Unicorn's Blood Read online

  Unicorn’s Blood

  Patricia Finney

  First published 1998 by Orion

  Copyright © 1998 Patricia Finney

  This Kindle edition does not require an ISBN,

  but we’re traditionalists, so we’ve given it one anyway.

  ISBN 978-1-909172-21-0

  www.patriciafinney.com

  www.climbingtreebooks.com

  Published by Climbing Tree Books Limited, Truro, Cornwall, UK

  All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted without the prior permission of the publisher.

  To my darling Alexandra,

  Without whom this book might have been finished a lot sooner

  – but then it could not have contained Pentecost.

  Foreword This is a novel, not a history book. I have used history as skeleton and scaffolding, but I have freely jumped off into fantasy whenever I felt like it, turned speculation into fact and rank conjecture into assumption – although I have tried to keep within the boundaries of what might just be possible, given the evidence. As I like to know when I finish reading a historical novel which was fact and which was fiction, I have included an extended historical note at the end. I have also supplied a glossary of obsolete words.

  I would like to disassociate myself from the opinions and prejudices of my characters, some of which I find obnoxious. But to attribute ‘political correctness’ of any kind to the Elizabethans would be to commit the infuriating sin of psychological anachronism, something I have done my best to avoid. Their lives were far harder and more dangerous than ours, if simpler, and their attitudes to pain and death utterly different. And yet, underneath their fantastical costumes and strange notions, lay Shakespeare’s familiar forked animal. If we look carefully and without prejudice, we are not so very different.

  I have decided that as I have received help from so many people over so many years, it would be politer not to thank any of them by name, in case I miss someone out. To all those who have patiently answered my occasionally mad-seeming questions or directed me to the right books, a hearty thank you. Even more gratitude is due to those who have read my book in manuscript and courageously suggested improvements (though I may not have thanked them at the time). All remaining stupidities, anachronisms and mistakes are, of course, mine. PF

  I

  TO RISE FROM VIRGIN to Queen is one thing; to be cast down from Queen to Whore to Witch is quite another. Would you not kill to avoid such shame?

  Once I was a Queen in England, and ruled on behalf of my Son, Jesus Christ. Ave Maria, they praised me, Salve Mater, they sang to me.

  Now I am deposed, cast down from my throne in men’s minds, a mere despised superstition. If I were mortal I would be a beggar on the road.

  But I am not mortal. I am your Lady, always and forever, your true Queen of Heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

  I still spread my dark velvet cloak overall my children, apostates and faithful alike, protecting you from the cold blasts of your God’s judgment.

  For am I not the Star of the Sea, Tower of Ivory, Gate of Paradise, Refuge of Sinners, Comforter of the Afflicted, most Holy and Mystical Rose? I stand upon the serpent and the moon; I am clothed with the sun and about my head shines a diadem of twelve stars; I am Queen of the Angels, Queen of Virgins, Empress of Hell . . .

  II

  SO WHERE SHALL WE begin, in this tale of unicorns and virgins? In the head of my usurper, the earthly Queen Elizabeth, I think. She lies peacefully in darkness on a clean linen pillow, the rose-water that took the red cinnabar and white-lead paint from her skin leaving ghosts of gardens about her cheeks. Her hair is cut short and no longer the fair burnished copper that men praised in her youth, but an ugly shade between grey and red, now hidden by an embroidered cap. Her alabaster skin is furrowed and freckled with the footprints of Time. But when she sleeps, the folds relax and the guile and statecraft melt away until it is just as if a child peeks from behind a crumpled mask.

  Just as earthly Queens must eat and purge themselves, so they also dream. In Elizabeth’s dream she was in her Presence Chamber, as stiffly buttressed as a church in cloth-of-gold and black velvet. Above her was her Cloth of State, making an awning for her in the room, which was just as well, for the roof had disappeared and the rain fell clear from the heavy clouds above. And in her dreaming heart was a familiar dread which must be hidden behind the paint of her face and the riddles of her eyes.

