All Night Awake

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Skeres and Poley stepped slyly towards the door, certain that Shakespeare would, of course, try to flee -- something they couldn’t allow, since he knew about this house and had seen them with Kit, whom they had meant to kill.

  Shakespeare ignored their sliding steps to the door, and, in fact, seemed not to notice them. His golden falcon eyes remained trained upon Kit, his gaze slowly lifting from the dagger at Kit’s waist to Kit’s own eyes.

  “How can I help you, Marlowe?” he asked. “I’m not fleeing. Only tell me how I can help you.” Though his voice shook, his words were resolute, and his gaze met Kit’s with such intensity that Kit felt as though Shakespeare were lending him strength for the fight against the wolf.

  Oh, the fool, Kit thought. The sheer provincial fool. Had he then come here to help Kit? Who cared for Kit’s damned soul? Who cared if Kit got killed?

  Kit wanted to believe no one did, and yet there was Will, staring at him with unwavering support, with quiet friendship.

  Kit had never known anyone to support him who didn’t want something from him in return.

  He shook his head, or started to shake it, but the wolf pulled the dagger out farther, and Kit had to concentrate wholly on his arm, on keeping his arm from moving.

  He felt a great raging anger against Shakespeare, and, oddly enough, felt his eyes mist with tears.

  What was this fool about and why? Why would he try to save Kit? What would that get him, if he did accomplish it?

  He’d never had anything from Kit but mocking words and vague, patronizing advice. Did he think he’d get more?

  “What do you want?” he managed to ask, though his voice sounded strangled, the wolf attempting to silence him. “What do you want from me?”

  Will started. His eyes opened wider, in surprise. It was obvious he’d never thought of wanting anything from Kit. “To help you,” he said. “You... you’re the best poet I know. And we are friends. The tavern....”

  Oh, hell. Buy a man a drink and he’ll follow you for the rest of his days? Never had Kit found such easy friendship. And yet, he found tears rolling down his cheeks.

  He wanted to shout at Will that he should leave. He wished that he could make Will leave.

  Didn’t Will realize that the only way out of this was for Kit to die, taking the wolf with him?

  This thought, like a scream, fell upon a dreadful quiet in Kit’s own mind.

  It was as if Kit’s divided mind, his tumultuous thoughts, had been a fashionable party, a well-heeled group of convivial lords and ladies, upon which a mad jester had walked, shouting unwelcome truths.

  Like the silence that would fall on such a jester’s words, was the silence in Kit’s mind, half outraged affront, half disbelief.

  The great resounding hall of his reason stayed mute, while the import of his thought sank in.

  The only way to free the world of this wolf was to rid the world of Kit Marlowe.

  Only that way could Shakespeare be saved. Only that way could Quicksilver be ransomed. Only that way could the world be set aright. Only that way. No other.

  The thought, not new, this time loomed inescapable.

  Only Kit’s death could set everything right. Yet, was Kit ready to die? Even to save the world?

  Scene Forty Four

  The small room in Deptford. Nicholas Skeres and Robert Poley stand by the door, looking as if they would block Shakespeare’s escape, but they dart confused glances at Marlowe, whose behavior visibly worries them. Ingram Frizer is still at the table, watching all with his slow, puzzled glance. Will looks at Marlowe, then the other men, then just at Marlowe.

  Will waited for Marlowe’s answer, feeling more foolish each moment.

  His heart beat erratically. His throat hurt with his effort to avoid screaming.

  Marlowe stared at him with such an odd expression. No, a warring of expressions: now the wolf’s sharp gaze, now Marlowe’s puzzled little-boy-lost look, pouting lip drawn in as though in pain, grey eyes a-swim in indecision.

  Will marked Marlowe’s hand reaching for the dagger; he watched the two men who, by the door, seemed to bar any attempt Will might make at escaping.

  Should Will try to escape?

  He didn’t want to. He’d come so far to save Marlowe.

  A cold sweat sprang from his pores, chilling him.

  What was here? What had he got himself into? Would he die at the wolf’s mercy? Or would his end come at Marlowe’s own hand?

