Little by little, amid the rank smells of urine and cheap ale, surrounded by dark warehouses, Will started feeling cold.
Like a breeze blown out of an icy place, the thought came: where did the words come from?
Will shook his head and smiled, and tried to quiet the thought down with easy assurances, such as would quiet Hamnet down when he woke up from a nightmare. The words had come from Will’s own mind, from his poetic dreams, his lofty aspirations, ever before confined by Stratford and his own lack of confidence, but which now were allowed, at long last, to fly in company that would understand them.
And yet he couldn’t quite believe it. It had been too easy. The words had flowed too easily, like sweet wine from a breached cask.
What if they’d come from the wolf -- Sylvanus -- from whatever evil power the dark creature commanded, that same power that had promised fame and fortune and sweet poetry to Will?
He shook his head. Around him, the shadows seemed to deepen, the dank smells to grow grosser in their overpowering assault upon his nostrils. They flowed to his throat, choking him.
Will shook his head. No and no and no. There was no ill gift in these words. No gift but his own, the one he’d been born with, and woven in strings of words and poetry ever since he’d been a tike tall enough to crawl after his mother through the Stratford garden.
Will remembered, when still learning to talk, how the sound of a string of words would transfix him, how the rhythm of words, pronounced and strung and played over and over in his head, would enchant him as much as shiny baubles dangled before his eyes.
And what was poetry but that enchantment, grown up and dressed in some learning, and taken out to be displayed in the world of noblemen and scholars?
Yes, but why had Will never been able to do it before, to create golden poetry, without a thought to either rhythm or rhyme? Where had that sudden confidence come from, that sudden knowledge? Had his sheer terror at finding himself among lofty nobles made him forget all but poetry?
Or could the words have come from a power Will feared? And what would the price be, that Will was sure he did not want to pay?
And yet he swore to himself it couldn’t be, he told himself he was a fool, a pathetic fool, a foolish fool, such as Nan used to call him. If Nan were here she would tell him, she would tell him he was frightening himself silly, of the nothing and the shadows and his own incompetence.
But when he tried this newfound power, when he tried to find new words to clothe new thoughts, they edged away from him, they melted into that very darkness, those very shadows. Like children frightened of a stern power, they slid sideways, away from Will’s searching mind, and went to play elsewhere.
He grasped for them with desperate thoughts, and called for them with a relentless mind, and they were there no more. No more. Which meant only that they could have come from elsewhere, been someone else’s servants, not his own.
A drop of sweat slid down the center of his spine like a gelid finger, and he trembled as he walked down the middle of the alley, where it was lighter. The alley was so narrow that were Will to hold his hands out, his arms fully extended, he could have touched the walls on either side.
And not a light anywhere, not a light, not a solitary candle in the upper floors, lighting the vigil of the workmen, the secrets of the magician, the work of the bawd. Not a single lantern swinging in the wind.
Dark dismal-dreaming night.
Will felt as if he were the only man in the world, walking through the dark chaos before the first divine word was ever uttered that put the sun in the sky and the light in the day.
When the shadow detached itself from the greater darkness near the wall on his left, Will jumped. He jumped back and knit his back with the wall on the right.
His heart pounded and his ears whistled, and he thought, if he thought at all, that this was Sylvanus come to collect Will’s life in exchange for his gift to Will -- come to demand payment for Will’s words, so roundly displayed before noble company.
But the shadow was man shaped and too short, too slight, to be Sylvanus’ dark majesty. Instead of graveyard clay and the smell of long-buried flesh, the smell that came from this creature was a perfume mingled with an indefinable smell of lilacs -- almost like Silver’s smell -- but layered over with good human sweat, the sweat of exertion, the reek of a closed bedroom.
The creature was breathed heavy, as no elf had ever breathed. It breathed heavily but with a catch, as if breath were caught upon grief and on it hung like a tattered sigh, almost becoming a sob but stopping short of it. Before the corner of grief was turned, the sob stopped and turned to that heavy, labored breathing once more.
