The Queen's Men

by Oliver Clements

  The oarsmen’s blades flash in the late-afternoon sunshine and the shadow of the helmsman is long on the water behind the barge. He is a fine old fellow, Dee supposes—the helmsman—with a silver beard trimmed close, and he stands tall and erect, proud of his barge, and of his oarsmen who sweat away, but in the pink-flushed sunlight he cannot restrain himself casting anxious glances at the water’s surface, where white rose petals float, scattered there for the Queen’s arrival, and then back at the Queen’s barge, which seems to be lagging behind. The sun is already low in the sky, shining in Dee’s eyes as they round the foreland of Rotherhithe and slide toward the bulk of the Tower. Seeing it from this angle, he can see what he missed before: the hole he blew in its wall, magically reappeared. He feels a twist of guilt. What a fool he was. But it really was an accident, sort of.

  From there on the crowds thicken along the wharves and quays that line both banks, and their cheering and shouting is heartening to hear, until the church bells drown it out with their peals. People on the boat start waving back, and Francis wakes up and starts barking, but Dee remains fixed. He sees things moving in the scrying stone. But then he stops and laughs. Christ. He is going mad. What he can see are the clouds above, reflected in the stone. He can see his own reflection if he holds it so. What a fool.

  He looks up and about, and the helmsman is looking more concerned than ever. He keeps turning back to Her Majesty’s boat, which lags farther behind, and Dee can see Her Majesty is wanting to slow it down so that she can see some of the vignettes that the mummers and the playactors have put on for her on the Rotherhithe shore. Were he, instead of Hatton, on the royal barge he would remind her that time and tide wait for no man, not even the Queen of England, and that if they are not through the bridge before the tide turns, she will miss her own procession. Dee feels a lurch of guilt when he thinks of Hatton, but really. What a fool. He hopes Hatton’s innards are being pickled by anxiety: she will blame him if she is too late.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  City of London,

  the day of Her Majesty’s birthday, September 7, 1578

  Walsingham and Frommond find Sir John Jeffers standing in the sun on the steps of Saint Magnus the Martyr.

  “Bring your men. As many as are to hand.”

  Jeffers throws aside the cornet of strawberries he has bought and starts shouting and waving at the Yeomen who are gathered in knots nearby, staring downstream at the oncoming flotilla. They leave off and gather about Walsingham at the mouth of the bridge; they are young, bovine, well-armed and in most other circumstances, they’d be reassuring. Walsingham tells them that Saelminck has been seen this day.

  “I believe he has some terrible thing planned for Her Majesty.”

  “She is coming now!” Jeffers says. “Look! Her barge!”

  Quickly then.

  Walsingham tells Frommond to wait there, but she won’t.

  He does not bother arguing. Her Majesty is his concern, not Frommond. The Yeomen clear a path with their halberds, pushing and shoving and hoiking people aside. They enter into the tight confines of the bridge, darkened by overhanging buildings, and enclosed all around, the air is warm and moist and filled with midges and strong smells.

  “What are we looking for, Master Walsingham?” Jeffers asks.

  “I don’t know,” he admits. “Check any barrels you see.”

  Jeffers flinches.

  “He’s got the Greek fire?”

  “Shhh.”

  Walsingham does not want the crowd panicking any more than they are by the sight, sounds, and feel of a dozen Yeomen beating a path through them. It is all small houses and shops and people packed in to see what they can. There doesn’t seem to be anything especially odd or unusual or anything that shouldn’t happen on a day such as this. Ahead it is brighter.

  Someone has erected a stage just above head height in the frame of the new house being built, one of the new companies of playactors. Leicester has a company; the Lord High Admiral, too. Walsingham does not know who these fellows are. He supposes they must have a license, though who would have checked that? Not Beale, nor Jeffers. One of the actors is dressed as a knight of old, and swipes around a sword, making a fool of himself for laughs. The backdrop is of sky and rock and every now and then an unseen hand pokes a red dragon through and the— Well, it is what it is.

