"What do you want to do?" Jamy asked, roughly but softly. "I'm ready for it. Yourself on top, or me? Whichever ye want."
"I - can you not - with your hands?" Nick asked.
"Not so very well. But if ye lie down I can take ye in my mouth."
Nick's breath jumped in his throat, and Jamy looked at him again. "Man, ye know nothing, do ye?" It was not unkindly said, but there was a tearing hoarseness in his voice. Nick lowered his eyes before the steady gaze. Jamy was ready for him, sure enough, his yard standing firm, a drop of liquid at the tip of it catching the candle-light.
Nick pulled off his own clothes. "Lie down," he said, "on your back," and when Jamy did that, he climbed on the bed and straddled him, trying to remember what Gabriel Spencer had done for Philip.
Jamy's legs opened to make room; his fist in the small of Nick's back pushed him down.
"Kiss me," Nick said, and Jamy hooked his other forearm over the back of Nick's head and pulled, opening his mouth as he had opened his legs, helping Nick fit there, helping him belong. The feel of it, the sunburst, the starburst, the growing heat, ached and burned between Nick's legs. He wriggled and thrust down, and Jamy pulled his head away to murmur, "Slower, Nick, smoother, it will be better for ye," but the heat and the ache were having none of that, burning through Nick as he pushed and thrust inexpertly against Jamy in a welter of sweat and lust.
Jamy spilled his seed before Nick expected, a guttural, half-stifled cry escaping his throat; and Nick was still burning and aching, not yet come. He let his head fall forward on Jamy's chest, and swore.
Beneath him Jamy was breathing hard; eventually he quieted, and began to slide out from under Nick.
"Don't go, Jamy."
"I'm not. But I cannot be the softest thing to lie on, with all these bones." Nick did not reply, and Jamy stroked his back. "Ach, Nick, do not take it so badly."
"I wanted it to be better," Nick mumbled.
"Man, for me it was very good," Jamy said. "I would pay to have that again."
"It's no jest." Nick was gritting his teeth to stop himself weeping from shame and thwarted passion.
Jamy wriggled up close, closer, and put his arms awkwardly round Nick. "It's not, and I'm sorry to have made it one. It was your first, you said so yourself; there's no surprise if it's not as you would have had it. Come now, let me hold you."
His arms were hard, and it was more like being locked in an embrace with a tree than anything else; but although his hands were clumsy, they were gentle. Slowly Nick relaxed.
"That's better," Jamy said. "That's better, now." He pushed gently on Nick's shoulders, to roll him on his back. "Lie still, Nick, and you shall have some pleasure after all."
With that he began to kiss Nick, not on the lips this time, but everywhere. His touch found the soft skin at the base of Nick's throat, and explored the dip there; his teeth found Nick's nipples, and almost had Nick out of his skin with the sharp, startling pleasure of it. He crept lower down the bed, and lower, his tongue and lips and the silken drift of his hair marking out every inch, bringing Nick's skin alive as it had never been before, lighting the fire and the ache again, so that Nick would have writhed with pleasure if Jamy had not been pinning him down. And he didn't ask Nick if he was ready, or give him any warning, but took him into his mouth, taking as he did so Nick's breath and the words from his mouth and even, for a moment, the very thoughts from Nick's mind.
Afterwards, the night dissolved into sleep, and it wasn't until long afterwards that Nick woke. There was a body warm and soft against him, a hand caressing his hair. "Philip," he muttered.
"Not Philip. I'm sorry."
Nick lay there, letting words and sensation flow through him, until what he had heard made sense. "Shit, Jamy, I'm sorry. I wasn't … I was … "
"Ye were thinking of someone else," Jamy said. "So your man is Philip?"
"His name is Philip, but he isn't mine."
"There's time. There's hope." Jamy yawned. "Ye'll not get back into Holyroodhouse tonight."
"I know," Nick said.
"Good." Jamy wriggled up against him. "More?"
"I … ah … in the morning?"
Jamy chuckled. "In the morning. Sleep well, my English lad."
Chapter 14
December 1601
"Where's Nick?"
