All Night Awake

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  He took a deep breath, controlled his sobbing. “Soft, I dreamed. It was all a dream. Or else witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate's offerings, and withered murder, alarmed by his sentinel, the wolf, whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace towards his design moves like a ghost. you sure and firm-set earth, hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear thy very stones prate of my whereabout, and take the present horror from the time, which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives: words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.”

  And yet he felt relieved, oddly relieved that he hadn’t managed to kill himself.

  The same death he wished yet loomed before his eyes as the horrendous threat it had ever been.

  A fear is not conquered in a minute, nor does the babe who cowers from the crackling thunder turn to playing in the baying wind with no remorse.

  Shame choking him and a fear that he’d lack the courage to die, even now, he tried to think his way out of his predicament. Was it his own self love that deluded him, and stayed the hand that would have slain him? Could he not even, like the Roman fool, fall upon his own dagger?

  Kit wrung his hands, one upon the other, digging his nails into the flesh of his palms, attempting to wake himself from this unending nightmare.

  To die: to sleep. No more -- and by a sleep to say Kit ended the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh was heir to.

  Oh, it was a consummation devoutly to be wished, no matter by what means attained.

  To die, to sleep....

  And yet, to sleep: perchance to dream.

  Aye, and there was the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams might come when he had shuffled off this mortal coil?

  Would all his sins revisit in his sleep, making his eternity as fearful as his living eternity here, with the wolf?Could Kit even kill himself, if he wished to, if he wished to with his whole heart?

  Or would the wolf, some control over Kit remaining even in this full daylight, manage to stay the hand that would have severed Kit’s life and his own?

  Could Kit not convince his cowardice of the sure need to kill himself? Could he not see the unending torment that waited immortal Kit upon an Earth where the wolf reigned?

  Oh, cowardice got more complicated by the moment, till, to be the coward that he was Kit needed more courage and twice the force of a brave man.

  And, desirable though his death might be, yet Kit feared it. His conscience for eternity might make better company than the foul wolf. But not by much.

  Thus his conscience, newly discovered, rendered him as much of a coward as his self-love had made him before.

  Thus conscience made him run from death, and thus the native hue of resolution was sicklied over with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment with this regard their currents turned awry, and lost the name of action.

  He wanted to save the multiple worlds, and aye, Kit would die for it, if he knew he could die all together, die without leaving behind any tendrils of feeling that hurt still.

  Oh, if Kit could be assured of having no immortal soul.

  But he remembered the ghosts he’d summoned to do his bidding. Were they the spinning of his own heart and memory?

  Or the remains of those he’d betrayed, the spirit that, naked, wailed the death of the self?

  He’d started walking around outside the gate, walking in circles, talking to himself.

  “Holla, Kit, holla, ar’t though bedlam?”

  He looked up. Everyone asked him this question lately. Everyone. Looking up, he saw three men.

  Two he had seen recently: Nicholas Skeres, he of the impeccable blond hair, stood by and wrinkled his very clean nose at Kit’s state. Beside him, to his right, stood Frizer, his bovine expression even more bovine as with oxen patience he seemed to ruminate upon the scene before his eyes. And to the side of those, a man Kit had not seen in many a year. Robert Poley, sweet Robin Poley, who’d been Sir Francis Walsingham’s right hand man and was now Robert Cecil’s.

  A darker traitor than Kit had ever been, because untroubled by the slightest glimmer of conscience, Robin Poley had turned in friends and lived to dance, unremorseful, upon their graves.

  Now he smiled at Kit and said, “Oh, we just wished to make sure, Kit, that you’d not forgotten our hour for meeting in Deptford. Come with us, we’ve secured a carriage.”

  And speaking thus they led Kit through the gate to the other side, where the carriage -- a looming dark thing -- waited on the rutted muddy street.

  Heavy curtains veiled the windows of the carriage.

  So that was how it was to be: one man from Essex’s camp, and one from Tom Walsingham, and one from Cecil.

  Between them they’d take Kit to the docks, from whence he’d never come again.

  Perhaps that was the best. Perhaps.

  But, as Kit climbed the carriage steps into the dark interior of the carriage, a fear of death -- his old fear of death -- struck at his heart like a well aimed arrow.

  Like a man who’s suffered all his life from blindness and from whose eyes, with sudden healing, the scales do fall, Kit saw himself and his own cold and empty center.

  He was a coward who feared death.

  Long had he known that, and yet he’d thought the undoing of his life had been loving Silver.

  Now he saw he’d loved Silver because Silver was immortal or nearly so. He’d never found a woman to compare only because he could not love something that would die.

  It was immortality Kit had longed for in Silver’s arms.

  Kit, cold and miserable, had never loved at all.

  With a push from Poley, Kit was sent sprawling onto one of the slick seats of the carriage.

  “I must confess I am amazed, Kit, at your state, and the reports of your doings that we followed here. Either you’re bedlam or so cunning you’d fake yourself bedlam to evade reckoning. Either case, it is either worse or better than I’d expect from you.”

  Kit felt the wolf stir within him, at his own fears, felt the wolf reach for control of his limbs.

