Contagion,” Chapman said, voice shaking. “You know what we’ll find.”
Despite Will’s earlier thought, he realized now that the smell was precisely the reek of Sir Francis’ sickroom. Will came within, noticing the door to a second room slightly ajar. What had killed Sir Francis– aye, and probably what carried off Lord Strange as well, and poor Tom Watson–was neither plague nor poison, but blackest sorcery. He knew because he felt its prickle on his neck, identical to the sensation of Kit waving his hand, bringing every candle in a room to light. Identical to the sensation he felt when an audience was rapt in his power–that prickle, of observance, as if something roused itself and watched. There were parchments on the table, beside a stub of candle. Will drew out flint and his dagger and kindled a light; the ashes in the grate had long gone cold. Ben lifted the pages toward the door. “The Faerie Queene,”he said. “Just one stanza. Over and over and over–
“When I awoke, and found her place devoid,
And naught but pressed grass, where she had lain,
I sorrowed all so much, as earst I joyed,
And washed all her place with watery eyed.
From that day forth I lov’d that face divine;
From that day forth I cast in careful mind,
To deck her out with labor, and long tyne,
And never vow to rest, till her I find
Nine months I seek in vain yet ni’ll that vow unbind. ”
Damme.Will understood almost without understanding, found himself chanting lines of poetry, anything that came to mind. A history play, Richard II,and Ben gave him an odd look and then nodded, understood, picked it up, murmuring lines of his own – clever epigraphs and riddles, damn his eyes, but Will was in no position to complain. “Poetry, George,” Will said, between verses. It was the only magic he had, and the only protection he had any hope for.
“What?”
“Poetry. Anything. Recite it – ”
George blinked like a frog, but obeyed –
“And t’was the Earl of Oxford: and being offer’d
At that time, by Duke Cassimere, the view
Of hid right royal Army then infield;
Refus’d it, and no foot wad moved, to stir
Out of hut own free fore‑determin’d course;
I wondering at it, asked for it his reason,
It being an offer do much for his honor. ”
Infelicitous,Will thought, but held his peace to murmur his own talismanic words.
I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire:
These high wild hills and rough uneven ways
Draws out our miles, and makes them wearisome,
And yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar,
Making the hard way sweet and delectable. ”
Will’s voice and Chapman’s combined with Ben’s–
“At court I met it, in clothes brave enough,
To be a courtier; and looks grave enough,
To deem a statesman: as I near it came,
It made me a great face; I asked the name.
A Lord, it cried, buried in flesh, and blood,
And such from whom let no man hope least good,
For I will do none; and as little ill,
For I will dare none: Good Lord, walk dead still. ”
– a strange and uneven sort of round between the three of them, but Will felt the pressure ease reluctantly. Raising his voice, he lifted the candle and steeled himself to pull the handle of the half‑open interior door.
He thought himself prepared for what might confront him, he who had been to Hell and back again, who had stood watch over a wife’s near demise in childbed and the second death of Sir Francis Walsingham. He was prepared for the peeling cold, like a wind off the ice‑clotted moor, and he was prepared for the horrific stench.
He wasn’t prepared for the huddled shape under the blankets, Spenser’s form curled thin and frail into an agonized ball. Chapman stayed in the front room. The creak of Ben’s footsteps stopped at the bedroom door.
Will raised the candle and went forward, just in case, but Spenser’s open eyes and the hard‑frozen outline of his form – I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire–told him already what he would feel when he laid his left hand over Spenser’s right: cold stiff flesh like claws of ice, and the candle showed him Spenser’s pale eye rimed with frost and sunken like a day‑old herring’s.
“Contagion,” Ben said softly.
Will shuddered and crossed himself before he quite knew what his hand was about. Something cracked and yellow lay frozen at the corners of Spenser’s mouth; Will remembered Sir Francis and did not think the stuff was mustard. He stepped back, scrubbing his glove on his breeches, tilting the candle aside. “I am a stranger here in– God in Heaven, Ben. Let us quit this place and summon a constable of the watch.”
“Aye,” Ben said, and he and Will trotted from the rancid little room.
They leaned against the wall outside, breathing the cold, sweet air like runners, having dragged the rabbit‑frozen Chapman between them. Ben caught Will’s eye over Chapman’s head, and coughed into his palm. “Edmund Spenser, starved to death for lack of bread.”
“Essex would never–” Chapman began, and Will knew from Ben’s level, warning regard that the big man’s mind was already churning through some subterfuge.
“Go look at the body yourself,” Ben said, lowering his hand again. “Essex obviously hasn’t been keeping him very well, if it has come to this.”
“I don’t understand,” Chapman said, so softly Will barely heard him over the whisper of snowflakes through the air, over the squeak of their compression underfoot.
Will lagged back as Ben paused under the swinging sign for a cobbler, snow thick on his uncovered hair, and turned to look Chapman in the eye. “Twas no plague carried Spenser off,” he said. “But mere starvation. And I mean to see the whole world knows it.”
Will bit his lip in the long silence that followed. It wasn’t starvation either, but sorcery–but Will thought he understood the broad rationale of Ben’s untruth, and was content to let the younger man’s plot play itself out. They turned down the alleyway near the Mermaid before Chapman gathered his thoughts enough to speak again.
“You’re not doing yourself any favors provoking Essex.” Chapman pressed the worn door open on its hinges. The Mermaid had filled in their absence, and a commotion of warmth and noise and smells tumbled past Will as they entered. “If that’s what you mean to do with this accusation that he cares for his servants inadequately.”