Ink and Steel pa-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  “I imagine the Pope hates him.”

  “Not as much as he hates Copernicus, I imagine.

  O, thou art fairer than the evening air

  Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars

  Kit laughed. “I should write you a poem. Something better than that.”

  “Better than Faustus?”

  “Christ wept, I hope I’ve improved.” Will earthed himself under the warm edge of Kit’s cloak, kissed him where his throat blended into his jaw, the sticky musk of the ocean rich on moist, salty skin.

  “Thou’rt all the poetry I need.”

  “Sweet liar.”

  “Sweeter when you know it cannot last.” Will’s voice shivered with his whisper.

  Kit’s answer was slow. “Christ. Damn me to Hell. Yes, Will. Tis sweet.” The old moon rose in the new moon’s arms. The rocks grew cool around them. Kit’s cloak concealed a multitude of sins. And over the water, something listened and understood.

  Act III, scene xiv

  And here upon my knees, striking the earth,

  I ban their souls to everlasting pains

  And extreme tortures of the fiery deep,

  That thus have dealt with me in my distress.

  CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, The Jew of Malta

  Kit rubbed a corner of his eye in the dimming room and thought of candles. He stretched against the back of his chair, his spine crackling, and stood a moment before a hesitant knock rattled the door. “Come!” He crossed to the fire to light a rush. The door swung open, revealing Murchaud leaning against its frame in a pose at once consciously arrogant and restlessly self-aware.

  “Christofer.” The prince flipped a stray curl behind his ear, an un-characteristically tentative gesture. “Art thou … ? Alone?”

  “Aye.” Kit touched his spill among the embers, then stood to apply the resultant flame to a lamp wick. “Come in.”

  Murchaud stepped onto the jewel-patterned carpet, cautious as a stag. Kit blew out the rushlight, adjusted the lamp, and fitted its chimney, carrying it to his table as a scent of char filled the room. It spilled golden light across his poems and paper, and Kit slid them aside until he found pipe and tobacco pouch among the clutter.

  “Filthy habit,” the Elf-knight said, latching the door. “I’d thought thee quit of it.”

  Kit turned to face Murchaud, tamping the pipe with his thumb. “I was.” He didn’t know how to explain that he woke from his dreams of late with the smell of tobacco and whiskey clinging to his skin, full of strange cravings nothing would assuage. He dipped a second spill down the chimney of the lamp and lit his pipe from it. Settling down on his stool again, he let the first breath of smoke drip down his chin.

  Murchaud leaned against the locked door and crossed his arms. “I came to wish thee well tomorrow.”

  “The Chiron? Thank you. Will needs your luck more than I do; my part is finished. He’ll be on the stage.”

  “Will,” Murchaud grimaced is with my mother tonight.”

  “In rehearsal first.”

  “I know. And so I came to thee. I expect thou planst to be with him after the play.”

  “So I had anticipated,” Kit answered slowly, cupping the warm bowl of his pipe in his hand. The embers had gone out from inattention: he reached for a rush. “He returns to London on All Saints Day.”

  Murchaud straightened away from the door. “And will your cruelty to me end when he is gone, my love?”

  Kit froze with the pipe between his teeth, the relit spill pressed to the weed within it. The poet forgot to draw; the flame flickered out and he laid pipe and burnt rush on a shallow pottery tray. “Cruel? To thee? As if I had the power.”

  “Thou goest to Morgan still, and dost hide it from thy mortal lover, who sports with her quite openly. And yet to me, who was more a friend to thee than ever my mother proved, thou wilt barely speak in passing.”

  Kit pushed his stool back and stood as the Elf-knight came to him. The room was growing chill; he thought absently of tending the fire. He lifted his chin to meet Murchaud’s gaze directly. “What couldst thou wish of me?”

  Murchaud’s fingers slid under Kit’s hair, caressing his neck. “Tell thou me, O Elf-knight with thy human lover,”

  “I’m not.”

  “what does he give thee that I cannot?” Murchaud’s breath was warm on Kit’s skin.

  Kit swallowed, and considered. “The Fae are very cold,” he said at last, hopelessly.

