Michael Moorcock - Gloriana

“What is it has done this? I must warn the palace.”

“You…she is you…”

Gloriana tested his weight to see if she could carry him. He was a heavy old man. Now he raved and would not be lifted. She smiled as she tried to get him to his feet. “Me? There is only one me, Doctor Dee. Come.”

He was sitting up, an arm about her shoulder. He opened his eyes and she saw in his expression the look of a lover who was intimately familiar with her expressions. She became afraid. He said: “She was you. But she went mad. She was so docile at first. Quire made her for me. Flesh. She was just like flesh. He was a genius. I tried the same experiment-in metal-but failed, as Master Tolcharde failed. Then Quire vanished. I could no longer pay him, I suppose, with potions, with poisons….”

“Quire made what?”

“He made her. The simulacrum. I was ashamed. I wanted to confess. But I was drawn in too deeply. She consoled me so well for so long, Your Majesty. I could not have you, but she was almost you.”

“Almost?” She remembered his passion. “Oh, dear Doctor Dee, what have you done and how has Quire ruined you?”

“She was mad. Attacked me. I stunned her. The philtres Quire gave me for her ran out and I was afraid to experiment, though I tried. She was already unstable. Now she wishes to murder me. For using her, she says. Yet she was made for that use. It was as if she woke up-became truly alive….”

“Where is she?” Gloriana did not attempt to follow his ravings.

“She followed me down. She is over there.” He made a movement with his head. She lifted the candle, saw a dark shadow on stone behind the anthropoidal statues. He began to shiver. “Come,” she said. “Rise.”

“I cannot. You had best go now, Your Majesty. I have given you my confession. Think not too ill of me. My mind was good and, until the end, always at your service, as you know. The poisons. I regret the poisons. I allowed Quire to convince me.”

There came a great noise, as if something heavy and metallic were dragging itself across the mosaic flagging, but the shadow remained where it was.

Gloriana could see nothing of the source until, of a sudden, into the shaft of moonlight which fell upon the familiar stone block, came an old man clad in iron, in antique armour, an enormous black sword, made for two hands, upon his shoulder. His red eyes were hot with the habit of rage. His grey face and beard were thin and his cheeks were hollow. It was Montfallcon, wearing the war-suit of his youth.

“He invented for me the most perfect simulacrum,” continued Dee, scarcely aware of the newcomer. “A soulless creature. I could worship it, however-have my way with it-and no guilt. Or hardly any…”

“Simulacrum!” Montfallcon’s frigid, heavy voice was loud in the hall as he turned to observe the shadow, which now, at the sound, began to stir. “You old fool! ‘Tis a real woman.”

Dee began to breathe rapidly and shallowly “No, no, Montfallcon. There could not be a twin. There was never any story of a twin or I should have heard it. And all witnessed the birth, did they not? Ah,” he smiled, “perhaps-from another world, as I once dreamed? Is that where Quire obtained her?”

“There is only this world.” Montfallcon clanked a few steps more, to lean himself against the block. “Dolt! It is the mother!”

“Flana?” Dee’s voice grew faint. “Flana died in childbirth.”

“She did not. I witnessed her rape and I witnessed the result of that rape nine months later. She was thirteen when she bore the Queen. We were all made to watch-both events. Hern was proud of himself. After all, it was the only time, up to then, he had been able to penetrate a woman. For some reason Flana, who was my daughter, was able to attract him. Flana?”

The shadow groaned.

Gloriana began to rise. She did not wish to hear this tale. And she was terrified of all of them now. Montfallcon spoke wearily:

“It was on this stone he raped my daughter, and on this stone he raped my granddaughter. Twice in his life was he capable of committing the act. I watched both. The blood was always bad, on all sides. I know that now. I sought to burn the knowledge from me. I willed Gloriana to her position. But the blood was bad. Now it is all over. And I am destroyed, hated by all now, because I loved Albion. History will remember your most loyal servant, Your Majesty, as a villain.”

The shadow stood up, muttering to itself. Gloriana was frozen. Her mouth went dry and her eyes refused to close.

Montfallcon gestured to the mad woman. “Come, Flana. Come to your father and your daughter.”

Flana moved with peculiar grace into the light. She looked youthful, as mad people sometimes do, though her face was ravaged and her hair, auburn like her daughter’s, was dyed in places.

“Here she is,” said Lord Montfallcon. “She ran into the walls after you were born, Gloriana, and was there until Quire snared her, drugged her, gave her to Dee in exchange for his secrets and his philtres. I would have known, but I refused to have the walls investigated for the same reasons as you. I hid the fact of Flana from myself. She loved you. Perhaps she still does. Do you love your little girl, Flana?”

“No,” said the mad woman in a thick, terrible voice. “She has been bad. She banished her only true suitor.”

“She saw Hern rape you. She watched from her hiding place within the walls,” said Montfallcon. “He waited until you were exactly the same age, and raped you on your birthday. Do you remember, Gloriana?”

“While the Court looked on. That leering Court.” She said: “I remember. Mother…”

The mad woman ran towards Montfallcon, who took her by the arm. He said: “Kneel.”

She was passive with him. She looked into her father’s eyes. Into her hero’s eyes. She smiled and knelt.

Her head was resting on the block and Montfallcon’s sword was lifting before Gloriana could cry out. “No!”

The broadsword fell. The auburn head burst free of the shoulders. Dee whimpered and then he, too, died.

“Your own flesh,” said Gloriana. “Why?” She left Dee and began to crawl up the steps, one by one, away from the corpses.

“Corrupt flesh,” Montfallcon equably explained, putting the sword on his shoulder again and looking down at his victim. “She should have died when the rest of the girls died. But she agreed to Hern’s proposal. To save her life. I could not stop her then. When you were born, I hoped that you would come to redeem all that had taken place here. But you followed her to corruption, soon enough. My wife and the boys went next. I would not let him have the boys, you see, or my wife. He had a poor imagination, your father, like most monsters. What it was, to be in the power of an all but mindless beast! Yet I waited. I made my plans, developed my ambition. I wanted you to be the golden creature who would give point to all my suffering. You and Albion. And for almost thirteen years it seemed my work, my sacrifices, proved worthwhile and that together we achieved the Age of Virtue. Then you, too, gave yourself to a monster. And now I shall kill you and be done with it.”

She had expected this. She could make no appeal to him. She began to scramble up the steps, one by one, faster and faster, as he came after her, in creaking iron, his eyes fixed upon her throat. She reached the throne, was seated in it before she knew it. He paused. “It can begin again soon,” he said. “With the bad blood extinguished once and for all.”

She began to fear for her surviving child.

“Come,” he said, and gestured towards the block. “You shall die where you were born. You should never have existed. You are a nightmare.”

She made a gasping sound, pleading not so much for her own life, but for his soul, for the life of the great-granddaughter he did not, at this moment, know had been saved from his revenging mob.