  Then he sees Beale. He is peering over heads, looking eastward downriver toward where Her Majesty comes, with his back to the stage. He turns when he hears the fuss the Yeomen are causing. The knight on the stage, too, becomes distracted, and for a moment he stops playing his part.

  At that moment the dragon emerges from the cave, a great red thing of cloth scales that should clank, but it is made of cloth, and it waggles its head to and fro, and the crowd gasp and cringe in delighted fright, and Walsingham can see the man’s legs underneath, and see that he is holding the head on what might be the stand for an arquebus. The knight roars in fright, and pretends to flee, and the dragon pursues him across the stage, long tail twisting behind, and everyone laughs and jeers.

  Beale has seen Walsingham across the crowd and touches his cap. He is looking puzzled.

  Walsingham stands stock-still.

  Christ! What is that smell?

  * * *

  CHAPTER FORTY

  River Thames, east of London,

  the day of Her Majesty’s birthday, September 7, 1578

  The oarsmen are pulling with real purpose now, and green river water is splashed over the guests’ finery, but the oarsmen on the Queen’s barge have pulled even harder and have brought her barge back in line, ten yards behind Dee’s barge, but it may yet be too late. The tide has turned already. Rose petals on the river’s surface have made up their minds and are flowing out to sea. The bridge is fifty yards ahead, thronged with people. Dee thinks he would have cleared them. What if someone drops—he worries—a snake on Her Majesty?

  The bargemaster is leading them through the central arch, under the house that’s being built by carpenters from the Low Countries. Dee tries to remember what had been said by the man taking down the old one, the day he rode across it with Frommond, before they were locked in the barge. Skillful little fuckers. It made him laugh, then.

  The oarsmen pull harder still against the tide now, and the barge is suddenly clumsier than ever. You can feel the life go out of her, as if the bargemaster might be trying to steer a brick. Ordinarily this would not matter, oarsmen can row against the current, of course, but not through the bridge, where even the widest arch is not wide enough to permit a barge and its outspread oars, and also, because the starlings on which the arches stand are so broad, the river is pinched to almost half its width, and even at a moment when the tide is hovering between wax and wane, the water comes through at twice its normal speed. The only way to do it is for the oarsmen to dip and pull as fast as they can and, then, just as the barge enters the arch, they must draw in their oars and pray they have done enough: that the barge has enough impetus to slide under the bridge and out the other side, where they can once more extend their oars and start to pull again.

  Dee is willing them on. He can see the oars bending with the strain and the oarsmen are taut with the effort. The bargemaster’s hand is on the tiller. The barge seems to leap and then seems to stop, leap and then stop. The river flow is high. It must have rained in Somerset.

  “Now!” the bargemaster bellows, and the oarsmen thrust their oars to one side, and the blades tuck in against the side of the barge as it slides into the shadow of the bridge and then into the central arch. The boat drifts, wavering in the increased flow against its bow, and it is at this moment that Dee looks down to check on Francis and seeing him unconcerned, he is about to look up again, to study the underside of the structure of the bridge, when he finds himself looking into the scrying stone, and at last, in this moment of curious crisis during which his emotions are heightened, he makes a connection with what the spirits have been trying to
tell him since he was in that room in Whitehall Palace.

  But what he sees is nothing angelic, or heavenly; he sees a face leering up at him, a man in visored helmet, such as knights wore to battle in his grandparents’ time, though the visor is raised, and the face… the face is like a gargoyle, as you see at the corners of cathedral roofs, and he realizes it is just that, a gargoyle leering down at him, and that the barge has slipped from under the bridge, and that the oarsmen have done it, and that what he is seeing is not a reflection of a hidden world beyond man’s comprehension, but a reflection of reality: a man really is leering over the edge of the bridge and he really is wearing an old-fashioned helmet, and the man is—Saelminck?

  And at that moment he hears the noise: ten swans, choppy water.

