All Night Awake

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Around Will’s shoulders her arms she wrapped, and in his ears, what sweet whisperings -- her breath against his neck, her lilac smell making him dizzy.

  Silver was sweet, and Will would fain listen to her. Her body felt gentle and warm in his arms, and it had been so long since Will had held anyone like this. Even Nan.... It had been too long.

  That Will hesitated, and, chaste in seduction’s arms, would hold back his love and his yielding, that had to do with Will’s true love.

  What he had with Nan, now there was love. Though Nan’s skin be coarser than this silk, though Nan’s whispers never be as soft, Will knew Nan’s goodness, the soft caring of her heart.

  He and Nan, like a tree well planted, had grown branches that, over their head, extended a canopy of love. If the trunk be slender or thick, what matter it, when the tree has born fruit, and the fruit is sweet?

  He felt Silver’s temptation and his body rushed with the sap of spring and the desire to give in to this lady’s wooing.

  And it was all a dream. Will knew he dreamed. Why not let his dream give him what his waking hours so denied him?

  Yet, what would he win if he gained this thing his body sought? A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.

  And wherewithal would his true love with Nan be marred. Even if she never knew of his transgression. For Will had promised there would never be another.

  Will turned in bed, his mind preoccupied, his dreaming arms hanging beside his body, while Silver hugged him tight and spoke of joy.

  Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to get a toy? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy? Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown, would with the scepter straight be stricken down?

  Will shook his head and, in his dream, pushed Silver away with his sleeping arms, and said, “Lady, no.”

  She was taken from him. A dark whirlwind sprang out of nowhere, and sucked her away into grey blankness, into nothing.

  Her face from pale turned waxen white, her body stiffened with unyielding death. Her lips opened and through them she screamed, “It was loving Will that has undone me.”

  A scream echoed from outside Will’s room, a cry like the fresh discovery of life’s short span.

  A woman’s scream, sharp, inconsolable.

  The scream on the heels of Silver’s wail intertwined into Will’s nightmare, making him start. He woke up. Trembling he sat, shaking in his bed, sweat springing, fearful, from every pore.

  What a dream he’d had. What a guilty dream. And following up close behind, this wailing, brought the fresh spring of his fear.

  Was Silver gone? Had she died for Will’s ill-considered refusal of her?

  And yet, how could Will not refuse her? And who was she, how far did she presume, that she presumed so far on Will’s love?

  This creature that was neither male nor female, neither human nor mortal, neither breathing nor ethereal?

  How could Will love such a thing, even had he not Nan -- real, true Nan -- to keep with him the span of his days? How could Will love light, immaterial light and cold magic?

  He could not. She was a dream he’d dreamed when young enough not to know the true from the false.

  But now the dream was gone and he, awakened, knew the real worth of wakening love.

  And yet he wished Silver not dead. And he’d not have the guilt of her death on his conscience.

  Outside the screams went on, pouring onto Will’s mind like blood fresh-sprung from a wound.

  This was no dream. This broad daylight should have dispelled the nightly terrors. And though Southwark was known for brawls and bawds, screaming like this meant a fresh death, and that was rare, least of all in daytime.

  Half-dazed and trembling, Will grabbed his clothes which he had thrown over the back of the chair. He pulled them on with clumsy hands.

  He opened his door to the warm morning air and ran perilously fast down his unguarded stairs.

  Outside on the streets, people ran like ants whose anthill the careless boot has ripped open. Men abandoned their forges, women abandoned thei r homes, ill-awakened bawds ran out in their nightclothes with tattered shawls ill-wrapped around their shoulders.

  They all ran in the direction of the screams and Will ran with them.

  As he ran, his mind whispered a disordered prayer.

  Only but let this mean a cutthroat had attacked a victim. Only but let this be a woman outraged in a dark alley. Let it be any crime, any crime at all, but not Will’s, and nothing to do with a wolf. Will remembered Silver’s talk of Sylvanus. He remembered his own dream of Sylvanus as a wolf.

