Hell and Earth pa-4

by Elizabeth Bear

  Cecil watched Will silently, running his hands over the back of the chair, his brow furrowed as if he added sums in his head. “Marlowe would have argued the succession for an hour.”

  “Marlowe cared about such things,” Will answered, feeling disloyal. Well. He does.

  “And what do you care for, Master Shakespeare?”

  Marley,Will almost said, and stopped himself just in time. It wouldn’t have been worth Cecil’s bewildered look. “The realm,” he said, which at least was true. Cecil stayed silent, and Will couldn’t resist. “The coins are hidden in the straw tick of a bed on the second floor. You’ll want to have the house searched before spring.”

  “Before the housemaid turns them out with the straw, to dry in the sun of the garden?” It drew a smile, at least. “Very well, Master Shakespeare. One thing more – ”

  “Aye?”

  Sir Robert pushed the chair he had not sat in back against the table. “Your play for Her Majesty?”

  “Aye.”

  “Make it a potent one. An you value the realm of which you speak.”

  Will nodded, running his thumb across the raised profile of Queen Elizabeth on the coin in his hand. And decided not to tell Robert Cecil just yet that he wasn’t entirely certain that the magic the Queen’s poets put into their words was still effective, given the fate of Edmund Spenser, and the way Elizabeth herself seemed to crumble before his very eyes.

  Will wasn’t surprised to find Kit waiting in his rooms when he returned to Silver Street, shaking the cold rain and the night out of his hair. Half a dozen candles gleamed on table and mantel, and Will didn’t like the dark circles under Kit’s eyes, like the smear of an ink‑marked thumb, or the snarls drying in Kit’s uncombed hair. Or the hollow expression he turned on Will when Will opened the door and came in, already unlacing his jerkin, his cloak bunched over his arm.

  Will paused just inside, making sure the door latched behind him. “Ill news.”

  “Aye.” Kit stood and stretched, crossing to the fire he’d built up either to warm himself or in anticipation of Will’s return. He was dressed in a plain linen shirt and black wool breeches; another, waterlogged, shirt and a jerkin were laid across the back of a chair not far from the fire. “Where hast thou been?” “Sir Robert,” Will answered. He stepped out of soggy boots and found a flannel for his hair. “The entrapment of Baines and Poley proceeds apace. We hope. Art planning to impart thy news?”

  “Bulldog.” Kit rose and came to Will, close enough that he could feel the warmth and moisture rising through Kit’s shirt, steaming from curls sprung tight in the humidity. Kit reached out and took the flannel from Will’s hands to dry his hair. Will ducked to permit the intimacy, smiling. “Dost think thine entanglement of Baines will succeed? ”

  “He’s close to Essex,” Will answered. He reached to touch Kit’s arm, and Kit stepped away with a smile that was half apology. “And he and Poley both useful to the Queen – ”

  “Aye, I think it unlikely too. Still, perhaps we can give him a bad moment. I went to Stratford, Will.” “And?”

  “Thou toldst me not that Annie knew something of us.” “Ah.” Will nodded, half to himself, and crossed the room, intending to pour wine for both of them. “I should have known she’d read through the riddle of thy presence. What didst thou tell her?”

  A low chuckle, honeyed with that pleased smugness that always put Will in mind of a satisfied tomcat. “That, dear William, is her business and mine. An thou wishest to know such things, shouldst arrange to be present when they are discussed. Thou’rt still wet through, love: take off thy shirt and dress thyself dry. I brought thee that Bible, but Ben or I shall have to read it thee.” “Greek?”

  “Aye.”

  Will turned in time to catch the clean woolen shirt Kit tossed. He tugged soft, scratchy cloth past his face while Kit cleared his throat once or twice, fussing with the wine cups; by the time Will had the shirt comfortably settled, Kit pressed a goblet into his hands. Kit’s hesitance–the way he turned his eyes aside when Will tried to catch his gaze – burrowed into Will’s composure as if with hook‑tipped nails. “Kit.” Will disciplined himself, leaning back against painted plaster, long fingers curved around the bowl of his cup. “Is thy news so dire?”

  “Dire enough. I interviewed the oak wood – ”

  “Interviewed the oak wood.” Will said it more to taste the sound of the words than because it needed saying. “What didst thou discern?”

