The tavern was almost empty by then, save for a snoring drunk and a man who tapped his mug to the tune.
Will lifted his eyebrows and his mug, daring Kit to pick up his challenge and improvise the next verse.
The wenches grinned at them.
Kit smiled, bemused.
As a little boy, he’d watched his father and his father’s friends play this game. But he’d been a quiet child, apart from the euphoria, the socializing of such convivial evenings. And later, later he’d been a learned child, who intimidated his father and his father’s friends.
Now, at long last, in the maturity of his years, he was being included in a game men played with their tavern friends. He grinned broadly. Only Will Shakespeare would dare do this with someone of Kit Marlowe’s jaded reputation.
Grinning, Kit picked up the tune in the voice that had made him the star of Canterbury choir—a clear, resounding voice, if made lower by age and manhood—“But when I came to man’s estate, with hey, ho, the wind and the rain, ’gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate, for the rain, it raineth every day.”
Will raised an eyebrow and smiled, as though asking if that was the best Kit could do. Kit chuckled.
“But when I came, alas! to wive, with hey, ho, the wind and the rain, by swaggering could I never thrive, for the rain, it raineth every day,” Will sang.
Kit picked it up before the last line had died in the still air that smelled of ale and smoke. “But when I came unto my beds, with hey, ho, the wind and the rain.” He grinned at Will, and lifted his ale mug in silent salutation. “With toss-pots still had drunken heads, for the rain, it raineth every day.”
Will laughed at that, and Kit laughed in return.
For a moment, in the glow of the ale, Kit relaxed and thought this was what having friends felt like and how he would like to be friends with Will.
Kit could picture many meetings like this. They’d dine and drink, walk together, and talk. Kit could improve Will’s mind and Will’s writing. They could discuss poetry, and Kit could learn the easy joys of undemanding friendship that required neither secret nor betrayal.
It was only a moment.
At the tavern’s door, they clasped hands and clapped each other on the shoulders.
But when they left the ale house, the cold wind sobered Kit, and watching Will retreat down the street in unsteady steps, Kit asked himself whether Will would be going home, home to his great lady.
Would Will not already be involved in intrigues of his own? Was Will not playing a game of his own?
Perhaps Will worked for Poley. Perhaps . . . .
In the dreary world Kit inhabited, too much warmth was as threatening as too much aloofness. Will was too open, too warm, too easygoing. Too good to be true.
“Kit?”
Kit looked down. Imp stood beside him, looking up, his eyes fearful as they’d never before been, his pale skin marked by the trail of tears. Had the child cried, then, at Kit’s rebuke?
Kit wished to undo each of those marks, take back the words that had hurt Imp.
He looked down. He smiled.
“Well met, Imp. Well met.” He grinned. “Is Lord Morality come to chide me for my shortcomings?”
As he spoke, he looked to the west, where the sun set in a glory as red as spilled blood behind the tall, dark wood buildings of London.
Kit must go to Southampton House and finish laying the trap for Will, before Will came with his note, to Lord Southampton this evening.
Kit must make sure that one or more of Southampton’s servants praised Will’s poetry before then, so that the gullible lord would fall for it, would give Will his patronage without even having heard Will’s poetry.
And yet, Kit wished he could know if Will was meeting with his high-born woman . . . . Or with Poley.
The wind clearing the fog from his mind, Kit took Imp’s hand in his own and walked down the street, measuring his steps with the child’s. “Listen, I need your help, Imp. I’m sorry I spoke to you so fiercely this morning, but that man who visited me wasn’t a good man. He was a wolf man, gross and evil, and I didn’t want him to think I loved you, for then he would . . . . He would hurt you to hurt me.”
