Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer (26 page)

“Are you sure that they work?” I ask finally.

“Absolutely … at least, so I have been told and I see no reason to doubt it. But Elizabeth, tell me truly, are you sure… ?”

He looks at me with such longing that I would be hard-pressed to deny him even if I had not already made up my mind.

“Yes, my love. But how do you … ?” I am trying to envision how the contraption is put in place when Robin demonstrates.

“The male member must be erect before the glove can be donned,” he explains, “but as you can see, that is no impediment.”

Indeed, Robin always seems to find my presence most arousing. I stare in fascination as he attempts the task and am obscurely pleased when he has difficulty with it. I would not like to think that he has experience in such matters for then I would have to question with whom.

After several awkward moments, I offer my assistance, which he accepts most gratefully. When I am done, I sit back on my haunches to observe my handiwork. “Remarkable, truly. However did the French think of them?”

“I suppose we should be grateful that they did.” Robin’s voice sounds unusually thick. His face is flushed and he appears to be having difficulty breathing. Even so, he asks me, “Elizabeth, are you certain?”

That is the question, is it not? What I contemplate is irrevocable.
Once gone, my virginity cannot be regained. Perhaps I will regret its loss, but with all that lies before me, I am determined to know this most essential part of human life no matter what the risk.

Truly, it is vital that I do so for even as I consider what I am about to do, my gaze strays to his throat. A need that is other than human rises in me.

Repressing it, I bend over him, brushing my breasts lightly across his chest. He groans and takes hold of my hips.

What shall I say of what follows? I assumed, without even knowing that I did so, that the passion we had already shared had prepared me for what was to come, and to some extent that was true. Yet the sheer intimacy of allowing him into my body was unlike anything I could anticipate. Men make such a great deal of that act of penetration that they do not seem to recognize how utterly and completely they are taken by a woman. Perhaps that is for the best.

But I, riding him vigorously after the briefest flash of discomfort, feel supremely in control. By the rhythm of my body, I control his release and my own. When we both scale the heights of physical joy, I know that my instinct to come to him was right. I give my virginity gladly, a sacrifice for the boon of courage, of which I have vastly greater need.

Afterward, lying in Robin’s arms, I listen to his heartbeat slowing as my own does the same. Contentment washes over me and with it a kind of peace I cannot recall ever feeling before. I have known pleasure well enough, to be sure, but the change I have allowed to take place within me seems strangely liberating. Queen that I am, anointed in the name of Almighty God, I am also completely and utterly human.

And determined to remain so.

“I have a plan to defeat Mordred.”

Robin takes a breath and hugs me closer. “I was certain that you would. Tell me of it.”

“I have seen him in his lair. He is … formidable but arrogant. I think that he truly does not believe that he can be bested.”

“How do you mean to do it?”

When I tell him, he is silent for several moments. Finally he asks, “How did you come to this?”

“The Druid priestess Morgaine told me what to do. I went to St. Peter ad Vincula in hope of finding her and I was not disappointed. She was there, as she has been for a thousand years, waiting for the one to come who would relieve her of the burden of defeat that she has carried all that time.”

He shakes his head slowly, struggling to comprehend. “I do not understand. How could you—”

“I don’t know and I will not pretend to. But scarcely did I begin to think of her than she was there, across the veil of time. She and Mordred are knit together far back to when they were both children. She knows him better than anyone.”

“And she has told you how to defeat him?”

“How I may possibly defeat him, nothing is guaranteed.”

He turns slightly, easing me onto my side. His eyes are liquid pools of dark passion in which I …

Truly, I am ridiculous. Romance is all well and good, but I have had my tryst with it and I must now return my mind to business.

“Did you find what you needed at the manor to accomplish this victory?” he asked.

I think for a moment and slowly nod. Indeed, I believe that I know precisely what is needed. It only remains to be seen if I am right.

True to my word to Kat, I am back in my own bed before dawn, although not before Robin and I make use of two more of the French gloves. If only our Gallic neighbors across the Channel concentrated their attention on what they are so good at, namely pleasure, rather than dabbling in government, we would all be better off.

The day is, once again, taken up with queenly duties of little import compared to what else I face. Yet amid the usual demands lightly cloaked as requests from various parliamentarians, churchmen, diplomats, bureaucrats, social climbers, and the like, I am free to send my mind ranging over what must be done to save my realm from evil threat. By the time night falls, thankfully so early in the chill of winter, I have settled on how I will proceed.

To begin, I write a letter:

Honored Lord Mordred, if I may address you as such, kindly receive my thanks for the hospitality you have so generously shown me. Truly, the fascinating hours I spent in your most gracious home were at once enlightening and thought provoking.

As I believe you know, since you so eloquently made your proposal to me, I have struggled to understand what
is best for my realm and myself. I would be less than honest if I did not admit to you that my efforts to that end continue. I am as yet unresolved in my mind although I wish most sincerely to put an end to the turmoil of my doubts and confusion.

