Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer (2 page)

“Majesty,” the two murmur in unison as they enter and incline their heads.

“If we might speak alone,” Cecil adds. He glances at my ladies, who hover close together like so many bright-hued canaries suddenly sensing the presence of a cat.

I dismiss them with a wave of my hand. They go, trailing backward glances of concern. Before the door closes behind them, I hear their anxious murmurs.

Only Kat remains, dear Kat, who came to me as my nurse when I was scarcely four years old and has remained at my side ever since save for those dark times when she suffered imprisonment for my sake. I have said and it is true that I received life from Anne but love from Kat. I love her in return. Virtually my first act upon learning of Mary’s death and my own ascension to the throne was to name her First Lady of the Royal Bedchamber. She takes her responsibilities seriously, sometimes too much so.

“You, too,” I say to her, but gently for she is old now, well nigh on to seventy years, and I would not hurt her for the world. All the same, she must recognize that I am no longer the
lonely, frightened child she cosseted. I am a woman now and Queen.

“Majesty—,” she begins.

I cut her off with a smile. “I worry for your health, dearest, for how could I ever manage without you? Please me and go to your rest.”

She obeys but not without a frown that creases her withered-apple face and would have shriveled men less intent upon their business.

“What has happened?” I ask at once when we are alone, for something grave must have occurred to explain their presence in the dead of night.

“We come on a matter touching on the security of the realm,” Dee replies. “If Your Majesty would be so good as to accompany us …” He gestures in the direction of the door.

I am, to put it plainly, dumbfounded. The procession into London and the reception afterward for the city’s dignitaries, each vying with all the others for my notice, ran late. The coming day promises to be both glorious and fraught in the extreme. By what right does anyone lay claim not merely to my attention at such a time but that I should actually go with them for some unnamed purpose? Even such good servants as Dee and Cecil must need explain themselves.

“What matter touching on the security of the realm?” I demand. “Do not speak in riddles but state your purpose clearly.”

Cecil is accustomed to my sometimes querulous nature, Dee far less so. Both pale slightly.

“Majesty,” Cecil says. “The threat to your realm is so strange and sinister, so defying of all mortal reason, that upon the advice of good Doctor Dee, it was determined that it could only be revealed to you now.”

“The conjunction of the planets was not favorable before this hour,” the magus endeavors to explain. “But it will remain so for only a short time. You must come with us.”

Had I not known both men so well and had they not served me with such devotion through perilous times, I would have ordered them from my chamber at once. As it was, I still seriously consider doing so.

“Please, Majesty,” Dee entreats. “Time is fleeting and there is much to accomplish.”

Before I can reply, Cecil lifts the heavy fur cloak I wore earlier in the day and drapes it over my shoulders in a gesture at once protective and insistent.

“We are your most loyal servants, Majesty,” he says simply. “I would lay down my life for you and so would Doctor Dee. I beg you to find it in your heart to trust us for just a little while and I promise that all will be made clear.”

In all fairness, Cecil has earned my forbearance, as has Dee. Though I remain reluctant to engage in so odd an enterprise, I acquiesce. Wrapped in the fur cloak, I remove my silk chamber slippers and allow Cecil to help me don a pair of leather pattens. That done, I suffer to be led from my rooms and down the stone corridor to the winding steps that give out onto the Tower Green.

At once, my breath freezes in the chill air but I scarcely notice, so glorious is the sight I behold. The sky, shorn of clouds after the leaden storms of recent days, is a riot of stars. Orion hunts in the west but I have little time to contemplate him before Dee draws my attention elsewhere.

“Look there, Majesty, Jupiter rises in Aquarius as Mars does the same in Scorpio. Both augur well for your rule. As you are the lion, so shall you command the powers of war and wisdom throughout your long reign.”

“God willing it will be long,” Cecil says fervently. He is shivering already. “It may not be if Her Majesty takes a chill.”

“Then let us go on,” I say, suddenly more cheerful in the face of this strange adventure.

We turn in the direction of the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. When Mary held me captive in the Tower, where I dwelled in daily expectation of my death, I was allowed to pray only in my rooms. That suited me well enough for I had no desire to enter the place where my mother is buried, having been carried there directly from her execution mere yards away and deposited in her grave with scant ceremony.

Nor is she alone. Catherine Howard, my father’s other slain queen, lies beside her along with poor Lady Jane Grey, the brilliant child who my dear Robin’s treacherous father tried to foist on the realm, thereby bringing ruin to his own family. The Nine-Day Queen died in the same manner as my mother and Catherine Howard, whose final resting place she shares.

Dee must sense my reluctance for he touches my arm lightly and says, “Pray forgive us, Majesty, but the signs are unmistakable. Only in this place at this time can we achieve what must be done.”

Having gone so far, I tell myself that it would be cowardly to turn back. Even so, I enter the chapel slowly and stand for several moments staring down the short nave toward the altar. There, just to the left near the chapel’s north wall, is the simple flagstone slab beneath which my mother lies. Nothing else marks her presence or that of the others. Yet I know where she is all the same. Several years ago, I pestered poor Kat, who surely deserves better from me than I have ever given her, to tell me what she knew. She complied, if reluctantly. From her, I learned the details of my mother’s death and interment as recorded
by eyewitnesses. I have never spoken of it with anyone else, not even Robin.

“Hurry, Majesty,” Dee says, and urges me forward.

I still do not comprehend what he and Cecil intend, yet I obey all the same. Something about the nearness of my mother’s grave draws me on. Clutching the fur robe tightly, I walk toward it, unable to take my eyes from the cold gray slab that holds her earthbound.

