Ink and Steel pa-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Widow Bull is Baron Burghley’s cousin? Your Highness! I did not know that.”

  “She is also a distant cousin of the Queen of Faerie’s court musician.” Elizabeth’s smile broadened. “Twas she saved your life, sweet poet.”

  Her delight was a schoolgirl’s, and Kit could almost smell stolen flowers when he met her eyes. “Thank you, Your Highness,” he murmured, and she laughed like a very young woman indeed.

  “I knew it should come. Now beg your boon. The hour grows late, and old women kept from their beds wax querulous.”

  She’d used and discarded him like a street-corner lightskirt, and still he permitted her to charm him. As if permission had anything to do with it.

  “Your Highness. If it suits you, would you share what you know of the Mebd, your sister Queen?”

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened: her only indication of surprise.

  “A fair and clever question, Sir Christofer,” she answered. “And one I cannot answer with the rectitude that it deserves but I will send you as well armed into Faerie as I may, and hope you will remember your old Queen with fondness.” Her smile grew pensive under white lead paint and carmine. Dizziness spun him.

  “I have been ever too fond with you greedy, extravagant boys. Our reign reinforces the Mebd’s, and so in subtle ways she supports it. The tricks you wreak with your plays have a greater place there than here, for her land is wove of the stuff of ballads and legendry. A strong Queen in England means a strong Queen of the Bless’d Isle, and she is old enough to know it. Old enough to remember Boudicca and Guenevere. But you have a problem, Sir Christofer.” She paced, pausing at last by the candelabra, and passed her hand through flames as if she caressed a lover sface. “Because it wasn’t the Queen of Faerie who knighted you and bedded you and took you into her service, was it? And when we’release you, it is not to her service you will go. And she is dangerous when thwarted, that one, and ambitious to a fault.”

  “Morgan,” he said, understanding, as another spasm wracked him. “Was the soup poisoned? Does she want her sister’s crown?”

  Elizabeth shrugged, and her eyes grew dark before she turned away. “Who can say what one Queen wants of another?”

  “Who can say, indeed. I will never …” He stopped, and then found his voice again. “Great Queen …”

  “Do not flatter me, Christofer. Tis boring.”

  “Your Highness. You release me from your service.”

  “We do.”

  He bowed around the hollowness that filled his throat, though pain grew in his belly like a flame. I must return to Morgan,he thought, realizing the source of the agony suddenly. “Service is what I have borne you, Your Highness, for I have not known you. And now that I bear you no service, I find I do know you. And my Queen, for what a playmaker’s word is worth, I have traded that colder thing for a warmer thing, and with your permission, I will say now that I bear you love.”

  “So many masks, Sir Christofer.” She raised one hand to her face. “We have that in common.” Her eyes narrowed as he broke, leaned forward, a cold sweat dewing his forehead.

  “Your Highness,” he apologized, and she waved him silent.

  “Gone too long from Faerie already, she sniffed. There’s a mirror in my chambers that will serve. Come, then. Lean on mine arm.”

  “Your Highness. It is beneath your dignity.” But a bubble of pain silenced him.

  Elizabeth jerked her chin, dismissing his protest with a gesture. “I am old and a Queen, and you shall do as you are bid. I will not have your life on my conscience after so much contrivance to preserve it!”

  “Your Highness,” Kit answered. And for the last time in a short mortal life, obeyed an order from his Queen. She handed him through the mirror, an old woman’s exquisite fingers steadying him. The glass surface clutched like bread dough, then snapped away before it could tear; he tumbled through, striking his knees and hands on stone. When he pushed himself up he thought the Queen’s long hands had come with him. But no, it was a rasping voice, jingle of bells in flicking ears, a strong small figure propping him up. “Sir Poet?”

  Puck. Kit struggled to a crouch, the agony in his gut receding. And didn’t understand why his next words were, “Where is Morgan?” And whence the twist of worry and lust that almost sent him back to his knees a moment after he’d toiled up off them?

  “Oh, about her tasks, I imagine. Or in her rooms. The Mebd set me to watch for you. She thought you might need assistance.”

  “I did,” Kit said, “but I found it. Morgan’s rooms—does Murchaud keep quarters here?”