Realizing that the thing he faced was mortal so relieved Will that he almost laughed. It was a man, nothing but a man. A common cut purse, an assassin.
Will smiled thinking that two months -- nay, two nights -- ago would he have frozen with terror and quaked at the thought of facing a cut-throat from London’s underworld.
But, compared with a supernatural being, what could a cut throat be? Weighed on the same scale, the cutthroat and Sylvanus with all his supernatural evil, the cutthroat would perforce appear almost gentle, and somewhat pleasing to the eye and mood.
He could kill Will’s body, but not his soul. Nor could his killing Will set the spheres on their way to colliding destruction, nor cloud the future of those who were still children -- in faraway Stratford. Their mother would look after them, and their uncles and their aunt. Will’s loss would go unremarked, except for Nan’s memories of him.
Will thought like that and it seemed as if he stood there a long time waiting for the other man to spring, standing with his back against a dank, dark door, that must have been painted once but was now only paint chips and splintered wood. Will let his arms hang by his side, set his palms back against the door and minimally moved his feet apart, braced to spring whichever way was needed.
Will’s would-be-attacker didn’t move. He stood across the alley from Will and made a sound that might have been a hastily suppressed sob.
He crouched, just slightly, bending his knees in the easy pose of the experienced fighter, and his shoulders stooped forward, just the slightest bit. Something metallic glinted in his hands.
A knife or a dagger, Will thought, and yet couldn’t command himself to fear.
The knife wielder would spring; the knife would be thrust at Will. This Will knew, and yet didn’t worry. In the space of mind to which he had retreated, these were banal, trivial threats, and he was certain of having the speed, the presence of mind to evade them.
Time seemed to slow, or hence his mind to speed up, so that everything happened very slowly, like a snail crawling on a green leaf in the sunlight.
Will saw the cutthroat shift his weight, so that it rested on the ball of his more advanced foot, and then he saw the man lunge. All of it took place, as it were, remotely, and so slowly, that Will had time not only to side-step the blow but slowly, seemingly so slowly, to extend his hand, to grab the advanced wrist that held the knife and -- in a maneuver he didn’t have the time to think out, but that his body seemed to know by itself -- twist that wrist with quick, vicious force.
The man yelped and dropped his knife.
The knife fell, with seeming slowness, and hit the hard packed dirt of the alley with a sharp metallic sound.
Only then did Will’s mind catch up with his body. Only then did he realize that the sleeve he had held was fine linen, soft and delicate to the touch -- not the normal attire of ruffians.
Only then did Will catch, from the glimpses afforded by scant light in this dark place, enough of his attacker’s features to find them familiar.
Good God, it looked....
Will took a deep breath, unable to accept what his brain told him about this man. And yet, the oval face, the small nose, the fine linen beneath his fingers, the tone in which the man had yelped his pain, all of it put Will in mind of Marlowe.
But what would Mar
lowe be doing here, in this dark place upon such a misguided mission as attacking Will? Why here and why Will?
Oh, Will didn’t think Marlowe was sound. He’d heard from many men before that Marlowe was an habitue of the street brawl, a frequenter of taverns where bawdy love was purchased cheaply and men got killed; a dealer in dark death and sudden betrayal, a man well adept at giving men private injuries.
But why Will? Surely Will was small enough, unimportant enough, far away enough from Marlowe’s ambitious reach not to be the bout of such an attack? And what could he ever have done to provoke such a formidable foe? Did Marlowe envy Will his poetry? Will almost laughed.
“Marlowe?” he asked.
The shadow man didn’t answer, except to try to force his body forward, pressing Will away from the fallen dagger, all the while attempting to stoop, to retrieve the weapon.
And there, Kit Marlowe might be the more experienced fighter, but Will was heavier, and stronger, and, despite the wine he’d drunk, seemingly the more emotionally unencumbered.
