The Queen's Viper Read online

  “The king?”

  “Bah! A child of eleven years, my nephew is no true king. Lord Somerset, my fat-kidneyed brother, coddles the boy-king’s cock and rules in his name.”

  Viper caught her breath when Seymour’s pursed lips spat into the blackness around them.

  Seymour placed an arm around his gardener. “John, I will tell thee the truth about royal blood.” John squirmed at the action. Seymour continued regardless. “Royal blood cannot be shed save by disloyalty or by enemy. The English Court is full of evil, within and without. If Elizabeth is welcomed at Court, then so too, will my Dowager Katherine and I be welcomed. And, if God sees fit to place my tamed princess upon the English throne, then I would have the same power o’er her which my brother now holds o’er the king.”

  Seymour stretched, a jerky, awkward motion, and retracted his arm. “This wine makes me too familiar with my tongue.” He stabbed a finger at his groundskeeper. “Speak naught of my intent, elsewise the words will be thy last.” Seymour drew his fur-lined coat around himself. He slouched with his legs extended between Viper’s feet, laid his head on the stumpy backrest and closed his eyes. His breathing rapidly descended into the rhythmic pattern of sleep. John was less fortunate. He stayed awake until the sun greeted them at their destination.

  Lord Seymour woke when his cutter thumped into the wooden dock at Chelsea Place. He shot John a final acerbic glance and disembarked for his home, leaving the groundskeeper behind. Viper hastened after Seymour through the mulberry saplings bordering the widest pathway to an older timber building that framed one end of the garden. Here, the kitchen servants bustled through the doorway, preparing to break the household’s night fast. They had aeir as alluring as those of Seymour and his men on the boat, all imbued with a rarity that stirred Viper’s hunger. With so many resplendent energies at Chelsea Place from which to choose, she no longer had to stop herself from devouring Seymour’s. The immortal plotted how to get him alone.

  Chelsea Place was built with red clay bricks that Viper had not seen in the less affluent village of Cammerwelle. Four thin chimneys stroked the sky from second storey embattlements. Narrow windows flanked either side of the open oak door on the main level. Viper followed Seymour inside, up a wide, polished staircase and through a lengthy hallway lined with cabinets and closed doors.

  Seymour pushed open the entrance to his personal chambers. Once inside, his attendants began to help him undress. Viper maintained her glamour and they didn’t see her standing in the middle of the room. She wound her elldyr creft about Seymour’s head, invoking a hankering for privacy in his mind.

  “Leave me in peace,” he barked at the attendants. “Bring bread, meat and wine from the kitchen. My stomach, not my clothes, craves attention.” When alone, Seymour closed the door behind himself and began stumbling towards his four-poster bed.

  Viper materialized, blocking his path. First she let him see her arms, then her legs and torso. His eyes turned into pie dishes when he beheld the curve of her breasts beneath her thin smock. Seymour scrambled backwards to the fireplace’s unlit hearth to get away. The immortal’s violet magic outlined her body, fluctuating with impatience. She shoved her hands onto his chest, propelling him into the carved mantle, as high as his armpit. He flailed his limbs and knocked a ceramic bowl of drying thyme onto the woven reed carpet. The heels of his boots were devoured by the wood ash and coal soot in the hearth.

  The Daoine Tor held the humaine effortlessly. She lowered her face into the ethereal energy surrounding his head. Viper half-closed her eyes in ecstasy. Seymour extended his arms and secured his grip on a large frame leaning on the mantle. The gilded portrait started to tilt forward. Viper backhanded it into the bed on the other side of the room before it struck her.

  A jewel worn by the woman in the picture caught her eye. She thrust Seymour to his knees in front of the broken frame.

  “Who is this woman?” Her demand tore through him.

  “My beloved wife, the dowager queen, Katherine,” he croaked. Queen Katherine wore a black, peaked gable hood bedecked with pearls over brown hair that was parted down the middle and drawn back. A sheer partlet descended to the pearl, ruby and gold embroidered trim on her gown. Three loops of pearls circled Katherine’s neck. A small, black, triangular pendant dangled from the middle of the shortest strand. Yellow acanthus leaves spun across the ruddy dance floor of her hooped skirt.