  The Puck’s lips compressed as if Kit had said something unwittingly funny, but there was concern? sorrow? in the droop of the little man’s ears and the set of his eyes. “Aye,” he said. “I’ll show you Morgan’s rooms. And Prince Murchaud’s. And the ones that will be your own.”

  “Mine own?” It was a pressure. The beat of a wave. As if being gone from Morgan’s side had pooled behind a dam, and now all struck him suddenly. Gone? Kit, you bedded her not two days since.But gone was the word, and gone stayed with him.

  “Aye,” Puck said. “The Mebd’s given you an apartment.”

  “Would you like to Morgan,” Kit said, and it came out a whimper. God, what has she done to me, Christ, what has she done

  “As you wish it.” Puck reached up to take Kit by the elbow. Kit thought he heard pity in the little Fae’s voice, but it might have been only the jingle of his bells. “The gallery over the Great Hall is by way of these stairs.”

  Kit lurched up them half at a run, aware that Robin fell behind on purpose and watched him go, bells jingling. Kit found Morgan’s door as much by luck as memory, tried the latch, slipped within breathing like a racehorse.

  Morgan. She sat before the window, embroidering. Her golden hands moved over and under the frame, chasing a silver needle, dragging threads of colors Kit could barely comprehend, through linen white as doves. She glanced up, pushed her stool back from the frame, and stood.

  “Safe home,” she said, and he hurried across the floor to her, the iron nails in his boots ringing immunity. She met him halfway, sleeves rolled back from the linen of her kirtle, clad in a gown so antique Kit had only seen the style on statues and in tapestries. “Sir Kit.”

  He hadn’t words. Something screamed betrayal in his belly. Christ. Christ. He couldn’t name it. She brought her arms up, laced them about his neck when he froze, suddenly, aching. Craving.

  “My Queen.” She laughed, mocking, her black hair tossed over her shoulder, braided into arope to bind his soul. “Long and long since I heard those words,” she said. “Speak more.”

  But words abandoned him again. He fumbled at the knots on her gown, tore cloth. Never like this and this is not me but she was lovely, oh, skin gleaming in the light that streamed through the window, thighs like pillars revealing a flash of Heaven’s gate as she stepped neatly from discarded clothing.

  He had no words. For the first time in his life, he had no words. He couldn’t kiss her mouth. Couldn’t bear that intimacy. He dragged her into an embrace, teeth against her throat, half sensible that he first crushed her, scratched her against the embroidery and jeweled fixtures of his doublet and then slammed her to the wall, cold stone against his knuckles, her naked body twisting in his grip, her hair knotted in his fist. Christ. It hurt. He bloodied his hand on the rough stone dragging it from behind her, fumbled the points on his breeches, the warmth of her sex against his scraped flesh like a siren song. What am I doing? What

  No, he was a juggernaut. Automaton.She whimpered as he tore at her shoulder with his teeth, tasted the salt of her tears, his tears, remembered a mouthfull of more blood than this and the pain of torture, rape, confession. He strangled on a scream he couldn’t quite voice, unlaced an erection he thought might just burst … Christ, she’s pliant and end his suffering, pinned her to the wall as she squirmed against the velvet and silk and rough decoration of his clothes.

  No. No. No.


  “Christofer.” A murmur. One hand, light on his collar. God. Almost a whisper. More of a groan. His hand cupped her sex. He might have been a statue. “Morgan.”

  “Not yet.”

  “What?”

  He ached, twitched. Writhed toward her warmth…

  “I’m not ready.”

  “Oh.”

  He stroked her breasts with bloodied hands. Caressed the curve of her belly, the amplification of her thighs. Fell down on his knees before her. Kissed the arch of her hips, the black-forested delta below. She tasted of vinegar, rosemary, honey. He wept. He made her scream and knot her hands in his hair, pulling until heat seared his scalp. When she gave consent at last, he took her there, on the floor by the window, her naked body arching against his black-velvet-clad one and she licked hot tears from his cheeks and laughed.