  He whirls around and sees something he never believed existed out of old wives’ tales: a dragon, ugly, clumsy, red-painted, with dead eyes, but an open mouth and from it—he knows it for what it is—the nozzle of his contraption for shooting the Greek fire, and he can hear the swans’ wings becoming louder and faster, and he sees that devil bead, the mouth of the nozzle, with its clever little flame that he spent so long developing, lit, and he can imagine the bladder in the barrel rapidly filling as the air is pumped in, and he knows that any moment the Greek fire will spurt from the hose, catch the flame, and drench him and the whole barge with boiling, inextinguishable lava.

  He is on his feet even before the stern of the barge is hardly out from under the bridge. He wastes not a movement. Not a moment. He fells the bargemaster with a single blow and wrenches the tiller to the right. The rudder swings to the left. The barge turns sluggishly, but then the current catches it, and spins it in the river, so that it lies across the current. Everybody in the barge shouts in rage, especially the oarsmen, who face the bargemaster and see what Dee has done. But the current catches the barge and drives it back toward the bridge and they stagger and must look to hanging on before they can think of rescuing the barge from the madman who has seized its tiller. By then the barge hits the first stone-built starling, and then swings across to hit another. It is caught, jammed by water pressure between the two of them, blocking the arch. The water banks up against it, tipping it so that everyone on board must grab a new handhold, but it does not roll entirely. Everybody bellows or screams in fright.

  The man from Shropshire catches Francis the lurcher, and Dee forgives him everything before he turns to look down the arch. The Queen’s barge is framed by the underside of the bridge as it comes sliding into that central arch, its gilded prow aimed right at him. Behind him, upriver, Dee hears the woof of the stream of Greek fire catching light as the swans take flight. There is much new screaming. He feels the heat at his back. The roof of the arch flickers orange. He stands in the middle of his barge now, facing down the arch to where the Queen’s boat drifts toward him, her oarsmen repeating the trick of laying their blades down. Dee has found the boat hook. As the Queen’s barge comes on, losing momentum now, he slams the boat hook into the barge’s gilded prow and tries to push it back, to stop its glide. Still everyone is screaming behind him and now the oarsmen in the Queen’s barge are turning as if they have been attacked, but as they stand to come at him, they see the fire, spreading across the river beyond the bridge behind him. They stand amazed, confused, horrified. Dee clings onto the boat hook, pushing the Queen’s barge back, stopping it coming farther, and then, in the reduced current, having to hold on to it for dear life as the Queen’s barge falters, and then starts to slip away, and back out downriver. He must keep it under the width of the bridge. He must keep it safe. He must keep her safe.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  London Bridge,

  the day of Her Majesty’s birthday, September 7, 1578

  The noise comes from within the cloth cave, or maybe from under the skirted stage, a great flapping and banging, and every man stands sore amazed, and startled, and the only movement is onstage, where Saint George has wrenched a length of what looks like a huge fat worm from the cloth cave and stands with the dragon holding it so that its curious brass nozzle points out over the river, and points it down, into the water, when suddenly it spurts into flame with a meaty woof, and there is a strong and hellish stink, and a pall of black smoke that blows back across the bridge to make everyone choke. Jane Frommond can feel the heat.

  Walsingham knows what it is. So does Beale. They are up onto the stage, but as they do so, three men tear down the backdrop, and unlike Saint George, they have real swords and come at Walsingham and Beale, driving them back for a moment and there is that terrifying sound of steel ringing and sliding on steel. They exchange swipes and the three men drive the two back, but then the two are reinforced by two or three Yeomen with their halberds. The three should turn and run, but they do not. They are joined by three others, and they prepare to sell their lives dear.

  “For God’s sake, stop the fire!” Walsingham shouts at the Yeoman Frommond recognizes as Jeffers.

