All Night Awake

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  This yellow, diffuse light highlighted patches of dark fog that formed shapes and clustered, center stage, slowly coalescing into something other, something human, like a group of people, sitting around.

  Little by little a concentration of fog moved up and center stage, and little by little, like a piece of clay gaining shape under the hands of a master sculptor, it developed the features of a man: a very young man, dressed all in black. His pale blue eyes protruded just slightly from the thin angular face, and wisps of pale blond hair clung to the high forehead.

  He looked around himself, as if not sure where he was, found Will and Ariel in the balcony, and stared up at them, with an intent gaze. “If we offend, it is with our good will. That you should think, we come not to offend, but with good will, that is the true beginning of our end. Consider then we come but in despite.” Its voice was slow and halting, as if coming from a mouth not used to words. “We do not come as minding to contest you, our true intent is all for your delight. We are not here that you should here repent you. The actors are at hand and by their show you shall know all that you are like to know.”

  Near him, another wisp of fog had taken the shape and the look of a man not so young, wearing a monk’s robe, his features likewise narrow and ascetic, his black eyes peering intensely from within his brown hood. “You come here to know where to find the wolf, and in which man he does repose. It should not be hard, for he’s inclined, as is the ravenous wolf, to bite when cornered, and fight without much prompting. Think you, you know him, if only you should think.”

  By his side, another specter had formed, a very young man, almost a child, with russet hair that Will remembered. Will would swear this was the shade of hair of the little apprentice whose corpse he’d seen. A frisson ran down his back, as he listened to that dead mouth speak.

  “He came upon me early morning, as I walked to my master’s, and stilled the heart that had yet years to live.”

  “The man who let the wolf make this spoil,” another fog creature said -- this one a fresh-faced maiden, "is as evil as the wolf who harbors him.”

  “That can I witness,” said the monk. “While yet we were both at Cambridge did he befriend me, and all the while he got from me my intent of going to Rheims and returning a missionary. I returned only to find that he had sold me to the gallows, and a fouler fact did never traitor in the land commit. For we were friends, and I trusted him well.”

  Cambridge. Will frowned. Had Kit Marlowe not attended Cambridge? He thought of the play maker’s odd behavior. But where would Kit have come across the elven kingdom before?

  “You?” Another fog shape said. “I, he did betray in the maturity of his years, when he made me talk of whom I wished would succeed our sovereign. And for those words, rash and quick, against his subtle mind I lost contest, and was hung in Tyburn square.”

  Others crowded in, with accusations.

  Will’s head swam in the confusion, like a traveler that has lost sight of shore and does not expect to regain it.

  He wished the shades would speak plainly, plainly accuse their slayer.

  Standing, his voice quavering, he put an end to the babel of accusations on the stage. “Stay, good spirits, tell me only: who is this man you so accuse?”

  The monk detached himself from the rest, and pushed forward, in rash movement. “He is a traitor and a miscreant, too good to be so and too bad to live, since the more fair and crystal is the sky, the uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.”

  The first ghost now pushed him out of the way, and said, “He is the muse’s darling, the poets envy, the actor’s patron saint.”

  The apprentice pushed them both away and said, “He is descended from Merlin’s own race.”

  And the maiden, last, shrilled, loud and clear, like a woman outraged. “His name is Christopher Marlowe.”

  Scene Thirty Five

  Will and Ariel in the theater. Ariel is determined to go out, and Will demurs.

  “But, my lady, you know not his poetry. He is the greatest poet of our age. How can we strike him down just because,” Will gestured towards the stage in exasperation, "ghosts and goblins have denounced him? It could all be a trap of the wolf.”

  Ariel felt her gorge rise. She wanted to yell, but she dared not. Were all men, then, these hesitant creatures, always ready to wait and ponder, and look both ways before deciding which way they wished to go?

  Oh, call them not men. Call them maids, and dress them in petticoats, and sit them to their embroidery all day.

