Sir Robert rose from his bow to regard the Queen, and then glanced at Will. “Surely we have all we need, Your Highness – ” “Aye,” she said. “‘Tis as we believed. We’d rather have plays of thee, Master Shakespeare.”
Will bowed very low, aware of Sir Robert’s eyes measuring him. “You forbid it, Your Majesty?”
“We do,” she agreed, her voice low and sweet. She extended her hand to Sir Robert, who helped her from her chair. Will did not miss how white her knuckles seemed on the arm as she pushed herself to her feet. “We trust we will have the pleasure of thy company for Lady Day, then, and that of thy Company.” She smiled, pleased at her pun.
“An it please Your Majesty–” He held his genuflection until the Queen moved away, her ermine trailing her like the wings of some vast white bird, Sir Robert in his austere black attending like a gaunt‑cheeked raven and Essex following a few steps behind.
Well, that could have gone better.Will stood, trembling more than he liked, and turned over his shoulder to see if he could make out what had caught his Queen’s attention. The poets had withdrawn from the graveside, and most of them dispersed, although Will saw Ben’s tall shape bent down to spindly crook‑toothed little Tom Nashe further down the eastern aisle. And then a flicker of movement by the graveside drew his gaze, and Will focused his attention more plainly on the shadows between the statues there.
A whirl of color, patches like autumn leaves tossed in a wind, and when Will squinted just right, knowing what he was looking for, he could make out a slender man huddled under a black velvet hood, his shoulders aswirl with a cloak that caught the light through the leaded windows in all colors and none. When Will looked at him directly, he seemed to fade into transparency and shadows.
“Kit,” he said softly, coming up behind the sorcerer. “I should have known you’d come.”
The black hood lifted and tilted to encompass Will, and he caught the glitter of Kit’s dark eyes. “Pity about this,” he said, and with ritual solemnity he held out his right hand and let something fall into Spenser’s grave. It caught the light, shining, and spun like a thistle seed as it fell; a white, white feather, the tip stained with ink and cut as a quill.
A feather from the Devil’s wing.
“I know what that is,” Will said softly. “Edmund might not appreciate the symbolism, though.”
Kit shrugged, stepping away from the grave. “I’ve all the gifts I need of that one, I think. He’s got no claim on my poetry, and I shall offer him none.”
“Wise Kit,” Will said, falling into step beside him. “Didst come to London only for the funeral?”
“Nay…” A sigh. “To see thee, and ask of thee a question. And ask one of a priest as well.”
“A priest?” Will swallowed worry.
“Oh, ‘tis nothing. A name I heard, the name of an angel. I wondered who in God’s creation he might be. No, I wanted to speak to thee of thy son Hamnet – ”
“Ah, Kit.” Unexpected. Will glanced over his shoulder at Spenser’s grave, and swallowed. Sharp tears suddenly stung his eyes. “That pain is – ”
“Aye.” Kit clapped Will on the shoulder, and Will looked up, surprised by the contact, and then sighed as Kit abruptly dropped his hand, his fingers writhing as if he’d touched something foul. Since the Devil, human contact hurt him.
He’s trying.Will forced his tongue to stillness until he could say, “Lucifer tried to cast blame on the Faeries.”
“Which Faeries?”
Will stopped walking and turned to meet Kit’s gentle, measuring gaze. “Those that love not the Mebd, he said. Nor Gloriana. Didst think to root them out for me, Kit?”
“I am tasked to root them out for the Prince,” Kit answered, fussing with his well‑cleaned fingernails. “We have sought them in Faerie a half decade now, and I could hope they revealed themselves somehow here. Were less cautious, or – ”
Will shrugged, and saw Kit watching the trembling of his hands, the nodding of his head out of the corner of his eye. “All I know – ” Will swallowed and tried again. “All I know, ‘twas Lucifer told me the oaks murdered my boy. Faerie oaks.”
Kit looked up, startled, something yellow as topaz gleaming in the smoky quartz of his right eye. He quoted a rhyme Will would as soon not hear again. “Oak, he hate– Damme, Will. What thou toldst me now, hast told any other? Annie? Amaranth? Anyone?”
The quick answer was easy, but Kit’s intensity caused him to pause and think through the past months. “No,” Will said, after several seconds dripped by. “Not a one, but for thee.”
Kit reached up as if to run a hand through his curls and laughed when he touched the black velvet of his hood instead. “Amaranth told me to talk to the trees. She knows more than she ever speaks, that one.”
“Aye,” Will said, worry blossoming dark in his heart. “And I’ll lose no other piece of my soul to a witch‑hearted tree – ”
“Peace, Will.” He saw the twitch of Kit’s hand toward his arm, saw it fall back among the folds of Kit’s bright, shifting cloak. “I’ll come to no harm. Must do this thing in any case: wilt trust thy vengeance to thine Elf‑knight, love?”
It hurt, the fear. But Will saw the promise on Kit’s face, and nodded nonetheless, and remembered something that Kit should know, that might link one group of enemies to another. “Robert Poley. Kit, Poley was in Stratford when Hamnet died. I thought he’d come to threaten me – ”
“Will? What are you doing, standing muttering in corners to yourself– ” Ben Jonson’s big hand clutched Will’s shoulder, turned him half around. Will put up a hand to cover Ben’s and saw his pupils widen. “I beg your pardon, sir,” Ben said to Kit, pulling the hand back to rub his eyes. “I did not see you there in the shadows.”
“By all means,” Kit said, his voice dangerously soft as he drew his cloak about him.
Ben glanced at Will and at the door. Will shook his head. “The Queen said no.”
“Damn,” Kit said, in unison with Ben. “How could she … ?”
“Who is this fellow, Will?” Ben’s hand on Will’s shoulder again, possessive, and Kit’s eyes almost glowed in the shadows of his hood. Who is this fellow to know so much of our affairs?
Oh, this it not how I would have chosen to handle this.“Kit Marley,” Will said. “Meet Ben Jonson. Ben, this is Christofer “ And God ha’ mercy on my soul.
“Please. Call me Merlin,” Kit said, his face very still, and Will knew at once that he had made a mistake. A very bad mistake indeed. Both in introducing Kit first to Ben, and more, in letting Ben lay that companionable hand on his shoulder in Kit’s view.
“Marlowe?” Ben blinked. “The poet.”
“The dead one,” Kit said irritably. “Aye.” And moved along before Ben could react. “And your fellow conspirator, though I see Will has informed you not. So. No dispensation for our Bible. Damme. Again.”
“That’s fine,” Ben answered, after a moment of slow consideration in which he apparently decided to deal with supernatural manifestations some other day. “We’ll write it anyway.”
“Against the Queen’s word?” Will shook his head.
Ben dismissed it with a gesture, and spoke without much lowering his voice. “She won’t be Queen forever, Will.”