“Gloriana,” he mouthed, and cocked his head at her. At the fine hooked arch of her nose and the cheekbones like panes of glass, and caught his breath.
“Elizabeth the First,” Morgan le Fey said on a breath like awe. “England’s greatest ruler. So shall she be remembered.” The sorceress offered him a bittersweet smile, and he knew that what she gave herself was not just peace, but a suitable sort of vengeance, after all these endless years. “A mere woman.”
Kit studied her. “There are no mere women.”
Her eyes shifted green to gray, smile rose‑pink as her lips compressed. She said nothing, amused.
He liked her in triumph. “It’s your revenge on Arthur.”
“Arthur and not Gwenhwyfar? Art certain?”
He was. He wondered, for a moment, what the legends might have been if this woman, and not her half brother, had been King. “Does the Mebd know what you’ve done?”
“She’ll learn soon enough. Come. Sit and have tea.”
Act IV, scene xvii
Some day that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.
–William Shakespeare, Hamlet,Act I, scene i
Will had learned by now to recognize the tingle of lifting hair at the nape of his neck that presaged Kit’s sudden appearances. The specter showed first flat as a painting or an image in a glass, and then stepping forward as if he rose through water into three‑dimensional reality. Will didn’t move from his place by the fire – hard won, in Tom’s cold parlor, and he wouldn’t sacrifice it willingly. Tom himself only nodded, but George Chapman –
Will hid his laughter behind his sleeve as Chapman turned to face the outlandish figure of Kit Marlowe–who had just materialized before the big window in his gaudy cloak – and dropped his half‑empty goblet on the floor. Tom didn’t even try to conceal his mirth as straw‑colored wine spilled over the rushes and Chapman’s jaw fell open, a red cavern within the bramble of his beard. He never even glanced down at the wine soaking his shoes, but when Kit smiled kindly at him and said, “Oh. Hullo, George. I hear you’ve been expurgating my poetry,” his eyes rolled up and only Tom Walsingham’s swift intercession kept him from dashing his brains out on the sideboard.
Kit considered the tableau for a moment, and then glanced over his shoulder and raised both eyebrows at Will. “He’s a prankster, our Will.”
Said direct to Will’s face and not in Tom’s direction at all, but it was Tom–tipping Chapman into a chair–who answered. “He is at that. Happy birthday, Kit.”
“Is it?” Kit glanced out the window, as if expecting rain and buttercups, and blinked at the cold gray slates and February darkness.
“February sixth, sixteen hundred.”
“It is,” Kit said wonderingly, putting his hand on the glass. He pressed the other against the center of his breast in a gesture that was becoming a habit, and one that quietly troubled Will. “Is’t afternoon or morning?”
“Before sunrise,” Will said. “We’ve been waiting up for thee–”
“And didst not tell poor George I was coming. Shame, William.”
Will grinned. “Congratulations, Kit. You’re thirty‑seven.”
“Strange, he doesn’t look a day over twenty‑nine.” Tom finished settling Chapman into the chair and pushed one long hand through hair that was streaked with gray now, like a careless daub of whitewash at the temples. Will’s attention was more on Kit, though, and he saw Kit flinch when Tom continued, “Worry not, Kit. Forty’s not the end of the world, for all they say it’s middle age and death on the horizon.”
“Aye, Sir Thomas,” Kit said, and crossed the room to crouch by Chapman’s chair. “Thou’rt forty now? It cannot be. ‘Twas only yesterday thou wert outriding and outshooting me day in and day out, and soon Thou’lt be as toothless as old Chapman, here” – he chafed Chapman’s wrists –“George, wake up. That was a cruel trick Will played thee–water, Will. If thou hast stopped the old man’s heart I shan’t forgive thee.”
“Old Chapman,” Tom scoffed, standing back. “Aye, he’s two entire winters on me.”
Will had left his cane by the door, and managed with some pride to fetch cold water and a cloth for Kit without stumbling. “As the youngest and baldest of the lot of you,” Will said, “I feel I should contribute, but–alas–I find myself at a loss to compete with elder wits.”
Kit snorted and ignored him, applying the cold soaked cloth to Chapman’s neck until the woolly poet opened his eyes and groaned. “Kit. A ghost? It can’t be Kit, so unchanged after a decade.”
“Not a decade, George,” Kit said, rising to his feet. “Eight years, a little less–”
Near enough a decade,” George answered, struggling upright, and Will saw Kit flinch again. “And not a wrinkle on thee–”
“Death is kinder than aging in that way,” Kit said, and walked to the sideboard to pour himself wine and sugar it lightly. “I hear a rumor thou’rt holding Ben’s pen for us now that the bricklayer has gone on to greener pastures.”
Chapman blinked, and cast about himself for the cup that he’d let fall. Will took pity and retrieved and refilled it, to Chapman’s effusive thanks. “Shall we begin?”
Kit sipped and laid his cup aside, turning to retrieve the precious Bible from its shelf while Will dragged a low table with ink and paper between himself and Chapman. But Tom raised his hand and cleared his throat, and Kit paused before he was properly begun. “What is it, Sir Thomas?”
Tom smiled at Will. “You didn’t tell Kit about his birthday gift, Master Shakespeare…”
A blush turned Will’s face hot.
Kit looked up, frowning. “Will… ?”
Wary as a stag at bay, and Will couldn’t blame him. “Supper at the Mermaid,” he said. “Everyone will be there. Tom Nashe, Mary Poley, and the lot–” ALL that are Left Living. And let him Look on young Robin with his own eyes, and make his own decisions, then.
Kit’s eyes grew wide. “Her Majesty would never permit it,” he said, when he finally found something to say at all. “Christofer Marley must stay dead, Will–”
Will grinned. “Aye, but Thomas Marlowe of Canterbury, a young man of, oh, perhaps twenty‑five, might just be of the age to have finished his prenticeship and come to London to meet the men his brother knew. What better excuse wilt thou ever have, my Christofer?”
Kit blinked and swallowed. Will saw his eyes too bright and his throat swelling above his collar, and hoisted himself out of his chair again. He crossed the floor and draped his arm over Kit’s patchworked shoulders, damning the trembling in his limbs for an inconvenience and a bother. He was as proud of Kit for not pulling away as he had ever been of anything, and prouder still when his friend leaned into the embrace.
“How didst thou know I had a brother?”
Will grinned to stop the sharpness that would have filled up his own eyes, and found himself supporting Kit as much as clasping him. “I wrote thy mother, fool, to tell her the rumors attending the ignominy of thy death were false, and that she could be proud of her eldest son. We’ve had quite the correspondence, since.”
Then Kit did pull away, and set the Bible down, and hid his face against the window glass. No one spoke for long moments, until he straightened his shoulders and forced his voice steady. “What time is supper, then?”
Will had to encircle Kit’s shoulders with his arm again to chivvy him through the Mermaid’s door: the fair‑haired poet froze with one hand on the door pull as if it were he and not Will who were halt. “Come on, Tom,” Will said, tapping the side of Kit’s shoe with his toe. “Your brother’s friends are waiting to meet you.”