  “I know,” she said, "that years before Quicksilver.... Years before you met him, he had this creature, this.... toy, for his one summer of sporting. A young man, it was, and later on, I remember Quicksilver said he had gone mad, tainted by faerie love, as all are who’ve experienced, and sought their livelihood from the stage.” She gave Will a malicious eye. “Obviously an all-too-common reaction to contact with faerieland,” she said, and had the satisfaction of seeing Will flinch.

  Yet, Will did a good imitation of Quicksilver’s overarching stubbornness that wasn’t force and yet wouldn’t be bent. “But Marlowe...,” he said. “His plays. If you’d see his plays....” Will’s eyes filled with something like starry-eyed awe.

  Ariel stamped her foot and blew out breath. He’d call her Milady, too. She wished, she very much wished that, like her husband, she could do more than borrow the appearance and clothing of the other sex. Then she would show them what a man should be, and how behave, and with what ready hand wield the sword. “If he is the wolf, and I argue he is, for I know a true seeing when I see one, then he is the undoing of both worlds. And you worry about killing him because he is a good playwright?”

  Why must men be stubborn only when arguing for inaction?

  Will looked at her with an expression somewhere between surprise and the look of a bird confronted by a rampaging cat. “And then the other thing is, Milady, one can’t go about murdering whoever one wants in the world of men, you know? I could end up arrested, or worse.”

  “And yet I am a queen,” Ariel said she opened her hands wide, to express the despair that welled up in her heart. “And yet powerless. My husband leaves me to defer to mortals, and my only ally, the man I’d have called a friend but a few minutes ago, has turned cowardly, his liver like water.” Even as she said it, and saw the sudden hurt fly across Will’s face, to be replaced with a closed, inscrutable expression, she knew that what she said wasn’t right.

  Will lived in the world of men, and in the world of men there were laws to obey, that no elf could understand, much less presume to ignore.

  But she’d been imagining him an equal who understood her and her dilemma.

  She heard Nan’s words in her mind, Nan’s fair words accusing her of having loved not Quicksilver, but only an image of him.

  Had she been doing the same here; had she been feeling friendship for an image of Will?

  Oh, if this were true, and she was only capable of being attracted to images, what did it say about her?

  How many times had she shied from Quicksilver’s caresses, how many times had she judged him inadequate because he fell short of her image of him?

  What did that make her, who’d so often accused Quicksilver of being cold?

  What did that make her, but the coldest of elves, the most wretched of wives?

  Like that, revealed to her own inner sight, unable to hide from her own mind, Ariel saw herself in that flash: small, inoffensive looking, and yet poisonous.

  How much hatred seethed within her, how much desire for power. And she, unable to love, unable to care for anything except these perfect images that she carried, within the secret of her bile-filled heart.

  The realization made her eyes widen in shock.

  It was as though someone had held a mirror in front of her, fully displaying Ariel in her full ugliness to her own eyes had, until now, been scaled over. “Oh,” she said.

  “Milady?” Will looked confused.

  “Oh,” she
said. “Oh, what a fool I’ve been.” But she didn’t wish to explain to him, as his eyes widened in further surprise, the full cause, the full extent of her revelation. A poor thing she was as an elf and a wife, but she’d keep her shame to herself. Aloud she said, “You need not suffer for killing the ally of the wolf. There are things, things elves can do, to...to prevent you falling to your human law.”

  This was the wrong thing to say. Will stiffened, if offended or shocked, Ariel couldn’t tell.

  Oh, for the ability to understand these strange, ephemeral creatures. What in this man made it so impossible for him to kill another, even another that so many ghosts had accused of treason, even another that perforce must die?

  And yet he was offended at the thought that he might. That she could tell, from the way he drew his spine up, from the way he glared.

  “Milady, Marlowe is a friend, a colleague.” He shook his head. “We have.... We have drunk together. We have.... He has given me advice. I couldn’t kill him. Not like that.”

