Kit laughed. “You haven’t changed.”
“You have. Ingrim told me the Queen ordered your death. Through Burghley. Poley showed him a writ, and had him burn it.”
“Would Ingrim know a forgery?” Kit rubbed his eyepatch.
Tom shrugged, leaning forward to speak over the creak and clatter of thecoach.
“He should. There’s testimony, too.”
“Do you believe it?”
“When Her Majesty more or less forbade anyone to examine your death, and pardoned your killers, what else could I do? Tell me you re no agent of Spain, or the Romans. Or James of Scotland. Tell me where you’ve been. The Continent? It has been kind to thee. Thou hast not aged a day. Tell me thou art loyal, in thine own voice, Kit, and I’ll believe it.”
“I was loyal to the Queen, and the Queen gave me my life,” he answered. “And then she returned to me mine oath. And now I am a free man. Beholden to another. But faithful in my dealings with England, I vow.”
Tom glanced at Will, who had withdrawn into a corner. He watched without speaking, making himself small.
“And how does Master Shakespeare come into the ciphering?”
“I followed Kit,” he said, folding his arms over each other as if he were cold. Kit felt him shiver, where their shoulders brushed. “He trailed Chapman from the Mermaid.”
A searing glance told Kit that he would have some explaining to do for his carelessness.
“I had stepped outside to catch George and remind him of somewhat,” and Tom smiled, and Kit knew he was deciding to let his actual question go unanswered.
Kit cleared his throat. “Tom, I can trust you?”
“As a brother,” he said, and squeezed Kit’s leg above the knee. Kit watched his face, and saw no flicker of deception.
“Very well,” Kit said. “This will take longer than a coach ride. How much has Sir Francis told you?”
In the half-light of the swinging lanterns, Tom’s face grew grim.
“Not enough, apparently.”
Kit nodded. “He’s dying, Tom. For certain. And Burghley too.” He lowered his voice. “And Her Majesty grows tired.”
“Her Majesty has reason.”
“They are old,” Kit said, knowing that the words carried every trace of treason that his enemies could have wished. The coach’s jolting seemed ready to drive his spine through his skull, but he kept on, though Tom sat back as if to increase the distance between them.
“There’s a reason your Ingrim put a knife in mine eye. Duped by Skeres and Poley, or conspiring with them, there’s time enough for that later. There’s a reason Oxford and Essex move against the Queen. The old Queen must have an heir.”
Will’s elbow banged against the side of the coach. “They are old. And we are young. Comparatively speaking.”
“Fellows!” Tom’s shock was evident.
“Listen.”
And somehow, Tom did. Kit drew a breath, but Will cut him short, surprising Kit with the depth of his understanding.
“When Burghley and Sir Francis are gone, their successors can be thee and me, Master Walsingham. And Robert Cecil, and Thomas Carey’s son George. Or they can be our enemies. Men like Poley and his masters. Baines. And the Spaniard.”
“What of the Queen?” And the Tom stopped himself before he said the unfavored word, succession.
Kit shrugged. “In any case, you must step into Sir Francis shoes. And quickly.”
Tom turned his face into the light. It illuminated his silhouette, limning lips and nose and brow in gold.
“He’s barely now begun to warm to me again, Kit. We did not speak o’er much after your murder.”
“Mend it soon,” Will said. “Or not at all.”
“That bad?”
“We must sire our own conspiracy.”
Kit could see Tom tasting the word. “Conspiracy.” He realized with shock that threads of silver wound Tom’s hair.
“Kit, and what of thee?” Kit closed his eyes on pain, knowing the answer. Knowing what it had to be, as soon as Will had effortlessly picked up the thread of his thought, and explained it. Known from the way Will had tailed him so deftly that Kit, Kit had barely even known he was watched, and how Tom had put Audrey and Chapman out of harm’s way without taking time to think.
“I am dead in this world.” Everything I could do, they can do better. Sweet Christ, I love these men. Better to remember them young and fierce, than like Sir Francis.
“Tom, your man Frazier was duped?” Tom’s lips twitched. He nodded once, his eyes focused on Kit’s scar.