Charles Massey looked up from his part. "I haven't seen him since supper."
"He said he was going for a walk round the palace," Jack Wynter put in.
He's not been the only one, after all. Philip sighed, and made himself relax. "I suppose we have no rule against that."
"Should we have?" Massey said.
"What do you think, Charles? Sol? Or … shall we wait and see whether we need to?" Philip crossed the room and peered out of the tiny window. The early sun was on the orchard and on the ordered gravel walks of the gardens, but immediately below was the long shadow westward of the palace wall. The shutters were across the casements on the eastern side of the room; when Philip went to open one, the low light was dazzling.
"Don't," Charles said. "Too bright. Look, go somewhere else, Philip, if you're restless. I'm having trouble enough learning this part."
"Sorry," Philip said, swung through the doorway with one hand on the jamb, and met Nick only a few strides across the next room. "Where have you - ?" He stopped. Wherever Nick had been, it had done him no harm. True, there were smudges of shadow under his eyes, but otherwise he looked … Philip paused to consider. "The cat with its face in the cream-jug," he said.
Nick blushed astonishingly scarlet, wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, and said, "I've had breakfast," which set the blushing off worse. "I thought I'd learn my p-part, now."
"By all means," Philip said, and went back to the room where they slept to do his own learning, cross-legged on the bed with a sheaf of paper on his lap. What has he … After a few minutes of futile wrestling with Romeo's lines, he stopped. It's clear as daylight what he's been up to.
Which was, of course, none of his business.
You'd like some of it yourself, wouldn't you?
He had never been back to Alexander Gray's room, although he had seen him among the audience at the plays often enough.
What will Sandy Gray think of you as the lover, then?
Meanwhile, those lines of Romeo's were still unlearnt: Philip gritted his teeth, and sat on the faldstool by the window. Anything not to see the bed. "'My lips two blushing pilgrims did ready stand, To smoothe that rough touch with a tender kiss.'"
"'Good pilgrim you do wrong your hand too much,'" Nick said, though it was Jack, and not he, who was to play Juliet. Philip dropped his papers; Nick, standing in the doorway, walked slowly forward, laid both his hands on Philip's shoulders, and kissed him.
"Philip," he said, drawing his breath deep, and then, "Philip?"
Christ have mercy. I never - "No," he said. "No, Nick. It's not fitting."
Nick swallowed. "Because I'm your apprentice?"
"That, and other things." Philip tried to smile, not knowing in the least whether that was what showed on his face. "You are too much among players, Nick," he said. "There are other ways of being."
"Not that I want," Nick said. "And if I was not your apprentice?"
"Still no," Philip said quickly, as much to quell Nick's hope as anything, without stopping to think. "Nick, I have my part to learn - if you don't mind - "
"No. I came to get mine, I left it here. I had forgotten." Nick flashed him a brief smile, and went out with the single sheet of paper in his hands.
Two days. Thank God we do not play this for another two days. Philip flattened the papers out on the desk in front of him, and set himself to learn. His mind and memory both seemed slow as tar. Learn these words before supper, Philip told them, and tonight I will take you to see what Alexander Gray can do for us.
After which, it all seemed very much easier.
The door had been left ajar, as if he were expected. Philip said, his words a b
reath that barely sounded even in his own ears, "May I come in?"
The door opened wider, to darkness and a single candle, which Alexander Gray set on a tall bracket a little inside the room. "You may."
Philip crossed the threshold into a pair of welcoming arms, and lifted his face to a kiss. He set his hands in the small of Gray's back, and held him close. The kiss deepened, their hold on each other strengthened. The world shrank to the room, with the candle for the sun; and the room shrank to the space of their two bodies in warm darkness. It was impossible to stand still; Philip pushed closer, closer, until Gray gasped, broke away and said, "No. Not now. The bed."
All Philip could utter was an incoherent noise of agreement as he reached for the ties of his partlet strip. Gray forestalled him. "Let me. Stand still. Let me do it all."
Philip waited. Alexander Gray glanced over his shoulder, pulled the chest across to prevent the door from opening, and came back. "I'm not going to hurry," he said, his voice low. "I'm going to do this slowly. I want to see you all, limb by limb and - more."