  “And mortals a flame we warm ourselves upon.”

  Kit turned his head to avoid the kiss, but did not pull away as Murchaud bowed his face against the poet’s throat. “I’ll be thine again after tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” Murchaud said. “I rather think thou wilt not.” There was grief in hiswords; so much pain that Kit shivered in reaction. “Why Morgan and not me?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Liar.” Murchaud breathed deep, as if fastening Kit’s scent in his memory, and stepped away unruffled, his pale eyes chill. “Is it vengeance upon thy poet, for not loving thee alone?”

  Kit shivered and shook his head. The words came strung on knotted wire: each one tore his throat. “Kissing thee does not hurt enough.”

  Murchaud chuckled, his hand on the door. “Half Fae already,” he said, and left Kit alone in the lamplight, unkissed.

  Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap

  To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

  Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,

  At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand!

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, from Sonnet 128

  Will poured golden wine into Morgan’s glass and then his own. It filled the fire-warmed air with a scent of summer, grape arbors, and clipped grass. He cupped the glass in both hands, leaning against Morgan’s chair, stretching his feet to the fire. “I’ll miss thee.” Without looking at her. “And thou me?”

  She leaned forward, knees pressing his shoulders, and took her glass from out his hand. Her lips brushed the top of his head; she sat back. “One becomes accustomed to loss.”

  “That is not an answer, my Queen.” The rug beneath him was soft, her fingers kind in his thinning hair. Fine ripples trembled as he raised the wine to his lips.

  “I will miss you. If it is important to you to be missed.”

  “To be missed? To be loved.”

  “You are loved.” Something in her voice reminded him of when she had read hispalm: an assurance like prophecy. “And shall be more loved still.”

  “By whom?”

  “One can never tell, until it is too late to do anything about it.” A light click told him she set her glass on a low table. Her fingers found his shoulders, sought deep into his tension. Do you regret this, “Master Poet?”

  “Regret leaving? Or regret Faerie?”

  “If we shadows have offended…”

  He laughed, and then her touch made him sigh. “It is rather like a dream. A dream of peace and healing. Is it your medicines or is it Faerie that mends me so well?”

  “Both,” Morgan answered. “Time stands still for thee here. And my herbwifery lends some relief. But when thou goest back to the world, thou wilt begin to die again.”

  “You still wish me to stay.”

  “Thou hast ten years. Perhaps as much as fifteen.” She bent and kissed his forehead, tilting his face up with a hand under his chin. “Go to him,” Morganle Fey whispered. Her lips brushed the heavy earring. He shivered. “Tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow is too late,” she said, and stood out of her chair. She stepped over Will lightly, her kilted skirts sweeping his shoulders. “Go now. Tell him to wear his boots and cloak tomorrow, and his sword.”

  Will pushed himself to his knees. “I had written something for you.”

  She stood facing the fire with squared shoulders and softened hands. “A sonnet?”

  “About your music.”

  “I do not need your poetry. It belongs to the mortal world. I have a poet of mine ow
n.”

  Silence. Will rose to his feet. The fire popped, scattering coals on thehearthstones; Morgan’s precisely applied shoe ended their escape. “Morgan.”

  “I have a poet of mine own,” she repeated. “If you are wise, you’ll go to him now; you have so little time left before I reclaim him.”

  The cruelty in her tone left him gasping. His lips shaped her name again, but that very breathlessness kept it mercifully silent. She stood before the fire and did not look at him. He turned and left her presence. The door of the room he shared with Kit was unlatched. Will pushed it open gently and found Kit bent over papers on their table. Kit’s table, Will thought as the poet looked up.

  “Forgotten something?”

  Will hoped he imagined the chill in Kit’s voice. He latched the door, breathing deep the aromas of wood smoke and cold tobacco.

  “Morgan’s finished with me: she couldn’t make me stay. You said that quill was too beautiful to use.”

  Kit glanced at the gorgeous alabaster feather in his hand. “I changed my mind. It writes well. You have a play tomorrow: come to bed.”

  “You re working.” But Will unfastened his doublet as he argued, struggling only a little with the golden buttons.

