Ink and Steel pa-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  She nodded and stepped away, her hand lingering for a moment. “I’ve brought a salve imbued with amber oil and camphor as well, to anoint the sore places. Some say it helps.” A facile shrug, and then she dug in her pockets for a tin box, a stoppered bottle no bigger than an ink horn, and a casket of carven stone. “We can try poison nut if none of these avail. Thou needst be cautious of the dosage: there is no remedy for monkshood or arnica poisoning, and neither is a pleasant death.”

  Will held out his hands: they trembled less as she laid each gift in his cupped palms. “Thank you, Your Highness. You will show me how?” She nodded and went to the fireside, leaning against the edge of the hearth, watching him with a sort of birdlike brightness. He stilled his face to hide the longing in it.

  “None of this is a cure, gentle Shakespeare.”

  “I understand.” Curiously, he examined the bottle; it was carven from the tine of a stag’s horn, and the stopper was finished with a knotty gray pearl. He laid it on the bed beside him, along with the other trinkets. Your Highness.”

  “Ask it, William. I have little time for reticence, as Sir Christofer will no doubt inform thee.”

  “Why am I permitted my freedom and vouchsafed your aid, and that of the Mebd, when my friend Kit is so obviously bound here against his will, and indurance?”

  “A good question, she said, and went to find glasses on the sideboard. “Thou shouldst not too much drink ale or wine with those herbs; a little will not hurt, but be sparing. But I can offer thee a drink of lemons and ginger.”

  “A good question that will go unanswered,” he said with some amusement, smiling as she placed the cup in his hands. It steamed, and the metal warmed his palms: more casual witchcraft.

  “Nay,” she said. “I’ll answer thee.” She sipped her own drink, and Will only held his for a moment and watched her face and the way her hair moved against her cheek, showing bands of silver among the black.

  She said, “Because thou art of more use to Faerie in the mortal realm than thou art here, and Sir Christofer has that in him which we need, and can bargain with, and can use as a weapon. And thus we keep him here.”

  “Has that in him, his magic? His poetry?”

  “No, though we have our ways of making profit on that.”

  “Does he know this?”

  “He knows we have uses for him. He knows what some of them entail: his poetry, his plays. We use him as your own Gloriana did and there is more to it, of course.”

  “And you have not told him.”

  “Because,” she said, pressing the back of her hand to her eye, “he is not ready to know. Thy Kit Marley is a deeply broken thing, gentle William, and I do not think he could bear the knowledge of what use he has been put to.”

  Will’s hands tightened on the cup. He lifted it to his mouth and tasted the sweetness of honey, the sharpness of ginger, infused with a silvery aftertaste. Her candor left him nauseated: the ginger helped. “What use is that, Your Highness?”

  “No,” she said, after a considering stare. “I do not believe thou couldst keep it from him long, even an thou understood why it must be kept. Suffice it to say he is safer with us, and kept distracted with small tasks.”

  “He’s not a man for small tasks, Your Highness.”

  This smile sparkled, parting her lips for a low, sugared laugh. “Perhaps not,” she answered, setting her cup on the mantel and strolling toward the door. She opened it and paused within its frame, turning back for a parting smile. “But then, neither art thou, I consider.”

  Will paused in the doorway to the conservatory, blinking in the light as its occupants turned to face him, and then blinking again to bring the splendor of the enormous room into focus. Music surrounded him, an eldritch sort of a reel on two flutes and viola; he gazed about in wonder as he paused atop the broad, time-hollowed marble steps. Some vining plant a type of fig, he realized, for the fruit that hung in purple-black profusion along its stem ascended a trellis, contorted branches a latticework against the crystal of the ceiling. A wisteria’s waterfall blossoms dangled among the fig’s glossy leaves, and all about the glass-domed marble space were fountains and benches and statuary, a profusion of half-private niches and mossy grottoes.

  A small group of people both nearly human and quite outlandish gathered by the splashing fountains: Kit and the bard Cairbre in their gaily colored patchworks, and beside them the snake-tailed Amaranth. There was a foppishly dressed gallant with a stag’s head on his shoulders, shiny above the ears where he must have shed his antlers, and Robin Goodfellow perched on the head of a statue, reed flute raised to pursed lips and his ears waggling in time.