  They were bringing her a strange and magical gift. Sir Francis Drake had journeyed beyond the bounds of the world and returned, and in his holds he carried a beast that none in England had ever seen, a beast as mysterious as the striped horses of Africa or the giant deer of the Americas. The legend had travelled with great trouble and at hideous expense from Plymouth to London along roads lined with curious crowds to see the wonder. Now, in sign of his love and devotion to the Queen his Mistress, Sir Francis would present it to her as the perfect New Year’s gift.

  She had not been able to prevent it. How could she? Why should she fear a Unicorn, being a virgin? Indeed, the Virgin Queen. Therefore a unicorn must be a fitting present for her. For Pliny tells us that although the unicorn is full of rage and will stab lions through the heart with the horn on his head, still, if he be led to a virgin by strong men, he will lay his head upon her lap and be tamed.

  And so, in the Queen’s dream, strong men brought the unicorn into her Presence Chamber. It snorted and fought the ropes and swung its horn this way and that, its breath puffing with the heat of its rage. And all her people left her, being afraid of the beast until she stood alone, as she always must, under her canopy in the rain and waited for it. And the red silken ropes broke, and the unicorn stared narrow-eyed at her.

  She could not speak. The unicorn tossed its head, trotted forwards with the raindrops splashing upon its gleaming white back, and its nostrils flared red as it snuffed her scent.

  Its raging scream of hatred froze the rain to hail as it fell. It reared high and screamed again, set itself with its goat’s tail lashing and charged at her, savage horn aimed squarely at her breast and the silver hooves breaking the rushes and the floor beneath it . . .

  She shrieked in horror and humiliation and sat up, her arms flailing, feet kicking the covers off, screamed and screamed until the girl lying beside her sat up blinking and put her hand timidly on her Queen’s shoulder.

  “Your Majesty,” she whispered. “Your Majesty?”

  Tears flowed down the Queen’s cheeks and she hunched over, clasping her bony knees, gasping and shuddering. Gently her bedfellow stroked her back and pressed her fingers into the stringy muscles of her shoulders and neck until the shuddering faded and the Queen could breathe again. At last the Queen turned her face to the girl and smiled a little.

  “Was it the evil dream again, Your Majesty?”

  The Queen nodded and shut her eyes, letting the girl’s hands knead fear out of her back. Beyond the shut tapestry bedcurtains another of her women called out uncertainly, in a voice thick with sleep, “Are you well, Your Majesty? Are you in pain?”

  “I am well enough,” the Queen said, easing her shoulders. “Go fetch me some spiced wine.”

  There was a soft muttering beyond the heavy curtains and the sounds of covers being pushed back and a furred dressing gown wrapped around and feet finding their slippers in the rush-matting. The Queen ignored the muttering: if she was awake, why should anyone else sleep?

  A door opened and shut, there were voices in the Privy Gallery, sleepy, aggrieved voices, and more argument.

  Irritation burned in the Queen’s heart. Half-witted ninnyhammers, why did they never think to refill the pitcher by the fire? Why was there always the business of fetching and carrying? No matter what she wanted, it was n
ever to hand.

  At last the bedcurtain was pulled back a little and Blanche Parry’s face appeared, underlit by a candle, creaking her joints down onto one knee and holding out a silver goblet covered with a white napkin.

  “Hmf,” sniffed the Queen, “about time. Bethany, you may stop that now.”

  She took the goblet and gave the napkin to Bethany Davison, who knelt there beside her in the tangle of blankets, exchanging glances with Parry that she thought her Queen could neither see nor interpret. The Queen drank to hide her irritation and the hot wine nipped her tongue. She blew on it and refrained from throwing the goblet at Blanche’s head.

  Blanche Parry’s eyes were half-shutting blearily. She was still holding back the bed curtain, which let a sharp draught from somewhere pluck the Queen’s flesh. The fire was banked and covered and the room cold.