  Kit shrugged, staring at Will as if he expected Will to look down. The fireglow and the candlelight snagged in his right eye and flickered golden, the left side of his face cast into shadow. “I’ve questions to ask in Faerie before I come to thee with final answers.”

  “Dammit, Kit – ”

  “Nay.” A clipped, flat gesture with Kit’s right hand. Will swallowed his protest with a hasty mouthful of wine, and waited for Kit’s explanation. “I won’t lead thee to a hasty conclusion on a matter so dear. Don’t ask it of me.”

  There was more darkness in Kit’s eyes than the angle of the light, Will decided. “What thou’rt doing– It takes a toll of thee, this witchery. Does it not? ”

  Kit turned down, away. He brushed a bit of lint off the shoulder of his shirt. “It leaves me stronger than before,” Kit answered. “Full of strange echoes of power, and knowing things no mortal man should know. I know not who I am, Will.”

  That hollowness–the only word Will could think of– echoed in Kit’s voice, and Will itched to go to him. “Thou’rt Christopher Marlowe,” he said. “Poet, playmaker, Queen’s Man, and the friend and lover of a lucky few who cannot hope to deserve thee –

  He didn’t understand why Kit flinched at his name, or the watery grin which he offered Will when Will’s voice trailed off. “Aye, thou dost deserve better,” Kit muttered, and set his cup aside and turned to open a shutter. “‘Tis raining still.”

  “‘Tis.” Will straightened away from the wall, turning his cup in his fingers to steady his hand, and scuffed a foot through the winter‑rank rushes on the floor. “We must put paid to Baines and Poley, Kit. Sir Robert didn’t say as much, but from him I have the impression that Gloriana is– unwell.”

  “When she passes – ” Kit chewed his lower lip. He glanced down at his hands, and latched the shutters again. “It will have repercussions in Faerie. We’ll deal with it when we must. Needs must move faster than we have, in any case – ”

  “Sir Robert won’t like it.”

  Kit grinned. “Sir Thomas will. And your side of beef, Jonson, or I miss my guess.”

  Will snorted. “Jonson is ever eager. Now that he knows you live, I may as well tell Burbage too. Wilt meet with us at Tom’s house, and we can start our Bible? If you have the book – ”

  “Aye, I have the book.” Kit’s fingers drummed on the window ledge.

  The pattern was erratic, a touch too quick, and ragged. It made Will’s heart feel as if it beat irregularly, in counterpoint. He kicked his heel against the wall, waiting for Kit to continue.

  “Did Sir Robert say the Queen was dying? Dying now?”

  “He insinuated she had not a year left in her.”

  “Damme,” Kit said. “We need more strength, Will. If things go the way I think they will in Faerie, I may very well provoke a war. What that means for England I am not sure, but Morgan and Murchaud and others all have told me that there will be battle when Elizabeth dies. And I suspect Elizabeth’s passing may not go easy on the Queen of Faerie, either: the two are story‑linked. We’re weak, our faction. Damned weak – ”

  Will exhaled. “There’s the witchcraft you got in Hell.”

  “Aye, and if I’m clever I may make Baines regret his alliances. I mean to go there from here, and try my hand at the evil work of an evil eye. But there’s Oxford and Essex and our old friend Southampton – ” He shook his head.

  “We can’t trust Sir Robert either, ” Will said, at last putting a name to the conviction the evening’s meeting had left
in him. He’s already searching for the place he’ll put his feet when the Queen is gone. He’s not his father’s vision – ”

  “Nor his father’s shortcomings, I hope,” Kit answered bitterly. “So it’s thee and me and Tom and Jonson and Dick Burbage against half the peerage and two of England’s greatest intelligencers.” His lips pursed as if it pained him to admit as much of Baines and Poley. “We need to take control back: we’ve lost the initiative utterly. Thy Lady Day play. Whatever Jonson’s working on. Has anyone talked to George?”

  “Can we trust George?”

  “Can we fail to?” Kit slumped, forehead to the shutters, taking his weight on locked elbows, his hair parting in ringlets at the nape of his neck. “He may already know more than we suspect. Tom was George’s patron before he was mine.”