Imp looked up and blinked, his grey eyes looking again older and more understanding than they should—as old and understanding as Kit’s mother’s eyes. And as weary. “You’re doing something dangerous, aren’t you? Mother says—”
Oh, no more of Madeleine’s maxims. Kit squeezed Imp’s hand hard and looked away from Imp’s searching eyes. “Look, it is dangerous but I must do it, and once I’m done, then we will be safe, we will all be safe, and mayhap I’ll even marry your mother and be your father.”
“You mean it?” Imp asked, his voice full of a strange joy.
“Aye, if she’d have me.”
“Oh, she’d have you well enough. She sometimes looks at you that way.”
“That way?” Kit asked. He picked the child up and held him, and looked into the veiled gray eyes which were so intent and yet revealed nothing of the emotions behind that little, peaked oval face.
Were Kit’s own eyes that unreflective? No wonder men didn’t often offer him friendship.
And perhaps, he thought, remembering Will’s unsuspecting friendship, Will’s trustingly offered confidence, perhaps those men were right. If Will’s friendship, thus proffered, was true, how foolish and how dangerous.
“What do you know of the way a woman looks on a man, Lord Curious?”
Imp shrugged, and looked away. “I’ve seen it,” he said.
“Well, and right. But you must stop following me,” Kit said. “Besides, I’ll need your good services, milord, if you wish to gain the boon of such a distinguished father.” He winked at the child, who giggled back.
“What do you want me to do, Kit?”
“I want you to go to Hog’s Lane in Shoreditch. Did you see the man who was just with me?”
“What?” Imp asked. “The one with the head like a polished dome?”
“Right,” Kit said, and smiled at the image. “Yes. Would you go to Shoreditch? He lodges above Bonefoy Hatters, and I wish you to spy him out, and find when he leaves, when he comes. And report to me any visitor he has. Would you do that, Imp?”
Imp nodded.
Kit set him down and watched his streetwise, London-bred son lose himself amid the crowds of Southwark.
How could Kit feel such trembling anxiety for such a self-sufficient creature? And yet he did.
As for him, Kit must go to Southampton House and lay the trap that would catch his hare.
Scene 16
Kit’s lodgings. The door is open and Madeleine, in a dark cap, and dark, prim clothes, stands in the doorway facing the splendorous Lady Silver. Humble apprentices and workmen walking by give Silver curious glances.
“Milady, I’m sure I know not.” Madeleine Courcy tightened her lips in a disapproving, ponderous frown.
Silver knew she should be here as Quicksilver. Silver’s splendor and her looks were bound to offend Madam Courcy. But that morning her body had taken Quicksilver’s shape only reluctantly, and had flickered back to Silver instantly.
Silver held both her hands demurely in front of her, the fingers entwined.
They stood in front of the good wife’s house, a ramshackle building whose door opened onto an immaculate hall strewn with fresh rushes.
Silver piped in her most innocuous honeyed voice, “This is about my husband, good wife, I’m sure you understand that. He frequents places where he should not go, and finds his pleasures elsewhere. I can no more control him than control the moon above, the inconstant moon that waxes and wanes with every changing day. But I must know. For my ease I must know.”
Silver squeezed what she hoped were convincing tears from her metallic-colored eyes.
To be honest, she did need to know.
Searching the dark trail of Sylvanus’s power, of Sylvanus’s tainted soul, she’d followed it to this unassuming house
in Southwark. “Lives a woman here?” she asked, looking demurely toward the upper windows. Glazed, as she would not expect in such a poor place, and clean, too, shining in the scant light of early evening. “Lives a woman here with whom my lord might be consorting?”
She had heard in the neighborhood that Madam Courcy ran a boarding house, and it might well happen that one of her guests was the deposed King of Fairyland.
Silver must find the dark creature and return everything to the way it was before Quicksilver’s unwitting sin had released it.
Madam Courcy twisted her mouth into an expression of distaste, as she followed Silver’s eyes to the high, lead-paned windows. “No woman lives here. I have only one lodger now and he has been with me for long enough. His name is Christopher Marlowe. He is a man of unrighteous living.” She looked at Silver. “Should your husband have been visiting him, it would bode nothing but ill for your husband, aye, and your home also.”
