by Lucy Weston
“Don’t let Mordred hear you call him that,” she says. “Even after so long, he remains sensitive about his birthright.”
I start to sag with relief that she has come but catch myself and straighten my shoulders resolutely.
“Descend, that we may talk face-to-face.”
She looks at me mockingly but comes away from the wall and floats down, alighting a few feet in front of me. Her black hair flutters down the full length of her back. I have never seen more perfect skin, as white as the moon, or eyes more filled with secrets.
“As Your Majesty wills. I am instructed to answer all your questions fully and honestly. Will that satisfy you?”
Did Mordred truly send her with such orders? If so, his confidence gives me pause. Rather than reveal my unease, I reply, “I can ask for nothing more.”
“Then begin. What is it you wish to know?”
I have lured Blanche here for the sole purpose of slaying her. Yet I hesitate to do so too precipitously. She may be the best chance I have to learn about Mordred and his kind.
“Why did you become what you are? Was it forced upon you?”
She raises a perfectly arched brow. “Forced? I pleaded with my dear lord to grant me so great a boon. I swore to him that he would not be disappointed and I have kept my vow. That is why I am here now and only for that reason.”
“Had you no care for your soul? No desire to stand in the light of the Almighty and know His grace?”
Blanche sighs and the world seems to sigh with her. I tell myself that it is only the wind picking up again.
“The same Almighty who, despite my most anguished prayers, declined to spare any of my family even to the tiniest child? Is that the God of whom you speak?”
“Death comes for all mortals.” It is a feeble answer even to my own ears.
Blanche does not spare me her scorn. “My family, of proud and noble lineage as I told you, rose in rebellion against a mad king intent on bringing ruin to this land. For that crime we paid the highest price. Only I escaped.”
I have known my own days of terror and imprisonment when the sword of death swung so close as to leave my skin feeling scraped. All the same, I can think of only one reason why she would have made so dire a choice.
“You wanted Mordred’s help to claim your revenge.”
She twines a length of the pearls around her fingers and smiles. “Oh, yes, bright Queen, I did! The mere thought of it sustained me through the darkest hours when my very sanity hung in the balance. It gave me the strength to call out, not to the god who had forsaken all those I loved but to the power I sensed in the darkness itself. Power that redeemed me and made all things possible.”
“But not the vengeance you sought. I know the history of this kingdom. Henry’s son, Edward, redeemed his father’s throne. He and his dynasty ruled this realm until my own supplanted them.”
“And you think that means I lost? How foolish you are! I watched them one by one grow old and wither and die. I was witness to their disappointments, their fears, their tragedies. I saw them weep and curse and try to bargain with their god who listened no more to them than he had to me. And all the while I remained as I am now—young, strong, beautiful, awaiting the day when my own kind will rule in the place of you weak mortals.”
“Don’t you mean when you will rule at Mordred’s side?” I saw how she looked at him in the hall at Southwark Manor. She had the proprietary air of a woman who has staked her claim, whether a man, vampire or otherwise, has the sense to recognize it.
“After three hundred years,” I continue, “surely you deserve nothing less. Haven’t you served him all that time, helping him step by step toward the power he has craved for so long? Yet now he wants to toss you aside and put me in your place.”
I am trying to provoke her, perhaps to justify what I must do. In that instant, it appears that I have succeeded. A dark flush of color spreads over her skin as her eyes glitter dangerously.
But I underestimate Blanche at my peril. The centuries have taught her patience. A moment later, she is once again in control of herself.
“Whatever my lord Mordred commands, I obey.”
Would that I had servants so steadfast in their loyalty.
“Convince me then,” I challenge. “Tell me why I should give up all I hold dear and join with him.”
She looks at me with scornful pity. “Give up what? The constant danger that surrounds you? The certain knowledge that like every mortal you will grow old, your body betraying you more and more with each passing year until you wither and die? That is, of course, if you manage to avoid assassination or execution. You are what—twenty-five years old now? I give you no more than two chances in ten of seeing thirty.”
Her calculation of the odds against me is chilling, all the more so because I cannot refute them.
“If it pleases God to take me, I will find my reward in the life to come.”
That is, of course, the appropriately pious response, never mind whether I really believe it.
Blanche shakes her head as though I am so great a fool as scarcely to be endured. “You have a chance to live far beyond the scant span of days allotted by your jealous god. You can bring peace and security to your people while pursuing all that interests you—art, music, natural philosophy, the pleasures of the flesh, all are yours for the taking. And you can do it in perfect health and beauty, never growing old, never dying. How could any person with a claim to sanity reject that?”
“You paint such an idyllic picture, yet surely it is incomplete.”
A frown creases her alabaster brow. She leaves off her play with the pearls as both her hands drop to her sides. “What do you mean?”
“What of your need to feed upon humans? You drug them into a stupor to facilitate your use of them. Some few become like you, but I presume that is only possible for those chosen by Lord Mordred?”
When she nods, I continue, “The rest, whether they die or not, are robbed of the spark of life that is most essential to their humanity. Does that not trouble you at all?”
