All Night Awake (45 page)

Now Kit would faint. Faint like a maiden with a guilty secret, and lay his fear open to these ruthless men.

His deafening heartbeat allowed him to hear words the men said, but just barely as if both his ears were stuffed with cotton.

“Put to the rack.... Tom Kyd....” he heard. And, “Confessed that you had said many blasphemous things.” The man went on to read the blasphemous things, starting with the most blasphemous of all.

Had Kit said any of it? Maybe he had. But nothing so open, nothing so crazy as denying the divinity of Christ. Nothing that could so surely speed Kit to his death.

How much had Tom suffered before speaking? What had Kit’s amused, distant friendship cost yet this other innocent?

Kit’s mind retreated, running, down the lanes of memory, till he found what mattered, the only thing that mattered to him. His safe mental place, his untouched core.

The one person he’d ever loved, Lady Silver, resplendent in her shimmering elven robes, her skin pale, her hair perfect black silk.

For a summer, when Kit was but seventeen, she’d been his love.

He came back from the memory calmer, more at ease. Or at least more resigned.

If he couldn’t have her again, then why not die? Aye, let death come and part him from his sorrow.

And yet, a clinging strand of hope and life struggled upward. And yet, were they talking of torturing him? Or had they tortured Kyd? Poor Thomas, who’d never done anything other than room with Kit.

Poor Kit, who would be killed now, as he would have been had he refused to talk, so many years ago. Now, damned and polluted, he would be killed. And all his crimes would have been for naught. He’d not even die for his own doings. No, he’d die like the worm, speared through the hook, so the fish may be caught.

Poor cunning Kit, all his ambition betrayed, all his treasons helpless in the face of this greater noose descending about his base-born, high-aspiring neck.

From the racing river of his fear words issued, spoken in that cringing, lost voice. His father’s voice. “Your honors, I am a playwright. This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish, extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, evolutions.” As always with Kit, panic fear betrayed itself in a running of the mouth in incessant, high-sounding, little-meaning words. He tried to check the words but he couldn’t, they would go on flowing. “These are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of
pia mater
, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.” By an effort of will, he managed to arrest the flow, his words checking upon a deep breath, something like a ghostly sigh.

He bit his lip, and found his Cambridge diction once more, and found his balance upon his icy feet. “That’s all I am, all. Just a playwright and a poet. Nothing more. Too much for me these intrigues, too high for me these philosophical opinions. Atheist, me? I studied divinity, your honors. Would an atheist study such?”

Breathing. He needed to concentrate on breathing, and rein his racing humors into composure, before he should collapse onto the floor like a woman on a hot summer’s day.

Breathing, breathing, breathing.

“Master Topcliff, now,” the middle man said, and chuckled. “He could break a man on the rack in an instant. Or make him sweat with all his weight suspended from manacles. Or other things, some of them so secret only he knows them. Why, it is said he can cut into a man for days, and take one sense at a time from him, all without killing him, while, little by little, crippling him forever. What think you, Master Marlowe? Hard to hold a quill, when you have no fingers, hard to write when your eyes are gone, hard to court ladies when you have lost that which makes you a man. You’d be advised, Master Marlowe, to speak now, before you’re put to the torture.”

Everything swam, and the room went black in patches, and moving, moving, all about Kit. He would stay conscious, he would. He wouldn’t disgrace himself.

But he was a poor thing when it came to physical pain. Hot to anger and as eager as any in a fight, yet Kit knew he’d prove a coward under torture, under slow, unavoidable suffering, and say anything, anything to end the slightest pain. Much less great pain such as Topcliff could inflict, the Queen’s torturer, whose skill was renowned all over London.

Kit’s mouth dry, and himself a distant thing, lost to all touch, all sound, all smell, he heard himself say, “Lord Cecil knows me well. He’ll vouch for me. Lord Cecil will.”

Before the echoes of these words died upon the thick stone walls, the distant ceiling, Kit knew he had signed his death sentence.

Cecil, if he were behind that screen, or his minions, who doubtless were there, would let Kit go now. For sure they’d let him go to seeming freedom before Kit could betray any guilty knowledge.

Oh, this court would let him go, and well enough. But only for the while and by the by. They’d let him go because Cecil would want him let go, before Kit could spill secrets that shouldn’t be spoken to the whole Privy Council.

But once they’d let him go, Kit’s days would be numbered.

He’d be a dead man, breathing and yet as dead as any corpse rotting in its coffin.

There were more ways to die than on the gallows or upon the torturer’s rack.

Scene Three

Near Stratford-upon-Avon, a clearing in Arden woods, those woods that are the last remnant of the forest that in the age of Arthur covered all of Britain. In this clearing, an ethereal palace rises, its white walls and tall columns seemingly woven of light and dream. It is the capital of the faerie realm, visible only to those humans with second sight. Within this palace, in a magnificent marble-and-gold throne room, the queen and king of faerieland sit on their golden thrones and hold court over their varied subjects. In front of them stands a centaur.

“M
ilord, you will have peace, if you give us our own land,” Hylas, the chief of the centaur delegation said.

Ariel thought he looked too bold for a pleader, his black curls done up in elaborate braids, from amid which golden chains sparkled, a muscular human torso gleaming with oil, and his well-brushed horse’s body white dappled with grey.

He spoke boldly and held his head up, as if owing no fealty to anyone. Facing the royalty of faerieland: fair haired young elven King Quicksilver, and Ariel, Quicksilver’s wife, Hylas acted as if he were a victor, come to claim spoils.