But that is absurd. My mother’s soul, which I privately accord to be as pure as anyone else’s, has long since flown to its reward. Nothing lies beneath the slab save her mortal remains. And yet—

“Majesty?” As though from a great distance, I hear Cecil speak. He sounds uncertain, but that cannot be right. The most trusted of my counselors is a man of extraordinary competency never at a loss in any situation.

Until now. I turn and see him just behind me, pale in the faint glow of the lamps kept burning in the chapel all night, some say to hold at bay the vengeful ghosts who dwell there. By contrast, Dee seems in his element, his eyes alight with excitement.

I turn my head again toward the grave. A faint but unmistakable mist rises from it, illuminated by the starlight pouring through the high windows above the altar. Scarcely aware of what I am doing, I move closer. The mist grows, expands, thickens, until I am engulfed within it. Oddly devoid of fear, I stand as though observing all from outside myself, able only to marvel at what is happening.

The silence is so profound that I can hear my own measured heartbeat. Apart from that, there is only a great hush, as though the world beyond has ceased to exist. I can no longer feel the floor beneath my feet; it is as though I have
become detached, floating free of earthly strictures. The mist has a quality of warmth and softness that I would not have expected. Additionally, I imagine that I smell roses. Far in the back of my mind, a memory stirs: my mother, twirling me in her arms, in a garden filled with white and crimson blossoms.

And my father looking on, weighing us both through slitted eyes.

I breathe and with each breath the mist enters into me, becomes part of me, filling me. The barriers between what is myself and what is not begin to shimmer and grow transparent until they melt away altogether. I am the mist and it is I. Looking down the length of my body, I discover that I am shimmering as though lit from within by a bright, white light. Still, I am not afraid. My mother is there with me. I hear her speak, not in words as we know them, but in the deepest recesses of my heart.

“My daughter,” Anne says, “do not fear your duty. Embrace it that this realm may be preserved against the scourge of evil that has come upon it.”

She speaks, and my heart, so long steeled against the cruelties of the world, cries out in yearning for her. Without hesitation, I take the final steps and kneel beside my mother’s grave.

How to describe what happens next when I scarcely understand it myself? It is as though a great wall within me suddenly cracks and the light pours through it. I am blinded, and yet I see for the very first time. See my beloved kingdom unfolding beneath skies across which sun and storm alike speed in an instant. See night and day flow in quick succession as ages pass, armies clash, and fortresses rise and fall. See myself rising above my city, above my realm, a queen regnant clothed in majesty, armed with power unlike any I have ever glimpsed while all
around legions of red-fanged, black-winged enemies soar across the moon.

I bear it so long as I can before my mind reels away to find surcease in blessed darkness. Dee and Cecil together catch me as I slump unconscious to the chapel floor.

Drifting over the city, following the pewter ribbon of the river, I, Mordred, king of the dark realm, came to the ancient hill where once Gog and Magog were worshipped by wiser folk than are to be found there now. The temples of the old ones are buried under the timber of the Saxons, interred in turn beneath the stones the Normans raised, foundation for the abode of kings, the place of execution for queens. I smelled the earth, well sated with blood. It warmed me.

She was sitting at a tower window behind a curtain of frost that ran like a web of frozen ferns across the leaded panes. Fire-haired, pale-skinned Elizabeth, child of Anne, the one for whom I have waited so long. I confess to a certain excitement upon seeing her finally.

She was not conventionally beautiful, being both too slender and too tightly strung like a fine thoroughbred mare that resists mounting. No matter; she was everything I desired, everything I needed. Or she might be. The coming hours would tell the tale.

Little men with little minds would do their utmost to make her my enemy. I, who would give her immortality if only she had the wit to take it! I remember being human, if only barely, as a dream that dissolves upon waking. It is a mayfly’s existence, here today, gone today. Surely, she would recognize better when it is offered to her. If not—

Her throat was white and slim. I could just make out the thin blue tracing of her life’s blood coursing beneath her skin. Could feel on my tongue the hint of how she would taste. Hunger stirred in me but I could wait, if only for a little while.

Separated by mere inches but invisible to her, I observed Elizabeth at my leisure, watching the steady rise and fall of her breath beneath breasts round and ripe as young apples. She appeared absorbed in her own thoughts, with no sense of me, not then, nor any awareness that she sat not on the edge of a throne but perched on the hinge of fate. Swing one way and I would open the eternal vistas of the night to her and place her by my side in golden halls where death can never rule. Swing the other … I would drain her to the final carmine drop and throw regret away along with her hollowed husk.

Surely it would not come to that.

A flicker of motion on the Tower Green drew my eye. Bustling in their importance, the men of the hour hurried along with their cloaks clutched close against winter’s chill and their own fear. No doubt they had a plan to manage Elizabeth if she balked, but they looked anxious all the same, as well they should for they involved themselves in matters vastly beyond their ken. Balanced on the air, hovering over my ancient and eternal kingdom, I watched them come. They paused at the foot of the stairs leading to the royal apartment to exchange a final, anxious glance.

And up they went.

I followed when they emerged again with her in tow. I watched them enter the chapel that holds so much pain. I witnessed all that transpired from my perch on the far side of the high window above the altar.

That light … the roses—oh, yes, I smelled them. Dear, dead Anne still couldn’t resist meddling, scant good it would do her.

It was too much for my poor Elizabeth, of course. When it was done, she lay on the slate floor, hovered over by her fretful gentlemen, so pale and still, scarcely breathing. I could restore her with a touch, but this was not the time. She had chosen her path; now she had to follow it to me.