“I am commanded elsewhere, Kit said.” You’ll outlive it. Outlive all your loves and hates, and when your mortal span is past …“Thou wilt not see me again. Nor shalt thou, Will, I warrant. But I leave my Queen in capable hands.”
“Kit,”— Two voices as one, and the tone of them warmed him even as he shook his head.
“I am commanded elsewhere,” he repeated. “And so tonight I shall give you everything I know.”
Kit laid the palm of his right hand on Will’s mirror and pressed forward against a sensation as if jellied mercury flowed to admit him. He glanced over his shoulder at Will and at Tom Walsingham standing beside him, fixing the two men’s faces in his memory. They had kissed and clipped him as brothers, and that embrace was a sort of hollowness resting on his skin. Dead men must trust the living to get on with their business, I suppose.
“I’ll write,” Will said.
“I don’t think I shall reply.” Kit looked away before Will’s expression could change. “Tom, give my love to your wife.”
He pushed through the mirror. He emerged in the corridor between the curtains that flanked the Darkling Glass, tendrils of crystal loathe to resign their grips.
No sooner had his boot touched the tiles than he bowed his head, startled, and dropped a knee, his silver scabbard-tip clinking and skipping. The Mebd stood over him: he had almost stepped into her arms. A scent of roses and lilacs like a breeze from a June garden surrounded him; he lifted the embroidered hem of her robe to his lips, heavy cloth draping his fingers.
“Your Majesty.”
“Sweet Sir Kit.” He heard the smile in her voice and clenched his teeth in anticipation of a hammer blow of emotion. Her hand touched his shoulder and he almost fell forward, realizing as he put a hasty hand to the floor that he had been braced against a raw spasm of desire. It never came.
“Mayst rise.” He did as she bid, keeping his eyes on the woven net of wheat-gold braids that lay across her shoulders, pearls knotted at the interstices. She tilted his chin up with flowerlike fingers, forcing him to meet her eyes.
“Needst not fear our games this night, Sir Poet.” She released him and stepped back, her fingers curling in summoning as she walked on. “We’ve been most wicked to thee, my husband, my sister, and me.”
“I’ve known wickeder.”
The pressure of violet eyes in her passionless oval face was almost enough to force him against the wall.
“Thou dost wonder at thy place in our court.”
“I do.”
She smiled, and reached into her sleeve. “When our royal sister Elizabeth dies, things will change.”
“Your Highness?” He stepped back as she drew out a long fluid scarf of transparent silk and twined it between her fingers. It shifted color in the light, shimmers of violet, green, and gold chasing its surface.
“And there will be a war. If not that day, soon after.”
“I am a poet, Your Highness. Not a soldier.”
She smiled at him, and reaching out, wound the scarf around his throat three times, letting the silk brush his face, softer than petals.
“For thy cloak, she said. Give me a song.”
“What sort of a song?”
“An old song.” She started forward again, and he paced her, reciting the oldest song he knew
‘… Young oxen newly yoked are beaten more,
Than oxen which have drawn the plow before.
<
br /> And rough jades mouths with stubborn bits are torn,
But managed horses heads are lightly borne,
Unwilling lovers, love doth more torment,
Then such as in their bondage feel content.
Lo! I confess, I am thy captive I,
And hold my conquered hands for thee to tie.’
“No,” the Mebd whispered, interrupting him with a hand on his wrist and seeming for a moment a woman given to softness rather than a cold and mocking Queen. “Not that. An English song, for thou art an Englishman.”
“Thomas the Rhymer?” he suggested waggishly, wondering if she would let him press the advantage. A gamble, but they that never gamble have no wit.
“Perhaps not that either. It’s no mere seven years thou wilt serve.” But she smiled, an honest smile, and tilted her head so her braids moved in disarray over her neck.
“I know it.” He nibbled his mustache. “I’ve made my farewells, Your Highness. I’m ready to set it behind me.”
“Thou shalt find it easier. And Morgan has released thee from what bondage she held thee in.”
He blushed. “It influenced my decision.”
“Of course.”
“Free, and myself,” he said. “But never free to leave.”
“No.” Her sorrow was not for him. Never that. They walked on in silence. She led him through tall, many-paned glass doors and into a garden that smelled as she did of lilacs and roses.
