Any Man So Daring

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  He was the first elf that she ever saw, the first male besides the Hunter or her troll serf, Caliban. The first that she ever sighed for. What a piece of work was elf. In understanding, how like the gods. In look, how like the angels.

  On seeing him — his noble features, his light-spun hair, his luminous black eyes, she knew that nothing ill could dwell in such a temple, for if the ill spirit had so fair a house, good things would strive to dwell with it.

  She’d come to the window and listened to him. He’d sung to her beauty. She’d gone to the door at his behest and for his sake, opened the back gate of the castle, ever kept locked.

  In the wood outside, which had always seemed to her forbidding and shifting, like dreams remembered in the waking morning, she’d talked to Proteus.

  They’d met, they’d wooed each other, they’d made exchange of vows.

  What Proteus had told her had shattered her heart, then built her a new one.

  To vows of love — and of those there were plenty — there had joined other, more substantial information. Stories of the fairy kingdom, the resplendent court that gathered around a tyrant King: Quicksilver. And more, he’d told her in that long night. So much that she feared that her reason and her understanding would sink under it all, like an overburdened bark.

  For how could what he’d told her be true?

  He’d told her she was not the daughter of the Hunter. She was no kith and kin of the cold immortal creature. Instead, she was the daughter of the late and virtuous king of Fairyland. Her father was Sylvanus, whom his brother, Quicksilver, had tricked into deposition and shameful death.

  Here, Proteus had rushed his narration and refused to give her the details of it.

  Miranda credited it to his kind heart that avoided giving her pain.

  And though his news be strange, like a window opening to an unknown world, she’d looked at his face and read there the volumes of truth and the chapters of love.

  He’d left her before the rosy morn of humans that looked like dim sunset in fairyland. He’d left her when the horse of her adopted father loomed in the horizon and the barking of his dogs could be heard over the eerie, still landscape of frozen waves of rock and millenary trees.

  Proteus had come again the next elf-day and the next and the next.

  His beauty assured Miranda of his truth when he spoke to her of his love for her and of the just war he and his father, Vargmar, waged against the evil tyrant, her uncle.

  For Miranda knew, from legend and tale — all that had kept her company through her lonely childhood — that the good were always beautiful, while the evil carried some obvious deformity upon themselves.

  There was nothing deformed in Proteus, and so he was her true and gallant knight.

  When they won the war — Proteus had told her -- Miranda would be Queen of fairyland, and Proteus her trusty husband.

  At such prospect, Miranda grew giddy, even as, in the Hunter’s library, she waited for the hoofbeats of her adopted father’s horse to vanish into the thunderclouds that announced the sunset of mortals, the dawn of fairykind.

  She wished her errand could have waited longer, till she was sure he was gone for the night and would not return.

  But outside the wood, Proteus would already be waiting her, and he’d told her their errand was likely to need all the time in the day of fairy, the night of mortals.

  Proteus had asked Miranda to search for one of the Hunter’s books from these shelves. He’d shown her the symbols that should be on the cover, and he’d told her it was a book of arcane and powerful spells.

  For Proteus’s side had lost the war and his father would soon be executed by the tyrant, Quicksilver.

  Nothing remained for Proteus but one more desperate spell, one last magical attempt.

  At which Miranda must help, for his magic was tied to the hill, and any magic he used would be noticed by the evil king, Quicksilver, or his spies.

  She felt her heart hammer within her chest, part excitement and part fear, for what if Proteus failed...what if he died?

  But no, she would not think on it. Nay, she would refuse.

  On such decision, she shook her head and drew a deep breath and, hearing Caliban moan a complaint behind her, she snapped, “To it, Caliban. Here, here are the symbols that will be on the cover.” She withdrew from her bosom and displayed to him the piece of paper upon which Proteus had traced the figures. “This is what it will look like, and you’ll help me look.”

  “But mistress--” Caliban started.

  “Don’t 'mistress' me. Just search for it.”

