How could a fearful nag cost five pounds? Oh, all these men must be trying to cozen Will. He must look innocent as a mewling babe. No wonder even Marlowe had sought to cozen him.
And for Marlowe—to save Marlowe, to save the elves that Will had never trusted—Will would spend all the money he had left from what Southampton had given him? What would he do then, without the money?
“Will you take him, master?” the horse dealer asked, untying the horse from the post that held it in place—though the horse showed no inclination to roam.
The beast turned pitiful eyes to Will, as though asking for an end to its sufferings.
Will would very much like to see his own sufferings end, too.
If he paid for this horse, if he paid now, if he paid the whole five pounds in his leather purse, he’d be back where he was a couple of days ago, with no money to eat, with no money to return to his family in defeat.
No, no. Let Marlowe kill the elves, let Marlowe and Sylvanus take over the world. Let the die be cast and all come out as it would.
What could Will do anyway, unschooled in magic, against such great evil?
Will was a poor prospect for saving the world from a magical creature, a demigod. To own the truth, he couldn’t save himself from penury.
Will shook his head at the dealer, and started walking away, amid the crowd.
“Best poultry in London, buy it here,” a woman yelled, waving a live chicken, its feet bound, in front of Will’s face.
Will dodged the chicken’s beak. The chicken’s cackle rang like a trumpet of doom.
What mattered it to Will who ruled the universe—old pagan deities, or Sylvanus, or the God of Christians, or even the uncaring, amoral deities of Marlowe’s plays?
Surely Sylvanus couldn’t be any more vicious than the blind woman who cut the thread of life.
Yet in his mind, he saw the child, Kit’s son.
Whatever Kit might be guilty of, Will couldn’t believe he’d committed that murder willingly.
And what creature would force the hand of a father against his own son? Sylvanus had done it. If such a creature ruled the world—no, wove the world anew in its image—who would be safe? What world would this be, but measureless hell?
Will touched the coins in his purse, the coins that would allow him to go back to Stratford and see his son and daughters again.
But how would they be when Will got there? What if in Deptford, in Mistress Bull’s house, the final battle were won by the wrong being? What good would it do to Will to ignore it?
Would he not be like those who, in the time of Noah, feasted and drank, married and were given away in marriage, only to be swallowed by the impending flood?
Like Noah, Will was the only man, the only mortal who knew of the cataclysm coming.
And unlike Noah, Will wished to save all of the world.
Pray, how could he do this by hiding in his room and writing?
How could he do that by shying away from people who thought him a fool and allowing them to go on believing him so?
And how could he get to Deptford?
Will took a deep breath, tainted with manure and the smell of spoiled meat.
“Lace,” a peddler yelled, walking past, his wears spread across his arm. “Lace such as should grace your lady’s petticoats.”
His lady back in Stratford needed no lace for her petticoats. But she did need her life, and she did love her children, and by all that was holy, Will would keep that for his Nan.
Without even realizing it, he’d turned around. In the horse enclosure, he laid hand not on the fearful nag, but on a better horse, a dappled brown beauty that frisked about with impatient spirits.
“Ah, you came back, master,” the dealer said with a smirk.
“Yes, and I’ll take this horse, and I’ll give you two pounds for it.”
“Two pounds wouldn’t buy the shoes on this horse. Two pounds? Villain, you would despoil me.”
The scream of the horse dealer brought stares from every person around. Will should shy away. He felt his face color. He felt the impulse to hide.
He was a provincial here in cosmopolitan London. He must have broken some rule and revealed himself for the fool he was.
Yet, he remembered his Nan, he remembered his children, he remembered the little corpse in the alley, the symbol and sign of all that Sylvanus might do to the unsuspecting world he bid fair to rule.
And though Will didn’t fully understand the means and magic involved or all this talk of elements and aspects, he knew that there was another magical reality that twined his and that the two were linked. Through one, Sylvanus could control the other.
Will thought of Sylvanus, who’d bring children to such low ends.
