“I misspoke.”
“Take you back.”
“I’ve worn her collar enough for one lifetime.” Kit shivered and drifted away, running his fingers inside the band of his ruff, disarraying the careful pleats. Abrupt gestures betraying annoyance, he untied it and tossed it on the chest. “Morgan is a fool.”
The thing on Kit’s face approximated a smile, Will decided, but it wasn t, really. “Shakespeare is a bigger one,” he answered, and was glad Kit kissed him before he could compound that foolishness somehow.
Hermia:
Out, dog! out, cur! thou drivest me past the bounds
Of maiden’s patience. Hast thou slain him, then?
Henceforth be never number’d among men!
O, once tell true, tell true, even for my sake!
Durst thou have look’d upon him being awake,
And hast thou kill’d him sleeping? O brave touch!
Could not a worm, an adder, do so much?
An adder did it; for with doubler tongue
Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Will’s role was small, Asklepios, and he’d written it so intentionally. After his own sad death, struck down by Zeus thunderbolt, the erstwhile physician scrubbed the paint from his face and made his way into the audience, seeking companionship. The revelers were masked and gowned as gorgeously as Will had ever seen; they bowed or curtseyed graciously or, pleasing him more, failed to, rapt in the performance as he walked among them, seeking Kit or Morgan. He found neither, but Puck’s small, twisted form beckoned among the window draperies, and Will went there. The sounds and scents of Faerie surrounded him; he sighed, settling into the window seat.“
“Master Goodfellow, well met.”
“Master Shakespeare, as well.” Spry as a goblin, Puck swung up the draperies and clung to them lightly, at a height from which to hold comfortable converse with a seated man. “They approve of your work.”
“They seem to,” Will answered, over the hollow clatter of hooves as the centaur playing Chiron took the stage, remonstrating with the Gods over Asklepios death. “Kit and I put some magic of our own into the ending.”
“When Prometheus takes Chiron’s immortality, to permit Chiron death I should think our enemies would find that more to their liking than our allies, Master Poet.”
Will grinned and tilted his head to look Robin in the soft, goatlike eye.
“Ah, but Prometheus dooms himself in doing so.”
“Dooms to eternal torment,” Puck answered, nodding. “Clever. But surely outside the scope of the play?”
“There is an epilogue.”
Silence, and then Puck tittered a high fey giggle like a child. “Speaking of eternal torment Aye? What think you of the teind?”
Will swallowed hard and looked away from the Puck, running his eyes once more across the crowd. Neither Kit, nor Morgan, nor Murchaud could be seen. “Kit thinks it will be Murchaud,” he said. “I imagine he is making his farewells.”
“Think how glorious the pain will be. How deep, how lasting. There’s poetry in that.”
“Pain?” Will hauled his legs up onto the window seat and hugged his knees. “Glorious pain? If you think pain is glorious, perhaps you have never known it practically.”
“When you live as the Fey live, any sensation is precious.”
“I see.”
“Not yet.” Puck smiled. But you will”
“I’ve had enough of prophecy,” Will said. He sighed and stretched and stood; Robin swung on the drape and hopped to Will’s shoulder, no more than a featherweight, holding Will’s ear with his long bony fingers.
“Then don’t listen to it.” A jingle of bells, the tangling and untangling of improbable limbs. Puck shifted on the bones of Will’s shoulder and made himself as steady a place as any horseman well accustomed to the saddle. “Tis not Murchaud going to the teind tonight, Will Shakespeare. And a sacrifice gone willing to Hell buys not seven, but seven times seven years.”
On the stage, Chiron was dying, beasts and mortals gathered close about. Will stopped and watched as the noble centaur went to his knees, a majestic fall. “How do you know?”
“It is kept close secret Will,” the Puck said softly, “I’m the Queen’s Fool. I know everything . I am just not often privileged to speak on it.”
“Then who will it be?”
Crowds have a way of moving, of breathing, of falling silent at once as if they were some giant dreaming animal. Will looked up as the animal sighed and stretched and turned in its sleep, as it rolled and broke open along his lineof sight. A tingle ran up his skin; he felt the nail that Kit had given him grow hot in his sleeve. Sorcery? But the thought was lost as a drape blew back from the curtained shadows of a window embrasure like the one he had just left, one toward the back of the hall and away from the crowd gathered before the stage. Will, slowly walking, froze so abruptly that Robin clutched at his head in a most undignified manner.
“Oh, Hell,” Will said, reaching out a hand blindly for balance. For Will recognized the figures intertwined within its moon-touched shelter, caught a kiss that seemed sheerest delight, the smaller all in black except his ragged cloak, his fair hair gleaming; the taller in a gown of palest green, her black hair tumbling over her lover’s hands like a living thing.
“Kit,” Will said, crossing his hands over his belly as if to press his vitals back inside. “Ah. No.” On his shoulder, Puck slid down, flexible as a squirrel, and threw both arms around Will’s neck. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Will mouthed. He was staring; the curtain fell back, mercifully, and he managed to turn and look away. The chorus took the stage for the epilogue. He raised his eyes. “You have no cause for sorrow, Master Goodfellow.”
“Sorry I could not tell you sooner,” Puck said, as Will closed his ears on the savage poetry of the thing that he and Kit had created together. The words left a taste like vinegar in his mouth; if the floor were berushed over the soft-sheened marble, he would have spit the grit and savor of bitterness out.
“It was hardly your place to tell a man his loves betrayed him.” Even as he said the words, Will tasted their hypocrisy. Puck slid down his shoulder. He wobbled, half realized he was sitting on a bench when Puck thrust wine into his hands. Will drank it greedily and put the goblet under the bench; his fingers itched to hurl it, hard, against the wall. “Oh, Robin. I’ve nothing to complain.”
“You feel betrayed? Then why not sing it?”
“Because,” Will said around the taste of ashes that the wine could not rinse from his tongue, “tis neither Kit nor Morgan who broke a bed-vow to a wedded wife, is it?”
“You know he went back to her bed almost as soon as she took you into it.”
Dear God in Hell.But Will kept enough control of his tongue not to say it. Then what did either one of them have to do with me for? Unless twas pity. Yes, pity. For poor, inept, sickly Will. How could a balding poet hope to content things out of legend.
But Robin was still talking. “…and that’s not what I’m sorry for.” Hopelessness, and the void in his belly sharp-edged as a fresh-dug hole. His eyes burned. His knees would not support him when he tried to rise. Somewhere, Will thought he heard a bell pealing; Chiron resurrected bowed for the end of the play. And the cold voice Will recognized as his own aggrieved conscience: Say you deserved it not. Say Annie’s courage in the face of your misbehavior was nothing. Then what?
Robin sucked his wide lips into his mouth so that every rosy trace of colorvanished from them. “Will,” he said. Murchaud isn’t the teind. Sir Christofer is.”
Will blinked, demanding that his ears report some other phrase. “Kit,” he repeated, stupidly. Robin laid a twiggy hand on William’s arm.
“I don’t think he can bear it.” Somehow, Will found his feet. “I know he can’t. Robin.” Enormous brown eyes turned upward, seeking Will’s expression. Will schooled it to impassivity.