Ink and Steel pa-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Take your ease,” Essex answered. He was alone, for a wonder, with neither courtiers nor the simpering Southampton in attendance.

  Will relaxed incrementally. “What is my lord’s pleasure?”

  “A word of warning,” Essex said. “Have a care in handling the coin of a poisoner, Master Shakespeare. You know that damned Portugall was Sir Francis Walsingham’s doctor when Sir Francis breathed his last, in agony.”

  “I have heard it so bandied, my lord,” Will agreed.

  “Hmph.” Essex regarded Will down the length of his nose, expectantly, and Will cringed like a bumpkin. There was something to be said for having the face for comic parts. “Moreover,” said Essex, “it’s well-known that Sir Francis papers vanished from his chamber at his death, and Lopez was among the few with access to the same.”

  And you so upset by it, my lord, for you would have wrested control of his agents after his death?“I shall be entirely cautious, my lord.”

  “See you are.” And now Essex in turn was withdrawing, after a short glance over Will’s shoulder. “Lopez is a traitor, and I do not doubt he’ll hang. It would be a shame to hang a poet with him. Good day, sirrah.”

  “Good day, my lord.” Will counted three, and turned from Essex’s receding back and into the orbit of Her Majesty, the Queen. Her gown was figured silk, white on white, her mantle thick with ermine against the January cold that even the press of bodies couldn’t drive from the hall. Sir Walter Raleigh in his black hung at her shoulder, a raven to Elizabeth’s gerfalcon, all devilish beard and tilted cap, eyes sharp as a mink’s over his impressive nose, an air of pipe-tobacco and dissolution on his shoulders in place of a cloak. Robert Devereaux, the Earl of Essex, God is merciful, was now nowhere in evidence.

  “You, Your Majesty.” Will dropped a hasty bow, wondering if his face would tumble to the floor and shatter like a mask if all the blood really did drain from it. “At your ease, Master Shakespeare,” she said. Raleigh stayed a step behind and to her left. He caught Will’s eye as Will stood, sure he was about to faint, and he winked. Her Majesty never saw it, but the slight gesture calmed Will enough to get a breath, and as the air filled him, the panic retreated. “Your Majesty is very kind”

  “Rarely.” Her gray eyes crinkled at the corners, irises dark in the alabaster of her paint; it was the only trace of her smile. By her breath, her teeth were rotten, and Will pitied her that. “And only when it suits me. Do you serve England, Will?”

  “With a will, where I may,” he said daringly, remembering that she had laughed at his dirtiest jokes. Raleigh’s nose twitched. “An it please Your Majesty.”

  “Clever lad,” she said. “You’ll do well, if you play the games of court as well as you played your art tonight. Of which art speaking, I understand we have common friends.”

  “Surely, I could not claim equal to the title of friend to any who Your Majesty might grace with that station.”

  She turned to Raleigh, amused. “He’s got a courtly tongue in him, at least. Sir Walter.”

  “Your gracious Majesty.” The pearls on his doublet glimmered like moonlight as he bowed under her attention.

  “What think you of this one, stepping into the place he must fill?

  “Walsingham likes him. That’s never a good sign.” But it was said wryly, one black eyebrow arched, and Raleigh’s eyes held Will’s as he spoke.

  “So long as Robin of Essex doesn’t like him as well. Tell me, young William, what factions do you favor in our petty dickering?” A direct, bright question, her voice mild and interested, the turn of her neck like one of her swans within the elaborate serpentine of her ruff.

  “Oh, that is one question that is many questions, Madam. The Earl of Southampton is my patron, Your Majesty, and lord Strange the patron of my company. But my loyalty is given to my Prince, and she alone may command my heart.”

  She seemed to wait expectantly, and he permitted himself a bold bit of a grin. “That portion my good wife permits me the use of, in any case.”

  Gloriana laughed, showing the powdered curve of her throat, and stopped as abruptly. “Don’t teach this one to smoke, Sir Walter. Tis a filthy habit. Master Shakespeare, good evening.”

  “Your Majesty. Sir Walter.” Will bowed, watching jeweled skirts soar away. A firm hand clapped him on the shoulder and he glanced up, into Raleigh’s glittering presence.

  “Sir Walter.”

  “Good to show her spunk, William.” That wink again, before he too took his leave. “We’ll see you at court again, I expect.”

