Текст книги "Hell and Earth"
Автор книги: Elizabeth Bear
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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
Beside him, rising from the stool he’d been straddling, another man Kit recognized – blond and well‑favored, a broad‑shouldered Adonis with eyes as heavenly as Lucifer’s. Robert Catesby, and Kit made sure his flinch didn’t show on his face. Just a dream.
Catesby’s sword was not at hand; the stool clattered and rolled as he scrambled after it, getting his back into the corner by the bed that was the only other bit of furniture in the room. Neither as cool as Richard Baines, nor as deadly smooth.
Kit stepped through the door and closed it with his heel, sealing plank to frame with a sandpaper‑surfaced word. Baines’ sword‑tip never wavered but Kit saw his head tilt, his brow wrinkle in a genteel manner that had never presaged aught but ill. “Interesting,” he drawled, examining Kit from his dripping hair to the slush‑stained boots and then slowly back up again. “Did he heal all thyscars, my darling?”
The word had left Kit’s throat as raw as a coughing fit. He managed to get his teeth apart enough to speak clearly, but it took courage. “Where’s Robin, Dick?”
Catesby lifted his chin, and his blade did waver, but Baines knew which Robert Kit meant. “Poley’s on errantry,” he said. Some matter, no doubt, of direst import for the Queen. Thou knowest how valuable she finds him.”
“Indispensable. Of course. Master Catesby, my apologies”– Kit didn’t turn his head, but he could see from the blond cavalier’s stance that Catesby knew what end of a sword was which, and it did not comfort him – “I’m afraid your presence here does not bode well for your continued well‑being. I’ve come to kill this man.”
“Arrogant puppy.” There wasn’t any harshness in Baines’ voice; only that controlled, chilling amusement. Catesby moved to put himself between Baines and Kit. Baines stepped forward, blocking him. “Don’t worry, Robin. I can handle this.” Baines drew himself up, smiling rather than sneering down at Kit. “Becoming Lucifer’s leman has made thee bold, I wot. Although whoring should be nothing new to thee – ”
The words were like a wall. The dismissal in them, the amusement, Baines’ quiet confidence and mastery. As if he could not even be bothered to despise Kit. Kit leaned into them, forced himself a step forward. Catesby would break first, he thought, would not permit Baines to shuffle him aside so easily, not to judge by the stallion set of his neck.
“At least I’ve never held down a boy half my size while five grown men forced themselves on him,” Kit answered, trying for something of Baines’ bantering tone. What got out between his teeth was bitterness.
“No, thou hast an easy time finding lords and libertines to make of thee their Ganymede. Thou didst think not thy patrons kept thee for thy poetry.”
“Bastard – ” Kit moved forward, a firm step where his feet wanted to shuffle, and called on the rage and the roiling power stewing in the hollow of his gut.
Baines only laughed. “Going to scratch mine eyes out, puss? Come on, then – ” and came forward to meet him. Catesby moved at the same moment, supporting Baines, two swords pressing as Kit sidled sideways to get his back into the corner by the door.
Kit freed his main gauche before the bigger men got within sword reach, hoping the cramped quarters would cause them to foul each other. Catesby had to come around the bed, at least, and hop over that tumbled stool. Baines advanced straight in; Kit’s right eye showed him something dark and potent twist itself around Baines’ left hand, as if he swung a cape of some black force to supplement the bright blade of his rapier.
Baines never took his eyes off Kit’s face when he spoke, and that unconscious caution made Kit feel suddenly lighter. “Don’t kill him, Robin,” Baines said. “Not until I get a look at him with his shirt off– ”
“As if you could manage my death,” Kit scoffed, and whispered a few words in a pidgin of bastard Greek and the sleek, fluid language that Satan had taught him. He looked Baines in the eye when he said them, but Baines’ left hand moved, that cloak of darkness flickering around his fingers, and it was Robert Catesby who slumped to his knees and fell back upon the floor, his sword blade ringing when it dropped from his fingers, a wide snore drifting from his parted lips.
