Will added well water to the stewpot, crumbled rosemary, stirred with a long peeled stick. Not pine; he’d learned the flavors of lingering resins in the wood the unpleasant way. Oak. For all he would have liked to burn it. Annie. I hope Kit found you. I hope he told you what became of me. He propped a plate across the lid of the stewpot, left a little gap, banked the coals about the iron bottom. He glanced at his desk, at the fine already-cut leaves of paper, at the elegant pens. At dust that covered all. He glanced at the door, at the notches whittled bright and new in the posts, the oldest ones silvering to match the weathered texture of the beams. He closed his eyes and inhaled the savor of garlic and onions and rosemary bubbling over the fire. He turned in the center of the room, the soft light of evening slipping in through opened shutters, the dark streaks of loam on the thighs of his breeches, the strange incongruity of the clock on the rough-hewn mantel with its scroll-worked hands for seconds, minutes, days, months, years.
A Hell of time.
He dusted his hands again; black dirt made moons under his nail-beds. A bit of grease daubed the left one’s back. He thought of turnips and swore. If I called on Lucifer, would he come to me? Aye, and bid me write, and chide me for childishness.
It had happened before. Will blasphemed a little. It did nothing to ease the bitterness in his throat, the emptiness in his bowels. He picked up his greasy oak stick and his broom and crouched before the fireplace, upsetting the stewpot intentionally, spilling gravy and vegetables on the hearthstone and away from the fire. He burrowed in the embers like a badger, raked them from the fireplace, scorching his shoe, burning his hands. The broom smoked as he swept the heaps of coals against the cottage walls;with the ash shovel he carried a smoking log outside and heaved it up onto the thatch. He caught his cloak from the peg by the door frame and settled under a pine tree, where he remained late into the warm autumn evening, watching the snug little cottage burn. He slept smiling, rough on sponge-soft needles, savoring the pain of his blistered palms when he woke in the darkness before morning. When the sun rose in tawny and auburn, Will crunched across soft-rotted pine boughs and mounds of needles to wash soot from his face and bathe his hands in the well. The cottage sat where it had always been, a thin ribbon of smoke and the smell of cooking bannock rising from the chimney. The door was propped open and had been repainted red; Will could see the unmarked, silvery doorpost from where he stood just under the roof-edge of the pines.
But that your trespass now becomes a fee; / Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.
He sighed, and went inside, and somehow, again, managed not to pick up the pen. Will knelt in the sunlight over a bowl full of water, shaving himself as best he could. He kept his hair haggled to the shoulders with his dagger; the palsy made keeping his beard trimmed hard, but he was damned if he’d let himself turn into a wild man. Truth to tell, he was damned even if he wasn’t pretty. He laid the blade aside and dipped hands in the water, washing the trimmed hairs from his face. He sat back on his heels and blinked; a shadow fell over him and he startled, overbalanced, and fell on his ass as he began to rise.
“Master Shakespeare.” Lucifer bent and extended a hand; Will took it reflexively, surprised that it felt … so much like a hand. “Still thou hast written not a word. Stubborn man.”
“I am what I am.”
“Stubborn enough.” Lucifer said. “Come. Thou art released. Thou art no longer welcomed in Hell.”
Will blinked, tilted his head to the side. “Released?”
“Aye.” Lucifer chivvied him along with a guiding wing. Will might have glanced back at the little cottage, the glade in the pines. But Lucifer’s wing blocked his vision, and he was half certain that if he turned the house would not be there.
“Your Highness, I do not understand.”
“Thy lover has purchased thy freedom.” The Devil smiled, his blue eyesglittering.
“And lucky thou art to command such loyalty. And such a ferocious soul.”
My lover? I haven’t one,Will thought. But I did. Once.“Morgan? What would Morgan want with me again?”
“No,” Lucifer said. “Not Morgan, gentle William. Ah, look. Already, here is the door.”
His waxen wings did mount above his reach
And melting, heavens conspired his overthrow.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Faustus
Will, thin and shivering in the red light of Hell, leaned against the yawning, gateless mouth of a dark stone stair. Eye bright as if with fever and clutching his doublet tight around him as if Hell had left not heat but deep cold in his marrow, he reminded Kit of a bony old cat. He would not look up, would not look Kit in the face. He didn’t seem to notice the lack of scars or the missing eyepatch, but the light, in truth, was poor, and Kit could see Will shivering. Kit thought to lay a hand on Will’s sleeve. He was as helpless to bridge the gap between them as to thrust a hand through a brick wall.
Will touched him though, and Kit’s mouth filled with the taste of whiskey, his nostrils with the scent of smoke. He stepped away more rudely than he could have. Will. Don’t
“Kit. Sweet Christofer.”
Oh, strange, to hear the name said in a lover’s voice and feel no shiver of recognition in its cadences. Tis no longer thy name, who was Christofer Marley.
“You came for me.”
“I chose a side, Will. The side that would have me as God made me.” The tone that should have been light and playful fell on his own ears like pebbles in a pool. Plop, plop, plop. Kit wondered if the ripples of what Lucifer had done would ever stop shaking the stillness of his soul.
“You came for me.” Will said it again, and this time Kit heard the disbelief clearly.”
“I love thee.”
He led Will to the stair.
“You love Morgan.”
“Oh. No.”
“Dammit, Kit, I saw the two of you together. Robin said…” Will swallowed, audibly. “And all the years I’ve been gone, have you not spent at her side? And now she needs me for something. Else why would it have taken you so long to come.”
“Puck. Damn you, too. Ah, wait. I already did that.” Kit bit his lip on a hysterical laugh. “Years, Will?”
“How much time has passed in the mortal realm?” Will asked wearily. “Who is King?”
“It’s still Hallow’s eve or was when I rode out of Faerie. And Elizabeth reigns yet. Hours, not years.” Kit knew he needed to turn and put his hand on Will’s sleeve, to knot his fingers in Will’s hair and hold him close. He knew it from Will’s sidelong glances, and the careful, conscious way Will kept his hands at his sides. But all he could sense was the touch of Lucifer’s hands on his body, those bright wings fanning over him, the taste of the angel’s skin. “Damn. Faerie time. Time in Hell. How long was it, Will?”
Will would not return Kit’s steady regard. “I lost my calendar.”
“God. Will I’m sorry.” Inadequate, and untrue. Kit shuddered. He wasn’t sorry. He was angry. “God in Hell, Will, if you knew what you cost me.” Pish. Kit. And if thou hadst gone to the teind as Morgan willed, wouldst havechosen differently what thou didst to Satan sell?“Thou’rt safe now. My love.”
Will flinched. “Mine other love sold thee to Hell. Whom thou didst love also.”
“Tis not love, Kit said. Morgan’s Fae. Betrayal, tis … part of whatshe is. As for me I’m sorry. I am so sorry, Will.” And he was. And angry, still.
Will did not try to touch him again, but walked very near, without speaking, on Kit’s left hand. Kit let the silence hold them, and hoped there was forgiveness in it. It was good for thinking, that silence, and he bent his mind to Lucifer, and Christ, and God, and Will.