Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer (30 page)

When Blanche departed, I retired to my library. I did not wish to dwell on what I would do if, even after such persuasion, Elizabeth remained uncertain as to her course. Rather than consider what I hoped most fervently would never come to pass, I sought diversion.

My eye happened to fall on Malory’s
Le Morte d’Arthur.
I had acquired the volume shortly after its publication almost seventy-five years ago but had barely glanced at it before tossing it aside in disgust. The fevered romance about my father and his court, intended to pander to the most maudlin sentiments, infuriated me. Or at least it had. With my objective at long last in sight, I was prepared to take a more benign view of the work.

I even thought that I might glean some insights into how to present myself to my human subjects when the time came to do so. It amused me to think that I would claim the mantle of Arthur’s fictional honor and nobility. Perhaps I would rename the court Camelot and install a round table.

In such manner, I passed a pleasant interlude. I was deep into the fanciful account of Arthur’s birth—which, if it had held a shred of truth, would have made him a bastard, too—when the first awareness struck that something was not right.

I felt from a distance what seemed like a glancing blow, inflicting pain but bringing hard upon it a surge of strength and resolution. My first reaction was bewilderment. Who among my kind was I sensing?
I considered any who might be absent from the manor, but no name occurred to me; none, that is, save Blanche’s.

My instinct was to pursue her at once and put an end to whatever was occurring. I leapt up, but the quick exchange of blows that followed disoriented me and robbed me of the ability to react immediately. My mind screamed out against the battle even as I was held captive by it.

That Elizabeth had attacked first was beyond doubt. Such foolhardy treachery! But so, too, was I aware that Blanche did not fight merely to defend herself; her clear intent was to kill. She would deny that afterward, of course, stressing that she had only meant to preserve her own life, but I knew the truth and even felt a stirring admiration of her for it. Not so submissive after all, dear Blanche. Indeed, the thought came to me that if she survived, she might prove a worthy consort after all.

Not that I wanted to see Elizabeth perish, of course I did not. But one does not live a thousand years without learning how to make the best of an unsought bargain.

Blanche summoned all her power to launch a final blow. I braced myself, expecting that the next moment would bring Elizabeth’s death. Caught between shock and dismay, I paced in extreme agitation. Had anyone entered, I would no doubt have been found with hair in disarray and eyes aglow.

Fortunately, no one did come in, for truly I would not have wished to be seen in such a state. Worse yet, an instant later I felt the death blow that struck not Elizabeth, as I expected, but Blanche. The stunning impossibility of that rendered me all but insensible. When next I fully recall, I was on my knees beside the hearth and the sound of my own howling was ringing in my ears.

Someone was pounding at the door, calling my name, but I paid no need. I could think of nothing but what had just occurred. Blanche destroyed and Elizabeth …

Rage filled me at the certain knowledge that this was what she had intended from the beginning. Her pleading letter, hinting that she was on the verge of submitting to me. Her request for Blanche to be sent to her. Even the meeting beyond time’s veil. All now became clear. Morgaine had learned through trial and tribulation the most effective way to grow in power as a Slayer. She had passed that knowledge on to Elizabeth, who had acted on it with ruthless speed and will.

Again I howled, but this time I also acted. At a flick of my hand, the high windows in the library flew open and I passed through them. Southwark flashed beneath me, followed swiftly by the river. In moments, I reached the palace and swiftly found the place where Blanche had fallen. It was deserted.

I settled upon the sand, turning in all directions, and bent space and time to my will as I saw the battle played out again before me. So, too, did I see the instant when Elizabeth teetered on the brink, almost but not quite falling victim to her own newfound power. Had she done so, I might still have been able to bring her to my side or, failing that, used her vaunted confidence as a weapon against her.

But there came her good dog Dudley, moaning of love, drawing her back from the precipice of darkness. Damn him and all he was to her!

Of Blanche, there was no trace. Or so I thought at first. My gaze fell on the pearls strewn all about. I held out my hand and several rose into my grasp. I touched them lightly, expecting nothing, but was surprised to feel some indefinable quickening stir deep within.

With a sweep of my arm, I gathered up all the pearls and slipped them into a pouch inside my cloak. What had changed in them, if anything truly had, was a question for another time.

Nothing mattered just then save for Elizabeth. I could no longer deny that she would go to the greatest lengths to slay me. That being the case, I set out to prepare myself for the climactic battle that I was certain was almost upon us.

“I cannot stay here.” It is morning and I am still in Robin’s bed. Kat will bar my ladies from my chamber for as long as she can, but even so there will be talk.

He turns onto his side to look at me and smiles. “Pray God the day comes swiftly when we can be together without any hindrance.”

If ever a man has dangled an invitation for me to declare my intentions, Robin has just done so. As my silence draws out, a frown moves behind his eyes.

“That isn’t what I meant.” I rise quickly, heedless of my nakedness, and begin casting about for my clothes. “I can’t stay here in the palace.” I turn, holding my shift, but making no effort to cover myself. “Meet me at the stables in a hour.”

I am gone before he can reply.

“What are you thinking?” Kat demands when she finally has me in her clutches. “Do you imagine that your ladies are blind? Every one of them has been trying to get in here since shortly after dawn, not to mention that Cecil. By God, he is the most persistent of the bunch. An old woman could not natter more.”

I refrain from suggesting that she should know and thrust my arms into the jacket of the riding habit she has fetched for me, a pretty thing of ruby brocade and silk.

