Kit gritted his teeth and accepted the assistance.
The chamber didn’t quite look Roman, he thought. Admittedly, the once‑frescoed ceiling was matted with mold and dangling roots, and the flickering torchlight showed mineral streaks and water damage on walls that might once have been painted plaster. The floor was slimy with ash‑fine mud; it sucked between Kit’s toes, and under the surface he could feel a hard, pebbly surface that must be tile. He wondered what design the mosaic would have shown if black silt had not occluded it.
“I can think of more pleasant places for an assignation,” Kit admitted, drawing his white wool cloak tight in the raw underworld cold. Dripping water freckled his shoulders and tapped against his hair. He pushed damp strands off his forehead, wiping water from his eyes with the back of his hand.
“But few with older power,” Baines answered. “And none of those in London. Come on, puss. We’ll need a canopy to keep the brazier dry. Come and help me set it up. Pity it’s my lord and master who will have the shaping of thy power tonight: I would have liked it for myself, thou knowest.”
Baines moved toward the wall. Kit followed carefully as Poley and the other robed men scattered around the chapel. Nothing Like Last time,Kit told himself. For one thing, all of those men are dead. Either hanged as Catholic traitors, or on the end of my knife.The memory of de Parma’s sticky lifeblood spilling over his hand warmed him; his rings clinked as he rubbed his palms together.
Something rustled in the darkness, disturbed by the torchlight. Bats,Kit worried, and then he saw a row of wire cages tucked behind a pillar and a slumping arch, and a dark lantern with the aperture turned toward the wall. The gleam of a too‑blond head, and capable shoulders straightening.
“Good evening, Robin,” Baines said over the hollow plink of falling water. “Is everything in readiness?”
“Every raven in the Tower,” Catesby said, resting a hand on the hilt of his sword. “I’m just about to leave for Westminster: one last meeting with Guido and a check of the powder barrels. I don’t Likethis, Dick.”
“None of us Likesit,” Baines said softly, as Kit came up beside him like a dog at heel. “But we do what we must, for God. Innocents will die–”
“Aye. And you’ll avail yourself of black arts for power.” Catesby cast a pitying glance at Kit. “Is this our poet, then?”
“I am,” Kit answered, before Baines could do it for him, and extended his right hand.
“Christopher Marlin, Robert Catesby,” Baines said, stepping back to keep the hissing torch clear of a stream of water. Catesby slid Baines a sidelong glance and opened his mouth.
Kit cut him off. “You were about to say that I am a bit unprepossessing, Master Catesby?”
A startled glance back. The torchlight made Catesby’s nose look long and beaked. “How did you know that, Master Poet?”
Kit smiled. “Words are what I do, ” he answered. He stepped past Catesby, stubbing his toe among the jumbled stones but doing himself no serious harm. A row of unhappy black birds huddled on a long iron bar within, crouched shoulder to shoulder with their feathers ruffled against the cold. Despite himself, Kit looked for one with a twisted wing, but couldn’t see it. “What are the birds for, Dick?”
The torch bobbed and guttered as Baines coughed into his hand. “The sacrifice,” he answered.
What is your substance, whereof are you made
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
–William Shakespeare, Sonnet 53
Will paused in Murchaud’s shadow, half wishing he had a weapon in his hand and half glad he did not. “Downward?
“Ever downward,” the Elf‑knight answered, glancing over his shoulder for Tom and Ben before he started moving.
“There’ll be an echo,” Ben murmured. “Keep your voices soft. And we shall have need of a light.”
Murchaud blinked. “Of course you will,” he said. “How foolish.” Of himself or of them he did not say, Will noticed, but he waved his left hand in an airy arc, swarming green motes flickering into existence in the path of his moving fingers. They scattered, swinging low to the ground in twining pursuit, and illuminated the ground by Will’s feet, and Ben’s, and Tom’s. “Master Shakespeare,” he said, “can you manage the steps?”
“I’ll manage what I have to,” Will answered. “Could we make more expedience? Every moment we hesitate is a moment that Kit is in danger. ”
“By all means,” Tom said, setting his boot down carefully among a school of witchlights that danced about his feet like minnows in shallow water. “Let us make our way underground.”
So, so; was never devil thus blest before.
– Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act III, scene ii
He was thankful for so many things.
That it wasn’t Baines who undressed him, but two of the other men, and that they did it with impersonal disinterest. They stripped him only to the waist, and left his feet free when they bound him standing between two pillars, and not helplessly prone on some clammy altar. That there was wet stone giving steady purchase under his bare feet instead of the greasy mud, and that the lengths of white silk binding his arms wide as wings were soft around his wrists, and tied so he could clench his hands tight about them, his fingers leaving rusty stains of blood where they had cracked around the iron rings.
Poley’s men had set up a rough pavilion not too far away, and the warmth of the braziers protected by its span just reached Kit. A warmth that he was also thankful for, because the water that dripped slowly onto his hair and shoulders, leaving delicate branching trails of silt down his skin and slowly soaking the waist of his breeches, was so cold it burned. A cut he hadn’t noticed stung on the bottom of his right foot, and he could feel the warm stickiness of a trace of blood.
He tossed his head to flick his dripping hair from his eyes, and then wished he hadn’t, because Baines climbed up the three swaybacked steps to the dais and smoothed the muddy locks back with thick, gentle fingers. Kit flinched from the touch as if it burned him, and in his heart he heard an angel whimper. “You could have lent me a hat.”
“Sorry about that, puss,” he said. “The roof leaks a little. You’re all over gooseflesh. Shall I fetch your cloak for now, until we’re ready to begin?”
“It’s past midnight and gone,” Kit answered, gritting his teeth so that they would not chatter. “What are we waiting for?”
“The man of the hour,” Baines answered, and brought the white wool cloak to drape over Kit’s shoulders. He drew the hood up to shelter his head and settled it carefully. “‘Twill soon be over, and then we can all get good and thoroughly drunk.”
Poley emerged from the shadows on the far wall, carrying an end of one of the long iron cages Catesby had been tending. Kit watched, idly twisting at the lengths of cloth restraining his wrists. He should thank Baines for that, he supposed. The bindings were calculated to do him very little harm, no matter how he struggled.
Baines turned and walked down the steps to Poley, and Kit tried to relax into a state of waiting readiness, calling poetry to mind. What a pity thou has’t ne’er written a comedy. If ever, now would be the time for a happy ending–