“Sweet Jesus,” Greville said, and Cassilis crossed himself.
“We know a part of it,” Sidney said grimly. “Get up behind, you can tell the rest as we go.” He kicked one foot free of the stirrup as he spoke and held out his hand.
Marlowe took it and swung himself up onto the piebald’s back behind Sidney, wrapping both arms around the older man’s waist to keep his seat. Pressed close as he was, he could feel Sidney’s warmth through the good wool cloak, could smell the homey scent of him, horse and musk and sweat, and nearly wept at the comfort of it all.
“Well?” Sidney demanded, and set spurs to his horse.
The poet shook himself, leaned back a little as though that would give him space to explain. “Ruthven—if he wasn’t always Bothwell’s, he is wholly now. He’s been sent to lure the king—to his death, I think—but I don’t know where.” He stopped, painfully aware of how little he really knew of Mephistophilis’s plans.
“I do,” Sidney said. “I won’t ask how you know this, Marlowe.”
Thank you for that small mercy, Marlowe thought, and found himself on the verge of tears. I have given up Mephistophilis—and for what?
Gowrie House was a small place, little more than an oversized farmhouse, recently rebuilt to more grandiose tastes. A brick wall, new-built but already crumbling in the damp, surrounded what had once been the farmyard, and Sidney rode straight for the wooden gate. To everyone’s surprise, a graying retainer appeared at once to unbar the massive door, and another, younger man came scurrying from the house to welcome them.
“My lord the earl will be happy to greet you, sirs,” he said. “Have you gone astray in this dreadful fog?”
The Scots exchanged wary glances. “Gowrie here, himself?” Seton murmured, and Sidney said firmly, “We seek the king.”
“The king?” The steward shook his head. “I don’t understand—”
“He was—lost in the fog,” Sidney said, more cautiously now. “He told his people he would come here, we were to meet him here.”
“The king isn’t here.” That was a new voice. The Earl of Gowrie himself stepped out into the courtyard, a long, fur-trimmed gown thrown in haste over shirt and hose. “If he intended to come here—my God, he must be lost in good truth, gentlemen. If you’ll come within, rest yourselves a little, take wine, I’ll send my people to look for him.”
Sidney glanced at Greville, seeing his own uncertainty mirrored in his friend’s face. If Gowrie were telling the truth—and surely he would not invite them into the house if he were lying—then Ruthven’s plan had been something different, and they would have to retrace their steps, with no clues to follow... Then a scream tore the air, a cry of fear and anger from within the house.
“The king!” Seton cried, and Gowrie swore and drew the sword he’d worn beneath his gown.
Greville flung himself from his horse, reaching for his own rapier, but Marlowe moved first. He drew his pistol, praying the damp had not yet reached the powder, cocked it, and fired. Miraculously, the powder caught. The pistol fired with a roar, and Gowrie staggered backward. Cassilis flung himself on him, dagger drawn to lay against the man’s throat. Gowrie started to raise himself on his good elbow, then froze, his eyes fixed on Cassilis’s stony face. The others rushed past him into the house.
“Through there,” Marlowe called, and pointed to a painted door leading off the main corridor. The others could feel it, too, and smell it, a lowing, over-sweet carrion taint in the air that seemed to ooze from under the closed door. The Scots hesitated, and then Seton and Greville set their shoulders to the painted panels. The frail lock burst, and they stumbled into the room.
The king stood frozen at its center, trapped within a circle of smoke and flame. The Master of Ruthven stood at his side, dagger held to the king’s breast. Something—someone?—else was moving in the fire itself, a hellish shape that wavered between the human and the utterly unknown.
“Back, all of you,” Sidney said quietly. “Don’t risk yourselves”
Reluctantly the Scots retreated to the doorway, urged there by Greville, but they went no further. Marlowe did not seem to hear the older man’s words, staring instead into the flames. So this was what Mephistophilis had planned, this was what Ruthven had ridden away to manage...
“Come away from there, Ruthven,” Sidney said, though the flatness of his voice betrayed his certainty that he would not be heeded. “You may yet live.”
The Master of Ruthven shook his head, a smile curving his perfect lips, his eyes not moving from the dagger’s point that rested against the king’s chest.
