“I know it,” Murchaud answered. “But that does not play fair with my question, sweet Kit.”
“I bethink myself,” Kit said carefully, “that in such case the beloved is as much at fault as the unfaithful lover. I knew a man, a man enough like Edward to share his name.” Kit closed his eye so he wouldn’t see the name Murchaud slips shaped, questioningly. ‘Oxford?’ Kit continued, “I cared for him. I did not much care for how he used his wife. I wrote a play to let him know it, and mayhap change his ways.”
“Success?”
“None to speak of.” Murchaud chuckled. “Is now the wrong moment to tell you that I am also a married man?”
“Married?” Kit shrugged, forcing his expression to blandness. “Most men are. Most women as well. I had thought myself, one day …” He paused at Murchaud’s smile, recognizing amusement and anticipation. “Where is your wife?”
“She sits on Faerie’s throne,” the Elf-knight answered.
“The Mebd. Is your wife.”
“Tis less impressive when you consider my parentage,” Murchaud said dryly, taking Kit by the wrist and drawing him down among the bedclothes. “And things are different here.”
“Yes,” Kit said against the pillow. “I’ve noticed.”
Kit woke uneasy in waning light. The wound in the valley of his throat stung, and beneath the door he heard the footsteps of servants, a rattling scratch. He drew the sheets up to cover his shame and called a welcome once he rubbed enough grit from his eye to be assured Murchaud was no longer in the chamber. A brownie entered bearing a taper twice his own height. He was a wee man clad in tattered brown trousers, braces strapped over his teacup belly.
“Sir Christofer?”
And the whole castle knows to find me in the Prince-Consort’s bed.Kit touched his lips, remembering a kiss; the aching hollowness that lately emptied him when he was away from Morgan gnawed his belly. “Awake. More or less.”
“I’ve brought hot water and your dinner clothes.” The brownie gestured with his taper, and other candles about the room flared to life. Kit wondered how someone so small would tote water, but steam rose from a silver ewer beside the wash-basin, and Kit saw a black doublet and breeches and smallclothes laid out on Murchaud’s clothes chest.
“Thank you,” Kit said. In London, he would have offered a tip. Here, he’d been given to understand, gratuities would be perceived an insult.
“Anything else?”
“Soap and some tooth powder?”
“Seen to,” the brownie replied with what might have been a grimace or a grin. “You’ve the three-quarters of an hour before dinner is laid.”
“Where is Murchaud?”
“With …” The candle flickered, and that was disapproval, even in the half-light, “his royal wife.”
The door shut between them. Kit let the sheets fall aside to release their perfume of sweat and almond oil as he stood. Disapproval of me? Or of Murchaud? Or of the Queen?He ached with the battering, but it was pleasant enough. Unlike what gnawed his belly. Kit, this is obsession.
He cleaned himself at the basin, scrubbed his hair with the rose-scented soap, and wished he had someone to pour the rinse water for him, but managed. The shirt was silk again, and wrought with pearls about the bands: he wouldn’t have been permitted that in London, but here he was a knight. I wonder if Faerie has sumptuary laws. The doublet was new. It wasn’t black after all, he saw when he held it up to the light, but a deep undulled green no mortal dye could match. The slashes were lined with silk of a paler green, and the embroidery and the buttons shone in some oil green peridots. There were clean white hose, a cap and gloves, the silver sword he’d practiced with that afternoon, its same plain, functional hilt adorned by a much finer belt and scabbard. And there were shoes with jeweled buckles, which gave him pause.
“Well, I can’t very well wear the one pair of riding boots every day for eternity. Even my father’s nailing won’t stand up to that,” he said out loud, with a little bitterness behind it. John Marley had not been kindly disposed to Kit’s choice to leave Corpus Christi without taking holy orders. A priest in the family … There had been five other mouths to feed, and a man might hope his eldest son would be in a position to provide for his dotage. A poet living on the largesse of other men was unlikely to manage that. Or respectability either.
You said you had a calling, Father, I did. Which had been half the problem.Kit dressed carefully, combed his damp hair, buttoned his buttons, laced his points. He wished he had a mirror to check the effect, although he didn’t mind that the shoes gave him an extra inch of height. He squared his shoulders, tucked his hair behind his ears, and went downstairs to meet his fate.
The great hall bustled. Kit moved through Fae both less and more familiar, already missing the click of bootnails on marble floors and the protection of forged iron. He paused at the doorway, but the herald saw and announced him, and as he moved forward, looking for a place below the salt, his eye was drawn by a jaunty wave from the high table.
Robin Goodfellow, the Puck, who sat beside what must by its chair and cushions be the Mebd’s chair of estate, held open a position on his left. Kit strode toward him, conscious of how recently he’d made a spectacle of himself in this very hall, more conscious of the ripple of hushed conversation that followed. Murchaud sat at the Queen’s right hand, his mother further right, and Kit’s stomach clenched and twisted with unkind recollection. But Morgan looked up at him and smiled as he walked before her. He returned the nod, and knew he blushed crimson when she stood to reach across the table and caress the velvet of his sleeve. “A lovely color on you, she said. Is the fit well?”
“My lady,” he answered, with a nod that mayhap concealed his desire to catch her black hair in both hands and scour his face with it. “Your gift?”
“You can’t go about clad in castoffs,” she said. We’ll see about a wardrobe tomorrow. And outfitting your chambers.”
“My lady is too kind.” He searched for the marks of violence on her skin, near the deep narrow neckline of her gown. There might have been a bruise, powdered over, but he wasn’t absolute. The looking left him sick, and he could not look away. “Your lady is not kind enough. Go, take your place.”
“Will I See you tonight?”
Her smile was the flex of a mayfly’s wings. “Perhaps, she said,” and froze him with her dismissal. Murchaud said nothing, but acknowledged him with a wink. He went to take his place between the fool and another Fae whose name he did not know.
“Sir Kit.”
“Master Robin.”
“Ah.”
“You remember my name better, then I apologize,” Kit said, and stood beside his chair rather than trouble himself to sit only to rise and sit again. “I was overwrought.”
“It is understandable. How fared you in the mortal lands?”
“Miserably,” Kit said, which was an answer. One cut short by the flare of trumpets. The Mebd entered, and was made courtesy to, and took her chair. She did not seem to notice Kit, though her long sleeves and her mantle of pure white silk brushed his leg as she passed. Kit seated himself as Robin did, and invisible footmen attended their chairs.
“I’m bid to tell you,” Puck said, “you’ll be called upon when the meal is done. There’s poetry in your future.”