He ground his teeth. “Two pounds,” he said, and held on to the horse’s rein more firmly.
A few breaths later, having paid three pounds, he rode the horse out of the fair headed for Deptford.
His mind was elated with his victory over the horse dealer, the respect he’d read in the man’s eyes at parting.
But now he faced a tougher adversary, one not likely to be impressed with a firm stand.
Scene 41
Marlowe, in a small room in Deptford, with Robin Poley and Ingram Frizer and a blond dandy known as Nicholas Skeres—a secret service man at Essex’s service. The three men sit at a table, playing a game of checkers by fits and starts. Kit reclines on the bed, attempting to look calm.
Through the window came the sound of a horn, calling warning to ships lost in the fog.
Outside, mist, thick as coal soot, wreathed every portion of this port town. The air smelled heavy, with decomposing fish and unburied plague dead.
Kit lay on the bed and trembled.
She’ll not come, Kit told himself, forcing deep breaths into his constricted chest. The Queen will not come. After her narrow escape the other night, she will not be so foolhardy as to risk her life in this small room, in the hands of secret service operatives.
But he couldn’t convince himself of it. The sun was setting. Night neared. The power of the elf grew within Kit. In Kit’s veins, in Kit’s brain, the elf’s hunger pulsed and the chant for blood, life, blood echoed through him like a drum.
Sylvanus hungered and Kit could not think of feeding for the creature once more, could not imagine tearing living flesh, killing men, not now that Kit knew what he was doing.
He shook with need to kill, and yet remained still by an effort of the mind.
Would the same veil of forgetfulness come over him now that Kit knew the truth? Or would he have to face the horror open-eyed? Had he only been aware of what had been done to Ariel because it had been daytime and, therefore, the elf had been weaker? Well did Kit remember that elves and fairies reigned in the night as men did during the day.
“Your conspirators come not,” Poley said from the table, casting a half-laughing look at Kit.
Kit sighed. He spoke through his teeth, against the veil of blood in his mind, “Please,” he said. “I’ve told you, my mind is disturbed. Arrest me now.”
Poley gave Kit a cunning glance, a halfhearted chuckle. “Arrest is too good for you. You’ll beg for it if you’ve lead us a merry dance in a fool’s paradise.”
But his chuckle and his cunning look told Kit that Poley believed in the phantom conspiracy, believed it more than ever. He cast the die again and said, “I believe the hand is mine, that will be your two pence gone, Skeres.”
“I’m tired of the game,” Ingram Frizer said, pushing the chair away from the table. “I’m tired of waiting.” He lumbered across the room to stand by the door to the garden glaring resentfully at Kit now and then.
Kit looked away and trembled. He wished they were all tired of this. He wished they’d arrest him and confine him in a solitary cell, with no one whom he could harm.
Then would the wolf spend his malice in those tight confines, and maybe even starve for lack of the life on which it fed.
Poley thr
ew down his die upon the polished table and half turned, to look at Kit. “What say you, Kit? Your conspiracy takes long enough in showing itself, doesn’t it?”
“It is a shy conspiracy,” Skeres said mockingly. “A conspiracy that will come out at night only.”
Kit sighed. He closed his hands into tight fists. He could almost taste their blood upon his tongue. He could feel their lives pulse, full and vital and energetic as they rushed like a swelling river all around him. He longed, more than anything, to drink his fill of that current.
If only they knew how hard it was for him to keep the elf at bay. And the sun was setting minute by minute. Soon Kit wouldn’t be able to hold back anymore. The elf would have all strength and Kit none. Soon this hunger for life and need to kill would hold full control over Kit’s body.
Soon—in Never Land—Quicksilver would die.
Tear, slash, eat, drink the life.
But the Queen wouldn’t come and soon, soon, even Poley’s cunning patience would exhaust itself, and they’d have to take Kit to some dungeon, give him to the tender mercies of some torturer.
How would the dark elf enjoy being tortured?