Kit never looked away from Baines, but Baines looked down at Catesby and then back at Kit with a nod that might have been edged with respect. “Nicely done.”
Kit drew a ragged breath and formed his sleeping spell again. Baines shifted onto the balls of his feet, and for half a drawn breath neither man moved. Then …
Fuck this for a Lark–
It wasn’t the sleeping spell that Kit spat hastily–as Baines lunged – but an older, wilder magic; something Lucifer had shown him but had not bothered to explain. A curse, very simply, simple and uncontrolled, related to the old weird magic the black Prometheans used to call down God’s wrath in plagues and famines and the strange wild storms of winters such as no living man remembered– winters that froze the Thames, and plagues that killed men like Edmund Spenser and Ferdinando Stanley.
Die like Sir Francis,Kit thought, and hoped a subtler magic wouldn’t slip off Baines’ black spell‑cloak like water off oiled silk. The words didn’t slow him: Kit hastened to parry Baines’ gliding serpent of a blade. He stepped to the right, hopped over Catesby’s sprawl, and found himself with his back to the spell‑locked door.
Baines had the reach and the weight and the heavier blade; he came in hard, let Kit parry, and took the stop‑thrust of Kit’s main gauche through the meat of his own left forearm with little more than a grunt and a curse. “Blast – ”
Steel ground on silver; Kit’s head spun with the clean, sharp reek of Baines’ sweat, the cedar from his doublet. Baines shoved Kit’s sword and his right hand hard against the wainscoting with all his oxlike shoulder behind it. A close bind: Kit released his main gauche, still fast in Baines’ arm, and dropped to his knees between Baines and the wall, dragging his rapier free with a sound that should have showered sparks on both their heads. I should have twisted the damned knife. I should have run him through the neck and not the arm.
Dammit, Kit, fight better than this.
You know how to fight better than this–
Too close in to use the rapier. Baines brought his knee up before Kit could dive aside – a great reckoning in a Little room,Kit thought, as the blow under his chin slammed his teeth together, his head knocking a dent in the plaster of the wall. His mouth was full of blood: Baines’ blood, dribbling from the wound in his arm, and Kit’s own blood streaking his teeth and roping down his throat. He gagged on it, rolled aside, and almost got his rapier up in time.
Baines kicked him in the belly, hard, and Kit went down with his head between his knees and the acid burn of vomit chasing the stringy sweetness of blood from his mouth. “Christ,” he whimpered, and Baines kicked the sword out of his hand. It rang like a dropped coin when it struck the wall and fell, blade angled like a broken wing, into the corner. Another kick, one more, center of his chest and Kit felt something flex and twist over his heart, a green buckling noise like a twisted stick.
Christ.
And then, ridiculously, as he doubled up, gagging again: I’m sorry, Will.Something else rang on the floor. Kit’s main gauche, Baines swearing heartily as he yanked it free and cast it aside. “That’s two scars I owe thee, puss.”
Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.But Baines’ hands were gentle, lifting Kit against the wall, smoothing the wet curls that had escaped his ponytail out of his eyes. Kit spat blood and bile in Baines’ face, slamming the side of his hand down on the dagger wound still weeping blood from the left forearm. Baines grunted, grimaced, and let go of Kit. Kit folded like a corpse, trying to push the sharp words of a witchcraft into his mouth. But whatever he had done–the twist and rill of the curse he’d spat out earlier – seemed to have stripped the power out of Kit, and the words were nothing more than doggerel.
‘Christ, Puss,” Baines said, half irritated and half pleased. Stay where I put thee for once. There’s a pet – ”
Kit slumped, wheezing. Almost got a leg under himself, but Baines’ command held him to the floor like the clink of chains. Something rattled. Something splashed. Tearing cloth and cursing: Baines must have been binding his arm. Kit forced himself to one knee again and again fell, defeated. Surely if he could stand he could reach his sword, a few short feet away, just in the corner by the hearth.