  Will did feel better for Morgan’s herbwifery, he realized; the ache across his shoulders ebbed, and his hands shook less as he took the banister to descend, hushing his footsteps so as not to disturb the musicians. Kit caught his eye over the restless motion of the bow, offering a smile that brought with it a frisson that Will could almost convince himself was aversion. Or should that word be fascination, Will?

  He paused outside the circle until Kit, Cairbre, and the Puck lowered their instruments, then joined the polite applause. Kit, that smile still intact, handed his viola and the bow to Amaranth, who settled it under her chin amidst much inconvenienced hissing from her hair.

  “Well played,” Will said. Kit shrugged it off. He laid a hand on Will’s shoulder and drew him gently aside, where the sound of the fountain and the flurry of music would cover their speech. “I’ve not much to do but practice and play the Prince’s favorite. How went your interview with my mistress?”

  “She is most gracious,” Will answered. “And most mysterious.”

  “I hope you have been careful what she has asked of you,” Kit.

  “As careful as a man may be, where he owes his life.”

  “Aye, there’s the rub.”

  “Tis not the rub that concerns us so much as the result.” Will chuckled, dabbling his hands in the fountain. He leaned back, rested against the edge, remembering the paleness of Kit’s scars. The man’s entitled to nightmares,he thought. He’s also entitled to the truth of what Morgan said of him: as well she knows I won’t be used against my friend.

  “She hinted at things that troubled me, my friend.”

  “Sorcery and subtlety.” Kit snorted, turning to sit on the marble edge, shoulder to shoulder with Will and on his left. “Did she tell you it was she who ensorceled me, when first I came to Faerie?”

  “No. And yet she released you?”

  “After a fashion. Or I won my way free. I am still bound here, though.”

  Will raised his left hand to brush his earring.

  Kit nodded. “I envy you that, a bit. It seems I can be gone from Faerie three days, perhaps four, before my body begins to fail. An unkind sentence. I comfort myself that at least I left no family, save that in Canterbury.”

  What dost thou then think I am, Kit? And the Toms, and Mary and Robin, and Ned Alleyn?But he nodded, and bumped Kit’s shoulder with his own. “She also hinted and wisely said she would not say more, as I might run direct to thee with the tidings,” a deprecating laugh, “that thou wert bound, somehow, still. She suggested that there was a power in thee, something trapped and broken.” He moved to see Kit’s profile. Kit had put his blind side to Will, Will realized with a rush of affection.

  “She has a gift for manipulation,” Kit said. “But she does not understand, always, mortal men.”

  “I see.”

  “What did she say, exactly?”

  Will drew a breath, watching Amaranth rise up on the tower of her tail, her scales catching the light that rippled from the fountains until it seemed she shone.

  “She said that I was free to go because of being more use in the mortal world than here, and that you have that in you which she needs, and might bargain with, and may find to be a weapon. And that you were too deeply wounded to be told this secret, because it would damage you further to know.”

  “I see,” Kit
said. “Tis so satisfying to have the trust and good faith of one’s patrons.”

  Will held back a laugh at Kit’s dry, weary tone. “Wilt beard her on this?”

  “Morgan le Fey? Might as easily draw the claws from a lion’s paw as secrets from that one. She’s fair as thorn in bloom, and twice as daggery. No. I’ll pursue where I can.” Kit folded his arms across his chest, the angle of his chin telling Will that he watched the Puck cavorting about the shoulders of Hercules. He sighed. “Sweet William. How did we ever get from there to here?”

  Will shrugged. “Where? London? Where is here, then?”

  “Sorcery, intrigue, intelligencing, Faerie.”

  “Poetry.”

  “Poetry is how we got here? Who would have thought poetry so dangerous?” Kit kicked one heel up, resting it against the base of the statue. “My father made shoes. Yours made gloves. There’s a certain symmetry there, and to ending up here.”

  “The Cobbler’s Boy, the Glover’s lad, and the Queen of Faerie. I hope this isn’t an ending.”

  “I was hoping for happily ever after in wealth and contentment.”

