Act IV, scene iv
Marriage is but a ceremonial toy;
If thou lovest me, think no more on it.
– Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act II, scene i
Such a small grave, neatly tended, evergreen branches laid atop the snow and the marker swept carefully clean. Two or three sets of footsteps; Kit couldn’t be sure. He crouched in the snow beside it and tugged his glove off, touched the frozen needles of a pine branch, the soft bow of a red velvet ribbon not yet faded by the wet and the sun. “Merry Christmas, little man.”
He sat back on his heels, the leathern bag over his shoulder almost overbalancing him, and glanced around the churchyard. The horizon already glowed orange with winter’s early sunset. Unobserved, he decided, and quickly freed the bit of ribbon from the greenery. He folded it inside the palm of his glove; the edges of the wet cloth itched and made a splotch on gray kidskin.
I’m sorry, lad. If anything, ‘twas my fault, what befell thee, and not thy sire’s. And a measure of Will’s kindness that for all he could have blamed me for every ill that’s touched his life since Sir Francis dragged him into this unholy mess, he never held me responsible for a bit of it.
Well, I did nearly put his eye out with a hot poker trying to reason with him– Kit shook his head as he stood, shaking his cloak to snap the snow from the hem. “Bloody hell.” So it’s Robert Poley and the Fae, is’t? Well. One more blood debt for Robert Poley. One more shouldn’t bother him a little.
Kit’s hand clenched around the bit of ribbon. Pity I can only cut his heart out once.
It wasn’t much work to find the New Place, as Will’s grand house was called. “The playmaker’s done well for himself,” Kit said, pausing on the roadway and looking up at the five peaked gables, the smoke drifting lazily from several of the chimneys. He paused, scuffing his feet on the frozen earth. Come, Kit. Put a bold face on it–
He squared his shoulders and stepped up to the door, tapping squarely. It opened a moment later, so promptly that someone must have seen him standing on the road. He hoped he’d looked like a man considering if he had the right house, only.
The dark‑haired girl within might have seen fourteen winters, or fifteen. Kit bowed as low as he would to any lady of the Mebd’s shining court, and swept his hat off too, making a flourish with his patchworked cloak. “You must be Mistress Judith,” he said. “And as lovely as your father described–”
“He said no such thing !” she said, and stepped forward to block the door. “And who are you, you fabulous tatterdemalion, to pretend to such a gallant tongue?”
Kit straightened and let his cloak drop in natural folds. The girl’s eyes sparkled: she knew her advantage, and Kit rather thought the tart‑tongued wench would have him twisted around her finger in a moment. “I am expected, I hope,” he said. “My friend Master Shakespeare said he would send word ahead of my visit, and that I might be assured of my welcome here. I see he underreported the sweetness of his daughters’ speech – ”
“Did he say so?”
“That he underreported your sweetness? Nay–
“Nay, that you could be assured of your welcome here.” She cocked her head back, her black hair spilling over her shoulders, and stared up at him. Kit bit his lip: her eyes were the same dark blue as her father’s, and made him shiver.
“Judith? Judith, if thou wishest to warm the out‑doors, build a fire behind the stable – ” Annie Shakespeare paused in the doorway, her faded eyes narrowing at the corners when she caught sight of Kit standing on the path. He waited while she examined him from boots to hair. A thoughtful moment, until she nodded and tugged Judith out of the doorway. The braided ribbon around Mistress Shakespeare’s neck caught Kit’s eye; he smiled in spite of himself, bitter and sweet. And joy you in it, Will.
“Welcome, Master Marlin.” After the country fashion, she kissed him in greeting when he came through the door.
Kit forced himself to stillness, to returning the quick peck she offered, but he knew from the lift of her brow that she noticed his discomfort. She reached out, deft as a bird, and brushed his hair behind his ear, her fingers quick on the rounded tip. He shied like a startled horse, and she nodded satisfaction as he shifted from foot to foot.
“Some Elf‑knight,” she said, when Judith was out of earshot, scampering into the house to let Cook and the maid know the company had come. “You look like an overdressed university lad, if you ask me, which you haven’t. Will you eat beef and bread and apples like a mortal man?”
“Madam,” Kit said, stamping the snow from his boots. “And glad of it. Mistress Shakespeare, you keep a fine house.”
“I do when I can,” she answered, and hung his cloak on a peg once he handed it to her. “Will wrote to say you were here on his business – ”
A note of suspicion in her voice, and not unwarranted. Kit let his gaze wander as she led him to the hearthside, concealing a swelling blister of sorrow. Will’s an idiot not to come home more often. Had I a family such as this– “And he told you I was an Elf‑knight?”
“Nay, he told me my rival was an Elf‑knight under a curse, who could not endure a mortal touch. ‘Twas not too difficult a study to know of whom he spoke, once presented yourself at my door in your hobgoblin cloak and your boots of green chamois.”
“Ah.” Kit kept the little bubble of–not homesickness, exactly–behind his smile as she led him to a chair by the fire and pressed a mug of warmed wine into his hands. “Your rival, madam?”
“Not his words,” she admitted. “But you’re no elf, Master Marlin, or I am very much mistaken.”
“Changeling,” Kit said with a shrug he meant to be casual. He closed his eyes, afraid of what Mistress Shakespeare might glimpse in them, and then opened them again, uneasy when he could not see. “It makes little difference in the end; I was born mortal, but it seems I am mortal no more.”
Mistress Shakespeare glanced over her shoulder, assuring their privacy, before she sat across the hearth from Kit. She lowered her voice so it would not ring through the house. “What is my husband to you?”
Kit’s breath stopped half in and half out of his chest. “My” – he swallowed wine to cover his hesitation, and managed only poorly, by the look in her eyes – “oh, there is no one easy word, madam. What did he say to you of me, to put that savagery in your gaze?”
Silence, and the dent of her teeth in her lip. Her skirts, twisted between her fingers, showed him a flash of red flannel petticoats. “He said he loved you.”
“Ah.” There is no answer that can make that better.“Mistress, and I him.”
She shrugged. Her skirts fell smooth. Her small foot twisted on the hearthstone, clad in a shoe of good blue leather, the stitching stretched over the rise of her great toe.
“I could mend that for you,” Kit said, pointing with his chin.
She started, expression darkening as if he indicted her housewifery, and then saw the angle of his gaze and looked down, extending a hearty ankle to inspect her shoe in the firelight. “A seamstress, are you?”
“I can darn a stocking, too,” Kit said. “Such it is with students.” The wine was sugared, sweet and thick. It heated his cold feet at least as much as the fire did. “Especially the overdressed ones.”
A laugh, but not a warm one. Aye, and she’s a reason to love thee, Kit?She tucked her shoe away under her skirts and dusted her hands together, as if about to rise. “Your supper will be a little while longer – ”