Текст книги "Hell and Earth"
Автор книги: Elizabeth Bear
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Or not‑Marley, as it were.
The Fae were in awe of him, mortal man in a journeyman bard’s cloak who had gone to Hell in pursuit of his mortal lover–and brought them both back out again, alive and to all appearances whole, no matter how much a lie that might be. “Your Highness.” Kit bowed low before the Mebd, scraping his boot on the floor. The only sound it made was the rustle of rushes: damned elf‑boots.
The Queen of Faeries smiled and inclined her head. She seemed drawn, her rose‑petal skin pinched beside her eyes, and as if she–always willow‑slender–grew thin.
“Prince Murchaud,” Kit said, with a bow almost as low. Murchaud favored him with a sideways glance, and nodded to the empty chair at his left hand. Kit circled the table with some trepidation to take it, not allayed when Murchaud laid a buttered roll on his trencher and served Kit with his own hands.
Kit picked idly at the roast laid before him, trying to find his appetite again. “Thank you, my Prince.”
Murchaud laid a hand half over Kit’s. A carefully casual gesture, and Kit would not shame him in public by flinching away as if struck. “Kit,” he said, tilting his head to hide his lips against Kit’s hair. “I am not sorry I tried to prevent thee going, love. But nor am I sorry thou art home and safe; I did not lie when I said I cared for thee. Can we not be friends at least, if thou canst abide not my closer company? ”
“Aye,” Kit found himself answering, and then halted. “Tis not thee,” he said, as something in Murchaud’s tone ripped him to honesty. “I would fain – ”
“Aye?” Murchaud’s voice, and close and tight.
Kit bowed his head over his hands, and stifled a chuckle at the image of saying grace over fey victuals. He stole a sideways glance at Murchaud’s pale, intense blue eyes, the midnight coils of his hair, the elegant line of his nose, the faint sequined glitter of magic behind it. “Thou didst seek to protect me,” Kit said.
“I did wonder when thou wouldst notice.”
“And,” Kit continued, unperturbed, “I might… call thee friend. An thou wouldst permit it.”
Murchaud drew a breath. “Is’t so bad, Kit?”
“‘Tis worse,” Kit said, and busied himself with his bread and beef. A little later he looked up, and waited for the quiet conversation between the Mebd and Murchaud to flag. He spoke when it did, knowing the Mebd could hear him as well as the Prince. “I have not been about my duties – ”
“Thou’rt absolved,” the Prince answered, absently.
“Nay,” Kit said, still wondering at the words that seemed so inevitable as they passed his lips. “‘Tis time I accepted my place, here in Faerie. ‘Tis time I chose a side.”
Kit missed Amaranth leaving the hall by a few moments, and hurried his step as he followed the flicker of her tail through cool, sunlit corridors. Her progression was stately enough; he caught her up by the doors to a balcony overlooking the rose garden. “Lady Amaranth.”
“Sir Poet? How may I be of service?” She turned from the waist, her long body twisting like a ribbon, and extended a cold hand in welcome.
He bowed over it and mimed a kiss. Her chuckle sounded as if it rose the length of her in bubbles. “I had hoped you might assist me in finding a book. Some information on an angel–I think an angel, by his name. And perhaps a very old Bible.”
“In Faerie?” She drew her hand back as he straightened, and gestured him to accompany her. Not to the gardens after all, but down the corridor and back toward the library where he had spent the morning. “A Bible? New Testament and Old? Apocrypha? I might have one of those. How old?”
“Whatever you have. And as old as possible,” Kit answered.
Amaranth laughed. “Read you Aramaic?”
“A little Hebrew,” he admitted. “Greek would be better.”
She shrugged fluidly, dropping her body to a merely human height to grasp the handle of the library door and twist it open. “I can teach you a spell ‘twill render tongues –human and otherwise – comprehensible to thee. It can be done with music also, now thou art both bard and warlock, but the bardic spell lasts only as long as the song.”
