Michael Moorcock - Gloriana

“But you’ll not stay at Court?”

“I may return. But not immediately. I need the air of Scaith.”

“And you take Oubacha Khan with you?”

“As my guest.” Una smiled. “He’s celibate, he tells me. A vow.”

“Aha. A vow.” She became distant.

“You still pine for Quire?”

“He is a traitor.”

“Perrott does not think so. Perrott maintains his belief that he was Lord Montfallcon’s victim.”

Gloriana shrugged. “Well, they are both gone, now.”

“I bear him no grudge,” said Una. “Because you love him so, Gloriana.”

“I love nothing.”

“You love Albion.”

“I love myself. They are the same.” Her tone was not bitter. It was worse: it was hopeless.

Una hesitated. “I’ll stay. If you think…”

Gloriana shook her great head. “Go to Scaith with your Tatar.” She moved, like a funeral barge, to stand before the window, blotting the light from the room. “You risked your life for the Realm. I’ll not have you risking your soul for its symbol.”

“Oh, Gloriana!”

The friends embraced. Una was weeping, but there were no tears in the Queen’s cool eyes.

Albion, with war banished and the Arabian fleet dispersed even before Tom Ffynne and the Perrotts could meet with it, knew optimism again as Chivalry was at least restored. The Queen made plans for a Progress, regretting only that the Countess of Scaith could not accompany her. Sir Orlando Hawes proposed marriage to Alys Finch and was accepted. He had found the innocent in her, now that Quire’s influence was gone. Sir Amadis Cornfield and his wife were invited to the palace and came, to receive token recrimination, though the Queen’s main purpose was to offer this new, sober Sir Amadis the position of Chancellor, which carried with it an earldom. Sir Amadis begged leave to return to Kent. He said he had lost his taste for statecraft. And Gloriana was alone, as she had never been alone before, and every night she pined for her villainous lover, and her voice was heard through the emptied tunnels and vaults of the hidden palace, the deserted seraglio, as she wept; though she never mentioned his name, even there, in the darkness of her curtained bed.

The autumn grew gradually cooler, but the year was still unnaturally warm. Tatary drew back from foreign borders. King Casimir was re-elected Poland’s King. The Lady Yashi Akuya, having lost hope of Oubacha Khan, returned to Nip-ponia. Hassan al-Giafar was accepted as bridegroom by the Princess Sophie, sister of Rudolph of Bohemia, and Lord Shahryar was recalled to Arabia for execution, seeming distressed when he was reprieved. The last leaves began to fall from the trees and lie in drifts on the paths. Sir Orlando Hawes was made Chancellor, head of the Privy Council, and Admiral Ffynne became, with him, the Queen’s chief adviser. Master Gallimari and Master Tolcharde arranged a further popular display, in the great courtyard, of the mechanical Harlekinade, attended by Queen, nobles and commons. Sir Ernest Wheldrake proposed marriage, in maudlin verse, to Lady Lyst, who drunkenly and cheerfully accepted him. The Thane of Hermiston, who had unwittingly encouraged Montfallcon’s final vengeance, disappeared in Master Tolcharde’s roaring globe and never returned to Albion. Doctor Dee remained in his apartments, refusing visits even from the Queen herself. His experiments, he said, were of major importance and should not be witnessed by the uninformed. He was humoured, though he was by now considered entirely mad.

There was speculation about the fate of Montfallcon, whom most thought a suicide, and of Quire, who had evidently fled through the Spider’s Door and returned to the underworld before escaping abroad. The Queen would not speak of either. The Countess of Scaith, as she had promised, said nothing of Quire and refused to accuse him. Sir Thomas Perrott maintained the firm belief that Montfallcon was the villain who had imprisoned him. Sir Orlando Hawes kept silent on the matter for two reasons-his natural tact and his need to protect his bride’s reputation. Josias Priest emigrated to Mauretania.

The Court resumed its old merriment, and Gloriana presided over it with grace and dignity, though her laughter was never anything but polite and her smiles, when they came at all, never more than wistful. She was as loved as she had always been loved, but it seemed that the passion, which had led her to aspire to fulfillment, was now gone from her. She had become a goddess, almost a living statue, a steady, gentle symbol of the Realm. She took to walking at night in her gardens, unattended, and would spend much of her time in her maze, walking round and round until it became absolutely familiar. Yet still she inhabited it. Sometimes servants, looking from their windows, could see in the moonlight her bodiless head and shoulders drifting as if by levitation over the tops of the yew hedges.

Time went by for Gloriana, hour by slow and lonely hour, and she took no lovers. Her private time was spent with Sir Ernest and Lady Wheldrake and with her surviving child, Duessa, whose son, many years hence, would come to inherit the Realm. She counselled Duessa towards a moderation she had never herself experienced, to balance Romantic faith against realistic understanding.

One night, as she undressed for bed, a palace servant came to her door with a message. She read the wavering words. It was from Doctor Dee. He wished to see her alone, he said, because he was dying and there was that on his conscience he would communicate. She frowned, wondering whether to go at least part of the way with attendants, but then decided she wasted time, if indeed he was dying. So she drew a huge and heavy brocade gown over her shift, put bare feet into slippers and went to the East Wing, towards Doctor Dee’s apartments, taking with her a candle. The way to Doctor Dee’s lay through the chilly old Throne Room, still known as Hern’s Chamber, which she had always refused to enter. She began to shudder, hating the place and its memories. She had not been here since her father’s death. In common with most of her generation she disliked the pointed or “Saracen” style of architecture, found it barbaric and inhuman. It was almost as if she entered the walls again, and only her regard for her old friend led her on. Save for a single shaft of moonlight, which struck the block and the surrounding mosaics of the floor to form a pool, the chamber was in darkness, dominated by the huge anthropoidal statues, the irregular, vaulted ceilings. She paused. There was nothing to fear now that the rabble had been transported to the new Oriental lands of the Empire, save imprecise memories. Yet, as she crossed near the brooding throne dais, she thought she heard a noise from near it and raised her candle to let yellow light fall upon the steps.

She had seen too much blood since the spring, particularly in the seraglio that dreadful night. She recognised the ragged, ruined face of the magus, the toothless mouth opening and closing, the eyes screwed tight shut as the light struck them. There was blood on his beard, blood on the torn nightshirt he wore, blood on hands and legs.

“Dee.” She climbed the dais and rested the candle down on a step so that she could take his head in her lap. “What is this? Some seizure?” But now she could see the little wounds all over him. He had been bitten as if by a whole tribe of rats. “Can you stand?” He must have been experimenting with animals, she decided. The animals had escaped and attacked him in the night.

He whispered. “I was coming to you. She is no longer in my control. With Quire gone…I feared that she would kill you, too.”