Kit Marlowe. Silver gasped at the name. Kit Marlowe, again.
She thought she detected something like a glimmer of amusement in Madeleine’s eye, and heard Madeleine’s lightly accented voice, “Ah, but I see you know him, the villain. Then you know well enough what it means for your husband to be seen visiting him, no?”
“Has a man with dark hair, and a dark beard, and wearing dark clothes also been here?” she asked. “Has anyone asked for him whom you’re not accustomed to seeing?”
Madeleine shrugged. “People ask for him every day that I don’t know and have never seen.” She looked away from Silver and spat daintily onto the muddy ground of the alley. “Master Marlowe is a spy, an assassin, and other things that even though true, I wouldn’t say for a true lady shouldn’t speak of that.”
A spy? An assassin?
Possible. That was often the way with mortals loved by elves.
After the love of fairykind, the love of human paled, and the human must seek his excitement in other ways: in theater and politics, in crime and high charity. Some became monsters and some saints, according to the bend and dint of that one soul.
But one thing happened to one and all.
Every man touched by Fairyland—and every woman, too—became more vulnerable to the supernatural in the world, to the other things that traveled through the world of mortals, unnoticed by most, disregarded by others.
Pixies that flew in the motes of light, and fairies in woodland glades late at night, became as visible to those people as the twigs and sticks of everyday reality.
It was belief that did it, and not some ointment as old people would say was rubbed on the eyes of the captives in Fairyland. It was only that those who’d once believed in faerie could never again ignore it.
And those who saw more were also more vulnerable to the things that went unseen by others.
Silver sucked in breath as she realized that the only common link between the unfortunate Nick and Kit was their having been touched by fairykind.
Was that, then, the only indication of peril?
But then, what about Will, Will who had been Silver’s, Will who had been loved by fairykind? Loved with a love hotter than that of Fairyland’s normal run?
“Where did Kit—Master Marlowe—go? Know you that?” Silver asked.
The woman shook her head. Her suspicious look had returned. “He could be here or there. More than likely whoring in some tavern.”
Whoring in some tavern, he would be safe. Even Sylvanus couldn’t cut out a human from amid a crowd and claim him in public.
But Will . . . . Where was Will? Was he, likewise, safe from Sylvanus?
Silver wrinkled her brow in thought, and clenched her hands on the fine silvery fabric of her dress. If Kit was vulnerable to Sylvanus, then so was Will.
And where would Will be at this hour, with the sun going down and the creatures of the night becoming more powerful than they were in daylight?
She must find him.
Silver thanked Madam Courcy and, giving her two coins from the store of old gold coins that Silver carried about with her—the store scavenged from old lost treasures that men had forgotten—Silver bowed and walked away fast.
When far away enough that she’d be lost to Madeleine’s sight within the crowd of apprentices and artisans hurrying home for supper, Silver ducked into an alleyway.
There, she winked out of existence.
She materialized again in Will’s room.
Scene 17
Will’s bedroom. Will is in the middle of changing his clothes. He has his hose and shirt on, and is inspecting his doublet by the insufficient light of a small taper set on his table.
Will thought that his doublet looked well enough.
His best suit, purchased ten years ago at Will’s wedding, it had developed weaker spots and places where the nap had not worn so well. But all in all, it looked well enough.
Nan had mended it, once or twice, with her large, uneven stitches. Will smiled at the stitches, which were so characteristic of his wife.
An excellent woman, was Nan, but always more adept at fishing and walking through the woods, at digging in the garden, and even at cooking, than at the daintier arts of womanhood.
When she’d been a young girl, Nan had often escaped a house ruled over by an unsympathetic stepmother and several large, bossy brothers to wander the Forest of Arden till she came to know all its paths. Will smiled, remembering the young, tomboyish Nan.
He started slipping his doublet on when Silver materialized beside him in the still, shadowy air.