  Well she understood his reluctance, for Miranda knew in her inner heart that the Hunter would not be pleased if he caught her here. And he would punish Caliban doubly were he to find the brute here.

  The Hunter had taught her magic — some magic — and he’d told her that barring the eternal creatures, creatures like the Hunter himself, she had more power than any man or elf.

  But he’d never told her to look into the arcane books, never taught her to read the strange language they spoke. He’d forbidden it, indeed, professing himself afraid for her safety, her sanity.

  A treacherous thought crossed Miranda’s mind, that perhaps the Hunter had kept her from the books to thus seal her away from discovering her true origin.

  She stamped down the thought.

  The truth was that her adopted father had never been less than kind to her. The innocent devilry of her childhood, the temper tantrums of adolescence, all had met with a bemused affection, a gentle joy in her presence.

  She thought, as she looked through the volumes, and climbed a ladder to reach the upper ones, that the Hunter might be hurt. Just that. He wouldn’t blame her and he wouldn’t turn on her. But his eyes might acquire a wounded look, and she might know that she’d hurt this immortal creature who’d never done her aught but good.

  She would know she had returned kindness with ill-will.

  Could she bear it?

  She gritted her teeth, thinking of her adopted father’s wounded expression. Force, her heart would break. She felt the sting of tears behind her eyes, like the swelling of rain-laden clouds that must burst in water or else break in storm.

  Then she thought of Proteus, poor Proteus, whose father had been defeated in battle, whose last hope had been dashed.

  She swallowed back the pressure of her tears and told herself that she must hurt the Hunter to save Proteus, and that Proteus, the weaker, needed her more.

  On this resolution, she reached for the shelf, and found her fingers brushing the symbols Proteus had drawn on the spine of a blood-red leather bound book.

  “I’ve found it, Caliban,” she said, and, holding her green dress up away from her rushing feet, she climbed down the ladder.

  Caliban hadn’t been making much effort to look at books. He’d been standing by the bookcase, glaring at Miranda with an air of aggrieved dignity. Now, he followed her out of the library with dragging step.

  “Mistress, I don’t think you should trust--”

  A look quelled him. When Proteus had first appeared near the castle, Caliban had made such comments, and indeed, enlarged himself upon the theme that Miranda shouldn’t trust the stranger, that the stranger was just that, and might bring danger and treason to her life and him and even the Hunter.

  Miranda had answered his doubts then, and clearly enough. By accusing him of jealousy of Proteus’s clean beauty, she’d reduced the beast to sputtering tears.

  Since then, Caliban had been quiet on the subject till now.

  What did he sense now, that pulled such words from him?

  Miranda gave her beastly servant a searching look but saw no more than his normal, surly, red-eyed boorishness.

  He’d been taken from his parents as a cub by the Hunter, who’d wanted him to be a serf to Miranda.

  Did Caliban miss his parents' smelly cave in the far northern mountains?

  Did he crave the companionship of his litter mates?
/>   “What, Mistress, what?” Caliban asked.

  Miranda realized that she’d been staring, thinking odd thoughts indeed. Trolls were brutes with no feelings or memories.

  Yet, why did Caliban look ever so mournful?

  Oh, nothing, it is nothing, Miranda told herself. No thoughts, no feelings does he have that are worth my concern.

  She held the magical book to her chest, and tried to think only of Proteus as she climbed the spiral staircase that led to the back door of the tower.

  Outside the tower extended a vast garden, a thing of marvel built by the Hunter for Miranda’s delight.

  On this expanse, flowers grew together that had never, in either geography or season, known each other’s company. Lilies intertwined with roses and those with tulips, and those yet with the exotic orchid that grew in colors so perfect and absolute that they would have been worth a king’s ransom in the world of men.

  Miranda paid no attention to the flowers, or to the singing of myriad multicolored birds, or to the smell of warmth and life that diffused into the crisp morning air. All of it had amused her when she was a child, but now she was a woman, and she must put her childish toys by.