  At the end of the street, pushing through the disordered crowd that milled there, Will beheld a corpse: a corpse torn, and mauled into shapelessness.

  He backed away through the crowd, gagging, feeling nauseous and dizzy.

  A woman sat by the bloodied corpse, a young woman that, doubtless, in other circumstances would have been comely. She cradled the shattered head upon her dark skirt, and cried freely.

  From the crowd Will heard comments, words that with some thinking assembled into meaning.

  “It’s a bear,” one of them said. “Some bear escaped from a baiting ring.”

  “Or one of the dogs,” said another.

  “Looks like a wolf’s ravaging of a sheep,” said an old man. “I was once a shepherd. I should know.”

  Will backed and backed, and backed, till he could hear no more.

  Something must be done about it.

  And Will knew not what to do. Silver had spoken of a wolf, and behold a wolf’s fresh kill.

  Will had turned Silver from his room, from the safe haven of his protection, such as it had been.

  Oh, the fool Will, the criminal fool.

  Cringing and sick at heart, he backed clear away from the press of people and leaned against a wall, his heart beating fast.

  He closed his eyes. Only let this be a dream, a mad dream.

  But opening his eyes he saw the same, the crowd gathering, the pungent smell of fresh death augmenting the normal reek of the street.

  “Ay me, for pity!” he whispered to himself. “What a dream was here! I do quake with fear: Silver said the wolf prowled the streets of London and behold, the fresh kill. Methought I was damned and behold, already, demons torment my heart.”

  Screams came from two other directions. More deaths?

  He thought of Silver who had come to town and warned him of just such dangers. He’d thought her to be lying for her own interests, and now, for his mistrust, was he undone, was she undone.

  Was Silver dead, who just yesterday had been alive and hopeful and confident in Will’s room?

  Or was Will’s dream one of those premonitory dreams he’d had sometimes, that warned him of impending danger?

  If so, then he must find Silver. Silver would know how to curtail the wolf. Silver would know how to make the world clean.

  Gathering himself with an effort, Will set off down the street. He must find Silver and tell her what was here.

  Despite the heat of the sun he felt cold, as he meditated on the fresh terror of his dream. For Sylvanus, the villainous traitor, was inclined as was the ravenous wolf. And like the wolf he’d prowl till he’d mauled human world and faerieland both to death.

  Scene Twenty Four

  The fields outside the closed playhouses. These are rutted, muddy fields, crisscrossed and tamped down by countless feet. Will, hastily dressed, his hair in a tangle, walks past the empty, plague-closed theater. Marlowe walking the other way, sees Will and stops, startled.

  And there the man was. Alive.

  Kit had searched Will’s street and heard of the killings. But neither had he that facility that some had of mingling with common people, nor had his disordered appearance, his great, anxious rush encouraged confidences from Will’s neighbors.

  Kit hadn’t found the little Frenchman he’d talked to before, and he couldn’t find if one of the dead might or might not be Wil
l Shakespeare.

  The description of the wounds of the dead men echoed with him like an evil dream.

  Seeing Will now, in this mundane street, walking, preoccupied, hardly noticing Kit, Kit breathed a sigh of relief and his legs that had held him steady through his long search for Shakespeare, now buckled under him, relief undermining them as fear hadn’t. Will was alive, the very man whose blood Kit feared he had just washed from his stained skin.

  Will was alive. Alive and, as far as Kit could tell, none the worse for the wear.

  “I didn’t kill.” The morning turned seemingly brighter, the air of Southwark, though heavy with garbage and decay, smelled cleaner, and Kit took deep breaths of the reviving, warm air. “I am no murderer.”

  And though his conscience shied he had often killed with words, with denouncing, with baseborn treason, the alarmed part of his mind demanded to know where the blood had come from, then, that had bathed him head to toe upon wakening.

  “Will, friend Will,” Kit called, his voice shaking, thinking only that if he talked to another it would quiet the voices of dissent in his own mind, for he was like a country broken to vicious fighting among angry factions, where none could emerge victorious.