  “I’ll tell Richard,” Will said. He turned his cup over on the window ledge by Kit’s hand, and fumbled in his pocket for the silver coin so he wouldn’t reach out to tidy Kit’s hair. “I’ll ask Tom about George – ”

  “Feel George out.” Kit pushed himself upright and turned to the chair by the fire, sliding his jerkin off the back and testing the dampness of the leather with curious fingertips.

  “I will.”

  “Who else have we?”

  Will stopped and closed his eyes. “Edmund.” He pressed his fingertips to his eyelids and bowed his head.

  “Edmund? Spenser? Will–”

  “No,” Will said. “Edmund my brother. He’s playing at the Curtain now, Kit.”

  “And thou wouldst risk him?”

  Will laughed, slicking both hands back over his ever‑rising brow, and met Kit’s gaze more squarely than he felt the need to. “He’d be furious with me if I kept him from participating in any justice meted to Hamnet’s murderers. He had more to do with my son’s raising than I did myself– ”

  He let the sentence hang, and Kit left it there long enough that Will filled the silence. “And thee?”

  Kit shrugged the jerkin on, and found a bit of rawhide in a pocket to twist his unruly curls into a tail. “I’m going to try to kill Richard Baines.”

  Act IV, scene vi

  Behold and venge this Traitor’s perjury!

  Thou, Christ, that art esteem’d omnipotent,

  If thou wilt prove thyself a perfect God,

  Worthy the worship of all faithful hearts,

  Be now reveng’d upon this Traitor’s soul,

  And make the power I have left behind

  (Too little to defend our guiltless lives)

  Sufficient to discomfit and confound

  The trustless force of those false Christians!–

  –Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great,Part II, Act II, scene ii

  The January rain drew cold fingers through Kit’s hair and down the back of his neck. The only lover’s touch you’re like to feel again.He shivered and tugged his cloak higher, settling the weight of his rapier at his hip as he made the turn from Muggle Street onto Silver. His fingers brushed the red velvet of Hamnet’s ribbon, tied to the hilt, and he laughed to himself at the irony. So Will raises Poley’s son– who might be Kit’s son, rather–and Edmund raises Will’s son.

  And what dost thou contribute to the equation?

  Blood. Blood and more blood.

  That is all.

  Kit left his hood down. The streets were deserted with the early winter curfew, leaving him without company except the odd stray dog and the odder feral pig, and the shadows he called would conceal his passage from most casual eyes. He pursed his lips and whistled an air, summoning a swarm of greeny‑gold glowing midges out from darkened alleys. They swirled like a minuscule waterspout over his open palm; he blew his breath and his music across it and they flocked like swallows and schooled like fish.

  There was one useful thing in the marks Baines had branded into his flesh. They were a palpable trace of the man, and Kit could use their resonance to find him. “Richardum Baines mei invenite,” he commanded. The motes rose and sparkled, darted and flitted, arrowed in a general easterly direction and then jigged back and forth like a dog leading its master to the gate, impatient for supper. As Kit followed the guiding will‑o’‑the‑wisp through London’s slick, dark streets, the night grew colder. Water froze in his hair.

  White flakes superceded the icy rain, turning the footing slushy and treacherous. Snow whispered on the reddish roofs as Kit’s guides led him to the theatre inns near Bishopsgate, each one closed for the night, narrow doors barred for curfew, and then through the twelve‑foot archway into the innyard of the Green Dragon.

  Some candlelight still glowed through shutters on the second and third floors. Kit leaned back, shading the snow from his eyes with a hand held flat, and contemplated the diamond‑patterned railings on the galleries. Despite his better intentions he found himself glancing about the innyard; he’d lodged here when he first came to London, and seen several of his own plays performed to audiences that crowded those very galleries and the pavement upon which he now stood.

  His witchlights twinkled along the railing by one shuttered window, a handful of emeralds set out in the sun. The second gallery, of course, and he wondered why it was that he never needed to scale a trellis in dry sunshine and gentle warmth.

  I wish I’d brought a pistol.Aye, ‘Marlowe,’ ” he muttered. “If a sword and black magic won’t suffice, perhaps thou shouldst ensure thou hast a firearm so thou canst blow thine own clumsy fingers off when the damned thing misfires. How am I going to get up that gallery with the front door closed and no doubt barred?”