  Will stood shivering as they left him, and almost jumped out of his clicking court shoes when Burbage appeared beside him, holding a cup of wine.

  “I see I danced away just in time. How was your pas de deux with Her Majesty?”

  “More a pas de trois, I think. A game was just played over me, Richard, and I do not know the name of it.”

  “As long as you didn’t lose,” Burbage said, and thrust the cup into his hand. Will took it, fingers half insensate. “Tom Walsingham likes me? I thought he just made a threat on my life.”

  Intra-act: Chorus

  Two weeks later, the playhouses opened as scheduled, and a letter arrived at Will’s lodging house, forwarded without comment by Annie from Stratford.

  Mr. Will. Shakspere Stratford-upon-Avon

  My dearest countryman & fellow:

  Please that this find you well, I have prevailed upon one Robin of my present company to deliver unto you this letter & my fondest remembrances, that all passeth well with you & the fair Anne your wife & that you me recollect fondly as you serve our fair Prince. It is to me as my days creep by that, gone as I am from England, England is almost near enough to touch: a great frustration to an exile. But even as my spirit sometimes flags, I find I am come home, & am given to hope perhaps my necessary & permanent absence will not prove so onerous as fear’d. I have an eye for you, my dear Will, & will be of assistance as I may find opportunity. I beg you trust me safe, if in politics, & well-occupied with many pleasures and problems. A letter may reach me through unusual channels, although perhaps not privily: FW knows the path. I hope you will forward your Adonis, & whatever other works you think may interest me. I would send gold to afford the purchase of books but it would not outlast the sunset as other than dross, & having been taken once for coining I’ll not will that adventure on you. So if you seek to do me this kindness I fear you shall have no recompense but mine unending affection. I am closer than you imagine. This 14th day of January 1593 (as I think it) I remain yrs affectionately & in good hope of our eventual re-acquaintance your most distant friend.

  Postscript: Yr Shrew was an outstanding success. I will be observing your future career with some interest.

  Act II, scene i

  ALL. God forbid!

  Faustus:

  God forbade it, indeed; but Faustus hath done it

  CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Doctor Faustus

  Murchaud had reach on Kit, and two good eyes, and Kit was not used to fencing with a surrounding audience hampering his movement. But Kit sidestepped as the pale sunlight of Faerie flashed along the spirals decorating Murchaud’s rapier. Despite the unkempt grass tugging his boots, a little spatter of dignified applause followed the gesture of his main gauche as it knocked his opponent’s foiled blade off line. Foiled, but still razor-sharp along the edge: the blade brushed Kit’s shirtsleeve in passing, parting the linen as easily as the skin of a peach. Kit stepped in to take advantage of the break in Murchaud’s guard, ducked a thrust of the main gauche, and, extended along the line of his blind eye, lunged. Murchaud barely twisted aside, Kit’s rapier stroking the brownleather jerkin over his muscled belly, and his riposte fell short as Kit skittered back, swearing breathlessly, sweat trickling between his shoulders. The onlookers shifted, a murmuring riot of colored costumes against the sweep of green lawn, the gardens of heartsease and forget-me-nots, the high golden walls of the palace.

  Kit forced his attention away from the audience
as Murchaud advanced, teeth white in the angle between his lips, lips coral pink against the black of his beard. Stop looking at his smile, Kit you ruddy fool. Watch his chest, his eyes hah! as if that will keep you from distraction!A thrust, a flurry of parry, riposte, bind Murchaud’s breath on his face as he pressed with all his greater weight and the strength of his arm. Kit locked his elbow, holding against the press, went for Murchaud’s belly with the main gauche and felt his hand knocked wide. Murchaud bent a knee, bulled and lifted, hilt ringing on hilt, shoving Kit’s rapier high and wide. Kit scrambled aside, sucking his belly against his spine and out of the path of the blade, feeling through the shifts of Murchaud’s weight for where the main gauche would be. Somewhere on his blind side, and Kit’s hand was out of line. He ducked backward, wove, dipped a knee as he parried another lunge and felt the edge part not just shirt but skin, the hotter trickle of blood joining the drip of sweat down his forearms and froze at the needle prick of Murchaud’s eighteen-inch dagger in the curve of his jaw where the pulse ran close. A slow, thick thread of blood curved down his throat, delicately as the pad of a thumb dragged over skin, and he shivered. Murchaud smiled in earnest now, and Kit tilted his head away from the knife and closed his eye as the applause swelled.