“So be it,” Sidney said, and lifted his head, focusing on the almost-shape lurking in the flames. “I have countered your demons, Bothwell, Francis Hepburn. For every one , you invoke, I can invoke the corresponding power. But this goes beyond minions, now. Are you indeed master of power, or merely of those who actually possess the power you yearn for? Face me as whatever you yet are, with whatever you still possess.”
The swirling flames shifted and rose, shaped themselves into the form of a man. Fire curled itself into ragged hair, twined into the shape of an untidy beard, swirled into crude parodies of limbs. If that is Bothwell as he truly is, Marlowe thought, God help us all. Sidney smiled deliberately, and the ephemeral shape seemed to tear itself into shreds of flame. Those tattered bits flew upward, like embers born in some unnatural wind, and swirled down toward the Englishman. Sidney lifted his hand, spoke quickly. The flames shrank, and disappeared. He took a deep breath, staring for a moment at the flames, and spoke again. The words were Latin, this time, short, clipped phrases, without the papists’ slurring. The air seemed to shift about them, taking on the icy tang of winter. The hellfire ring faded briefly, sinking, then returned to its earlier brilliance. A single gout of flame leaped upward, but fell back as though it had struck some invisible barrier. Sidney swore silently, and damned himself again for succumbing to his anger. He could not touch Bothwell— the knowledge made him frantic with rage and fear. He could not touch the earl even as the earl could not touch him, and that stalemate was almost worse than naked defeat. The form Bothwell had chosen to adopt, this shape of pure power, incorporeal, had no true strength even as it had no true existence here: the challenge he himself had issued was worse than meaningless. But if I cannot touch him, neither can he touch me, Sidney thought. That can yet be turned to my advantage, and save the king.
James stood frozen in the center of the circle, his eyes flickering from Ruthven to the knife-point to the Englishman and the rest of the hunting party behind him in the broken doorway. He was afraid, certainly—what man would not be, held so?—his face deathly pale, but he had himself under iron control. I can help him now, Sidney thought, and spoke aloud.
For a moment nothing happened, and then, quite slowly, the flames in front of the king bent away to either side. The movement opened a narrow path, a break in the circle. James saw, and took a half step forward, but was stopped by Ruthven’s dagger.
“Ruthven,” Sidney said. “Think what you do.”
The young man did not move, but then James said something in a voice too low for the others to hear, a strange, sad half-smile lighting his pale face. Ruthven’s grip faltered, the dagger drooping, and in that instant the king sprang clear. Marlowe leaped forward to catch him, to pull him further away from the flames, and put his own body between the king and Bothwell. Ruthven cried out, and the flames soared back, almost hiding him in their encircling embrace. Sidney spoke again, but shook his head, feeling the spell slide off the lack of substance. Then the flames faded, and something else took its place, a weird shape, a dark mirroring of light. Then it slid apart with a sound like silk on silk, and Ruthven screamed again, a deep-throated, bloody noise. There was blood on his mouth, and dripping from his chin, but he ignored it then, and straightened.
Sidney caught his breath, aware of his own miscalculation and its cost. It was Bothwell now, for the first time in the flesh, though the flesh was not h
is own. Poor Ruthven, he thought. Whatever Bothwell offered him could not have paid him for this usage. He shook himself then, angrily. Ruthven was dead already, it was useless to waste pity on him.
Ruthven—Bothwell, Sidney thought—lifted his hands, the only flaw in his dark beauty, words tumbling from his bloody mouth. Sidney felt the power rising around him, leaching up out of the ground like some infernal spring, and spoke himself, a counterstroke drawn from Virgil s book. The two spells collided with a force that shook the house, as though a mine had been exploded beneath its walls. Ruthven screamed in desperate agony—riven indeed, Sidney thought, with despairing pity, seeing the slim body momentarily transfixed, pierced like Sebastian by arrows of hellish flame.