  “Oh, go to bed, for God’s sake, Parry,” growled the Queen. “I shall be well enough.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.” She heaved herself off her knee and let the curtain fall back as the Queen sipped more cautiously at the wine: too much cinnamon, not enough ginger or nutmeg, she thought, but at least it is hot and sweet.

  Bethany was shivering too. The Queen finished all but a couple of swallows and handed her the goblet.

  “Finish it,” she said, and the girl drank what was left and then delicately patted the napkin against the Queen’s mouth and against hers. Well-trained, she wiped out the inside of the goblet and put it on the little shelf carved into the headboard, among the wooden grapes and vine-leaves and the wild gilded cherubs.

  The Queen lay down again, the linen already glazed with cold, and Bethany drew up the sheet and rearranged the blankets and the fur-lined counterpane and at last lay down next to her, with her soft black hair escaping from its plait and spreading out behind her head like corporeal shadow.

  In the dark you cannot see how beautiful she is, thought the Queen, how thick and sooty the lashes around her grey eyes, how pale and creamy her skin. It was Bethany’s skin she had noticed when the girl was first presented for her inspection as a possible maid of honour: a miracle of clarity for a girl in her teens. Not a single pockmark or blackhead, smooth and soft and as lightly furred as a peach, and it was all the colour of clotted cream so that you half-expected her to smell of milk. She did not, though, she smelt of almonds and spice and the most expensive rose-water from Damascus. Someone had evidently warned her not to use musk, which the Queen abhorred, nor civet. She had been wearing a dark-crimson velvet gown then, the false-front of her petticoat of white stain embroidered with rainbows and butterflies. Her hair was loose and dressed with garnets that matched the jewels lying upon her breast, between those two soft hills that had sent many gentlemen of the Court gibbering into verse. This child’s hair had the strange quality of being black, but not shining: it was too soft for that, it simply fell about her neck and down her back like still black smoke.

  Her cousin, Mr Davison, who had brought her to Court, had known what he was about; while the Queen smiled and inspected his offering, she could feel the satisfaction in him at her liking. Just so, she remembered, had ambitious men brought pretty laughing creatures to Court for her father’s inspection. To be sure, she was not Henry VIII. She did not want gigglers and made that well known. And it was different for her; she prided herself on the fact that at her Court, the girl’s maidenhood was safe.

  Now, with the curtains drawn tight and the air inside the bed’s cave beginning to warm, Bethany Davison was turned to mystery again. All the Queen could know was the shape and smell of the girl. And that she was still shivering.

  Why? Even the thin-skinned Queen was warming. Was she shivering with fear? This was no means to find Morpheus, and in any case the Queen had no wish to recall the fading rootlets of her dream, nor the heavy load of Christmas ceremonial awaiting her in the morning.

  “Come, Bethany, my dear,” murmured the Queen and gathered the dark head against her shoulder, wrapped her arms around her and her legs. “Don’t be afraid. You are a good girl.”

  To the Queen of England, there was the same pleasure in stroking Bethany’s cheek and shoulder as in running fingers across silk velvet. Her long, bony hand found its way to the square neck of the girl’s smock, with its nibbling of black embroidery, and under it to the soft pointed cushion of flesh below. It quivered as she cupped it, warm in her palm.

  Were mine once like that? the Queen wondered. Smaller, certainly, and more pointed, I think.

  Bethany turned her face to the Queen and the Queen kissed her sooty black eyebrows and the straight nose – as cold as a dog’s nose at the moment – and the warmer cheeks, and the soft defended rose of her mouth. The Queen’s other hand moved down and down as they kissed, at length to find the outline of the girl’s quim beneath her smock and rub there gently.

  In a little while Bethany smiled and sighed.

  III

  ELSEWHERE, A MAN AWOKE in stinking darkness and knew that some terrible mystery had happened to his hands. Each of them was like a plate of meat, amorphous, blazing in black flames that pounded from his fingers, bulged about his wrists, flowed down his arms and lanced upwards into his head. Aching cold struck into him from the stone under his flank and shoulder; every part of him was palsied with it, save his poor hands that lay somewhere in front of him.

