Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed.”
A sonnet.
It’s a sonnet.
A sonnet he knew, although he could not remember from where. He swam through blackness, pushed and pulled, following the thread of that voice –a voice that cracked with weariness or emotion, and in cracking broke Will’s heart and made him strive the harder, because he knew, somehow, that the pain he heard could somehow be healed if he –
“That poor retention could not so much hold,”
– could only –
“Nor need I tallies thy dear… dammit. Thy dear love to,
to score,”
–pierce –
“Therefore to give them from me was I bold,”
–that –
“To trust those tables that receive thee more.”
–blackness.
The heat was more. The pain, the burning. Will pressed at it, and it was not like walking through flames, because flames cannot push back. His body trembled, and he understood that it was his body, suddenly, soaked in sweat, cloyed under blankets in a room where the fire roared beyond all sense and the bed was pulled so close beside it that the bedclothes smelled scorched where they weren’t soaked in sour sweat and stinking fluids. And he was cold, shivering cold, and Kit was bent over a book beside the bed. Kit was wiping away the sweat that must be stinging his sleepless eyes, then angling a tablet in dim light to read the poem in a voice that creaked with overuse.
Will’s hand darted out like a snake, all his reserves gone in one flash of motion, and he caught Kit’s wrist, and Kit’s eyes came up, widening.
“To keep an adjunct to remember thee,” Will finished, or tried to finish, because coughing racked him into an agonized crescent. Kit steadied his head, pressed a handkerchief to his mouth, which filled with ropes and clots of something that had the taste of iron and the texture of boiled brains. Will choked, coughing until he would have vomited if there were anything in his belly but bitter yellow froth, until he sobbed, half wishing for death.
He would have curled up again in misery, but Kit held his shoulders until he finished, and wiped his mouth again, and touched his forehead, which was slick and wet.
And then Kit smiled, and said, “Were to import forgetfulness to me, ” which Will understood was the end of the invocation, the end of the poem. And then Kit finished, “Thy fever’s broken. Praise God,” and hugged him hard enough to make his bones creak.
“I’m hot,”Will said petulantly, and Kit burst out laughing with relief and got up to knock the fire apart until it died down a little, all the while shouting for Morgan.
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckled of the purest gold.
–Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
After the fateful ride, the Oueen’s men escorted Essex, a wounded and dignified Catesby, a profusely apologetic Monteagle, the estimable Francis Tresham, and a few dozen others to their temporary quarters in the Tower of London, from whence they would be tried. The revolution ended, most said, more or less as ineffectually as it began. And it was Richard Burbage who brought the news to Tom Walsingham’s house, where he had come in search of Will.
“It’s good that thou’lt live,” Burbage said, perched on the stool at Will’s bedside as Audrey Walsingham spooned broth into the sick man, out of mercy for his shaking hands. The bed had been pulled back from the fire and Kit’s cloak aired and returned to him. Will himself was sitting up against pillows, the crusted lesions at the corners of his mouth almost healed and his eyes their normal calm blue, not dull with fever.
Kit leaned back on a settee against the wall and cupped between his palms the mulled wine that Morgan had given him. His voice at last had failed him utterly, and he drooped, inches from sleep, in a warmly contented state of exhaustion that was too pleasant to abandon for bed. Beside that,he thought, I’d rather sit in a corner and watch that man make faces over unsalted bouillon than ever sleep again. Even if the whole room draped in red cloths to combat fever does make of thy place a scene out of Dante.
Morgan and Tom and Ben Jonson had crowded into the tiny sickroom now, Tom by his wife’s shoulder, Morgan not far from Kit, and Jonson as geographically distant from the slumping Marley as the closet’s confines would allow.
Will, concentrating on swallowing the soup without choking, did not answer.
“‘Tis good thou hast survived,” Burbage repeated, “because Her Majesty would be most wroth with me if thou hadst not.”
“Her Majesty?” Will’s voice was weak but clear. He laid a hand on Audrey’s wrist to restrain her when she would have poured more sustenance into him, and turned to Burbage. “Richard, what meanest thou?”
Burbage sighed. “She requests the Lord Chamberlain’s Men perform for her on the twenty‑fourth of the month. Shrove Tuesday. That’s thirteen days hence; thou hast lain fevered for three. And the play she wants is Richard the Second,and she very especially mentioned your name among the company of players she wishes to see perform it. I was half afeared” – Burbage’s hand on Will’s thin shoulder belied the brusqueness of his tone – “I would have to send word you were detained in a churchyard.”
“Not dead yet,” Will answered before taking more soup. “Thirteen days. Richard the Second.I may be able to do it.”
“I won’t have you killing yourself over a play, Will.” Jonson, forgetting himself, moved from his nervous post by the door and then stopped. He cast a wary glance at Kit, who knew his chin had started sagging to match his eyelids, and Kit struggled with a half‑formed understanding.
Christ. Ben Jonson is scared of me. Scared I’ll deduce him? Or scared I’ll overpower him and have my way with him?
Now therewas an image incongruous enough to send an exhausted poet giggling, and giggling touched Kit’s ravaged throat and turned to a hacking cough, which drew the worried glances of everyone in the room.
“Kit, thou’rt sickening–” Will, ignoring Jonson’s command.
Kit saw another measure of hurt cross the ugly young man’s face, and the half‑formed understanding crystallized into pity. Oh. Ben–
But there was nothing to be done for it, was there?
“No,” Kit managed, a stage whisper that almost started him coughing again. “Just talked raw. Will, Ben is right.” Morgan brought Kit more wine, and he drank it, enjoying Ben’s surprise at his intercession.
Will shook his head, looked up at Burbage. “Richard, why the twenty‑fourth, precisely? ”
The room got very quiet. Kit glanced from face to face, and realized everyone assembled knew the answer but for him. Like Will, he waited, calm enough in the knowledge that they would live. It was satisfying enough that he and Morgan and Tom–and Audrey and Jonson and Burbage and most of all, Will–had beatenBaines’ worst. No answer could trouble him.
It was Tom who cleared his throat, and answered, “Because Essex is to be executed on the twenty‑fifth, and Her Majesty wishes to see the play before she has her old friend drawn and quartered.”