  Which was his friend, and which his sworn foe, of these two souls trapped within a body?

  Marlowe’s lip curled upward, even as his whole face seemingly lengthened in a wolf-look. “Kill the fool,” Sylvanus’s voice snarled. “Kill the fool and be done. Kill the fool and drink his life.”

  Before Will could do more than take a step towards the door, before Skeres and Poley could do more than take steps forward, to prevent his escape, Marlowe’s face smoothed and rounded, looking like Marlowe’s once more, but a Marlowe on the verge of despair. His grey eyes filled with water. Tears flowed unbidden down his cheeks. His pulpy lips trembled. “No,” he said. “No. He called me friend. I’ve never had friends. Not friends I don’t turn in.”

  “You were right, Poley,” Skeres said. “He’s right bedlam. And he almost fooled me into believing that story about ruling the world.”

  Marlowe trembled, his eyes immense and round, and he looked at Poley and Skeres with sudden fright. “But he meant it,” he said. “I mean, I did. Ruling the world, I mean. If you spare me. Only please don’t kill me.” Before he finished speaking, the wolf laughter echoed, followed by Sylvanus’s sneering words. “That’s a good Kit. Now kill the fool, and let’s be done with this.”

  And Kit took a step towards Will.

  But at that moment, a frightful knocking echoed from the hallway outside, a knocking as if horses had come within and galloped, pitilessly, through the house.

  A woman screamed. Eleanor Bull?

  Then the door was thrown open, and a centaur strode in.

  The centaur had not been one of those that Will had seen the night before, but a larger, more powerful creature, with black hair and a grey and white body.

  For a moment, upon seeing it stride into the room, Will thought that it had a double body, but as soon as it stopped in the middle of the room, making it even more crowded than it already was, an elf dismounted from its back.

  Will recognized the elf that Ariel had told him was the leader of the rebellion, and took a step towards the door.

  Unfortunately, another centaur had started to come in and, unable to push himself into the already packed room, stood half in, half out the door, blocking Will’s path.

  At least Marlowe was not attempting to kill Will.

  Marlowe’s face sharpened, his eyes wholly wolfish, and he stared at the elf.

  “Malachite?” he asked, disdain dripping from his voice. “How come so far from your hill, little elf?”

  “Our deal,” the elf said, drawing himself up tautly. He didn’t look as perfect as the other elves Will had seen and, when he drew himself up like that, fear was visible in every line of his long face. “Our deal was that you should hand me the faerie Queen so that through her I might rule the hill. But the centaurs say you took her for yourself.”

  Sylvanus laughed, a silky, chilly laugh. “Yes, but that was if I needed you. I thought that my brother would stay in the hill and that you must sever him from it, before I could capture it. But the fool came to London, as did the Queen. So I captured them both without your help. I owe you nothing. I’ll rule both worlds. I’m quite able.”

  Malachite turned pale. He stared at Sylvanus. “But...” he said. “But... you promised.”

  Scene Forty Five

  The same small room, now much too full of men and centaurs. From within the house come the sounds of more hooves, and the alarmed scream of Eleanor Bull, “No, not my ale. Help! Invisible sprites and goblins are at the ale.” Within the room, Marlowe’s face shifts, momentari
ly becoming Marlowe again.

  Kit had been ready to kill Will to avoid being killed. Then the next second he couldn’t believe it, and shame at his own cowardice overwhelmed him.

  While the centaurs came into the room and Sylvanus overpowered Kit’s body in order to speak to the creatures, Kit stood as if back within his own mind, looking at the scene.

  It was all very far away and yet very clear, and Kit analyzed it all with that detachment of mind and heart that are possible only to the very old, to the very ill, to those near death.

  He’d run enough. He’d committed villainies enough. Now he’d run no more. He’d betray no more.

  To cure the world, he must die.

  Upon his consciousness fell the words of that poor elf, Malachite, whom Kit knew -- through his contact with the wolf -- that the wolf had enticed to treason. Just as Poley had enticed Babington and his co-conspirators. Sylvanus, in wolf form, had approached Malachite in the wild marches of the south and represented him such benefits from their alliance, and made Malachite feel so ill for being just a changeling, that Malachite had fallen to Sylvanus’s coils.

