Ink and Steel pa-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  “Many a Prince abuses the trust of his subjects, and yet how few men are born to rule?” She rolled her silver-handled knife between fingers white and soft as cambric. “And yet thou dost serve a woman who is also a Prince. Is she deserving of thy sacrifices?”

  “Your Highness, aye.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because…” He shrugged. “Because she has made her own sacrifices, to keep her people safe.”

  “Ah.” The Mebd closed eyes that had shifted from green to lavender and then to gray. When she blinked them open, they were the color of thistles under gold lashes worthy of a Hero. “So the sacrifices a husband makes for his wife earn her loyalty. If he is worthy of her.”

  He lowered his eyes, unable to support her inquiry, and dissected a morsel upon his plate, sopping the meat in sweet-spiced gravy. The flavor cloyed.

  “And are you worthy of your wife, Master Shakespeare?”

  “No,” he answered, without looking up. “Madam, I am not.”

  “And yet she serves you as you serve your Prince.”

  “Aye.”

  “This is what we adore our poets for.” He was surprised by the tenderness in her voice into glancing up again. “They lie with such honesty.”

  “Lie, Your Highness?”

  “Aye.” A smile on her lips like petals. “Sweet William is a flower. Didst know it?”

  “Aye, Your Highness.”

  “Perhaps we shall have some sown.”

  Will nodded, dizzied. Emboldened, a little, by the frankness of her conversation, he asked a question. “Your Highness. Like Gloriana, you have no King.”

  “I will be subject to no man,” she answered. “Even a God.”

  “And yet from what Morgan tells me, Faerie is subject to Hell and its lord.”

  “Women,” she answered, extending her white-clad wrist to pour him wine with her own pale, delicate hands, “have long learned to simper in the presence of their conquerors. And not only women, Master Poet.”

  “No,” he answered, tipping his goblet to her in salute before he drank. “Not women alone.”

  “We are glad,” the Mebd said, “you have agreed to dine with us today. We trust you will never find yourself bound in an unpleasant subjugation.”

  “Your Highness.”

  “Yes.” She smiled as she touched his sleeve. “I am.”

  Act III, scene x

  Had I as many souls, as there be Stars,

  I’d give them all for Mephostophilis.

  CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Faustus

  Kit unhooked his cloak and threw it over the high back of his chair. He leaned on Murchaud’s velveted sleeve and watched the dancers eddy across the rose-and-green marble tiles, wondering if he could afford another glass of wine. The way Will’s head bent smiling as he whispered in Morgan’s ear was making him want one, badly, but he suspected that it would be unwise to indulge.

  “It looks as if thou mightst have room in thy bed tonight,” Murchaud said conversationally, drawing his arm from under Kit’s head and dropping it around his shoulders.

  “Aye. I’ll sleep alone tonight.” And in the morning, Morgan will find me. Sweet buggered Jesus, how have I come to this?

  “If thou wouldst wish companionship…”

  “Perhaps,” Kit said, and poured water into his glass. He sat upright to drink it, as Murchaud played idly with the strands of his hair. “Aye. Dice and wine, perhaps a pipe? To begin with.”

  “Thou canst defeat me at tables again.” Kit chuckled. Murchaud’s luck with dice was abysmal enough to be notorious. “For a start.”

  Murchaud reached past him for a tart and leaned forward to eat it over the table, scattering crumbs. “Hast spoken more with Geoffrey?”

  “Words in passing.” Kit drew up a knee and laced his fingers before it.

  “Wilt give him thine answer?”

  It wasn’t really a question, Kit knew. “Shall I offer to betray you, then?”

  “That would be kind.” Murchaud leaned back beside him, crossing long legs, his right foot flipping in time with Cairbre’s fiddling. The song wound down;the dancers paused.

  “We need to know the nature of the plotting.”

  “Ah. Yes.” Kit stood and glanced over his shoulder at Murchaud, sweeping his gaudy cloak around his shoulders as he did. “Thy mother seems to have abandoned my poet,” he said. “I’m off to comfort him. And yes.”

  “Yes?”

  Kit turned away. “By all means, come and see me tonight.”

