Hell and Earth pa-4

by Elizabeth Bear

  He wished he’d seen Salisbury take that short, ragged step back under circumstances where he could appreciate the victory. “Where are Baines and Poley?”

  Will gathered his thoughts, but Kit beat him to the answer. “Poley is dead,” he said. Will admired the lack of apparent relish in his voice, and then blinked, startled, when he saw the golden earring wink in the shadows under Kit’s tangled hair. I’LL be damned–“Baines has perhaps gone to join Catesby and Fawkes and their friends. I can’t say–”

  “Fawkes is in custody,” Salisbury said, smoothing the front of his robes. The silence that followed was all but thick enough for Will to lean into. The harness of the fey horses creaked with their breathing; the eyes of the Faerie riders rested on himself, on Kit, on Murchaud. “Catesby and his bravos will follow before dusk, I warrant. We know his movements well, and their plot is ended, the gunpowder seized, the kingdom quite safe.”

  “Quite safe from explosions,” Tom Walsingham supplied, with a sideways glance at Will. Will nodded, sneaking his hand into his pocket to rub the iron nail in its silken pouch. “Safe from sorcery?”

  “Sorcery–”

  “Scoffs a man with the Queen of Faerie at his back and a magician close enough to spit in his eye?” Kit said softly. He glanced at Will.

  Will picked up the cue as smoothly as Burbage might have, and continued. “The astrologer Dee would tell you the same. ‘Tis a night for the fall of kingdoms, Robert.”

  Will could see Salisbury’s shock at his use of his Christian name, the ripple that spread through the guardsmen at his back. He bit his lips to keep from laughing at the casual way Kit pushed forward, all but disregarding Salisbury, moving toward the Fae. Will kept to Kit’s elbow, grateful when Murchaud came along on the other side, and Tom and Ben stayed with them as if drilled.

  Kit limped heavily now, and Will kept a hand under his elbow to support him, limping himself. Murchaud shot them a sideways glance, and seemed as if he might move closer. And then bit his lip, nodded, and looked away. Will was surprised to find himself grateful for the Elf‑knight’s looming presence.

  It was the Puck who came to greet them, his lop ears lolling like his pony’s, with the clop of unshod hooves on stone. Will took a breath in relief when Kit didn’t shrug off his steadying hand, instead seeming to lean harder. “I see you are forgiven, Master Goodfellow,” he said.

  Aye,” Puck answered, his ears laid flat down the nape of his neck. “Art thou?”

  Will squeezed Kit’s arm, sensing some unspoken context. He glanced up at Kit, who frowned. “Thou art the one who can answer that, Master Goodfellow.”

  The Puck glanced from Kit to Will to Salisbury, sideways at Murchaud, and then over his shoulder at the silent, solemn Queens. “Yes,” he said softly. “I suppose I am. Your steed is ready, Sir Poet.”

  “As long as it’s not white,” Kit answered, and followed where Puck led, toward the rear of the Fae guard. Salisbury stamped off in the opposite direction and stood, conferring with one of the yeomen.

  Will hung back a little, with a glance to Murchaud. “Where are we going?

  “Damned if I know,” the Elf‑knight answered. “I suspect it will involve hunting Richard Baines to ground, but nevertheless we should ask the Mebd.” With a single glance to see that Tom and Ben were following, he went to pay court on his Queen, taking Will’s elbow as Will had been holding Kit’s. Salisbury, still off to one side, didn’t manage to intercept them and take precedence; Ben and Tom moved to block his attempt. There’ll be Hell to pay over that.

  The raven on Will’s shoulder twisted its head to look back at the soldiers, ruffling its damaged wing as if the cold air pained it. “There’ll be Hell to pay no matter what,” Murchaud commented quietly, and smiled when Will raised an eyebrow at him. “You were thinking out loud, Master Poet.”

  “Ah – ” Will raised his eyes to the impassive, alabaster masks of two women who had never looked so much like sisters as they did at this moment, for all the Mebd rode sidesaddle, swathed in layers of color‑shifting silk, and Morgan wore those damned riding breeches that had once so discomfited Will.

  “Master Shakespeare,” Morgan said musically, patting a stray strand of hair back into her pearl‑braided chignon. “It appears thou hast a thing which doth belong to me.” She raised a hand imperiously, fingers belled loosely into a fist, and her eyes were not on Will’s but on the raven’s black ones.

