“How dear? I could take his place if I had to. But mayhap there’s somethin gelse…. I could pay you with a song.”
“Thine art might be enough to buy his freedom. Thy soul.”
“Mine art. All of it?”
Just that smile. The wings parted, shifted, opened. Lucifer stepped away half lovely swan-winged man, half vortex of light and shadow, and looked down, bowing his long aristocratic neck.
“What about my body?”
A gesture, as if the Devil reached out and pulled something from a table, although there was no table near him. He wheeled about, wings furled tight, their peaks reaching three foot or more over his head, their primaries brushing the floor. Still silent, he tossed the black thing that swung from his fingers at Kit. It sailed heavily though the air; Kit got his hands up in time and caught it, barking his fingertips. And almost dropped it, when he saw what he held.
Rough iron bands abraded his skin; if it were locked in place they would go across the top of his skull, under the chin, around the sides. Hinges made the thing to be opened. A padlock hung from the cheek-piece. The bit or mouthpiece was flat and broad, the size of a small woman’s palm, scattered with blades that would score his tongue and palate, worse if he was so foolish as to try to talk. It weighed a great deal.
“A scold’s bridle.”
Lucifer smiled, and as if the smile cast a shadow over him, seemed to change and darken. Kit found himself looking further up, into eyes he saw in his nightmares. Richard Baines. God help me.
“Holla,” the image said, his lips moving gently, “ye pampered Jades of Asia.”
Kit might have dropped the thing in his hands and run. But there was only abyss to run to, and his right eye showed him that same dancing twist of mocking light with the suggestion of wings behind it. And Will was here.
Somewhere.
“Father of lies,” Kit said. White feathers settled.
“Welcome to Hell, Christofer Marley. What wilt thou sell me for the freedom of thy friend?.”
“I…” He looked down at the instrument of torture in his hands, and remembered something a Faerie Queen had said, about mortal men and bindings. “If this is what it takes, Satan, I will do it. But I think I have something you would value more than a little sport to my torment.”
An arched eyebrow rose. The Devil tilted his head politely, waiting for Kit to continue.
“My name,” Kit said, and let the bridle fall. It vanished before it could clank on the stones. He wondered if it had ever existed. “I’ll sell you my name, for Will’s freedom.” He swallowed, but the Devil smiled.
“Done.” he answered promptly, leaving Kit to wonder if he had made a bad bargain indeed. “Thou art Christofer Marley nomore. And more, I tell thee it will be a long time indeed before thou art remembered for what thou hast been, and not what thine enemies proclaim thee. Thy trials are not over, in Faerie or the mortal realm.”
“How bad will it be?”
“Bad. But all is illusion and memory. Thee, and me. God, and the world. Faerie and Hell.”
Kit turned and walked to the edge of that vanishing tile of stone, floating in an infinite absence. Where are the damned? he asked, which was not what he had intended to ask at all. The words seemed to surround Kit, floating on the air like the toll of the bell, the fumes of the snuffed candle that should accompany them.
“Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing, in Heaven and on earth, we deprive Christofer Marley himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance, and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.”
“Is that what thou didst expect?” Satan asked. “Eternal fire, and the demons of Hell forking souls into furnaces like so much coke for burning?”
“No. Ridiculous, on the face of it. But…”
“The damned are all around thee.”
“Those creatures on the glassy plain. Lost creatures, aye. But I saw I see no souls in torment, Father of lies.”
“Seest thou not thyself? Seest thou not Satan and his angels, then?”
“Am I damned? I feel no fire upon my skin, or on my soul.”
“Fire cannot kiss thy soul, who was Christofer Marley. Such conceits are for simpler hearts than thine. Thou art in Hell, and have been every day of thy life since thy God abandoned thee in a little room in France. And thou, brave soul, reconstructed Him into a God that could love thee. But thou hast not the power to change God.”
Kit closed his eyes, without turning. He felt the cup of a warm wing against his shoulder, and knew Satan came to stand beside him. “Haven’t I?”
