“A bottomless sea in moonlight. Are mine eyes mismatched?” She smiled, her hair writhing about her head. “You have not looked in a mirror since you came back from Hell, I see – ” How could I? There are no mirrors in Faerie.”
“That is a difficulty.” She slid from the table edge like a fall of silk and crawled off among the rows of bookshelves. “I shall return,” she said. “Take your ease.”
Kit obeyed her, listening to the rustle of her scales over stone and carpet as she searched the shelves. “And so you will teach me more magic, Lady Amaranth? To what end?”
The room smelled of serpent’s musk and dried autumn leaves. Kit breathed deeply. Her voice drifted back, muffled as if the paper and leather absorbed its tones. “Fondness for thee and thy mortal poet are not answer enough?”
“And I should trust a Fae’s fondness?” He lay back on the weighty table and looked up at the gilt plaster relief netting the ceiling, letting his feet dangle over the edge.
“I’m not a Faerie,” Amaranth reminded him, over the sound of sliding books and rustling pages. “And just as happy not to be. William told me before he left that he thought the Fae might be responsible for the murder of his son.”
“More than thought. Had on good authority–”
“Aye.” The lamia sneezed, a sharp and diminishing hiss. “Did he tell you the culprits, then?”
Kit shook his head. “He did not say he knew them. I had assumed whomever it is who supports Baines and Essex’s faction of Prometheus, if they are still allies.”
“You know,” she said, emerging from behind a monumental book‑case with a black, leathery tome resting on the flat palms of her hands, “the spell I shall teach you can also be used to talk to trees. If the trees are forthcoming.”
“And if they’re not?”
“Many a wood hates man for wrongs wronged in centuries past.” Noncommittally. “Men generally win, when they go forearmed to deal with trees. Will you talk to Geoffrey, then?”
Why should I care to talk to trees?“I had meant to ask you if you knew where he was to be found,” Kit said, sitting up. “Why this sudden interest in politics, Lady?”
“Oh,” she answered, tipping the dust‑stippled Bible into his hands with an amused hiss. Her hair darted forward, every black eye bright with curiosity. “I care not for politics.”
“Then what is your interest?”
She shrugged. “Snakes are always interested in mysteries,” she said. “And Mehiel is well‑enough known. You can no doubt find him easily when you do return to London to speak with your friends. Now –about that spell – ”
Forty‑five minutes later, Kit was halfway up the stairs, holding the fragile old Greek Bible reverently in both hands, when he realized that wherever Amaranth had gotten the name Mehiel,it wasn’t from Kit’s lips at all.
Act IV, scene iii
If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for
thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
thou shalt not escape calumny.
–William Shakespeare, Hamlet,Act III, scene i
In January of 1599, Edmund Spenser was buried under the towering pale vaults of Westminster Abbey alongside England’s greatest poets – save Marley,Will thought uncharitably, blowing on his reddened fingers. As if stung by the whispers of his criminal neglect of Spenser in the hour of his need, the Earl of Essex paid for an elaborate funeral, which the Queen herself attended. And eight of the poet’s most renowned fellows carried the body down the memorial‑cluttered aisle and laid it into a cold hole in the stones beside the grave of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Elizabeth slumped heavily in a cushioned chair as if she could not stand through the burial, and her courtiers clustered about her. She turned as the prayers ended and the mourners moved forward, a still‑regal gesture, and caught the eye of Shakespeare upon her. And Will, standing a little apart from Chapman, Jonson, Fletcher, and the rest of the small band of poets and playmakers hurling flowers and pens into Spenser’s open grave– and how our number is lessened from what it was ten years ago … and why did I never stop to wonder at that before?–saw her lift one elegiac hand and beckon him.
He came forward, stepping past the crowded graveside, and shakily genuflected before the Queen. Long‑faced Essex stood behind her, all in white with his wooly beard oiled into ringlets, and the ascetic Sir Robert Cecil stood at her right hand. The Queen acknowledged Will and gestured him to rise; Sir Robert’s eyes asked a question over her shoulder, and Will met them, inclining his chin in a nod. We’ll speak later, my lord.