  Will turned, amazed, and looked at Kit, and half opened his mouth.

  Will looked as bad as Kit felt, his face paler even than a shroud, his lips as grey as though death’s pale flag advanced there, fighting life away.

  Will’s lips worked for a while, before he managed to say, “Marlowe?” and that came in a choking, rasping voice. “Marlowe?” The repetition implied incredulity, the questioning of what Marlowe might want there, the test of the unsteady truth of naming.

  Kit crossed the distance between them, squelching mud whichever way under his boots, and not caring if they got splattered or not.

  His shaky legs supported him ill, as he extended his hands, both of them, to Will. Words he hadn’t meant to say dropped from his lips. “I thought you dead. I feared you dead. But you’re alive.” He took a deep breath and attempted to explain. “I meant I came from your street and they said three men were found dead there.”

  Will’s color faded another shade, going from pale to a sickly translucent grey like congealed lard. He straightened himself and looked at Kit with suspicious eye.

  Kit had just managed to get his mouth under control of his panicked mind, and contrived to say, “I thought I might have injured you.... yesterday.” And upon saying it, he felt his cheeks color, because he knew well that he hadn’t injured Will.

  He remembered too well, with sudden, vivid force, who the injured party had been and in which manner.

  But Will didn’t laugh at Kit’s pretensions, though he relaxed and unbent slightly from his square-shouldered, defensive posture. “No, no, I’m well,” he said. He didn’t extend his hands to meet Kit’s, but, instead, raised his right hand and ran it back through his own thinning hair. “I’m well, I’m well. And how fare you?”

  “Well enough,” Kit answered, though the question was asked for the sake of form. He let his hands fall, since his intended gesture of friendship had been ignored. Indeed, why had Kit made it? He and Will were not friends. Not friends like that.

  Kit had no friends. All his friends were dead, and the brand of their death upon his conscience like a stain.

  Will nodded. Once, twice, quickly, he nodded, then straightened. “Well, and I must be gone. Pressing matters of business call me hence. I must—”

  He started to turn away from Kit, but Kit grabbed at his sleeve, held him. “No, wait,” he said. He must tell Will of his foul awakening...he must tell him of the wolf, the horror, the blood that had covered him on waking. He must know if Will knew of Silver and what Silver’s remedy could be for such an irremediable ill.

  Will turned, vague and wondering.

  “We have....” Kit searched for words, but couldn’t somehow find them. It was as if his mind had become a quick stream, in which fish flashed by, silver and gold, but couldn’t be caught. So did the words for what he wished to say evade him, and when his mouth thought to capture them, his tongue faltered and turned his speaking to incoherent sounds.

  Will stared at him, eyes widening.

  “We love -- ” Kit started, meaning to say that they both loved Silver and that this must concern Silver being, like Silver, a thing of another realm, alien to human. But his mouth stopped upon the words. He took in breath and tried again, in an exasperated exhalation, “We love -- ”

  Will’s eyebrows rose, his expression something between sheer alarm and confusion. “Well, and may we talk about it another time? I am pressed for time, and I -- ”

  “No. I must...talk.” As Kit said that, he realized he couldn’t. Between himself and his words interposed the dark shade of the wolf, squatting upon Kit’s reason like a dragon upon his hoard and determined, by these simple means, to keep Kit mute. He couldn’t speak. And Will was turning away, walking away.

  Kit could get no help. He’d gone to Will’s lodgings, and knocked, and either Silver wasn’t there or she didn’t answer his knock. It came to the same. He must tell Will what was happening. He must. It was his last hope.

  He must ask Will to beg Quicksilver to save Kit. Or he would die alone.

  Maybe if Kit approached his meaning sideways, like a thing to be hunted. Maybe if he leapt on it like a cat upon a well-watched mouse, the thing would work. Thinking thus, Kit ran after Will, and stood in front of him, barring his way.

  “Listen, listen: There are more things in heaven and earth, Will, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  Will stared at him, uncomprehending, and made as if to walk around Kit.

