Quintessence Sky (34 page)

Blanche Parry was gone. She had not been a
prisoner herself, and had been free to leave. Ramos hoped Elizabeth
had told her to get as far away from London as she could. After
today, she would not fare well if she were caught by Mary's
agents.

At the bottom of the stairs, they emerged
into bright sunlight. Two ranks of Tower guards, halberds held
high, kept back the crowd and made a straight path toward the
headsman's block. Elizabeth stumbled as she saw it, but she quickly
regained her balance and made her way forward with poised and regal
bearing. She looked every inch a queen, despite her simple dress
and shaved head.

A huge crowd had come to see the spectacle,
but most of them were outside the Tower's outer walls, unable to
view the event itself. The crowd permitted inside were mostly
aristocracy and loyal supporters of the king and queen, though even
that was enough to fill the inner ward from Constable Tower all the
way around to Wakefield Tower and right up to the edge of the green
itself. Elizabeth would have preferred to be executed on Tower
Hill, where everyone could have seen her, but of course Philip had
designed it this way. He wanted her death to be public, and thus
incontrovertible, but not so public that her final words or actions
could influence the people.

It wouldn't matter, Ramos thought. If
everything went as planned, today's events would spread through the
masses like a city fire, whether they saw it with their own eyes or
not.

The block was on a raised platform, covered
with straw to soak up the worst of the blood. Elizabeth mounted the
platform without a pause, and Ramos, as the representative of the
church, followed behind her. Wind whipped his robes. The Tower's
ravens croaked from their perches on the battlements, anticipating
that another head would soon be mounted on the wall for them to
peck at.

The executioner knelt before Elizabeth. "I
beg your pardon, my lady."

It was customary for a headman to ask those
convicted to pardon him for his act. Since the swiftness of death
was in his hands—a botched execution might take four or five
strokes to finally sever the head—prisoners were often quick to do
so, and even to pay him for his services. Elizabeth, however,
looked down at him with steel in her eyes. "God forgive you," she
said in a ringing voice, "but I never can."

Startled, he rose to his feet and lifted his
axe. Elizabeth ignored him and faced the crowd. King Philip and
Queen Mary sat on a raised platform of their own outside the Chapel
of St. Peter ad Vincula, surrounded by all their attendants. There
were also Nicholas Heath, the Archbishop of York; Lord Russell and
William Paget, Keepers of the Privy Seal; as well as the Chief
Justices and Secretaries and Lord Treasurers, the Chief Barons, and
the Masters of the Rolls. Beyond them, and in a circle to every
side, were all the lords and nobles and their families, with many
of their servants, every one of them here to watch Elizabeth
die.

"My people," Elizabeth said. "Loyal subjects
and traitors both." This was treason, but it could hardly matter at
this point. "I stand here accused because I will not recant my
Protestant faith. Much blood has been lost over this issue, but
that we cannot change. The past cannot be cured. Only the future
lies within our power, and for that, I beg you, consider carefully
whom you will follow. The powerful are not always the good, and
those who appear the most sanctified are sometimes the worst of
men.

"As for me, I ask only that God will judge me
justly for my deeds. If my crimes are as great as my sister, Mary,
deems them to be, let my blood flow across these grounds for all to
see and wonder at. If, however, I have not sinned, may my life
today be spared, as witness to all of you that my cause is
just."

King Philip smirked. Even now, he didn't see
what was coming. The deception bothered Ramos, but only a little.
It was, after all, exactly the sort of trickery Philip himself had
employed at the burning of Charles Shiveley, using quintessence to
give the impression of divine intervention. The justice of it
pleased him.

Elizabeth drew back her hood and knelt in
front of the block. She stretched her beautiful, vulnerable neck
across the dark wood. Without her hair, she seemed tiny, like a
child, and it was all Ramos could do to play his part.

"Elizabeth, I call on you to renounce your
heresy and cling to Christ for mercy," he said in a loud voice.
"Acknowledge the Holy Father as God's authority on Earth and your
sister Mary as the rightful queen, and even now, you shall be
pardoned your crimes."

He looked down at her and saw that she was
shaking. She placed her arms behind her back and said, "Never."

Ramos nodded at the headsman and took a step
back. The man flexed his fingers and grasped the pole of the axe
with a sure grip. Muscles rippled as he took his stance and lifted
the axe over his head. When Elizabeth's mother had been executed on
this spot, King Henry VIII had sent to France for an expert
swordsman to insure that her death was quick and clean. For
Elizabeth, however, no such expense had been made.

With a grunt, the headsman swung the axe
down, throwing his weight into the blow. The blade flew through her
delicate neck and embedded itself in the wood beneath. The head did
not fall. There was no blood. The executioner himself was the first
to notice that something was wrong. It had been too easy; there had
been no resistance as bone and flesh were severed. The rest of the
crowd didn't realize what had happened until Elizabeth lifted her
head.

Gasps spread throughout the crowd, turning
into shouts as Elizabeth stood up, unharmed. The headsman crossed
himself and backed away. A few people screamed. Elizabeth raised
her hands and spun slowly, letting them see her unmarked neck and
her white dress free of blood, for all the world like an angel come
to Earth.

Philip was on his feet, shouting. Soldiers
ran toward them, weapons drawn. Ramos took Elizabeth's hand. "Time
to go," he said. They jumped down from the platform and ran back
the way they had come. Soldiers presented their halberds and tried
to prevent their escape, but Ramos and Elizabeth ran right through
them, to shouts of fear and consternation.

