Kit realized he’d been ever cleft in twain: the scholar, calm and impenetrable, above the world with curious eyebrow cocked at human follies—and the enraged, betrayed, mocked cobbler’s son that moved through the night, his dagger out, seeking revenge on those who’d done him wrong.
He cast a look at the man—the creature—beside him. The elf’s arm weighed like cold, dead iron in Kit’s.
The creature turned his perfect face and smiled at Kit, showing teeth that were just a little too long, a little too sharp.
But more than the teeth, what scared Kit was the hunger in the eyes that regarded him.
“I’ll get your revenge for you,” the elf said, and he smiled. His tongue appeared, sharp and pink between his teeth—the lolling tongue of a dog.
Kit thought of what Imp had said, of the man with the face of a wolf. He looked at Sylvanus with new eyes. Had this been it? Kit felt his heart race.
Was this the creature who had sought him at home? And for what purpose?
He tried to pull away from the arm that encircled his, and the arm’s grasp tightened.
What had Kit done? What? What had he agreed to when admitting he wished for revenge on Silver?
“All that I will do, and yet more,” Sylvanus said, his voice as gentle as a spring breeze. “All that I will do, and yet I’ll grant that Kit Marlowe will not squander his life, that he shall not give up breath and heart for the heartless elf, the foolish peasant.”
The gentle wind carried a smell with it, a heavy, gagging stench. Kit felt as if the elf’s voice had a physical presence that rubbed against his leg like a large dog.
Kit looked down, but where he thought there would be a dog, he saw only a darker patch of night, as if a concentration of darkness. The darkness crept up, like a miasma, and engulfed the shape of Sylvanus, making the elf look as if he’d emerged, half formed, from overarching dark.
What was this creature?
Kit pulled away, but the strong, cold arm would not let him go.
Kit thought of Imp. He thought of Will and his easy friendship, in the tavern, the day before. Those thoughts were rays of light in the gathering dark.
But Imp was threatened and Will must be sacrificed to Kit’s and Imp’s safety.
Kit felt trapped in one of those dreams where one wishes to stand up but can’t, the dream wrapping around him tightly, like a suffocating blanket.
Like a swimmer amid overpowering waves, crossing the broad arm of a perilous sea, Kit, wave on wave, saw his death near, and felt the abyss rob him of his very breath and life.
Kit thought of Imp and plunged headlong toward the promise of air and life, even should that air prove stale, that life fickle.
They were now in a part of town where no living thing walked. Houses, many houses, were marked with the seal of the plague that had so suddenly returned to ravage the city.
“Who are you?” he asked the elf, while the air around them grew very still, filled with the smell of the grave and of rotting flesh. “What are you?”
An apprentice, clad all in black, walked by on the other side of the street.
Kit struggled to cry for help, but he could not form the words. And if he found words, what could he say? That the gentleman at his arm was molesting him? Kit Marlowe, a grown man, who’d survived a rough and secretive life of London for so many years, would now ask for help from an adolescent?
The apprentice walked past. He gave Kit a sidelong glance over his shoulder, then with an obvious stare at the tavern sign above Kit’s head, shrugged his shoulders.
And perhaps I’m drunk, Kit thought. Or perhaps dreaming without sleeping.
But what dream of his had ever smelled so foul?
Laughter, unmistakably male in its low accents, and yet laden with soft, flowing promise, echoed all around Kit, seemingly wrapping him in coils of the mind. The creature grasped Kit’s arms with both hands. His fingers looked like claws and felt like crushing bonds.
“Who are you?” Kit asked again.
“I am that which can grant you your heart’s desire,” a male voice said, soft and slow. “Your desire of revenge and love and life, and everything you ever wanted.
“Only take me in, give me asylum, and shall your brow be crowned with a poet’s crown, and future generations will compare their meager efforts to your greater worthiness. And all your enemies will be destroyed and you shall reign, effortless and fair.”
Kit cleared his throat against the foul stench that surrounded him. He did not know why his heart beat such a disordered dance within his chest.