  And now Sylvanus had betrayed Malachite, made all of Malachite’s treason for naught.

  Curse Sylvanus and his dark ways. He made Kit’s gorge rise; he resembled Kit and Poley and the like of them so much.

  Kit thought all this, but couldn’t say it, his mind but a small, afflicted thing within the totality of the wolf.

  He heard the wolf laugh at some threat of the centaurs. “You’ll have no time,” the wolf said, through Kit’s mouth. “You’ll have no time to hurt me, Hylas. See that mortal there.”

  He nodded towards Will. “Watch as I slit his throat and drink his life, and become monarch regnant of both spheres.”

  Kit felt himself take a step towards Will, and forced himself to stop.

  He felt his hand half-drawing the dagger from the sheath, and made it arrest in its movement.

  Yet the wolf was too strong. He felt the wolf slowly reaching for control of his muscles.

  With a last, desperate strength, Kit managed to scream, “Kill me, Will. Kill me now. Only that will save you. Only that will save the world. Only that will save Quicksilver.”

  Will had his hand on his dagger. He looked down at the hand on the dagger as though it were not his, but he did not move it.

  “Now, you fool. Now.” Kit could feel the wolf overpower him. “Kill me now,” he begged, and hoped that the blow would be swift and he’d not feel it.

  Will shook his head. “I’m not going to kill you. I want to save you.”

  For a moment everything stopped. The wolf that had been on the point of overpowering Kit, of taking control of Kit’s body, started at the words. And Kit himself felt as if an infusion of fresh strength coursed along his veins.

  Stupid idiot that Will was. He wanted to save Kit. Curse Will, and yet -- despite himself Kit had made a friend.

  His arm stopped, before the dagger was fully out of its sheath.

  This had been all so quick that the centaurs only now awakened from their confusion. The lead one, who was in the room, took a sword from somewhere, and started swinging it towards Kit, but midway hit Frizer a glancing blow with the flat of the blade.

  In the cramped quarters, Frizer jumped, and stood right close to Kit, trembling. “Invisible spirits are attacking me,” he said.

  Skeres and Poley, pressed against the opposite wall by the push of the centaurs, looked confused, too, by this crowding of bodies they could not see.

  Kit, once more in control of his body, wanted to laugh, but didn’t. Instead, he concentrated all his strength on keeping Sylvanus from killing Will, as he desperately wanted to.

  He hoped the centaur would behead him, killing Sylvanus, but Malachite, gone even paler, had grabbed onto the centaur’s huge wrist with both hands, and held his hand and his sword down as he screamed, “Don’t kill him, you fool. If you do, you’ll be freeing Quicksilver.”

  The centaur started sneering something back.

  Kit felt a revolt within him, an impatience, as Sylvanus despaired of making him draw his dagger.

  “Oh, curse you, Kit Marlowe, and your late repentance,” the wolf said, through Kit’s impotent mouth. “Slave that you are, yet you think to resist me? First I’ll slay this mortal fool, and then I’ll destroy you and burn your coward soul from within this body, to which I’ll do more justice than ever you have.”

  Kit trembled at the words he knew true.

  What an end. What a piteous end. His soul would be devoured, disappear, be part of the wolf for eternity.

  If only he could still appease the wolf....

  Yet, despite his wavering, he didn’t let go. Something long dormant in Kit Marlowe had awakened. He knew that retreating here would be death, as sure and as final as any death the wolf might inflict upon his spirit.

  Holding on to his dagger, Kit would not let his hand move, not let it withdraw the dagger further.

  The wolf had turned Kit around to see Will, and in looking out through the wolf’s eyes, Kit could see Will looking scared, paralyzed.

  Like a lamb come to the slaughter.

  And this, this fool thought to save me, he thought. This fool to whom I’ve done so much injury, from mocking his poetry to attacking him. He’d save me. He.

