Ink and Steel pa-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  That is to say, if I had any claim on him at all. Mayhap Annie can come steal him back from me, and keep the legend intact.He sighed and looked down at his hands. Most men are married,he reminded himself. It is the custom of the age. And what of you, Sir Christofer?

  Ah, the unanswerable questions. He straightened and left Will there, slipping through the glass door to the garden. Gravel settled under his boots; the scent of roses overwhelmed the sticky, lingering perfume of the crushed blossom upon Kit’s skin. Kit turned his face to the sky, reveling in the warming sunlight. He recognized the step on the walk behind him and didn’t turn to face who came. A warm breeze lifted Kit’s hair; a warm hand followed it, stroking the nape of his neck.

  “Wanton.” A whisper against his ear.

  “Murchaud.”

  “Sweet Christofer. Your friend has charmed the court already.” Kit bit his tongue on his first reply and forced his manner to calm.

  “He’s for the ladies, lover.”

  “Poor Kit, that he should disappoint thee so. And more fool he.” Murchaud knotted a hand in Kit’s fine, full hair and turned his head to kiss him on the mouth. Kit fairly burned with unexpected shame, knowing the embrace plainly visible from within the conservatory. Knowing Will would think Kit had abandoned him among strangers to go out to his lover.

  A Prince’s licentious favorite. Ganymede, indeed. Even if he were so given, how could he ever believe thy love more than this travesty? Tom did.

  Murchaud spoke against his ear. “You re thinking.”

  “Aye.” Kit cast about for the plausible lie, hesitated. Drew back enough to look Murchaud in the face when he spoke.

  “The Mebd.”

  “Aye.”

  “What do you think I owe her, Murchaud?” He turned as he spoke and strode slowly along the path, leading Murchaud among the roses and their lesser brethren.

  “Aside from your life?”

  “She’s got payment in service for that,” Kit answered. “And surely I owe your mother as much.”

  “Aye.” Murchaud cocked his head to follow the flitting progress of an exaltation of larks. His right hand rested possessively on Kit’s elbow.

  “Everyone pushes me in one direction or another, Murchaud. As if the whole world held its breath, waiting to see which way I’ll bend. And yet I feel I am not vouchsafed information enough to do so intelligently.” Kit kicked at the gravel.

  They came beside a path of cypresses. Kit did not remember having gone this way before.

  “And when you chose for England and her Queen, what details were you vouchsafed then?”

  Kit stifled a laugh at himself. “That was simply naive patriotism, I’m afraid.” And there was only one side that wanted me untrue,he realized as he said it. Or I wouldn’t have been able to enter Rheims at all.

  “Well, then, to be wanted so desperately now tells thee something.” Murchaud drifted away, plucking dusky blue berries from the evergreens hedging the walk and flicking them away with his thumbnail. Kit caught their resinous scent and thought it erotic.”

  “And what am I taught, my love?”

  “Thou art important to someone. Come, I wish to show something to thee.”

  Kit considered that as he followed the suddenly animated Prince across a wide green lawn toward a copse of thorn trees hung with berries red as blood. Curiosity galled him, but he wouldn’t give Murchaud the satisfaction of seeing it manifest.“

  “You’ll know soon enough. The Mebd said once that when Queen Elizabeth passes there will be a rade. A procession.”

  Murchaud’s strides were long. Kit hastened to keep up, soft greensward dimpling under his boots. “Aye, we’ll go to honor your Gloriana.”

  “And your wife,” the faintest emphasis, “said also that there would be a war. A war of song.”

  “A war of spells. Not that they are much different, in Faerie or on Earth.”

  Murchaud led Kit under the bowering thorn trees, lifting the branches aside. Red blood welled from the Prince’s thumb; he licked it and laughed.

  Beyond the trees rose a simple pavilion of classical design, a miniature Parthenon of milk-white stone.

  “How can she know what will happen when Elizabeth is dead? How can any of us know?” To contemplate her death alone was a marvel: Iron Bess had reigned and ruled longer than Kit had been alive.

  “We can’t,” Murchaud answered, turning impatiently to Kit, who must have mounted the steps more slowly than the Elf-knight liked. “I can only guess.”