Oh, Kit wanted that more than anything, even if he had to suffer alongside Sylvanus. For between them, they’d killed the best child, the sweetest imp in the whole world.
Kit stood up, tripping and lurching as he fought against the sanguinary demands of the elf within his body. He tried to pace around the room, to dissipate some of his impotent anger, his painfully coiled feelings. But pacing was too hard when he was not fully master of his body. He fell to the bed once more.
Poley rose from the table, and Frizer and Skeres with him, their movement rocking the table and scattering the pieces upon the polished wood.
“Think not of escaping,” Poley said. “You have an appointment, Master Marlowe, with the questioner.”
“Oh, take me now,” Marlowe said, extending both his hands. His voice came strangled, through his need and the demands of the elf. “Take me now. Let the torturer do his worst. There’s reckoning to be done, and I’m eager to pay.”
“What mean you here? What strife is here?” a sharp feminine voice asked from down the hall, and quick, decided steps approached.
Kit turned, lurching, losing his balance.
The Queen of England entered the room.
Oh, Lord, she came unguarded.
Skeres and Poley and Frizer rose, all of them looking scared, guilty, as intelligence men always did when surprised.
Kit’s thought suspended, Kit’s amusement at the spies’ discomfiture halted. Upon that thought another thought came, trailing upon the heels of the first.
The Queen, the Queen. Don’t fail me now, vassal. We hold the world within our hands, the power of the ages within our reach.
Kit felt the wolf’s power expand and pull, extending tentacles of thought, reaches of feel to every limb of Kit’s to every pore, to Kit’s every nerve.
Like a conqueror entering a citadel whose gates have long been broken, thus the dark elf navigated Kit’s veins, and sent his orders along them.
Tear, slash, eat, drink the life.
Yet the sun remained up in the sky. Vassal, the thing called him, and vassal Kit might be, but Kit didn’t wish to kill his Queen.
For all his crimes, all his mad, reeling sins, Kit had never yet sacrificed a whole country, nor did he wish to do it now.
“No,” he said. “No. Run. Run, your majesty, run. Save yourself.”
The Queen stared at him exactly as though Kit were a dog turd freshly laid upon an expensive carpet.
“Run?” she said. “Run from whom? Run from where? This is my country, young man, and I rule it. Let rather all evildoers run from me.” Thus speaking, she withdrew her hand from behind her back, and showed that in that bony, wrinkled hand she held a massive sword, its edges corroded by rust and eaten by time.
The dark elf roared within Kit, throwing Kit forward.
The Queen flourished her sword. “What treason is this?” she yelled.
Poley, Skeres, and Frizer surged forward, seized Kit, pulled him back, away from the Queen.
But the elf had inhuman strength, inhuman power that flowed now through Kit’s muscles. While Kit struggled within his body, seeking to restrain the dark elf, the dark elf, driven by roaring anger, pulled away from the men who restrained him and, against their curses, their exclamations of surprise, jumped at the Queen.
I will kill her, the elf thought, his thoughts sounding trumpet clear in Kit’s fogged mind. I will kill her and through her, with sympathetic magic, will I kill the maiden, the female image that is a component of everyone and everything feminine in both worlds. With the Hunter already wounded, the fabric of the worlds will not withstand the death of the maiden. The stuff of the universe will dissolve within man’s minds, leaving all at our mercy. The worlds will be ours. You’ll rule mortals, vassal, and I’ll rule elves.
Elf-possessed, Kit’s body dove under Elizabeth’s sword-wielding arm and, teeth bared, jumped toward the Queen’s neck. Kit’s hands held the Queen’s arms.
The Queen screamed.
Kit smelled her perfume of camphor and stale roses. His teeth almost closed upon the parchment-dry skin.
And then he stopped.
A man entered the room, behind the Queen, another familiar face—balding forehead, dark curls, and falconlike golden hairs.
In that moment, Kit regained control of his body and stopped, still holding the Queen but not moving.
The elf protested and pounded upon Kit’s nerves like a man punching at an unmovable wall.
