The cold wind tugged Kit’s hair, a sensation like the caress of Lucifer’s feathers. The crippled raven who always came to visit at suppertime landed on the window ledge, strangely awake in that midnight hour, and on an impulse Kit reached out tentatively and touched its black jet wing. He felt the slick surface of feathers, the deeper warmth of the flesh, and wondered if he’d been a fool to send Lucifer–and Lucifer’s promises of love–from him. The raven endured his caress, and Kit stifled an impulse to gather it up in his arms and cradle it close like one of his small sisters with a poppet.
“Mehiel,” he said, softly. “Art become so tainted by mortality, after twelve years my companion, that thou shouldst preach suicide?”
«An it save God, I am prepared to make the sacrifice.»
“Despair is a sin, angel,” Kit said, and closed the casement frame.
* * *
Baines came for them as the clock struck eleven.
Look, here’s the warrant, Claudio, for thy death:
‘Tis now dead midnight, and by eight to‑morrow
Thou must be made immortal.
–William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure,Act IV, scene ii
A heavy bell tolled midnight, and Will laid his cards faceup on Sir Walter’s ornately carved black wooden desk and raised his eyes.
It’s time,” Murchaud said from his place against the wall. Light‑colored stone with the look of hasty mortaring and great age caught the candlelight, outlining his dark‑clad frame.
Will nodded and stood, resting one hand on smooth waxed wood. “You know where the magic will be worked, Your Highness?”
“There’s a temple under the Tower,” Murchaud said, straightening away from the wall. Unlike Will, Ben, and Tom, he had arrived by unusual means, and still wore his rapier at his hip. “More a chapel, really. Twill be not a comfortable place for me, but I am content to suffer it.”
Sir Walter,” Tom said, rising and bowing. “I am afraid we must then bid you adieu–”
Go,” Raleigh said graciously, rose, and tapped on the door, summoning the guard to inform him that the guests “were ready to be excused and that he himself was ready to go up to bed with his wife, Elizabeth.
If those guests managed to vanish into the shadows between the Garden Tower and the gate, how was he ever to know?
Accurs’d be he that first invented war!
They knew not, ah, they knew not, simple men,
How those were hit by pelting canon‑shot
Stand staggering like a quivering aspen‑leaf
–Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great,Part I, Act II scene iv
This isn’t so different from climbing down to Hell,Kit thought, balancing himself with a hand on one wall of the ragged stone stairwell. His shadow writhed before him, cast by the torches Baines, Poley, and the four others walking behind carried.
All in all, he would have preferred the demon with the glowing maw.
He was exquisitely careful how he placed his bare feet on the ragged stone, annoyed all over again that Baines hadn’t given him back his boots. He had to give the bastard credit: on a floor like this one, it was an effective means of keeping him from running.
At least his skin and hair and clothes were clean, and the puffy flesh around his rings was peeling with eczema now rather than infection. Which was an improvement of sorts, and so was the cloak warming his shoulders. Not his own fey cloak–this one was as white as the woolen doublet and breeches that would have made it all that much harder for him to run. If he had planned to. And where would I run?Or perhaps all that white served to mark him a virgin sacrifice, which was a thought worth a slightly hysterical giggle.
“How far down are we going, Richard?”
“All the way,” Baines answered.
The wall grew moist under Kit’s fingertips, wet, sandy earth gritting between his skin and the mortared stone. “It’s a wonder the river hasn’t washed these tunnels away,” he commented. “How old are they?”
“Since Arthur’s day.”
Which was a strange choice of words. Kit almost wished they’d bound his hands, but then he probably would have fallen down the stairs. Essex refused the blindfold,he thought. Can Marley do less?“These must be Roman ruins?”
“Puss, must you chatter so?”
Kit shivered at the fond correction. “I am understandably somewhat nervous, Dick.” The quaver in his voice was less showmanship than he would have wanted it to be.
«Be bold,» Mehiel chanted in his ear. «If thou hadst listened to me, thou wouldst be beyond this fear and pain.»
Aye, and on to others.
«I still fail to comprehend thy plan.»
That’s because I do not have one, other than that I will not die tonight, but live, and thwart Richard Balneo another day.
зAnd if he has remade our God into the image he pleases–»
Mehiel,Kit reminded, my power may be chained and my magic shorn from me, but I am a bard, a poet, and a warlock too. And there’d a half‑completed Bible in Tom Walsingham’s study that says that my God has as much claim on the world as the God of Richard Balneo and… Lucifer.
«Prometheus, thou meanest.»
Aye.Kit steadied himself against the wall and stretched over a step too crumbled to be safe. “Watch your step, Richard.”
«Hast thou the power to do this thing?» Wonder on the angel’s voice, those golden eyes shuttered by dark lashes.
You never know until you try.Kit swallowed dryness, and tried to hush his thoughts so the angel would not overhear his fear. The force of will to defy Richard Baines, and wrest his own greatest sorcery away from him? I can’t even best the man in a verbal jousting match. What think I that I can take control of a sorcery in which I am only the catalyst, the sacrifice?
«Sir Poet,» the angel reminded gently, «thou art the man did tell the Prince of Darkness where to take his blandishments.»
From the way his shadow stretched before him in the fluttering light, Kit could see that they were coming to the bottom of the stair. A low tunnel vaulted with Roman arches stretched away before them.
Aye,Kit answered. But Lucifer Morningstar doesn’t frighten me like Richard Baines.
Now entertain conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night,
The hum of either army stilly sounds,
That the fix ‘d sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other’s watch:…
–William Shakespeare, Henry V,Act IV, chorus
The Earl of Salisbury limped up the stairs with a half‑dozen men‑at‑arms at his back. “Your Highness, ” he said, raising his chin to look over Will’s shoulder. “Master Shakespeare–”
“Stand aside, my lord,” was Will’s answer as he continued his descent. His cane clacked staccato on the steps as he stumped downward.
Salisbury did not move. “I will not have thee risk thyself in this, ” he said. “Thy King needs thee to shape what will follow, Will. There’s nothing thou canst do to help Marlowe now. They will have already begun.”
Will stopped, one step above Salisbury and leaning forward. He wanted to close his eyes at the declaration, remembering the heat of a crimson iron close enough to curl his lashes. The hand that did not hold his cane tightened on a bit of silk in his pocket, and something pricked him. The enchanted nail Kit had given him, and Will drew strength from it.