“Rumors fly, I see,” Kit said. He followed Amaranth’s train into the room and turned to shut the door behind them. She draped a coil of herself over a massive dark wood table with legs as thick as Kit’s thigh; Kit hopped up on the table opposite, hugging a knee.
“Some of us see more than others,” Amaranth said. “And you came back from Hell and an interview with Satan with mismatched eyes. Tell me, Christofer –how look I to thee, now?”
“A bottomless sea in moonlight. Are mine eyes mismatched?” She smiled, her hair writhing about her head. “You have not looked in a mirror since you came back from Hell, I see – ” How could I? There are no mirrors in Faerie.”
“That is a difficulty.” She slid from the table edge like a fall of silk and crawled off among the rows of bookshelves. “I shall return,” she said. “Take your ease.”
Kit obeyed her, listening to the rustle of her scales over stone and carpet as she searched the shelves. “And so you will teach me more magic, Lady Amaranth? To what end?”
The room smelled of serpent’s musk and dried autumn leaves. Kit breathed deeply. Her voice drifted back, muffled as if the paper and leather absorbed its tones. “Fondness for thee and thy mortal poet are not answer enough?”
“And I should trust a Fae’s fondness?” He lay back on the weighty table and looked up at the gilt plaster relief netting the ceiling, letting his feet dangle over the edge.
“I’m not a Faerie,” Amaranth reminded him, over the sound of sliding books and rustling pages. “And just as happy not to be. William told me before he left that he thought the Fae might be responsible for the murder of his son.”
“More than thought. Had on good authority–”
“Aye.” The lamia sneezed, a sharp and diminishing hiss. “Did he tell you the culprits, then?”
Kit shook his head. “He did not say he knew them. I had assumed whomever it is who supports Baines and Essex’s faction of Prometheus, if they are still allies.”
“You know,” she said, emerging from behind a monumental book‑case with a black, leathery tome resting on the flat palms of her hands, “the spell I shall teach you can also be used to talk to trees. If the trees are forthcoming.”
“And if they’re not?”
“Many a wood hates man for wrongs wronged in centuries past.” Noncommittally. “Men generally win, when they go forearmed to deal with trees. Will you talk to Geoffrey, then?”
Why should I care to talk to trees?“I had meant to ask you if you knew where he was to be found,” Kit said, sitting up. “Why this sudden interest in politics, Lady?”
“Oh,” she answered, tipping the dust‑stippled Bible into his hands with an amused hiss. Her hair darted forward, every black eye bright with curiosity. “I care not for politics.”
“Then what is your interest?”
She shrugged. “Snakes are always interested in mysteries,” she said. “And Mehiel is well‑enough known. You can no doubt find him easily when you do return to London to speak with your friends. Now –about that spell – ”
Forty‑five minutes later, Kit was halfway up the stairs, holding the fragile old Greek Bible reverently in both hands, when he realized that wherever Amaranth had gotten the name Mehiel,it wasn’t from Kit’s lips at all.
Act IV, scene iii
If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for
thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
thou shalt not escape calumny.
–William Shakespeare, Hamlet,Act III, scene i
In January of 1599, Edmund Spenser was buried under the towering pale vaults of Westminster Abbey alongside England’s greatest poets – save Marley,Will thought uncharitably, blowing on his reddened fingers. As if stung by the whispers of his criminal neglect of Spenser in the hour of his need, the Earl of Essex paid for an elaborate funeral, which the Queen herself attended. And eight of the poet’s most renowned fellows carried the body down the memorial‑cluttered aisle and laid it into a cold hole in the stones beside the grave of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Elizabeth slumped heavily in a cushioned chair as if she could not stand through the burial, and her courtiers clustered about her. She turned as the prayers ended and the mourners moved forward, a still‑regal gesture, and caught the eye of Shakespeare upon her. And Will, standing a little apart from Chapman, Jonson, Fletcher, and the rest of the small band of poets and playmakers hurling flowers and pens into Spenser’s open grave– and how our number is lessened from what it was ten years ago … and why did I never stop to wonder at that before?–saw her lift one elegiac hand and beckon him.