  The stairs were less trouble sober, although he cursed the lack of a railing under his breath. He skirted the applauding dancers on the side away from the musicians, not wishing to capture Cairbre’s eye and be summoned to perform. Will must have seen him across the floor, because he met Kit halfway. Kit ached to look at him, giddy with dancing, color high and eyes sparkling like the gold ring in his ear in the light of the thousands of candles and torches.

  They love him because they cannot keep him,he reminded himself, and forced himself to smile. “Will. Come have a drink with me.”

  “No dancing for you, Kit?”

  “I don’t pavane,” Kit said dryly. “Neither do I galliard. Stuffy dances for stuffy dancers. Come, there’s spiced ale by the fire.”

  He led Will to the corner by the tables and filled cups with the steaming drink, redolent of cloves and sandalwood. They leaned between windows, shoulder to shoulder, and Kit buried his nose in his tankard, breathing deep.

  “The Queen wants us collaborating,” Will said, swirling his ale to cool it. “A play by Hallowmas, it seems.”

  “A play?” Kit turned to regard Will with his good eye. “Did she assign a topic?”

  “Not even a suggestion. Please, overwhelm me with your brilliance.”

  “The Passion of Christ,” Kit answered promptly, and was rewarded by a gurgle as Will clapped a hand over his face to keep his mouthful of ale from spraying across the dance floor.

  Choking, “Seriously.”

  “Damme, Will. I don’t know. Thou hast had longer to think it than I have. They won’t care for English history.”

  “I left my Holinshed in London, in any case.”

  “Coincidentally, so did I. I wonder who has it now?”

  “Tom,” Will answered. “Unless he burned it. He was very angry with you for some time.”

  “Only fair. I was very angry with him.” Silence for a little. They drank, and Will took the cups to refill them. When he returned, he rolled his shoulders and kicked one heel against the stones.

  “Why the Passion?”

  “Suitably medieval,” Kit replied. “Like so much of our religion.”

  “Still no faith in God, my Christofer?”

  “Faith, William?” Kit tasted the ale; this cup was stronger. “Died blaspheming, indeed. Do you suppose He eavesdrops on those who call His name in passion? Oh, God! Oh, God! Mayhap He finds it titillating.”

  “Kit!”

  Kit snorted into his cup. “Faith. I faith, the Fae, who ought to know it, say God is in the pay of the Prometheans. I imagine He’d little want me in any case.” No, and never did. No matter how badly I wanted him. A little like Will in that regard, come to think of it.

  “I sometimes suspect,” Will said softly, “that God finds all this wrangling over His name and His word and His son somewhat tiresome. But I am constrained to believe in Hell.”

  “Hell? Aye, hard not to when we’re living in an argument on metaphysics.” Kit kicked the wall with his heel for emphasis. “Say that again once the Devil’s complimented you to your face.”

  “But I am the Queen’s man, and the Queen’s church suits me as well as any, and I should not like, I think, to live in a world without God.”

  “An admirable solution,” Kit said. “I flattered myself for a little that God did care for me, but I felt a small martyrdom in His name was enough, and He has never been one to settle for half a loaf. And I am maudlin, and talking too much.”

  “I do not
think your martyrdom little.”

  “Sadly, it is not our opinion that matters.” Kit had finished the ale, he realized, and felt light-headed. He set his cup on the window ledge and leaned against the wall, letting the cool breeze through the open panes stir his hair. He put a smile into his voice.

  “Your celebrity here is not little, either.”

  Will laughed, and leaned against Kit’s shoulder. “I find the affection in which I am held adequate.”

  “For most purposes?”

  “The purposes that suit me. Are all poets admired in Faerie?”

  “Only the good ones,” Kit answered. “And yet I envy you your freedom to go home.”

  “If I knew a way to bargain for yours…”

  “Poley would simply have me killed again.”

  “He might find it harder this time.”

  “Ah, Will. Everyone in London who loved me is gone. What had I to return to, even were it so?” Kit shook himself, annoyed at his own sorrow, and knowing as he said it, “Will, forgive me. Those words were untrue, and unfair.”