  Kit didn’t fight the fatal influence. Awestruck at seeing himself clearly, like a man who, lifelong, has thought himself lissome and suddenly discovers gross deformity upon his own limb, he wondered at his coldness, his wrongness.

  All these years he’d thought himself expeditious and smart and capable, and congratulated himself on his cunning escapes, and he’d thought himself a lover who had once wooed a great one from faerieland and been unfairly dismissed from her sight.

  Now he saw himself for what he was, the true, empty shell of a being with neither heart nor feelings, neither shame nor courage.

  Kit could blame it on his elven blood, Merlin’s inheritance, but it didn’t seem right. His father was good enough, as was his mother, the best person Kit knew, always disposed and ready to help friend and neighbor, acquaintance and stranger, with her hands, her purse, her words.

  How of two such had Kit been born? Except that, like the humble field mouse, he’d tried to reach beyond his own burrow and become something other.

  What? A fox? A lion?

  He didn’t know, but he knew he’d never changed. He’d just gnawed on the flesh of greater ones than him.

  Latterly literally.

  Wrapped in misery, he heard Poley ask, “Are those tears? Does Kit Marlowe cry?”

  He heard the wolf answer, but he did not know what. He saw the quickened interest in Poley’s look.

  The carriage rocked beneath them and in the penumbrous dark, Kit Marlowe wondered if he headed towards death and damnation or damnation in life.

  Scene Thirty Nine

  The same gate but more animated, in the rush of midday entrance into and departure from the city. Will comes walking through it.

  Will wished he could see the power tracks that Ariel had seen, the indications that beings of power had been there.

  He could not. Instead, at first light of day, after a sleepless night of wondering where the queen o
f faerieland had been taken and how long until evil conquered the world, Will had returned to Marlowe’s street and followed the marks of heavy hooves upon the mud of the alley.

  Strange that invisible centaurs could leave such visible marks: hoof prints, larger and deeper than would be left by a normal animal.

  Will followed the tracks, down muddy streets and past awakening markets. He followed all the way to the city gate, where the creatures seemed to have trampled round and round a solitary tree -- nightlong to judge by the profusion of stepped-over tracks and horse dung, all in this one small space. Amid the hoof prints, prints of a man’s boot showed.

  Marlowe’s fine boots, Will would wager, though, of course, one boot was much like the other. But Marlowe had been with the centaurs.

  Will shuddered at recalling the transformation of Marlowe’s face, the wolfish, sharp quality of his look.

  Again, Will asked himself why he was doing this. Why follow the evil creatures who’d almost killed him the night before?

  Will who was afraid of meeting Lords and of exposing his creations to theater goers and of standing up and declaiming his own poetry, could Will truly think he might take on creatures like this in single combat and defeat them? Did Will think he had what it took to save the world?

  He walked back towards the gate, following the footsteps of the boots, which had got joined by other human footsteps.

  Into his mind unbidden came an image of Marlowe, wielding that round object -- a doorknob? a handle? -- patently it had been iron and burned Marlowe’s own changed nature. And yet Marlowe, the madman, had taken on the centaurs armed only with it.

  Will shook his head. Marlowe had ever had more confidence than Will could muster.

  It took self-confidence to strut your creations on stage and hope for reward and adoration from the crowds.

  The footprints ended in rutted carriage tracks, and Will stood there, staring at them. The tracks led out the gate again. Will could not follow -- could not hope to follow -- carriage tracks.

  Raising his eyes from them, with a despairing sigh, Will thought that it was here that his search ended and that he might as well go back to his lodging and pack and go back home to Nan.

  He didn’t know how the end of the world would happen, or if the end of the world would be such indeed, come all of a sudden, in a blaze of horror or evil. He rather suspected it would come quietly, day by day, until in the end all that existed would be Sylvanus’s harsh world of granite and impiety, of cruelty and instant death.

  But be that as it may, Will would be with Nan and Hamnet and Judith and Susannah. This was no time to try to make it in London, where any disturbances would be first felt.

  A part of him felt a great relief at this thought, but something like disappointment yet nagged at him. Venus and Adonis had been going well, despite all this, and Will had almost believed he might be a true poet after all.

  He sighed, and in mid-sigh saw a young woman on the other side of the street. She wore a dirty low-cut chemise and a skirt too tight on her ample hips. The shawl thrown over her shoulders was that flaming orange that people called harlot’s leg -- and the woman was probably a bawd.

  Yet she looked at Will with meaning, attentive eyes, as though she wished to tell him something.

  Probably wishing for a customer, Will thought, and sighed again. She looked so young. Scarcely older than ten-year-old Susannah, though, to be honest, she probably would be fourteen or fifteen, only stunted by ill-treatment.

  Since coming to London Will had found himself often giving alms to prostitutes who tried to solicit him as a client, and he suspected this would be one of those times.

  And yet, she looked so meaningfully at him. And a bawd this early in the morning was strange enough.

  He walked towards her, careful not to smile or give any indication that he might be a potential customer. “Tell me,” he said, without preamble. “Have you seen a red-headed gentleman? He would be about my height but slenderer, and he wore a dark velvet suit, very rumpled and worse for the wear?”