  “I can work in November.” Kit dropped the quill into jet-black ink and stood. He came around the table. “Will, I’m frightened.”

  “Frightened?”

  “I think,” He shook his head. “If you stayed in Faerie, love, you could live.”

  “I want to see my son again,” Will said quietly, knowing Kit would not argue the point. “That’s not what scares you.”

  Kit tugged the doublet from Will’s shoulder and took it to lay out to air. “Murchaud was here. And very fey.”

  “He is.”

  “No. Will, I think he’s going to the teind.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Will laid his hand against Kit’s cheek. The skin was cold and damp. Kit let the doublet drop on the floor and Will pulled him close, feeling Kit’s heart like a terrified sparrow trapped in the cage of his ribs. “I mean,” Kit said, “I think it was farewell. And he’ll be gone, and you’ll be gone.”

  I’ll write,” Will said. “You’ll visit.”

  Kit turned around and looked at him, unapproachably distant from inches away. “You’ll die. I’ll care for you. Morgan said she would have you back.”

  “I have no plans. To return to Morgan.”

  So they were lovers, then. Will laid his hand on Kit’s cheek. “I wonder who ended it.”

  “I misspoke.”

  “Take you back.”

  “I’ve worn her collar enough for one lifetime.” Kit shivered and drifted away, running his fingers inside the band of his ruff, disarraying the careful pleats. Abrupt gestures betraying annoyance, he untied it and tossed it on the chest. “Morgan is a fool.”

  The thing on Kit’s face approximated a smile, Will decided, but it wasn t, really. “Shakespeare is a bigger one,” he answered, and was glad Kit kissed him before he could compound that foolishness somehow.

  Act III, scene xv

  Hermia:

  Out, dog! out, cur! thou drivest me past the bounds

  Of maiden’s patience. Hast thou slain him, then?

  Henceforth be never number’d among men!

  O, once tell true, tell true, even for my sake!

  Durst thou have look’d upon him being awake,

  And hast thou kill’d him sleeping? O brave touch!

  Could not a worm, an adder, do so much?

  An adder did it; for with doubler tongue

  Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  Will’s role was small, Asklepios, and he’d written it so intentionally. After his own sad death, struck down by Zeus thunderbolt, the erstwhile physician scrubbed the paint from his face and made his way into the audience, seeking companionship. The revelers were masked and gowned as gorgeously as Will had ever seen; they bowed or curtseyed graciously or, pleasing him more, failed to, rapt in the performance as he walked among them, seeking Kit or Morgan. He found neither, but Puck’s small, twisted form beckoned among the window draperies, and Will went there. The sounds and scents of Faerie surrounded him; he sighed, settling into the window seat.“

  “Master Goodfellow, well met.”

  “Master Shakespeare, as well.” Spry as a goblin, Puck swung up the draperies and clung to them lightly, at a height from which to hold comfortable converse with a seated man. “They approve of your work.”

  “They seem to,” Will answered, over the hollow clatter of hooves as the centaur playing Chiron took the stage, remonstrating with the Gods over Asklepios death. “Kit and I put some magic of our own into the ending.”

  “When Prometheus takes Chiron’s immortality, to permit Chiron death I should think our enemies would find that more to their liking than our allies, Master Poet.”

  Will grinned and tilted his head to look Robin in the soft, goatlike eye.

  “Ah, but Prometheus dooms himself in doing so.”

  “Dooms to eternal torment,” Puck answered, nodding. “Clever. But surely outside the scope of the play?”

  “There is an epilogue.”

  Silence, and then Puck tittered a high fey giggle like a child. “Speaking of eternal torment Aye? What think you of the teind?”

  Will swallowed hard and looked away from the Puck, running his eyes once more across the crowd. Neither Kit, nor Morgan, nor Murchaud could be seen. “Kit thinks it will be Murchaud,” he said. “I imagine he is making his farewells.”

  “Think how glorious the pain will be. How deep, how lasting. There’s poetry in that.”

  “Pain?” Will hauled his legs up onto the window seat and hugged his knees. “Glorious pain? If you think pain is glorious, perhaps you have never known it practically.”