  Add burglar to thine accomplishments.

  He huddled under shadows in the innyard, watching the soft green jewels of his will‑o’‑the‑wisps shifting like sleepy doves on the railing, glowing dimly through the downy fall of snow. The chill on his skin, the numbness of his hands and tongue, couldhave been the cold. Aye, and thou hast lied to thyself so many times before.

  Kit looked down at his hands, knotted in front of his belly. Courage, puss.” His own words, meant for irony, startled him; he’d captured Baines’ calming tone–the voice a man might use on a skittish animal – better than he’d expected. He drew a breath and kept on: intentionally now. “Come, kitten. It’ll soon be over. Be a little brave – ” He tasted blood, and couldn’t decide if it was real, or a ghost of memory. But his cheek stung; he’d bitten it hard enough to break the flesh. He turned and spat into the snow. Blood and more blood.

  He looked up, untangling his fingers from their knot and then tangling them again when they wanted to creep up and press his jerkin and his shirt against the scar in the center of his breast. Fist doubled in fist, Kit punched himself in the thigh and snarled, “Baines was right. Here standeth as God‑damned a white‑livered coward as needeth a keeper to wipe his arse. Now get thee up there, Marley, and do thou what thou camest for.” If thou’rt going to whore thyself for the power to do, it ill befits thee to stand shaking in terror when couldst bedoing.

  He shuffled forward, eyeing the lower gallery. White flakes dusted it, caught in the ripples on toothy icicles, but it wasn’t more than ten feet above the pavement, and Kit rather thought he could get his fingers over the lip. If he didn’t slip and dash his brains all over the pavement.

  Here standeth a fine gallant figure of a hero.

  Kit scrubbed his hands on his doublet one more time, made sure his sword was settled, and tucked his cloak tight. Then he took a breath and crouched, and leapt into the air.

  I should have thought to sand my hands.But he grabbed and held, right hand burning on the ice, something gouging the softer flesh between ring and middle fingers. He wedged his left hand through the trellising, fingers around a rail post and jammed by the narrow gap, and he hung there, kicking.

  And didn’t fall.

  He wasn’t sure he could have managed what he did next when he was a student or a poet, and soft. But he had relentless Murchaud and their fencing sessions to thank for the easy strength across his shoulders and i
n his forearms that let him drag his leaden body higher. He levered himself up to the gallery and twisted to get an elf‑booted foot over the lip, then pushed himself upright amid a rattle of dislodged ice. He froze against the timber, calling his shadows about him, and listened for any sign that the landlord or his custom might have heard.

  The whisper of snow softened everything. In the stable, a courier’s or a courtier’s steed snorted, stamped. Somewhere a church bell tolled, and that was all.

  Kit leaned his forehead against the timber and gasped, holding the beam as close as a lover. I should have begged Lucifer for wings, while I was begging.And then he found himself pressing his free fist against the hollow of his chest like a man in panic, a pain like a cramp flexing his ribs.

  Christ wept.

  Aye. And is weeping still.

  The witchlights gleamed under their icing of snow. A gentle glow: it put Kit in mind of sunlight through fine worked jade, or the new leaves of spring. Infinite riches.

  And not a man would give a penny for them.

  Lord, what fools these mortals be.

  A grin to himself and one for Will, and no look down at the knotty cobbles behind and below his boots. Infinite riches.Aye, and they showed him precisely where to place his reaching hands.

  The second gallery was harder, as it matched the overhang of the first. Kit hoisted himself, still clinging to his post, and balanced himself on the ice with trepidation. Still, his boots never slipped and the witchlights gave more guidance now that he pressed his hands into the snow between.

  He lifted himself over the railing on the second gallery; his guidelights vanished as if snuffed. Kit stood in the heady darkness, sweat freezing with the rain under his hasty ponytail, and drew ragged breaths of the dank night air. A crack of brightness gleamed under the shutters of the nearest window, and he smiled and pressed his ear against the wall.

  There were spells for listening, too, and for hearing more plainly. Easy enough: he mouthed one and cupped a hand.