«Hold fast,» the angel answered, and quoted poetry. «Angels and ministers of grace defend us.»
The pain of the nail in Kit’s palm was just enough to keep the laugh from bubbling from his lips. Baines’ spell clutched his throat; he could not breathe; he dropped the reins and clutched his collar, tearing it open, sagging forward over Gin’s blond mane. The pressure crushed him, swept him aside, rolled him under. Shoved.
And eased.
Baines’ hand was on his sleeve, tugging him upright. “Sit straight, Puss,” Baines said, and Kit obeyed without thought. “Come along.”
Kit opened his hand, the nail driven through his palm grating between the bones. He gasped and sat back in the saddle, feeling the eyes on his back. The eyes of his friends. Trust me.
Baines could destroy him in any fight. Sorcerous or physical, it mattered not. Kit had no hope of meeting him in open war.
Which left just treachery.
Kit gave Gin a little leg on the off side, sending him shoulder to shoulder with Baines’ bay. Kit’s knee banged Baines’ calf; Baines cursed good‑naturedly, raising his right hand to Kit’s shoulder to ward man and horse away.
As he turned, Kit skinned the saber from its saddle sheath and put the whole curved, wicked length into Richard Baines’ belly and out his back, low and angled for the liver, a kidney, both if Kit was lucky. His hand on the hilt, the iron nail in his palm, his blood binding him to the blade, Kit felt skin pop before the blade’s knife tip –a slashing weapon, not designed to stab, awkward and unbalanced. But it went through.
He leaned across his saddle and twistedthe weapon in Baines’ guts, and the nail thrust through the back of his own hand.
Gin shrieked and planted both forehooves at the cataract of blood that drenched them both, and Baines’ bay horse too. The bay reared; Kit yelped as the saber was dragged from his grip, Baines somehow staying in the saddle as his horse curvetted.
Staying in the saddle, Kit estimated, but not for long, with both hands folded across his belly like that, holding his guts inside like an overfull armload of mold‑slicked gray rope. Gin’s eyes were white‑edged, his ears laid back hard as he backed away, one step and then another, his head down to protect his throat as if he faced a slavering dog.
“Puss – ” Baines managed, more a bubble of blood on his lips than a word. He blinked, his expression the strangest blend of grief and hurt betrayal; Kit saw it with a clarity that made a mockery of the ten feet between them. “Forsworn?” And then his grip failed, and his guts slid out over his thighs and the saddle, and his body tumbled backward as his bay horse said enoughand put its hooves hard to the ground.
Kit gentled Gin with a hand that left bloody streaks on the sorrel’s blond mane, remembered a moment later the nail sunk into his palm. He picked it free while his gelding’s quivering slowed, and bound the wound with a scrap torn from his filthy white doublet. He trembled like shaken paper, and it took all his concentration to wind the cloth around his hand. By the time he had the bleeding stopped, the Fae had joined him, and the mortal riders too.
Morgan got to him first, Will seated pillion behind her. She reined her mare in close enough that Gin could lean a shoulder on her to be comforted, and slid her own arm around Kit’s waist, seeming not to notice that it took all of hisflickering strength of heart not to shy and buck. “Clever,” she said, and left it at that, leaning away.
He sighed, stealing another glance at the ruin of his worst nightmare sprawled messily on the bank. He couldn’t quite look at Baines; nor could he–quite–look away.
“Kit.” Will’s voice, and Will’s gentle hand on his arm.
Kit flinched, held himself steady as Gin tossed his head in protest of the blood and his rider’s plain fear. “Aye, love?”
“You forswore yourself for me?”
Kit laughed, and looked up, feeling suddenly lightened. “No,” he said, and shook his head, feeling how his hair gritted against his neck. “I told Dick that Christofer Marley would do as he bid.”
“And?”
Kit shrugged, pressing his right hand to his thigh to slow the piercing agony in it to a throbbing ache. “There is no Christofer Marley any longer, Will.” He picked flakes of blood off the back of his hand with a thumbnail and did not stop himself this time. “Come away, love. I want a bath. Come away from this place.”
Act V, scene xxiii
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.
–William Shakespeare, King Henry VIII,Act III, scene ii
Catesby would not be taken alive. Will heard later that the chase led the King’s Men as far as Warwickshire, his cousins gone to ground in a gatehouse and pried loose only at the cost of blood on both sides. He heard, and nodded as if it had been no more than he expected, and–wishing he had more grief left in him–turned his face back to the fire.
There was an ugly bit of business when they returned to London and learned that Salisbury had arranged to have the recusant Ben arrested for questioning regarding the Gunpowder Treason. But he was pried loose soon enough, following a renunciation of his convenient Catholicism and a few earnest threats from Will and Tom, and the comments of the Baron Monteagle, roused from his bed at an inconvenient hour.
The following morning, Will took himself to Westminster in the company of Thomas Walsingham and that same Ben Jonson, where the three of them presented themselves again before the Secretary of State. Salisbury met them in a red‑walled receiving room where Will had once been greeted by a Queen, and Will suspected the canny old Earl had chosen that location on purpose. There were wine and a fire; Tom and Ben availed themselves of the former, Will of the latter, and they stood in wolf‑pack silence while Salisbury sugared a cup of sack for himself.
“Master Shakespeare,” Salisbury said finally, turning to face the hearth and Will. “I’ve considered thy proposal, again. And I am afraid I cannot allow–”
Will drew a breath and raised his hand, not quite believing himself what he was about to say. “I’m afraid, my lord, that my request is no more negotiable than Ben’s freedom.”
“Not–” Disbelief. Salisbury set his cup aside.
“Would you care, my lord, to see my talents turned to the sort of satire our friend Ben is known for? To the odd anonymous broadside? The Devil makes work for idle hands.”
“I have mine own resources,” Salisbury countered, the threat patent in his voice.
Will laughed, crossing his arms in the King’s red livery, trying not to show how much he needed the support of the wall he leaned back against. “What can you threaten me with? I am dying, my lord. Behead me tomorrow; you cost the world at most a few plays, and my wife the pain of nursing me through my decline.”
Salisbury’s mouth worked. He glanced at Ben, who remained perfectly still, a shaggy, menacing figure in incongruous wire‑rimmed spectacles. Will did not need to turn to know that Tom Walsingham smiled. He could see its effect, the sudden nervous flicker of Salisbury’s smirk. Tom’s voice was light, level, and as sweet as a woman’s when she has her husband dead to rights. “I too have resources, ”Tom said. “And while I am not Secretary of State, my lord Earl, I amTom Walsingham.”
Will took his cue from the heavy downflex of Tom’s voice, the emphasis of the accidental rhyme of verb and name. “And I dare say,” he continued pleasantly, “that we three know enough of your dealings, and have enough trust from the King and Queen between us, to see you in the room beside Sir Walter’s. No doubt His Majesty would not be averse to seeing one of his loyal Scotsmen in your place; you know how he prefers them to the English‑bred men of the court.”