The Queen Ariel could admire the centaur’s muscles at the same time that she felt the impact of his words and heard the shocked gasps of her husband’s courtiers.

The centaur’s attitude caused titters and whispers to run up and down the vast salon, amid the splendidly dressed elf Lords and Ladies and, at a distance, the smaller, but no less splendid pixies, the sorcerers, the shape changers, the tree spirits of faerieland. Lords chuckled, and ladies laughed behind their fans. The servant fairies -- tiny, winged, perfectly proportioned human beings -- flew hither and thither flashing bright lights in their version of a chuckle.

Beside the centaur delegation stood the elf who’d brought them here, Quicksilver’s particular servant and confidant, Malachite. He put his hand on the pommel of his sword.

Ariel remembered that Malachite had wanted to subdue the proud centaurs and for the last seven years; he had pleaded in vain with Quicksilver to allow him to make war on the creatures. But Quicksilver had allowed no more than a small, woefully inadequate negotiating force, of which three elves had been killed before the centaurs had agreed to come to Arden and parlay.

Trouble had started right away.

But instead of private talks, the centaur had demanded -- and got from the too compliant King Quicksilver -- open audience in the throne chamber.

Obviously intending to humiliate Quicksilver.

Ariel, Queen of faerieland, wife of King Quicksilver, wished, very much wished she could take the matter in her own hands. She wished she could make the creature shut up. She wished he’d unsay his insulting words. Or else, she wished Quicksilver would have the strength to retaliate, to put the creature in his place, to remind the centaur of the might of the elven kingdom, which could subdue his people in a moment.

Though the ten years of her marriage to Quicksilver had taught her better, yet Ariel hoped against hope that her gentle, preoccupied king would find again the rash fire he’d displayed in his youth, when he’d fought for the throne and subdued his enemies, mercilessly. She wished he’d risk such fight now, without measuring the benefit of winning against the expense of magic, the distress in the cycle of seasons, the loss of elven lives.

But Quicksilver said nothing, and the minutes lengthened.

Ariel dared not turn her head to look at her husband’s expression, but she prayed to the any gods who might listen that he wouldn’t be simpering or, worse, looking scared.

Oh, Ariel wished that she could be the king, the lord of this land for just an hour, one brief moment.

Come, you spirits that tend on immortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty!
she thought, clenching her hands into tiny, hard fists, just as her heart clenched within her chest, at her lord’s humiliation.
Make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between the effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, and pall you in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, to cry 'Hold, hold!'

The centaurs had always wanted independence for the marshy land of the south of Avalon that they’d occupied ever since their ancestors had come over aboard Roman galleys. And, like the discontented, warlike race they were, they warred and harassed, rained destruction on their neighbors, quarreled with the native fairies and pixies, who were -- alas -- not able to defend themselves from such a strange foe.

Time and again Quicksilver’s father, Oberon of blessed memory, had sent expeditionary forces to put down the rebels. Time and time again such expeditions had bought peace with blood and the severed heads of centaurs had graced the front of the faerie palace.

But centaurs rebelled again and again, and again and again they fought, this time with impunity, as Quicksilver’s tender heart shrank from the thought of war.

Ariel clenched her hands tight, wishing she could use this force against the centaurs, or else to give Quicksilver some of her own daring.

Quicksilver and force were antithetical words. The brawling prince he’d once been, upon ascending the throne, as if remorseful of past error that had been no error, had laid by his weapons, and relied on kind words and soft wishes to keep order in his domain. As such, were things all disordered, and the realm broke out in a rash of brawls.

And Ariel, who loved Quicksilver well, felt her love cool before his endless retreat, his immutable submission.

Quicksilver didn’t answer Hylas, not even to put down the proud words of this most insolent creature that should have been his subject, and a meek one.

Ariel waited, and the seconds lengthened between the insult offered and the revenge that did not come.

Hylas smirked ever more broadly, as the courtiers tittered or sighed, or grumbled behind raised hands and fast-waving fans.

Ariel felt anger boil along her veins.

One could not rule without offending, and Quicksilver either feared offending too much or -- and Ariel shied away from this thought -- cared not for his kingdom and his people.

Ariel waited. And waited. And yet Quicksilver spoke not. Oh, calm, dishonorable, vile submission.

Hylas took note of this and advanced a sure-footed hoof upon the marble of the throne room floor. “You know, Quicksilver, that you can’t dispute it. Even amid our people it is known you art soft as a maid and a maid indeed in your other aspect. Consent to our demand and give us our land. Let the vermin, the mine-dwelling pixies, the gold-hoarding green men find their own place elsewhere. The broad marches of the south are ours and too fine for them.”

Ariel drew in breath. Quicksilver couldn’t be so insane that, even in his peace-loving heart he didn’t see the danger of these words.

The pixies and leprechauns might well go to war on the simple provocation of such a request, even without the support of the elves and the sovereign of faerieland. And, once engaged in a war, they’d not give out till the last of them fell bleeding beneath the centaur hooves.

Such a war between species, such a clashing of the spheres, hadn’t been seen on this sorry orb since man was but an unwashed simian in a cavern.

It would cause untold evil both in the faerie sphere and for human kind. And if humans should become aware of it, what grief would not befall? Men had picks and shovels and swords and axes, and greater number than ever faerie land creatures had waxed to. Humans would fight back. They’d fight both sides. They might very well win.