  “It should be a ballad.”

  If I know Cairbre, it will be. A facile comment, but Will thought there was more behind it. Kit hummed a familiar melody, and sang under the rise and fall of the flutes and the viola: ‘ALL hail the mighty Queen of Heaven!’

  “Oh, no, True Thomas, that name does not belong to me.”

  “Old songs?”

  “Old songs, old poems. Old poets.”

  “Getting older.” Silence for a minute, as they listened to the melody of the instruments and the falling water. “I think I know, then, what’s bound in me that they mean to use as a weapon.”

  “You do?”

  “I can guess.” The arms unfolded. Kit leaned back, his hands flat on the edge of the fountain. Will imitated the gesture, cool marble smooth and damp under his hands.

  “What then?”

  “At a guess? Something to do with the spells we build with our poetry. It would go a deal toward explaining why thou hast been unable to break the drought, if they’ve … Baines,” and Will felt Kit’s shiver, “said the bridle, the stopping of a poet’s voice, was the symbol that drove the spell.”

  “Spell?” Will turned again, and laid a hand on Kit’s shoulder, watching him swallow and continue to stare straight ahead at the musicians. “Spell?”

  “You re too easy to talk to, Will.

  As it may be. Spell. You said nothing.”

  “What happened in Rheims,” Kit said, “was some sort of black magic. Promethean magic. Baines called me …” a deadly levelness, the tone of a boy reciting latin verbs vessel.

  “Christ, Kit.”

  Kit didn’t turn, but a casual gesture dismissed Will’s fury. “So, logically, if that’s what’s bottled up in me, and how they did it …”

  “Canst prove it?”

  “Nay. Tis speculation of the rankest sort.”

  “What are we going to do about it?”

  ‘We.’ He felt Kit’s relief at the word, the way the smaller man relaxed as he turned to give Will a fragment of a smile. “Damn, Will. We haven’t an idea. But we’ll be sure to let us know when we figure it out, won’t we?”

  Will squeezed and let his hand drop, turning back to the music, aware that the appraising eyes of Cairbre and the stag-headed Fae rested upon them.

  “We’ll certainly do our best.”

  Act III, scene vi

  That love is childish which consists in words.

  CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Dido, Queen of Carthage

  Kit watched Will turn away, admiring the resplendent and obviously uncomfortable figure he cut in trunk hose, a starched ruff, a plumed hat, and a gold-and-aquamarine-wrought doublet of the vivid blue called inciannomati. Blues were unfashionable in London; it was the color of apprentice gowns and Elizabeth detested it, but here in Faerie there were no such considerations. The color looked very fine with Will’s dark hair and startling eyes, the trunk hose showing a sinewy leg.

  “Give Morgan that, Kit thought. She can dress a man.”

  And then he laughed, remembering many an attempt to dress Will up in years gone by. Will glanced over his shoulder as Kit pushed away from the fountain and fell into step beside him. Together, they wandered away from the little clutch of musicians and observers to circumnavigate the conservatory. “What?”

  “My William doesn’t look like a Puritan today.” Kit watched Will’s eyes to see if his friend flinched at the endearment, and was relieved when it seemed to pass unremarked except by a flicker of smile.

  “Can you call it a day, here? And would a Puritan be welcomed in Faerie?”

  “That’s a ballad of a different sort,” Kit said.

  “A bawdy one, or I miss my mark. Perhaps I should write it:

  With a black cloth coat

  and a starch’d white ruff

  all strewn o’er thegreensward …

  Will sang to the tune of a common tavern song, and Kit laughed. “So, sweet Christofer, how shall we entertain ourselves until the dinner hour?”

  “Hast eaten?”

  “A pastry and a bit of small beer. It will do.”

  “I could introduce thee to the gardens.”

  “If they outshine the conservatory…” Will’s stagy gesture took in the glittering dome overhead, the marble planters full without regard to season of nodding blossoms, the scent of the wisteria as heavy and sweet as treacle. “Shall I be called upon to sing for my supper again tonight?”