And then the vision was gone. Ruthven collapsed bonelessly, dead before his body struck the floor. “Ye swords and angels,” Sidney cried, groping for words that would stay Bothwell’s fleeing shape, insubstantial though it was. “Ye hosts of the lord of power, aid me and serve me, lend me your arms against this enemy of the right.” The spell took shape around him, coalesced and formed, but slid like smoke from Bothwell’s presence. The form was wrong, Sidney thought, despairing, there’s no relation between my power and his, and I cannot touch him. Oh, God, don’t let me fail so completely, where so many have placed their trust in me—
There was a sound that must have been what the rending of the temple veil had sounded like, and Bothwell was gone. Sidney bowed his head, tasting defeat. Dee’s fears were right, and I should have listened—worse still, I’ve failed both James and the queen, and in my failure caused Ruthven’s death as surely as if I’d put my sword through him. God forgive me, what has my pride brought me to?
“Oh, Alex,” James said quietly, and the sound brought Sidney to himself a little. He turned, to see James staring at the crumpled body. The king saw the movement, and lifted his head warily.
“I did what I thought best, coming here,” he said. “I was wrong. Once again, I owe you my life, Sir Philip.”
Sidney sighed, and shook his head. “I’ve failed you, your Majesty,” he said. “I did not mean to kill, not him, and I could not reach Bothwell. “ I was no better than Ruthven, he added silently, groping after power whose implications I couldn’t understand, and couldn’t truly master, rejecting the tested intricacies of Doctor Dee—of all the greatest thinkers—for something too simple, too pragmatic to be effective... He broke off with a gasp, aware that James had been speaking to him, but unable to reconstruct the words.
“See to him, Sir Fulke,” James said gently, “take him home to his lady wife.”
“And you, Sire?” Seton asked.
James’s face hardened, and for an instant he looked almost terrifyingly like a king. “I have business with my lord of Gowrie,” he said, and stalked from the room.
Gently, Greville touched Sidney’s shoulder. Sidney smiled, a mechanical response, but let himself be led away. Left behind, Marlowe went to kneel beside the body, cautiously lifting the nearest shoulder until he could see the slack face. The muddy features held no remains of the uncanny beauty, were commonplace, flecked here and there with the scars of childhood smallpox—a face finally in keeping with the common hands. So that was the price, the poet thought, that extraordinary beauty. I wonder, did he desire beauty first, or the king? It was not a question that would be answered now, unless Gowrie knew and chose to reveal his knowledge, and it was hardly important. Marlowe let the body fall again and pushed himself to his feet, trailing after the others into the chill courtyard.
Chapter Thirty-One
For of the soule the body forme doth take:
For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.
Edmund Spenser, “An Hymne in Honor of Beautie”
The attack—not precisely unexpected, but not expected in that form—cast something of a pall over the court. The Earl of Gowrie was remanded to the Tollbooth to await James’s pleasure, despite his protest that he had known nothing of his younger brother’s intentions. James was not inclined to show mercy, and, even had he been, there was the fact that Gowrie had lied about his presence in the house to dissuade him. Most of the court rejoiced in Ruthven’s death, while shuddering at the manner of it, and the presbyters preached stern thanksgiving for the king’s safety. James thanked them publicly, but privately was heard to exclaim that had any of them had a hand in saving either life or soul, they would be welcome to take the credit.
“God’s ass,” he exclaimed at last, in the privacy of his own bedchamber, “they’ve even denied that anything but God’s personal regard could make this palace safe. I may not be looking far enough, Sir Philip, but it seems I see the main worker of these miracles here before me—and you’ll forgive me if I’m not quite sure he’s God. Quite.”
Sidney’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Hardly that, your Majesty,” he said, and in the same instant a familiar voice whispered in his ear.
He’s yours. All you need do is hold out your hand.
Sidney ignored the intrusion as he had tried to ignore the others. “I can do no other. I am—and I will remain, so long as I am at your court on her majesty’s service—your humble servant. My abilities are given over to your service.”
James smiled rather sadly. “Ay, I understand that well enough. Men have called our cousin of England a witch; certain it is she has some power over men’s hearts. But still, I know where to direct my thanks for this same service.”
“To God, certainly, your Majesty,” Sidney answered, and heard a whispering laugh.
Yours. Want him or no, you can do nothing. Even when you try your hardest you win him, and I win by it.
“Of course, Sir Philip,” James said.
