Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer Read Free Page A

bright by the certainty that victory, so long awaited, would not now be long denied.

Before dawn, 15 January 1559

    I return to my senses with no thought but to remove myself from the chapel at once. With Cecil and Dee on my heels, I flee across the moon-washed sward, past several startled guards, and up the stairs to my privy chamber.
    “What magic do you conjure?” I demand of the magus the moment the door closes behind us. My heart beats so fiercely that I fear it will spring from my chest, my breath is labored, and dizziness threatens to overcome me. I sag into my chair, gripping the carved arms, and glare at Dee.
    “You know I forbid sorcery in my realm! Do not imagine that because you have been of use to me I will make an exception for you.”
    For a man just accused of engaging in the black arts—an offense for which he can burn—the good doctor seems oddly unconcerned. Indeed, he appears to be in the grip of a strange elation that similarly afflicts Cecil. My Spirit’s cheeks are flushed, and for once the gouty pain in his legs does not seem to trouble him at all.
    “It worked!” the magus exclaims. He clasps his hands in glee, looking at me as a parent might gaze upon a child who has performed vastly beyond expectation.
    “It may have worked,” Cecil corrects, precise even in his excitement. “We cannot know for sure until—”
    “But you saw!” Dee protests. “The mist, the light, there can be no question. Her Majesty has awakened!”
    I am tempted to regard all this as gibberish, for so it surely sounds. Yet in the manner of both men is a seriousness that I cannot dismiss. Beyond that, the word Dee used—
awakened
—fits too perfectly with what I have only just begun to notice.
    The world, even wrapped in hushed night, has acquired clarity unlike any I have known before. Every object in my chamber seems to shine with a faint but unmistakable inner light hitherto unseen by me. And there is more. I hear all manner of things with new awareness—the crackle of the fire, the snap of frost outside my window, the surge of the tide against the piers of London Bridge, and beyond an exhalation all around and within, as though the world itself is breathing. I feel beneath my fingers the carving of the chair in which I sit in all its intricate detail. And I smell … smoke, wool, leather, the silk bed hangings imbued with the delicate aroma of lost cocoons, my own skin and the musk perfume adorning me, and beneath it all, the fetid stirrings of the Tower moat and the river, mercifully held in check by the blanket of frost.
    “What is happening to me?” I ask, more to myself than to either of my counselors, yet they endeavor to answer.
    “Your Majesty,” Dee says, “you are experiencing the result of a confluence of heavenly alignments occurring only once in each millennium that in combination with the unique qualities of your own nature and in the presence of your late mother’s mortal remains, from whose bloodline your calling comes, has awakened in you certain hitherto latent powers.”
    This pretty speech leaves me entirely confused. I turn to my Spirit. As always, Cecil strives to provide clarity.
    “Majesty, at your birth, your mother arranged secretly for the casting of your horoscope. It revealed signs sufficient to convince her that you are the one whose coming had been long predicted in certain arcane circles. To shield you until youcould come into your own, this information was concealed from all save a small group sworn to your protection. I have the honor to be a member of that group, as does Doctor Dee.”
    This makes only slightly more sense to me than what the magus said. All the same, it has the ring of truth. My father, in his lethal disappointment at my failure to be the male heir he so desired, would never have bothered to have my horoscope cast. But neither would he have allowed anyone else to do so lest it be used for treachery. My mother would have had to act in secret even as she