“Braided?”
“Aye. You’ve not one great love in store, Master Shakespeare, but three.”
He laughed. “Surely one great love is enough for any man.”
Her fingers moved again, and he thanked the opaque surface of the table between them for preserving his dignity.
“And this is your life line.”
“And what does that tell you, Morgan le Fey?” The challenge in his own voice surprised him. Her fingers followed the tracery down and under his thumb, stroking the soft flesh at the inside of his wrist. He caught his breath in shock at the delicacy of that touch.
“You will live to go home again, William Shakespeare,” she said.
“Do you say any of this will come true, Your Highness?”
“Tis the rankest charlatanry,” she answered. Bending her head further, she placed a moth’s-wing kiss in the center of his palm. He gasped again and almost pulled his hand away; she held the wrist and transferred her attentions there.
“Your Highness.”
“Hush,” she said, glancing up at him through the pall of her hair. “Say nothing, Poet, save yes or no.”
Will closed his eyes, aching. Annie, he thought hopelessly, and then almost laughed aloud at the next thing he thought: That was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead. Oh, Kit, trust you to make a hellish sort of sense of this.“Yes,” he said, and waited endless instants while Morgan sent her pixy-lights to bar and watch the door.
Rejoice, ye sons of wickedness; mourn, unoffending one,
with hair in disorder over your pitiable neck.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, On the Death of Sir Roger Manwood (translated from the Latin by Arthur F. Stocker)
Kit rolled over and lifted his head from the pillow as the bedroom door opened and Will slipped inside, half invisible in the starlit darkness. “You were gone a while,” he said softly, smiling when Will startled and jumped. I went to the library after all.
Will’s doublet was unbuttoned, his hair disheveled. Kit’s smile broadened. “Didst find what thou sought?”
“Nay.” Will started, pulling off his clothes. And then he stopped and moved toward the cupboard, a paler shape in the darkness. “Well, perhaps. After a fashion. So many books, Kit!”
“Faerie has some joys.” He turned away as Will struggled into a nightshirt. Plumage rustled as Will made himself a place in the featherbed, the perfume of a woman coming with him. Just as well,Kit sighed. Perhaps he’ll lie easier now that he’s reclaimed that.And then he caught the scent of rosemary and lemon balm on Will’s hair, and turned, mouth half open, before he stopped himself. I could wish he’d chosen differently or do you simply wish that you had chosen differently, Marley?
Will, half settled among the pillows, returned Kit’s stare wide-eyed. That as much as anything told Kit how fey his expression must be.
“Kit?”
“Will.” But what do you say? You haven’t a claim on him.“Thou hastn’t anything to prove to me.”
“Perhaps I had something to prove to myself.”
“Ah. Of course.” Kit opened his mouth again, to say whatever he had been about to say, and closed it before the words could escape. “Just be careful, Will.”
Will laughed, softly, and tugged the covers. “What chance have I against the likes of her, sweet Christofer, an she decides she wants me?”
For which Kit had no answer. The thrill of delight in Will’s voice told him more than the words, anyway. He lay back down, a serpent gnawing his bosom, and dreamed of sunlight and herb gardens and the beating wings of ravens and of swans. He woke again before Will did and stretched in the morning sunlight, surprised by how rested he felt. He stood and performed his toilet, stealing a glance at Will before he dressed. The other poet had burrowed so deeply beneath the covers that all Kit glimpsed of him was one ink-stained hand. Kit smiled fondly, for all he still felt seasick with jealousy, and went to collect his rapier from the stand beside the fireplace. I’ll have to get another main gauche,he thought, although he wasn’t sorry to have left the slender blade in de Parma’s back. I wonder what the coroner will make of a silver dagger, beyond the estimate of price?
He turned to check his hair in the mirror over the mantel, tilting his head in curiosity as he noticed the papers stacked there. The roll of poetry didn’t surprise him. The letter addressed in Will’s cramped hand to Thomas Walsingham did, and Kit’s fingers almost brushed it before he tugged his hand back. It’s not as if he made any effort to hide it from me. I could always just ask. If I weren’t so out of the habit.He settled the rapier on his hip one last time, turning for the door. Which reminds me, I should write Tom myself and let him know I’ve queered the game with Baines and Poley.
So early, the palace was still as quiet as Kit had ever seen it in daylight. He wandered downstairs, idling, and made his way into the hall to see what there might be to break his fast upon, if anything had yet been laid. A few Fae clumped at trestles along each wall, sipping steaming mugs and carrying on quiet conversation. Kit was first surprised to see brownies among those present, but quickly nodded. The kitchen staff dines early everywhere. He was less pleased to see Morgan le Fey rise from the sole occupied chair at the high table and beckon him, but he went. She looked composed this morning, lovely, robed in some fine, unrestrained black fabric that clung to her body when she gestured. Kit swallowed sharpness and moved forward, ascending the steps.
“Your Highness,” he said, and bowed.
“What, so formal, Kit?” She reached out and took his hands, drawing him to her side. She did not sit, and neither did he, aware that they made a lovely picture in their sable finery, framed against the crimson hangings at the back of the dais. Her hair was dressed, today, into a high elegant coil, a single strand of tiny pearls wound through its blackness. Her changeable eyes were poison green over the cheekbones of a goddess, and she suddenly took his breath away. “Art unhappy?”
“What have you done to my William, Madam?”
A raven-black eyebrow arched. “Your William, is it? And yet I heard you said to Murchaud that he was for the ladies, and in the manner of one who knows for himself the truth of his words. No matter,” she said, shifting abruptly, turning away from the hall without releasing his hand. She led him between the draperies, to a passage he had suspected but never walked down. “Come, spend a little time with me.”
“You are my mistress,” he said, and fell into step.
“Am I?” Her voice was hushed; if he didn’t look at her he could imagine they walked hand in hand like old friends, like brother and sister. When he turned to catch her words more clearly as he half suspected she intended, with the soft risings and dips in her tone, a barbed spiral he recognized as lust and jealousy and covetousness and the bitter dregs of a hundred other mortal sins, caught under his breastbone, and he drew each breath in pain.
Why should she have what I want so badly?
A bitter thought. An unkind thought. And unfair to Will, who was kindness personified.
“Are you my mistress? I come to your whistle.”
“Still you have not forgiven me?”
They came from the cloth-draped passageway into the throne room, and Morgan led him down from the dais with its chair of estate and the massive cloth-draped throne that Kit had never seen, nor seen the Mebd sit in.
“How can I forgive…” He caught the words in his teeth before they quite got away from him. She held his arm, leaning close enough that he could smell not only her own pungency of rosemary and rue, but the traces of another’s scent on her hair and clothes. He breathed in through his mouth, and told himself it was against the pain in his bosom.