He came forward, stepping past the crowded graveside, and shakily genuflected before the Queen. Long‑faced Essex stood behind her, all in white with his wooly beard oiled into ringlets, and the ascetic Sir Robert Cecil stood at her right hand. The Queen acknowledged Will and gestured him to rise; Sir Robert’s eyes asked a question over her shoulder, and Will met them, inclining his chin in a nod. We’ll speak later, my lord.
Before his sojourn in Faerie, and then Hell, Will and Thomas Walsingham had arranged to plant counterfeit coins in the home of Richard Baines, Promethean and mortal enemy of Will’s faction. Will wondered what Tom had told Sir Robert about their ill‑fated attempt at reverse burglary. Add Tom to the list of people I must make time to speak with, and sooner than tomorrow.“Highness,” Will said, and inclined his head again.
“Master Shakespeare.” Elizabeth, swaddled in furs against the cold, leaned back in her chair rather than sitting stiffly upright under the weight of her massive tire. Her cheeks were hollow under the fine high line of her bones, and her wrists seemed fragile as twigs and wire below the heavy jeweled points of her sleeves. She tilted her head to Sir Robert and then to Essex; both men moved back, withdrawing without seeming to. “We missed your presence in our revels this winter.”
“I missed as well the privilege of performing for Your Highness,” he said. “I was – ”
A small pursing of her painted lips might have been a smile. “In attendance upon our sister Queen. Aye, and we know it. We trust we may rely upon your presence in our court for Lady’s Day – ”
“The New Year? Madam, I would be honored beyond words.”
“Wilt have a new play for us, then?” Her eyes flickered past Will’s shoulder, and her mouth twisted to one side. It could have been distaste or amusement for whatever she saw; her eyes would not give him enough to say and he could not in politeness turn to see what she had deigned to acknowledge.
“It will be as Your Highness wishes.” He looked into her sharp, averted eyes, and pushed back a memory of Morgan. Nipping kisses and temerity, and he was shocked to suddenly see Elizabeth – Gloriana– as a woman, a lover, and haunted by love. Has she ever been kissed like that?And then another thought, of Edward de Vere and his trust in his immunity.
She probably beheaded de Vere’s father,Will realized, half his mind on history. Had she ever loved where she has not had to kill?“A comedy or a tragedy? Or a history, my Queen?”
Her eyes came to his face again, and she opened her fan with a rustle of lace, but did not stir the air with it. “We are weary of history, poet. Give us a comedy.”
As you like it,he thought, and inclined his head with its treacherous tendency to nod, and folded his shaking hands. “Your Highness, I would beg a favor of you –”
His voice trailed off at her expression. She chuckled, and it sounded as if it hurt her. “A favor, Master Shakespeare?”
“Aye – ” He swallowed, bowed again. “I have it in my heart to make a poetical translation, a new edition of the Bible, with great and glorious words to uphold the great and glorious Church of England– ”
“And there is something amiss with the Bible as we use it?” She turned her head and caught Sir Robert’s eye; he limped closer. Will caught the sparkle of her humor in the gesture, and decided to risk a joke. “It could be better poetry.”
He caught his breath when she looked back at him, gray eyes hard over the narrow, imperious arch of her nose. And then the corners of those eyes crinkled under her white‑lead mask, and she looked up at Sir Robert. “Robin, my Elf, how are we predisposed to new translations of the Bible?”
Sir Robert rose from his bow to regard the Queen, and then glanced at Will. “Surely we have all we need, Your Highness – ” “Aye,” she said. “‘Tis as we believed. We’d rather have plays of thee, Master Shakespeare.”
Will bowed very low, aware of Sir Robert’s eyes measuring him. “You forbid it, Your Majesty?”
“We do,” she agreed, her voice low and sweet. She extended her hand to Sir Robert, who helped her from her chair. Will did not miss how white her knuckles seemed on the arm as she pushed herself to her feet. “We trust we will have the pleasure of thy company for Lady Day, then, and that of thy Company.” She smiled, pleased at her pun.
