The Armor of Light

by Melissa Scott

  “I had much the same thought myself,” Seton answered. “May I ride with you and Master Marlowe, then?”

  “I’d be honored,” Sidney lied. Seton was something of an unknown quantity, much in evidence about the court but allied with no particular faction. Still, Sidney thought, how freely can I talk with any of James’s nobles?

  They rode west through Holyrood’s park, and past its boundaries into the farmland beyond. The low hills were just greening now, the narrow fields new-sewn, when England had been in the grip of summer for some weeks. Sidney sighed for Kent, his eyes fixed on the distant hills. The summer was even later coming in those highlands, the planting hurried and the harvest correspondingly hard-won; it was no wonder, he thought, that only the dourest Calvinism had served to wean these people from popery. He shook his head, and felt most of his ill temper drain away in the sharp-edged air. He glanced sideways at Seton, who rode at a discreet distance, and said with a half smile, “Was this a commission from the king, my lord, to make sure I didn’t hare off back to England?”

  “It was intended as support, Sir Philip, back-handed though it might seem,” Seton answered. “I’ve heard what you say to the king, and I’ve never thought it wise to patch holes in rotten cloth.” He shrugged. “As you’ve said yourself, it’s best to have more than one line of defense. A lesson from Holland, sir?”

  “The Dutch have more lines of defense than you can imagine,” Sidney answered with a wry grin, “and I’ve always admired their tactics. As for the matter at hand, certainly, I have defended the king in close engagement before, but I would prefer not to do it again. It’s not my life, to take such risks with it.”

  “Little enough risk if what we saw at the banquet was fair measure of your art,” Seton said. “That was a display of power such as I doubt any of us have ever seen.”

  Sidney did not answer, seemed fully occupied in managing his horse. Seton glanced toward Marlowe, one eyebrow lifting in question. The poet shrugged, and improvised. “Would you, my lord, finding yourself, a foreign stranger in a court known for its—admittedly understandable—aversion to witchcraft, be happy to find your function as ambassador usurped by the need to play court wizard? An Englishman protecting the king of Scots, since the Scots have proved singularly incapable of doing so?”

  Seton grinned. “Ah, well, there is a little ill feeling, of course.”

  “But not on your part,” Marlowe said, lifting the end of the phrase into a question, and in the same moment slowed his hack discreetly.

  Seton shrugged. “I’m his majesty’s man, Master Marlowe. He’s no Alexander, God knows his life’s been hard from before he was born…

  Marlowe raised an eyebrow at that, and Seton’s lips curled bitterly. “You’ve seen the black seraph who’s his majesty’s favorite? The master of Ruthven, brother to the Earl of Gowne? Well, their father, the old earl, kidnapped the king in the faction fights thirteen years ago, and was executed for it; their grandfather was the man who held his knife to the late queen’s belly, she being then with child with the king, when the earls murdered David Rizzio.”

  For a moment, the Scots pronunciation made the name unfamiliar, but then Marlowe’s eyebrows rose even higher. No one in London had missed a single scandalous detail of the stories surrounding Queen Mary of Scotland, and her execution eight years before had been the occasion for the reissue of the more lurid pamphlets. Rizzio had been the queen’s Italian secretary—her lover, or so her own husband had claimed, when he masterminded the Italian’s death. The king-consort had been murdered himself a year or so later, quite possibly with Mary’s consent if not actually at her orders... This was not England, and Marlowe hastily pulled away from that train of thought. Where kings and princes die so easily, who would miss a mere poet? He said aloud, “His majesty would seem to have little cause to love the Ruthvens, then...” He let his voice trail off invitingly, and Seton snorted.

  “You’ve seen the lad, and can say that? A gesture of defiance, maybe, but the boy is a Ganymede.”

  A Ganymede, Marlowe thought, but next to mine…

  Next to him, Ruthven would have to shrivel up into the creature he actually was. It was an odd image, and the poet tilted his head to one side, assessing its worth. Certainly he did not trust the lynx-eyed master of Ruthven, but there was no cause to call the boy a changeling, or place him any lower in the great chain of being. The metaphor was getting out of hand. He lifted his head, letting the wind clear his brain.

  “A fine animal,” Seton said, and nodded to Sidney. Marlowe, for whom a horse was a mode of transportation or a set-piece subject for his characters, looked away. The fitful wind strengthened then, bringing with it a faint familiar noise.

