Yet she must find him. For they were near the end and she must tell her lord that she loved him and loved him true. Oh, let the world end, let faerieland be destroyed and gone, but she would tell Quicksilver what she had discovered, first -- that the fault she saw within him was within her, in the way she saw him; that though he might not be what she’d prefer, he was what she wanted and needed; that she meant to make their marriage a true union, were the it the last thing they ever did. Which, likely, it would be.
She’d walked what seemed like forever, though she knew not where she’d been or where she was going. This land had no more direction than it did sense or smell.
No sensation defined this land, except cold which leeched at her body, at her soul, at her magic.
Even if Sylvanus didn’t kill her, she would not last long in this land.
Her foot caught on something, and she tripped. But what could she trip on in Neverland?
She fell on something soft and cold and, for a moment, blinking, recognized Quicksilver and thought him already dead.
But he opened his eyes, and then his mouth, in astonishment at seeing her here.
He put his arms out to her, and he sat up. “Milady.” He said. “Oh, how I longed to see you. But not here.”
“I thought you dead,” she said.
He shook his head, tangling his already tangled silver-blond hair. “No. Sleeping. Trying to preserve what little strength remains to me.”
Never would Quicksilver appear thus disheveled in his court, never had she seen his face so grave, his moss-green eyes so intent.
He had never looked so much like a king.
Standing on tiptoes Ariel offered him her lips and, after a brief hesitation he covered them with his own. His lips were ice cold, as they would be. Quicksilver had lingered too long in Neverland.
“Oh, milady,” he said, as their lips parted, “I bless your presence, but I wish we could have met beneath the sun of mortals.” He ran his long, soft hand along her face, as if to ascertain by touch the truth of all her features.
He looked so grieved at her presence here, yet so relieved at seeing her that the warring expressions upon his face made him look comical.
Ariel laughed, as she couldn’t remember laughing in days -- nay, in years.
Quicksilver raised one eyebrow and looked bemused. “Do I look, milady, like a jester?” But he spoke softly, and his mouth still pulled in a smile, as if her mirth amused him.
She shook her head. “Not like a jester, no. Never, milord. It’s just that I...I’ve just realized I’ve been a fool.”
Both his golden eyebrows went up, arching in perfect, puzzled demi-rounds. “You mean it not,” he said. “Or else, why do you laugh?”
“Because I’m done being a fool, milord and I only wish.... I only wish the world weren’t coming to an end through my folly.” Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes and rolled down her cheeks to meet her smile.
“Your folly?” Quicksilver asked. His voice was distant, a tolling bell of death over hope. “Your folly, milady. Oh, if you knew my folly and what I’ve done....”
“I know your folly,” Ariel said. “Or at least most of it. The human called Kit Marlowe.” To his astonishment she started telling what she’d seen, what had happened to precipitate her leaving the palace in such haste.
“And you hate me not?” Quicksilver asked.
Ariel shook her head. “It was not you, but Lady Silver. And why should Lady Silver wish me well, when I’ve kept her chained and hidden all these long years? Like a prisoner who evades her jailor, she would wish to do all that her deprival of liberty has prevented.”
Quicksilver tilted his head sideways, as though trying to understand. “Then you mind not....”
“Oh, I mind,” Ariel said. “It is still you. But perhaps Lady Silver and I must get better acquainted.”
At first his eyes looked unbelieving, and his eyebrows descended in a frown over his moss-green eyes.
“She is you,” Ariel said. “And, milord, I do love you.”
The clouds of doubt dissipated. A slow grin crept across Quicksilver’s lips. “I love you also, milady,” he said. “I love you too much, if not too well.”
He put his cold arms around her warm body, and pulled her close.
Sitting on the grey ground of never land, side by side, they told each other all they’d discovered and perceived in the last ten years and in their time apart.
It did not make for happy telling. Quicksilver admitted his remorse, his certainty of having brought Kit Marlowe to his present torment; Ariel spoke of the palace revolution, of how she might have encouraged the rebels without meaning.