“An it please Your Majesty–” He held his genuflection until the Queen moved away, her ermine trailing her like the wings of some vast white bird, Sir Robert in his austere black attending like a gaunt‑cheeked raven and Essex following a few steps behind.
Well, that could have gone better.Will stood, trembling more than he liked, and turned over his shoulder to see if he could make out what had caught his Queen’s attention. The poets had withdrawn from the graveside, and most of them dispersed, although Will saw Ben’s tall shape bent down to spindly crook‑toothed little Tom Nashe further down the eastern aisle. And then a flicker of movement by the graveside drew his gaze, and Will focused his attention more plainly on the shadows between the statues there.
A whirl of color, patches like autumn leaves tossed in a wind, and when Will squinted just right, knowing what he was looking for, he could make out a slender man huddled under a black velvet hood, his shoulders aswirl with a cloak that caught the light through the leaded windows in all colors and none. When Will looked at him directly, he seemed to fade into transparency and shadows.
“Kit,” he said softly, coming up behind the sorcerer. “I should have known you’d come.”
The black hood lifted and tilted to encompass Will, and he caught the glitter of Kit’s dark eyes. “Pity about this,” he said, and with ritual solemnity he held out his right hand and let something fall into Spenser’s grave. It caught the light, shining, and spun like a thistle seed as it fell; a white, white feather, the tip stained with ink and cut as a quill.
A feather from the Devil’s wing.
“I know what that is,” Will said softly. “Edmund might not appreciate the symbolism, though.”
Kit shrugged, stepping away from the grave. “I’ve all the gifts I need of that one, I think. He’s got no claim on my poetry, and I shall offer him none.”
“Wise Kit,” Will said, falling into step beside him. “Didst come to London only for the funeral?”
“Nay…” A sigh. “To see thee, and ask of thee a question. And ask one of a priest as well.”
“A priest?” Will swallowed worry.
“Oh, ‘tis nothing. A name I heard, the name of an angel. I wondered who in God’s creation he might be. No, I wanted to speak to thee of thy son Hamnet – ”
“Ah, Kit.” Unexpected. Will glanced over his shoulder at Spenser’s grave, and swallowed. Sharp tears suddenly stung his eyes. “That pain is – ”
“Aye.” Kit clapped Will on the shoulder, and Will looked up, surprised by the contact, and then sighed as Kit abruptly dropped his hand, his fingers writhing as if he’d touched something foul. Since the Devil, human contact hurt him.
He’s trying.Will forced his tongue to stillness until he could say, “Lucifer tried to cast blame on the Faeries.”
“Which Faeries?”
Will stopped walking and turned to meet Kit’s gentle, measuring gaze. “Those that love not the Mebd, he said. Nor Gloriana. Didst think to root them out for me, Kit?”
“I am tasked to root them out for the Prince,” Kit answered, fussing with his well‑cleaned fingernails. “We have sought them in Faerie a half decade now, and I could hope they revealed themselves somehow here. Were less cautious, or – ”
Will shrugged, and saw Kit watching the trembling of his hands, the nodding of his head out of the corner of his eye. “All I know – ” Will swallowed and tried again. “All I know, ‘twas Lucifer told me the oaks murdered my boy. Faerie oaks.”
Kit looked up, startled, something yellow as topaz gleaming in the smoky quartz of his right eye. He quoted a rhyme Will would as soon not hear again. “Oak, he hate– Damme, Will. What thou toldst me now, hast told any other? Annie? Amaranth? Anyone?”
The quick answer was easy, but Kit’s intensity caused him to pause and think through the past months. “No,” Will said, after several seconds dripped by. “Not a one, but for thee.”
Kit reached up as if to run a hand through his curls and laughed when he touched the black velvet of his hood instead. “Amaranth told me to talk to the trees. She knows more than she ever speaks, that one.”