  “And yet, you heard what he’s done to his other friends,” Ariel said, earnestly confused, seeking to learn. “And yet, you know he’s not reliable. This is a true seeing. I assure you of as much.”

  Will squeezed his lips together, making them appear small and tight, and straight. “A true seeing it might be, aye, and a true reason. But, milady, I don’t know why he did these things. You cannot believe only one side of the story. No man is so vile that he’s a villain in his own eyes. And Marlowe’s words are.... Marlowe’s poetry is winged fire and vibrant air.” Looking at Ariel, he looked earnest, pleading, his golden falcon eyes shimmering, filled with tears.

  “I don’t expect you to understand, milady. You’re not a creature like us, bound to a short span of mortal years. You’re not a creature who must seek immortality and hope in words that will transcend death. Marlowe’s words will transcend death, milady. Kit’s words. I don’t know about others'. That the mouth of such an able poet should be stopped. It would cry to the very heavens for vengeance.”

  “He is the wolf,” Ariel said. She wished she could make Will understand what she meant by that, how tainted the soul must be that could harbor such a creature as Sylvanus, and yet how, even to one such, Sylvanus would be torture and vexation, an eternity of torment to live with and excruciating suffering to endure. How the very fiend who’d given the fiend shelter must be suffering more than he deserved from the horror of it.

  “That may be as it might be,” Will said, stubborn, the facile words falling from his lips. “Now, if there were another away, an elven way, that you could separate him from the creature -- that you could detach the poet and the wolf, and let the poet go on living, while the wolf dies....”

  He wanted her to lie to him, Ariel thought. He wanted her to do the impossible.

  And yet, Ariel’s bitter voice reproached, hadn’t she, so often, demanded of Quicksilver that he do the impossible, that he make himself into something he was not -- into her mental image of him, her idealization of this prince Quicksilver that lived in her mind only? A Quicksilver without Silver, a creature without duality and ever ready to impose his will upon the world of faerie and men alike?

  If she could demand the impossible of others, why shouldn’t others demand it of her?

  She swallowed. It was impossible. She had forced Quicksilver to live an impossible lie for ten years. And yet, he’d tried.

  This was undoable, too, and, by the Fates, she would try. “I will try,” she said and meant it. “Good Shakespeare, I will try. Only take me to his lodging. There’s not a minute to lose. The centaurs are rebelling and even now, even this minute, I could lose my kingdom, have it severed from me like the cord from a babe.

  “And Quicksilver will die if he loses that contact. He will die, too,” she said, and was surprised to find her eyes overflowing with tears. “He will die, too, if the wolf claims one more victim, and see, watch, good Shakespeare, the night is advancing, dark prevailing. Even if this Marlowe tried, even if he’s not as corrupt as he seems to be, even if his conscience made him fight the wolf, he couldn’t keep away this evil. For Marlowe is of human kind and night finds him longing for his pillow--while this evil is of elven kind and used to spending the entire human night awake.”

  Will took a deep breath. He looked pale and as though he were debating with himself, neither side winning. “All right,” he said at last. His features set in stony determination, his shoulders unnaturally square, his hand resting on his dagger, at his waist, as though it were the hardest thing to do, to make this decision. “All right. I will take you to his lodgings.”

  Knowing she was a fool for braving the wolf in his den, knowing that if Quicksilver hadn’t been able to prevail, neither could she, knowing that the death of the creature was the only thing that would free them all -- but determined to try the impossible as Quicksilver had tried it for ten long years, Ariel walked beside Will out of the theater, and along the fields of Southwark, towards the place where Will told her Marlowe lodged.

  Scene Thirty Six

  Kit Marlowe’s room. Marlowe has removed the doorknob from his door and hung it around his neck, from a leather strap. He paces his room, back and forth, now and then touching the knob. Always, when he does that, it flashes forth in blue light. The smell of scorched flesh hangs heavy and bitter in the confined air of the room, mingling with the reek of the blood-soaked clothes piled in the corner, and with the stench of fearful sweat.