“Perhaps thou art more powerful than I.” Lucifer admitted, and Kit studied his profile. Leander. Adonis. Apollo. His body straight as Circe’s wand. Eyes as blue as Heaven looked on the darkness, unflinching, and then turned to regard Kit from beneath lashes frosted in gold.
“I have not succeeded. Is it not what children wish, a father’s acceptance? His love?”
“Yes,” Kit said, into a hollowness that echoed. “If Hell is not torment,” he asked, knowing the answer, “then what is Hell?” If I fell, would he come after me? On those white, white wings? Or would I fall forever, like…
Kit stepped away from the abyss, retreated to the center. Like him.
“Sweet child.” Lucifer said. And then said what Kit had always known he would. “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Thinkst thou that I that saw the face of God, and tasted the eternal joys of heaven am not tormented with ten thousand hells, In being deprived of everlasting bliss? O Faustus leave these frivolous demands, which strikes a terror to my fainting soul.” Kit’s own words, given into the mouth of a seductive devil. Mephostophilis. And again, the angel smiled. “Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place. But where we are is hell, And where hell is there must we ever be. And to be short, when all the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified, All places shall be hell that is not heaven.”
That agony in his chest must be his inability to breathe, Kit thought. The burning in his eyes, the taint of Hell.
“O child.” Lucifer said into Kit’s silence, “how canst thou deny what thou thyself hast written, and known to be Truth as it was revealed to thee?.”
Kit scrubbed his hands on his breeches, as if to remove some rusty stain. He tried to ignore the Devil circling, wings fallen into expansion like a courting hawk’s, but Lucifer caught his wrists and drew him close, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. “Hell,” he said, “is where God is not.”
I am damned.His knees rattled. The Devil’s strength held him up. “Thou art as God made thee.” Wry, startling humor. “As are we all.”
“What could such as you want with such as me? “We have our reasons. Thou livest with demons that fright thee more than I do, and so for that which thou art as much as that which thou dost carry inside thee, as I have healed thy scars, I will give thee the power to destroy thine enemies.”
“That which thou dost carry inside thee?”
“Power.”
“How?”
“Why,” the Devil answered, his fingers dimpling Kit’s skin, “Be thou a warlock, who was Christofer Marley. I shall make of thee a witch, as I have bewitched men before thee. As thou hast said … Tis only sodomy.”
“Only.” But he tasted something on the word. Revenge. “Lover.” the Devil whispered. “Brother. Thou givest me that only which isalready mine.”
Kit closed his eyes on the glorious eyes,
the broad white wings, the twist of fire and purity that was the Prince of God’s Angels, and whispered yes. Lucifer smiled, and this kiss tasting of whiskey and smoke began with Kit’s lips and ended there after an exploratory interval, during which clothing vanished by magic under the touch of caressing hands. Kit pressed both palms to the fallen angel’s smooth-muscled back, clawing fingers digging for purchase against the base of those wings. Lucifer’s forked tongue stopped his mouth as effectively as the scold’s bridle would have, and Kit didn’t care; the angel’s arms clipped and embraced him, lifting him bodily, cradling him against the perfect strength of a chest that might have been carved of warm white marble by some Grecian master. The angel knelt, never breaking the kiss, wings fanning wide for balance, their breeze pulling soft fingers through Kit’s hair as Lucifer drew him down to straddle white thighs. Powerful shoulders, deep-rooted muscle nothing like a man’s flexed under Kit’s fingers, sliding beneath soft skin and slick feathers. Kit broke the breathlessness of the kiss to gasp sharply. With one hand he stroked the angel’s belly, wrapped the silken member that dented the flesh of his thigh. The angel shuddered again, as he had when Kit touched his wing. Lucifer drew back, glanced down, and smiled in intimate provocation. Kit’s loins ached as if the regard were a caress.