But even these sad tales with all their woe, even the nothing land, and the grey landscape that shifted with every moaning sigh, even the chill of Neverland could not impair the happiness they had found.
In her sad captivity, with her husband’s cold arms around her, Ariel felt contented as never before.
Scene Forty One
Deptford, a busy dockside town. There are some nicer streets and houses obviously built by the nobility. Mistress Bull’s house sits near the river, the garden bordering on it, and it is a good house, with shabby-genteel charm. It rains; the rain rather increasing the suffocating heat than relieving it. In a room at the back, four men sit. It’s a narrow, clean, white-walled room, furnished with a bed and a table. At the table three men sit playing at tables. One of the men is Frizer, the other Skeres, the third sweet Robin Poley. All three have pipes. Skeres’ and Frizer’s sit beside them at the table. Poley lights his. On the bed, Kit Marlowe reclines, looking spent and vacant, like a man who’s run a long race and is no longer sure towards what.
“Marlowe,” Nicholas Skeres said, turning from the small table, where he played at tables with the other two men. “Tell us that you told me in the garden, that thing about ruling the whole world and our ambition never again going lacking, once we knit our fate with yours.”
Kit groaned.
He couldn’t remember telling Skeres anything in the shaded garden of Mistress Bull’s house. Or yet, if he remembered it, it was but dimly, through a fog as if from too much ale, or too little sleep.
What was he doing here?
What was he doing here and still alive?
He should be dead.
Yet he did not want to die.
He was dead, dead within the wolf’s grip, and yet walking still. And this dying life, this living death, made Kit feel that almost anything, almost, would be preferable. Maybe even dusty death, his mouth forever stopped, his body consigned to a common grave in a forgotten churchyard, or floating downriver, bloated and gross, anonymous and horror-inspiring.
These men wanted to kill him. So why allow the wolf to persuade them otherwise? Why did Kit cling to this half life? Why struggle so hard to remain here, in this torment?
But that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzled the will and made him rather bear those ills he had than fly to others that he knew not of?
And in that fear, undone, Kit gave the wolf, the wolf’s persuasive tongue, the power to argue his case.
As for these men, wolf-tainted themselves, wolf-like, living on living flesh and beating hearts and enjoying it, these men bent and swayed to the wolf’s oratory and had all but already sworn fealty to the wolf’s dark designs.
If men like this would reign after the wolf’s victory, oh, let Kit be dead.
And yet, no.
For how was Kit better than these men? And what torments waited Kit hereafter?
Upon meeting these three men who should have been his doom, these three men he could identify from his days in the secret service and name as to their nefarious thoughts and expectations, Kit should have been dead. He should have been dead within minutes of his arrival at Deptford, his body buried in the pestilent river out back, or else thrown in some forgotten hole, sequestered in a common grave as a pretended plague victim.
On seeing them together Kit had known that indeed it was his life they sought. No doubt about it. No room for doubt.
There was Nicholas Skeres, to make sure that he was dead and couldn’t somehow turn the plot of the duke of Essex back on the duke himself, as they all feared Kit could do, by power and virtue of his magical words, his silver tongue.
And there was Frizer, come to ensure that Kit was dead on behalf of Kit’s own patron and good friend Sir Thomas Walsingham, who no more wished the Privy Council to know how he’d lined his pockets than did any other secret agent.
Finally, the third man was Poley. Robert Poley, sweet Robin Poley, the main betrayer of the Babington conspirators, if indeed not the instigator of those poor fools who, lured in a moment of bravado, had signed statements swearing to kill the queen, but who’d in fact tried nothing against her, and who nonetheless had ended in their graves for Poley’s sake.
He was a smooth, middle-aged man, with a wealth of blond and white hair, carefully coiffed, and a dark, circumspect suit.
He’d been the right hand of Francis Walsingham, and he was, no doubt, in an equally important position with Cecil.
