Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer (20 page)

“If I were in a position to do so,” Robin says, “I would order the world in such a fashion that I might bask continually in your favor as in the radiance of the sun. As it is, I can only beseech you to forgive your poor servant who loves you and thinks solely of your well-being.”

A pretty speech nicely delivered. The last of my anger at him slips away. I hold out my hand.

“Lawd, Robin! We have a tiny tiff and you magnify it into high drama. You know that you are my dearest friend as, indeed, all the world should never forget.”

I raise my voice just enough to assure that the courtiers hovering on the other side of the door can hear me. With those few words, the strain slips from his face and he smiles. As well he should for I have restored him to my favor and, perforce, the court’s. The uncomfortable night he no doubt spent worrying about exactly how far he had fallen is over and the new day has broken.

Truly, power is an amazing thing. I find I have even more of a taste for it than I would have anticipated.

When he is done kissing my hand, I draw him a little away so that we may speak privately. Now that we are friends again, I have a use for him.

“There is somewhere I must go tonight. I want you to arrange it for me very quietly, and accompany me.”

“Of course but Cecil—”

“I don’t want him to know anything about this. It is strictly between the two of us. You understand?”

Whether he does or not, Robin is pleased. Not only is he back in my graces, but I am trusting him above my Spirit, who, like Kat, is no friend of his.

“Absolutely, have no doubt, I will arrange everything just as you wish. Where do you want to go?”

In all likelihood, he expects me to say that I want to return to Southwark and I do, but not yet. When I tell him what I intend, he looks surprised but he is wise enough after my recent coldness to ask for no explanation and raise no objection. I am content that the matter will be well managed.

That leaves me to get through yet another round of celebrations. I have been Queen for scarce three days and have had precious little opportunity to see to the ordinary business of the realm. Somewhere laws are being proposed, cases are being adjudicated, foreign affairs are being hashed over or made a hash
of, but I am not there. I am here, the amazing, performing royal puppet. See her smile! See her wave! See her pretend to be interested in an endless parade of preening blowhards.

And to think that I once believed that all my worse problems would be solved by becoming Queen. I would laugh at my own idiocy if I weren’t so tempted to weep.

Of course, I will do neither. I will, instead, do my best to assure all concerned that the hand that holds the scepter is steady and sure. Admittedly, my task would be easier if the ambassador from the Hanseatic League would conclude his peroration on the vital necessity of expanding the tax and customs concessions granted to his trading guild, including listing each of them in excruciating detail. By the time he has finally done, I am nearly limp from the tedium.

Still, I manage one diversion, that of avoiding Cecil, who spends the entire day attempting to gain my ear. Each time he approaches, I wave him off while pretending rapt interest in whoever is speaking to me. My attentiveness wins frowns from him but startled smiles from the recipients of my unexpected interest. I must assume that Walsingham told Cecil of my fears concerning my mother. But perhaps he did not. Perhaps the schoolmaster trusts no one fully, not even the man who brought him to my notice.

If so, he is wiser by far than most.

Of all the questions that have bumped and tumbled through my mind in the hours since reading my mother’s letter, one stands above the rest: why did Anne raise no alarm when Mordred visited her, not once but repeatedly? It was a curious omission on the part of a queen who must have understood the precariousness of her position. But upon reflection, I think I understand why she did it.
He expressed no disappointment that you were a girl
. What a balm that must have been to a frightened
woman confronted by her royal husband’s fury. How easily Mordred played on her loneliness and dread to insinuate himself into her graces and win, if only for a time, her trust.

How shocked he must have been when she chose death over all he offered.

If it comes to it, will I have the courage to do the same?

No matter if I do, for plainly and simply I must not die or England will be caught between civil war and foreign invasion. No realm, no people, can survive such dual threats.

I must live and I must prevail. If only I can determine how. To do that, I must seek counsel of a very particular kind.

So, when night descends at last, the candles in the great hall are gutted, and the court wends its way to bed—though few will remain in their own—I join Robin in the passage beyond my chamber. He is at pains to assure me that all is in readiness.

“The river is running too high just now to risk it, but I have horses at the ready and a handful of good men who can be trusted to keep their silence.”

I fasten my cloak over the simple woolen gown I have got myself into without any assistance. Kat and my other ladies think me so exhausted that I have retired early. I would not have them know otherwise.

“They had better or they will not keep their tongues.”

We go swiftly out through the walled garden to the road beyond where his men wait. They keep their eyes forward, not a one so much as glancing at me. I am reassured that he has chosen well.

Robin cups his hands and bends to give me a leg up into the saddle. We are away, our mounts’ hoofbeats muffled by the fresh fall of snow. I smell the banked fires of my city mingling with the icy wildness that blows from the north where it is said that all manner of marvelous creatures dwell. I am inclined to believe
it for truly creation holds wonders we can barely comprehend. It is that I seek in dark depths of night when all the world lies wreathed in stillness and decent men and women do not stir.

The guard on watch at the Tower bars our way until Robin is recognized. Then they stand aside swiftly. We pass over the moat and through the gate before Lion Tower. I dismount on the green—for all I know on the very spot where my mother died or near enough—and look toward the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula. The high windows are silvered by moonlight. Nothing moves within.

On sudden impulse, I reach for Robin’s hand. I should go alone, but the mere thought makes me falter. The wooden door leading to the chapel, much battered and stained, creaks as it swings open. Just inside, I stop and look toward the altar. Is it my imagination or does a faint mist rise near it?

“Stay here,” I say. “Do not come any farther.”