  Sidney looked up sharply, his mouth setting into a thin line, and turned to Seton. “Where?”

  “There’s a village on the far side of the hill,” Seton answered, his own face suddenly grim.

  “Follow me,” Sidney said, and set spurs to his horse without waiting for an answer. Seton obeyed without question. Marlowe swore softly, glancing over his shoulder at the trailing grooms. He had heard the sound of a mob before now, and dreaded what they’d find.

  “Come on,” he said aloud, and kicked the horse into a reluctant canter. The grooms followed more slowly, muttering to each other.

  The village was a tiny place, half a dozen thatch-roofed hovels clustered in the lee of the hill, a few fields and a muddy common pasture visible beyond the last house. Fifteen or twenty people, men and woman about evenly mixed—the entire population, probably, Marlowe thought—milled in front of the largest house, where two men of middling age pinned a struggling woman. A few of the crowd were shouting at a greybeard who stood in the door of the house, their words overlapping and mingling until the broad Scots was incomprehensible to the Englishmen, but most stood silent, watching the struggling woman.

  “Witch hunt,” Seton said. “Such loyalty to the king… very touching.”

  “I’m sure that here on this lonely heath we’ve found the king’s great enemy,” Sidney snapped, and spurred his horse forward again.

  Seton managed a brief grin. “Was this what he was like in Holland?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Marlowe said, with acid resignation. He jerked one of Walsingham’s pistols from its case at his saddlebow and cocked it, glad he had thought to carry them today. “I wasn’t with him.” He was speaking to empty air. Seton was already at the older Englishman’s side, braced and ready. Marlowe snarled a curse, but brought his horse up beside them, the pistol resting across his thigh. At least Sidney has the sense to stay horsed, he thought, though if the damned peasants knew how to use those pikerelspickerels they’re carrying, it won’t do him much good. Not that he’d ask his horse to commit suicide, of course; that honor’s reserved for those unfortunates under his protection…

  “Let her be,” Sidney said, his voice cutting through the noise of the crowd.

  The greybeard turned to him eagerly, welcoming an authority greater than his own, but someone in the crowd hooted angrily.

  “We don’t need a foreigner to deal with a witch,” a woman shrilled.

  “Hang her, the bitch of Satan!” another voice cried. “One less to trouble our king’s sleeps.”

  Marlowe lifted his head sharply at that. That wasn’t the usual cry of a country witch hunt; those were usually local matters, local grievances, not something political—particularly when a monarch was as little known as James. “ ’Ware, Sir Philip,” he said aloud, and Sidney nodded, not taking his eyes from the woman.

  “Who’s in authority here?” he said, and charged his voice with the landowner’s rich contempt. “What’s this woman done?”

  “No concern of yours, Englishman,” one of the men who held the accused witch snapped. He wore a better suit than most of his fellows, and there was a silver hilt to the dagger at his belt. “Be gone, before you have serving the devil’s minion on your soul.”

  “I’m as good a Scot as you, Cohn Nuscatt,”
Seton called. “Oh, ay, I know you, and your preaching. Come along, what’s the woman done?”

  There was a confused outcry, not all of it accusatory, and the woman lifted her head. “I’ve done no harm, my lords, no harm.”

  “It says in scripture, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” Nuscatt retorted, and shoved her to her knees. “You pollute the kingdom by your presence, and endanger the king.”

  “If she’s done no wrong, how can you accuse her?” Sidney said, with deceptive mildness.

  “He has the right of it,” Seton agreed. “Go home, good people, this isn’t a business for honest folk. Man, it’s Sir Philip Sidney, the king’s own defender, who says to let her go.”

  “And why does the king’s defender protect the witches who daily threaten him, aye, and have since he was a babe?” Nuscatt glared at the villagers; but there was no answering murmur from them.

  “It wasn’t witches who threatened his mother,” someone called from the back of the crowd, and effaced himself as Nuscatt turned on them in fury.

  “So one of you knows truth when he hears it,” Seton said, and pointed to the accused witch. “What can she have to do with his majesty?”

  “It’s all part of the same evil,” Nuscatt retorted, “of which Scotland will be purged.”

  Seton glanced toward Sidney. “The kirk speaks at last. It’s well for you you’re such a brave defender of the faith.”