  “Yield?”

  “Yield.” Kit forced clenched fingers to unwind from the grip of his rapier. The blade rasped on Murchaud’s and thumped pommel-first into the grass. He waited for the knife point to ease away from the red-hot dimple it wore. Instead, the blade caressed his throat, came to rest in the hollow of his collarbone, pressed just sharply enough to sting as Murchaud covered Kit’s mouth with a kiss as claiming as any bridegroom’s. The applause for that was more than a polite ripple.

  It could have been an hour later or a dozen, although sunlight still streamed between the bed curtains to stain Murchaud’s pale skin tawny. Kit pillowed his head on the man’s ridged belly and sighed, idly picking at the clean wrap of linen covering the scratch on his arm. Murchaud wound a few of the long fair strands of Kit’s hair around his fingers like a girl playing with her ribbons. That was better. Wryness twisted Kit’s mouth into something only a fool would call a smile.

  “What?””

  “The fencing, or the fencing?”

  “Thy swordsmanship is improving,” Murchaud continued blithely. “And the strength of thine arm.”

  “Exercise is the best remedy for a weak arm, I’m told.” Kit still tasted that public, thrilling kiss. Still heard the roar of approving laughter that had followed.

  Now, Murchaud’s laughter trailed into thoughtfulness. “We’ll make a warrior of thee yet, Sir Christofer. How long hast been among us?”

  “Four days? Five? Time passes quickly with thee by my side.” He’d expected from his previous visit that by the time a month passed in Faerie, the world of London would be thirty years gone. Not so: perhaps the difference changed with the whim of the Mebd, but the once or twice Kit had found an unattended moment in which to prowl through the palace’s golden corridors and peer into the Darkling Glass, it seemed only a few hours had passed for Will and Sir Francis. He had sought the Prometheans behind his murder, as well, but the glass shied from them, as if he would pick up ice with an oiled hand. Kit didn’t feel himself guarded, precisely. Or watched. But he was seldom left alone, waking or sleeping. Of course Morgan can watch me if she wishes. And no doubt the Mebd can, as well.

  Murchaud continued, “Thou wilt need learn something of the factions, if thou art to be ours. I’ll presume a certain comfort on thy part with politics, given thy career fair enough.” Murchaud’s fingers tugged Kit’s hair as Kit turned his head to kiss the Elf-knight’s belly.

  “There is thee and thy mother,” Kit continued. “By whom I read I have been claimed. But I know not yet what task you mean to set me to.”

  “We’ve uses for poets. Not unlike the uses to which thou hast set thyself, in thine old Queen’s court.”

  “Commission thy poem,” Kit answered. “I could pen a sonnet on the arch of ev’ry rib, passage of verse on thine eyes, and lay a very pastoral over field and fallow of thy flank and loin. I’ll hang a golden tongue about thy throat.”

  Murchaud’s sweat was bitter and sweet; a droplet of Kit’s own blood had dried on his breast, and Kit kissed it away. Murchaud pressed fingertips to the hollow of Kit’s throat. “It should have sealed by now.”

  “Like any corpse, I bleed at the touch of my murderer.”

  “There is Faerie and there is Hell,” Murchaud interrupted, with the air of one reciting a catechism. “They are allied under a contract drawn up long ago, when the Christian, now Romish, church first came into its glory. Portions of that Romish church are under the sway of those who oppose science, poetry, freedom of thought, and liberty of speech. Those same men have their fingers in the puppet Puritans too.”

  “I know this,” Kit answered. “The secret underbelly of the Prometheus Club. The claims and counterclaims as to who has honest right to the name are too complex for me to follow, but as I understand it, once …”

  “Hush,” Murchaud interrupted. “Faerie pays a tithe to Hell for Hell swardenship. My mother, Morgan, wishes to see the tithe ended, and Faerie to stand on its own.” The Elf-knight’s calloused fingertips traced the curve of Kit’s ear. They played languidly on, even as Murchaud’s next words froze Kit’s breath into stone. “What didst thou intend, when I overheard thee to tell Shakespeare that thou wert no Gaveston?”