Before his sojourn in Faerie, and then Hell, Will and Thomas Walsingham had arranged to plant counterfeit coins in the home of Richard Baines, Promethean and mortal enemy of Will’s faction. Will wondered what Tom had told Sir Robert about their ill‑fated attempt at reverse burglary. Add Tom to the list of people I must make time to speak with, and sooner than tomorrow.“Highness,” Will said, and inclined his head again.
“Master Shakespeare.” Elizabeth, swaddled in furs against the cold, leaned back in her chair rather than sitting stiffly upright under the weight of her massive tire. Her cheeks were hollow under the fine high line of her bones, and her wrists seemed fragile as twigs and wire below the heavy jeweled points of her sleeves. She tilted her head to Sir Robert and then to Essex; both men moved back, withdrawing without seeming to. “We missed your presence in our revels this winter.”
“I missed as well the privilege of performing for Your Highness,” he said. “I was – ”
A small pursing of her painted lips might have been a smile. “In attendance upon our sister Queen. Aye, and we know it. We trust we may rely upon your presence in our court for Lady’s Day – ”
“The New Year? Madam, I would be honored beyond words.”
“Wilt have a new play for us, then?” Her eyes flickered past Will’s shoulder, and her mouth twisted to one side. It could have been distaste or amusement for whatever she saw; her eyes would not give him enough to say and he could not in politeness turn to see what she had deigned to acknowledge.
“It will be as Your Highness wishes.” He looked into her sharp, averted eyes, and pushed back a memory of Morgan. Nipping kisses and temerity, and he was shocked to suddenly see Elizabeth – Gloriana– as a woman, a lover, and haunted by love. Has she ever been kissed like that?And then another thought, of Edward de Vere and his trust in his immunity.
She probably beheaded de Vere’s father,Will realized, half his mind on history. Had she ever loved where she has not had to kill?“A comedy or a tragedy? Or a history, my Queen?”
Her eyes came to his face again, and she opened her fan with a rustle of lace, but did not stir the air with it. “We are weary of history, poet. Give us a comedy.”
As you like it,he thought, and inclined his head with its treacherous tendency to nod, and folded his shaking hands. “Your Highness, I would beg a favor of you –”
His voice trailed off at her expression. She chuckled, and it sounded as if it hurt her. “A favor, Master Shakespeare?”
“Aye – ” He swallowed, bowed again. “I have it in my heart to make a poetical translation, a new edition of the Bible, with great and glorious words to uphold the great and glorious Church of England– ”
“And there is something amiss with the Bible as we use it?” She turned her head and caught Sir Robert’s eye; he limped closer. Will caught the sparkle of her humor in the gesture, and decided to risk a joke. “It could be better poetry.”
He caught his breath when she looked back at him, gray eyes hard over the narrow, imperious arch of her nose. And then the corners of those eyes crinkled under her white‑lead mask, and she looked up at Sir Robert. “Robin, my Elf, how are we predisposed to new translations of the Bible?”
Sir Robert rose from his bow to regard the Queen, and then glanced at Will. “Surely we have all we need, Your Highness – ” “Aye,” she said. “‘Tis as we believed. We’d rather have plays of thee, Master Shakes
peare.”
Will bowed very low, aware of Sir Robert’s eyes measuring him. “You forbid it, Your Majesty?”
“We do,” she agreed, her voice low and sweet. She extended her hand to Sir Robert, who helped her from her chair. Will did not miss how white her knuckles seemed on the arm as she pushed herself to her feet. “We trust we will have the pleasure of thy company for Lady Day, then, and that of thy Company.” She smiled, pleased at her pun.
“An it please Your Majesty–” He held his genuflection until the Queen moved away, her ermine trailing her like the wings of some vast white bird, Sir Robert in his austere black attending like a gaunt‑cheeked raven and Essex following a few steps behind.
Well, that could have gone better.Will stood, trembling more than he liked, and turned over his shoulder to see if he could make out what had caught his Queen’s attention. The poets had withdrawn from the graveside, and most of them dispersed, although Will saw Ben’s tall shape bent down to spindly crook‑toothed little Tom Nashe further down the eastern aisle. And then a flicker of movement by the graveside drew his gaze, and Will focused his attention more plainly on the shadows between the statues there.