  “And what of this amulet?” Viper pointed to a round brooch fastened on the left side of Katherine’s squared-off neckline. Seven thumbnail sized diamonds alternated with an equal number of oversized pearls around twinned red and blue centre jewels. Fine lines of white radiated outwards within each segment of the red and blue gems, like star sapphires. The filigreed setting held Celtic swirls uncharacteristically paired with ivy vines.

  “King Henry commissioned this portrait when Katherine was his Queen Consort at Hampton. She wears one of the Crown Jewels.”

  “Fetch it to me or meet thy death,” Viper said without hesitation. She moved to thrust him to the door when images of a forgotten event overwhelmed her mind: a feminine voice with pressured speech; large chunks of shattered stones strewn around a circular bank and ditch; faces she couldn’t make out but felt she should know; and the amulet from the painting of Katherine Parr. In Viper’s vision, she reached for the talisman—

  A flash of white blinded her and she shrieked in a mixture of fear and pain.

  Viper tore off her sleeves. Newly erupted scars flared on her inner forearms like white poppies in a meadow of purple heather. She bore six raised, keloid scars. Each one was a runic symbol, the translation of which she couldn’t fathom. The agony of not knowing their purpose hurt more than the burning in her arms.

  Distracted by her shock, Viper didn’t see Seymour sneak to the exit. The door flung open and an attractive girl in a sleeveless smock, with hazel eyes and a notable aquiline nose, ran into him. Flowing red hair hugged him as her body collided with his.

  “Princess!”

  “My Lord Seymour!” Princess Elizabeth gasped, her teenaged body still pressed into his. “Forgive me! I heard a disruption within and I – oh!” She stopped when she saw the disarray. Seymour’s hands lingered on the pale skin of Elizabeth’s arms as he helped her gain her balance. She leaned over to peek at Viper beyond Seymour’s body. Elizabeth caught sight of the face that, once seen, could never be forgotten. “Is that a painted flirt-gill?” The princess pointed at Viper, referring to a Bankesyde prostitute.

  Elizabeth’s aeir equally captivated Viper. The girl’s life-magic flowed with greater magnificence than anyone. The energy replicated every minutiae of Elizabeth’s body, from her fine eyelashes to her straight legs and naked feet. The immortal braced herself with the bed frame, unable to believe her good fortune. Princess Elizabeth was the source of the enhanced aeir of Chelsea Place’s residents.

  Elizabeth skirted around Seymour with curiosity, not covering her underclothes. “No. Not a woman. A creature with the appearance of a woman too sharp of bone and too tall of height. So much like us, yet vastly different. As magnificent as an angel, and as fearsome as a demon.” Elizabeth sounded more curious than cautious, more reckless than reverent.

  The Daoine Tor laughed, a crackle of a dying bonfire. “To some, hath I been both.”

  Elizabeth’s aeir doubled in strength as she set her jaw. “Thou art meaning to harm my uncle?”

  “I did come here to feed upon him. Be that as it may, I hath ne’er seen a life force as succulent as thine.” Viper summoned her elldyr and sent it to ensnare Elizabeth with forked, clasping barbs.

  Seymour grabbed Elizabeth and moved her aside. “No! She is a child!” Elizabeth’s hair flowed over his arm as he inserted himself between the youth and the immortal. The princess’ face paled beneath the apple red cheeks of her high cheekbones. “Do not touch her!”

  Viper bared her teeth and stayed her advance. “Thou dare to feign fatherly care for thy pawn? I o’erheard thy plans. Wit
hout her, thou art without influence upon the throne.”

  “Lord Thomas?” Elizabeth tried pushing away from him. “What poisoned lies does this viper speak?”

  “Name me what e’re thou will, humaine, but call me not a liar.”

  “What is your name, then, you abomination?”

  “Insolent wretch! To thee I am a viper, so feel my fangs.” Viper’s hands flared with the fire of her elldyr creft, as much at Elizabeth’s contempt as at her own inability to remember her real name.

  Seymour raised an unsteady hand to Viper. “I will procure this amulet you desire,” he stammered, beads of sweat on his forehead, “if, by so doing, you spare Elizabeth.”

  Viper yanked Seymour apart from the princess with one hand and pushed the girl from him with the other. The immortal spun Seymour around and pinned him to the far wall. A tapestry of men a-hunting furrowed behind him.