  Will told himself that the raven could not smirk.“He doesn’t leave the Tower,” Will said. “His life is England’s, now.” The poet rubbed his beard. Ice crystals were forming between the spiral hairs; they dusted his breast when he lowered his hand.

  Morgan left hers upraised, her head tilted as if she, herself, were some strange new sort of raptor. The Mebd, still silent, turned only her head to regard her sister, her pale lips twitching toward a smile. The long, woven braids of her hair slid like a fisherman’s weighted net around her shoulders.

  Morgan did not return her sister’s glance. “What wouldst thou see done with him?”

  “I’d see him ensconced with Sir Walter, I think. The brave captain can see to his safety, can any man–and is conveniently unable to leave the Tower.”

  “I shall reclaim the bird sooner or later, sweet William.”

  “Aye,” Will said. “But not until ravens flock these grounds again. Do we have an agreement, my lady?”

  She bit her lip, ignoring the Mebd’s arch amusement. “He’s hidden from me for a thousand years, ” Morgan le Fey said at last, acquiescing. Her hand slid gracefully down to rest on her thigh, cupped inward, palm open. “A few more days mean nothing.”

  Will looked at the raven. The raven looked at Will. Their silent regard was interrupted by the measured clop of hooves.

  Kit’s horse wasn’t white at all, Will saw with relief, but a sorrel gelding so red he gleamed like wet blood even by the cold fey light that surrounded them. His saddle and bridle were leather, even redder, a saber sheathed on the harness by Kit’s left hand. A white blaze graced the animal’s nose, dripping so low he seemed to drink it, and Kit’s free hand rose again and again to stroke the coarse blond mane back from the crest.

  The fond gentleness of Kit’s touch contrasted harshly with the expression he turned on Morgan. Murchaud took a half step forward. Will shot a hand sideways and gripped his sleeve, staggering with the force it took to stop the Prince’s movement.

  “Will–” Tom said behind him, and Will shook his head just enough to make his hair brush against his collar.

  “‘Tis his to play out, Tom,” Will said under his breath. Ben grunted on Murchaud’s far side, but stayed steady as if planted. “Stand fast, and be ready for whatever might befall.”

  “My kingdom for a good iron blade, ” Tom answered. Will grinned at the sideways flattery despite the tension in the air.

  “Don’t say that where the Fae can hear you,” Will answered. “They’ve been known to take men up on bargains like that.” He didn’t take his eyes off Kit and Morgan, listening to the long silence stretch between them, wondering when it would break. He smiled to himself, and thought, and now is the time to brace Salisbury, while he’s still considering blackmail and England.

  Silently, controlling his limp as best he could, Will disengaged himself from Murchaud and went toward the thunder‑browed Secretary of State.

  Fie on that love that hatcheth death and hate!

  –Christopher Marlowe, Edward II,Act IV, scene v

  Morgan met Kit’s gaze calmly, her eyes dark and mysterious as emeralds in the weird, cold light. Over her shoulder, the Queen of Faerie looked on. Beyond her, not even turning his head to the scene, Cairbre the Bard sat his saddle like a statue, a ruby gleaming in the tip of his pointed ear where it parted the black strands of his hair.

  The sorrel’s hooves were steady on the rimed cobblestones; nearby, Will and Tom and Murchaud and that damned self‑satisfied Ben Jonson stood side by each, bloody and ragged and ready for more. Kit’s
breast filled up with a warrior’s pity and indignation, that men so tired should be made to fight endlessly on–

  Wrath held him silent long enough for the corner of Morgan’s mouth to twitch with discomfort. Kit cleared his throat. “You lied to me.”

  “Sir Christofer?”

  Such patent innocence, her hand raised to her throat. Kit turned his head and spat, the sorrel dancing a sidled step. A fragment of motion caught his eye: the flip of Puck’s ear, where Puck sat his pony. “Such pretty nonsense you all told me–and chief among the liars, you, Morgan. Poets and rades and battles of song and powers and portents–”

  “Dost see a rade before thee?” Morgan’s gesture swept the gathered Fae, touched Murchaud and his mortal companions, swept up and dismissed Salisbury and his men.