He -- he had come to make sure Kit was dead and Robert Cecil and all the high Lords at court could sleep in peace, the mouth of such a dangerous member having been stopped.
Even looking at these men now, Kit felt himself sweat with the fear, the cold, clammy fear of death.
Aye, and that was the rub, for when he’d first seen them, thus, together, he’d feared death as much as he had in that dim chamber where he’d first been interrogated, ten years ago.
And from that fear, through that fear, he’d heard the wolf’s voice again, the wolf promising him life everlasting, if he let the wolf handle this, if he let the wolf deal with this potentially lethal situation.
Looking at the three men, Kit closed his eyes and wanted to groan again, but the wolf’s voice poured from his lips, in well-modulated words that possessed the magic of faerieland, the dark enchantment of inevitable death.
The wolf was promising these men power and wealth, and mastery over everyone who’d ever done them a wrong.
Men like this would not deny it. Nor could they resist an evil that spoke to their evil.
As yet, Kit kept the wolf from fully possessing his body, from tearing men to pieces and taking their life force. But the sun would be setting soon and, tired and spent, Kit would not have the strength to resist the wolf for another night.
Sitting back, in the sweltering heat of the afternoon, leaning on Mistress Bull’s dubiously clean cushions, Kit wondered whether Sylvanus would kill these men and take their lives, or use them for his acolytes.
It seemed to him that the wolf would value these men as his allies, these men who’d committed plots and murders, vile assassinations and character destruction, treason and most foul entrapment.
Men like Kit himself.
Feeling sick to his stomach, Kit could see a world where such men ruled. And there was no room for poets, or for well-intentioned affectionate fools like Will.
Looking at those three men, it seemed to him they all had wolves' heads, like the Egyptian god who devoured the entrails of the dead.
Closing his eyes, while yet from his mouth the wolf’s words poured, Kit thought that all he’d done these last few days had been in vain.
He remained a coward, too afraid to die, and he’d managed no more than to bring the wolf to his natural allies.
No one would kill Kit, and, this time, the betrayal he’d commit was the betrayal of the whole world.
For the world, Kit would be saved. At the price of the world, Kit would never die.
Tomorrow and tomorrow, and tomorrow would creep in this petty pace from day to day until the last syllable of recorded time, and all his yesterdays had lighted fools the way to dusty death.
Scene Forty Two
Outside Mistress Bull’s, Will ties the reins of a tired-looking horse to a stone ring attached to the side of the house, beside the door. The smell of fish and rotting raises as if from the depths of the river where drowned mariners and dead warriors decompose.
Will should have bought a better horse. But his money ran to no more than a nag, a bag of bones, a creature of meager canter and tired steps.
Yet it had got him to Deptford. Saddle-sore, tired, wet through from the pouring rain, sweaty from the stifling heat, Will pounded on the door of Mistress Bull’s house.
He still did not know what he would do, but whatever it was, he must do it fast, for the sun was setting and soon the wolf would be stronger than anything Will might undertake.
What to undertake remained a round puzzle, a mystery he knew not how to solve.
Will feared Marlowe might have to be killed; Will very much wished that Marlowe could be saved.
At least... he thought of mad Marlowe, Marlowe attacking him in the dark of night in a Southwark alley. At least he would like to save the Marlowe who made the immortal poetry that lifted and lilted within Will’s own heart.
At least that. If only they could save the poet, and set aside whatever other darkness had come through and polluted this creature of the muses.
Let the wolf take the rest, let him have it and destroy it and die with it. But allow Marlowe’s yet-unwritten poetry to come to fruition, allow Marlowe’s golden words to live on.
Will dismounted in front of the narrow wooden door and knocked.
No one answered the door, and the house didn’t look like a rooming house, or the sort of purlieu that Kit Marlowe would haunt. It was too big, too imposing, too grand.
He knocked again, and his knock echoed as if upon an empty palace. Will felt too common, too gross, too indecisive.