A whirl of color, patches like autumn leaves tossed in a wind, and when Will squinted just right, knowing what he was looking for, he could make out a slender man huddled under a black velvet hood, his shoulders aswirl with a cloak that caught the light through the leaded windows in all colors and none. When Will looked at him directly, he seemed to fade into transparency and shadows.
“Kit,” he said softly, coming up behind the sorcerer. “I should have known you’d come.”
The black hood lifted and tilted to encompass Will, and he caught the glitter of Kit’s dark eyes. “Pity about this,” he said, and with ritual solemnity he held out his right hand and let something fall into Spenser’s grave. It caught the light, shining, and spun like a thistle seed as it fell; a white, white feather, the tip stained with ink and cut as a quill.
A feather from the Devil’s wing.
“I know what that is,” Will said softly. “Edmund might not appreciate the symbolism, though.”
Kit shrugged, stepping away from the grave. “I’ve all the gifts I need of that one, I think. He’s got no claim on my poetry, and I shall offer him none.”
“Wise Kit,” Will said, falling into step beside him. “Didst come to London only for the funeral?”
“Nay…” A sigh. “To see thee, and ask of thee a question. And ask one of a priest as well.”
“A priest?” Will swallowed worry.
“Oh, ‘tis nothing. A name I heard, the name of an angel. I wondered who in God’s creation he might be. No, I wanted to speak to thee of thy son Hamnet – ”
“Ah, Kit.” Unexpected. Will glanced over his shoulder at Spenser’s grave, and swallowed. Sharp tears suddenly stung his eyes. “That pain is – ”
“Aye.” Kit clapped Will on the shoulder, and Will looked up, surprised by the contact, and then sighed as Kit abruptly dropped his hand, his fingers writhing as if he’d touched something foul. Since the Devil, human contact hurt him.
He’s trying.Will forced his tongue to stillness until he could say, “Lucifer tried to cast blame on the Faeries.”
“Which Faeries?”
Will stopped walking and turned to meet Kit’s gentle, measuring gaze. “Those that love not the Mebd, he said. Nor Gloriana. Didst think to root them out for me, Kit?”
“I am tasked to root them out for the Prince,” Kit answered, fussing with his well‑cleaned fingernails. “We have sought them in Faerie a half decade now, and I could hope they revealed themselves somehow here. Were less cautious, or – ”
Will shrugged, and saw Kit watching the trembling of his hands, the nodding of his head out of the corner of his eye. “All I know – ” Will swallowed and tried again. “All I know, ‘twas Lucifer told me the oaks murdered my boy. Faerie oaks.”
Kit looked up, startled, something yellow as topaz gleaming in the smoky quartz of his right eye. He quoted a rhyme Will would as soon not hear again. “Oak, he hate– Damme, Will. What thou toldst me now, hast told any other? Annie? Amaranth? Anyone?”
The quick answer was easy, but Kit’s intensity caused him to pause and think through the past months. “No,” Will said, after several seconds dripped by. “Not a one, but for thee.”
Kit reached up as if to run a hand through his curls and laughed when he touched the black velvet of his hood instead. “Amaranth told me to talk to the trees. She knows more than she ever speaks, that one.”
“Aye,” Will said, worry blossoming dark in his heart. “And I’ll lose no other piece of my soul to a witch‑hearted tree – ”
“Peace, Will.” He saw the twitch of Kit’s hand toward his arm, saw it fall back among the folds of Kit’s bright, shifting cloak. “I’ll come to no harm. Must do this thing in any case: wilt trust thy vengeance to thine Elf‑knight, love?”
It hurt, the fear. But Will saw the promise on Kit’s face, and nodded nonetheless, and remembered something that Kit should know, that might link one group of enemies to another. “Robert Poley. Kit, Poley was in Stratford when Hamnet died. I thought he’d come to threaten me – ”
“Will? What are you doing, standing muttering in corners to yourself– ” Ben Jonson’s big hand clutched Will’s shoulder, turned him half around. Will put up a hand to cover Ben’s and saw his pupils widen. “I beg your pardon, sir,” Ben said to Kit, pulling the hand back to rub his eyes. “I did not see you there in the shadows.”
