Saint Antony's Fire Read online

  "But why?" Winslow blurted. "You say they aren't even true papists. So why do they hate England so much?"

  "I don't think they do. Indeed, I sense in them a void that holds neither love nor hate nor anything at all except a cold contempt for all besides themselves that lives. No, England is just in their way."

  They all stared at the magus, except for Walsingham, who was hearing nothing new. Dee, who always relished being the center of attention, dropped his well-trained voice another octave.

  "The hints that I have been able to gather together are maddeningly vague and obscure, as though they deal with matters that lie beyond mortal ken. But they all point in the same direction. There is even a clue in the saint for whom their profane order is named. All the Catholic world thinks Saint Antony of Padua was chosen because of his reputation as 'the hammer of the heretics,' and the Gray Monks have been content to let them think so. But there is a double meaning, for he is the patron saint of 'those looking for lost objects.' The Gray Monks are searching for something—seeking it avidly, almost desperately. I believe it has to do in some way with their origin, from which they entered our world."

  "But Doctor," asked White reasonably, "if it's where they came from, then how can they not know its location?"

  "I have no idea. But they now think they have learned, in general, where it is." Dee turned his hypnotic blue eyes on Raleigh. "It is in that region of Amer—I mean Atlantis where you, Sir Walter, have planted an English colony. Thus it is that we stand in their way."

  "But," protested Raleigh, "I wasn't trying to thwart any deviltry of the Gray Monks when I dispatched my expeditions to Virginia! I sought to establish a base from which to raid the Spanish treasure fleets on their way from the Indies to Spain."

  "Ah, but they don't know that. They can only regard us as a threat." Dee somewhat spoiled the effect he had created by lapsing into didacticism. "As well they might! My studies have established that England has a claim to those lands which far predates those of the Spanish and Portuguese, arising from King Arthur's conquest of Estotiland, a country which, as I have conclusively demonstrated, was located—" Walsingham gave a polite but firm cough, and Dee reeled himself in. "The point is, they must stop us English before we settle that coast and prevent them from carrying on their search. And the fact that we have colonists there now makes it urgent for them; we might find whatever it is they are looking for first."

  "How would we know it if we did find it?" wondered John White.

  "Who's to say?" Dee spread his hands theatrically. "But if it is as uncanny as I am coming to suspect it must be, then perhaps it will be something too extraordinary to be missed. And if we can destroy it, then perhaps we will cut off the Gray Monks' demonic power at its source. Or possibly we could take control of it, and bend that power to our own use."

  "You've mentioned that last possibility before." Walsingham looked grave. "When you first raised it, I was troubled by its implications. Any traffic with the inhuman foulness of the Gray Monks must surely carry with it a risk to our souls."

  "I admit the dangers," said Dee. "But if it is possible, have we any choice but to try?"

  "Perhaps not. Indeed, we have few choices of any kind in this evil hour. If there is to be any hope at all for England and the true religion, the Queen must—"

  "And what, exactly, is it that the Queen must do, my Moor?"

  Winslow was sitting with his back to a side-door. It was from that direction that the sudden interruption, in tones of high-pitched female fury, came. So he could not see its source. All he saw was the men at the table getting to their feet with a haste that sent chairs toppling over, and then going to their knees—Raleigh and White practically falling, Walsingham and Dee lowering their aging joints a little more carefully. He could only follow suit. Once on his knees, he kept his eyes lowered and saw the hem of a voluminous skirt as its owner swept into the room.

  "Well, Walsingham, you rank Puritan, what are you plotting behind my back?"

  "I crave pardon for my unhappy choice of words, Your Majesty. But I seek only to secure your safety, and the rescue of the realm."

  "Ha! More likely you seek the advancement of your fellow Puritans. Sweet Jesu, but they bore me with their unending demands for further reformation of the Church of England of which I am the supreme head on Earth! God's blood, isn't it already reformed enough?"

  "Soon, Your Majesty, I fear it will no longer be reformed at all."

  Winslow expected thunderbolts, but he heard only a snort which he could have sworn was half amused. "Oh, get up, all of you!" the Queen commanded in a voice that was merely imperious.

  As Winslow rose, he saw the Queen hitch up her farthingale and settle into a chair with its back to the westward-facing window, with the blaze of sunset behind her head, so he could make out no details—only a fringe of pearls around hair that the setting sun turned ever redder than its dye. A pair of ladies-in-waiting moved into flanking positions as she surveyed the five men.

  "Sir Walter, thick as thieves with Walsingham! Well, let no one say the days of miracles are over! And you, Dr. Dee—I might have known. But who are these other two schemers?"

  "Master John White, gentleman of London, Your Majesty," answered Walsingham. "And Captain Thomas Winslow, merchant adventurer, only just arrived from London."

  "London." The royal head with its ruddy nimbus turned in Winslow's direction. "So you were there when . . . ?"

  "Yes, Your Majesty," he mumbled. "By God's mercy, I escaped ahead of the Spaniards, unlike so many others."

  "Many, indeed." The head lowered, and when she spoke again it was to herself and to her memories. "Sweet Robin," she whispered.

