Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer (37 page)

And infuriated with myself. Why did I not anticipate that Mordred would use every weapon in his arsenal, including his ability to bend space and time, to defeat me and make me a helpless supplicant to his wishes?

But he has made a mistake, perhaps a fatal one, for in feeding upon me, he has truly awakened latent powers I have not previously possessed. Not only the power of flight, as I have discovered, but also to do as he does and walk in the gaps that fall between the moments we know as reality, strung as they are like pearls on a string.

I leave the warehouse, noticing as I go that a rat, skittering between barrels, stands frozen, one paw lifted in the air, whiskers braced. Outside, the smoke rising from banked fires all over my city hangs motionless. The vessels moored at the quays do not rock. The few lamps lit here and there do not flicker but burn with an unnaturally steady light.

Swiftly, I seek some sign to tell me where Mordred has taken Robin. At first, I can find no hint of him. Only when my gaze travels to the bridge, heaped as it is with multistory dwellings clustered tightly together and hanging out over the water, do I sense the emanations of his otherworldly presence. When I realize where they are coming from, my heart sinks.

At the very center of the bridge lies the ruined chapel built four centuries ago to the memory of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who dared to challenge the authority of the great king Henry II. Becket died, supposedly at Henry’s order, and was promptly declared a saint by the Roman Church grateful for the opportunity to put down an upstart ruler considered insufficiently respectful of its holy privileges.

My father, for reasons that should be obvious, had the chapel rededicated to Saint Thomas the Apostle, but that subterfuge had little effect and the chapel remained a focus for those objecting to reform of the Church. In the final months of my brother Edward’s rule, his supporters, perhaps sensing what would happen once Catholic Mary assumed the throne, destroyed the chapel utterly. She left its ruins as a silent rebuke of the Reformers. It falls to me to do something about the blight on an otherwise prosperous and happy stretch of commerce, but, as of yet, I have been unable to give it my attention.

I will certainly need to do so now for there is no doubt where Mordred has gone. With all speed, I make for the ruins. As time resumes its flow, the wind off the river picks up. My hair streams out behind me. Small prickles of ice strike my face. A frozen mist rising from the water obscures the scene. I climb past the shut-up shops and slumbering residences, along the empty road that runs between them, barred now at the south side until morning comes and the tax collectors once again awake, for nothing enters my city without me being paid my due.

Mordred is waiting at the chapel ruins. He perches on the very edge of the tumbled stones, closest to the river. Robin is with him, choking in the grasp of the hand around his throat. His body dangles out over the water that, with the turning of the tide, is running at a fury through the piers of the bridge directly below.

“What will it be, Elizabeth?” Mordred calls. “Shall we have this out now or go our separate ways and cogitate upon the matter?”

Why would he give me such a choice? And why would he imagine that I would agree? Does he want more time to take the measure of my newfound powers and perhaps increase his own? Or does he still harbor the misbegotten belief that I can be persuaded to his side?

“What is to be gained by delay? We cannot both exist in this realm.”

Mordred stretches his arm out farther. Robin, clawing at his hand, is now fully suspended over the deepest point of the river.

“Let him go,” I call, “and face me in fair battle.”

Mordred appears to consider it, his gaze luminous by starlight. His cloak whips around him. Even now, his beauty catches at my heart. I have never seen a more magnificent creature, but it is his malignancy that I must remember.

“The winner to take all?” he asks.

“Hasn’t it ever been so? When Richard fell to my grandfather, his throne, his crown, his realm, all fell into Henry’s hands. Would you have it differently?”

Instead of answering directly, Mordred looks amused. “Are you so confident of victory over me that you are willing to risk everything you hold dear?”

“I have no choice!”

“But you do, Elizabeth. The choice has always been yours.
You could have gone to Mary and asked her to find you a fine Catholic husband. She would have been overjoyed to do so. By now, you could be a mother several times over. Or you could have become a nun; your royal sister would have accepted that even more eagerly. You could have devoted your life to the scholarship of which you are so fond. You did neither. Instead, you risked your life to stay the course and become Queen. Why?”

“Because it is what I am meant to be. Only I—Queen and Slayer both—can protect this realm from you!”

“From me? What about from the Spanish, the Pope, and everyone else? Or have you forgotten about them?”

He shakes his head at my incomprehension. “Don’t you see? To protect this realm from its mortal enemies requires that we work together. Believe me, I’m not happy to admit it, but the truth is that neither one of us can succeed alone. That is why I have waited for you so long and why I wait still.”

His admission that his own powers have limits surprises me, but I cannot be deflected by it. Drawing on all my nerve, I say, “Well … that truly is a shame because tonight one of us is going to die.”

Valiant words, but I tell myself that I mean them. Mordred’s claim threatens to undermine my will at this most crucial point. Even as I raise my arm to strike at him, a small seed of doubt begins to blossom. Before my resolve can weaken, I must act.

To my surprise, Mordred makes no move to defend himself. Instead, he looks at me with what gives every appearance of regret.

“I cannot let you do this, Elizabeth. Both of us are far too important to this realm to sacrifice either on the altar of your misconceptions. You are young yet and in time you will come to understand that.”

“You cannot stop me—”

“Oh, but I can.”

He opens his hand.

Robin plummets toward the raging river. I hear myself scream as though from a great distance.

For a fragment of time I do indeed have a choice—strike at Mordred as he stands exposed on the crumbled stone of the destroyed chapel making no effort to defend himself. If my aim is true and my blow strikes home, I will slay him.