  Sidney’s mouth twisted. “Not your faith.”

  “It’ll do.”

  Nuscatt sneered openly, and turned to the villagers. “He’s a witch himself, and proud of it. We’ll rid Scotland of him first, and then the witch.”

  There was a noise from the crowd, more uncertain than eager. Marlowe grinned, but kept a tight grip on his pistol nonetheless. How like countryfolk, to be ready to hang the common woman, but balk at facing down a lord.

  “Cohn Nuscatt,” Sidney said slowly. “Let’s put an end to this. I’ll fight you, for the woman’s life, and let God judge the right.”

  “Lord Jesus, it’s the thrice-damned Tilts,” Marlowe said, and did not care who heard.

  The crowd murmured again, the sound approving now, and the greybeard in the doorway called, “Ay, let God judge.”

  “Your answer?” Sidney’s face was remotely amused, looking down at the preacher. Nuscatt’s face contorted.

  “Be damned to you!”

  Seton swore and softly said, almost to himself, “She’s not worth his death...”

  Sidney heard nonetheless, and glanced back over his shoulder, one eyebrow quirking upward. “I doubt God would see it that way, my lord.”

  “God might not, but I know the king would,” Seton muttered, but flushed to the roots of his pale hair. He cast an imploring glance at Marlowe, but the poet looked away, shrugging. There was nothing anyone could do to stop Sidney now; the wise man realized it, and made ready for the consequences. Marlowe shifted the pistol against his thigh, making certain the villagers had seen it. And what will London say when it hears of this? he wondered. Sir Philip Sidney, the queen’s champion, defender of the king of Scots, stood champion again for the life of a woman falsely—and of course the accusation would have to be false; it would be utterly unworthy of Sidney’s legend if it were not—accused of witchcraft and— He shook the thought away. Time enough for that when we’ve survived.

  Sidney slid from his horse, and took a lurching step toward the Scot. Nuscatt’s eyes widened, and Marlowe restrained a rather hysterical laugh. That the great Sir Philip Sidney should stoop to such deception—a fencing-master’s trick, to bait a country coney into a fight he could not win... No one, no one in London would ever believe it. Nuscatt grinned tightly, and released his hold on the witch. He stepped forward, drawing sword and dagger in a single movement. Sidney did not quite smile, and drew his own weapon. For a moment, no one in the watching crowd realized what he held, and then, with a sudden twist, he separated the long blade from the slim dagger that fitted flush against it, twin blades in the same sheath. An Italian toy, Greville had called it once, but only in jest.

  Nuscatt came forward in a rush, trying to overrun the other, to make him move on the stiffened leg. Sidney stepped back, moving more easily now, and parried neatly, the light Italian dagger turning the Scotsman’s rapier easily. He lunged in the same instant, and Nuscatt’s blade just turned the thrust. There was a quick exchange of blows, shortened thrusts made at close quarters, turned aside by the left-hand daggers, and then suddenly Sidney was inside the other man’s guard. Nuscatt stepped back instinctively, seeking room, and Sidney’s foot shot out, tripping him. Nuscatt went sprawling, the rapier flying from his hand; Sidney staggered—it had been a risk, throwing his weight onto the bad leg, but a calculated one—but recovered, and set his shortened sword to the Scotsman’s throat. Nuscatt froze, the dagger forgotten in his hand. The villagers were very silent.

  Sidney stood utterly still, looking down at the man almost without seeing him, a voice whispering in his mind. Not pride, not pride, to force you to this demeaning bat-tie, nor even common sense, but fear. You know you cannot win, even against such as these. What hope, then, against the Enemy of the king? Sidney’s face hardened.

  He knew what the voice wanted, what it proposed without words: a death for a threatened death, Nuscatt’s blood for the blood he had intended to shed, and the part of him that was still a soldier could not but agree with that prompting. If Nuscatt lived, he would preach again, and some other woman would die; better that Nuscatt die, to save the innocent unknown.

  “No,” Sidney said aloud, and drove his sword into the ground just above the preacher’s shoulder. The man flinched, then opened startled eyes, as though he could not believe he had been spared. I am not God, Sidney thought, I cannot, will not play His part. “Cohn Nuscatt,” he said slowly, fumbling for the words that might reach the man, that might convince him of the truth of Sidney’s own conviction. “You spoke from the old dispensation; we are of the new. Did our savior not speak of mercy, save the woman—a guilty woman—from stoning.” There was no answering understanding in Nuscatt’s eyes, and Sidney turned away, sickened by his own failure.