  Had it worked?

  Kit could not tell. He thought it had worked. He had seen the specters leave his room and fly through the dark, clear air towards the theater.

  Kit’s hands hurt and the wolf paced, just as impatient behind Kit’s mental barrier, as Kit paced within his narrow, dark room.

  Did both of them wait but for doom?

  The ghosts had flown at Kit’s command, but had Kit’s other command brought someone forth to hear the spirits? And had they delivered his message? Exactly what message had they delivered? And to whom?

  He couldn’t tell. He could only hope. He could only pray, pray with desperate fervor he’d not experienced since he’d been a choir boy in Canterbury. He could only pray for Quicksilver and himself, for his own damned soul.

  Oh, let someone have got his message who understood it and who knew what to do to separate Kit from his doom.

  Only let someone help him with this supernatural doom and Kit himself would deal with the mortal harm that threatened him -- and not the way he usually did.

  He’d not talk to the council. He’d not denounce Raleigh for things Raleigh had never done. He’d not kill anyone. Let Kit survive this and Kit would leave the country all together. Go to Scotland or France and there live, in fearful, quiet humility, forsaking his art and his silks; his velvets and his drink; his late nights and later mornings. Kit would live like a monk sworn to poverty and humble affliction.

  Only let Quicksilver be well, and remove the dark wolf from Kit’s mind, that even now paced back and forth and struck at the wall that divided them, the wolf’s impatient, eager hunger for blood and life striking at Kit’s mind, at Kit’s hold on his own body.

  Kit touched the iron knob around his neck, and whimpered at the pain it brought him.

  Oh, curse it all. Even wearing this knob over his clothes hurt and made him cringe inwardly. But touching it with his bare hands brought sheer torment.

  And yet, he’d lived well enough with iron his whole life. This reaction to iron was a measure of how much the wolf had already taken Kit. But the iron acted on the wolf even more than on Kit, and, pray, it was all that Kit had to keep the wolf at bay until more effective, more permanent, remedy could be sought.

  A sound of fast hooves outside brought Kit running to his window. His pursuers were here, at last.

  But outside, in the dark shadows of the night, what moved, amid the bawds and their customers, the gamblers and their victims, the drunken men and their next drink, was not human.

  These strange
creatures looked half-horse, half-man, with dark hair unbound down muscular, bare torsos, and glimmers of golden chains and barbaric jewelry.

  Ten of them, but only the nearest three were clearly visible -- their broad flat faces, dark curls, yellow eyes. One of the horse bodies was a stocky roan, another a sleek velvet black, the other pure white. But all of them, all of them looked alien and strange, and barbaric and just larger-than-human.

  His mouth dropping open, Kit wondered how damaged the world was, already, and by what means, that centaurs would walk the world of men.

  The men and the women on the street below walked around the centaurs without seeming to see them, even when they detoured to avoid them.

  Did they not see them? Was it Kit, who alone could see them? Was it because he was so close to the realm of faerie, so touched by the coils of invisible magic?

  Cold sweat dropped down Kit’s back.

  Or was this just a manifestation of the madness seizing Kit? Did he see what was not there?

  He touched the knob. It brought nothing but searing pain, and a further cowering of the cowered wolf. And yet, in the momentary parting of the barrier in his mind, Kit realized that the centaurs were something of the wolf, of the wolf’s own, dark vassalage.

  Were they the expected avengers for Kit’s crimes, also?

  They wouldn’t be, would they? Not if they’d come to serve the wolf.

  But then, Kit’s saviors who would come, would, inevitably, run into these centaurs and....

  And what? Would Kit’s deliverance flounder upon this shoal of hoofed humans and human-seeming beasts?

  Looking down from his window, Kit sighed. The centaurs looked fierce, muscular, strong. Each held a war mace and wore, strapped around his middle, both sword and dagger.