“Come unto me.” The Devil’s hands clenched on his flanks, lifting him without effort, indenting flesh and coaxing him open. Soft hands, strong. Kit winced in anticipation, wrapped his arms around Lucifer’s neck to bear his weight, for all it seemed as nothing to the angel. Witchcraft,he thought, how cunning, how quaint.A silent chuckle shivered his belly, breath becoming an expectant whimper as Kit braced himself for a pain that never arrived. If He hurts you, silly boy, it will not be out of carelessness
It came not as a thrust, or as the lingering accommodation that gentleness had almost seduced Kit into expecting. But one massive downsweep of those incredible wings hurled them upright one, and then another, as the pale perfect mouth found Kit’s again and Lucifer stood in a fluid arc, and Kit was pierced.
“Christ,” Kit whispered, impassioned, hearing his own awe and fear, disbelief thick in his voice.
“Tis not Christ thou wilt bear on thy back.” Amusement, wryness. Wrathful irony, almost a lover’s teasing. Lucifer’s hair tumbled down around Kit’s face, bearing his smoky, bitter, musky scent.
This is not real. This is not happening. There is no Devil. There is no Hell. God is love, and God judges not what is done in love Christ, Christ, Christ… . Rapt. Speaking in tongues. Possessed. Yes, possessed.
“God.” Warm arms and wings supported him. “God judges. And He is not pleased with His creation, for it can never echo His perfection and His will. He does not wish thy love. He commands thine obedience and fear. The lord thy God i sa jealous God, and thou wilt have no Gods before him.”
Bitterness? Sorrow? Oh, but that mouth on his throat, on his breast. The effortless puissance bearing him up. A decade and more of rationalization stripped away by that calm, gentle voice in his mind. Passion on him again, divine will, and remembering the agony that had come with the realization that whatever God had made of Christofer Marley, that Marley was a thing whose love the God of the Church would never return. A calling. The craving they named vocation. Put away now with other childish things. Raped away from God, and So this is what Leda felt, which made him giggle. Kit leaned into the embrace, trusting himself to those powerful arms, body decisive while his heart struggled and tore itself in his breast.
“No Gods before Him. Not even love. To love God completely, thou must set aside all others.” The Devil moved in Kit, and Kit wept and clung. “Christ the Redeemer.”
“God’s Redeemer, perhaps.”
“Oh God, forgive me.”
“First He would have to forgive Himself. And that, I assure thee, he will not.”
“Father of lies. Oh, Christ, Christ, Christ.”
Silent laughter. “Is that the name thou chooseth for me?.” A lingering caress. “Tis sweet, isn’t it, child?.” ‘Did you like it, puss?’ But even that pain was so far buried that Kit had no answer, no speech, no reason; was too far lost for anything more eloquent than whimpered sacrilege. Died blaspheming,he thought, and laughed out loud, and cursed again.
Act III, scene xx
The Prince of darkness is a Gentleman.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, King Lear
Will dug all ten fingers to the knuckles into friable loam, sand gritting under his nails, leaning the weight of his shoulders behind it. The earth was black as Faerie ink; he unearthed another turnip and rubbed crumbles between his hands. Neither the resin of pine needles nor the bitter sweetness of the fertile earth soothed the ache in his breast, as sharp as it had ever been for all he’d carved the notches of too many winters to count at a glance on both doorposts of the cottage. It seemed the ever-freshness of his grief was one of Hell’s many charms. Or perhaps it was simply being left alone with it; no one to speak to but the self-murdering trees, no way to express his soul except through the quill and paper Lucifer had left him.
The ink which stayed ever fresh in the horn, for all Will would not set a pen into it. ‘This is Hell, nor am I out of it.’ He thought perhaps he would have preferred the rack, the irons, to the slow wearing of days on his will like water on stone. Irons indeed: then I must be an iron Will, and let me rust shut.
He stood, hands trembling now the work was done, and picked his turnips up. The irons. Aye, which led him to think of Kit’s smooth chest, and the mark etched there that Will’s palm could just cover, if he angled it properly. The irons, indeed. And the irony: when he troubled himself to count, fitting his shaking hands into the notches he had carved in the posts beside the peeling blue-gray door, Will knew that Annie must be gone by now, Susanna and Judith quite possibly grandmothers, Elizabeth cold in her grave and Mary Poley and Richard Burbage and thank Christ Robert Poley and Richard Baines and that thrice-cursed old bastard Edward de Vere as well.