Will’s heart skipped a beat.
He’d thought himself well rid of her.
When he’d returned from the tavern, feeling the glowing warmth of his unexpected and much-needed meal, he’d found his house empty, no Silver in sight.
He’d been relieved. He’d thought the elf had finally desisted of seduction, finally given up on whatever deranged lust and wanton craving had brought her to London.
Instead, here she was again.
Will stepped back away from her. “Milady. I didn’t expect to see you again.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. Her bosom, overspilling from the tight confines of its lacy nest, rose and fell rapidly, as if animated by some uncontrollable passion.
“I had to tell you,” she said. As she spoke, she stepped closer, and held each of his arms in one of her long, white hands.
Her hands felt so hot that, even through his doublet, he feared they would burn his arms.
He tried to step back, but found the wall behind himself, found himself surrounded by her lilac perfume.
He could go no farther.
“Lady,” he said, and turned his face away.
She moved her face closer. She pulled his face forward to look at him earnestly, with her large, silver eyes. “I must tell you, Will Shakespeare, that you’re in danger. Those who’ve once been touched by the fairy realm always crave fairy love and as such—”
Will slid away from her and, diving under her arm, made away. “Lady, for Jesu sake, forebear. I crave nothing. It is you who seem to have uncontrollable cravings.”
She looked surprised, offended, as if he’d slapped her.
Her dainty foot in its silver slipper stomped hard. The dusty rushes on the floor crumbled. “My cravings do not matter. It is those who’ve been touched by Fairyland, you see, who forever crave excitement. Almost always in their souls there remains an unquenchable thirst, like a hole that swallows normal human emotion and normal intercourse and that . . .”
Will had ceased listening to her. Her voice faded out of his ears as he looked at his doublet, where she had held him.
The force of her holding him, the force of his pulling away, had left several tears in the fabric.
Will could not go see an earl attired in this way. Oh, curse the elf and his-her mutable needs and his-her annoying demands.
Opening his clothing trunk, which was in the main empty, Will rummaged inside for a needle and wool thread. He knew that Nan had packed him s
ome, when he’d left Stratford. If he could only find it.
He turned over his possessions, two shirts and some spare, much-worn stockings.
“Will Shakespeare, are you listening to me?” Silver asked, and grabbed him by the sleeve once again.
Will straightened. His long-simmering acceptance of her needling was at an end. “No, my lady. No. I hear you not. And you will not entice me with your charms, no matter how you try. So cease already.” His gaze persisted, nonetheless, in visiting the milky-white mounds of her bosom. “I have to mend my doublet so I can go and see the Earl of Southampton. Kit Marlowe has arranged for me to be introduced to the earl.”
“Kit Marlowe?” It came as a shriek, and the Lady Silver stomped her foot harder than ever. Dry dust of rushes rose from the floor. “The wolf has gone to search for Kit Marlowe. The dog is for him, Sylvanus is. Can’t you see the danger? Can’t you see he’ll come for you next?”
Will was tired. Silver spoke in riddles and, even now, held on to Will, leaned into him, her warm bosom against his shirt, soft and resilient against his arm.
If she persisted, he would hold her. He would take her in his arms and he would hold her, and then he’d be as unable to stop as he’d been ten years ago.
And what would he tell his Nan when he returned? How would he explain, once again, violating their sacred bond, their joint sacrament? Or could he lie to Nan? Deny this ever happened?
No, Will couldn’t countenance it.
He pushed Silver away. He fought free of her. He spoke in fast and breathless words. “Kit Marlowe has arranged for the Earl of Southampton to hear my poetry.”
He picked up the note from Kit and waved it around, before stuffing it into his doublet sleeve. The small tears on the sleeve would have to do. He would have to hug the shadows and stay in the darker portions of the room. Unlikely, anyway, that he would get invited to the high table, being only a poet and an unknown one.
All Night Awake Page 14