“It is my fault,” Will said. “For fear of magic did I refuse to think over it all till it was too late. And with my incautious temper did I rush here, where I was not needed and could only do harm.”
But the Hunter laughed, waved his hand and said. “Pardoned, the sorry lot of you.” Then, turning to the centaurs, he said. “And you, creatures?”
“We’re not guilty,” Hylas said, managing to stand. “Our race has been kept--”
“Not guilty?” the Hunter thundered. “How not? The oppression of your race, however great, could not have caused you to offer violence to my daughter.”
“It was the wine,” Chiron said.
“That he gave us,” Eurytion said, and pointed towards Caliban.
“Master--” Caliban started, squirming.
“It is my fault,” Quicksilver said. “So the guilt is mine. Mine and only--”
“Be still, O king,” the Hunter thundered. “I grow tired of your obsessive guilt.” With fierce brow he turned to the centaurs. “But you and that pool of iniquity--” he pointed at Proteus, "--you have committed crimes that naught can excuse.
“For your cold hearts and twisted souls, I call you guilty.”
On that word, the Hunter’s dogs rushed upon the centaurs, who, summoning their strength, scrambled and shambled away.
“Now, you,” the Hunter said, pointing at Proteus.
The net vanished and Proteus stood.
“You’ll be my dog, cur, for eternity,” the Hunter said.
“You’ll not win thus,” Proteus said, and, his body changing, fur growing upon it, loped in the direction of the pool in front of the magic castle, leaping into it. “I’ll burn myself and fairyland with me,” Proteus yelled.
Flame exploded.
Proteus's magic caught, and he burned like a living torch.
“Proteus,” Miranda yelled, feeling keenly the horror of the moment.
Beside her, her uncle screamed.
In a flash, Miranda understood.
Quicksilver, as King of fairyland, was still linked to Proteus, who was his subject and part of the hill magic. So when he burned, like a fuse, he’d set the whole hill aflame.
“Stop, Proteus,” she screamed and, throwing her own power between the two, knew she’d be consumed.
For she must stand between him and those she loved. She must save Hamnet and Will and Quicksilver.
She felt flame engulf her, burn her. She would stop existing.
But then the smell of dark forests surrounded her. The Hunter. Her father’s power, strong and icy, covered her, encased her.
She could see Proteus burn like a living candle, but it didn’t hurt her. Quicksilver looked unhurt and puzzled.
Quicksilver stared at Proteus who was all consumed. “How, how am I saved?”
“She saved you,” the Hunter said.
“And he saved me.” Miranda said, baffled. “My father saved me.” She turned uncomprehending eyes to the Hunter. “Father,” she said, then conscious of her unworthiness of such connection. “Sir, I am not worthy.”
The Hunter smiled and looked kindly. “None of you are worthy, nor am I. But each of us must do what fits the time.” He pointed to Quicksilver. “King, be both your halves and be not ashamed for that shall you more the king be, and less the fool.”
As he pointed, Quicksilver vanished, though as he did, as though a door opened around him, the people in the crux saw a lavish bedroom and a blonde woman who ran to embrace him.
“And you, Miranda, daughter, and you, Hamnet, my foster son,” the Hunter took Miranda’s hand in his cold one and, smiling, joined it with Hamnet’s warm one.
“You have my blessing,” he said. He grinned at Hamnet. “And you, you’ve been a son to me, these long years. My daughter take of me, and make her happy.”
He grinned at them, a grin most inhuman. “Now is the riddle solved, and I have by this contrivance of bringing you all to the crux raised for my daughter a companion most worthy. Now shall I to my ancient occupations, and unlearn the cares of a human heart. Fare you well, and may you be blessed.”
With his wave, Miranda felt as though the ground had opened beneath her.
She struggled to regain balance and found herself, still holding Hamnet’s hand, in a sumptuous salon.
There Quicksilver stood, dressed, wearing a crown and wrapped in a cloak. He smiled at them. Beside him were the blonde woman and a serious-looking elf with dark hair and bright-green eyes.
“Ariel, Malachite,” Quicksilver said. “Here are my new son and daughter.”
Scene Fifty
Will and the Hunter, before the castle.
“And you, O poet,” the Hunter said. “What shall we do with you? The witch warned you that to leave the crux mortal man must pay in forfeit a part of himself.”
From far off in the crux came the snarling of dogs the screams of centaurs.
Will shivered. “I have lost my son,” he said.
The Hunter chuckled. “Part of yourself? Poet, I think not. You scarce saw him from year to year, him in Stratford-upon-Avon and you in London.”
Will shivered and hugged himself. Must he, indeed, lose even more to the crux? What could he give? His son was already leaving.
But no, it had to be something closer: some quality of mind, or sight or hearing, breath from the body or else years of life.
Quality of mind? Will thought and thought on the poetry that Marlowe had bequeathed him. He could leave that behind, and then Marlowe would be free and Will himself free also.
But Will had made his fame, and not inconsiderable fortune, from Marlowe’s words. What if alone Will could not write at all?
He felt his throat close in panic.
Did he want, truly, to be forever beautified with another’s feathers? But did he, otherwise, wish to starve?
If he let it go, what of the people who depended on him? Ned Alleyn and Lord Chamberlain’s men depended on Will’s plays.
Could he let them down?
He felt the fog close about him. His throat constricted. Yet he must leave something behind.