  Act I, scene x

  Malvolio:

  … Thy Fates open their hands;

  Let thy blood and spirit embrace them;

  and, to inure thyself to what thou art

  Like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear fresh.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Twelfth Night

  For once, Burbage knocked before he entered. Or possibly, he tried the handle and found it latched. A new habit. Will rose from his seat against the chimney—his room had no hearth, but the heat from the ground floor’s giant fireplaces kept the corner nearest the bed tolerably warm except in the coldest hours of morning—and carefully laid his quill aside before crossing the wide floorboards to answer. His fingerless gloves made his grip on the wooden doorpull uncertain, but he fumbled it open after a moment’s struggle. December cold flushed Burbage’s cheeks as he came into Will’s drafty single room. He unwound and dropped his muffler on the table next to Will’s squat lamp and the papers, where it shed a few flakes of snow.

  “Will, I have word from the lord Chamberlain. He’s spoken to lord Strange, and the playhouses will open in January. We’ll start rehearsals for Titus, and see if we can break the plague once and for all.”

  Will leaned back against the wall, stretching limbs, stiff from too long hunched over his writing. “Will it suffice?”

  “I don’t know.” Burbage laid his hands against the chimney bricks, warming fingers tinged white. “There’s more. The Queen requests a comedy for Twelfth Night. The word through Burghley is that she wishes to see weddings and beddings in no particular order. Have you something?”

  Will handed Burbage the first two or three of the folded sheets scattered across his table.

  “Almost the last words I heard from poor Kit Marley were that I should not short myself for comedy.”

  “Katharine, eh? A likely name. Why Padua?”

  “In the cold months, a man likes to dream of warm places.” Will shrugged. “She’s a shrew no man will marry, and well, tis a metaphor. As a wise and gentle woman respects her lord, so must a land bow to its sovereign. I’ll finish it in time for Oxford and Walsingham to dig the nibs of their spells between its lines, and then for mine own hand to correct their scansion.”

  Will picked up the page he had been working on, judged it dry, and held it closer to the poor light.

  “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,

  Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,

  And for thy maintenance commits his body

  To painful labor both by sea and land,

  To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,

  Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;

  And craves no other tribute at thy hands

  But love, fair looks, and true obedience;

  Too little payment for so great a debt.

  Such duty as the subject owes the prince,

  Even such a woman oweth to her husband.”

  Will glanced up. Burbage was smiling.

  “Twill serve?”

  “Twill please the Queen: she has little use for women.” Tis a trick I had from Kit

  “Will.” Burbage shook his head. “You know Strange won’t hear Marley spoken of, and has forbidden us to rehearse his plays. It is a risk to so often speak his name. He’s dead, man, and there’s little you can do to stem the tide of scandal now.”

  “He was your friend, Richard.”

  “Aye, and dead, I say again. And you are my friend as well, and quick. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” Will answered, but rebellion soaked his heart. Not so dead after all, he wanted to retort. But he remembered Kit’s words: ‘One among usis a traitor.’ It could be Burbage. It could be anyone. A chill settled into Will’s bones. He tossed the scribbled leaf upon his table and stepped back beside Burbage, against the warmth of the chimney wall.

  “Twelfth Night,” and then he paused, another dread setting in. “I promised Annie I would come to Stratford for Christmas. I was to leave on Monday morn.”

  Richard tugged his mittens back on. “Send her a letter. Bid her to London: quote those lines you just quoted to me. Surely they will stir a woman’s heart to understanding. Are these ready for Oxford?” A gesture indicated the pages on the table.

  “They are.” Will edged one sheet a little farther from the lamp with a forefinger. Oil from his fingertip glistened on the paper. “Take them from my sight.”

  “Will.”

  “What?”

  “I had supper with Ned Alleyn at the Mermaid last night. Most of the players, lord Strange’s Men and the Admiral’s Men have been whiling away an idle hour there now and again while the playhouses are shuttered. It wouldn’t do you any harm to be seen more often: you re missed, and some wonder if you’re well. But aside from that,” Burbage raised a hand to forestall Will’s interruption, “Ned said if I saw you, to tell you this: Robert Poley’s been looking for our Will, and in the company of a great oaf of a tradesman, blond as a Dane.”