  She walked along the path between the tower door and the gate that opened in the encircling wall, the gate that led to the forest and to Proteus.

  The book in her arms felt very heavy and cold, and she couldn’t help but hear, in Caliban’s shuffle behind her, an ominous question.

  Why did Proteus want this book?

  Thinking about it now, Miranda realized she did not know. She’d been lulled by Proteus's talk of love, of proving her love and of righting the great wrongs done to both their families.

  And yet a book of spells was for spelling — and what spell would change the outcome of the elf civil war? What spell would restore Miranda to the throne? What spell could bring back the brave rebels who’d lost their life in the war? What spell could give Proteus back his father?

  Spells — Miranda had learned — rarely could perform even one such miracle, much less all of them.

  Miranda doubted not that Proteus meant well. It would be going against her very soul to doubt it. But what if Proteus over-extended his power? What if he misjudged some spell’s power?

  How did he expect Miranda — Miranda who had scant training in magic, and whom her fath... the immortal Hunter had forbidden from meddling with the higher books and spells in his library — to perform such a spell?

  The spells in the Hunter’s library were, after all, designed for the Hunter himself, with his immense, cold, immortal power.

  What would they do to a mere elf?

  She tried to push her fears to the back of her mind, and yet they returned, sped thence by her aching heart.

  She couldn’t do this, she thought. But neither could she bear the thought of losing Proteus.

  Opening the gate and leaving it open, she slipped out of the castle, with Caliban, onto the black waves of rock outside.

  Across an expanse of broken rock, the forest stood, wreathed in misty twilight.

  Miranda tried to see Proteus amid the trees, but she could discern neither his look, nor his golden hair, nor any limb of him, and when she got to the forest, she found their usual meeting place empty.

  Oh, had her evil uncle, the dark king of elves, found out where Proteus was headed? Had the tyrant stopped him?

  Scene Four

  The inside of a peasant’s kitchen in Elizabethan England. A broad fireplace, overhung by an even broader chimney, holds a brightly burning fire. Over the fire a pot of something bubbles with a merry sound. By the fireplace itself cooking implements sit — pots and pans of iron and of clay. In a corner, not too far from the fire, a cradle hangs upon a stand and moves slightly, now and then, giving the impression of a child or babe turning within it.

  To the left, at a bench pushed near a scrubbed pine table, a woman sits. She wears plain peasant clothes, kirtle and shirt, with neither lace nor embroidery. Over them, a plain apron. She scowls at Will, who sits across from her.

  “Speak,” the woman said. “Or go. I have no time for this.”

  She was young, with a rounded face. A white cap covered her brown hair. Her dark eyes, surrounded by bruised circles, gazed with the intent wisdom of a much older woman.

  Will, sitting across the table from her, felt the power of that glare. He shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t be here.

  What did he, Will Shakespeare, master playwright, the toast of the London stage, have to do with witches, with fortune tellers, with those who had commerce with dark forces and other worlds?

  Oh, playwrights of the past had been involved in such things. Kit Marlowe had been a rumored member of the School of the Night-- that group of dark seekers -- the disciple of magic, involved with things beyond the ken or interest of mortal men.

  Marlowe. Will felt as though Marlowe stood behind him, fixing him with an intent gaze. Will shivered. In this homey kitchen, redolent of herbs and cooling, Will felt cold. Yet sweat beaded on his upper lip. He found words. Innocuous ones.... “I came, good woman, in search of help in my trouble.”

  The woman’s dark eyebrows rose, above her young-old eyes.

  She flung herself up from the bench suddenly, with an impatient quickness that reminded Will of his own wife, his Nan, back in Stratford-upon-Avon.

  Approaching the fire, she stirred her pot with a long-handled wooden spoon. “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,” she said, and turned and grinned at him, displaying white, even teeth. “Indeed. Much you tell me. Do you think people come to see me when they’re not in trouble? Nay, I tell you. When the thread of their life runs smooth, they stay in their homes, by their snug hearths away from the likes of me. Which trouble brings you to me, Master Shakespeare?”