Apparently not as it seems the question has never occurred to the Lady Blanche. She looks puzzled by it.
“They live,” she says. “What else matters?”
“The quality of their lives is so greatly diminished as to scarcely be life at all, but I perceive that is not a concern for you. Perhaps like Mordred you have forgotten what it means to be human. Let us go on then. What are the thralls?”
Since first becoming aware of the existence of those beings, I have been troubled by them. Not vampires, yet seemingly not human either, they hint at something amiss in Blanche’s paradise.
“They are servants, nothing more. I marvel that you notice them.”
“Servants whose faces are never seen and who never speak. Where do they come from?”
She shakes her head in disgust. “That does not concern you! How weak is your mind to be drawn in so meaningless a direction when Lord Mordred offers you so much. Do you truly still not understand all that can be yours?”
The moon casts long shadows over the tiers of seats surrounding us. I turn away and close my eyes, imagining the crowd, feverish with excitement, roaring for blood. Blanche has nothing more to tell me. It is time.
“I had another purpose in asking that you come here,” I say, and turn back to her. In the instant that I do so, her mouth pulls in a taut smile as her eyes go flat and hard.
“Did you, Slayer? What could that possibly be?”
She knows. I cannot be certain how or why, but whereas my ruse duped Mordred, it has not fooled Blanche. Yet she does nothing.
Not so myself. In the quickening of a breath, I seize my chance and hurl a bolt of light directly at her. The air between us ripples. Before my horrified gaze, the light slows, leaving Blanche ample time to step away from it.
Yet she does not, or at least not fully. She allows it to just slightly graze her, severing the strand of pearls, which shower down onto the ground, and rending he
r garment to expose pure white skin gashed by scintillating fragments of light.
Pain contorts her face but fades too swiftly. Before I can overcome my surprise and gather myself for a second blow, Blanche strikes.
The blackness that comes from her is as deep and suffocating as that I experienced from Mordred. I must call on all my will to hold it back and even then only just manage to do so. She, on the other hand, seems to have strength in reserve.
“I know your kind,” Blanche says, “far better than my lord Mordred ever can. I know how treacherous and scheming you are, the lengths to which you go to hold on to the only power you are capable of understanding. Did you truly think that I would come into the presence of a Slayer without being prepared to defend myself?
Defend and more, for even as she speaks, the darkness thickens. I gasp for breath, my heart pounding and will from deep within myself a strike of such power as I have never unleashed before. The light flows from me as a spear cleaving the night, aimed directly at its target.
Blanche avoids it easily and rises into the sky, hovering above me.
“Fool,” she taunts. “In striking at me, you have done exactly as I hoped you would. Now that I bear your mark, I may return to my lord with proof of my loyalty and your treachery. He will understand that I had no choice but to end your pitiful life. I will reign at his side while you rot in the ground, unlamented and forgotten.”
Clearly, the thought gives her great pleasure for she is smiling as she prepares to unleash what I do not doubt will be my death blow.
Midnight, 22 January 1559
I run, heedless of dignity, with no thought but survival. My skirts catch around my legs. I grab them in both hands and leap, hurling myself into the maze of columns that hold up the tiers of seats around the pit.
“There is nowhere to hide, bright Queen!” Blanche calls out. “I see in darkness as well as you, even better. I hear your every movement. I smell the scent of you. Come out and die swiftly. Otherwise, I promise, you will curse your last moments on this earth.”
I am cursing already, regretting my arrogance and stupidity. How did I imagine that the sole survivor of a line that dared to topple a king would give up what she believes to be her rightful place simply because Mordred bid her do so? And, moreover, that she would cede it to me, heiress to the throne from which her family’s ruin was decreed?
She will kill me to gain the place at Mordred’s side that will come to her when I am dead but also for the vengeance so long awaited.
But not if I can kill her first. Please, God, let me truly be as treacherous and scheming as she claims I am.
“Wait,” I call out. “There is no need for this. I have no quarrel with you. Mordred is my enemy.”
“And you imagine that I am not?” Again, she laughs.
With my back pressed against a pillar, I dare a swift look into the pit. Blanche has settled on the ground again. Her wound still glitters, but she seems unaffected by it. Her arms flung wide, she paces like a beautiful, agitated beast anxious to be done with its confinement.
“Come out, come out, bright Queen!”
“Why should we two be foes? Mordred contrived at my mother’s death and he conspires to take my throne. I sought your power so that I could kill him, but now I see that was a mistake. Far better that we should be allies. Tell me, what is it that you wish?”
Silence for a moment, broken by the murmur of the wind, before she says, “To rule in my own realm, Queen regnant of all vampires.”
Poor Mordred, so convinced of Blanche’s devotion! Yet she seems more than able to embrace existence without him. Indeed, he stands between her and the power she seeks.
“What of vengeance for your family?”
Again she hesitates, but at length I hear, “You did not kill them.”
“I sit in the place of those who did.”
“True … do you think that I should kill you for that?”
