Hell and Earth pa-4

by Elizabeth Bear

  It being an offer do much for his honor. ”

  Infelicitous,Will thought, but held his peace to murmur his own talismanic words.

  I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire:

  These high wild hills and rough uneven ways

  Draws out our miles, and makes them wearisome,

  And yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar,

  Making the hard way sweet and delectable. ”

  Will’s voice and Chapman’s combined with Ben’s–

  “At court I met it, in clothes brave enough,

  To be a courtier; and looks grave enough,

  To deem a statesman: as I near it came,

  It made me a great face; I asked the name.

  A Lord, it cried, buried in flesh, and blood,

  And such from whom let no man hope least good,

  For I will do none; and as little ill,

  For I will dare none: Good Lord, walk dead still. ”

  – a strange and uneven sort of round between the three of them, but Will felt the pressure ease reluctantly. Raising his voice, he lifted the candle and steeled himself to pull the handle of the half‑open interior door.

  He thought himself prepared for what might confront him, he who had been to Hell and back again, who had stood watch over a wife’s near demise in childbed and the second death of Sir Francis Walsingham. He was prepared for the peeling cold, like a wind off the ice‑clotted moor, and he was prepared for the horrific stench.

  He wasn’t prepared for the huddled shape under the blankets, Spenser’s form curled thin and frail into an agonized ball. Chapman stayed in the front room. The creak of Ben’s footsteps stopped at the bedroom door.

  Will raised the candle and went forward, just in case, but Spenser’s open eyes and the hard‑frozen outline of his form – I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire–told him already what he would feel when he laid his left hand over Spenser’s right: cold stiff flesh like claws of ice, and the candle showed him Spenser’s pale eye rimed with frost and sunken like a day‑old herring’s.

  “Contagion,” Ben said softly.

  Will shuddered and crossed himself before he quite knew what his hand was about. Something cracked and yellow lay frozen at the corners of Spenser’s mouth; Will remembered Sir Francis and did not think the stuff was mustard. He stepped back, scrubbing his glove on his breeches, tilting the candle aside. “I am a stranger here in– God in Heaven, Ben. Let us quit this place and summon a constable of the watch.”

  “Aye,” Ben said, and he and Will trotted from the rancid little room.

  They leaned against the wall outside, breathing the cold, sweet air like runners, having dragged the rabbit‑frozen Chapman between them. Ben caught Will’s eye over Chapman’s head, and coughed into his palm. “Edmund Spenser, starved to death for lack of bread.”

  “Essex would never–” Chapman began, and Will knew from Ben’s level, warning regard that the big man’s mind was already churning through some subterfuge.

  “Go look at the body yourself,” Ben said, lowering his hand again. “Essex obviously hasn’t been keeping him very well, if it has come to this.”

  “I don’t understand,” Chapman said, so softly Will barely heard him over the whisper of snowflakes through the air, over the squeak of their compression underfoot.

  Will lagged back as Ben paused under the swinging sign for a cobbler, snow thick on his uncovered hair, and turned to look Chapman in the eye. “Twas no plague carried Spenser off,” he said. “But mere starvation. And I mean to see the whole world knows it.”

  Will bit his lip in the long silence that followed. It wasn’t starvation either, but sorcery–but Will thought he understood the broad rationale of Ben’s untruth, and was content to let the younger man’s plot play itself out. They turned down the alleyway near the Mermaid before Chapman gathered his thoughts enough to speak again.

  “You’re not doing yourself any favors provoking Essex.” Chapman pressed the worn door open on its hinges. The Mermaid had filled in their absence, and a commotion of warmth and noise and smells tumbled past Will as they entered. “If that’s what you mean to do with this accusation that he cares for his servants inadequately.”

  “I care not for Essex,” Ben answered, making sure the door shut tight against the snow. “Especially when England’s greatest poet starves to death under his care.”

  Act IV, scene ii

  And to be conclude, when all the world dissolves

  And every creature shall be purified,

  All places shall be hell that are not heaven.