  “And it may not be hard on the heels of her death. I rather expect there will be a few years subtlety and manipulation, first. Edging the pieces about the board. The midgame starts when Elizabeth dies.”

  “Why?”

  “Because faith in Elizabeth herself is half the faith that holds England and the Protestants together,” Murchaud said. “And that faith alone is enough to send enemy ships storm lost at sea, and bring forth men like Burghley and Walsingham and Shakespeare and Marley to serve.”

  “What’s that?” Kit gestured to the long marble box, chest-high and seemingly hollow within, that dominated the center of the pavilion. The only other furniture was a pair of marble benches along the walls.

  “England,” Murchaud answered. “Come forward, Sir Christofer, and meet my family.”

  Curious, Kit walked up beside him, through the softly breezy shadows, until he stood beside Murchaud over the tall plinth, as long as a coffin. An apt comparison, because … A plinth, he realized. Or a bier.

  Its high marble sides enclosed the form of a man on a platform some twelve inches below: what Kit would have taken for a waxwork had not the impossible profusion of copper-blond hair stirred in the passage of the sleeper’s even breaths. Someone had combed those locks to softness, shining like hanks of silk in the filtered light, and Kit judged it would reach beyond the sleeper’s knees if he stood, on a man as tall and as broad as Murchaud. A golden circlet crossed his splendid brow, and a scattering of freckles dusted the skin over the aristocratic bones of his face: last stars fading at dawn. By contrast with his hair, his beard was neatly barbered and as red as Kit’s, but streaked with steel under the corners of the mouth. Powerful elegant fingers enfolding the hilt of the bronze Roman sword laid down the center line of his chest gave Kit the first soft inkling of who this was.

  “How long hashe lain here?”

  “A thousand years.” Breathless, and the weight of all those years was in the Prince’s voice. Fingers very like the fingers of the sleeper twined Kit’s own, and Murchaud drew Kit’s hand out to brush Arthur’s warm and pliant cheek.

  “I always rather liked the tale,” Kit said, just to break the hush, “that he had become a raven. And that is why ravens are sacrosanct, and why should they all ever leave the Tower, it is assured that England will fall. Pity it isn’t true.”

  Murchaud smiled. “But it is true. As true as the story that he sleeps here in Faerie.”

  “How can that be?” Kit, softly, wondering.

  “All tales are true,” Murchaud answered, squeezing Kit’s hand before he let it fall. “Some are simply more true than others. Look here, unto thy lover, Sir Poet: here stands a man born nigh unto Roman times, son of a story not invented until seven hundred years later.”

  Kit couldn’t bear to break the silence. He stepped away from the bier, his eyes stinging, and turned away for a moment to watch the sunlight move through the branches of the thorn trees. A thousand years. When he re-collected himself, he asked, “What do all these factions want of me, Highness?”

  Silk rustled; Kit thought Murchaud shrugged. “What do you suppose they wanted of him?”

  “Conquest,” Kit said promptly, and then, a moment after, “Salvation. Love? Do you suppose?

  “My father loved him,” Murchaud said softly, and Kit turned to him in surprise. The Elf-knight hadn’t moved: he stood, still, with bowed head over Arthur’s bier. “Your father betrayed him.”

  “Aye,” Murchaud answered, glancing up
with shining eyes. “That’s what makes it a tragedy, my dear.”

  Act III, scene vii

  Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,

  A dearer birth then this his love had brought,

  To march in ranks of better equipage:

  But since he died and Poets better prove,

  Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 32

  Kit lay on his back against the emerald coverlet, lamplight snarled in his light brown hair, and idly turned the swan-white quill between his fingers while Will watched from the chair by the window. The ornately carved back was winning the war against Will’s spine; Will leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

  “These lamps are very fine. They burn paraffin?”

  “Spirits of some sort,” Kit said. “Tis a lovely bright light, isn’t it?”

  “I might sit up a little,” Will said, feeling dishonest. “If the light will bother you, I can retreat to the library.”