This close up, holding Marlowe’s wrist, Will realized that the other man cried. He cried quietly, like a child scolded once too often, and his tears were invisible in this darkness. And yet his grief was unmistakable from the rhythm of his breathing, from his sudden intakes of breath just as suddenly stifled, from his gasps and the slight tremble that shook the whole, long, limber body.
Like that, thus impaired, he could no more resist Will than could a child. Wrapped in his own grief, he was too slow to react, when Will grabbed both his shoulders, and, in a movement Will had not used since his schoolboy brawls, a long time ago in Stratford, pushed at Marlowe, with all the force of Will’s body behind it.
Will slammed him against the wall with sudden violence.
Marlowe lost balance, and fell back under the impact, and hit the wall full force, and gasped harder, and, for a moment, appeared to loose whatever strength had held him up.
Just a moment, and his body sagged, and he seemed, like a puppet whose strings are cut, to have no will and no power.
In that moment, Will advanced again, and grabbed Marlowe’s wrists, and, lifting his knee, slammed it full force into Marlowe’s private parts.
Marlowe bellowed and went down on his knees, and Will stepped back, and picked up the dagger from the mud, and held it uncertainly. He’d brawled with his fists and his feet, but he’d never before used a dagger on a man.
Yet, this time, Will had defended himself without thought. Or at least with no more thought than it takes to reach for a spot that itches. He had some idea, somewhere, that he must injure Marlowe to stop him from attacking him.
Now thought returned and Will realized what he had done, and part of him doubted that Marlowe would ever have meant violence towards him, and that part demanded that Will help his fellow playwright whom he admired.
Marlowe still knelt on the dirt, and held the offended part of his anatomy, and made a sound something like a low keening.
“Kit Marlowe?” Will asked. His voice sounded uncertain to his own ears. “Have I injured you?” he asked, and thought in asking it how stupid it sounded, for surely, surely, he’d injured Marlowe. He could tell that easily enough from Marlowe’s position and his high complaining.
At the sound of Will’s voice, Marlowe attempted to stand up, and tried to lunge at Will, in a half-crouch.
This man had no idea when he had enough.
Will stuck Marlowe’s dagger into the sheath with his own dagger and stepped back, balled his hand into a solid fist, and threw the fist forward, to catch Marlowe full on the jaw.
No time to think, once more, till the moment was past, and Marlowe had stopped, stock still, shaking his head.
Then did Will realize that Marlowe must mean it, really mean it. For some reason, Kit Marlowe wished to kill Will Shakespeare.
“What have I done, that you come at me so?” Will asked. “When have I ever injured you?”
This time, though he braced himself for the attack, his words didn’t incite Marlowe to violence.
Instead the playwright stepped back and lifted his face so that it caught fully in a beam of reddish moonlight coming between two tall buildings.
Will saw, as he had suspected, the traces of tears, moon-bright, down Marlowe’s face, and the swollen lips, the ravaged look of one who’s cried long, unguardedly.
He also saw surprise, or confusion, or something like a slow puzzlement dawning on Marlowe’s face.
Marlowe swallowed, then swallowed again, and when he spoke his voice sounded high and reedy and unguarded. “You ask what you have done?”
Will nodded. “Aye, I ask, for I do not know.”
Marlowe arched his eyebrows in disbelief. “My love,” he said, and stopped.
Will felt his eyes widening in shock. He’d heard rumors about Marlowe, but surely, surely the words didn’t mean what Marlowe seemed to say. Even Marlowe couldn’t be that insane.
And there Marlowe caught breath again, and took it in, seemingly expanding his chest to accept that much air, and swallowed again, and half sighed, and cleared his throat and spoke, closer to his normal voice, “Oh, you, foul thief, what have you done with my love? Damned as you are, you have enchanted her, for I’ll refer me to all things of sense, if she is in chains of magic not bound, whether a maid so tender, fair and happy, would ever have, to incur a general mock, run into the provincial arms of such a man as you.” Marlowe took a deep breath, again, and seemed to explode in words as fresh tears erupted from his unguarded eyes. “Judge me the world if ‘tis not gross in sense, that you have practiced on her with foul charms, that weaken notion.”