  Kit sat back out of the bedclothes, tugging his hair out of Murchaud’s grasp and squinting against the sunlight to meet his eyes. “You watched me. In the Glass.”

  “Aye: we stayed to ward you, should someone take your reappearance amiss.”

  Kit swallowed the self-loathing that filled his mouth. You’ve gotten careless, Marley. Careless and unbalanced, and it will have you dead twice over if you don’t find your feet among these stones.

  “Sir Piers Gaveston, Kit said calmly, was the leman of Edward the Second. For whom Edward abandoned a loyal wife and peers who would have supported him, neglected his Kingdom, and paid with his freedom and eventually his life and Gaveston’s life, now that I think on it. For all Edward was a selfish spoiled boy more than he was a King, he died quite terribly for his sins. There’s a story about an impalement.”

  “I know it,” Murchaud answered. “But that does not play fair with my question, sweet Kit.”

  “I bethink myself,” Kit said carefully, “that in such case the beloved is as much at fault as the unfaithful lover. I knew a man, a man enough like Edward to share his name.” Kit closed his eye so he wouldn’t see the name Murchaud slips shaped, questioningly. ‘Oxford?’ Kit continued, “I cared for him. I did not much care for how he used his wife. I wrote a play to let him know it, and mayhap change his ways.”

  “Success?”

  “None to speak of.” Murchaud chuckled. “Is now the wrong moment to tell you that I am also a married man?”

  “Married?” Kit shrugged, forcing his expression to blandness. “Most men are. Most women as well. I had thought myself, one day …” He paused at Murchaud’s smile, recognizing amusement and anticipation. “Where is your wife?”

  “She sits on Faerie’s throne,” the Elf-knight answered.

  “The Mebd. Is your wife.”

  “Tis less impressive when you consider my parentage,” Murchaud said dryly, taking Kit by the wrist and drawing him down among the bedclothes. “And things are different here.”

  “Yes,” Kit said against the pillow. “I’ve noticed.”

  Kit woke uneasy in waning light. The wound in the valley of his throat stung, and beneath the door he heard the footsteps of servants, a rattling scratch. He drew the sheets up to cover his shame and called a welcome once he rubbed enough grit from his eye to be assured Murchaud was no longer in the chamber. A brownie entered bearing a taper twice his own height. He was a wee man clad in tattered brown trousers, braces strapped over his teacup belly.

  “Sir Christofe
r?”

  And the whole castle knows to find me in the Prince-Consort’s bed.Kit touched his lips, remembering a kiss; the aching hollowness that lately emptied him when he was away from Morgan gnawed his belly. “Awake. More or less.”

  “I’ve brought hot water and your dinner clothes.” The brownie gestured with his taper, and other candles about the room flared to life. Kit wondered how someone so small would tote water, but steam rose from a silver ewer beside the wash-basin, and Kit saw a black doublet and breeches and smallclothes laid out on Murchaud’s clothes chest.

  “Thank you,” Kit said. In London, he would have offered a tip. Here, he’d been given to understand, gratuities would be perceived an insult.

  “Anything else?”

  “Soap and some tooth powder?”

  “Seen to,” the brownie replied with what might have been a grimace or a grin. “You’ve the three-quarters of an hour before dinner is laid.”

  “Where is Murchaud?”

  “With …” The candle flickered, and that was disapproval, even in the half-light, “his royal wife.”

  The door shut between them. Kit let the sheets fall aside to release their perfume of sweat and almond oil as he stood. Disapproval of me? Or of Murchaud? Or of the Queen?He ached with the battering, but it was pleasant enough. Unlike what gnawed his belly. Kit, this is obsession.

  He cleaned himself at the basin, scrubbed his hair with the rose-scented soap, and wished he had someone to pour the rinse water for him, but managed. The shirt was silk again, and wrought with pearls about the bands: he wouldn’t have been permitted that in London, but here he was a knight. I wonder if Faerie has sumptuary laws. The doublet was new. It wasn’t black after all, he saw when he held it up to the light, but a deep undulled green no mortal dye could match. The slashes were lined with silk of a paler green, and the embroidery and the buttons shone in some oil green peridots. There were clean white hose, a cap and gloves, the silver sword he’d practiced with that afternoon, its same plain, functional hilt adorned by a much finer belt and scabbard. And there were shoes with jeweled buckles, which gave him pause.