A fire burned in the hearth. The room was small, but richly furnished. The candle-light gleamed on gilded, embossed leather, on polished wood, on a mirror dark as ink, on the bed-hangings. They were embroidered, red and green and blue on a cream ground. Silver and gold thread, sequins, fragments of something else brittle and shining, danced in the glimmering flames.
Philip stood very still, shivering a little, but not with cold. The slim fingers at his throat moved on and down, to his shoulders and wrists. Gray stroked him wherever he touched, the lightest of caresses, soft but deliberate. He lifted the shirt over Philip's head, and undid his girdle; then he knelt at Philip's feet, and unfastened his shoes. "Ribbons," he said softly. "Silk ribbons."
"Player's shoes," Philip replied, breathlessly. "Alexander - "
"My name is Sandy, to you." He looked up, laughing. "What is it?"
"You may have to hurry - a little."
"Oh, indeed … no, I do not think so." Sandy laid one warm hand on Philip's belly. "Why, you are a cold lad, I do believe; cold as if you had seen a ghost, or some other ferlie."
Philip shook his head. "No ghost, no sprite. 'Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.'"
Sandy's hands were at his waist now, pulling down his trunk-hose, unfastening points. "Good words. Yours?"
"No," Philip said, stepping out of the last of his apparel. "A friend had them from a friend of his. There is more."
"Go on," Sandy said, standing up.
"If you disrobe."
"Must I?" Sandy whispered. "I have a fancy … my velvet, against your skin … will you not?" He pressed himself close again, and yes - ah yes, the touch of silk and velvet would have dissolved a stronger will than Philip's. Sandy pulled back the bedcovers, took Philip in his arms and swung him on to the bed before kicking his own shoes off and covering Philip with his body. "Go on," he said. "More words, you of the upright flesh."
Philip gathered his wits from the whirl of skin and velvet that filled his mind, stammered briefly, and went on. "'License my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below.'" As he spoke, Sandy's hands followed the words, light, strong, demanding, delicate, playing him as if he were his own lute. "'My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned, My mine of precious stones, my empery … '"
Sandy's fingers were probing where nobody had touched him since Kit had died, not even Gabriel; Sandy's body was hard against his, as roused as his own. Philip wrapped his arms across the velvet back, pushed himself hard against the thrusting legs and hips, and crooned the last words he could muster, changed for the purpose, into Sandy's ear. "'To enter in these bonds is to be free; Then where thy hand is set, thy seal shall be.'" And with that the small death came, and he fell into a dazzle of ecstasy, barely conscious of Sandy's voiceless gasp of completion in his ear.
The candle guttered out. In the darkness two breaths, two bodies, were indistinguishable one from another. There were no more words.
If Philip had woken in the same room as the other players of Cecil's Men, he would not have been surprised: it had been a night of dreams, finding his way through the labyrinth to the treasure at its heart. In the land of faerie, the treasure would have been gone in the morning or changed into a handful of withered leaves: but here in Holyroodhouse, the gold was still on the pillow, in the form of Alexander Gray's hair. He must have disrobed himself after all, once Philip was asleep, and now lay naked beside him. Philip propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at the sleeping face; then, very carefully, he kissed the slightly-parted lips.
Sandy's eyes opened, and he smiled. "I was awake," he said. "I hoped you would do that. So the shadow at my door is a man after all, and not a fetch or an incubus."
"I thought you might be the enchantment," Philip whispered.
"Oh no. I am a man indeed; and so are you, Philip Standage."
"You remember my name, then."
"Knowing your name gives me power over you; is not that true?" Sandy rolled on to his back. "It is very early. I have not heard the cock crow, this long hour."
"You have enchanted him to silence, to lengthen the day for your own purposes," Philip said lightly. "Whatever they may be."
There was a silence: then Sandy said, "Philip - I hardly like to ask, but what is your fee?"