  “Here stand I with both thy lives at my whim, and thou art fool enough to bargain.” His ambitious cockiness infuriated Viper. Her magic crawled up his shoulders and around his neck.

  “Not so much a fool, foul creature,” Elizabeth spoke out from behind Viper, hands on her hips. “For if ye could fetch this item thyself, I believe thou would.” Viper turned her head and narrowed her calculating eyes at Elizabeth’s defiant ones.

  The immortal released Seymour, who squirreled to Elizabeth’s side. “Well played, little princess.” Viper strode to the Dowager’s portrait and caressed the painting, proving to herself that the amulet under her fingers was only an image. “I was ignorant of this talisman's existence till now, thou art are correct.” The immortal faced them, eyes heavy with threat. Elizabeth held her breath. “Thomas, if thy Dowager, thy princess, and thy household are to escape unscathed, find this amulet and yield it unto me.”

  “Uncle, you must not do as this viper asks.”

  Seymour kissed his ward on the forehead and held her tightly. “Elizabeth, think of Katherine and how she suffers at the hand of my brother. She was your father’s last queen. My brother treats her with great disrespect. A bargain with this creature may improve our station. I must obey the demon’s will.”

  Elizabeth lowered her eyes without stepping away. “I fear ’twill be your undoing, Sir.”

  The immortal heard other people approaching in the hall. “Make haste, Seymour. I will watch for thee.” She summoned her enchantment of concealment just before Katherine entered the room.

  The Dowager let loose a string of un-ladylike curses and accusations of infidelity at her husband, who still embraced the princess. Katherine demanded that Seymour immediately move Elizabeth, and the temptation of her youth, far from Chelsey Place, to which Seymour protested that he had not been unfaithful.

  As maids withdrew with a crying Elizabeth, Viper stroked her new scars. She promised herself she would have the princess’ aeir in her grasp again. First, she needed Thomas to find the mysterious amulet that provoked her past into her present. In the meantime, she would search for other Daoine Tor, the hazy faces she saw in her vision, determined to find out if they proved friend or foe.

  5: Mouse

  Beneath the River Thames, London.

  June 3, 2012: early evening.

  The sweat of the river on the flat subterranean walls of the prison beneath the Thames reeked of stale water. Viper’s eyes fluttered open. Years of confinement had deconditioned the endurance of the Daoine Tor’s skill. Her exchange with Queen Elizabeth II on the Spirit of Chartwell, and in the stone henge beneath it, unexpectedly drained Viper. She propped herself up on one elbow and produced a weak, purple elldyr creft flame, then surveyed the room with the tiniest hope of seeing her enemy’s wasted body.

  Her heart sank when nothing except six blank walls greeted her. A limestone slab wracked with fractures leaned on the seventh wall. Viper dragged herself closer with complaining muscles. The light of her magic grazed the limestone’s surface. She expected to see rolling hills carved into its façade. Fragmentation and heavy mildew greeted her. The immortal came to her knees with a groan and pressed her glowing hands to the stone, willing an exit to form on its surface.

  Nothing happened. The mist rising from the cold floor matched the sad swirls in Viper’s eyes. The room had been compromised and the elldyr magic bound to the limestone frieze eradicated. She had no simple means of escape, or of finding help. The thought of being trapped again overwhelmed Viper. She crumpled to the ground in a fine spray of water.

  Viper felt, as much as heard, the grinding of metal on stone behind the limestone. She tried rousing a potent elldyr fire. Her power flickered and died. Defenseless, Viper lacked the stamina to protect herself from a potential assailant.

  A crowbar eased into the room and jimmied about for attention from the smallest gap behind the limestone. “Mistress,” a quiet male voice inched into the room, “if you would kindly relocate this slab, I would appreciate it very, very much.”

  “Mouse!” Viper’s surprise gave her the boost of energy she needed to shift the heavy stone.

  Her Foundling, a wiry man with grey hair, crawled out from a modest tunnel. “After all this time, I finally read the signs correctly!” Mouse braced himself against the wall and brushed the dust of khaki trousers with arthritis twisted hands. Both legs bowed outwards as he chittered with excitement. “Whew! That was almost impossible. I have been working for months on getting around that slab.” Dirt shook off him as he gesticulated. “I could have started burrowing from City Hall. City Hall is in the other direction, which is not the side we want to be on. Then again, if I had, I would not be stuck behind the slab, late for your arrival. No matter. You are here!”

