All Night Awake (51 page)

The faerie palace. It is daylight in the world of men, night time in faerieland. The palace lies still, like an abandoned monument. Only the guards at the entrance, and those standing in the hallway, keep alert. Everyone else slumbers, oblivious. All except the Queen Ariel. In her frilly white-and-pink bedroom she sits up in her bed.

S
he had cried but was now done with crying. Lady Ariel sat on her bed, her eyes dry, her mouth clenched tight in a straight line, her arms wrapped around herself for protection and warmth, though the air in the room felt temperate enough.

Her pale hair, her small, peaked oval face, her white silk nightshirt, all made her look yet smaller, weaker than she was, and well she knew it.

But it was he that was weak. He. Her king, Lord Quicksilver whom she loved. Whom she loved to her grief.

Thinking of him, she crept out of bed, across the white, broidered sheets. The bed was high and for her descent from it, she must make use of a small, lace-covered footstool. Normally her lady’s maids would come and put the stool under her foot that she might not break her neck in coming down. But Ariel did not wish to call her maids to her, did not wish to wake them from their well-deserved slumber, did not wish anyone to know that Quicksilver had left with less than her approval and that she must go on, weak and bereft, looking after this kingdom that mattered not to him as much as the fate of one insignificant mortal.

She let air out of her nostrils, noisily, and, on her stomach, holding on to the sheets, extended her foot towards the floor, searching by touch for the stool’s padded surface. Finding it beneath her toes, she exhaled again, this time in relief and, carefully, lowered her other foot to meet the same surface.

From the stool, she stepped to the floor.

This room she had, Quicksilver had given her when she’d become his Queen. By his magic and to his taste, he’d furnished and decorated it and even now, looking around it, Ariel found that the space better suited Lady Silver than herself.

The bed itself was gilded, and high and wide and surmounted with a crowning canopy of lace and never-dying flowers. In the lace of the curtains, a silver thread wove through, that shone like light on the surface of water. The high ceiling of the chamber glimmered with heavy gilt, and the tapestries of the room displayed young nymphs and satyrs engaged in pleasing pursuit.

Even Ariel’s dressing table lay hidden under a suffocating cover of lace and her mirror, crowned by lace, likewise, resembled a bride arrayed for her wedding.

The rest of the furniture were fainting couches, covered all in pink velvet and placed so that one could strike a pose on one of them wherever one happened to be.

Looking at them now, Ariel thought that her husband struck poses on them much too often, on his visits to her chamber.

The door to the left of her bed led to Quicksilver’s chamber, now deserted. The door to the right to her lady's maids' chamber and that one, too, Ariel was not desirous of opening.

She retrieved her white silk dressing gown from where it lay, languidly thrown over the back of a languorous fainting couch, and tied it around herself with peevish haste.

That Quicksilver would go thus, on the strength of a dream, on a threat to the head of that mortal....

He, Quicksilver, who could never resolve upon the more important matters of the kingdom without a couple years deliberation. He, who could not even think through simple problems, like keeping the satyrs’ glades untouched, the nymphs' water clean. He, who in all must consult and conjure, wait and bide his time till the whole kingdom suffered and pined under his weakness.

But he would go like this, uncalled, to that most lethal of places, the largest city in the world, where the collective minds of unbelieving humans, the forged iron, even the very air, polluted by curses and low dealing, could not fail to injure him -- nay, maybe kill him.

For this he had courage. Courage born of love?

Ariel walked quietly across the vast marble expanse of her chamber’s floor to the oak door, which she opened with the gentlest touch and closed behind her with no more than the sound of a feather gently falling to a soft ground.

The guard by her door bowed to her, and she nodded to him, trying to look as if she had important business abroad at this hour, then turned her back on him and started down the long hallway, alone.

Serene at this hour, like never during the waking hours of the faerie realm, the palace looked like an undisturbed pool of water under a gentle sun.

Light from the mortal sun streamed in through the windows. Attenuated by the veil of magic that divided the worlds, it made a pretty sort of moonlight, bright yet not blinding, which shone upon the polished black and white marble-tiled floor, and gave off a gentle gleam.

Walking along this hallway, Ariel felt lonely, invisibly separated from all the sleepers in all the rooms to either side. It felt as if she were on a fast-moving river, unable to reach for those on the sides.

Ariel listened to the rhythm of her steps on the marble, a slap, slap, slap of bare feet. What would happen if she, too, left this palace, just left it, if she left behind her throne, her husband, her realm, everything?

Would anyone even notice she was gone? And when Quicksilver returned to his abandoned throne, would he mourn her loss?

She wished she could be sure of it.

Oh, she’d known when she married Quicksilver that he did not love her as she loved him. But she’d hoped that time would mend his inconstant heart, and she’d thought she had the whole eternity to teach him love and care.

She walked on down the hallway, her feet slapping the marble -- slap, slap, slap. The forlorn sound sang her loneliness back at her, making her feel even smaller and more alone.

She’d thought Quicksilver would come to love her and she’d overcome his self-centered, cold nature, as brittle and bright as his appearance. She’d thought she had eternity to achieve this in.

She’d underestimated the weary feel of loving so passionately when Quicksilver looked through her as though she were not there and dreamed of humans and their love.

Ariel sighed. The hallway ended in front of the double-door to the terrace. The terrace looked even lonelier than the inner palace. Under the moonlight, this expanse of tile, bordered by a marble balustrade, might have been a dream landscape, something out of an idle fantasy. She opened the doors and walked through, walked all the way to the balustrade and stood there, looking down.

The terrace projected from the fourth floor of the faerie palace and as such looked down upon the tree tops of Arden forest, now immobile in the attenuated light of the faerie realm. Closing her eyes, she opened them again, willing them to see the forest as it was in mortal land.