This was all a dream. It had to be a dream.
Did he not stand in a Southwark street, looking on mundane facades of wooden buildings, and watching apprentices walk by? Was the morning breeze not cold upon his skin? Did his clothes not feel clammy with his own sweat? Was he not in the world of real things, the world of the living?
By asylum, the elf could not mean more than for Kit to hide him for a time.
And yet, the elf offered to have all of Kit’s enemies destroyed . . . .
Kit thought of Poley and of the dark coils of the secret service. He thought of them threatening Imp. Oh, to see them laid low and Imp free. “How do I know you can do this? Who are you?”
“I told you, I’m Sylvanus. I was once King of Fairyland.”
“How do I know that you speak true?”
The elf laughed. “Because I know your future, Master Marlowe. Aye, and your past, too. Your future is to reign upon all earth. As for the past—did you not once stand in an ancient grove of trees, in a garden in your own home town, when you beheld Lady Silver? Aye, and when you rushed to her embraces, and submitted to those of Quicksilver, too?”
Upon all earth? It was insanity. As for the rest, Kit’s throat closed. How could this creature know the secrets Kit had told no one in all these years?
This dream knew too much and was too mocking. This dream knew about Quicksilver? If a dream of his own, it was a foul dream that lifted the scab off the not-yet healed injury and exposed Kit’s own heart to the cold and bitter bite of memory. And if it came from elsewhere, this creature knew too much, human or elf.
It seemed to Kit that a blanket of darkness enclosed him, a warm fog that obscured his vision.
Darker flecks floated in this black haze, like black diamond dust tossed in the wind. And a voice came from it.
“You must share my life and I yours, and in that life will you gain immortality, so that not only will your poems be remembered through the centuries, but you’ll be there to hear the praise and reap the accolades.”
The blanket tightened around him, keeping the cold breeze out. A different scent than the smell of rotting flesh surrounded Kit, again a smell not unlike that smell of lilac that he associated with Quicksilver and Silver, but grown overpowering, so as to become rank, cloying, like flowers arrayed around a funereal urn. “This I’ll do for you and more, if you take me in and give asylum to my high and lofty purpose. Rulers of the world, we’ll conjoined be, if only you keep me within your heart and mind. You rule humankind, and I Fairyland.”
“Fairyland?” Marlowe asked, the one word costing him all the accumulated breath he’d gathered, while the blanket coiled and coalesced around him. The creature had said he was King of Fairyland before, but how could that be, when Quicksilver had made the same claim? Did Fairyland have many countries? Many kings? “Where in Fairyland?”
“From Fairyland I hail,” the thing said. “From the hill within the Arden Woods. And there I ruled, before that demon, that low shape changer, Quicksilver, took my place, and with cold, unloving hand, thrust me from my race to die.”
“Quicksilver? Quicksilver banished you?” Kit asked. In his own mind was the image of Quicksilver, the fair youth in all his noble splendor turning Kit away from his love, and from his true lady’s bed.
“Banished?” A bitter laugh echoed on the heels of the word, and the darkness coalesced, so that over Kit’s shoulder, Sylvanus reappeared, thi
s time much taller than Kit, and better formed for war, with broad shoulders and powerful arms so that, beside him, Kit felt like a child, less than half grown.
Kit made as if to move away, but a hand grabbed him around his middle, a powerful arm held him immobile. “The vermin had no right to banish me, nor to punish me, nor did he have power to do so. I was his king and he a foolish boy, playing with his mortals and his maidens. Yet, like the snake, well nurtured to the bosom, did he despoil me of kingdom and of country, and send me wandering the desolate darkness, with no one and nothing to sustain me. But give me asylum, and together, we’ll recover my land, my kingdom entire, and lay the worm in the darkest dungeon that the imagination of man has ever built.”
Kit felt he should say that he did not wish to see Silver harmed—nay, nor Quicksilver either, harsher though he was—nor did he wish their enchanted life brought low.