  –Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act II, scene I

  Kit turned, gritty stones under his feet: the broad rooftop pediment of a gray stone tower. The limitless sky lofted overhead. Ravens and swans circled in confusion, a tumult of cawing and jet and alabaster wings. Then a glitter of black pinions, white weskit, a shiny bauble in a smaller bird’s sharp beak as it settled on the battlements before Kit and cocked a bawdy eye.

  The magpie spat something ringing on the stone. A silver shilling, spent until the face of the King upon it was smooth as a water‑worn stone. Kit crouched to pick it up and found himself eye to eye with the magpie, something–his cloak? –tugging at his wrist as he reached. The magpie chuckled softly and settled its feathers. Ware the Church. Ware the Queen. Ware the raven with the wounded wing.

  “Doggerel?” Kit asked. It made perfect sense as he said it. “Can’t you, of all birds, do better than that?”

  The magpie chuckled again and hopped off the battlement, climbing to dart between circling ravens and swans. Kit pulled against the cloak, but it seemed to bind his wrists tighter. He stood and spread his arms, stretching against the fabric. The wind caught and luffed under the patches, ruffled his feathers, stroked his pinions. Lifted him, and he fell into flight as naturally as breathing. His dark wings rowed the sky; he arrowed in pursuit of the magpie – faster, more agile, more deft, his barred tail flicking side to side like a living rudder as he avoided the broad wings of the regal swans and ravens. One of the ravens limped through the air; Kit saw a spot of bright crimson on its wing, vivid as a tuft of rags and feathers, as it spiraled down to rest within the Tower’s walls.

  Hawk Hawk Hawk,the ravens cried in alarm, which was foolishness. Kit’s sharp triangular wings showed him a falcon, no hawk. And no threat to anything as big as a raven. Or a swan. A merlin,he realized, amused, as the magpie led him flitting over the rooftops and marketplaces of London. St. Paul’s Churchyard, where the booksellers were. King’s Street, and the merlin caught a glimpse of a balding human who seemed familiar, somehow, leaning against a stucco wall between a big man and a stout man, all three of them shaking, slumped, breaths smoking in the cold.

  Blackfriars, Whitefriars. Charing Cross and then somehow it was sunset, it was nightfall, and through the gray twilight five men were unloading a barge on a bank near Westminster. One a cavalier with shining golden hair–hair that glowed,even in the gathering dark–and to look at him, the little falcon’s wings skipped a beat in fear and distant–or perhaps forward?–memory. He dropped several feet before he caught himself, and went back for another look. A big man stood in the barge, handing barrels up the bank to the other four: a broad‑shouldered soldier with a luxuriant red mustache and a kind, hooded eye.

  The merlin circled over their heads. The magpie flew out over the river, dipping and diving, chattering still. The air sustained other sounds and odors, as if there were a wood across the water and not the stews and bear‑pits of Southwark: dry leaves and tannin, a hollow knocking like the rattle of a stag’s autumn‑velveted tines among the low branches of oaks.

  And then a cry, a lamentation or a sugared moan of delight, a voice too sweet, chromatic, resonant to reveal the difference.

  The belling of a stag, the entreaty of a falcon, the toll of a carillon. Wingbeats. A name that seemed to resonate over his taut‑drawn skin like shivers through a tapped drumhead.

  Mehiel.

&nb
sp; Mehiel.

  Mehiel

  Kit woke curled tight in the layers of his cloak, the French seams he’d stitched flat still prickling his skin, a name on his lips. Mehiel.Sweat soaked his brown‑blond hair and his face itched with dried salt, eyes burning, scars burning. The fists pressed to his face smelled of tears, so very like blood.

  So very like blood indeed. “Not a night terror, at least,” he said, sitting up, at sea in a giant bed. “There was a prophecy in that one, I wot.” His bedroom was empty; he spoke only to the walls and to the sunrise beyond his window. Mehiel.He knew the name. An angel’s name, by the sound of it.

  He was sure he had heard it before.

  He stood and washed, cleaned his teeth, relieved himself, combed his hair. Once he had dressed, he gritted his teeth, tugged down his doublet, and made his way to the hall to break his fast. The patchwork bard’s cloak he swung around his shoulders smelled of smoke and sweet resin and strong whiskey, so every time he inhaled it was as though the Devil’s hand traced his spine.