What was he doing here? He should go back.
But he could not go back. He stood, rooted to the spot. The image of Ariel and Quicksilver came to him. Cold and fleeting, magical creatures though they were, they were creatures of a fair magic that made the cold world worth living in.
And then there was Will’s family, whose fate, he guessed, was tied to keeping the balance of the worlds -- faerie and human in their proper place. And in seeing that the foul wolf did not win.
Will raised his hand and knocked.
Scene Forty Three
The same small shabby rental room, now made even more crowded by the addition of Will. Mistress Bull -- perceived as no more than a shadow in the darkened hallway -- closes the door behind Will.
Kit half stood, as Will came into the room. He half stood in panic fear, and wished he could yell at Will to run, run and not come back.
Silly, provincial Shakespeare, in his russet suit, with his receding hairline and his face creased and puffy like faces get when people haven’t slept for too long.
God alone knew how Will had got past Mistress Bull, or what he’d told her. Not that he needed to say much. If, in any way, he’d revealed that he knew her to be harboring intelligencers, she’d have brought him here, to let them deal with him.
For any man that discovered that Eleanor Bull’s often served as a safe house for members of the secret service, a place where they could do whatever dirty deeds were called for, aye, any common man possessed of that knowledge was a threat and must be killed.
So Kit stood, and tried to scream at Will to run. Even were this a normal gathering, and the wolf not present, Will would be dead, dead in his entering the room.
But Kit’s mouth, opened, uttered only silence.
He made a keen noise of frustration that called all eyes to him.
“I’ve come to help you,” Will said. He spoke plainly, and looked Kit Marlowe in the eye with a frankness that Kit hadn’t seen, hadn’t hoped to see in oh, so long. “I’ve come to help you, if you but tell me how.”
Poley, and Skeres exchanged looks, and Frizer made a barking laughter deep in his throat.
Kit felt laughter bubble out of his throat, too, the wolf’s howled, bitter laughter. “Oh, you can help me well enough, you sorry puppet.
Only lend your throat to my dagger, allow me to drink your life.”
Kit shuddered at the words, and at the thought, at the thought of Will dead.
Provincial and inadequate, Will was, but something good and strong burned in him, something Kit could see all the brighter for it lacking wholly in himself.
And with Will, Quicksilver would die, and Lady Silver who was Kit’s one love -- or if not his true love, the closest thing such a poor show as Kit had ever come to love.
Kit’s heart beat disordered in his chest, as he tried to command his strength to obey him. Him, and not the wolf.
Oh, for some iron to touch, for some iron to plunge into Kit’s own traitorous chest, while yet the wolf remained dazed by his contact with the metal.
With a tremor that shook his whole body, like an ague, an unexpected fever, Kit bit his lower lip, willing pain to allow him self-control.
Though his own lips felt like unwieldy cork, his tongue like wood, he bent them to his wishes. Through the pain and the taste of his own blood, he said, “Go,” to Will, who stood amazed. And then again, “Flee. All is lost.”
But his last words were drowned out by the wolf’s laughter, by the wolf’s power and the wolf’s strength that traveled through Kit’s muscles, reclaiming Kit’s body as his own.
Fully in control, the wolf took Kit’s hand to Kit’s belt, pulling out Kit’s dagger.
Kit fought for control of the arm. Sweat sprang from his forehead stinging into his eyes, as Kit struggled with all his force against his own muscles that moved when he willed them not to.
Yet his arm moved, slowly, slowly, holding the dagger.
With all his force, Kit willed his arm to stay.
Curse it all. He would not do this.
Will Shakespeare, who’d taken a step back at Kit’s warning to flee, stood with his eyes as wide as those of a frightened horse, his face waxy pale. Will put his hand to his dagger. His hand trembled visibly. His gaze riveted itself to Kit’s own hand that fought with the wolf, not to pull Kit’s dagger fully out of its sheath.
All Night Awake Page 59