Glaring sun shone in her eyes and she heard birds sing.

Oh, to live in that world, to be a mortal -- a mere mortal -- in that busy, animated world so unlike the dead calm of elf land.

Oh, to have only a mortal span of years, a mortal coil that wouldn’t allow her to love Quicksilver as she did, and to love him forever.

A sound of hooves behind her broke her concentration. The landscape wavered, like something seen through water. Once more, she saw only the still silvery tree tops in elf moonlight.

Ariel turned.

The centaur who’d defied Quicksilver just before Quicksilver’s odd episode stood on the terrace behind her, a horse-step behind her. His dappled horse-hide gleamed. The human torso protruding where the horse’s neck would be shone golden and hairless.

“Milady,” he said, and bobbed his dark head up and down. He no longer wore the elaborate braids he’d worn for the audience. His hair fell free, unfettered, blue-black curls cloaking his back to his waist. Only a little bit of intensely blue ribbon around his head kept his hair confined. He wore no other clothing or ornament.

“Why...,” Ariel said, and tried to hide her surprise from his searching dark eyes. “Hylas.”

He smiled, showing a golden tooth in the front. She had heard centaurs often plated their teeth in gold as ornament. It seemed an odd ornament to her.

“Walking sleepless, milady? Have you not, then, recovered from your illness this afternoon?” As he spoke, he took a step forward, then another, his hooves making a very light sound against the marble, so carefully was he placing them. His tail twitched back and forth.

“I have quite recovered,” she said. “I am very well.”

He smelled of spices, of cinnamon, of sandalwood. She wanted to tell him she was well, but her lord had left her, to go defend some fool human. She wanted to tell him that she felt miserable -- unloved, unlovely.

The desperate need to tell someone her tale made her heart pound. But she didn’t dare.

The beautiful barbaric face gleamed in a smile. “Your lord is perhaps still indisposed?” the centaur asked. “I wage he’s not as strong as you.”

Hearing her own thoughts echoed from those sensuous lips, Ariel started. “Oh, my lord is quite strong,” she said, her voice raised higher than she intended. “Quite strong I assure you.” Her voice wavered and trembled, and she realized her defense sounded, even to herself, hollow. Hylas had walked all the way until he was quite near her. She wouldn’t even have to extend her arm very far to touch him.

His dark, dark eyes looked into hers, close up, and her own eyes seemed to be swallowed up by them. “And yet, not strong enough to give us our own land,” he said. “Nor to bring us to heel on the battlefield by proving himself a worthy foe. Not strong enough to rattle his saber, or to unsheathe his dagger, as we would say.”

Ariel opened her lips, but realized it would be useless to deny it. Quicksilver was not strong enough for that. He would never be strong enough to go to war, no matter how justified. If he were like this centaur here. If he had a tenth of the animal strength, the basic cruelty of this creature, Quicksilver could be powerful indeed.

But he hemmed and hawed and talked about how immortal life should not be squandered.

The centaur raised a hand, and, for a moment, Ariel thought that if he pulled her to him and kissed her, she would allow it. If Quicksilver could have his human sport, why should she not have her own? If Quicksilver could --

The centaur’s hand picked up a few of her hairs that had strayed in front of her face, and pushed them back into the blond mass. “Now, you, milady, you’re strong enough. I hear your lord has left. What say you we ensure he will never return?”

Scene Seven

St. Paul’s Yard. Will, holding the Lady Silver who leans limply within his hold, starts steering her out of the yard. They attract little enough attention, in this place. One or two scholars look startled at a bawd in such an unwonted place. But most just walk past Silver, oblivious to her and to Will. Three steps away, lost in the throng, Kit Marlowe looks as if stricken by a thunderbolt.

W
ill didn’t know what to do about the sweet weight in his arms, the wan face looking at his.

“Milady,” he said. Feeling her body warm and firm in his grasp took him back to days he’d sworn to forget. And though he knew half -- at least half -- her charm was the elf’s glamoury, yet the glamoury nonetheless enchanted him.

The every-day uneventfulness of his life had shattered like unsound glass beneath a sound blow, and revealed a realm of fractured, sparkling light -- the strange, wonderful realm of faerieland.

“Milady? In London? I’d never have expected.... I never thought.”

“London....” She leaned heavily on him, her arm folded into his left arm that he extended to her across his chest, while his right arm encircled her waist. “London is poison to... us. Like.... Like poison to humans. London is cold iron and unbelieving, cynical minds. London.” She spoke with a low, pasty voice, as if drunk, and walked as if she could barely stand. Her silver shoes that had, once, trod Arden forest with light skipping grace, now dragged on the flags of the walk of Paul’s, as if she could barely stand to walk at all.

And Will could think of nothing, nothing, save only that he must get her out of here. He cast a fearful look over his shoulder at the looming shadow of Paul’s cathedral. Once, in a different world, Silver had told him that elves had nothing to fear from what humans held sacred, that humans' prayers and thoughts affected not the realm of faerie.

Yet, here was the Lady Silver now, saying that the cynicism of men could do this to her and rob her of her sparkling magic, her vital strength.

Will did not dare drag her towards the church, or walk her through Paul’s Walk. Who knew what sacred precincts would do to her, when she was already so weakened.

“Here, here,” he said. “Milady, this way.” And, with his arm around her, the other arm supporting her, he dragged her through the crowd of scholars and fools towards the other side of Paul’s Yard, where the dilapidated gates stood askew between what remained of the walls. Sometime, long ago, those walls had ruptured, allowing the houses of merchants and burghers to encroach on the sacred precinct. Now, nothing remained of that once inviolate enclosure, except those leaning gates, always open. “You must tell me what makes you so ill, what brings you to London, what—”