  He had anticipated the silence in the hall when he entered, still mincing on feet worn sore by barefoot climbing the steps from Hell. He’d known heads would turn and voices would still, that the clink of silver on Orient porcelain would halt. And he’d called himself ready for it.

  His steps didn’t slow. He was Christofer Marley, brazen as they came, and he would walk down the center row between the long tables and find his breakfast of porridge and honey and sheep’s milk–such homely stuff, for Faerie, but man did not live by thistledown and morning dew alone–and take a seat, and he would dine. And let them mutter what they would. He was Christofer Marley.

  Except he wasn’t. The name had no power over him, for good or ill. It was no longer his.

  He had sold it.

  His stride did lag when he recollected that, and he nearly stumbled on the rushes. But he recovered himself and squared his shoulders, thinking Needs must replace my rapierwhen his hand went to his belt to steady the blade, and found it absent. That, too, was left in Hell.

  He carried on, limping more heavily now that he’d hurt his foot again. But chin up, eyes front, not because he was Christofer Marley but because he was not willing to bow his head today.

  When he was halfway to the board, the silence broke. At first, when but a single pair of hands struck together, he thought the clapping ironic. But then another joined, and a third, and by the time he stood ladling porridge into a bowl, he did so at the center of a standing ovation.

  Two days previous, he would have set the bowl aside and turned and given them a mocking bow. But he was not the man he had been, two days previous. He had passed through that man, passed beyond him, been transformed on his quest to retrieve his beloved Will from the devil’s grasp. And as with Orfeo, there was no looking back to see where he had been.

  Now, he was a man who had been to Hell and back again, and whose feet still hurt with the journey. He turned, and nodded blindly to the room, and found his seat with as little ceremony as possible.

  When he sat, and hunched over his bowl, the rest sat too, and that was the last that was said of it.

  It’s time wert about thy duties, Kit,he thought, half hearing the rattle of antlers on wood. Thou hast charged from the Queen and thy Prince that thou hast much neglected, in pursuit of love and poetry.

  He would to the library, and see what he could find there. And perhaps start researching Will’s crackpot scheme to retranslate the Bible.

  For once, Amaranth was not in the library. Kit sought through old texts until near the dinner hour, and found nothing on the names and ranks of angels, and little after the fashion of Bibles. Which should not have surprised him, he knew: there was little of Christian myth in the Queen of Faery’s archive. Hast never heard to know thine enemy, and keep him close?And then Kit laughed. Why, no. Of course not. I wonder if the Book itself ‘could do them injury.

  He wiped dusty hands on his doublet and then cursed the mouse‑brown streaks across its front. A wave of his hand spelled them away again. It seemed frivolous to use hard‑won power for such petty purposes, but there was no reason not to. No one told me witchcraft was so useful. If word gets out, ‘twill be all the rage indeed.

  He cast one more lingering glance around the room before he left, but lunch–truthfully–held a greater allure. And mayhap I can find Puck or Geoffrey there.It suddenly occurred to him to find it odd that a being with a stag’s head would eat beef and bread like a man, but he shrugged as he stepped through the open double doors of the hall and walked silently across the fresh‑strewn rushes.

  The Mebd, Queen of the Daoine Sidhe, sat at the high table, although she did not usually take her dinner in public, and the Prince, her husband, sat beside her. Kit might have slipped aside and taken a seat just above the salt–there was one near Amaranth, on the bench she had pushed aside to make room for the bulk of her coils–except Prince Murchaud raised his head and smiled, and beckoned with one refined oval hand.

  Kit turned his head to get a glimpse of Amaranth through the otherwisevision Lucifer had awakened in his right eye. She seemed to him a long spill of dark water, a black surface shattered with ephemeral reflections of light. Murchaud and the Mebd – all the Fae – shimmered like dust motes in dawnlight as Kit walked down the center aisle of the hall between the long trestles. He didn’t need the second sight to show him every eye guardedly upon him. It was there again, the way they had stared in the morning, before the applause. Climbing the steps to the dais, Kit realized belatedly what it was. You’re among the legends now, Marley.

  Or not‑Marley, as it were.