Every breath hurt enough to dizzy him. Baines crouched in front of Kit and washed the blood and vomit from his face with a wine‑soaked rag. “Hush for a moment,” he said, and slapped Kit’s cheek backhanded when Kit–‑weakly–fought him. “Hush, puss. This wouldn’t happen if you didn’t fight me so.” His fingers probed.
Kit winced and swore, squirming back against the wall, not liking the strange, concerned gleam in Baines’ eye.
“Oh, thou’rt not bad hurt. A cracked rib is all.” And then he doubled both hands in the lawn of Kit’s collar and shredded the shirt as if ripping up rags, tearing it down to the lacings of the jerkin that Kit wore on top.
“Come, puss. Give us a kiss.”
He leaned forward. Kit slammed himself against the wall, harder than Baines had managed, feeling the strain in his neck as he twisted his face aside. Kill me and get it over with,Kit thought, shivering.
Instead Baines grunted in satisfaction, mock‑loving fingers outlining the scar on Kit’s breast, and let him go. “Good. That saves us time. Now get out, Marlowe. Before Catesby wakes.’
Kit blinked, focus eluding him. He got a hand and a knee on the floor; the effort made the walls spin. “Get out?”
Baines had turned his back on Kit and was wiping the blood from his hands. “I can’t keep thee in a bird cage until I have use for thee. And thou’rt no good to me dead: surely even a poet could have deduced that by now. I’ll be back for thee when I need thee, never fear.”
Back for thee when I need thee.Kit made it to a crouch, steadying himself on the wall. Stood, and staggered to the corner to retrieve his sword. Bending over was a trick; he managed it with one hand braced on the wainscoting, trying not to hear Baines whistling merrily as he washed and rebandaged his wound. Kit staggered for the door.
Baines’ voice arrested him. “Don’t try this trick again, or I’ll see thy friend Shakespeare on the rack. Dost hear me?”
“Aye,” Kit said, and somehow released his own spell on the door and tumbled through it onto the gallery and into the cold. At least,he told himself–trying not to giggle– at least from here thou canst leave by the interior stairs, and out through the front door. Because thouwouldst dash thy brains out if thou hadst to climb down now by the way thou camest.
Past the house‑cleaning landlord, it turned out, who raised a questioning eyebrow as Kit came across the common room to the barred front door. “Master Catesby’s guest,” he said, tugging his cloak tight and hoping the shadows would conceal the ruin of his clothes.
“‘Tis past curfew.” Friendly enough. “Stay the night.”
“My mistress expects me. I’ll mind the watch – ”
“See that you do,” the man said, and came around the bar to lock the door after him.
The cold cleared his head. He staggered into an alleyway and leaned against the wall, under the overhang. Damme. I won’t make that mistake again. Next time, it’s a shadowy alley and a bullet in the back of the head, you son of a whore.
He wants me alive. He’s wanted me alive all along, except when I made it too difficult to keep me that way.Kit pressed his back against the timber and plaster, tasting acid and bitterness, remembering Rheims, remembering the taste of blood and gentle hands holding his hair back while he vomited, again and again.
As if that, as if anything, could clear the poison and the filth from his body. Remembered pleading for his life, and braced his hands on his knees and vomited again, into a rain‑pocked slushpile this time. In Rheims, Baines had argued for his life. Had told the others that if they spared him, they could use the same vessel.
He never meant to kill me.
No.Kit forced himself to stand, to ignore the ragged ache in his chest. He rinsed his mouth with dirty snow, scrubbed more on his face for the chill and abrasion of the icy granules. His brands ached like blisters. His hands stung with the cold. No. He just means to keep me alive for however long it takes and then what? Rape me again? Something else?
God in heaven.
I don’t want to know.
Kit used the frozen surface of a public basin for his mirror – more Promethean witchery, that, that London grew cold enough to freeze her fountains of a winter–and slipped through it and into Faerie with a sigh that was very much relief, even though the court’s fey night shadows twisted around him and small things scurried in the dark. All it would have taken to make my night complete would be to be caught short out of Faerie, and die in some alleyway.