Yet she should be punished, and Quicksilver, too, for their wanton disregard of Kit’s love. But no more than a rebuke, a soft rejoinder.
Just as he thought this, another thought intervened, that Quicksilver had cast him from his bosom and from Silver’s warm favors.
Twice.
Into that thought wrapped the memory of disordered sheets and warm bed, of the soft, silken body beneath his own. He sighed and bit his lips, and didn’t say anything, did not defend his erstwhile love, nor attempt to turn away condemnation from that fair head.
In that moment this other elf was upon him, seemingly still blanket-shaped and yet human-formed, his hands everywhere, and prying upon Kit’s breast, his thighs and every limb, and up again, and close beside him pressed, and talked of love.
Gasping for breath, scared and giddy and confused, knowing what he’d allowed Quicksilver but not ever truly craved from mortal, Kit made reply. “You are deceived, I am no woman, I.”
The elf smiled at that and said, “It is no love such as human love I crave, but the fair use of your fair body that we will become one and the other and both interchangeable.”
Too late, Kit thought to run. Too late he thought that if it were so, if this creature were to have use of his body—whatever that use meant—Kit, the weaker, would lose his body, aye, and his soul, too, and all that went with life.
What good was life, if just a semblance, if Kit seemingly would walk and talk, but another creature use his mind and limbs?
He ran, pushing his feet hard against the dusty ground.
The elf ran with him, the darkness clinging around Kit’s cold limbs. Laughter, immortal laughter, stopped Kit’s ears.
Kit ran and ran, in disordered running, till each breath made bid to burst his lungs, and upon each breath he thought it would be his last.
Then in a dark place, far away from the awakening street where he had started, his legs gave out. He fell down. His knees bent, bringing him to his knees upon a muddy street, wet with slops and smelly discards.
Kit’s eyes stung from sweat. Blinking, he looked around, and saw that all the houses here, once taverns and bawdy houses, were blocked, the board nailed across their doors, the seal of the Queen upon the board and a warning that here reigned the plague.
Kit Marlowe made as if to rise again, but his knees wouldn’t support him.
Kneeling like a penitent on the muddy street, he heard the elf laugh and felt a touch, upon his whole body at once, like a million wanton hands seeking to explore his skin, to know his every pore, and trying to possess him and have him and win him as never human lover could have done.
He tried to shrug away from this feel, too intimate and knowing to be pleasurable, but found nowhere to turn since it was everywhere, and his legs would not allow him to rise.
Trembling, he knelt and wished that he would die, or else that he would, instantly, be consigned to the raw attentions of the torturers Poley had threatened him with, torturers which, not feeling this soft, would yet be kinder.
The myriad hands seemed to sink deeper and, through his clothes, touch his very skin.
Then the touch turned burning, hot, intemperate, and sank lower and deeper into Kit’s being, so it seemed to have captured not inconsequential flesh, but his very soul.
Like a bird trembling between the hands that would crush it, Kit sought to escape, but couldn’t. What lay inside could not be escaped.
With a fearful burning upon his every limb, he collapsed to the muddy street and thought that he’d sealed a hellish bargain.
But something in him laughed, something pushed, like a rider will set spurs to a sluggish horse, something whispered within his brain, “You will rise and do my work now. Morning is nigh, and from now on, must you spend all night awake and doing my will, if we are to achieve our revenge over our mutual enemy.”
Scene 24
Will’s room. Silver has made an attempt at straightening the disordered bed and paces, back and forth, her dainty silver slippers ticking a fast rhythm on the floor. Now and then her long, white fingers tug at her neckline, pushing it ever lower, to reveal more of her white, rounded breasts, as if she were too hot to bear the contact of the creamy lace. Will opens the door and steps in.
Will opened the door to his room, his head still swimming with confused elation.
The Earl of Southampton had given him money—given money to Will Shakespeare, the boy from Stratford, the provincial that no one believed could be a poet. The earl had given him money to write a long poem.
Will felt drunk without drinking, tingling with excitement and trembling with fear at his own daring.