King Philip had been demanding a supply of
this liquid, but Ramos had put him off, saying that he had used all
of his supply on his demonstration, and it would take weeks to
gather more from the bird. In fact, it worked even greatly diluted,
and Ramos could easily have supplied some to the king and still had
enough left for himself and Elizabeth. However, he had wanted to
make sure that there would be no chance of them meeting a squadron
of soldiers whose swords could pierce their otherwise insubstantial
bodies.

Ramos hadn't bothered to bring a weapon. He
didn't want to kill anyone; he just wanted to escape, and there was
no one who could stop them. They raced through the stones of the
inner wall to the outer ward. On the other side of the outer wall
was the moat, and their quintessence magic wouldn't allow them to
fly over that. Instead, they ran around the outer ward to Byward
Tower, and through that to the bridge. The portcullis crashed down,
but they passed through it without pausing and across the
drawbridge, ignoring the hail of arrows raining down on them from
above.

On the other side, a Protestant friend of
Barrosa's was waiting for them with two horses. They each vaulted
into a saddle—treated with wax so they wouldn't fall through—while
the man who had brought the horses melted back into the crowd
gathered outside the Tower. By this time, Elizabeth had been
recognized. A huge roar went up, mostly cheers, and she waved to
them from atop her horse. She trotted in a quick circle,
demonstrating that she was unharmed, and then rode into the
crowd.

The people parted for her, like the waters of
the Red Sea. Men threw cloaks down in the mud for her horse to
trample. Women called out blessings and shouted her name. Some
cursed her as well, calling her heretic or traitor or whore, but
most seemed inclined to love her. Even without her hair, she was
beautiful, but not like a peasant girl was beautiful. Elizabeth was
regal, supernatural, untouchable. She looked like nothing so
mundane as an execution could have any hold on her. As if she would
be young forever. When the queen's soldiers came racing after them,
the gap in the crowd closed, blocking their path.

We made it
, Ramos thought.
We
really escaped
. Then an arrow flew over the crowd and embedded
itself into his horse's flank. The animal screamed and reared.
Ramos tumbled off and hit the ground hard. The panicked horse, its
hooves flailing, came down on top of him.

FOR a time, everything was blood and chaos.
The pursuing soldiers attacked the crowd with swords and arrows,
and the people rioted, surging in every direction, sometimes around
Ramos and sometimes—since the invisible bird's saliva was still
working—right through him. He struggled to his feet. His horse was
screaming and twisting on the ground in a pool of bright red
blood.

Suddenly, Elizabeth was there, wheeling her
horse around him to make a space in the mob. He clambered up behind
her, and she galloped away at high speed, leaving him no choice but
to put his arms around her to stay on.

By this time, their pursuers had found horses
of their own. Ramos knew this escape could be disastrous to Mary's
hold on power. Soon there would be dozens, if not hundreds, of men
following them. The small advantage that the invisible bird's
saliva had given them would soon wear off. If they could not lose
their pursuers, they would eventually be found and captured.
Barrosa and Ramos would certainly be killed, probably after
torture. After a betrayal of this magnitude, Philip would want to
make them suffer. Elizabeth might be kept alive until a second
execution could be prepared, but it would be swift, and without
help, she would not escape a second time.

The most critical part of their escape would
be making it to London Bridge before they were cut off. Their
destination was a home on Tooley Street in Southwark where a small
band of Protestants loyal to Elizabeth were waiting to bring them
to Gravesend, where a ship could take them across the channel to
the Netherlands. The Netherlands was Protestant now, and would
harbor Elizabeth while she gathered support to reclaim her throne.
Ramos had already secretly relocated Antonia to Tooley Street, a
risky move that might have doomed the whole plan if Philip had
discovered it.

London Bridge, however, was the only bridge
across the Thames. If the queen's soldiers blocked it, they would
have no easy way across. As a backup plan, they would ride through
the city to the horse ferry at Westminster, where Barrosa knew a
man willing to take them across to Lambeth. This route took them
right by Whitehall Palace, however, and required riding several
miles through muddy, winding streets crammed with horsecarts and
foot traffic without being caught.

London Bridge was their best chance. Their
horse thundered through the streets, throwing up mud, heedless of
pedestrians. The soldiers behind them shouted for them to stop.
Elizabeth rode hard, avoiding obstacles with prodigious skill, but
every time Ramos stole a look back, the soldiers seemed to be
closer. The raw sewage smell of the Thames was strong; they must be
close. Suddenly, they rounded a corner, and there was the bridge,
so crowded with shops and buildings that one feared it might tip
over from the weight.

He could tell there was something wrong as
soon as they reached it. Normally it was choked with traffic, not
just those trying to reach the other side, but those visiting the
shops along its length. But the bridge was empty.

"Where are all the people?" Ramos said.

Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder at him.
"They all came to watch me die."

"There's something wrong."

"It's too late now," Elizabeth said. The
pursuing soldiers had almost reached them. There was no time to
change their plans. She spurred the horse forward with a cry, and
it thundered across the stones onto the bridge.

The buildings flanked the road, several
stories high on each side, giving the impression that they were
riding on a city street instead of a bridge. Most of the time, they
couldn't even see the water. Some buildings even connected over the
road, forcing them to ride through dark tunnels.

They flew past shop after shop, past the rows
of latrines that emptied out into the river below, past the Chapel
of St. Thomas, a church dedicated to Thomas Beckett that was larger
than some churches built on land. When they passed around the
chapel and through the narrowest arch of the bridge, Elizabeth
wheeled the horse around and turned to face their pursuers. As the
first two charged through the arch after them, they exploded into
flame. The horses collapsed, blocking the tunnel, already dead.
Their riders were blackened ash. The next horse collided into this
devastation and went down, catapulting his rider off of his back
before he, too, burst into white flames.