“Brave Sir Kit,” she whispered when she’d tied the final knot.
He leaned spent against a bedpost.
“Braver than lance was over his wounds, when I dressed them. He spat and swatted like a cat.” She gave him more brandy and bound a poultice across the right side of his face. When he set the cup aside she leaned down and licked the last sweet drop from the corner of his mouth. He startled, gasping, but regretted it when she leaned back, eyes narrowed at the corners with her smile.
“My lady, I am not at my best.” And then he worried at the knot in his gut, the fascination with which he followed her.
‘This is not like me. Anything to think of, but Tom.’
“Welcome to Hy Brásil, poet.” She balled up the cream silk hanging on the pale oaken bedpost and threw it against his chest. “Put your shirt and doublet on. It pleases the Queen to greet you.”
He dressed in haste: the shirt was finer stuff than he’d worn, and the dark velvet doublet stitched with black pearls and pale threads of gold, sleeves slashed with silk the color of blued steel.
“What royal palace is this?” he asked as she helped him button the fourteen pearls at each wrist.
“The Queen s. They re all the Queen’s.”
“Westminster or Hampton Court? Whitehall? Placentia?” He scrubbed golden flagstones with a toe and noticed that someone had polished his riding boots until they shone like his shirt. The pressure of bandages across his face calmed the pain; he hazarded a smile.
“Call it Underhill.” She tugged his collar straight. “Or Oversea, and you won’t be far wrong. Names aren’t much matter, unless they re the right name. There.” She stepped back to admire her work. “Fair.”
“Art my mirror, then?”
“The only mirror you’ll get but a blade.” She’d changed her dress while he was bathing and wore gray moir : no less plain than the green dress, but of finer stuff and stitched with a tight small hand. Slippers of white fur peeked under the hem, and he stole a second glance to be sure. Ermine. He was glad he hadn’t taken advantage of what the mad-woman offered, and resolved not to absentmindedly thee her again.
“Her Majesty does me honor.”
Morgan offered him her arm. He held the door open as she gathered her skirts.
“She has an eye for a well-turned calf.”
“I’ve an eye as well,” Kit admitted. “Only one anymore, alas. But it serves to notice a fair turn of ankle still.”
His voice faltered as they came through the doorway. His knees and his bowels went to water, as they hadn’t when Morgan showed him the gaping wound across his face. As they hadn’t when she kissed his mouth.
The door opened on a narrow railed walkway over a gallery that yearned heavenward like the vault of a church. The whole structure was translucent golden stone, carved in arches airier than any gothic-work, the struts blending overhead like twining branches. Between those branches sparkled the largest panes of glass he’d seen. Beyond the glass roof, through it, shone a full moon attended by her company of stars. People moved in eddies on the stone-tiled floor several lofty stories below; they passed through a guarded, carven double door two stories from threshold to lintel. Even from this vantage Kit could see not all were human. Their wings and tails and horns were not the artifice of a masque. He licked his lips and tasted herbs and brandy, and a kiss.
Fairy wine, he said, half-breathless with awe and loss and betrayal. I drank fairy wine. I cannot leave. Morgan le Fey stepped closer on his blind side, resting her strong hand in the curve of his elbow. I warned you about the tisane. And as long as you’re tricked already, we may as well see this ended so we can get dinner. Come along, poet. Your new Queen waits.
Touchstone:
When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a
man’s good wit seconded with the forward child
Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a
great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would
the gods had made thee poetical.
Audrey:
I do not know what “poetical” is. Is it honest in
deed and word? Is it a true thing?
Touchstone:
No, truly, for the truest poetry is the most
feigning; and lovers are given to poetry, and what
they swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, As You like It
May became June, and Burbage’s prophecy held: the plague carried off another thousand souls, rat- and cat-catchers roamed the streets with their piles of corpses and their narrow-eyed terriers, and the playhouses stayed closed. Will’s new lodgings were over the tavern Richard Burbage favored, north of the River and closer to James Burbage’s Theatre. They were considerably more luxurious, possessing a window with north light for working by and a bed all to Will’s own use. But Titus grew a scant few manuscript pages, and Will swore to Burbage that they might as well have been written in his own dark blood.
Will sat picking at a supper of mutton and ale in the coolest corner of the common room, his trencher shoved to one side and Titus spread on the table, the ink drying in his pen. The food held no savor, but he set pen in ink bottle anyway and worried at the meat with his knife so he wouldn’t sit there only staring at the mottled page. How long did one go without writing before one stopped calling oneself a playmaker? It wouldn’t be so bad if the pressure to have the stories out would relent. Instead of nagging after him like a lusty husband at a wife just delivered of the last babe. The image made him smile, and then it made him frown. How long since you’ve seen Annie last? If you can’t write plays, you could go home and watch your son grow.
He picked the pen up, and a fat drop of iron gall splattered a page folded in four for convenience of writing. But his grimace of irritation was interrupted when Burbage walked out of the warm summer twilight, crossing to Will’s table after a quick examination of the room. A taller man might have had to duck the thick beams. Edward Alleyn would have been stooped just crossing but Burbage strutted through clots and eddies of drinkers like a rooster through the henyard. A flurry of conversation followed as the custom recognized London’s second-most-famous player. Will gestured Burbage to the bench.
“Good even, Will. I’ll not sit: had your fill of mutton?”
Since what you have to say will no doubt rob mine appetite.”
Burbage shrugged, so Will smiled to take some of the sting from his words.
“Whither?”
“We’ll to Oxford.”
Burbage offered Will a handclasp.
This time, Shakespeare took it to stand. “A long walk, he said,” though Burbage’s grin alerted him.
“Just across London Bridge,” the player continued, softening his voice. “We re stayed for at the Elephant, Cousin. Step quick!”
Will gulped the last of his ale and hung the tankard at his belt, then gave the landlord’s son a ha’penny to run his papers and pen up to his room. The leftover mutton and trencher would be given as alms to the poor or more likely go into the stewpot. He wiped moisture from his palms onto the front of his breeches and took Burbage’s arm.
“I feel as if I’m summoned by a patron, and I shall have to confess so little done on Titus—”
Titus this and Titus that—” Burbage led him north. “Vex me not with Titus. What thorn is in your paw on that damned play?”
The houses and shops lining London Bridge came into view. Will checked his stride as the foot traffic clotted, keeping one hand on his purse. Stones clattered under hooves and boots. Will squared his shoulders, hooked thumbs in his belt, and charged forward so abruptly that Burbage struggled to pace him, bobbing like a bubble in an eddy in his wake.
“Will!”
Will shook his head as Burbage caught his elbow.
“Will, what is it?”
Will jerked his chin upward, and Burbage’s eyes followed the motion.