  “I understand, Will answered. As for me, I am half ready to flee London overall. Our epics are not in fashion any longer, Kit. Shallow masques and shallower satires, performances good for nothing but jibing. More backstabbing and slyness than old Robin Greene ever dreamed of. Stuff and nonsense, plague and death. Stabbings in alleyways, and I’m as much to blame as any man, because my plays do not catch at conscience as they once did. My power is failing with the turning of the century.”

  “Failing?” Kit laid a hand on Will’s shoulder and shook him, not hard but enough to slosh the ale in his cup. “Foolishness. The power is there as always; in every line thou dost write. It’s merely…” Kit squeezed, and shrugged, and let his hand fall in abeyance. “Because it depends, in some measure, on the strength of the crown.”

  “Another raven.” Will set his cup aside and pushed away from the wall. “Waiting for Gloriana to die.”

  Kit plucked the figured silk taffeta of Will’s sleeve between his fingers, drawing his hand back before the urge to stroke Will’s arm overwhelmed him. Across the hall, he saw Morgan mounting the steps to take a seat at the virginals. At least our feathers glisten.

  “Look, Will. Smile, go dance attendance. Your lady takes the stage.”

  Will looked him over carefully, boots to eyepatch, a frown crinkling the corners of his eyes. Kit held his breath as the poet leaned so close that Kit almost thought his lips might brush Kit’s cheek. But his hand fell heavily on Kit’s shoulder, and his frown became a smile. “I’ll see you.” Kit turned and took himself upstairs, to wait for Murchaud and the backgammon board.

  Act III, scene xi

  A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted

  Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;

  A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted

  With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 20

  A tankard of Morgan’s brew bittersweet and redolent of ginger and lemons cooled by Will’s elbow. He dipped his pen in raven-black ink, so different from accustomed iron gall, and watched it trickle, glossy, down the crystal belly of the well.

  “Stop playing with your pen and write, Master Shakespeare.” Kit curled like a goblin on the window ledge, wrapped in his parti-color cloak against the chill breeze through the sash. “Commit mine immortal words to paper.”

  “Thine immortal words?” Will smiled. He touched pen to paper and let the ink describe the arcs and knots symbolizing Kit’s immortal words. “I was just thinking, we haven’t done this since Harry and Edward met their fates.”

  “We’ve improved,” Kit answered. He turned his back to the window and kicked his heels against the wall. “I heard from Tom last night. Another letter.”

  “And?”

  “All is as well as can be expected. I’ll read it to thee later. When didst thou think to return to London?”

  A little too casual, that question. Will laid the pen down and turned to regard Kit, silhouetted against an autumn light. “I’ve been here three, four weeks now? I thought I might stay another month, perhaps, and go home to Annie before Christmas.”

  Will thought of Morgan, and the way his hand was steadier on the pen than it had been in years. He’d stay as long as he could. He tried not to think that once he left, the chances of being invited to return were slim.

  “I’m glad of the company. And then there’s our Chiron.”

  “I couldn’t leave that unfinished. Although it will never be performed in London. Difficult to find a centaur to play the lead.” Kit’s gaze unsettled Will. He looked down at the paper again. “I think it might prove a challenge even for Ned, if Henslowe still had him.”

  “He’d be fine as Achilles.”

  “He’d be brilliant as Achilles.” The pen wasn’t flowing well; Will dried the nib and searched out his penknife to recut it. He couldn’t quite forget the stiffness and hesitance in his muscles, but simply being better was such a blessing he couldn’t bear to question it too closely.

  “We should give Dian a stronger role. Mayhap an archery contest. Don’t cut yourself, Will.”

  “Very funny.” But he looked up and saw Kit’s concern was genuine, and looked down again quickly. “Archery would give us a chance to bring Hercules in earlier, and show him at play with his arrows.”

  “Aye. Will.”

  The tension in Kit’s voice drew Will’s head up. “We could still do Circe, instead.”

  “Nay, Kit answered. There’s a thing that happens here, every seven years. A tithe.”

  “The teind. Morgan told me.” No, no mistaking that flicker of Kit’s lashes when Will said Morgan’s name. Nor was there any mistaking the relief on Kit’s face when Will continued. “She said I am a guest, and needn’t worry; hospitality protects me.”

