footprint.” Viper pried out a chunk of mortar with her nail. She held it up in front of him and crumbled it in her fingers as she spoke until she rendered it into the tiniest grain. “London. Londinium. Trinovantum. Caer Lud. Troia Nova. Each were places of great importance, founded upon the one that came before.”

  “And the first?”

  Viper’s memory of England clashed with her earliest recollection. “Vey… veyan… ” She didn’t know why she couldn’t fully recall the answer. A nagging twinge started in her lower eyelid.

  “You know everything about the world.” Mouse sighed unaware that Viper didn’t complete her answer. He lowered his bottom onto the stone, arms flopping to his sides.

  “As, one day, shall you,” she assured him. The gaps in her memory haunted her. Seeking her history exposed Viper to great dangers before her journey granted her the precious Foundling before her. She didn’t think she could travel the uneven path of the unknown past afresh.

  Her Foundling’s wide, innocent eyes drank in her promise. “I want to know everything, everything!” He jumped up with enthusiasm, dangerously close the edge of the uppermost part of the gate. Viper grabbed Mouse by the waist and lowered him to the sheltered area behind the crenellations. Viper released him and softened her face.

  “Hath you forgot what I hath taught you?” she said with gentle severity. “Keep yourself hidden. People will not see what they are not shown. Be as a mouse, and you shall find entry where lions cannot go.” Viper twirled her fingers in Mouse’s auburn curls and tickled his ribs with a lavender tendril of elldyr. “A mouse is not invisible, and yet, it is rarely seen.”

  “And if they cannot see me, they cannot hurt me,” he said, reproaching himself. A reminiscent gloom prevailed over the veneer of his youthful bravado, a sign that that Mouse yearned for Viper’s concealment ability.

  On a foggy night last winter, Viper had been stalking a thief in an alley in London. She heard Mouse crying and whimpering from blocks away. When she found Mouse, an innkeeper was beating him with a broomstick.

  “Begone you malformed thing, before you beshrew my business!” The man lashed out at Mouse with abusive curses and equally wicked strikes. He had broken the boy’s arm and lacerated his head. Viper pummelled the innkeep until he had no recognizable face left. She then posed as a violent ghost and chased out his customers. Once she had restored Mouse’s body, she let him feast on the food in the larder. Viper swore that she would never let anyone hurt her Foundling again, after she chastised him for his recklessness at being seen.

  Mouse waved off Viper’s caress, the shadow of this memory on his face. “I wish to leave now, Mistress.” He straightened his hunched shoulders with determination. The ache in his voice didn’t escape Viper’s sensitive hearing. Mouse scrambled away without her answer. He lost his balance when he stumbled into a poorly kept section of the wall, adjacent to a flight of stone stairs.

  Small chunks of masonry cascaded onto the city guard patrolling at the steps below. The impact on his metal helmet jarred him and he bellowed. Mouse yelped in guilty surprise, revealing his location. The guard dashed to the top of the stairs in pursuit of the wastrel who had assaulted him.

  Viper caught the man before he snagged Mouse. She grabbed the guard by his collar and britches, then threw him over the wall. He landed in the city’s growing debris pit with a thud, head crooked at a fatal angle. Feral dogs snapped at each other as the smell of his blood attracted them.

  Mouse kept running, now along the muddy street. The boy’s head stayed down, following any open space before him. A woman carrying a wooden bowl of offal stepped in front of him. He careened into her and the grisly mess doused her white apron.

  His tears, like those of an urchin seeking alms from the queen’s revised Poor Law, had little effect on the woman’s pity. She tried boxing his ears. He ducked out of the way and dashed into a close sandwiched between two buildings.

  Closing in with easy strides, Viper reached the narrow passage that opened into a dim enclave. Overhead, ropes for dying leather garrotted the precipitous clouds. Ammonia from the adjacent tannery clogged the air. Three men in dark cloaks entered through an aisle on the opposite side. They toted a bulky object wrapped in coarsely woven burlap. The largest of the men lost his grip when Mouse bounced off the man’s side. His end of the item landed in the dirt with a soft thump.

  “God’s blood!” the burly man swore. “What manner of unnatural cankerworm are you?” He reached out with a hand so scabbed, that Viper couldn’t distinguish his skin. One of his companions hollered for help and the man paused.

  “Malcolm! Her tail!” yelled the shortest man, his arms wrapped around the middle of the undisclosed item.