  But he knew, he knew in his heart that the reason Will hadn’t killed the evil and saved the world was out of misguided friendship towards Kit. Because I’ve drunk with him one evening.

  An invincible tenderness, a gratitude, a warm human sympathy crept into Kit Marlowe’s heart, that heart that before had known only love and hate -- stark fire and invincible ice -- but no friendship, no companionship, no sympathy, none of the grown up emotions.

  With this sudden growth came strength, and with his strength, Kit shoved at the wolf, seeking to expel him for good from within him.

  Given time, he knew, with his new strength, his -- for the first time whole -- human soul, as immortal and fiery as the wolf’s evil, Kit would win.

  The wolf struggled to control Kit’s body, his ravaging fangs rending at Kit’s very soul. And, within himself, Kit stood still, his awareness of his own soul shocking him, he stood still and strong, and defended his body as a householder will defend his home, by standing and not allowing the foe control.

  It is no use, Kit, the wolf said. No use. You are nothing, you are less than nothing. No matter what you think, you can never win. This sudden human kindness you think you found within yourself is only an illusion, a dream spun of your very fear. You delude yourself. You’ll never throw me off. I’m the only one you can trust. We are two of a kind, Kit. You never belonged with my weak brother. You are mine.

  But Kit shook his head. He could feel the wolf’s strength pushing along his arm, willing him to kill Will.

  And Kit could feel himself, suddenly strong, suddenly grown up, no longer afraid of death or of life.

  With that force, he held fast, grinding his teeth. The black wall in his mind was broken, and the wolf had taken over his inner thought. And yet, Kit lived still, within that great chamber of his mind, and managed to control his body, aye, and push the wolf back, step by step.

  Kit would kill no more. He was done with blood.

  The wolf wanted him to step forward, to lift a dagger, to kill Will -- Will Shakestaff of Stratford, with who knew how many little children to feed.

  Will, fool Will, who’d come all this way to save Kit to whom he owed nothing, not even common courtesy.

  This time, this one time, Kit would not take innocent life to save his own.

  Like that, upon that decisive thought, he felt the wolf let go.

  I don’t need you, the wolf said within Kit’s own mind. I don’t need you. There are other villains who’ll do my bidding.

  The wolf, who knew himself threatened, made one last effort, gambling his all, and, turning Kit Marlowe’s body around, faced Frizer and said, in a voice of command that oafs such as Frizer couldn’
t help but obey, “Kill him.” He pointed at Shakespeare.

  Ingram Frizer plunged forward, dagger drawn, obeying orders, as he always had.

  Kit saw Will, frozen in place, staring still. Even if Will wanted to escape, he could not. There was a centaur blocking his path, living, supernatural horse flesh barring his way.

  Will made as if to crouch, but that would not get him far.

  Kit wanted to live. Oh, he wanted to live with this soul he’d found, and find love yet in the bosom of some mortal, now that Kit no longer feared death.

  And yet death was such, looming before him, dark and dank and full of silence.

  The silence of the tomb where there were not silks and velvets and those who’d admire Kit’s pretty words.

  And yet, it mattered not. What were all of Kit’s skill, all of his words, compared to Will’s steady mind, his gentle, loving heart, Will’s forgiving soul that forced him to come to the succor of even such as Kit Marlowe, himself? Will’s soul who would not kill whom he thought his friend, even to save the world.

  Oh, let the better man live.

  In Kit’s mind it took forever -- those few moments between the time the assassin plunged forward, dagger and unsheathed, and the final, freeing decision that Kit would not let Will die.

  Too many had been sacrificed already for Kit’s life.

  Now would Kit die. Now would Kit die and upon dying, would he throw what remained of his soul at the foul wolf, and drag him into death with him.

  In his eternity, tormented by demons though he might be, Kit, like the warriors of old, buried with their enemies, would have as his escort the evil king of darkness.

  And Will would live to see his little Shakestaffs grow. And Quicksilver, fair Quicksilver be released from the dark land of what never was.

  And Quicksilver would live and be blessed from Kit’s long and well deserved death.