Philip sat up abruptly. "I am not selling myself!" After a brief moment's thought he swept up his clothes from where he had let them fall. "If you think that - "
"Soft, soft." Sandy laid one hand on his arm. "I see I was mistaken. Players - I thought - "
"I am not a hireling," Philip said more steadily, his pulse beating in his throat. "I am a sharer in our company and I live by that means." He let Sandy take the clothes from between his hands. "Sandy, if I lie with you, it is because I choose to give myself."
"And a precious gift it is." Sandy dropped the clothes on the bare boards again. "Wherefore I feel that I should make you a gift in return. It could be money."
"I do not want money," Philip said. "It smacks too much of commerce."
"A jewel, then?" Sandy nuzzled at Philip's neck, into the hollow behind the tendon that stretched from ear to throat. "I should like fine to see you with a jewel hung in your ear. A pearl, say, or a ruby. Shall I make you ready for it?" His teeth were sharp on Philip's ear-lobe, and he drew back laughing. "Nay, I'll bring a needle when the time comes. What jewel would you like?"
"You - you choose," Philip said, the breath catching in his throat. "Ah, Sandy - there are gifts worth more than jewels."
"Such as?" Sandy murmured, before running his hand up the line of Philip's closed thighs.
"Love."
"Love, yes of course. Come, Philip - love - lie back and let me show you how much … "
"I think I know how much." But Philip lay back on the pillows and gave himself to Sandy all over again.
Nick was at Isbel Drummond's house once more; the door was on the latch, but she was not at home. He closed the door behind him, and called up the ladder. "Jamy, it's me. Nick."
"Come up, lad."
Nick climbed the ladder; in the upper room Jamy was lying on top of the bed, half-undressed, the beard-shadow dark on his face. "Have I come at a bad time?" Nick asked. "I needn't stay." He hadn't told anyone in the company he would be out of the palace; he hadn't, particularly, been planning to visit Jamy, but that one sweet kiss with Philip had made his own body almost beyond bearing, unless he could share it with someone else.
Jamy smiled, a little wanly. "It's been a bad day with my hands, but I'm glad to see ye. And - I'd be more pleased still, were your clothes off." The smile curled up into wickedness. "Ye could turn a bad day into good for anyone."
Nick laughed. "You should be a poet, or a courtier. I brought wine. Would you like some?"
"That's fine and courtly of ye," Jamy said. "I would."
They shared the cup; Nick drained the last drop, and said, "What shall I do for you, Jamy?"
&
nbsp; "Ye could undress both of us, if ye would. Some nights I have to ask Isbel for help, see." Jamy watched, no mockery in his face, as Nick stripped. "No sense in taking it slow; it's cold in here. Come to bed, Nick. Come."
Once he had folded Jamy's clothes on the back of the chair, Nick slid under the covers and kissed him. Jamy would not open his lips, so Nick dared to use his tongue against the closed mouth, so that the roughness of Jamy's stubble tingled on his tongue-tip. Jamy's lips quivered at Nick's touch; then his mouth opened with a smile, and they were kissing indeed.
"Aye," Jamy said, eventually. "And now tell me what you would like us to do."
That night, they did not hurry; that night, Nick let Jamy do all that he could with tongue and hands, and then Nick did the same to him. They slept a while, and woke to find the candle out and themselves still with fire and spirit enough in their bodies for a little more sport. Nick learned things he had never read or thought of, many things, but not sodomy itself; there was enough to pleasure each other with, without going that far. Afterwards they clung together, not talking but not silent; crooning nonsense to each other.
"Is this love?" Jamy asked, after they had been silent for a while. "I have to say, I hope it is not."
"So do I. Although I - although it is not hatred, certainly."
"True. But ye will hardly be staying here forever, and I would be a fool to love one who will never stay."
"We are here until Candlemas," Nick said. "That's all I know. You and I - "
He nodded. "Some of that time can be ours."
"I do wish - I wish it could be more."
He laughed softly. "Don't fret yourself. Be here when you want. I'll let Isbel know. But it's time to sleep, I think."
They curled against each other as if they had been bed-mates for years. In the grey light of morning, Nick rose at the sound of Isbel's raking the ashes below, and dressed, and clambered down the ladder with more haste than elegance.
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