Still staggering, steadying himself with one hand on the wall, Kit moved at first automatically to Morgan’s room and then stopped himself. Not welcome at court.Hell. But Murchaud’s room was closer anyway, and only one flight of stairs away.
The flagstones whirled under Kit’s boots. He pressed his shoulder to the wall, as if the palace needed his assistance to stand as much as he needed its. They leaned together, shoulder to shoulder, flying buttress and cathedral –
A better image than most, for once.He ran his right hand up the banister, cool stone against his ice‑abraded palm, and pulled his torn shirt collar closed at the hollow of his throat, and forbade himself to weep. A command he managed to obey until Murchaud opened his door in a nightshirt Kit had given him, blinking sleepily. “Kit. Thou’rt hurt – ”
“Not so sorely,” Kit answered, and fell through the door.
Murchaud bound his ribs in linen, tight enough to squeeze like a giant’s fist whenever Kit drew a breath, and ignored Kit’s feeble remonstrations over the undressing and the necessary handling. Murchaud warmed water for him–with his own hands, when Kit wouldn’t permit him to call for servants –and combed Kit’s hair, and dressed him in a nightgown twice as large as it needed to be, and carried him–as he had carried Kit that first night in Faerie –to the big chair by the fire. Murchaud settled him there with his feet up and a cup of warmed wine in his hands. It was a blur of action, with Kit trembling like a trapped fox under the Prince’s care and reminding himself not to bite.
Kit drank half the wine without tasting anything but the alcohol’s sting in his lacerated cheek, and then he raised his chin to look Murchaud in the eye. “Thou’rt alone,” he said, wondering.
Murchaud turned away and squatted to poke the fire higher, turning a smoldering log so the bark would catch alight. “I’d be in the Mebd’s rooms if I weren’t, love. She does not come to visit my chambers.”
No, ‘ Kit said. He covered his discomfort with a sip of wine. “I’d have thought – ”
Murchaud shrugged and looked up from his angle‑kneed crouch, shapely limbs protruding from his nightshirt this way and that. “I’ve all the lovers I want,” he said, and stood, limber as a cat, and went to pull the bedcurtains back. The covers were as disordered as Murchaud’s hair; the prince had struggled out of a sound sleep to answer Kit’s knock, and Kit felt a rush of sudden, hopeless gratitude.
And then a moment of wry self‑exasperation. “Damme – ” Kit set his cup down with a click.
“What?”
“I left Cairbre’s viola in Will’s lodging.” He made to stand; his knees failed him, and he slumped back in the chair. “Thou didst drug the wine, ” he accused, as tiredness pressed the center of his chest like a broad, flat palm. His fingers curled on the textured brocade of the chair cushion, but failed to shift his body.
“I’ll save that trick for when I need it,” Murchaud said. “I rather thought the wine would be enough. Come, let me take thee to bed.”
“Murchaud, I – ”
“Hush. I’ll carry thee to thine own rooms if thou likest. Or thou canst sleep in that chair. But I don’t believe thee when thou sayest thou dost wish to be left alone, this night.”
Kit subsided, his eyelids too rough and heavy to hold up. Liar. He did drug the wine.
It didn’t matter. He hadn’t even the strength to protest the discomfort of the Prince’s touch when Murchaud lifted him and laid him in the bed and drew the feather comforter up to his neck. “Puck,” he said, remembering.
“What about him?” A dry kiss on Kit’s forehead. Lights and candles, the dimming of the room. The pressure of a body in bed beside him, and then an arm across his waist. Over the covers. Almost tolerable so, and Kit hadn’t the strength to roll away.
Puck is the villain,Kit meant to say. But then he remembered, he owed Puck a chance to answer the charges to his own face. Before he, Kit, named another friend for treason. As he had named so many before.
He’d seen too many friends hang.
“Nothing,” he said, but he wasn’t sure the word took breath before the darkness folded him deep.
Act IV, scene vii
Thou hast years upon thee; and thou art too full
Of the wars’ surfeits to go rove with one
That’s yet unbruised: bring me but out at gate.