Sidney made his excuses then, and fled the royal chambers. He stalked through Holyrood’s corridors toward his own chambers, biting his lip in frustration and anger. It was an anger that had been growing in him since the moment of Ruthven’s death. Many said it was no loss, his influence over the king having been so great and so malign, but Bothwell’s cold-blooded use—rape—of body and soul alike was sickening. And still he could not act. First, he could not act in anger; anger was too dangerous now, could only force him to make mistakes. Second, and more important, he did not know yet how to act. He swore under his breath, and returned to his room to brood on the problem.
The players, huddled together in the lower hall, saw him pass, and read the anger in his face. They were as aware as any of recent events, and Burbage sighed. It had been a profitable stay here at the Scottish court, but he recognized the signs. When the people were frightened, they turned to repentance, and repentance usually meant being rid of the players. He leaned close to Shakespeare. “We should think of taking our leave soon, I do believe. If Sir Philip looks stormy, what hope for the rest of us?”
“It’s a bad time for traveling,” Phillips objected, though he had not been addressed. “Hell of a time to go south now.”
“I think we should wait,” Shakespeare said quietly. “This isn’t England. Let’s lie quiet, see what happens—I for one would dearly love to see the end.”
Burbage’s face twisted. Phillips was right, they’d left it very late to travel south—and Will’s right, too, he admitted. I’d like to see the end of this myself, if only to know all will be well with the world again. “I think you’re mad,” he said aloud.
“His majesty favors us still, and the queen, and Sir Philip Sidney still offers us his protection,” Shakespeare said, and smiled.
Burbage scowled. “Oh, I know all that. All right, we’ll stay. At least we’re not losing money on the venture.”
“It was a stroke of good fortune that we encountered Lady Sidney that day, wasn’t it?” Shakespeare agreed.
“And damned well only right, given the stroke of unutterably vile fortune that loosened Essex’s purse and Jonson’s so-called wit,” Burbage said bitterly. Even now, months after the closing of the playhouses, he could not think of it with any equanimity. Shakespeare grinned, and glanced acr
oss the hall to where Marlowe sat close beside but not a part of, a group of Scots.
“If it had been Marlowe, now,” he began, and Phillips snorted.
“There would be no more playhouses in England. Count yourselves lucky, my fellows.”
Marlowe was well aware of their stares, but gave no sign of it, glancing instead down the hall toward the Earl of Mar. He was more concerned with that gentleman than with his fellow poets—especially since he himself owed Cecil a report, and more than one. And worrying over politics helped fill the strange emptiness in his life: so far from keeping to his threat, Mephistophilis had vanished utterly. Marlowe looked for him as promised, half afraid, half perversely hopeful, and found nothing there. He shook the thought away, concentrating on Cecil. He had not written to the secretary since some weeks before he left for Holland... I wonder if I could win Mar over? he thought. God knows, he could afford to defy Cecil, and he wanted to—there’s precious little Cecil could do to punish a Scottish earl. One look at Mar’s pale eyes killed that hope. Damn Cecil anyway, Marlowe thought. He’ll get the news from half a dozen other sources, if I know him at all—and right now, Sir Robert, Sir Secretary Robert, we are all too busy trying to stay alive to bother with your codes and ciphers.
He smiled slowly. He no longer really cared what Cecil’s orders were: if Sidney succeeded as he’d always intended, there would be little Cecil could say or do about it —especially since James’s gratitude was likely to be very public. Of course, under the cover of all the noise, it would be an easy matter to try to remove a mere poet… But he’d tried that before, with a conspicuous lack of success. A second such attempt could well prove embarrassing. Let us win, Marlowe thought fiercely, let us free James, and Cecil will be bound. James will be a king in his own right, with no need to fawn to any ministers, his own or others’—and when the time comes and he’s king in England, too, Cecil will have to serve him, and not hold any debt of gratitude. He may never be a great king, James may not, but there’s a sharp streak in him, canny as her majesty. Put that sharpness on the throne, and surely we’ll avoid disaster. Marlowe shoved the thought away as unprofitable. Let’s work toward Sidney’s victory, and then perhaps we’ll survive to see what happens. Else we might as well not care.
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