“Aye,” Will said, worry blossoming dark in his heart. “And I’ll lose no other piece of my soul to a witch‑hearted tree – ”
“Peace, Will.” He saw the twitch of Kit’s hand toward his arm, saw it fall back among the folds of Kit’s bright, shifting cloak. “I’ll come to no harm. Must do this thing in any case: wilt trust thy vengeance to thine Elf‑knight, love?”
It hurt, the fear. But Will saw the promise on Kit’s face, and nodded nonetheless, and remembered something that Kit should know, that might link one group of enemies to another. “Robert Poley. Kit, Poley was in Stratford when Hamnet died. I thought he’d come to threaten me – ”
“Will? What are you doing, standing muttering in corners to yourself– ” Ben Jonson’s big hand clutched Will’s shoulder, turned him half around. Will put up a hand to cover Ben’s and saw his pupils widen. “I beg your pardon, sir,” Ben said to Kit, pulling the hand back to rub his eyes. “I did not see you there in the shadows.”
“By all means,” Kit said, his voice dangerously soft as he drew his cloak about him.
Ben glanced at Will and at the door. Will shook his head. “The Queen said no.”
“Damn,” Kit said, in unison with Ben. “How could she … ?”
“Who is this fellow, Will?” Ben’s hand on Will’s shoulder again, possessive, and Kit’s eyes almost glowed in the shadows of his hood. Who is this fellow to know so much of our affairs?
Oh, this it not how I would have chosen to handle this.“Kit Marley,” Will said. “Meet Ben Jonson. Ben, this is Christofer “ And God ha’ mercy on my soul.
“Please. Call me Merlin,” Kit said, his face very still, and Will knew at once that he had made a mistake. A very bad mistake indeed. Both in introducing Kit first to Ben, and more, in letting Ben lay that companionable hand on his shoulder in Kit’s view.
“Marlowe?” Ben blinked. “The poet.”
“The dead one,” Kit said irritably. “Aye.” And moved along before Ben could react. “And your fellow conspirator, though I see Will has informed you not. So. No dispensation for our Bible. Damme. Again.”
“That’s fine,” Ben answered, after a moment of slow consideration in which he apparently decided to deal with supernatural manifestations some other day. “We’ll write it anyway.”
“Against the Queen’s word?” Will shook his head.
Ben dismissed it with a gesture, and spoke without much lowering his voice. “She won’t be Queen forever, Will.”
Act IV, scene iv
Marriage is but a ceremonial toy;
If thou lovest me, think no more on it.
– Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act II, scene i
Such a small grave, neatly tended, evergreen branches laid atop the snow and the marker swept carefully clean. Two or three sets of footsteps; Kit couldn’t be sure. He crouched in the snow beside it and tugged his glove off, touched the frozen needles of a pine branch, the soft bow of a red velvet ribbon not yet faded by the wet and the sun. “Merry Christmas, little man.”
He sat back on his heels, the leathern bag over his shoulder almost overbalancing him, and glanced around the churchyard. The horizon already glowed orange with winter’s early sunset. Unobserved, he decided, and quickly freed the bit of ribbon from the greenery. He folded it inside the palm of his glove; the edges of the wet cloth itched and made a splotch on gray kidskin.
I’m sorry, lad. If anything, ‘twas my fault, what befell thee, and not thy sire’s. And a measure of Will’s kindness that for all he could have blamed me for every ill that’s touched his life since Sir Francis dragged him into this unholy mess, he never held me responsible for a bit of it.
Well, I did nearly put his eye out with a hot poker trying to reason with him– Kit shook his head as he stood, shaking his cloak to snap the snow from the hem. “Bloody hell.” So it’s Robert Poley and the Fae, is’t? Well. One more blood debt for Robert Poley. One more shouldn’t bother him a little.
Kit’s hand clenched around the bit of ribbon. Pity I can only cut his heart out once.
It wasn’t much work to find the New Place, as Will’s grand house was called. “The playmaker’s done well for himself,” Kit said, pausing on the roadway and looking up at the five peaked gables, the smoke drifting lazily from several of the chimneys. He paused, scuffing his feet on the frozen earth. Come, Kit. Put a bold face on it–
He squared his shoulders and stepped up to the door, tapping squarely. It opened a moment later, so promptly that someone must have seen him standing on the road. He hoped he’d looked like a man considering if he had the right house, only.