  The end on the ground jerked violently. A giant, slender fish tail flopped out from a gap in the wrappings, then curled up and repeatedly whacked the captor at the far end. Scales scuffed the face of the short man in the middle when the tail clouted his companion’s nose.

  Malcolm spurred into action. He turned from Mouse to secure the thrashing aquatic creature. Mouse backed into Viper.

  She whirled him about and knelt to meet his eyes saying, “Go now and hide yourself. These men are not to be trusted.” Fear possessed every part of her body. She dared not show her Foundling.

  “Yes, yes. But what about the man who stands behind you?” he asked, chin quivering. Viper spun about and protected Mouse with her body. For a moment, she didn’t recognize the man in the wide hat and scraggy clothes. A patch covered his left eye.

  “Turstin?”

  “Mistress Viper?” Turstin glanced at the boy quizzically before he peeked past the immortal to the men in black. “I did not expect you in London, nor to meet you upon my tracking of this Merrow,” he whispered.

  “Merrow?”

  The men in the enclave beyond Viper grunted with effort in their continued struggle with the creature. Turstin pressed his body against the wall, avoiding detection.

  “Go,” she said to Mouse and ushered him up the alley with a hasty squeeze on his arm. “I will find you anon, at the Ald Gate.”

  “Your Foundling?” Turstin asked when Mouse ran away. Viper nodded without explanation. “He shall need that spine attended. My Mistresses can show you how.”

  From the yard, Malcom barked, “It is done. Let us get inside.”

  Turstin remained in the shadows, while Viper observed hidden by her glamour. The tall man with the bleeding nose wiped his face with the back of his hand after they had hitched up the tail. Red smeared across a tattoo above his wrist that Viper recognized as the same symbol on Edward Kelley’s book, a knife stuck into an arched line.

  “What is it?” Viper asked of the captured aquatic creature as the men lumbered inside.

  “A sad thing that was once a person. Then, some madness did make her turn to ascrying for help. Annys finds them, the downcast.”

  Turstin checked the windows to see if anyone observed the Merrow’s abduction before he moved to doorway the men entered. Viper raised her fists, ready to smash through the door.

  “Not there. I know this place. There is another way. Come.” He led her to the adjacent building and an entryway that was mortared closed, then whitewashed to disguise it. “This one.” The increasing blanket of rain muffled the sound of Viper splintering through the wood with her elldyr.

  The interior was as wide as Viper’s arm span and too short for her to stand. “This is an abandoned Priest’s hole,” Turstin said. The immortal never imagined she would be on her knees in one of the secret sanctuaries of the Catholic priests. “The street-front façade only has one door. These walls and that entrance behind us do not exist when one views the building from the street.” The mis-matched beams framing the space indicated it had once been part of the neighbouring building, into which the men took the Merrow. “Your Elizabeth hath ordered every one of the Cathol
ics out of the country,” he said, working on a rusted latch in the ceiling. “Why would they stay in England at the cost of twenty pounds monthly? ’Tis twice the yearly rental fee of a London residence.”

  “Better to flee the country than die for heresy.”

  “For some. For most, better to serve the needs of the soul and hide for free,” he said as the hatch opened and a rope ladder unravelled towards them. He climbed up, and a moment later, re-emerged, waving at Viper to join him.

  “There hath been many a Merrow in the southern rivers of late,” he whispered in the covert space that once hid the vestments and vessels of Catholic mass. Viper used her elldyr creft and brightened the room that now sheltered dust and mice.

  The added height in this space, designed to keep wall-hook hung religious robes from dragging on the floor, allowed Viper to stand upright. They heard the men wrestle the Merrow up a wooden staircase. Turstin lifted the leather flap that disguised a spy hole in the plaster. He pressed his eye to the wall.

  “The Merrow travel as do fish, in schools, except this one. She did see me with the enchanted stones my Mistresses hath erected on the bed of the Thamys, near the Towyr. She swam away, I thought, to bring the news of my actions to Annys. I later came upon her picking through the plague bodies on the Isle of Dogs father along the river, where only wild dogs dare live. Those men seized her afore I could find out what she doth know of my plans.”

  “Which be?”

  “A prison for Annys. I hath convinced my Mistresses that Annys cannot be left free to roam among the humaines. Her pox is too deadly and her ambition worse.”

  “She kills the population I made thrive.” Viper’s right hand was incandescent with resentment, ready to strike. “The Sisters would not be affected by Annys’ pox, and they do not feed upon humaines. Why would they imprison her?”