  He tried to sit up, find a tinder-box, discover what had befallen him, perhaps waken from his nightmare.

  The black dream deepened. First, he cracked his sore head on a roof of stone only three feet above him. Then he stubbed his toes on a wall mere inches away, although he was lying curled over like a cat with his knees drawn up. There was a scraping clink of metal on metal, and he felt bruising, constricting weight on his ankles and his arms.

  He blinked sightlessly, trying to understand. But understanding was a quicksand. Either he was dead and in an antechamber of Hell or he was a prisoner: so much was clear enough. But why? Who had chained him?

  Breath sucked into his chest. He held it and let it out shakily.

  Here was the man within, as it were an homunculus, setting out bravely to answer a mystery: why was its body cooped up in a stone cell with iron clasping him feet and arms?

  No answer. The steady floor whisked from under his mental foot and so he stumbled to the next question.

  Who could have done this? Again, no answer and the next step not where it should be.

  And how and when had he come there? How had his wrists been so agonisingly wounded?

  The homunculus within flailed, grasped out for a banister and so found itself falling from a cliff edge and not merely a stair.

  He had no idea who he was. He knew neither his name nor his condition, not his father’s name nor his mother’s face.

  Within the dark sky of his skull was an echoing void, unstarred, unpeopled, barren. He had been robbed and stripped of all his mental furniture save this ugly present in which he lay trussed like a hog for the slaughter, stinking like a midden, and two great bladders of pain lying before him where his hands should have been.

  He laid his head down again, gasping, his heart drumming, his ear crushed on the stone, his lips bruised and tasting of metal.

  “Sweet Jesus,” he whispered, and found his throat raw also.

  In the distance, loud and ugly, came an irregular distorted clanging.

  I am dead and in Hell, he thought, appalled and strangely comforted because no further effort could be required of him. He was weary to the bone.

  IV

  THE ARISING OF AN earthly Queen from her bed is a matter of great moment. The fire must be made up and a brazier brought in to fight the frost flowers inside the windows. A dressing-gown must be fetched from the press and held up to the fire by one of the other maids of honour, who must herself be fully dressed and ready for anything. Maids of honour who singe the sable lining can expect to have their ears boxed for disrespect to His Majesty the Tzar of Muscovy who had sent the furs, so it is a job fraught with anx
iety.

  Blanche Parry and the other Gentlewomen of the Chamber who are on duty must bring Her Majesty’s breakfast of bread and small beer and two red boxes of urgent papers. The Stool must also be ready, clean, empty and scented with lavender water. God forbid the Stool should smell, for Her Majesty has thrown it (full) at the head of the gentlewoman who was supposed to have seen it emptied.

  Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the first of that name to rule in her own right, awakens officially at seven of the clock. Her women must be up by five and creeping about as they dress in the dark so as not to disturb her before the time comes for the bedcurtains to be drawn back.

  The Queen is generally not in a good mood in the morning. On this particular morning she had woken at the first rustle and cautious creak of floorboards. Firelight and candle-light flickered between the curtains, reflecting and spangling on the cloth-of-silver tester making the roof of her elaborate den. Bethany Davison, her bedfellow, still snored beside her with the annoying ease of youth.

  Somewhere in the cellars of the Queen’s mind, the unicorn stamped and pawed the ground, but she had locked and barred the door and only kept the memory of terror and shame and the unicorn himself. She concluded that her melancholy dreaming was caused by that half-witted Royal whore, the Scottish Queen, whose badge is the Unicorn of Scotland, and she glowered. Every stealthy preparation and whisper beyond her bed curtains fell crisp and clear to her ears, and she lay on her back and stared up at the gleaming tester and prayed for patience. Bethany sleeping beside her stirred and murmured something. It sounded as if it might have been a man’s name, which it had better not be.

  At last she could smell the new-baked manchet and the spiced warmth of the mulled ale.

  Mary Ratcliffe and Blanche Parry, Mistress of the Maids, drew back the curtains while Katherine, Countess of Bedford, knelt by the bed with the dressing-gown.