  The bawd looked relieved. She essayed a clumsy curtsy, and blushed a deep red, and looking away from him, said, all in a rush, “I thought as you might be looking for him. He looked.... well, he looked bedlam and that’s the truth, and I thought that his keepers might be coming for him.” She made a face. “But the men who took him didn’t look like his keepers, nor at all kindly inclined towards him.”

  The men who’d taken him? Had Marlowe become Marlowe again, then? Will was not sure how the mechanism actuated, but he thought that in the beginning of the fight he’d witnessed, Marlowe had been himself, not Sylvanus. And, looking at it from what he knew now, Will suspected that when Marlowe had met him by the river, there he’d been Marlowe too and trying to tell Will the truth, though something had stopped him.

  He wondered if Marlowe himself had sent the ghosts to denounce him, and felt a chill down his spine.

  He might well have, for who else would do it?

  “Did it look like the men took him with them against his will?” Will asked. In truth, if it were so, it must be Marlowe, for he couldn’t imagine any mortal forcing Sylvanus to do anything.

  The girl nodded. “They were rough with him, and not like keepers who might be rough for his own protection. I thought...I thought that he might be wealthy and they mean to rob him, so I lingered hoping his friends would come for him. You are his friend?”

  “Aye,” Will said. He was Marlowe’s friend, was he not? The playwright whose plays had thrilled Will’s heart, whose untamed heart fought even against the wolf within? How could Will deny him? “And know you where they took him?”

  “I heard one of the men speaking to the coachman,” she said. “And he said Mistress Bull’s house, in Deptford.”

  Will sighed. Deptford. A half day’s ride away, by the docks, where sea and river met. Not somewhere where Will could hope to go on foot.

  He fished in his sleeve and got a few pennies, which he thrust at the girl. “For your pains. You’ve done me great service.”

  “Thank you, master.” She smiled, displaying very bad teeth, then ran down the street, her conscience no doubt relieved.

  But Will’s own conscience was not relieved. Deptford. If they’d taken Marlowe there, they might have killed him by now. At least if these were the same people about whom Marlowe had talked, the arms the Privy Council, the agents that moved, unnoticed through the darker shadows of London.

  If they’d killed Marlowe, what would happen to Quicksilver and Ariel? Would they be restored or lost forever?

  Will could not tell.

  He moaned his indecision to the street, as a cart rumbled past. What could Will do if he followed Marlowe? What would he do?

  Then he remembered the dark king’s command to the centaurs to leave the body alone, for they would kill him with it.

  Would Sylvanus, able to summon enough strength to say this even when Marlowe’s body was no longer controlled by him, stand by while humans murdered Marlowe? Not likely.

  And if they did not, what would happen when night fell? Ariel had said that creatures of faerieland gained strength at night. Would the wolf not take Marlowe’s body fully again for his use then? And if so, would those mortal assassins not be killed immediately?

  Though the assassins might deserve their death, Will thought of the power that would give Sylvanus. Armed with such power, Sylvanus could and would kill Ariel and Quicksilver, if he hadn’t already.

  Then would the world go down the unalterable path to evil regnant.

  Will felt sweat spring from all his pores, instantly gluing his shirt to his body.

  He was the only person who even knew of this threat that hung over the heads of all the inhabitants of this vast earth.

  He walked along the street, watching vendors set up fruit and bread stalls. Chimney sweeps called loudly for clients. Urchins ran errands. Schoolboys with shiny, fresh-scrubbed faces crept their unwilling way to school.

  On a
street corner, a young boy kissed a girl about his age.

  And come tomorrow all these people, all, might be Sylvanus’s vassals and his unwilling slaves. His corrupting breath might taint them all though they knew it not.

  To save them from doom, Will must act, since he was the only one who knew that acting was needed.

  But what could Will do? What say? How could he stop a menace that was destroying Marlowe? How could he stop a supernatural force that had imprisoned the king and queen of faerieland?

  Will was only a provincial boy who wanted to be a poet.

  And if he did not try, how live with it?

  He saw himself an old man, in an evil-ravaged world, justifying to Hamnet why he had not fought for good and life and right.

  No. No. It would be the same as explaining to Hamnet why Will had never tried his hand at making it as a poet. To both of those Will would find no answer. Were Hamnet in Will’s position, Will would expect his son to at least try.

  Will stopped and sighed again, so loudly that several passersby looked at him.

  Will reached for his sleeve, to which, that morning, he had transferred the purse that had been beneath his mattress.

  To go to Deptford, he must buy a horse, and that would take all the money he had.

  And Will still didn’t know what he’d do once he got there.

  Scene Forty

  The in-between worlds -- a desolate land with no taste, no smell, and no feeling save overpowering cold. Shadows appear and disappear, like windblown clouds, now prefiguring trees, now seemingly palaces, but nothing is, in solid reality. Amid these shadows Ariel walks.

  Where was Quicksilver? Where? Why couldn’t she find him in the mutable landscape of this lost land?

  She wanted to see him. She needed to see him, and sometimes, through the shadows of trees, the glimmering of buildings never built, she almost thought she saw him. But it was always nothing.