“What wouldst thou?” He felt her smile against his shoulder, and knew he was lost.
My lord husband. I could make thee a wealthy man. A long pause, and shimmering wryness. I want to buy land.
Which she could do only in his name and person.
“With the income I send?”
“And mine own portion.” Her held breath stilled against his cheek, he considered.
“Annie,” he said, and still heard no hiss of breath through her lips. “Send me what needst my mark,” he said.
“Mean old biddy. Stripling,” she answered, and kissed his cheek above the beard, and he was sorry that was all.
Can kingly lions fawn on creeping Ants?
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Edward II
“Sweet Kit.” Murchaud shook his head, black curls uncoiling across the silver-shot gray silk taffeta of his doublet. He reclined beside the fire, an octavo volume propped on his knee. Kit looked up from the papers spread on his worktable and smiled through the candlelight, wary at Murchaud’s tone.
“You must not weary yourself on the affairs of mortals, my love. It will bring sorrow.”
Kit blotted his quill and laid it across the pen rest. Methodically, he sanded black words, setting the letter aside unfolded when he stood. “A command, Your Highness?”
Murchaud set his book aside and stretched on the divan, gesturing Kit closer, but Kit stood his ground.
“Nay, my lord.”
“Kit.”
“Nay, my lord.” He scraped a bootheel across the flags and frowned, turning to look into the flames of the cross-bricked hearth.
“Where has Morgan been?”
“What mean you?”
“I mean,” Kit said, watching ash crumble at the edges of a cave among the embers that glowed cherry red as a dragon’s eye, “she has not summoned me in … How long has it been?” He shrugged, running his tongue across the cleft in his upper lip and then frowning as he nibbled his mustache. “—some time.”
Kit heard the Elf-knight stand, his almost-silent footsteps as he closed the distance on Kit’s blind side.
“She has a cottage where she flees the court. It lies behind yonder beech wood. I will see that she knows of your sorrow. There’s worse to come.”
“What mean you?” The hesitation was long enough for Kit’s gut to clench.
“I’m leaving in five days. The Mebd sends me on diplomacy.”
“Where?”
“I cannot say. But it will be hard for you; Morgan must keep her distance now, and you must seem alone while I am gone. It must seem she has tired of you. You’ve played this game before. She said she warned you.”
Kit looked up. “That I might be needed for skills beyond poetry. Am I naught but a Queen’s toy, Murchaud?”
The Elf-knight smiled. “Is that so terrible a thing to be? You courted Papists for your former Mistress. There are factions in Faerie that are not so fond of your new one, or the Queen. You’ll be attractive to them.”
“The ugliness of the intelligencer’s lot,” Kit said. “Win a man’s trust. Become his friend. Whisper words of love in his ear as you slip in the knife. Catholicism is as excellent a religion as any, I suppose, so I have no reason to prefer Protestants to Catholics. Nor this Fae to that Fae, Murchaud.”
“No,” Murchaud answered, a gentle hand on his elbow. “But thou didst serve a Queen those Papists would have seen murdered, didst not?”
Kit turned back to the fire. “I did.”
Murchaud bent close amid a scent of new-mown grass. “And now you serve another, whose enemies are also manifold. Shall you serve her less well?”
“That other service, for all its blackness, I chose.” Kit sighed and nodded, and Murchaud draped an arm around his shoulders. The Prince’s tone grew intimate.
“You mourn your other life? You miss smoky, brutal London and its pox-riddled stews, its painted Ganymedes, and its starving pickpockets, soon to be hanged?”
“Should I not?”
“Ah, Kit.” Warmth, yes, and pity. “You’ll outlive it. Outlive all your loves and hates. Tis easier to lose it now, all of a piece, than by shreds and tatters.”
“… outlive it?” He turned and looked, despite himself, and caught Murchaud’s expression as the Elf-knight reached to steady him. “Outlive the mortal world?”
“Faerie does not move as the iron world, and you’ll not age here. How long did you think you had lingered here?” Earnest eyes, and dark brows drawn together.
“Hast been a year and more in England, two, three summers here.” Kit swallowed. His voice trailed off at the smile in Murchaud’s eyes. “How long?”
“We mark by the tithe,” Murchaud answered. “The teind we pay to Hell for their protection. Every seven year we draw lots, or a criminal may be chosen to go, or a changeling stolen or, rarely, someone will volunteer. Which last pays the debt not for seven years, but for seven times seven.” He shook his head. “Tribute to our overlords.”
Kit shivered. Murchaud hadn’t answered the question. Kit tried to think back, to count summers and winters, flowerings and fallings. He looked down at his right hand, turned it to examine the tendons strung across the back, the calluses ridging his palm. How long? He had no answer. “When’s the tithe, then?”
“Hallow’s eve. Always.” Murchaud shook his head.
“Hallows eve here or in the mortal world?”
“Time here is an illusion,” Murchaud answered. “In the mortal world: Hallow’s eve, fifteen ninety-eight.”
“Four years hence.”
“Not so very long. Do not pine so for your lost life, Sir Kit. Set it aside, and do what you can to make yourself a stronger place in this court.”
“You suggest I could be sent, if the Mebd does not value me? Although your mother claimed my service? Kit Marley in Hell it has a certain symmetry.”
“The Mebd values you,” Murchaud said. “But she trusts her sister, my mother, not at all. Wert wise to make as many friends in court here as thou couldst, and let thine old friends glide past. The river of time will bear them to their end more quickly than you imagine.”
“I,” Kit swallowed. “Soon enough, then, I shall be beyond that. Had I no loyalty, what would I be worth to you?”
“So be it,” Murchaud said. “Bloody thyself on the bars of thy cage, but know thou canst not straddle the flood between that world and this forever.”
“I did not choose this world.”
“No. This world chose you. Live in it, or it will cut you deep, my love. You cannot go home again.”
“Have I leave to help my friends?”
“I will not forbid it,” Murchaud answered. “But by the love you bear me, pay more mind to courting your Queen.”
Kit nodded, watching the flames. He didn’t tell me how long I’ve been here. How much time could I have lost?The answer brought cold sinking in his belly. In a Faerie Court, Marley? You could lose your whole life in a night.He frowned, and didn’t think of the letter to Walsingham on his desk, with its icy, alien words about Edward de Vere. “As you wish.” He turned his back on the fire and walked to the cupboard, taking his time in selecting his clothes.
“Where are you going?” Kit looked up, fingers stilling on the ruched sleeve of a padded doublet. He turned over his shoulder, enough to see Murchaud clearly. “I must dress if I am to dine with the Queen.”
“Sit at the low table,” Murchaud told him. “We shall pretend at a falling out. I cannot come to you tonight. Or any night until I return from my travel.”