But all Kit could think, all Kit could feel, was how sorry Will had been at Imp’s death. A true friend and, oh, how kind and honest Will had been to Kit, always.
Of all the people in this room, Kit wished Will to remain alive, even more than he wished the Queen to live.
“Oh, Will,” Kit said. “Why did you come? Had I not warned you stay away?”
Scene 42
Will stands near the door of the room. Kit holds the Queen, who kicks and screams but whose arms Kit keeps immobile. Skeres and Frizer, at Poley’s gestured command, duck around the Queen to flank Will.
Will would swear it looked as though Kit had been going to bite the Queen and then stopped.
What was it, then? Was it the wolf in Kit, going to kill the Queen by the only methods the wolf knew?
But if so, then why had it stopped? And why did Kit look so stricken, and why had he reproached Will for coming?
“I came because I had to,” Will said, ignoring the two dark-attired men who flanked him. “I came because you needed help, and because Quicksilver and Ariel needed help, too.”
“So Kit had warned you away, had he?” a good-looking blond man said as he advanced, and pulled Kit away from the Queen. “And who are this Ariel, this Quicksilver? They sound like code names to me.”
Kit stumbled backward, as though not fully in control of his body.
Kit’s face had an intense look of concentration, as though every muscle were taut, every nerve straining. The look was familiar, but Will could not place it.
“You can’t help me, Will,” Kit screamed at Will, ignoring the blond man. His voice was a lost wailing, his eyes full of dread. “No one can help me for the night will come soon and then it will all be up.”
“I think it is all up now,” the good-looking man said. “I think it is all up now, Marlowe. Who are Quicksilver and Ariel?” he asked Will. “And what do you know of the conspiracy to kill the Queen?”
“Who is he?” Will asked Marlowe. He tried to duck past the Queen’s sword, and get near Marlowe, but the two tall, dark-attired men seized his arms.
What was this? It looked to him as though the knots of Marlowe’s life had all come to a tying point here, all entwining and enmeshing with each other. “Who are these people?”
“You’d have me believe you don’t know who we are? You, who conspire with Marlowe?” the blond man asked.
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“Oh, good Will Shakelance, permit me to introduce the two men besides you. The one on the right is Skeres, the one on the left is Frizer. And the other gentleman is Poley, sweet, treacherous Robin Poley, who sends men to the gallows with a smile.” Kit’s voice had a mad echo of his old, amused drawl. “They are secret operatives. Spies. Spooks.”
He could talk, yet he remained immobile, Will thought. Immobile and strained, every muscle working at remaining still.
Suddenly, the expression on Kit’s face made sense—the poet looked exactly like Will’s seven-year-old son, Hamnet, when he tried to stop breathing, for a tantrum.
He looked like a man controlling the uncontrollable.
Sweat sprang from Will’s every pore.
Only Marlowe’s willpower stood between them and the unleashed might of the wolf—the might of a supernatural being in full rampage.
“Treason, foul treason,” the Queen yelled. She’d brought her sword down, but she glared at each of them in turn. “If these men be spies, they be not mine. I know naught of what they do. No one tells the truth to me, a fragile woman, and yet I am Queen and King enough for this kingdom.” She stomped her foot.
Kit’s eyes looked wild and he seemed just like Hamnet when he couldn’t stop himself from breathing anymore and must suck in living air.
“Kill me,” he yelled. “For mercy’s sake, Will, if you’re my friend, kill me.”
Skeres and Frizer and Poley, himself, stared at Kit as though he’d lost his mind.
Will unsheathed his cheap dagger, which he’d never used for more than eating his meat in taverns. Will had never with his own hand killed man or beast, save only a deer once, when he’d been practicing archery. And that he’d regretted enough.
Could he kill Kit? Could he actually plunge the dagger into the beating heart of the greatest poet who’d ever lived?
Faith, Will did not know.
But aye, he would try to kill the wolf.
Even if he must die trying.
All Night Awake Page 27