  “Then you’ll stay; tis settled.” Kit braided his fingers in his lap for a moment, stood abruptly and began to pace, almost walking into a three-legged stool that Will had absently left out of its place. “We’ll be like Romeo and Mercutio: inseparable. What happens after the archery, Will?”

  “Mayhap a philosophical argument. Chiron and Bacchus. We could trade off verses, give each a different voice.”

  “And I suppose I am meant to versify Bacchus?”

  The sharpness of Kit’s tone halted Will’s bantering retort in his throat. “If you prefer the noble centaur, by all means. Kit, what ails thee?”

  Will saw the other man pause before he answered, the moment of contemplation that told him Kit was framing some bit of wit or evasion. But then Kit looked him in the eye and frowned, and said straight out, “I’m jealous.”

  “Of Morgan?”

  “Dost love her, Will?”

  Will picked up his cold tisane and gulped it, almost choking. “Love is not a seemly word, where vows are broken.”

  Kit’s lips thinned. “Grant I forgive thee for Annie’s sake.”

  Will stood and crossed the room, crouched by the cold, dead fire. “Kit, yes. I love her.”

  “Then I am jealous. Of thee, not Morgan. And canst swear thou feelst nothing of the like?”

  Will stopped. Thought. Closed his eyes. I could lie. Could he?

  “What I feel frightens me. I love thee. Is my love for thee less than thine for me, that I would kiss thee?”

  “You’ve not held a rose unless pricked by a thorn, sweet William.” Will shot Kit a hard look; Kit’s eye shone with his silent cat-laugh.

  Will spread his hands wide and swore, then: “Here.” He kicked the stool toward Kit, and tossed a roll of papers tied with ribbon at him. Kit more batted them out of the air than caught, but wound up holding the roll securely. “What?””

  “Read.”

  He turned his back on Kit, and the stool, and the golden Faerie sunlight that poured over both. The light illuminated Kit’s flyaway curls with the sort of halo usually registered in oils, dry-brushing the dark mulberry velvet
of his doublet, making the crumpled sheaf of papers in his hands shine translucent. Will slapped wine into a cup perhaps over quickly.

  “You may skip the first,” he counted on his fingers, “seventeen. Or so.”

  “Starting from ‘Shall I compare thee’ …?”

  But then Kit’s voice trailed off into the rustle of thick pages, and Will stared out the window over Kit’s shoulder and drank his wine without tasting it, small sips past the tightness in his throat, until enough time went by for the sun to shift and warm the rug between his boots. He didn’t dare look directly at the young man reading; surely Kit hadn’t aged a day in six years, but the calm expression of concentration on his face dizzied Will more than rejection or horror would have.

  Finally, Kit looked up. “There must be a hundred of these.”

  “One hundred and two. So far. Not counting those terrible ones I wrote for Oxford.”

  “One hundred and two.” Kit cleared his throat, and read:

  So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse,

  And found such fair assistance in my verse

  As every alien pen hath got my use

  And under thee their poesy disperse.

  “That says a dozen things, all different, half of them bawdy. These are wonderful, Will.”

  “They re yours,” Will answered carelessly. He brought a second cup to Kit.

  “I have perhaps been cowardly. These…”

  Kit lay the papers on the floor and his cup on the windowsill, expression neutral as Will sank down on the floor nearby. Shades of red colored Kit’s cheek in waves. “I am not accustomed to being the subject of poetry.”

  “Are we not as brothers? Like Romeo and Mercutio.”

  Kit stood with a young man’s nimbleness and knelt in the same movement on the floor before Will, who set his cup aside.

  “I should not use a brother thus,” he said, and knotted his right hand in Will’s hair, meeting Will’s gasp with a wet, swift kiss. A kiss that bore Will over, slowly, with perfect control, until he lay flat on the carpet, Kit straddling his hips. Kit’s lips moved on his lips, his cheek, his eyelids: a little tickle of mustache, the lessened ache and stiffness in Will’s muscles forgotten as he raised his hands to encircle Kit’s waist. Kit leaned forward, slick mouth wanton on Will’s ear and then his throat, until Will felt the flutter of Kit’s heart, the bulge of his prick, and the pressure of his thighs. The velvet covering his body was warmer than the sunlight.