I then risk that he is right and that only the two of us together can preserve this realm.

I can do that or I can save Robin.

For Morgaine, love was the most powerful force of all. I thought the notion frivolous and congratulated myself that I could not be prey to any such weakness. Yet love has come upon me and with the same results: I am its hostage. Without it, all that I fight for will be no more than a dry, empty husk.

Mordred knows this in some way. He knows me better than myself.

“No!”

I leap from the side of the bridge down toward the stygian water, which hurtles up to meet me. Frantically I stretch out my hands, straining for Robin. Time bends to my will but it is not enough. My fingers scarcely brush his doublet. He strikes the surface and at once sinks beneath it.

The moment hangs suspended. My heart does not beat, my blood does not flow. Only desperation exists and it drives me on. I plunge into the river that is the lifeblood of my city and my realm, fumbling in the darkness for any sign of hope.

And find none, only emptiness that sinks my soul. Robin—bold, daring, stalwart Robin—must not end this way, not because of me.

My mother died a monarch’s sacrifice; I cannot let a flawed but well-meaning man who loves me do the same.

Robin!

My hand brushes … something. A bit of flotsam such as clogs the river in all seasons? Or vastly more precious than that?

Desperately, I tighten my grip and rise up, erupting out of the water toward the bankside. Whatever I have grasped goes with me. On the shingle shore, I collapse, gasping for breath, and scarcely dare to look up until I hear the blessed sound of gagging and see a spew of foul river water erupt.

“Robin!”

More gagging, more spewing. Then, when he is finally done: “Lawd, Elizabeth, you let him go!”

Incredulity fills me. He cannot possibly be serious. I gaze into his strained, white face and shake my head in disbelief.

“Should I have let you drown instead?”

“I’m glad you didn’t. But
he
still lives.” Robin drags himself upright and stares toward the bridge. There is no sign of Mordred. The vampire king is gone on the night.

“I had to make a choice.” Weak words even to my own ears, yet true enough although the life I chose to preserve is not the one Robin will assume.

“I know and I am grateful but—”

He does not know. When a little time has passed and he thinks of this moment, he will believe that I leapt into the water for love of him. He will preen in the light of that imagined love and his ambitions will swell. It will be the undoing of us in the end, but what other course is there?

Am I to tell him that I acted for love not of a man but for this blessed isle, to which I, its anointed ruler, am consecrated? That I did not try to slay the vampire king because I may have need of him?

Robin turns and looks at me from behind those dark, liquid eyes of the sort the Italians paint so well. “I heard what he said. Mordred really believes that it will take the two of you together to preserve this realm. Is he right?”

Without replying, I scramble to my feet and start up toward the river road. I am fleeing from myself as much as from Robin, but I can escape neither. He hurries after me. I hear him calling.

“Is he right, Elizabeth? Do you believe that this realm will perish without you both?”

The going is littered with sharp shingles but I scarcely notice. After all, if I had not been born with a light step and the instinct for when and how to stretch out my arms to embrace what I need most, I would long since have perished. Let no one condemn me for being what I must be unless they think to wrest the crown from my head, and then, by God, they will have such a struggle as the world has never seen.

The wind is picking up again. Toward the east, a rim of gray appears. A new day is being born. I walk into it, uncertain as yet what I must become in order to preserve my realm, but resolved that while I yet draw breath, no enemy mortal or immortal shall prevail against me.

I am the Slayer awaited for a thousand years but I am more.

I am, and I shall ever be,

Elizabeth, the Queen.

F
ROM THE DESK OF
L
UCY
W
ESTON

I first became aware of the existence of
The Secret History
some years ago in London when I overheard a discussion in a private club hidden away down a narrow lane that has changed little in centuries and is known to few. There Mordred was holding court before an audience of his acolytes, regaling them with episodes of his long, eventful career. In doing so, he mentioned
The Secret History
. I have done my best to faithfully record his remarks here.

I confess that my interest was piqued. For too long, the highest echelons of the British government have concealed the deadly peril posed by vampires. The discovery of Elizabeth Tudor’s journals, written in her own hand and recording her battles with the vampires of the British Isles, would forever shatter this cruel deception.

I was mulling over how best to proceed when, on the afternoon of 20 November 1992, everything changed. The first reports of a massive fire at Windsor Castle began to come in around noon. By midafternoon, it was clear that a significant part of the castle was burning. At about six o’clock, my phone rang. The caller was an antiquarian aware of both my interest
in all things Elizabethan and my lack of scruples in acquiring them. He told me that he was at the scene of the fire, watching the items being removed, among them a small chest containing a collection of journals bound in embossed leather and bearing the initials
ER
. For the right price, he would arrange for the chest to slip unseen from the pile of salvaged items. Less than half an hour after receiving the call, I was en route to Windsor.

I will not dwell on the excitement that accompanied my smuggling of the chest back to London. My hands shook when I opened it. There they were—the leatherbound personal journals of Elizabeth Tudor, who identified herself as “Vampire Slayer.”

I was terrified that the pages would crumble to dust before I could read a single word. But time—and the dry, cool environment within the walls of Windsor Castle—had proved kind. Quickly, I started to read the elaborate script. The story that unfolded before my eyes was startling in the extreme and unlike any I could have predicted. By the time I finished it, I knew that I had exactly the weapon I needed to rouse public rage against the vampires that threatened the land still, and bring them down. But I also knew that it would be of no use to me if I was not able to deploy it correctly.