  Jeffers is nonplussed. Frommond remembers Dee’s description: bellows; hose; barrel; hose; nozzle; fire. She ducks under the stage. This is where the thundering noise comes from and in the semidarkness she makes out four men, hard at work on the bellows. They see her, but do not stop. What can a woman do? Especially one with no sword or gun. She doesn’t even carry an eating knife. She grips the first length of hose in both hands. It is rigid, and made of greasy leather, double-walled and so full of forced air that she cannot bend it to pinch it shut. It snakes across to a barrel behind the stage, which is almost as tall as she. From there, the other hose, almost as thick, just as rigid, leads up to Saint George, who stands on the parapet of the bridge, still trying to tip the mechanism down so that he shoots the fire on something below, but the mechanism will not budge, and the fire squirts out into the river. Inches above Frommond’s head, the stage reverberates under the stamping and scuffling of the fighting men. She ducks and makes her way to Saint George. She has a hairpin. Two of them. She is bent double and must fiddle her skirts through the struts of the new building and of the stage, but she gets there, and finds herself standing below him; his calves are at eye level, and he stands with his heels to her.

  She looks up. Seeing her movement, he glances down.

  It is him. Saelminck. The man who seduced, ruined, and then murdered Alice Rutherford. The man who caused Frommond’s near death in the barge. They stare at each other. His eyes are watery blue, almost impossibly cold. In his hands is the leather hose, and from its nozzle a few feet away spurts molten fire. In her hands: two silver hairpins. Each is six inches long, each as thick as a poor woman’s knitting needle, but each as sharp as a rich man’s dagger. She holds them in her fists as you would the bars of a window in gaol. And then turns her fists sideways, and she rams the pins into Saelminck’s calves.

  He screams and flails. He drops the hose, and the nozzle springs into a life of its own, shooting fire out over the river in snaking curves. He tries to reach the pins in his legs, but as he dances on the parapet Frommond bats at him, and shoves his feet, and he loses his footing and his legs go out from under him. He lands heavily on the parapet but still manages to turn and grab her shoulders as he does; he clings on and tries to haul himself back, using her. They are howling face to howling face as she tries to wrench herself from his grasp. He has twice her strength. He claws at her and would bite her if he could. She pulls herself from him, twisting and writhing. Saelminck’s legs still hang over the edge of the bridge, but now the Greek fire is running out. The barrel is empty, and Dee’s design is not perfect, and when the liquid fire slows to a dribble, it drips down onto Saelminck’s legs, and sets them flaming.

  With a snarling scream, he arches backward, calculating in his agony that he must get to water, and she who had been pushing him now finds him pulling her, and with his grip like a vise on her arms he pulls her back with him, and she can do nothing to stop herself smashing against the parapet and toppling over, following him into the river b
elow.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  London Bridge,

  the day of Her Majesty’s birthday, September 7, 1578

  Dee sees the two bodies fall. A man and a woman. They hit the bottom of the half-turned barge, and they glance off it and vanish into the sea of flames that swirls through the arches either side of that which the barge has blocked. The fiery slick piles up against the barge’s gunwale, threatening to spill over, but it doesn’t quite: it parts, and flows around it, and slides down through the arches on either side. Everyone in the barge has been thrown to one side, and they are trying to untangle themselves from oars and other bodies, and Francis is there, barking and barking, and the bargemaster is coming around, too. A couple of the oarsmen have clambered onto the starlings, and they are retreating along them, inching past Her Majesty’s barge.

  Dee sees a flash of something burning under the water, under the archway, and then it’s gone, downstream under the Queen’s barge.

  “Get out!” he shouts to those still in the barge. “Get out!”

  He is sure the barge will soon go up in flames.

  But then his mind catches up with his eye, and he knows what he has just seen: a man and a woman falling. Frommond.

  “Take this!” he shouts at the bargemaster, who has roused himself and seen what is happening. He takes the boat hook and shouts to the oarsmen to tie the Queen’s boat up to the starling. Dee leaps onto the bow of the Queen’s barge, pushing aside more oarsmen as he hurtles its length. He jumps up onto the gunwale and his head hits the underside of the bridge. He carries on. Hatton looms before him.

  “What the devil—”