  Leicester, Winslow realized after an uncomprehending moment. And it came to him that she was seeing in her mind's eye the young Robert Dudley whose bold Gypsy charm still lived, for her, inside the fat, florid, wheezing earl Winslow himself had known. That insolent rogue would have won her youthful hand if any man could have. But she had never once been able to put out of her mind the headless corpse of her mother Anne Boleyn and its grim lesson in what could befall a woman who gave control of her fate to a man as all women had to do . . . all women besides herself.

  Now her sweet Robin was dead, and her own youth was dead too, for she could no longer pretend that she was the girl who had loved him.

  "Your Majesty," Walsingham said before the silence could stretch beyond endurance, "we must not deceive ourselves with false hopes. Such army as we could muster is dead or fled, and Captain Winslow has confirmed our worst suppositions about the fate of London. The men of the west and north will resist valiantly, I'm sure," he added hastily with a glance in Raleigh's direction. "But they cannot prevail. If you remain in England, it can only be to fall captive to the Spaniards . . . and therefore to the Gray Monks."

  The Queen rose to her feet, and the last glare of the sunset outlined her entire body. "You would have me abandon my people to their fate?" she asked in a dangerously quiet voice.

  "Your Majesty, there is no choice—"

  "Bad enough that I let you persuade me not to go to Tilbury and speak to the troops there," she continued, overriding him. "God, how much I wanted to say to them! I wanted to tell them that that I was not afraid to come among twenty thousand armed men, despite the cautious counsel of such as you, Walsingham. I wanted to tell them that I knew I had nothing to fear, because I loved them and I know they loved me because they loved England and I am England. No: that they and I are England, and that we are joined in an inseparable bond. 'Let tyrants fear,' I wanted to say to them. I wanted to tell them . . . oh, how did I have it worked out in my mind? 'I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.' Or . . . well, something like that. I was still working on—" She came to a flabbergasted halt as the roomful of men fell to their knees again.

&n
bsp; "Before God, madam," whispered Walsingham, "I regret that I did let you go to Tilbury! Only . . ." The realism that Elizabeth knew was indispensable to her even as it infuriated her reasserted itself, and Walsingham rose slowly back to his feet. "No, Your Majesty. I do not regret it. You would have given our nation something to cherish as part of its heritage—but there would have been no nation left to cherish it. You might have summoned up from the soul of England something that could have stood against Parma and his hired killers, but nothing could have stood against the foul and unnatural sorcery of the Gray Monks. And if you had died, England's last hope would have died with you. You must"—Walsingham unflinchingly used the forbidden word—"depart England, to Sir Walter's colony of Virginia, from whence Dr. Dee believes you may well be able to return in triumph to the liberation of your people. That is why Captain Winslow is present, for his ship will convey you there." Walsingham took on a crafty look. "My only concern is whether Your Majesty will be up to the hardships of the voyage."

  "What?" Walsingham quailed—or seemed to quail—under the royal glare. "How dare you? I'm a year younger than you. And I can dance a galliard and ride a horse for miles while you can barely stand up without your joints creaking, or pass an hour without the flux sending you running lest it gush forth!"

  "Your Majesty's unabated vigor is an inspiration to us all," Walsingham murmured.

  The Queen advanced toward Winslow, and as she left the sunset-glare of the window he could finally see her face clearly: the face of a sharp-nosed, thin-lipped woman of fifty-five, caked in white makeup, with dark-brown eyes that speared his very soul. "So, Captain, do you think yourself up to the task Walsingham has set you of getting me across the ocean alive? Or am I too decrepit an old crone?"

  Afterwards, Winslow could never clearly remember what went through his mind. But he looked up and met those dark-brown eyes, and spoke from his soul because he could not do otherwise. "No, madam. You are Gloriana, and you are ageless."

  Silence slammed down on the room. After a moment, the Queen gave a short laugh. "God's toenails, Captain Winslow, but you're a pretty flatterer! Sir Walter, you had best have a care for your laurels in the courtier's art!"

  "I protest before God, madam, that I do not flatter," Winslow heard himself say, in a voice that shook with emotion. "My upbringing has not been in any arts."

  Elizabeth of England leaned closer, and her eyes penetrated to depths Winslow hadn't known he possessed. "Devil take me if you don't remind me of Drake, Captain Winslow." She turned to Walsingham. "I suppose Drake . . . ?"

  "Yes, Your Majesty," Walsingham said somberly.

  "Ah. Of course." The Queen said no more. There was little speech to be spared for grief, in this season of death. "And who is to accompany us, Walsingham? You, for one, I'm sure. If you fell into their hands, the Inquisition would devise something truly special."

  "No doubt, Your Majesty. And Dr. Dee and Master White must also come, for it is by means of the former's learning and the latter's experience that we hope to find what we seek in Virginia."

  "As you say. Lord Burghley is too old to endure a voyage even if he were here, and I know he has already departed for his estates. The Spaniards will find him there, of course, but they'll probably put him to work administering the country for them. They know he served my half-sister Mary as best he was able, because at bottom his concern all along has been for the right ordering of the realm." The Queen turned to Raleigh. "And you, Sir Walter?"