The dark‑haired girl within might have seen fourteen winters, or fifteen. Kit bowed as low as he would to any lady of the Mebd’s shining court, and swept his hat off too, making a flourish with his patchworked cloak. “You must be Mistress Judith,” he said. “And as lovely as your father described–”
“He said no such thing !” she said, and stepped forward to block the door. “And who are you, you fabulous tatterdemalion, to pretend to such a gallant tongue?”
Kit straightened and let his cloak drop in natural folds. The girl’s eyes sparkled: she knew her advantage, and Kit rather thought the tart‑tongued wench would have him twisted around her finger in a moment. “I am expected, I hope,” he said. “My friend Master Shakespeare said he would send word ahead of my visit, and that I might be assured of my welcome here. I see he underreported the sweetness of his daughters’ speech – ”
“Did he say so?”
“That he underreported your sweetness? Nay–
“Nay, that you could be assured of your welcome here.” She cocked her head back, her black hair spilling over her shoulders, and stared up at him. Kit bit his lip: her eyes were the same dark blue as her father’s, and made him shiver.
“Judith? Judith, if thou wishest to warm the out‑doors, build a fire behind the stable – ” Annie Shakespeare paused in the doorway, her faded eyes narrowing at the corners when she caught sight of Kit standing on the path. He waited while she examined him from boots to hair. A thoughtful moment, until she nodded and tugged Judith out of the doorway. The braided ribbon around Mistress Shakespeare’s neck caught Kit’s eye; he smiled in spite of himself, bitter and sweet. And joy you in it, Will.
“Welcome, Master Marlin.” After the country fashion, she kissed him in greeting when he came through the door.
Kit forced himself to stillness, to returning the quick peck she offered, but he knew from the lift of her brow that she noticed his discomfort. She reached out, deft as a bird, and brushed his hair behind his ear, her fingers quick on the rounded tip. He shied like a startled horse, and she nodded satisfaction as he shifted from foot to foot.
“Some Elf‑knight,” she said, when Judith was out of earshot, scampering into the house to let Cook and the maid know the company had come. “You look like an overdressed university lad, if you ask me, which you haven’t. Will you eat beef and bread and apples like a mortal man?”
“Madam,” Kit said, stamping the snow from his boots. “And glad of it. Mistress Shakespeare, you keep a fine house.”
“I do when I can,” she answered, and hung his cloak on a peg once he handed it to her. “Will wrote to say you were here on his business – ”
A note of suspicion in her voice, and not unwarranted. Kit let his gaze wander as she led him to the hearthside, concealing a swelling blister of sorrow. Will’s an idiot not to come home more often. Had I a family such as this– “And he told you I was an Elf‑knight?”
“Nay, he told me my rival was an Elf‑knight under a curse, who could not endure a mortal touch. ‘Twas not too difficult a study to know of whom he spoke, once presented yourself at my door in your hobgoblin cloak and your boots of green chamois.”
“Ah.” Kit kept the little bubble of–not homesickness, exactly–behind his smile as she led him to a chair by the fire and pressed a mug of warmed wine into his hands. “Your rival, madam?”
“Not his words,” she admitted. “But you’re no elf, Master Marlin, or I am very much mistaken.”
“Changeling,” Kit said with a shrug he meant to be casual. He closed his eyes, afraid of what Mistress Shakespeare might glimpse in them, and then opened them again, uneasy when he could not see. “It makes little difference in the end; I was born mortal, but it seems I am mortal no more.”
Mistress Shakespeare glanced over her shoulder, assuring their privacy, before she sat across the hearth from Kit. She lowered her voice so it would not ring through the house. “What is my husband to you?”
Kit’s breath stopped half in and half out of his chest. “My” – he swallowed wine to cover his hesitation, and managed only poorly, by the look in her eyes – “oh, there is no one easy word, madam. What did he say to you of me, to put that savagery in your gaze?”