–William Shakespeare, Coriolanus,Act IV, scene i
Will crouched in the chair by Tom Walsingham’s fire, his damp boots draining onto a rush mat, turning Kit’s glorious old Greek Bible in his hands. Will’s Greek had never been good, worse even than his grammar‑school Latin, but he could tell from the handscript, the margins, and the way the sections abutted in the glove‑soft, gold‑embossed red leather of the binding that he held three or four books stitched together. Their pages had been carefully trimmed to match in size; now scallop‑shell flakes roughened the fragile gold edge. He held the book close to his face, open, cupped in the palm of his hands, inhaling the oak‑leaf scent of the pages. “George, have you ever seenanything like this?”
Chapman set his wineglass on the mantel before he came closer, crouching before Will to get a better look at the text. “Seen? Aye. Never with such a freedom to read as I pleased, however …” Chapman reached forward, hands like wings on either side of Will’s, but didn’t touch.
Teasing, Will pulled the book closer to his chest and hunched over it like a mantling hawk. “Ah – ”
“Can you read it, Will?” Ben, who leaned against the window frame, his dark eyes hooded as if with weariness.
“A word here and there, ” Will said. He looked up as Tom returned to the study, two bottles of wine in his hands. “It’s missing some rather large bits, Kit says. We’ll have to resort to Tom’s Erasmus, too. Tom – ”
The bottles clattered on the sideboard as Tom dug in his purse for a penknife to draw the corks. Ben cleared his throat and tossed one, pearl‑handled, which glittered in the afternoon sunlight as it tumbled across the room. Tom’s hand came up; he plucked it from flight. “Thank thee, Ben – ”
“Not at all, Sir Thomas.”
“Will? Thou wert about to speak?”
Will looked from Tom to Chapman, to the book in his own hands, and shrugged. Ben concealed a smirk behind his sleeve, his regard steady on Will. Chapman stood, puzzled, looking from one man to the other, until Tom smiled. “Why not?”
“Gentlemen?”
“We’ve a plan to translate the Bible into English,” Will said. Wouldst care to engage in it?”
Chapman looked down at the book open on Will’s palms again. “From the Greek, Will? May I‑“
“Aye.” Will held the book up.
Chapman lifted it reverently, in broad fingers knobbed from hours of holding the pen. “There are translations – ”
“None like ours shall be,” Ben put in from his place by the window. He set his cup down and went to relieve Tom of the wine bottles. Ben poured first for their host, who watched, amused, and then filled a cup for Will now that the precious book was out of his hands.
“Will.” Chapman’s voice was barely a breath. He looked up, across the pages, awe on his broad‑cheeked, broken‑nosed face. “Wheredidst come by this book?”
“Kit gave it me – ” Will said distractedly. He covered his slip with a coughing fit and rinsing his mouth with wine, but Chapman paused, bald forehead wrinkling over bushy brows.
Tom stepped in. “It was Marlowe’s. It went to Will after his death.”
“He thought highly of thee.” Chapman touched the book the way a man might stroke flower petals. “How he ever afforded such a thing – ”
“It must have been a gift,” Will said.
Chapman shook his head sadly. “Rare skill, had he. And a foolish manner of spending them–you’ve heard his Ovid’sto be burned?”
“Burned?” Tom,unbuttoning the neck of his doublet, looked up.
“Aye.” Chapman shrugged sadly and set the precious Bible down on a high table, away from the fire, the wine, and the window. “The Archbishop of Canterbury’s men seized copies from St. Paul’s on Monday. Along with everything of Nashe’s, and Gabriel Harvey’s. If you’ve your own copies, you’ll want to keep them quiet. Perhaps even out of the city–
“Burned?” Will heard his own voice as the echo of Tom’s, and thought a chorus. Yes.“Well, Harvey’s no loss to posterity. But Nashe?”
“It’s the Isle of Dogsback to haunt him,” Ben said. “That and his wrangling with Harvey: the Puritans are growing stronger, Will, and it’s foolish to deny it. There’s something to be said for masques.”