  "My place is here, Your Majesty. As Vice Admiral of the West Country, I will endeavor to hold these counties against your return from across the seas."

  "You are so certain of that return, Sir Walter?" A note of tenderness entered the Queen's voice.

  "As certain as I am of the loyalty to you that is the only thing Mr. Secretary Walsingham and I have in common—indeed, probably the only thing that could have made us sit down together at the same table."

  "You really must guard against these attacks of honesty, Sir Walter. They will be the ruin of you as a courtier." The Queen straightened up, and everyone in the room stood straighter. "So be it, then. I leave the preparations for the voyage in your hands, Captain." She started to turn away, then paused and took another look at Winslow. "By God, but you put me in mind of Drake! I hope I'm not mistaken. For the sake of the realm, I hope I'm not mistaken." She swept away. England departed.

  "Well, Thomas," said Walsingham after a moment, "how soon can you be ready to sail?"

  Winslow thought furiously. "Mr. Secretary, I know the Dons aren't far behind us. But we can't undertake this voyage without preparation. The stores—"

  "Letters in my name should get you what you need."

  "All well and good. But no one in his right mind ventures across the Atlantic with a single ship—especially this late in the year. What if something befalls that one ship?"

  "Set your mind at rest. I have arranged for a smaller vessel to accompany the Heron."

  "But what about shallops? I remember from Master White's accounts that we'll be traversing shallow waters."

  "That also has been attended to." Winslow wondered why he was even surprised, knowing the man with whom he was dealing. "I suggest you see to your ship. We sail with the morning tide."

  Four

  "Now, Boatswain," said Winslow in a voice that sounded almost as harried as he felt, "you must understand that we are going to have the Queen herself aboard, and two of her ladies-in-waiting—Mr. Secretary Walsingham managed to persuade her that we could carry no more than that. You must understand that these are not . . . ah, they're not the sort of women with whom the crew are accustomed to associating. So there are going to have to be some, well, changes in the way the men customarily behave. I'm thinking in particular of the language that occasionally escapes them in moments of stress."

  "Oh, have no fear, Cap'n," Martin Gorham assured him with great seriousness. "I'll allow no God-damned profane talk among the men. If any of these sons of noseless whores fail to observe the niceties, I'll hand 'em their balls to use as holystones!"

  Walsingham's eyes twinkled. He was what was known as a worldly Puritan. "With your example before them, Master Boatswain, their deportment can hardly fail to be exemplary."

  "Thankee, yer lordship," Gorham beamed. "Rest assured that every swinging dick of this crew will be a model of prim and proper behavior." An eruption of shouting confusion on the dockside caught his attention, and he leaned over the rail. "Have a care with those casks, you pox-eaten lubbers!" he bellowed, and with a hurried "Excuse me, Cap'n," he hastened off.

  "Actually," John Dee remarked with a twinkle of his own, "I suspect the sailors could learn a thing or two from Her Majesty about the art of swearing."

  Winslow was in no mood to be amused. He had begged Walsingham for more time, but the Principal Secretary had been adamant. Time was a luxury they did not possess. The Spanish army would be coming west toward Plymouth as soon as Parma could flog the aftereffects of the sack of London out of it. Furthermore, Dee was certain that the Spaniards would lose no time in sending a naval expedition to Virginia—probably major elements of the Armada, as soon as they could be refitted and reprovisioned. He was confident that certain new navigational theories of his would enable Heron to use the shorter, more northerly longitudes, bettering the usual time for such a voyage and avoiding the Spanish islands of the Canaries and the Indies. Winslow was only too willing to follow his advice. Spaniards aside, he had no desire to dawdle in the tropical seas that, this time of year, were already spawning hurricanes. In fact, they would arrive off the treacherous coast of Virginia at the height of hurricane season. And the longer their departure was delayed, the worse it got.

  So they had toiled through the night, and Winslow had passed beyond exhaustion into a state beyond the reach of fatigue. One of the first matters to be settled had been that of accommodations. The Queen and her ladies-in-waiting would, of course, have the captain's cabin. Winslow would move just forward of that into one of the
mates' cabins, which he would share with Walsingham, Dee and White, evicting the current occupants to the forecastle, and so on, with the lowliest sailors sharing the 'tween deck with the soldiers who were aboard simply because it was unthinkable for the Queen to go anywhere without a guard of honor. Sanitary arrangements weren't as much of a complication as some might have thought. Chamber pots would naturally be provided in the captain's cabin, from whence they could be taken directly out onto the stern gallery to be emptied into the sea. (A single experience, Winslow thought grimly, would teach the ladies-in-waiting the wisdom of doing so from upwind.)

  As for provisions, Walsingam's letters, delivered by soldiers pounding on doors at night, had proven marvelously effective at persuading ship chandlers to be flexible about their business hours. The loading had gone on through the night, and was only now coming to completion under the boatswain's bellowing supervision. In addition to the usual stores, they were bringing a consignment of copper implements. White had explained that the Indians of Virginia set great store by copper, and had been impressed by the Englishmen's relatively advanced techniques for working it.