“Mortals can be enchanted,” she said, gravel rustling beneath her slippers and turning under the brush of her train, “but they cannot truly be bound the way the Fae can be bound by their names, by iron. Every knot in my hair is a life I possess, Sir Kit, a Faerie entangled to my will forevermore. I could not bind thee so. Nor canst thou be released by the gift of a suit of clothes, or a new pair of shoes. So thy folk require more careful handling. Tis better to let them grieve at their own rate, and leave at their own rate, too.”
She smiled, and recited a scrap of song of her own. “‘Ellum do grieve, Oak he do hate, Willow do walk if yew travels late.’ Dost know that one? No Ah, well. Thou wilt learn it, no doubt. Do you toss like an elm, or break like an oak, Sir Kit?” She stopped and bent to smell a rose.
“This war that you expect, Your Highness.”
“Aye?”
“How will it be fought?”
“Oh,” her smile was lovely. Even through vision unclouded by fey magic and glamourie.
“With song, Sir Poet. With song.”
Act II, scene xii
Jessica:
I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so:
Our house is hell, and thou, a merry devil,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice
Will stood against the painted cloth covering the wall of Sir Francis Walsingham’s bedroom, flanked by Richard Burbage’s fair hair on one side and Thomas Walsingham’s tall frame on the other. They leaned shoulder to shoulder, unspeaking, feet and lower backs aching, listening to the halting rhythm of a dying man’s breath, watching his daughter bathe his brow with cool water and fret his spindled hands. Lopez was dead, and even if another could have been trusted to keep the secret of his identity, Sir Francis would not have accepted the ministrations of strange physicians.
Tom Walsingham shifted, his shoulder brushing Will’s doublet. Will met his glance, but neither spoke, and they turned away again after a moment of consideration. Tom’s guarded eyes reminded Will of the expression in the mirror. They kept their vigil though the clock struck midnight and its hands began their long dark sweep through the downhill hours of the night. Sir Francis whined low on one intaken breath; his next expiration held a damaged clatter that Will knew better than he liked.
“Not long now,” Burbage murmured, and Tom shook his head no but it wasn’t a denial. Thus began the seventh of September, 1595: the sixty-third anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s birth.
One oil lamp guttered. The other had burned out by the time the bell struck three of the clock, leaving a thin white coil of smoke ascending from the wick. Will stepped away from the wall, across the rush matting. He didn’t understand how Sir Francis’ daughter Frances bore it; the stench of putrefaction rising from the dying man’s very pores and on his breath was enough to raise Will’s gorge from across the room.
There was oil in a cupboard. Wordlessly, with exquisite care, he filled the extinguished lamp and trimmed the wick, relighting it before snuffing the second and repeating the process. He set the light left-handed on the stand beside the bed, acknowledging Frances’ grateful glance with a smile.
“We should send a messenger to lord Burghley,” he said to Burbage and Tom as he returned to his post by the wall. “And a messenger to the Queen. He will not last the …”
“The Queen will not come.” A wheeze, a broken gasp followed by Frances’ command to lie back. Will turned in place and looked back to the bed with its coverlet drawn high and its curtains closed on two sides to keep the draft away.
“Sir Francis.” The old man was up on one elbow, waving his nursemaid irritably aside, pain furrowing his face. His voice fragmented.
“Master Shakespeare. Master Burbage, ah, Tom. Waste no time on the Queen. She wouldn’t come. Unless she forgave me.”
“Cousin, lie down,” said Tom, crossing the rush mat heedlessly. Frances moved out of his path in a graceful sweep of skirts and leaned against the window ledge to throw open the shutters, breathing gratefully of the rank Southwark night. Over the reek of the bear gardens, Will imagined he smelled fruiting lemons and apples ripening to the frost that would leave them sweet enough to be plucked. He brushed comforting fingers across Frances arm and moved forward. Burbage hung back beside her, his nostrils flaring in a drinker’s roseate nose. Tom crouched beside the bed, heedless of the reek, and Will stood over his shoulder.
“Cousin,” Tom said. Sir Francis coughed. Will flinched: the sound had torn flesh in it. Tom reached out and gripped Sir Francis hand.