  The Fae were in awe of him, mortal man in a journeyman bard’s cloak who had gone to Hell in pursuit of his mortal lover–and brought them both back out again, alive and to all appearances whole, no matter how much a lie that might be. “Your Highness.” Kit bowed low before the Mebd, scraping his boot on the floor. The only sound it made was the rustle of rushes: damned elf‑boots.

  The Queen of Faeries smiled and inclined her head. She seemed drawn, her rose‑petal skin pinched beside her eyes, and as if she–always willow‑slender–grew thin.

  “Prince Murchaud,” Kit said, with a bow almost as low. Murchaud favored him with a sideways glance, and nodded to the empty chair at his left hand. Kit circled the table with some trepidation to take it, not allayed when Murchaud laid a buttered roll on his trencher and served Kit with his own hands.

  Kit picked idly at the roast laid before him, trying to find his appetite again. “Thank you, my Prince.”

  Murchaud laid a hand half over Kit’s. A carefully casual gesture, and Kit would not shame him in public by flinching away as if struck. “Kit,” he said, tilting his head to hide his lips against Kit’s hair. “I am not sorry I tried to prevent thee going, love. But nor am I sorry thou art home and safe; I did not lie when I said I cared for thee. Can we not be friends at least, if thou canst abide not my closer company? ”

  “Aye,” Kit found himself answering, and then halted. “Tis not thee,” he said, as something in Murchaud’s tone ripped him to honesty. “I would fain – ”

  “Aye?” Murchaud’s voice, and close and tight.

  Kit bowed his head over his hands, and stifled a chuckle at the image of saying grace over fey victuals. He stole a sideways glance at Murchaud’s pale, intense blue eyes, the midnight coils of his hair, the elegant line of his nose, the faint sequined glitter of magic behind it. “Thou didst seek to protect me,” Kit said.

  “I did wonder when thou wouldst notice.”

  “And,” Kit continued, unperturbed, “I might… call thee friend. An thou wouldst permit it.”

  Murchaud drew a breath. “Is’t so bad, Kit?”

  “‘Tis worse,” Kit said, and busied himself with his bread and beef. A little later he looked up, and waited for the quiet conversation between the Mebd and Murchaud to flag. He spoke when it did, knowing the Mebd could hear him as well as the Prince. “I have not been about my duties – ”
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  “Thou’rt absolved,” the Prince answered, absently.

  “Nay,” Kit said, still wondering at the words that seemed so inevitable as they passed his lips. “‘Tis time I accepted my place, here in Faerie. ‘Tis time I chose a side.”

  Kit missed Amaranth leaving the hall by a few moments, and hurried his step as he followed the flicker of her tail through cool, sunlit corridors. Her progression was stately enough; he caught her up by the doors to a balcony overlooking the rose garden. “Lady Amaranth.”

  “Sir Poet? How may I be of service?” She turned from the waist, her long body twisting like a ribbon, and extended a cold hand in welcome.

  He bowed over it and mimed a kiss. Her chuckle sounded as if it rose the length of her in bubbles. “I had hoped you might assist me in finding a book. Some information on an angel–I think an angel, by his name. And perhaps a very old Bible.”

  “In Faerie?” She drew her hand back as he straightened, and gestured him to accompany her. Not to the gardens after all, but down the corridor and back toward the library where he had spent the morning. “A Bible? New Testament and Old? Apocrypha? I might have one of those. How old?”

  “Whatever you have. And as old as possible,” Kit answered.

  Amaranth laughed. “Read you Aramaic?”

  “A little Hebrew,” he admitted. “Greek would be better.”

  She shrugged fluidly, dropping her body to a merely human height to grasp the handle of the library door and twist it open. “I can teach you a spell ‘twill render tongues –human and otherwise – comprehensible to thee. It can be done with music also, now thou art both bard and warlock, but the bardic spell lasts only as long as the song.”

  “Rumors fly, I see,” Kit said. He followed Amaranth’s train into the room and turned to shut the door behind them. She draped a coil of herself over a massive dark wood table with legs as thick as Kit’s thigh; Kit hopped up on the table opposite, hugging a knee.

  “Some of us see more than others,” Amaranth said. “And you came back from Hell and an interview with Satan with mismatched eyes. Tell me, Christofer –how look I to thee, now?”