  “When you live as the Fey live, any sensation is precious.”

  “I see.”

  “Not yet.” Puck smiled. But you will”

  “I’ve had enough of prophecy,” Will said. He sighed and stretched and stood; Robin swung on the drape and hopped to Will’s shoulder, no more than a featherweight, holding Will’s ear with his long bony fingers.

  “Then don’t listen to it.” A jingle of bells, the tangling and untangling of improbable limbs. Puck shifted on the bones of Will’s shoulder and made himself as steady a place as any horseman well accustomed to the saddle. “Tis not Murchaud going to the teind tonight, Will Shakespeare. And a sacrifice gone willing to Hell buys not seven, but seven times seven years.”

  On the stage, Chiron was dying, beasts and mortals gathered close about. Will stopped and watched as the noble centaur went to his knees, a majestic fall. “How do you know?”

  “It is kept close secret Will,” the Puck said softly, “I’m the Queen’s Fool. I know everything . I am just not often privileged to speak on it.”

  “Then who will it be?”

  Crowds have a way of moving, of breathing, of falling silent at once as if they were some giant dreaming animal. Will looked up as the animal sighed and stretched and turned in its sleep, as it rolled and broke open along his lineof sight. A tingle ran up his skin; he felt the nail that Kit had given him grow hot in his sleeve. Sorcery? But the thought was lost as a drape blew back from the curtained shadows of a window embrasure like the one he had just left, one toward the back of the hall and away from the crowd gathered before the stage. Will, slowly walking, froze so abruptly that Robin clutched at his head in a most undignified manner.

  “Oh, Hell,” Will said, reaching out a hand blindly for balance. For Will recognized the figures intertwined within its moon-touched shelter, caught a kiss that seemed sheerest delight, the smaller all in black except his ragged cloak, his fair hair gleaming; the taller in a gown of palest green, her black hair tumbling over her lover’s hands like a living thing.

  “Kit,” Will said, crossing his hands over his belly as
if to press his vitals back inside. “Ah. No.” On his shoulder, Puck slid down, flexible as a squirrel, and threw both arms around Will’s neck. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Will mouthed. He was staring; the curtain fell back, mercifully, and he managed to turn and look away. The chorus took the stage for the epilogue. He raised his eyes. “You have no cause for sorrow, Master Goodfellow.”

  “Sorry I could not tell you sooner,” Puck said, as Will closed his ears on the savage poetry of the thing that he and Kit had created together. The words left a taste like vinegar in his mouth; if the floor were berushed over the soft-sheened marble, he would have spit the grit and savor of bitterness out.

  “It was hardly your place to tell a man his loves betrayed him.” Even as he said the words, Will tasted their hypocrisy. Puck slid down his shoulder. He wobbled, half realized he was sitting on a bench when Puck thrust wine into his hands. Will drank it greedily and put the goblet under the bench; his fingers itched to hurl it, hard, against the wall. “Oh, Robin. I’ve nothing to complain.”

  “You feel betrayed? Then why not sing it?”

  “Because,” Will said around the taste of ashes that the wine could not rinse from his tongue, “tis neither Kit nor Morgan who broke a bed-vow to a wedded wife, is it?”

  “You know he went back to her bed almost as soon as she took you into it.”

  Dear God in Hell.But Will kept enough control of his tongue not to say it. Then what did either one of them have to do with me for? Unless twas pity. Yes, pity. For poor, inept, sickly Will. How could a balding poet hope to content things out of legend.

  But Robin was still talking. “…and that’s not what I’m sorry for.” Hopelessness, and the void in his belly sharp-edged as a fresh-dug hole. His eyes burned. His knees would not support him when he tried to rise. Somewhere, Will thought he heard a bell pealing; Chiron resurrected bowed for the end of the play. And the cold voice Will recognized as his own aggrieved conscience: Say you deserved it not. Say Annie’s courage in the face of your misbehavior was nothing. Then what?

  Robin sucked his wide lips into his mouth so that every rosy trace of colorvanished from them. “Will,” he said. Murchaud isn’t the teind. Sir Christofer is.”