“Cousin,” Sir Francis wheezed. “There’s papers. Under a false bottom in my clothespress. Thou wilt need them.”
“What are they?
“There are men who will work for the love of their Prince. And there are those who must be cajoled, brutalized, or bribed.”
“Your men,” Thomas said, understanding.
“Filthy linen,” Sir Francis answered. “Yes. Tis yours.”
“Sir Francis, Her Majesty would not come to your deathbed?” Will felt the vibration of his own voice, but did not at first understand that he had spoken. It took him longer to recognize the wet, desperate sound that escaped Sir Francis throat as laughter; it was like the sounds a man might make being broken on the rack.
Serve your Prince,” Sir Francis choked, waving Will closer.
Breathing shallowly, Will bent forward, extending a hand. Francis Walsingham’s yellowed nails dented the flesh of his wrist as the spymaster fell back against the bed.
“Do not expect thanks of her. Not if you serve her well.”
Will flinched. Blood and something thick and yellow crusted the corners of Sir Francis mouth. A thin trickle of watery red dripped from his nose, as if the effort of holding his head up had burst a vessel somewhere, one with barely any blood left in it.
“Sir Francis.”
For all its feebleness, Sir Francis voice brushed Will’s aside as casually as a hand lifting a curtain.
“You were young. When the Queen’s Men, I built for Gloriana toured Stratford, and they took you on.“
Will thought the sound of the dying man’s laugh would make him vomit. Dick Burbage shuffled forward as if through mud. Sir Francis didn’t release Will’s wrist, and Will stayed bent over the crouching Tom, wondering if Sir Francis could feel the tremor starting now in his biceps, shivering down his arm to his hand.
“Sir Francis.”
“Didst know what we had here, Dick?”
Wordlessly, Burbage shook his head.
“Ah.” Walsingham slipped lower in the be
d. “Now we do.”
Tom dabbed his cousin’s upper lip, rubbing thin blood into his beard. Sir Francis hand slid from Will’s wrist and lay slack and open on the coverlet, as if waiting to receive.
“Let me be, Tom.” Sir Francis closed his eyes. “Let me be.”
Tom stood easily and backed up, looking up as he took a second step away from the bed. And then kept moving, stumbling, his left arm catching Will across the chest and bearing him away as Will too raised his eyes. A warm wind scented with tobacco smoke blew the bed curtains back. They rippled heavily, the lamps guttering in their chimneys. The sound that fell from Will’s parted lips was almost a quack.
The angel’s wings, white and strong as a swan’s, filled the room from floor to ceiling, even folded tight. Tom’s shove turned into a clutch; Will looked up at a serene, unsmiling alabaster face, blue eyes dark as the ocean stern under a mannered wheat-gold mane. Those candent wings rose not from robes, but a black silk-velvet doublet gleaming with ruby buttons, slashed in flame-colored taffeta and showing a gentleman’s cobweb lawn collar at the neck: nothing so lordlike unwieldy as a ruff. The rapier at his hip wore a matching ruby in its pommel pigeon’s-blood, and big as a pigeon’s egg. The angel’s neck was long and fine, his elegant chin unshadowed by beard. His curls hung in oiled array behind his shoulders, one snagged disobedient on his collar. His lips were palest pink as dog rose, matching the blush in his cheeks. A heavy chain of office lay across his shoulders, a golden circlet crossed his noble brow, but his head was crowned in twining, writhing shadows like silhouettes tormented by flames, and so Will realized he wasn’t exactly an angel.
“Be not afraid,” the Devil said in the voice of a harpsichord, and reached down to stroke Sir Francis matted iron-color curls. Then he raised those indigo eyes. They examined Tom’s face for a moment, then flicked to the side and studied Will more carefully.
“Master Shakespeare the playmaker.”
Will nodded. Tom gripped his arm tightly enough to leave a perfect handprint through the cloth of Will’s padded murrey doublet. “I am.”
“Will?” Burbage stepped forward. From the corner of his eye, Will glimpsed Frances a half step behind him. Both stared at him and Tom as if they had grown donkey’s heads. “Who are you talking to?”
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