“Aye, nobody ever finds a bit of meaning in one, to want to burn it. Gods, poor Tom. I suppose that means they’ll be burning Dido,too, with Kit’s and with Tom’s hand all over it. How can there be any sedition in a translation of Ovid,of all things, to draw Archbishop Whitgift’s ire? It’s Love poems–”
“It’s the Puritans,” Ben said, pouring himself another cup of wine. The big man moved like a cat, for all his weight bent the floorboards under their rush mats. “It’s the Puritans, as I said. They think the translation lewd, and Whitgift bends his neck to the bastards. An Archbishop.” Ben looked as if he wished to spit.
Baines,Will thought. And Essex behind him. Another attack on the poets–
“The Queen’s ministers grant them more power, aye. I suppose they think, better Puritans than Catholics.” Chapman leaned against the mantel, but he didn’t lift his cup again. Instead, he edged closer to the popping grate, as if the fire could warm him. “I wonder who would give Kit a book like that,” he mused.
Will saw Tom’s glance, and didn’t need it. “I’m sure I don’t know. So what think you, George, of our Bible in poetry? ”
Chapman shrugged. “It could never be published. And a man must eat– ”
“Drudge,” Ben said. “Toiling only for coin – ”
Tom laughed with him, and Chapman dismissed both with an airy wave of his hand. Will might have joined them, but the cough that followed bent him over with his hands on his knees, and only Ben thumping his shoulders gently with those massive bricklayer’s hands put an end to it before he choked.
Only two days later, Will scratched another line out and crumpled the scribbled palimpsest that had been meant to become act II, scene I of a tragedy into a fist‑sized ball, which he pitched into the grate. He glanced up again at the steel mirror over the mantel and the single candle burning before it–despite the daylight through the open shutters–‑with a sealed letter propped against it, and swore under his breath. “Dammit, Kit. A week is too long to make a man wait for news.” He could have returned to Faerie, and an hour or less gone by in his world. Thou wouldst have heard something if aught had gone wrong.
And if thou hadst not, Tom Walsingham would have.That Tom also said that Richard Baines was, to all reports, alive and well and fulfilling his obligations told Will only that Kit might be biding his time. Kit was certainly crafty enough – crafty as Tom himself, or Sir Robert.
I am not like these men,Will thought, not for the first time. I cannot see as they see, in shades of advantage and degrees of subtlety.He sighed, and glanced at the light on the wall: the noon bell would toll any moment. He couldn’t leave the candle burning in an empty room, and he couldn’t put off meeting the rest of the Globe’s shareholders for another instant. He pushed his stool back from the table and stood, scuffing the rushes aside as he limped to the hearth. Dick’s had me playing old men for ten years now. A shuffle and a quaver in my voice won’t limit my roles.
Perhaps there is prophecy in the stage after all.
Will blew out the candle, banked the fire back, and picked up his jerkin and cloak, fumbling the door latch a moment before managing to twist it open. He chose to walk through the garden rather than the house, using the side gate onto Silver Street as the bells finally tolled.
London bustled on a sunny Tuesday in February. Kit’s birthday,Will realized, and cursed himself for thinking about Kit. He’d hard to kill.
He’d also terrified to the soled of his shoes when it comes to Baines,he thought, turning sideways to edge between a goodwife arguing with a carter and the wall. At least the overhang kept the heavily laden carts and the tall draught horses to the middle of the road, although it seemed the crush of hireling carriages grew thicker each year. And frightened men make mistakes–
“Master Shakespeare ! ”
The hailing voice of Edward de Vere broke Will’s musings open like an egg on cobblestones. He turned and strove to hide his limp. His hand found a coin in his pocket and he tugged it back again, resisting the temptation to fuss it forth and spin it across his knuckles, over and over again.
‘My lord,” Will said, bowing as best he could. Oxford swept his tall hat off as he ducked the overhang and came up before Will. “I am surprised to see you afoot, my lord, and so far from your usual – lairs.”