  Burbage mimicked Alleyn’s sonorous tones perfectly. Will would have laughed if he hadn’t recognized the description.

  “Baines. Looking for me? Did Poley say why?”

  “As it was Poley, I assumed you owed him money and he’d come to take it out of your back in one-inch strips. Chapman’s still in debt to the usurious bastard.”

  “No. It’s not money. Thank you, Richard, and I’ll come by the Mermaid tonight and thank Ned myself.”

  “Ned said the second man was near as big as Ned himself.” Burbage’s voice fell. There’s more on Strange, as well. Burghley as it happens, lord Strange was contacted by a Catholic conspiracy. They wished to see him as pretender to the Throne, and Elizabeth … done with.”

  “Strange? Accused of treason?” Will’s voice too dropped to a murmur, as he thought of skulls painted red by the afternoon sun. “Surely not.”

  “No, he reported the conspiracy to Burghley, and Burghley who has no fondness for Catholics of any stripe will use the information as best befits the Queen. All is well.”

  What of the loyal Catholics who will be punished as well as the guilty?But Will didn’t say it, although he counted the silence more of a betrayal than failing to defend Kit. There was no way to raise Kit’s supposition that the Catholic enemy were not Catholic at all, not at their deepest roots. Because the man was, as far as Burbage knew, six months dead. Will comforted himself that Walsingham should know it, if Burbage didn’t.

  “But by that action,” Burbage continued, “Strange has made of himself an obstacle to the plotters. Have a care, Will, and keep an ear to the wall.” He tapped the boards.

  “Oh.” Will ordered the pages before he handed them to Burbage. “I will.”

  Flakes of paint came away on Will’s fingertips as he pushed the Mermaid’s peeling plank door open. Edmund Spenser’s pointed visage and dull brown beard greeted Will’s eye, framed in a lace-tipped falling collar. And what does Spenser in London? Will had heard he was in Ireland, avoiding lord Burghley’s wrath. But no one man in London could keep track of the politics that attended his own name unless that name were Walsingham, never mind the ones that trailed like cloaks
and hat-plumes about the shoulders of every man who was any man at all.

  A coterie had gathered around England’s greatest poet. Spenser held forth, one hand curled around the base of his wine cup and the other moving through the air as if he drew strands of wool for spinning. Will paused, not to interrupt the tale, but he did not miss the broad-shouldered gentleman beside Spenser, greased black hair hanging over his untied ruff, slumming it amidst base players and poets and pamphleteers. It was not a usual thing for a patron to move among his servants in the theatre. The customary arrangement was for him to loan out his livery for whatever status or notoriety the players could provide; in exchange, the players were not classed masterless men, criminals, but servants to a lord.

  Ferdinando Stanley, lord Strange, turned only slightly as Will entered, offering the playmaker bare acknowledgement. But his dark eyes drifted past Ned Alleyn, big as a chalk giant, who had taken up the thread of conversation now, bony hands moving like angel’s wings. Will followed Strange’s glance and nodded, skirting the crowd wooly-faced. Chapman jostled his elbow in silent greeting and went to fetch a bench. Will kicked rushes aside so they wouldn’t snag under the wooden legs when he dragged his prize back. The other men gave him room to sit beside his patron. Strange himself waved for the wine, never disrupting the flow of Ned’s monologue.

  “My lord.” Will poured two cups as the door swung open on a frigid blast. The breeze blew Kemp and two Burbages, Richard and his brother Cuthbert, into the room; Cuthbert shut the door firmly.

  “Tis an unusual pleasure to see you here.”

  “You are to perform for the Queen.” Strange leaned so close Will could smell his hair pomade. A stout man, Strange, and soft around the middle despite bad teeth but his hands showed tendon. The right one moved in a manner Will memorized as a character detail, turning like a leaf moored to the stem.

  “We are.” Strange hid his mouth behind the rim of his cup, the interior belling back his voice. “Thou knowest Southampton is the enemy’s dupe.”

  It was only a player’s presence of mind that kept Will’s startlement from his face. He was glad attention was focused on Richard Burbage and Ned Alleyn, circling one another like a terrier and a mastiff who might decide to be friends and who also might not.