  Kit raised an eyebrow when he spotted Will, moving between the groups. The laugh he could not contain sliced like a fish bone at his throat. “Thou hadst no care for me, my Queen–”

  “Not so‑”

  “–I was only the vessel. The container. The prison for the being thou didst truly wish to touch, to win–”

  “–not so,” she said again, even softer. The tone in her voice was too much.

  He flinched, and stopped, the gelding shaking his mane as Kit’s grip tightened on the bloodred reins. His nervousness affected the horse; he could see white traces of foam against the crimson neck, where the reins rubbed the animal’s cold sweat into lather.

  “We’re here for thee,” Morgan said, lifting her head on her long white neck. “We would not have permitted thee to be sacrificed–”

  “No,” Kit continued, finding his voice again. He shivered no longer, Mehiel’s power warming his shoulders like a feathered cloak. “You did not come to fight a war, but to twist another sorcerer’s magic to your uses. Baines would not have completed his ritual, had thou thy choice of events. But thou wouldst have waited until he had the opportunity to fill me up with his power and his plans, as if I were no more than a talisman, a crystal to be cut into a lens–”

  “We could have used the power, ” Cairbre said quietly.

  “I imagine you could,” Kit answered.

  “It does not mean that we have no fondness for you–”

  “No, teacher.” Kit’s outrage and fury were failing him. The warm horse breathed between his legs, the ears swiveled one forward, one back, switching with every nervous ripple of the gelding’s tail. “No, I know the Fae and their fondnesses. Fondness would not stop you from spilling my blood.” He gave his attention back to Morgan. “What did they offer thee for thine assistance, my Queen?”

  He didn’t need her answer. He saw her eyes flick to the raven, and to Will. Murchaud stepped forward, away from Ben and Tom. “Mother,” he said. “You should have trusted me.”

  A ripple of power, the sound of wings inside his mind. Kit forced his hand open, forced himself to stroke the sorrel’s rough mane rather than knotting his fingers in it as he would have liked to as Murchaud walked calmly to his mother’s stirrup and drew her down by her sleeve to whisper in her ear. The gelding turned his head slightly, enough to roll his eye at Kit. Could you move this along, please? ‘Tis tiresome, Sir Poet, standing here in the cold on rough cobbles.

  Kit bit his cheek on tired laughter, all his irritation draining away. Perhaps I’ve just been used too much to care any more,he thought. And also, I’m keeping this horse.

  “Trusted thee?” Kit asked the Prince, when Morgan did not comment. He wondered at the speaking look Murchaud gave him, and hesitated. Twisted the reins around his fingers until they cut his skin. Nausea twisted likewise in his belly; he caught himself looking after Will, bent in whispered argument with Salisbury, and away from Morgan and Murchaud.

  ‘Tis time to pick a side.He touched the trusted sorrel’s mane again. “I wish I knew your name.”

  “Gin,” Puck said, having come up silently on his pony.

  “Gin?” The sorrel’s ears flicked back. “For Ginger?”

  “‘Cause he’s a rum one,” Puck answered. His laugh smelled of juniper and loam, and Kit’s confused expression showed; it made the little elf laugh the harder. “What will you do, Sir Poet?”

  You, not thou. It stung, and Kit could not deny he deserved it. “What do you think the Prometheans’ ritual, their capture of Mehiel, will mean over time, Master Goodfellow?”

  Puck shifted on his shaggy pony’s saddle. The barrel‑bodied animal shook itself, its wiry upright mane rippling with the motion. “If the angels are clever, it means an end to miracles.”

  “And an end to martyrs?”

  The little Fae’s wide mouth twitched. “There will always be martyrs. You did not answer me.”

  “No,” Kit said. “I did not. First we deal with Baines.”

  “And then?”

  “This will never end,” Kit answered, “as long as I live, and Mehiel lives in me.’

  “Aye. Shall I ask you a third time, Sir Poet?”

  Kit lifted his reins. Murchaud stepped back from Morgan’s saddle and moved away. He caught Kit’s eye under the arch of her horse’s neck and mouthed something–two words. Trust me.

  Ah, my Prince. If only.Kit’s gaze slid off Murchaud’s, and found the back of Will’s head as Will laid his hand quite boldly on Salisbury’s sleeve, demanding the Secretary of State’s attention. Kit sighed. “Will is for England,” he said with a tired shrug. “And I am for Will.”