  Kit extended his arm, to bar his way. “But come; here, as before, never, so help you mercy, however strange or odd I bear myself.” Kit’s mind was barely ahead of his words, seeking to excuse his odd behavior to this man who stared at him as if he thought Kit should be in bedlam hospital for the insane, locked in chains, and fed on water and dry bread. “That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, with arms encumbered thus, or this head shake, or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, as 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,' Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,' or such ambiguous giving out, ignore me, for what I have to say is hid in such foppery, and I must talk to you, I must say, we love both the same, both entwined in one heart, the same woman, the same-” He stopped short, unable to pronounce the word elf.

  Kit let out an exasperated exhalation. Perhaps another way.

  Perhaps Will, who dwelt with Silver, knew something of the wolf himself. “You may as well use question with the wolf,” Kit said, and amazed himself that he had managed to pronounce that word.

  Upon the word, Will’s eyes widened, his face acquired an intensity of concentration as if here, at last, was something that interested him. “Wolf? What mean you of wolves, man?” he asked.

  Kit opened his mouth to explain and, instead, horrified himself at the words pouring from his mouth, senseless words with no reason. “Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb; To wake a wolf is as bad as to smell a fox.”

  Will took a deep breath. He detached Kit’s hand from the sleeve of his doublet, physically unfolding Kit’s fingers that clenched upon the cheap russet fabric.

  “Ha! art you bedlam?” Will asked. “A roguish inconstant humor has installed itself in your wits. Or else have you drunk too much. Hence to bed, kind Kit, and leave us be, upon our fatal search.”

  Like that, with no appeal, Will turned his back on Kit and walked away.

  His fatal search? How fatal could it be? Could it compare to Kit’s anxious, hopeless quest?

  Standing near the closed theater, tears stinging his eyes, Kit thought it was all to naught, and why had he thought it would be different?

  Kit couldn’t speak, couldn’t betray the thief of Kit’s wits who’d installed himself in Kit’s heart and Kit’s mind as surely as if he were Kit himself.

  And perha
ps it was Kit. Always Kit. Oh, dread thought, and yet how likely. It would be no supernatural thing, and only Kit. The same Kit who’d turned in his friends and who, with fiendish humor and fiendish greed, had watched them go to their deaths, with very little regret and a justification that it was best for Kit’s own sake.

  Now Kit was the wolf, and prowled the night. It was Kit, whose schemes were revealed, whose plots tolled his end as surely as an unsound bell. Kit whom the council suspected, who’d made himself suspicious to Cecil, who cowered in the shadows of his own mind, and who woke up covered in blood. Kit who now fed on human flesh more openly than he had before, and yet was this feeding so different from taking payment for the lives of friends?

  And if this were all Kit, how could he be stopped, unless his immortal, fugitive Mistress knew of some simple that evaded the might of men.

  And if it were not Kit, then, again, Silver must hold the cure.

  “Can you not minister to a mind diseased?” Kit heard his own voice moan, and startled himself with its piteous tone. He yelled after Will’s now far-away, walking-away back, “Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow. Raze out the written troubles of the brain and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart. Good, sweet Will, for friendship’s sake. For the sake of humanity and kindness.”

  But humanity and kindness didn’t so much as make Will turn back at Kit’s pleading.

  Taking hold of his stray emotions, Kit swallowed hard. He ran his fingers through his entangled hair. What a fright he must look. What a sight. If anyone who knew him, who respected him should see him now.... How foolish they’d think him, how week.

  If his enemies in the secret service should see him now, what easy prey, what a mark they’d not deem him.

  He took a deep, deep breath.

  “Soft, I dreamed. It was all a dream.”

  But within him, the wolf howled triumph.

  Scene Twenty Five

  A tavern, in a narrow street, the ground muddy with accumulated refuse. Large, fearsome pigs run amid the people. Through the street Ariel walks, bewildered, confused, evading men who would hire her for a bawd, and shrinking from women’s envious gaze.