“By all means,” Kit said, his voice dangerously soft as he drew his cloak about him.
Ben glanced at Will and at the door. Will shook his head. “The Queen said no.”
“Damn,” Kit said, in unison with Ben. “How could she … ?”
“Who is this fellow, Will?” Ben’s hand on Will’s shoulder again, possessive, and Kit’s eyes almost glowed in the shadows of his hood. Who is this fellow to know so much of our affairs?
Oh, this it not how I would have chosen to handle this.“Kit Marley,” Will said. “Meet Ben Jonson. Ben, this is Christofer “ And God ha’ mercy on my soul.
“Please. Call me Merlin,” Kit said, his face very still, and Will knew at once that he had made a mistake. A very bad mistake indeed. Both in introducing Kit first to Ben, and more, in letting Ben lay that companionable hand on his shoulder in Kit’s view.
“Marlowe?” Ben blinked. “The poet.”
“The dead one,” Kit said irritably. “Aye.” And moved along before Ben could react. “And your fellow conspirator, though I see Will has informed you not. So. No dispensation for our Bible. Damme. Again.”
“That’s fine,” Ben answered, after a moment of slow consideration in which he apparently decided to deal with supernatural manifestations some other day. “We’ll write it anyway.”
“Against the Queen’s word?” Will shook his head.
Ben dismissed it with a gesture, and spoke without much lowering his voice. “She won’t be Queen forever, Will.”
Act IV, scene iv
Marriage is but a ceremonial toy;
If thou lovest me, think no more on it.
– Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act II, scene i
Such a small grave, neatly tended, evergreen branches laid atop the snow and the marker swept carefully clean. Two or three sets of footsteps; Kit couldn’t be sure. He crouched in the snow beside it and tugged his glove off, touched the frozen needles of a pine branch, the soft bow of a red velvet ribbon not yet faded by the wet and the sun. “Merry Christmas, little man.”
He sat back on his heels, the leathern bag over his shoulder almost overbalancing him, and glanced around the churchyard. The horizon already glowed orange with winter’s early sunset. Unobserved, he decided, and quickly freed the bit of ribbon from the greenery. He folded it inside the palm of his glove; the edges of the wet cloth itched and made a splotch on gray kidskin.
I’m sorry, lad. If anything, ‘twas my f
ault, what befell thee, and not thy sire’s. And a measure of Will’s kindness that for all he could have blamed me for every ill that’s touched his life since Sir Francis dragged him into this unholy mess, he never held me responsible for a bit of it.
Well, I did nearly put his eye out with a hot poker trying to reason with him– Kit shook his head as he stood, shaking his cloak to snap the snow from the hem. “Bloody hell.” So it’s Robert Poley and the Fae, is’t? Well. One more blood debt for Robert Poley. One more shouldn’t bother him a little.
Kit’s hand clenched around the bit of ribbon. Pity I can only cut his heart out once.
It wasn’t much work to find the New Place, as Will’s grand house was called. “The playmaker’s done well for himself,” Kit said, pausing on the roadway and looking up at the five peaked gables, the smoke drifting lazily from several of the chimneys. He paused, scuffing his feet on the frozen earth. Come, Kit. Put a bold face on it–
He squared his shoulders and stepped up to the door, tapping squarely. It opened a moment later, so promptly that someone must have seen him standing on the road. He hoped he’d looked like a man considering if he had the right house, only.
The dark‑haired girl within might have seen fourteen winters, or fifteen. Kit bowed as low as he would to any lady of the Mebd’s shining court, and swept his hat off too, making a flourish with his patchworked cloak. “You must be Mistress Judith,” he said. “And as lovely as your father described–”
“He said no such thing !” she said, and stepped forward to block the door. “And who are you, you fabulous tatterdemalion, to pretend to such a gallant tongue?”
Kit straightened and let his cloak drop in natural folds. The girl’s eyes sparkled: she knew her advantage, and Kit rather thought the tart‑tongued wench would have him twisted around her finger in a moment. “I am expected, I hope,” he said. “My friend Master Shakespeare said he would send word ahead of my visit, and that I might be assured of my welcome here. I see he underreported the sweetness of his daughters’ speech – ”
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