The years slipped by like seasons; the seasons slipped by like weeks; the weeks slipped by like water. And still Will ate turnips and snared rabbits and lived (if it was living) among the quiet of the trees who had gotten what they wanted and perhaps found it less than satisfying and longed for someone to speak to. Someone to hold. Somewhere, he thought, carrying his turnips into the cottage, somewhere Kit is alive. And Morgan. My gentle betrayers. Oh, unkind, William. He laid the turnips on the low table, recalling the glow of banked embers, a young man’s plea. What do you take your Marley for? He had a knife and a hatchet; the rhythm of the words came to him as he worked, the thud of metal on a stump cut into a butcher’s block, the verse cold and lovely as a winter freeze among his lonely pines. That you were once unkind besuits me now no, befriends. That you were once unkind befriends me now. Once unlike yourself, once untrue, once unfair. Unkind. Aye. There under the pines, under the arching branches of dead souls slain by their own pettiness, their own spite, their own grief and helplessness and pain.
Pines. How aptly named. Oak, he hate.
He would not think on it. If he thought, he would think on vengeance. He would think on Kit, immortal, and on Annie, now surely dead. If he thought, he would think on fifty years alone in a forest without end. He would think on how Lucifer wanted him to write, and how he would not do what Lucifer willed of him. How he would not pay the price, even though he knew, somehow, if he did, his horizons would broaden. That the Devil would reward Will if Will gave up that piece of himself. Of his soul. If he served. He would think on how there was someone left alive to take his vengeance for Hamnet on, someone in Faerie, and how poetry was the only tool he had to do it. He would not think on it, because he would not think on any of those things. His knife made cubes of the turnips, cubes of the rabbit. He browned them in the fat left from a pheasant and added an onion from the braid on the wall. Housewifely tasks; he’d learned them all well. And for that sorrow, which I then did feel, / Needs must I under my transgression bow
The word
s came; he could not stop them. They chewed at his heart, another pain among many. They gnawed at his breast, bosom serpents, venomed worms. He had no need to busy himself so; the pantry would fill on its own, the garden would unweed itself. Will himself had no need, it seemed, to eat unless the desire took him, although his hands did tremble with his illness when he had no task to set them to. Idle hands are the Devil’s playground. Idle hands had a tendency to stray to the well-appointed desk, to lift the white pen that was a twin to the one Kit had found under the covers of his bed. Unless my nerves were brass or hammer’d steel. For if you were by my unkindness shaken…
Perfect words. Better than anything, Will knew, anything he had written before. As I by yours, you’ve passed a hell of time; / And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken / To weigh how once I suffered in your crime. Kit was alive. Somewhere. In Faerie. And his crime was ever less than Will’s; Kit had had no vow of marriage to forswear. Kit had made no promise of fidelity at all. Worse, worse. Kit had offered, and Will had refused him. Only to react like a kicked whelp when he discovered that Kit had believed what Will had told him. Kit, who was alive. Kit who would always be alive. As alive as the Fae who had killed Will’s only son. Alive and grieving. O! that our night of woe might have remembered / My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits, / And soon to you, as you to me, then tendered / The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!
Will added well water to the stewpot, crumbled rosemary, stirred with a long peeled stick. Not pine; he’d learned the flavors of lingering resins in the wood the unpleasant way. Oak. For all he would have liked to burn it. Annie. I hope Kit found you. I hope he told you what became of me. He propped a plate across the lid of the stewpot, left a little gap, banked the coals about the iron bottom. He glanced at his desk, at the fine already-cut leaves of paper, at the elegant pens. At dust that covered all. He glanced at the door, at the notches whittled bright and new in the posts, the oldest ones silvering to match the weathered texture of the beams. He closed his eyes and inhaled the savor of garlic and onions and rosemary bubbling over the fire. He turned in the center of the room, the soft light of evening slipping in through opened shutters, the dark streaks of loam on the thighs of his breeches, the strange incongruity of the clock on the rough-hewn mantel with its scroll-worked hands for seconds, minutes, days, months, years.
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