Genuinely baffled, Will stepped back and braced for further attack. “You’ve drunk too much ale,” he said. “Or else are your senses addled with moon madness. Of what do you speak?”
“Of my love,” Marlowe said, and though he spoke in a low voice, yet it seemed to Will that he wailed. “Whom you have stolen from me.”
“Friend Marlowe,” Will said. “I know not by what false report you understood this, nor what manner of creature has thought to send you against me by these means, but I have stolen no love, yours or anyone’s. I love no one, save only my own lady, Nan, at home in Stratford....”
A brief thought of Silver, in the room, of his lust for her, made Will flinch from so bold a statement, and yet he spoke true and knew it in speaking it. For Nan’s sake had Will resisted Silver’s blandishments. “And unless you aspire to her favor -- in which case I hope to stand firm as her lord should, I -- ”
He could go no further. Marlowe’s face, ravaged by grief and marked by shock, changed aspect. His eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open, then his eyes half-shut, his mouth smiled, and a dry cackle rose out his throat, like the sound of a creature surprised at itself. “The good wife?” he asked. “Oh, but that’s rich.”
“Rich or poor, she’s the only one I got, and tell me not I’ve trifled with some fine lady, or with the wife of some nobleman, or whatever women move in those circles to which you aspire, Kit Marlowe, for I’ve none of it, and well you know.”
Marlowe stopped laughing as abruptly as he’d begun, and opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it on the words unuttered. After a while he took in breath, and said, “Maybe you’re right, and maybe I was ill informed. Who am I to doubt what you so earnestly say?” Standing in the street, he composed himself, though his shirt still protruded below his doublet, and his hair still looked like a tangled mess. He brushed ineffectually at the slime and mud on his jacket. “I’ve done you injury, good Will.”
“Nay, no injury, but let me walk you home.” To be honest, with Marlowe in this state, Will didn’t trust him to go more than a few steps without getting in another brawl. And the next ruffian might bring Marlowe down.
Will realized, with a shock that almost made him laugh that, envious though he was of Marlowe’s gift of words, he didn’t wish Marlowe ill. No, let the wretched creature go on living, if it meant he’d g
o on producing poetry.
Kit tilted his head sideways. “I live not very far off. There’s a tavern beneath my lodgings. I pray you let me, repay it in some measure by taking you to the tavern, where you shall drink my health and I yours, and we shall be friends again.”
Will opened his mouth to say they’d never been friends, but closed it again. Neither seemed it a good time to remind Marlowe that if anyone had suffered injury in this fray, it had been Marlowe himself.
London contained taverns aplenty and Will thought that in many of them he could be killed and disposed of and no man the wiser. Yet, he looked at Marlowe and at Marlowe’s seemingly open countenance and honest proposing of a drink.
Will sighed. After all, much to his own surprise, Will had managed to stop Marlowe in private brawl. Surely in a tavern he’d only be safer. “I’ll go with you, Marlowe,” he said. “But I’ll keep your dagger, yet a while.”
And Marlowe bowed, but it seemed to Will that something weary spied out of the corner of the playwright’s eye.
Scene Sixteen
The palace of faerieland. Upon the throne, Ariel looks more than ever like a doll -- a waxen-pale doll. The court has fallen silent, the deep silence of the profoundly shocked.
It was the silence that woke Ariel from her horrified contemplation of the image in the drop of water.
Quicksilver used to say, joking, that the court became quiet only for regicide or treason.
Quicksilver. She remembered his smiling at her, as he said that. She saw him as Silver, within the drop of water, smiling on another, a mortal, a young man. And not Will.
It had come to this, then, that her lord -- her lord’s other aspect -- would be a bawd unto human kind.
He had promised Ariel -- promised -- upon their wedding day that he would never change again, not voluntarily. She’d seen him break that yesterday.
And then he’d promised her, promised her, she’d be his only love, lifelong -- a promise most uncommon for a marriage between near-immortal beings.
All Night Awake Page 43