  The devil knew not what he did when he made man politic; he crossed himself by ‘t: and I cannot think but in the end the villainies of man will set him clear. How fairly this lord strives to appear foul! takes virtuous copies to be wicked, like those that under hot ardent zeal would set whole realms on fire.

  –William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens,Act III, scene iii

  Salisbury looked up, still scowling, as Will closed the distance between them until he was close enough to the Earl that Salisbury visibly resisted stepping back. Will gathered himself, drawing on a player’s dignity as he framed himself against the Tower wall and the Faerie lights behind. He waited a moment, until he was certain of Salisbury’s full attention, and deepened his voice when he spoke. “I think I know what you want, Mr. Secretary. And I think I can give it to you.”

  Cecil paused, his head angling sideways on his short, wry neck. “What I want, Master Shakespeare?”

  An attempt at coolness, and Will saw through it. For all his political savoir‑faire, Salisbury was no player. “You wish English security,” Will offered, smiling and holding tight to the sleeve of Salisbury’s warm woolen robe when the Secretary might have pulled away. Will’s hand trembled only a little. He leaned forward to make the nodding of his chin seem chosen rather than uncontrolled. His breath steamed in the air between them; he was grateful for the drama of the effect. “You wish the power of the Romish and Puritan factions lessened, the Prometheans brought to heel” – a gentle cough – “and your own, shall we call it, future assured.”

  “Very astute, Master Shakespeare,” Salisbury said, lowering his tone. “You do not mention the King.”

  “No. My lord, I do not. But England –I mention her. Not the King. Not the Church. But the land, and the men.”

  “All this love for a spit of rocky land cast adrift from the Continent?” It was mockery, but not dismissal. Mockery that hid something else, something slick and sapient, and Will went after it carefully as tickling fish.

  “All this love for Englishmen,” Will answered.

  “You expect me to believe that?” Low intense, the man’s teeth flashing.

  Will smiled and stepped back, only half a pace. Eight inches, no more, and he knew Salisbury heard his foot scuff lightly over the cobbles. “And nothing for myself?” Will brushed a hand across the expensive, stained brocade of his doublet, the King’s livery badge on his breast. “Haven’t I more than any common man should dream? Both from James and from Bess?”

  “Yes,” Salisbury answered.

  Will glanced over his shoulder, and
saw Kit’s eyes drop a second too late to hide the intensity of his regard. Relief and pity warred in him, and a cold white flame he knew for bitter, possessive love. Frustrated love.

  Is love nonetheless.The raven stirred on his shoulder. Salisbury’s eyes were drawn.

  “We can be allies,” he offered, striving to keep his tone generous. “Or we can be enemies. You are who you are, my lord, but Earls before you have found me a very bad enemy to have.”

  It was Salisbury’s turn to glance over Will’s shoulder, and Will wondered what he saw. “Are you going to threaten me again, Master Poet?”

  “Not unless you force me, Mr. Secretary.” Will looked down at his hands, let them fall, folded them in front of his belt. “Speak with our King. Talk to him about our Bible–”

  Salisbury scoffed. “What purpose will that serve?”

  Will raised his eyes again, held Salisbury’s with his own practiced, disquieting gaze. “The power of the Romish and Puritan factions lessened, the Prometheans brought to heel”–he recited, the same tones as before–“and your own, shall we call it, future assured.” A tilt of his head. “Believe in me.”

  Salisbury blinked. “We’ll discuss it when the conspirators are captured–”

  “If we live so long.”

  “Little danger of any other outcome,” Salisbury replied. He paused, considering. “The King would wish to involve Bishop Andrewes.”

  Who had been Will’s own parish cleric, after a fashion: the Bishop of Southwark, at Saint Saviour’s. Will sighed, but nodded.

  He’d worked by committee before.

  Salisbury raised his head a moment before the clop of hooves alerted Will that they had company.

  The Mebd’s soft voice followed, furred like catkins, complex as honey. “Master Shakespeare,” she murmured as Will turned and dropped her a deep and heartfelt bow and another for the red‑haired Queen beside her. A poet flanked them on either side–one dark, one fair and blood‑smeared–and a Fool rode a pony between. “My Lord of Salisbury. Dawn is coming.”