  Will’s heart skipped a beat.

  She’d called him by name. And he’d not given her his name. It was the first sign, the first display of power from this woman. Will had come here, blindly, on Ned’s word. He’d not known what to expect, save cobwebs, exotic animals in jars and the hands and fingers of long-dead criminals on display or bubbling over the fire in noxious potions. He expected a crone, muttering curses and glaring at him with half-mad eyes.

  Instead, he’d found a kitchen not so different from his own kitchen at home, and a young woman not so different from how his own wife back home had looked ten years ago.

  But now, at last, she showed her otherworldly power, her true nature.

  Trembling, Will repressed an urge to leave while he could. If she had such power to look into his mind and heart, he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t meddle with her. Yet if he meddled not with her, the ghost would stay with him. If there was a ghost.

  “You called me by name,” he said. “How did you know it?” Because if she could read his thoughts, she already knew his fears. Why did she not calm them?

  She turned around and laughed, an easy, young laughter that vibrated in the homey, food-scented air of the kitchen. “Not through my powers, Master Shakespeare, which, at any rate, I would disdain to use for such a purpose.” She reached to the shelf over the chimney and, from it, pulled a much-thumbed booklet, which she held up.

  On the cover was an awful woodcut of Shakespeare himself. Beneath it, faded words proclaimed, The poems of William Shakespeare, the sweet swan of the Avon, his Venus & Adonis & the Rape Of Lucrece.

  It was not any edition that Will himself had authorized. Likely a print laboriously copied from the first editions and full of errors. Doubtless, sold more cheaply than the original print, though. As for the likeness, the best that could be said was that it was enough like him. Enough to recognize him.

  “But if you have no great powers...” Will said.

  The woman set her hands one on each side of her waist and grinned at him. “I did not say that. But I have more respect for my powers than to do tricks for you, like a pet witch, a tame witch, a juggler on the street corner.

  “Those who do tricks, mind, are tricks
ters and swindlers and no-accounts, trying to get pennies from your pocket, nothing more.” She paused and looked wistful. “As for me, for years, I denied what I was. I would have no commerce with the supernatural, no part in witchcraft. I denied and resisted till the forces beyond took me and held me in their palms, and made a mockery of my reasons and senses. I denied till I ran about, with my hair unbound, insane and pursued by things none other could see.

  “Then did I come to heel and break to saddle, and take on the duties that must be mine. For that I work. Not for money, but for the peace that comes with doing what I’m meant to do. I do not show off. I am no juggler.” Turning her back on Will, she resumed stirring the pot. “And therefore you’ll tell me what troubles you have, or you’ll be gone. There’s the door and yonder the road, and I’ll wager you know your way well enough to your cozy quarters, your respectable rooms.”

  As she spoke, Will pictured the street outside: Shoreditch at its worst, with winding, narrow streets from which the hastily built five story buildings on either side excluded all sunlight and all fresh air.

  The streets he’d walked to get here were unaccustomed streets for the respectable burgher he’d become.

  He shouldn’t even be in this part of town. And yet he knew it well enough. It was but three years since he’d lived here, as had Marlowe, as still did many of the poorer actors.

  The thought of Marlowe again brought a chill, again the feeling of being watched, and Will imagined walking that street, alone, back to his quarters.

  And, step on step, Marlowe’s steps would dog his, and, thought on thought, Marlowe’s voice would echo in his mind, mocking Will’s worries, smiling derisively at Will’s wit.

  Marlowe had been dead for three years. To Will, he was more alive than ever.

  And Marlowe would write his plays through Will or — barring that — prevent Will from writing plays all together.

  What, then, would Ned Alleyn do, having lost his investment? And what of the other actors of Lord’s Chamberlain’s men, good men all, some with large families.