And one that could mean a great deal of danger to Will, especially if his friend’s secret plan to undermine the ill-feeling between Protestants and Papists came to light.
Kit dropped his cloak in the driest corner and ran each hand up opposite sides of the rough-hewn timber, glad the edges had not been planed to corners and the bark was only haphazardly smoothed away. He grabbed as high as he could, locked fist around wrist, and half hopped, half pulled himself into the air. He wrapped his legs around the pillar, the rough surface burning skin through clothes so much for these hose and breathed. One. He reached as high as he could, coiled his arms around the pillar, and dragged himself a few inches, cursing rain and splinters.
Something stabbed his thigh, working deeper as he shimmied up. He kept his grip and pressed the scarred side of his face against the timber. Another flicker, and a halfhearted growl of thunder. Kit struck his head on a crossbrace and flinched, but held on. The stars he saw were brighter than the lightning. A slow hot trickle winding through his hair was soon lost in all the swift, cold trickles; he hoped the thump would be as lost in the sound of the storm.
The voices he strained to hear almost vanished under the pattering of droplets; Kit chased them, hoisting himself onto that crossbrace and straddling it. His arms and legs trembled. The crossbrace dug into his back, and the splinter burned in his thigh. Good work, Marley. And how get you down?He wiped his hair out of his face again and saw dilute blood on his fingers, though the bump on his head seemed superficial. He closed his eye and listened through the rain: first to the commonplaces of intelligencers in the tones of Baines and of Poley, reports of Catholics and Puritans Kit dismissed as no longer relevant to his service.
Until … “no, I haven’t seen Nick today, but he intended to attend. He must have been delayed at some trouble, my lord. I can tell you until he gets here that your Shakespeare’s been well behaved,” Poley said in his sharp, sardonic tones. “He spent the night in his room with his wife. Had supper sent up, and the candle went out shortly after. Not a peep: he seems apt to take the Queen’s penny and write his plays as he’s told.”
And then the third voice. Precise, a little pinched. As pompous as his peascod doublets: the voice of Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. Kit covered his face with his forearm, blocking the incessant drip. “Have your men see he stays under control, Master Poley. I’d not waste another playmaker. Though so long as he seems biddable, there should be no danger; lord Burghley relies on me to guide his production, and there have been no incidents such as those that provoked us to deal so harshly with Master Marley.” Kit almost lost his grip on the beam.
“Have you aught else to report? Anything of Thomas Walsingham?” Baines voice, the first part lost under the rumble of the thunder and the vsudden agony of Kit’s throat constricting. You broke it off, Kit. You were young. You learned. You never meant a thing to him. Edward.
“… Thomas Walsingham’s trust is secure. I’ve made evidence that Marley was involved with enemies of the Queen, and Thomas has accepted Master Poley’s judgement. With some tearing of the hair. I gather they were bosom friends.”
Kit straightened his arms against the beam overhead. Cold water dripped onto his forehead and ran down his arms as he let his head loll back. It mingled with slow heat leaking down his cheek, dripped burning against the back of his throat. He tasted salt and didn’t lower a hand to wipe it dry. ‘Edward,’ he mouthed. Oh, unhappy Marley. He’d blamed poor Thomas for his murder all unfairly, and it was fickle Edward all along.
Baines said, “Walsingham suspects nothing, my lord.”
“Excellent. What news from the Continent?”
A band of heavier rain swept the alley, and Kit couldn’t bear in any case to listen longer. The pang that wracked his belly was the final consideration: he couldn’t be sure if it was hunger, or the doom that would drive him back to Faerie, but he didn’t dare stay wedged under the stair. He slung a leg over the crossbrace and locked his ankles around the timber again, thinking, At least going down will be easier than coming up.
Except his hand slipped on slimy wood as he shifted his hip off the crossbrace, and he grabbed wildly for the timber and got a slick handful of rain-soaked bark that peeled free. He wasn’t sure how he remembered not to shout as he skidded two feet, asmear with whitewash and crumbs of wood, that splinter lodged so deeply now he thought he’d die of it, his eyepatch tearing loose a knot of hair as it went into the gulf underneath. His sword stayed blessedly fast in its scabbard, though, and for a long moment Kit hugged the timber and just breathed long, slow rattling breaths that hurt more coming out than going in.
Somehow he made it to the ground and stood against the timber, shaking more with his realization about Oxford than with the terror of the climb. He knew the length of such reports to the minute, and Poley and Baines would be emerging soon. What’s another betrayal? I already knew what he was. At least I’ve confirmation. Edward II stung him. Although perhaps more than I intended.And then a bright flare of hope, quickly doused. It wasn’t Tom. And so what if it wasn’t? The thought that must concern me is whether Edward is our only traitor.
Kit pulled himself away from the timber and bent to retrieve his cloak. He couldn’t find his eyepatch; the rainwater felt odd trickling over the drooping eyelid and the scar on his blind side. But at least with the cloak too sodden to wear, it was unlikely anyone would look past the whitewash daubing his form, the blood and mess and the long-healed wound to recognize a dead man’s profile. He needed Morgan. He needed to get another message to Francis, that his cousin was innocent and Oxford the man not to be trusted. We, We. Kit, there is no we any more. You serve a different Queen.He would have laughed if he’d dared: first the sinking horror of betrayal and then relief that left him giddy. Edward, not Thomas. Why is it so much better to be betrayed by one former lover than another? Because it is better to have a vile impression of someone once cared for reinforced, than to have one’s heart shown irreparably flawed.
He picked his way out into the steadier traffic of the street, too weary and pained to keep to the shadows though passersby were offering his bloody, whitewashed, rain-streaked visage curious stares and wide berths. There was a rain barrel up on bricks a half block further on, and he thought he might wash his face. Kit kept his eye on his shoes, cautious of the slick cobbles. He wouldn’t have looked up at all if a hurrying figure hadn’t drawn back a startled step and gasped.
“M Marley? God’s blood.”
Kit looked into the eyes of a narrow little man with a narrow little face. He was well dressed and well wrapped against the rain, and he skittered back three steps and bared his teeth like a trapped rat as Kit advanced, reaching across his body for the rapier.
“Nicholas Skeres,” Kit muttered between the draggled locks of his hair. He tasted lime and blood and soot, and spit them out upon the road. “Thou murdering bastard. I’ll see thee hang.”