  “No need,” Kit said, kicking his legs high to swing himself out of the bed. He dropped the pen onto a shelf as he stood, his fingers returning to stroke the stainless plume briefly before he turned away. “What a little mystery this is, isn’t it?”

  “What will you do with it?”

  Kit shrugged, his eyebrows arching in cheerful mockery. “Tis too lovely to strip and stain with ink. Keep it as a token of affection, I suppose; I musthave an unconfessed admirer.”

  “Perhaps she wants you to write a sonnet to her loveliness. Or,” Will grinned, “on her loveliness, for that matter.”

  “Ah, but sonnets are thy idiom, not mine.”

  Will leaned back into the shadows, feeling the grin slide down his face. “Where have you read my sonnets, Kit?” He managed to hide a guilty look at his cloak and the brownie-cleaned boots that he had come to Faerie in. They were tucked into the corner beside the clothes press with his sonnets rolled up inside them. Surely Kit would be, if anything, too proud to sneak.

  “Romeo and Juliet,” Kit answered. “And nicely done it was. I wouldn’t mind seeing those others you mentioned, though, when you think they re fit for the public eye.”

  Somehow, Will managed not to choke. “They may never be so.”

  “Really? Not as off-color as Tom’s dildo poem, I trust.” Kit poured water to wash his hands and face and made a little ceremony of it.

  “With a better meter, at least.”

  Kit turned to him surprised, reaching for linen to dry his hands, and Will laughed. “No; I’ve a touch more decorum than Tom, though I’ve read the poem in question. I rather imagine that one will never see printer’s ink. You don’t mind my rustling papers and cursing by lamplight while you try to sleep?”

  “Not at all.” Kit shrugged. “You re not like to have much time for work here. You re a puzzle to them, a toy, and if you claim the library, this palace holds enough creatures who do not sleep to distract you with their demands. Besides, if you’re here, you can wake me if I start to dream.”

  “Sensible,” Will said. May I have that lamp by the bedside as well?”

  “Yes, and use my table.” Kit brought the squat globe with its odd, tall chimney over to the broad walnut writing table, shoving layers of papers aside. Will picked up the lamp from the square table beside the window and joined him, angling the two so they gave enough light to write by.

  “That’s not bad. Better than candles.”

  “Aye.”

  “Sleep well, Kit.”

  Kit pursed his lips as he turned away. “Just don’t wish me dream sweetly, I pray.”

  A few hours later, Will rolled the mismatched sheets of sonnetry into a tubeagain and fastened them with a ribbon. He weighed the poems in his hand: a few ounces of ink and paper and emotion and clever word play. Surely nothing to feel such pride and consternation over.

  He’d lied to Kit when he said Jonson had a copy; a few he’d shown to friends, but not most of them. Certainly not to anyone who might recognize the subject.

  Poley and Baines know Kit is alive now, he realized suddenly. I have to draft a letter to Tom Walsingham.Which he did, hastily, and sanded and sealed it, explaining the situation and that he, Will, would return by Christmas. ‘And may I meet my promise to a conspirator better than I meet my promises to my wife.” Will stood, the poems in one hand, the letter in the other, and hesitated. I don’t know how to send it.

  He stole a glance at Marley, curled like a child under his spotted cloak, and stifled a yawn against the back of the hand that held the sonnets. He didn’t feel like sleeping, and he propped the letter and the poems upon the mantel and stepped into his boots before he blew the lamps out.

  The latch clicked softly, well oiled, when he turned the handle, and he walked into the darkness of the hall. The Mebd’s palace changed in darkness and solitude. The airy corridors closed in, became low and medieval, and Will thought he saw things scuttle in the corners near the floor. He stopped his hand before he could cross himself, wondering where that ancient reflex had arisen from, and picked his way past the roiling shadows of infrequent torches, certain of restlessness, uncertain of his goal.

  He found the spiral stair with ease and followed it down, noting landmarks so he would be able to find his way back when his wandering tired him. An unusual sense of well-being buoyed him; he wasn’t sure if Morgan’s medicines deserved the credit, or if it was simply the magic of Faerie. Will paused in the atrium, in the mellow moonlight drifting through high windows and magical skylights, and nodded to the unmoving suits of armor flanking the relief-wrought doors. He wasn’t sure they were inhabited, but in the very least they felt alive. Felt alive, Master Shakespeare? Can you explain what precisely that means, for our academic interest? Well… …no.But he nodded anyway, and continued past, down the winding side corridor that would bring him to the library. A library worthy of a Cambridgeman’s glee, in Will’s admittedly under-experienced opinion.