“I had matters to attend to.”

Kat snorts. “One matter certainly. All things in moderation, my chick.
All
things.”

Partly to divert her but also because I am curious, I ask, “What is the gossip of the day?”

“You are lucky there,” she admits, however grudgingly. “Instead of wondering what you are up to, something else has caught the court’s notice. Part of the cockfighting pit collapsed last night. Not only that but there are strange marks on the sand, traces of scorching as though there was a fire, though there’s no sign of what might have burned.”

“How odd.” I speak by rote, my mind turning over the scene in the pit. Abruptly I remember the pearls. “Was anything else found?”

Kat thinks for a moment, then shakes her head. “Not that I’ve heard mention of.” She looks at me shrewdly. “Should there have been?”

It is possible, of course, that someone passing by the pit, drawn by the sight of the collapsed bleachers, found the pearls and appropriated them. But they are far too large and sumptuous to be peddled safely within the city. Perhaps some bold lord or lady will present them to me as a gift and then I will know who took them. They matter little, in any case.

“Tell Cecil I will return in better humor and that he should be glad not to have to deal with me in my present state.”

“He had that fellow Walsingham with him,” she calls out, but I am through my private door and do not answer.

Robin is at the stables. Coming round a corner, I pause for a moment to look at him. He wears only an open shirt, a loosely laced doublet, hose, and boots, with a short sword at his side. His skin is tanned by the sun, his coutenance open and cheerful. Never has a man looked finer.

“There you are.” Gesturing to the chestnut mare whose velvety
nose he is stroking, he adds, “Newly arrived from Ireland. Do you like her?”

I wait while a groom leads the mare out, then look her over carefully. Robin is a superb Master of the Horse, the first of many important appointments that I intend to give him. He shares my love of the hunt, but nothing pleases either of us so well as a full-out gallop across open ground. Never mind that Cecil and all my counselors live in dread certainty that any day I will fall from the saddle to my death. At times I can scarcely bear being cooped up within my own skin. Nothing will do but to fly free and fast, heedless of all but the power of the horse beneath me.

We are away to the north. Robin has arranged for a small escort, but we leave them behind once we reach the manor of Hyde, purchased by my father and enclosed as a deer park for his pleasure. The deer are safe from me this fair morning; I want only to feel the sun on my face and the wind against my skin.

The ground is hard-packed, covered in places by drifts of snow and frost. The bare branches of the trees stretch against a sky almost painful in its brightness. I set spurs to the mare and send her flying. Her legs stretch out, gobbling ground, as the world flows by in all its spare winter beauty. Robin follows, but the mare is swifter and carries less weight. Though his mount makes a valiant try, when I draw rein several miles hence it is to tease him for his laggardness.

“You are a slugabed this day,” I tell him.

He laughs and sends me a kiss off his gloved fingertips. “Would that I were, fair lady, provided you were with me. Be assured, I would give you a good ride.”

His boldness makes me laugh in turn. We continue on, walking the horses until we are deep within the park. A doe, feeding near a copse, lifts her head and looks at us. In an instant, she is gone. I hear the crash of her movements as she leaps through
the underbrush. My heightened senses, so surprising at first, are becoming second nature to me. That easily do we change, if we do not take care to preserve ourselves.

“My father loved this place.”

Robin stares away toward the far horizon as though it holds something of great fascination. He knows our history well enough to sense where this is going.

“He acquired it from the canons at Westminster Abbey,” I continue. “They had held it since the Norman Conquest.”

“A wonder then that they wished to part with it.”

The words fall from his lips as though each weighs a stone and more. Clearly, this is not a topic that he wishes to pursue.

I am of a different mind. This day above all I will speak of Henry. “I suppose he offered them a decent enough price. And, of course, they would not have wished to incur his disfavor.”

“Let us speak of other things.”

“He bought it not long after my mother’s death.”

The manor was one of the gifts the king gave himself after disposing of his queen in order, it was said, to lighten his mood, much lowered by all that he had suffered in ridding himself of her.

“He swore his undying love for her before man and God.” The mare, feeling my tension, shies beneath me. I soothe her firmly. “He wrote her poems, composed ballads in her honor, draped her in jewels, and remade the world all so that he could marry her.”

“Elizabeth—”

I hold up a hand, silencing Robin. “Let me finish. The nearer one stands to the throne, the easier it becomes to see people as no more than a means to an end. That is how my father saw my mother, for all that he claimed otherwise. When she failed to give him the son he thought his due, he allowed her name to be dragged through the filth and attached to every infamy. And then he butchered her.”

“He sent for a swordsman from Calais. Only a single blow was needed—”

“That changes nothing! All my life I have heard him called merciful because he did not burn her as was his right!
Burn her!
She trusted him with her life, her honor, her body, even her soul, and look what he did to her!”

The mare shies again. I pull hard on the reins, compelling her to settle.

“He was ill served by ambitious people who conspired to bring her down,” Robin says.

“He was cleverer than all of them put together. Do not tell me that he failed to see through their machinations.”

“So be it then. Do not look to me to excuse him, but what purpose does this have? The world has gone on and you with it. Surely it does you no good to dwell on such sad matters now?”

“You do not understand.”

He reaches across the small distance separating us and clasps my hand. “Then for pity’s sake, help me to do so. What is your meaning here?”

Words, once spoken, can never be recalled. Our greater safety lies in silence. I, who have kept my own counsel since tenderest childhood, know that far better than most.