The rolling, broad-backed river moved on, outside the tavern, and did not know or care a jot for the living, melodramatic frieze hat hung in time within the beams and plaster of the Unicorn's walls. That blood was to be spilled, life to be winked out or filled with pain in a moment, it cared as little as the air, It knew only the sea, and its ultimate destiny there.Within, however, in the flickering torchlight, a moment of warmer, more passionate destiny hung on a hingepoint, men facing men with blades drawn and the readiness to use them, and the genial air of beer and warmth had frozen into a readiness for bitter battle, of sharp blades readying to find flesh and spill blood.
The instant was sharply and suddenly interrupted by the crashing sound of a large heavy glass carboy, which had been innocently doing its job of holding several gallons of red French wine in the corner, smashing into violent, loud, wet smithereens against the tavern wall.
The sound succeeded in drawing some attention from every single person in the room, and in the instant of silence that followed, a penetrating command shivered the timbers of the entire boozy and overwrought lot.
"Put down your weapons and return to your seats! You have done quite enough this night!!"
The tension in the room dissipated and reformed, seeking the origin of this imperious interruption, and at least for an instant, bloodletting was forgotten; every eye in the house turned instead to the sender shape of the monk who had thrown the carboy, and was now standing on a table near the wall invoking compliance with an outstretched arm and pointing finger.
Only one of the crowd was unimpressed by the electric presence that seemed to emanate for the cowled figure. The pock-faced and hate-filled walleyed sailor broke th emoment's sell, falling back on his usual repertory of gutter terms.
"Git orf o' that then, ye bloody feckin' do-good, er yer'll fine yerself in more trouble than yer bloody prayers can git ye out of! Who d'y think ye are, the bloody Queen of England, puttin' on such airs? Get orf before ye get hurt by a better man than you, ye silly git!!"
The monk turned toward the drunken sot and threw him a glance that would have frozen his heart, had it been not dead already. With a single fluid gesture, an arm reached up and pulled back the cowl that covered the monk's face, revealing the unmistakeable, imperious, and furious features of Elizabeth Regina, Queen of England.
"I know full well I am England's Queen, good doltish oaf. Now show us your true colors, and be ready to lose your head faster than Mary Stuart!"
There was a muted gasp from every man and woman in the room except two. The rapier-wielding gentleman, who simply rolled his eyes and stepped back to guard the Queen standing atop her table, and Francis Drake, dirk in hand and his own flaming pounding heart in his throat, who could do nothing but give way to the longest slowest grin he had ever experienced.
"Your Majesty!!??" "Wot th e-- the Queen?" "B'God, it's the Queen!!" Buzzes and gaping stares and flood sof awe, embarassment, and not a little fear swept over the varied tables; and then the gentleman who guarded Elizabeth cleared his throat,
"On your knees for the Queen, ye salt-heads, or ready yourself for a meeting with yer maker!"
The suggestion penetrated the room like an irresistible cold wind, and in a moment of rustling and scraping, every man and woman in the room went to one knee and bowed. The furious and scintilliating presence of Elizabeth took on an almost palpable electric glow, a force which no-one there could even look on in comfort, let alone think of crossing.
She looked at them, looked at Drake, and smiled.
"Stand up, all of you!! You are true English men, and the very quick of our Navy, the soul of our kingdom. We will not dampen your spirits with authority this night; let us all remember th elessons we have learned here, and take a round on the Queen for every man. God bless you all, and God bless England!"
A roar of acclaim came back to her in another instant, as every man in the tavern threw his entire soul into the refrain: "GOD BLESS ENGLAND!!".
It was the giant ox of a bosun who stood then, and hollered loud enough to shake the beams and raise a wake on the Thames, "Three cheers for good Queen Bess, lads!!", and the night erupted with the roar of men turned into patriots to their very souls.
In the confusion, as the courtly gentleman put up his rapier and turned to pay the house for the Queen's benevolent offer, and Lil began running tankartds to every table, the Queen in monk's clothing took a firm grip from behind on Francis' elbow and steered him toward the rear of the tavern and onto a shallow railed deck that stood over the Thames' waters in the chill November mist.
"Dearest Elizabeth," he laughed, taking her royal waist in his giant hands. "God's blood but I am rejoiced to see you, folly though it is that brought you!! How did you dare?"
"No, Francis," the Queen replied. This is not folly, nor any great affair of state. This is not Spain, or the treasury or law. What brings me here is a simpler thing by far, just the heart of a single woman, no more or less."
"Dear God, but I have missed you! I have been most hard-pressed to find cause to live on, being so alone, as though the sun had abandoned the world. I have been so alone this fortnight, Elizabeth, I cannot speak the pain of it."
"Oh, Francis, you do have the silver tongue, that lashes a poor girls'heart to ribbons!! But no more. No more.
You will never be alone again, I promise you,"
There was a day, long back, when the Unicorn was new and the floors were laid down smelling of freshly adzed oak and sweat, rather than stale beer, smoke and fetid urine. A place was born then, into times that called for a cheap alehouse to spring into being, to turn shillings on wiry seamen in the hour of England's blazing birth.Strange times, they were -- reason was rising in the house of Commerce, new continents had appeared for the bold to savor, the sextant was highest of technologies, and the national spirit was straight out of the foc's'le head. ...
Magic flowers of an unleashed language singing were everywhere, they bloomed in the very alleys, and there was a sense of nation, of tribal hugeness that has survived unto this hour. Every month saw new timbers rising by the Mother river, new docks and vessels to tie to them, small and huge, appearing as miracles of plain tar, plain fir, plain rope, oak, hemp and salt tack suddenly combined in an overwhelming burst of organized magic, sent down the splintering rollers to the Thames in towering, mystic, nautical visions of power and of hope.
And, too, there was madness, both in ones and in gangs, the madness of churches, lost women, and terrified soldiers, and the far-flung madness of the displaced. This, too, spread wildly and drove men many times to sea in a search for reason; and often, accompanied them there.
In such a search, accompanied by such madness, does this tale end....