This one evening Will had been treated like a poet, accepted into the highest circles of nobility by the power of his mind, the strength of his learning. Why, the gentlemen with the earl had asked Will’s opinion on politics and religion and important, weighty matters, and they’d listened to his words as if he held a secret to knowledge they could but guess at.
On this wave of triumph, he opened his door, on this wave of triumph he stepped into his room, to be engulfed in Silver’s arms, enveloped by the cloying lilac perfume of fairykind.
“Milady,” Will said.
Silver’s skin burned, like the skin of a feverish child, and her arms around Will scorched like brands pulled from a blazing fire. Her breasts pushed against his chest, so that he could feel them even through his doublet and his shirt.
“Milady,” he said. He could say no more. Her lips, hot, searched for his with the blind eagerness of a child’s.
For a moment her lips touched his. For a moment their mouths joined, and he breathed in the taste of her—like wine, newly bottled, full of spirit and bursting with life.
He thought of Nan. Nan in Stratford. Nan patiently waiting for Will beside their hearth. Nan, who should hear of Will’s triumph. Nan, who deserved not to have her husband betray her with an elf—something not human, something beautiful but also cold and distant like stars twinkling in the velvet of the night sky.
His hands lifted and rested on Silver’s shoulders, and pushed away at her till she stepped back. Looking dazed, she tried to approach and kiss him again.
He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, wiping the taste of new wine from his lips, and pushed away harder.
Silver lost her balance, with his too-rough shove, and stepped back, till she stood against the bed and looked at him with wide, unfocused eyes. The eyes of a drunkard.
“Milady,” he said again. “Milady, you forget yourself.”
Silver opened her mouth. She took a step toward him, then a step back. Her hands trembled, and her body, too, giving the impression of a great struggle, as if she were two people, one rushing eagerly toward him, the other holding back, pulling back. Like an eager horse being restrained by a severe trainer, like a chained bear struggling against the chains to reach the dogs that wound him.
A mewling sound came through those parted red lips. A sound of complaint. “I don’t wish . . .” Silver said, her voice low and rough. Quicksilver’s voice. “I don’t wish to do this. It is the universe-ordering thought, the
elements and images through which elves and humans perceive the universe. It’s all disturbed. The female element—the triple goddess, the eternal trinity, maiden and mother and crone—feels threatened. And like a person preparing for a blow, it increases its strength, it rules all, trying to appear powerful, trying to . . .” Silver’s mouth opened and closed, her body trembled.
Will thought of his dream, his odd dream. He thought of the maiden, the matron, and the crone.
He shook his head. He did not wish to think about it.
He wanted nothing to do with the slippery world of the supernatural. He wanted his solid home, his commonsense wife, his profitable career, his coat of arms. He wanted his son to attend a well-regarded college.
His hand within his sleeve touched and felt the solidity of the leather purse he’d got, the metal coins within. He took a deep breath. The world of reality called him, the world of coin and work and family. The faerie world was delusion, a mad dance of nonsense that permeated reality yet didn’t impinge upon it.
He walked toward his bed, intending to put the purse beneath the mattress.
Silver cut his advance.
Her trembling hands stretched toward his shoulders, her chest rose and fell in fast, eager breaths—reaching breaths, imploring breaths, demanding breaths. Her lips parted, promising a heaven within—the taste of fresh wine, the caresses of her searching tongue.
Will looked at her lips and at her rising and falling breasts, and heard his own voice come small and strangled from a throat that felt suddenly tight. “Madam,” he said. “Madam, you forget yourself. I am married, and so is Quicksilver.”
As he spoke, he stepped backward, toward his desk, hoping nothing was in his way.
If he fell and she touched him once more, it would all be up.
Will might resist temptation while looking at Silver, but resisting temptation under the touch of those long, knowing fingers—resisting temptation then would take a less lively saint than Will could ever hope to be, a saint of plaster and painted wood like those the papists venerated.
All Night Awake Page 18
