“And what task is that, Your Highness?”
And she smiled again, never looking back, and handed him a comb.
Act V, scene vi
These late eclipses in the sun and moon portendno good to us: though the wisdom of nature canreason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itselfscourged by the sequent effects: love cools,friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities,mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces,treason; and the bond cracked ‘twixt son and father.
–William Shakespeare, King Lear,Act I, scene ii
Just before dawn on September 17, 1605, Will was dragged from a companionable reverie in the garden of the Silver Street house by an urgent hand on his sleeve, reaching awkwardly backward. “Will,” Kit said. “Look at the moon.
They were huddled under blankets, back to back on the bench. The wine was finished; the night’s conversation drifted into sitting and dozing, watching the night. Will turned over his shoulder and gasped; the full pewter disk was eaten away on one edge, as if someone had taken a bite from the disk, and a dim red glow shone through it. “An eclipse.”
“Not a full one, I think,” Kit answered. “Remember old Doctor Dee, Gloriana’s astrologer?”
“I remember his beard,” Will said, picturing its white luxuriance. “The Queen used to ride out to his house on horseback and scandalize the court. He’s still alive, you know, though James won’t have aught to do with him.”
“Is the old bastard?” Kit’s smile shone through his voice. “I always liked him better than Northumberland. And he was right more often, too. Thou knowest his horoscopes for Elizabeth were sealed as state secrets?”
“Out of favor now, though.”
“We could ride out and see him, as Elizabeth would have – ” Kit’s voice swelled, a momentary flight of fancy on what a pageant that would be. And then he stopped himself, and shivered. “Nay. Unwise at the extreme.”
“So what would he say about that?” The moon continued to darken, even as the eastern sky grew pale. A third of the disc had vanished into shadow, and Will caught his breath at the beauty of it, and the danger. “That’s a portent, Kit.”
“The sky is full of portents.” Kit stood, and walked from one wall of the garden to the other, studying the sky. “But that’s an especially bad one. The moon is devoured in the dragon’s tail, or so the expression goes–the moon, astrologically speaking, equates the psyche.”
“What does it mean?” Will’s voice, still and small. He moved to stand beside Kit, as if the warmth of another body in the chill fall air would make a difference to his pounding heart.
“It means,” Kit said, “that the Mebd is right. And the war is nearly on us. And everything we have believed in, fought for – Gloriana, England, Faerie–is coming to an end.” He dropped his eyes from the sky; Will could see the yellow witchlight gleaming behind his right eye when he turned. “Will, just remind me. What day did Elizabeth die?”
“March twenty‑fourth,” Will said. “Very early. Or perhaps late the night before.”
“The last day of the year,” Kit said softly. “The sun would have been at fifteen Aries when she died if she had held on one day longer. The brave old bitch almost made it.” Tears clotted whatever he would have said next.
“Kit?”
Nodding, a sniffle in the darkness as the moonlight reddened and dimmed.
“I don’t know what that means,” Will said at last, plaintively, and was relieved when Kit laughed and threw an arm around his shoulders, as if they both needed the support.
“Fifteen Aries is when you sacrifice a King,” Kit answered. Whispered, really, though it had almost the quality of a pronouncement to it. “So that his blood may replenish the land, and make it strong. ”
“Oh,” Will said, only half understanding the shiver that rocked Kit’s body. “You’re saying she died for England.”
“I’m saying she tried her best.” Kit folded like a dropped marionette and sat down on the ground, his knees drawn up and his arms “wrapped around them to pull them close. “I’m saying we’relosing, and there’s our proof. That” – a shaky hand waved at the setting, half‑eaten moon – “means the end of an old way, and violence, and upheaval.
Will sat down too, and cleared his throat. “Couldn’t the end of an old way mean the Prometheans, just as well?”
“It means Elizabeth,” Kit said with quiet conviction, both his fists pressed against his chest as if his heart might burst right between his ribs, and there was no arguing then.
Will had cause to remember those words a fortnight later on October the second, when broad noon turned to darkness over London Town as if a tarnished silver coin had been slid across the disk of the sun. A strange twilight strangled the city’s voice to desperate murmurs as every foot paused, every voice hushed, every eye lifted and then quickly fell again, unable to bear the light of even a half‑occluded sun.
Will shaded his eyes with his hand, pressing his forehead to the rippled glass and lath of Tom Walsingham’s casement window and tilting his face to the side. “It seems a year for ill omens, ” he said softly, and did not look down until Tom came to draw him away from the window.
“What, a cloud across the sun?” Kit came up too–the three of them were alone, Ben and George having been left home from this particular council of war – and glanced through the window. “Ah. I don’t suppose I missed a rain of fire while I was away? ”
“Nay,” Will answered, and pulled Tom toward the door. ‘That’s a terrible sight.”
“Don’t look upon it,” Kit warned. “Wilt burn thine eyes. Tom, have you smoked glass?”
“Nothing so useful,” Tom answered as the three men emerged from the garden door into a world that seemed to Will even stranger and more alien than Faerie. In those places where gold and auburn leaves still clung to the trees and bushes, the dappled shadows moving underneath them formed diminishing crescents, layer on layer of moving images.
Will thrust his hand under the branches of an oak, watching the gleaming crescents shrink upon his skin. The air seemed thicker in its darkness, and hung with sparkles like a summer night. “Camera obscura,” he said, gesturing Kit and Tom to join him. Somewhere beyond the garden wall, he heard someone sob and the sound of a window breaking. “Look at this. The leaves make the pinholes.” He almost fancied he could feel the light brushing his skin as the leaves tossed in time with the breeze.
“Sweet buggered Christ,” Kit said. “I need my books.”
“What books?” asked Tom alertly.
“Oh, I had – ” He paused, as if considering. “A Ptolemy, and Brahe’s Die Stella Nova,an Agrippa, some of Dee’s work – ” Kit stopped and looked around, realizing that Tom and Will were staring. “Research,” he said. “Faustus.In any case, I loaned them all to Sir Walter and he never gave them back. A most notorious thief of books, that one–”
Tom coughed into his hand. “I have some volumes of Ficino.”
“Please?” Kit looked up, exactly as he had admonished Will not too, and closed his left eye. He seemed to pay no notice as Tom returned to the house.
Will cleared his throat, the unease swelling in his belly. “Kit?”
Kit looked down and smiled at Will. “Fear not,” he said. I doubt an eye that won’t be damaged by a knife will be blinded by the light of a half‑dimmed sun.”