  “Get the woman,” Marlowe said softly, to Seton, and spurred forward, lifting his pistol. To his surprise, Nuscatt did not move, though he stared after the Englishman with hatred. Sidney looked up then, and Marlowe was appalled by the bitterness in his face.

  “You did what you must,” the poet said, not knowing certainly why he spoke, or if the older man would be willing to listen. It was as if the words were forced from him by the near-despair in Sidney’s eyes. “I know what you were thinking, I saw it gathering in you, and there’s not a man alive would have blamed you for it. And I saw you banish it. Pride it may have been, but a wiser pride, a braver pride, I’ve never seen.”

  Sidney raised an eyebrow and re-sheathed his Italian blades, the hilts snapping home to betray his anger. He took the reins from the ashen-faced groom, and pulled himself up in the saddle. His eyes swept the crowd. Sidney’s lips curled, and Marlowe remembered that this shepherd knight had never seen any necessary virtue in poverty and ignorance, not even in Arcadia. Then Sidney’s eyes widened, and the poet saw a knot of horsemen, badged in royal red and gold, coming over the hill from Holyrood. He breathed a curse, and Sidney’s mouth twisted. He looked over his shoulder at Seton, and the accused witch riding pillion behind him.

  “And what good have I done here today?”

  “She lives, doesn’t she?” Marlowe answered, almost roughly. “And so does he. You’ve not done so ill.”

  Sidney lifted a skeptical eyebrow at that, but turned toward Seton again, studying the woman who clung to the saddle behind him. She seemed ordinary enough, her skirts bunched up to show much mended stockings and bare knees, her coif pushed askew to release a loop of mouse-brown braid, a young-old woman with sturdy, short-fingered hands, and dirt on her weathered face. “I trust you’re unharmed, mistress?” he said aloud, and was rewarded by a fleetin
g, urchin’s grin.

  “1 am so, my lord,” she said, and the lilt of her voice was very different from the accents of her neighbors. “I only hope, my lord, you don’t find yourself misguided in this act of charity. I am what they say I am, though I would never stoop to what they accuse me of.”

  Sidney drew back slightly, instinctively, but managed a smile. “I must confess, it never occurred to me to wonder if you were. I saw a woman mistreated, and I could only act.”

  “Even a witch-woman?” she asked, eyes wary.

  “Even a witch,” Sidney answered, wryly. “Perhaps I do you an even greater injustice when I say I don’t believe you to be the king’s dire enemy, or to be in league with him. I don’t doubt your powers, but I’ve become familiar with his—scent, these past few weeks.”

  “Have you, then?” The witch darted a glance at the approaching horsemen, and slid suddenly to the ground, shaking out her tattered skirts. “No, I’m not offended, for I’ve felt these things too—who could not, and be alive in these times? But a word for you, in thanks and common courtesy, and your king may live to see another day, and you too, my lord. Watch carefully tonight. He’s abroad, and the air stinks of blood. Watch the king—and watch yourself, if you be the knight of the south.”

  The horsemen were within earshot now, the crowd of peasants scattering before them, and the witch lifted both arms. “lain Min!” she cried, and then something more in an unfamiliar, liquid tongue. It sounded very like the Irish spoken in Galway, Sidney thought, and saw the leading rider pull up abruptly. He was a thin-faced man with the dark scar of a powder burn across his cheek, and Sidney’s eyes narrowed.

  “John Gordon,” Marlowe murmured, and smiled. Seton’s eyebrows rose.

  “And what’s he doing here?”

  The scar-faced man ignored them both, holding up his hand to stop the soldiers who rode with him, and stared down at the witch. He spoke to her in the same strange language, voice rising in question, and she answered volubly, broad hands gesturing. After a moment, Gordon nodded, and spoke again, cutting off her spate of words. He looked then at Sidney. “Sir Philip, it seems I owe you thanks on my mistress’s behalf. This woman’s of our kin, and we wouldn’t willingly have seen her killed—whatever she may be. I will take her now.” As he spoke, he held out a hand, and the woman scrambled up behind him.