To assist me in better determining the proper course for me in this matter, I beseech you to send me the Lady Blanche, whom I confess to wishing to know far better than is possible on such scant acquaintance as she and I have already shared.

The counsel of a woman who has already joined with you may prove invaluable to me. I wish to draw upon her wisdom and experience in this matter.

With thanks for your understanding and patience, I am—

Elizabeth Regina

I read the letter over several times, wondering if it is too much. Mordred possesses undeniable intelligence that I would be a fool to abuse. If I rouse his suspicion by too fulsome prose, I will have cause to sorely regret it. Will he think me serious or will he smell betrayal?

Yet the more I consider the letter, the more convinced I am that it will lull my adversary into a false sense of confidence. Let him believe that I yearn for the eternal youth and beauty of the Lady Blanche, as though I were a poor, shallow female called to no higher purpose. Let him send her to me, this once mortal daughter of warriors who boasts of her own power.

I seal the letter with hot wax into which I press my personal
signet. By the time I do so, the new day has arrived. Banishing the last of my doubts, I summon a servant.

“Find Doctor Dee and tell him to wait upon me here.”

Who better to send with a message for the king of the vampires than the magus who played so key a role in bringing about my confrontation with them?

The illustrious Doctor Dee did everything but grasp his balls with both hands and bend over moaning in fear while he waited for me to read Elizabeth’s letter. Beads of sweat shone at his temples. His mouth twitched as his eyes darted here, there, and everywhere. I could smell the fear rolling off him like the stench of a fetid swamp.

He was an interesting fellow, was Dee, at once as frail a human as any who has walked this earth, but at the same time possessed of insatiable curiosity and a need to make sense of the world that bordered on obsession. I could almost have sympathized with him had I not fully appreciated the futility of trying to understand this strange, contradictory place in which we find ourselves, washed up like amnesiac survivors on an alien shore.

“Tell your mistress that I will grant her wish,” I instructed finally as I rolled the parchment up again and placed it on a nearby table.

He appeared relieved that he would not have to face Elizabeth’s wrath, yet even so he could not contain his restless mind.

“If I might ask,” he ventured, “what it is that she wants?” In his anxiousness, he tugged on his beard so hard that he winced.

His willingness to admit his own ignorance if only to assuage it amused me and won him a measure of tolerance I would not otherwise have extended.

I raised a hand and at once Blanche was at my side. With a private smile for her, I replied, “The Queen requests the counsel of a
lady who may advise her as to the best course to follow in this matter.”

Dee’s eyes darted between us, widening yet farther as Blanche’s beauty had its usual effect. Not even a man who aspired to the wisdom of ages was immune from it.

“This lady?”

“The selfsame.”

I took Blanche’s hand, brushing my lips over her fragrant skin as her gaze met mine. “Will you undertake this commission for me? I can trust no one else with it.”

I was asking her to persuade Elizabeth to agree to my proposal, join with me, and become my queen, thereby denying Blanche what she had so long sought for herself. I took it as a measure of her true devotion and submission to me that, after the briefest hesitation, she nodded.

A doleful assent to be sure but good enough under the circumstances.

“I will inform Her Majesty then,” Dee said, looking anxiously toward the door, through which he scampered scant moments later with speed suggesting that all the imps of hell were nipping at his heels. Even so, he could not resist a last glance over his shoulder and what I took to be a sigh of regret that he could not bring himself to tarry longer.

Having draped herself over the arm of the chair where I once again reclined, my dutiful inamorata blinked back tears—leading me to wonder if she could actually still cry—and pouted.

“How can you send me to that mindless ninny? It is too cruel.”

I accepted the wine offered by a thrall but handed it to Blanche in a small service intended to soothe her temper. I took another for myself.

“You have nothing to fear. She is merely the means to an end.”

I was lying, of course. Already Elizabeth fascinated me, partly because
of her connection to Morgaine but increasingly in her own right as well. Her fiery will and courage, the sensuality glowing behind the façade of virginity, and, most particularly, the raw power she possessed, the equal or greater of my own … all that and more convinced me that I could love her as I had not loved since Morgaine. Indeed, perhaps I was destined to do no less.

That being so, I did not hesitate to use Blanche but kept her in good humor with a gift of a strand of pearls, each bigger than a man’s thumb, that I twined around her neck amid assurances that no touch, no presence, no companion, could ever please me so well as she did.

Yet I also cautioned her, “I know your temperament better than you do yourself. Once with the Queen, do not forget your duty to me. Fulfill your mission and you will have reward beyond any you can imagine. But fail and—”

“I shall not. You will have your foolish mortal for whatever good she may do you.” Blanche bent closer, inhaling my scent even as I breathed in hers. “But afterward, when you have used her to the fullest possible extent and there is nothing left of her save an empty husk, then I will still be here and we will be as one, shall we not, my most dear and precious lord?”