  “I should count on it, my friend. The Fae,” Kit said softly, as they came upon the rest of the group, “will pay handsomely to be made to feel. They are cold and strange, and I sometimes think …”

  Will’s curious gaze stroked his face. Kit felt it as a palpable touch, and sighed. He stopped, and turned aside to toy with the cool, silken petals of a chimerical chrysanthemum.

  “Put it aside, Marley I sometimes think they envy us our passions, and half the reason they steal us mortals away is to keep us hothoused like these blossoms. Nothing ever dies in Faerie. It just grows chill and dark. I could wish a little chillness in trade for a little life.”

  Kit glanced up at the bitterness in Will’s tone, and almost reached to take Will’s arm. The stiffness of the other man’s posture, his averted eyes, gnawed at Kit with sorrowful teeth, and he let his hand sink back to his side. “Will, I’m sorry.”

  “No,” Will said. You’ve nothing to be sorry for. There’s nothing you can make better, Kit.”

  I could have been there,Kit thought. You said it yourself.But he waited, dumb, as Will wandered away to plunge his hands into the fountain again.

  A tug on Kit’s sleeve startled him; he jumped and turned to his blind side. “Geoffrey!”

  “Your pardon, Sir Poet. You seemed pensive.”

  “I am pensive, Geoff. Has the music lost its charm for you already?” He tilted his head suggestively at Amaranth, Puck, and Cairbre, who were still in full swing.

  The stag shrugged, which Kit found anatomically interesting, and looked down his long muzzle at the poet. “This Shakespeare is a friend of yours?”

  “Aye,” Kit said, “a good one.”

  Geoffrey raised a placating hoof at the warning tone in Kit’s voice. “I meant nothing by it. One tries to stay apprised of the poetical rivalries in court, of course, and it’s been long since we had bards to choose between.”

  Kit laughed. “Friendship has never stopped us being rivals. The two are not exclusive. Is politics and poetry the main course tonight, then?”

  Geoffrey’s cloven forehoof moved like a scissors. He lifted the dark violet, golden-eyed blossom he’d snipped from the planter to his nostrils and sniffed. “Do you remember when we spoke of war, and bondage?”

  “Love-in-idleness. I couldn’t forget.”

  “Then you know tis always politics. Politics and poetry. Politics and love. Politics and fairy tales.”

  “This is the intr
oduction to a seducement, Geoffrey.”

  “Am I so transparent?”

  Kit let his voice go low, but kept the banter in his tone for the sake of eavesdroppers. “It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “What does it entail? The overthrow of the Queen?”

  “Nothing so dire,” the stag answered, just as soft. “Merely a little magic. Which you well began in song already, I wot.”

  “Why now? Why not last year, or the year before?”

  The stag arched his head, observing the musicians and Will both through the advantage of his wide-spaced eyes. “You’re reclaiming yourself at last. You show you are a man of loyalty, once that loyalty is won.”

  “I wouldn’t be so hasty as to think so. I’ve never been known for choosing sides based on anything other than expedience.”

  “Haven’t you? You’ve been careful not to choose, here, Sir Christofer. It has not gone unnoticed that you share your gifts between factions, and permit none of them, quite, to claim you.”

  Kit caught himself chewing a thumbnail, made himself stop and tuck his hands inside crossed arms. “What can you offer me that Morgan can’t, or, failing that, the Mebd?”

  “Freedom,” Geoffrey answered, the sunlight shining on the silver-gray patches where his antlers would grow come the fall. His wet nose quivered softly. “If you like.”

  Kit felt Puck’s curious eyes on him when he reached out and eased the flower from Geoffrey’s hoof. He crushed it in his hand, satiny moisture and a violet stain, that vanished when he brushed the ruined remains on the raven’s-wing velvet of his doublet. “We’ll talk again,” he said, and nodded once before he walked away.

  Leaning against a marble satyr, Kit folded his arms and watched Cairbre and the towering Amaranth show Will the esoteric fingerings of a silver Faerie flute. He covered a momentary pang of jealousy with an idle smile. Give him his glory: a poet in Faerie.Kit laughed silently. If Orfeo stole his lover back from the Faerie king, what does that make of me, having done the reverse?A moment before the fallacy sank in and his mouth twisted in bitter whimsy rather than humor.