Oh, let Marlowe’s poetry stay here in the crux. Let it go. Will would succeed on his own words or not at all. And if Ned starved until he found another playwright Will would gladly divest his purse to keep his fellows alive.
And go back to Stratford and gladly be a glover, if that were what fate of him demanded.
Let him pay the price alone and let Marlowe go to his reward.
He felt as though something invisible but attached to him broke off.
Suddenly, he breathed more freely. It was as though he’d carried a weight for years that was suddenly lifted from his back.
“You chose well, poet,” the Hunter said. “Now let me return you to your work. Now that my plans are all overthrown and that strength I have is mine own — it is most strong. Be free, and fare you well.”
On those words, Will found himself in his bare room in London. What strange events he had witnessed. He could hardly compass losing his son.
As for the words, well... he might never write again.
Yet, letting go of Marlowe had been worth it. The ghost was gone, and it seemed to Will he remembered scenes and voices in a fog, as though something had happened in that heartbeat when Will had forsworn Marlowe’s words. Something too quick for the human eye to perceive and yet crystal clear to Will’s heart.
He remembered a fog, and a small boy running through a featureless landscape -- a boy with auburn hair and wide gray eyes.
“Father, father,” the boy said.
“Imp,” Marlowe cried out, and, his ghost looking whole and unblemished, reached for the small ghost, and lifted him high, whirling him around in a rapture of joy. “Imp, I’m here at last.”
“And now we’ll truly be together forever?” Imp asked, as Marlowe set him down. Imp raised his hand to meet his father’s.
“Forever,” Marlowe said.
Together they walked off, towards some bliss only
they could see.
But all this seemed too metaphysical for Will’s small, tidy, homey room. So did all of the crux.
It all seemed a dream.
Yet there was an idea Will had for a tragedy.
What was it now?
Ah, yes, young love and adverse houses. A parent who refused to let his child change and therefore would create a tragedy.
He sat himself down and began to write.
Scene Fifty One
It is a week later, at night in Will’s lodgings, and Will sits by candlelight before a completed manuscript, frowning down at a letter in his hands. From outside come the sounds of tavern shills and drinking songs, and the call of sellers hawking their wares.
Will read the letter three times. The handwriting was not Nan’s — who couldn’t write — but the small, perfect handwriting of Will’s brother, Gilbert, a worthy Stratford merchant.
But the words were Nan’s and, from the page, leapt her distress and grief at the news she gave.
She said Hamnet had been found dead in the woods, and they’d buried him for, it being summer, they could not risk the corruption that would soon come.
Will would no more see his small son, only perhaps to pray at his humble grave.
And Will, knowing his son wasn’t dead, that what they’d brought from the woods was a stock -- a stick or twig enchanted to look and feel all like Hamnet’s corpse -- wondered whether to tell Nan. Would it multiply her grief or soothe it? Faith, he could not bear it if she hated him for having consented to the arrangement.
What else, though, could Will have done?
He closed his eyes, trying to decide. Either way, he must go to Stratford soon and console his wife and his grieving daughters.
They were all he had now.
For though his son was alive, Will had lost him, perhaps as all fathers must lose their sons.
Hamnet, for whom Will had dared dream so much had, after all, grown into a life that his father couldn’t imagine.
In the kingdom of elves would his life be lived, a kingdom so different from his father’s sphere as to defy Will’s understanding.
And yet, Will thought, wasn’t his own sphere of London and the theater a puzzle to his father, the provincial glover?
Someone knocked at the door and Will went to open it.
He found himself facing Ned. “You look hag-ridden, still,” Ned said. And, anxiously. “Have you any play yet?”
Will smiled. He went to the desk and got his manuscript and slowly set it in Ned’s hands.
“Here is,” he said. “The Tragedy Of Romeo and Juliet.”
“A tragedy?” Ned said. “Are you sure? And wasn’t the name different you told me before? Rowena and...what was it?”
Will smiled. He felt serene confidence that this play, written with his own words and without Marlowe’s was, yet, the best thing that he’d penned. “It is the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.”
Ned peered doubtfully at the first page. “Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean--” Ned read. He looked up and blinked. “This is like nothing you ever wrote before, Will.”
“I know,” Will said.
Ned peered back down on the paper. “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, A pair of starcrossed lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows doth, with their death, bury their parents’ strife. The fearful passage of their death-marked love, and the continuance of their parents’ rage, Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove, is now the two hours traffic of our stage,” Ned looked up and slowly, a rare smile curled his lips upwards, erasing the marks of tension in his features. “Faith, Will, it is the best you’ve written.”
Will grinned. “I know.”
And it seemed to him, though it couldn’t be true, that somewhere nearby Marlowe’s ghost laughed.
About the Author
Sarah A Hoyt has published over twenty novels and a hundred short stories. If you enjoyed this book, please look in Baen's webscriptions page for her Shifter's series (Draw One In The Dark, Gentleman Takes a Chance) or her science fiction (Darkship Thieves.) For more of her fantasy, look for Heart of Light, Soul of Fire and Heart and Soul. Those interested in historic mystery might wish to check out Sarah's Musketeer Mysteries, under the pen name Sarah D'Almeida. Her contemporary mysteries, under the name Elise Hyatt are Dipped, Stripped and Dead and A French Polished Murder.
For samples of all of Sarah's work, check out Sarah's website at http://sarahahoyt.com.
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