Oxford paused, his hat in his hand – a dramatic gesture ruined by the revolted wrinkle of his narrow nose. “Master Shakespeare,” he said. “I had thought you might prove more amenable to a personal visitation, as you have returned my notes unopened. You” –careful choice of the formal pronoun, and a careful stress against it, to be certain Will noticed the respect – “have done me good service in the past, and I am inclined today to remember it. You are too fair a poet to fall with Cecil and Raleigh and Walsingham. And fall they will, make no mistake.”
Will blinked. Oxford stepped closer and let his voice drop. “Essex’s star is rising, Will, and it’s said Scottish James is fonder of masques and entertainments even than the Queen.” He coughed. “There’s no guarantee the Lord Chamberlain your patron will remain in favor after the succession. It would be a pity to see the Globe go empty, her players all jailed as sturdy vagrants and masterless men.”
“If I wrote masques I should be more interested.” Wondering where he got the courage to brush past a peer on the street, he nodded curtly to Oxford and turned his back on the man.
“Master Shakespeare. Halt your step.”
“My step is halt enough,” Will said, but he paused, although he did not turn. What could be dire enough that the Earl of Oxford would call after a common playmaker on a busy street?“As you have no doubt observed, my lord.”
Oxford laughed and strode up beside Will, seating his towering cap once more on his head. His ruff was starched fashionably pale pink, maiden’s blush, stiff enough that it rustled against his beard. Will smiled, glad of his own plain murrey doublet. Puritan,he thought, and then pushed the memory of Kit’s teasing away. “There’s more,” Oxford said. “What you offered Her Majesty at Spenser’s funeral did not go unremarked by all, Master Shakespeare. Nor did the disgrace with which she refused your gift. I have friends – ”
“More than one?” Oh, Will. You shouldn’t have said that.No, but he couldn’t close his ear to de Vere’s simpering tone, and hearing it he recalled some measure of Kit Marlowe’s close and thready rage. And wonder of wonders, de Vere laughed and forced a smile, although he dragged his fine kid gloves between his hands hard enough to stretch the cheveril.
“If it’s a Bible you want to write, Master Shakespeare. There’s those would pay you to get it. Our side” – he cleared his throat, as if it were distasteful to him – “has an interest in the nature of god as well.”
Will swallowed. Politics. And yet– He turned slowly, feet shuffling, cursing the slow, nodding oscillation of his chin, and looked Oxford in the eye. And yet he’s a bad enough poet I rewrote mine own plays under his eye, and he never saw the power I put in them. I could manage. Work fortheir Prometheans and undermine their very agenda from within. Ben and Kit and I could manage very well–
“What would you wish of me, my lord? In return for such patronage?” Although he already knew what Oxford would demand.
The Earl smiled, reaching up to tilt his hat at the proper angle as he stepped back into the hurly‑burly of Silver Street. “Don’t answer today,” he said. “But the Lord Chamberlain’s Men perform before Her Majesty on the Feast of the Assumption.”
“We do,” Will said, struggling with feet that wanted to step back into the shadows, get his back to the Avail of the tack shop he stood before.
Consider,” Oxford said, smiling, “whether your play will be a success, and the Oueen’s reign will be sustained. That is all. Consider it. And consider whether your Bible means more to you, William Shakespeare. These friends of mine. Friends of ours, I should say. Mutual friends. They’re impressed with your work. They could give you everything you need. And you know” –a lowered tone –“her Majesty isunwell. And what’s one old woman, past her three score already, in the face of the future of all Christianity? ”
Will fixed a smile on his lips, thin as stage paint. His throat tightened. Just the palsy, doubtless. Everything you need. Freedom to work. Yes, and all it cost is a brave old woman’s life.
He hesitated, watching Oxford grin ironically, touch his hat –as if to an equal, or a rival –nod, and turn away. One old woman’s life.
That’s all.
Sweet Christ. This could be trouble for the whole company. I need to talk to Dick Burbage about this right away.