“Elizabeth—” Robin uses my given name only in our most private moments, but I cannot blame him for doing so now. Standing alone in a place that has encompassed so much pain and fear has a certain intimacy.

Even so, I release his hand and turn to face him. “Whatever you see—or think you see—do not attempt to interfere. Stay here if you can, leave if you must, but do not approach the altar or anywhere near it.”

His eyes darken with dread but such is his devotion to me that he says, “You cannot expect me to—”

“I order you to. Damn you, Robin, listen to me! There are forces at play here that you do not understand.”

“But you do? This involves Mordred, obviously. Is he here?”

“No, at least I don’t think so. It isn’t about him, not directly. I need to—”

What can I say? That I need to reach out across the chasm of time to try to find the one person who might be able to tell me how to defeat Mordred without destroying myself in the bargain?

Robin would think me mad, and who is to say that he would be wrong?

I take his hand again and raise it to my lips. He stiffens in surprise. I look up, meeting his gaze.

“As you love me, do as I ask. If I think you are in peril, my resolve will weaken and we may both be lost.”

He takes a breath, lets it out slowly, and nods. With difficulty, I release him. Even more reluctantly, I turn to gaze down the aisle toward my mother’s grave. The mist really is there and it is deepening.

I step away from Robin, and in all honesty, with that step he is forgotten. I can think only of what I have come to do.

The mist dissolves and I am standing on a hilltop within sight of the river Thames. Tumbled walls covered in moss give way to fields running down to the water. A lovely woman is nearby. Her hair is black as a raven’s wing, her skin like cream kissed by the sun. She wears a crimson robe caught at her shoulder with a golden broach. The fabric presses against her as she moves, revealing a figure at once slim and strong. A bow and quill are hooked over her shoulder.

A moment ago, I knelt beside my mother’s grave in the chapel, praying that I would find a way to bridge the chasm across time. So swiftly my prayers have been answered! I am without breath, left gaping as the woman strides toward me.

“Elizabeth.” Her voice washes over me like fast-running water, exhilarating and daunting all at once. “At last we meet.”

“Morgaine?” I know who she is—as my mother said, in the way of dreams—yet the circumstances are so strange that I can scarcely believe it.

“I am she. The Slayer before you and the one who has awaited your coming all these years.”

A thousand years spent waiting … where? “What is this place?”

“My home.” With a graceful movement of her arm, she indicates the hill, the river, and the shore beyond. “Like everywhere
else, it exists first and foremost in eternity. When I needed it, I found it there.”

“I was in the chapel a moment ago—”

“You are in a different moment now, a much longer one that beats to a time vastly greater than the flicker of a human life. But you have come here for a reason. Tell me what it is.”

So much draws me to her—my awakening beside my mother’s grave, Anne’s letter, the desperate struggle to save my realm. But even in that vast moment, urgency grips me.

“Mordred—”

At once, she nods. “Yes, of course, Mordred. He is at the center, after all, which I suppose you realize is where he was always determined to be.”

“I’m not sure that I do.” I am struggling to understand anything at all. What has happened to me in the past few days is beyond comprehension. By comparison, the rest of my life seems plain and ordinary.

“You, whose father exiled you into the darkness where you were left to wonder if every breath you took would be your last? You fought your way back to nothing less than the throne itself. What drives you drives him.”

The notion that Mordred and I are alike in some way offends me deeply. Far more important, the suspicion that it is true terrifies me.

“I was born to be Queen,” I say stiffly, “anointed before God for that purpose. How can you compare me to such a creature as—”

“But he wasn’t always,” Morgaine says. Sadness flits behind her eyes, so intense that it pierces my offended dignity. “He was a man and, before that, a child as innocent as any. Mordred chose the path of darkness for what he truly believes is the greater good. If you do not understand that, you will have no chance of defeating him.”

“But I must.” The notion that I may not fills me with despair. “What he wants for England cannot come to pass!”

“Because it would offend your god?”

Your god,
not simply God. I remember then what Mordred told me, that Morgaine is a priestess of the old faith. A pagan, and as such, perhaps not so deserving of my trust as I would wish her to be.

Even so, she remains my only hope.

“Mordred is not human,” I say. That is the crux of it, but I wonder if she—who has waited a thousand years for me to come—can understand what is missing when humanity is gone. I am not sure that I fully grasp it myself.

“Because he does not die?” Morgaine asks. “He can do so but only under extraordinary circumstances. In the normal course of events, he is immortal.”

“As you are?”

The idea seems to amuse her. “Not in the least. My spirit lingers here because I will it so, but my body—of which I was quite fond, by the way—is long gone. No, Mordred and his kind are entirely different from any who know death. They don’t live in the shadow of the scaffold, the sword always descending toward their necks.”

My stomach tightens. I know far too well what she means and yet I perceive that she is speaking of much more than my private fears.

“You are saying that to be human is to know the inevitably of death?”

“Oh, more than that. It is to know life as a flash of lightning against a darkening sky. We exist and are gone—
poof
. However much we suffer in the world or whatever joy may come to us, we know at the core of our being that we are tiny and insignificant. Yet we are driven to become so much more.”

“Surely,” I venture, “God determines what we are?”

Morgaine shrugs, as though what I believe is of no great import compared to what truly is.

“God—in any form—gives you the gift of creation but it is up to you how well you use it. Mordred has convinced himself that he can rule England and eventually the world without any real harm to humans. Of course, you will have to be fed upon by the ever-growing legions of vampires that he intends to create. But in return for that, he will free you from all pain, all suffering, all need to strive or dream. You will be so drained of spirit, so lulled into lethargy, as to be as lowing cattle content to chew your cuds even as the blade slices through your necks.”