  The light was better, candles that never seemed to drip or smoke ranged every few feet along the wall, and Will found the tall red cherry doors easily enough. They gleamed strangely in the candlelight as he pulled a taper from its sconce and fumbled for the crystal knob, pleased his hand didn’t shake. A dim strand of light crossed the floor as he eased the door; he slipped in and let it latch softly.

  “Good night?”

  “Master Shakespeare.” A pleased voice, a thrill of velvet that reminded him of the furry backs of fox moth caterpillars inching along a twig. Morgan le Fey looked up from reading, her light gilding one side of her face and casting the other into shadow. A folio whose illuminated leaves were shiny umber under the ink and gilt lay open before her; she held a thin glass rod in her right hand which she used, delicately, to turn the pages.

  “Your Highness.” He bowed, balancing his candle, careful to spatter no wax. The scent of paper and leather filled the library. “An unexpected pleasure.”

  “I haunt the place,” she said, laying her wand aside. “Sleepless? Too ill? I have herbs for that, too.”

  “Rather, I am too well to sleep, Your Highness,” he answered. “And I thank you for it.” As he came forward, he saw that the light gleaming over her shoulder was neither lamp nor candle, but what seemed a swarm of green and golden atomies hovering in midair. He tucked his candle into a wall sconce, well away from the ancient tome, and seated himself across from her in acquiescence to her gesture.

  She smiled. “I’m pleased to find I’m not the only one who seeks the dusty comfort of books when I am restless at night.”

  She did not behave in the manner he expected of Queens, and truth to be told he was restless; restless with a sort of longing that his own poetry and his sleepless exhaustion had reawakened in his breast. He ached with the need of it, instead of the pain that had haunted him so much of late. He licked his lips and looked down at her text.

  “What are you reading?” She wrapped her fingertips in her sleeve and turned the book so he co
uld see, but the thick hand-drawn letters defeated him. The illuminations told him it was an herbal, though, and he thought it one in verse. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Not quite so old as I am.” She smiled. Her near-black eyes caught sparks of light from her attendant atomies; they swirled about her hair like a tiara of jewels on invisible threads. Unbidden, Will thought of a line of Kit’s poetry

  ‘O, thou art fairer than the evening air

  Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.’

  And then, unbidden, a response and dark within that light; not so much a star herself. There’s a poem in that no, not a star, not so much a sun …

  Her calm voice broke his reverie. “I could grow accustomed to being looked upon so, Master Shakespeare.”

  He blushed, and blinked. “My lady is lovely,” he said, and blushed harder when she moved the priceless book aside and reached to take his hand. Her fingers were rough at the tips with callus, the hands shapely and long and the tendons plain against her skin as she turned his over to study the palm.

  “Have you ever had your fortune told, Master Shakespeare?”

  He bit his lip and shook his head. The dancing lights grew brighter, flitting like the fire-bugs that were supposed to inhabit the darkness of a New World country called Virginia. Her thumb traced the lines of his hand, and as she bent to study them her hair cascaded across his wrist. “The old women of the gipsy caravaneers practice an art handed down from ancient times, they say. They claim a man’s destiny is written in his hand, a predetermined fate.”

  “The Puritans agree,” Will said with a smile that hurt the corners of his mouth. “And the Greeks.”

  “And the Prometheans,” Morgan continued, without raising her eyes. “Their ideas are not so revolutionary as they believe. My history gives us prophecies of a different order: geas and fulfillment. You won’t have heard of them.

  “No, madam.” He watched, fascinated, as she stroked a deep crease beside the heel of his hand.

  “This is called Apollo’s. Tis said to indicate creativity and potential for greatness. Combined with the shape of your thumb, a fortune-teller would say that you are intuitive, passionate, intellectual. Quick of wit and great of talent.”