“Any more than all Puritans are.” Kit nodded, as if seeing the logic. “Your opposition is not to Catesby. Only to those who use him, so unwittingly.”
“As they used Essex, and discarded him when they were done.”
“Hell,” Kit said. “As they used and discarded one Christofer Marley, playmaker – ” He stopped, fingers tight on the cloth of his sleeves, and closed his eyes for a moment. “I beg thy pardon, Will. Pray continue.”
I made the right choice not to ask him what became of Oxford,Will thought. “Catesby had been imprisoned for recusancy again, but he’s out, and building a … congregation”
“A congregation and not a private army?”
“Is there a difference, in this age?” Will sighed. “I haven’t a choice. Remember old Sir Francis and his damned lemons out of season?”
“It was a good conceit.” Kit stood and crossed the rush‑covered floor in a few short strides. “He swallowed enough bitterness for his queen to know the taste of it. I do not think Robert Cecil is such a civil servant as that. But be cautious, Wilclass="underline" it’s easy enough to hang for treason even when one acts on the orders of the crown. I’ve seen it happen, King’s Man.”
“Queen’s Man,” Will corrected, with a smile. “I’m only a player for James.”
“Good,” Kit said, and laid both hands carefully on Will’s shoulders, with a precision that belied the force of choice behind that action. “I’d hate to think I had to defend thy virtue from a king.”
“He suits my fancy not at all,” Will answered, and let his head fall back against Kit’s belly. “I’d find something better to be forsworn for, if I were of a mind to be forsworn.”
Kit bore the touch for a moment and stepped back. “I dreamed of thee again. Thee, and a pouch full of silver coins, every one of them tainted in poison. I knocked them from thy fingers – ”
Will pivoted on his stool, away from the table, so he could watch Kit pace. “And?”
“And a flock of ravens arose, startled by the sound, and then the ravens dove on the coins and were transformed into magpies. And the magpies touched the silver – it was shillings, all shillings. Forty of them.” Kit’s face went dreamy as he pressed a palm to the window glass.
Will stood, a bit unsteadily, and came up beside him. “And then what happened?”
“The magpies died. Every one. And turned into gray‑feathered doves as they fell. Damned if I know what to make of that for a prophecy.” Kit’s shoulders rose – slowly – and then dropped.
“I do,” Will answered, shaking his head just a little, remembering the weight of a pouch of coins in his fingers on the eve of the Essex Rebellion. Remembering Robert Catesby’s considering glance as Will took it from his hand. “The plague. And that sickness that almost killed me, four winters back.”
“And did kill Spenser and Walsingham. Aye.”
“Coins. It’s spread on coins, Kit. Ensorcelled silver, that taints any hand that touches it.”
Kit turned to him and blinked, candlelight cupping his cheek like a hand. “By God,” he said. “Thou’rt right. Thou must be.” And then he stopped and crossed his arms before his breast, and visibly swallowed. “How does a man fight something like that?”
Will just shook his head. “I do not know.”
Act V, scene v
But while I have a sword, a hand, a heart
I will not yield to any such upstart.
– Christopher Marlowe, Edward II,Act I, scene i
She’s asking for you,” Murchaud said from the doorway, and Kit laid down the book, open to a page he’d read three times over and never seen.
He stood and twisted his rapier back into place in its carrier. “The Mebd’s awake?”
Murchaud didn’t answer, only beckoned. Kit came to him and they passed through the corridors side by side, not speaking until they reached the threshold of the Mebd’s privy chamber. He paused, his hand on the doorknob, and glanced over his shoulder at the Prince. “Thou’rt not coming in?”
“No,” Murchaud said. “My royal wife said Kit, and Kit alone. So alone thou goest.”
“What does she want of me?”
“Thy company, I presume.” He smiled a worried smile, one that made the corners of his pale, soft eyes turn down.
“It’s the teind year. Sixteen naught Five, and less than a month to choose the sacrifice – ”
“No.” Murchaud’s headshake was slow. “Thy William went willing, Kit. Even though thou didst retrieve him – mad poets, the both of you–the debt is paid for seven times seven years. Go on, my love.”
Kit shivered at the endearment, set his jaw, and opened the door.
A cool breeze ruffled silk curtains, admitting sunlight on dancing rays. The chamber smelled of lavender and peppermint, and thick rush mats muffled Kit’s footsteps.
The Mebd lay on a daybed by the window’, embroidered pillows behind her shoulders and her thin violet gown draped over one bent knee, a bare graceful foot showing beneath the hem. Her head was turned, her gaze trained out the window, her hair down on her shoulders in a thousand braids as fine as golden wire.
Kit bowed, then straightened when she summoned him with an airy wave.
“Sir Kit.”
“Your Highness.”
She smiled as he came closer, her eyes as violet now as twilight, matching the shadows that surrounded them and lay under her cheekbones. The lines of her collarbones glinted like knives, and he could see the rings of her larynx through the translucent skin of her throat. He thought the bones of her fingers might crumble if he simply reached out and took her hand; even her amazing hair was lusterless and dry in its floor‑long braids. “Sit,” she said. “I’m healing at last. England’s King is secure upon his throne. Faerie will endure.”
“Was it wise of you to risk Faerie so far?” Kit asked, because he felt secure enough in his Bard’s patched cloak to do it. He reached out softly, and took a few of her long yellow plaits in his hand. “There are many lives braided here, my Queen. Lives that would be lost if you were.”
“The war’s not over,” she said. “I understand thou hast been speaking with Morgan, yet.”
“Aye.”
“Her politics?”
“What are her politics, you mean, Your Highness?” When she nodded impatiently, he continued. “She says she wants peace.”
“She does,” the Mebd said. “But she’s never understood that compromises can be required to assure it, and sometimes the Devil you know is to be preferred to the Devil you don’t.” She smiled into his eyes as he leaned forward, and turned her gaze out to the garden again. “I have a task for thee, one that shall burden thee a while, and one which I cannot ask my bounden subjects. And one which thou wilt never speak of, Sir Kit. I charge thee.”
“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.”