Silence, and the dent of her teeth in her lip. Her skirts, twisted between her fingers, showed him a flash of red flannel petticoats. “He said he loved you.”
“Ah.” There is no answer that can make that better.“Mistress, and I him.”
She shrugged. Her skirts fell smooth. Her small foot twisted on the hearthstone, clad in a shoe of good blue leather, the stitching stretched over the rise of her great toe.
“I could mend that for you,” Kit said, pointing with his chin.
She started, expression darkening as if he indicted her housewifery, and then saw the angle of his gaze and looked down, extending a hearty ankle to inspect her shoe in the firelight. “A seamstress, are you?”
“I can darn a stocking, too,” Kit said. “Such it is with students.” The wine was sugared, sweet and thick. It heated his cold feet at least as much as the fire did. “Especially the overdressed ones.”
A laugh, but not a warm one. Aye, and she’s a reason to love thee, Kit?She tucked her shoe away under her skirts and dusted her hands together, as if about to rise. “Your supper will be a little while longer – ”
“‘Tis no matter,” he said, sipping his wine, trying to puzzle out what the even tone of her comment meant. Is she inviting some sort of a battlefield alliance, I wonder? Or running her banner up over Will’s castle?“The company is good.”
She blushed dark; Kit rather enjoyed imagining Will’s reaction to his flattery. He smiled wider when she absently brushed fingers across the pouch resting against her bosom. “I wanted to hate you,” she said.
“You would not be the first. Or likely the last.”
“He came home – Master Marlin, why did you send him home again? And healed. Half healed, at least. …”
“Aye, and I wish I could claim his health my doing,” Kit said. They matched gazes a little while, and Kit finished the wine. “Madam, I thank you. That was very pleasant.”
“And unpoisoned, ” she said, with a little shrug and half a chuckle. She leaned to lift the cup from his fingers, turning it with her own. “This time, at least. You did not tell me why.”
Her answer was so dry he had to laugh before he hoisted himself to his feet and swept a bow. “Mistress Shakespeare. I beg your sympathy, madam, and I pray you understand that there is nothing in me so base as would take a man from his wife and children. Even could I.”
Mistress Shakespeare lowered her voice. The firelight fell across her face; Kit liked the way it outlined the high, arrogant arch of her brow. “If he knew them better, that might be more of a promise, Master Marlin.”
Ah. Touch й . And the heart of the matter.“Madam,” Kit said, as kindly as he could through an ache and a coldness that ran from his throat all the way down to his fingertips, “Will’s heart is yours. No matter what else transpires – ”
“Words are easy,” she answered, but she didn’t rise.
“They are. And they are yet all I have, and all I have ever had.” Kit sighed, and stared down at his boots. Hanged for the lamb is hanged for the ewe.“Did Will tell you why he sent me?”
She swallowed, a little bobble behind the worn silk of her throat, and whispered, “Hamnet.”
With his witch’s sight, Kit wouldn’t have had any problems walking through the woods after sunset, as long as there was some little starlight. But he was not eager to go among Faerie oaks in the darkness and the dark of the moon, and less eager even to drag Annie Shakespeare out into the snow and the night. “Tomorrow. When it’s light. Can you show me where he died? That is all I need of you; I can stay the night at the inn.” Aye,” Mistress Shakespeare answered, and gathered her skirts to rise, his cup still dangling from her fingers. “Your supper will be ready. Come join us at board, Master Marlin. And then Peter, our lad in service, will show you up to bed. There is no need for any lover of my Will’s to share a buggy inn bed.”
She turned then, and Kit stopped her with the quick brush of fingers across her sleeve. “Madam …”
“Master Marlin?”
He coughed, a prickling throat. It was all inadequate, anything he could say, any flowery line he could quote, in the face of her grace and her strength and her composure. “If I had someone such as you at home, I would not leave her a moment.”
She regarded him evenly, only the corners of her eyes giving a trace of a smile. “As well‑favored as you are,” she said. “How can it be that you do not?”