  Mouse’s wild hair bounced enthusiastically as he hugged Viper. His enlarged head eclipsed his body, with sprawling eyebrows to match. His yellow and jade checkered bow tie clashed with a herringbone jacket in two shades of red. Mouse had aged, simultaneously looking completely unrecognizable and exactly as Viper had left him in 1603.

  He held Viper at his arms’ length, and lifting his chin, scrutinized her face with brown eyes over the narrow, rectangular glasses perched on his prominent nose. “You did not have to fight off one of those fish-tailed Merrow, did you? They increased their numbers of late. From the Northern Isles, I reckon. With the Diamond anniversary of Elizabeth’s Coronation coming, your enemy has been strengthening their ranks.”

  “The watery wraiths hold no match for me.” Viper shrugged out of his embrace, too weary to be captivated by both Mouse’s streaming words and his arms.

  Mouse danced a little jig, his bowed legs surprisingly lithe. “I knew you would come for the Diamond Queen. Oh yes, I knew it. Diamonds on the Second Throne; White Queen on the First. Diamonds are white; She was white. When I could not find you, well, I did not know what I would do. I went to the White Queen and I tried to tell her who I was. She stared out the window, unmoved for hours, even days. She would not, or could not, see me. So, I hid.”

  “For all these centuries?”

  Mouse scratched his abundant, rogue hair. “Yes. Well, and no. There was one decade… Alas, that is not important.” The memory slowed his jubilant steps. He took his glasses off and cleaned them with his handkerchief. A forlorn emotion touched upon his face. Then, he threw himself on his Mistress, babbling his relief.

  Viper disentangled herself from Mouse a second time, impatient to leave. “The display of your affection is neither requested nor desired. I must renew my elldyr power.”

  “Yes, yes. That first.” He toddled back into the tunnel. “I am afraid that you are not safe here,” he said, his words muffled from within the darkness. “Someone long ago made sure the walls could be breached. By whom, I do not know. And, I will not be able to drag anyone through the tunnel for you to feed upon as I do not have the strength. I am sorry to tell you that you will have to, ahem, crawl out. I will collapse the room and tunnel behind us when we leave.” He re-emerged, showing her a bag of grey putty and wires. “Explosive devices. Very handy.”

&n
bsp; He began affixing them to the walls. “In 1884, the city created a transportation system to carry people under the ground. The cobblestone roads were a disgraceful mess. Queen Victoria reigned at the time. You would have liked her. She reminded me of your Elizabeth, smart and determined, despite her youth. The original design for a tunnel under the Thames would have come right through here. Well, your Mouse stepped in, yes I did. I laid out some hefty bribes to make the surveyors change their plans. The workmen dug a passage several metres east of us. In fact, I spent a lot of time restructuring the designs to suit my needs. From the Gherkin, where I live now, I have…”

  Viper glowered at Mouse and he held up his hands in protest. “Yes, yes. Let us go. Humans live longer lives now, but they are still afflicted with illness and cancers. We will find you someone suitable, perhaps at The Royal London Hospital. It is not far.”

  “It need not be a dying person,” Viper said. “The aeir of any humaine shall suffice. My recovery proves difficult. Already hath I rashly fed upon healthy humaines.” The luscious tones of Viper’s skin faded.

  “Surely you, you do not mean children, Mistress?” Mouse swallowed, his Adam’s apple visible beneath the close-cropped, white beard that starkly contrasted with his hair.

  “No, Mouse, spare the youngest. In my adverse reaction to a child’s aeir, I hath not changed.” A headache started behind her eyes as she recalled the boy in the Camberwell hotel.

  “In that case, we might come across a Once Under in the Underground before too long. There have been a higher number of individuals throwing themselves in front of trains lately.”

  “When I am fully convalesced, then shall you assist me in taking vengeance upon Annys.”

  “I am yours, my Mistress,” Mouse said with a bow and a cryptic smile. “I have long prepared for this day. Come, come. It is not far.” He tapped his nose and disappeared down his rabbit hole.