“I care not for Essex,” Ben answered, making sure the door shut tight against the snow. “Especially when England’s greatest poet starves to death under his care.”
Act IV, scene ii
And to be conclude, when all the world dissolves
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that are not heaven.
–Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act II, scene I
Kit turned, gritty stones under his feet: the broad rooftop pediment of a gray stone tower. The limitless sky lofted overhead. Ravens and swans circled in confusion, a tumult of cawing and jet and alabaster wings. Then a glitter of black pinions, white weskit, a shiny bauble in a smaller bird’s sharp beak as it settled on the battlements before Kit and cocked a bawdy eye.
The magpie spat something ringing on the stone. A silver shilling, spent until the face of the King upon it was smooth as a water‑worn stone. Kit crouched to pick it up and found himself eye to eye with the magpie, something–his cloak? –tugging at his wrist as he reached. The magpie chuckled softly and settled its feathers. Ware the Church. Ware the Queen. Ware the raven with the wounded wing.
“Doggerel?” Kit asked. It made perfect sense as he said it. “Can’t you, of all birds, do better than that?”
The magpie chuckled again and hopped off the battlement, climbing to dart between circling ravens and swans. Kit pulled against the cloak, but it seemed to bind his wrists tighter. He stood and spread his arms, stretching against the fabric. The wind caught and luffed under the patches, ruffled his feathers, stroked his pinions. Lifted him, and he fell into flight as naturally as breathing. His dark wings rowed the sky; he arrowed in pursuit of the magpie – faster, more agile, more deft, his barred tail flicking side to side like a living rudder as he avoided the broad wings of the regal swans and ravens. One of the ravens limped through the air; Kit saw a spot of bright crimson on its wing, vivid as a tuft of rags and feathers, as it spiraled down to rest within the Tower’s walls.
Hawk Hawk Hawk,the ravens cried in alarm, which was foolishness. Kit’s sharp triangular wings showed him a falcon, no hawk. And no threat to anything as big as a raven. Or a swan. A merlin,he realized, amused, as the magpie led him flitting over the rooftops and marketplaces of London. St. Paul’s Churchyard, where the booksellers were. King’s Street, and the merlin caught a glimpse of a balding human who seemed familiar, somehow, leaning against a stucco wall between a big man and a stout man, all three of them shaking, slumped, breaths smoking in the cold.
Blackfriars, Whitefriars. Charing Cross and then somehow it was sunset, it was nightfall, and through the gray twilight five men were unloading a barge on a bank near Westminster. One a cavalier with shining golden hair–hair that glowed,even in the gathering dark–and to look at him, the little falcon’s wings skipped a beat in fear and distant–or perhaps forward?–memory. He dropped several feet before he caught himself, and went back for another look. A big man stood in the barge, handing barrels up the bank to the other four: a broad‑shouldered soldier with a luxuriant red mustache and a kind, hooded eye.
The merlin circled over their heads. The magpie flew out over the river, dipping and diving, chattering still. The air sustained other sounds and odors, as if there were a wood across the water and not the stews and bear‑pits of Southwark: dry leaves and tannin, a hollow knocking like the rattle of a stag’s autumn‑velveted tines among the low branches of oaks.
And then a cry, a lamentation or a sugared moan of delight, a voice too sweet, chromatic, resonant to reveal the difference.
The belling of a stag, the entreaty of a falcon, the toll of a carillon. Wingbeats. A name that seemed to resonate over his taut‑drawn skin like shivers through a tapped drumhead.
Mehiel.
Mehiel.
Mehiel
Kit woke curled tight in the layers of his cloak, the French seams he’d stitched flat still prickling his skin, a name on his lips. Mehiel.Sweat soaked his brown‑blond hair and his face itched with dried salt, eyes burning, scars burning. The fists pressed to his face smelled of tears, so very like blood.
So very like blood indeed. “Not a night terror, at least,” he said, sitting up, at sea in a giant bed. “There was a prophecy in that one, I wot.” His bedroom was empty; he spoke only to the walls and to the sunrise beyond his window. Mehiel.He knew the name. An angel’s name, by the sound of it.
He was sure he had heard it before.
He stood and washed, cleaned his teeth, relieved himself, combed his hair. Once he had dressed, he gritted his teeth, tugged down his doublet, and made his way to the hall to break his fast. The patchwork bard’s cloak he swung around his shoulders smelled of smoke and sweet resin and strong whiskey, so every time he inhaled it was as though the Devil’s hand traced his spine.
He had anticipated the silence in the hall when he entered, still mincing on feet worn sore by barefoot climbing the steps from Hell. He’d known heads would turn and voices would still, that the clink of silver on Orient porcelain would halt. And he’d called himself ready for it.
His steps didn’t slow. He was Christofer Marley, brazen as they came, and he would walk down the center row between the long tables and find his breakfast of porridge and honey and sheep’s milk–such homely stuff, for Faerie, but man did not live by thistledown and morning dew alone–and take a seat, and he would dine. And let them mutter what they would. He was Christofer Marley.
Except he wasn’t. The name had no power over him, for good or ill. It was no longer his.
He had sold it.
His stride did lag when he recollected that, and he nearly stumbled on the rushes. But he recovered himself and squared his shoulders, thinking Needs must replace my rapierwhen his hand went to his belt to steady the blade, and found it absent. That, too, was left in Hell.
He carried on, limping more heavily now that he’d hurt his foot again. But chin up, eyes front, not because he was Christofer Marley but because he was not willing to bow his head today.
When he was halfway to the board, the silence broke. At first, when but a single pair of hands struck together, he thought the clapping ironic. But then another joined, and a third, and by the time he stood ladling porridge into a bowl, he did so at the center of a standing ovation.
Two days previous, he would have set the bowl aside and turned and given them a mocking bow. But he was not the man he had been, two days previous. He had passed through that man, passed beyond him, been transformed on his quest to retrieve his beloved Will from the devil’s grasp. And as with Orfeo, there was no looking back to see where he had been.
Now, he was a man who had been to Hell and back again, and whose feet still hurt with the journey. He turned, and nodded blindly to the room, and found his seat with as little ceremony as possible.
When he sat, and hunched over his bowl, the rest sat too, and that was the last that was said of it.