I manage a faint laugh. “I would prefer that you not, but consider that if I die, there will be chaos in this land. Out of it, the remnants of the same lineage that destroyed yours will have a chance to rise again and take the throne once more. Is that what you want?”
The wind is growing stronger, whistling down the river from the direction of the distant sea. I would draw my cloak more closely but that I must keep my arms unencumbered.
“You know that it is not.”
“Then let us make common cause. With Mordred dead at last, we will both achieve our ends.”
I dare to peer once more around the column. Blanche appears to be considering what I have said. I could try to strike her now but the distance between us is great enough that I could miss, and for certain there will no other opportunity.
“Let me come out,” I call, “that we may discuss this face-to-face.”
She tosses her head, the dark mane of her hair fluttering out around her. I marvel that she does not feel the cold, but in truth my own sense of it is fading. The power is rising in me, eclipsing all else.
“As you will,” she says.
I step out slowly from behind the pillar, knowing even as I do so that I may be taking my last steps in this life. If Blanche only means to lure me out …
“Come closer,” she says. “You fuss so about the faceless thralls, I would see you clearly.”
Crossing the sandy floor, I affect such confidence as I can muster while seeking to divert her. “You will admit that they are passing strange.”
“I suppose, although it’s been longer than I can remember since I thought of them at all. Still, you could say that they are Mordred’s little joke.”
Despite the circumstances, my curiosity stirs. “How so?”
“They are his former foes, men and women who have dared to go against him. He has taken that essence of humanity you make so much of from them and left them able to do naught but his bidding.”
A shiver runs down my neck as I consider what such a living death must mean. Does sufficient spark of consciousness still exist for any of the thralls to know what is happening to them? I almost hope that it does not for surely the knowledge of their torment would be torment in itself.
“Why doesn’t he simply kill them?”
“Because death would be a release. This way their punishment goes on and on.”
“And you call that a joke?”
“It is for him, for he certainly enjoys it.” Something in my expression must alert Blanche to my disgust for she adds, “Did you think him too refined for such cruelty?”
“I hadn’t really thought of it at all.” This much is true. I have considered, and been tempted by, what Mordred could provide to me—eternal youth and beauty, safety of a sort for my realm, and so on. I have given scant attention to his essential nature, yet I am not surprised.
“In my experience,” I say, “power does not bring out the best in people. To the contrary, it tends to be corrupting.”
I will be the exception to that, of course. Alert as I am to the sins committed by my father and my sister, Mary—both of whom only just refrained from adding my own death to their litany of offenses—I will never allow such cruelty to take root within my soul.
Bless God, let that be so.
“How perceptive of you.” Blanche beckons me nearer. “So we are to be friends, you and I? You to rule over England while I rule over the vampires? Is that what you propose?”
“It is, but none of that can come to pass while Mordred lives.”
“How then do you suggest that we destroy him? I can tell you that your power is not sufficient to the task. Go against him as you are now and you will find yourself in the ranks of the thralls.”
The very thought fills me with cringing horror. It is all I can do to refrain from crying out against so loathsome a fate.
“Your power added to mine and mine to yours will surely accomplish what we both desire,” I say as I come closer still.
“Indeed it will,” Blanche says, “but for that, one of us has to die.�
�� She raises her arm.
“Wait! We can attack him together.”
She hesitates, but I sense that she is only playing with me. Mordred’s cruelty has its equal in her. “We could,” she says, “if I were willing to trust you, but I learned long ago that trust is for fools.”
I do not need to hear more nor am I likely to, for just then she releases a dark, suffocating blow. Rather than attempt to flee again, I leap forward and dive toward the floor of the pit. She is just sufficiently surprised for me to have a chance at the desperate plan I have conceived.
Rolling over and over across the sand, I unleash a spear of light that misses her entirely and strikes instead a tier of seats rising over the pit. They collapse with a shriek of rending wood into a cloud of dust. Blanche’s face contorts, her beauty replaced by stark hatred as she prepares to deliver another blow.
Scrambling to my knees, skittering backward like a crab, I strike at her again. This time, against all odds, my aim proves true. Blanche cries out and lurches back, but not before releasing another blow at me.
I throw myself desperately to the left, rolling again, and do not get to my feet until I am once more within the shelter of the columns, where I leap upright and run, darting in between them. She howls with rage and comes after me.
As she steps across the sand, I raise my arm and, calling upon all my strength, take aim at her again. Once more, I miss her. Snarling, she continues forward. So dark and thick a cloud of life-draining energy as I have not seen before hurtles across the sand. It passes by so close as to threaten to suck me in. I cling with all my strength to the column, knowing that the contest between us is almost done. I have little left.
Indeed, I can muster only one more blow and I have scant hope of that succeeding. Blanche has withstood everything I could throw at her, and now she comes at me remorselessly. I take a final breath, gather myself, and—
She slips. Her feet roll on the pearls scattered across the floor of the pit when I struck her first. Her balance lost, she flails.
In that moment, I gather myself and whisper the only prayer I can think of.