Ink and Steel (12 page)

“Foolishness, Kit. I've read your
Leander
.”

“Pretty, isn't it? I'm partial to
Tamburlaine
myself: still my best work, I think.”

Will choked, and laughed, and turned back on himself nimble as a ferret. “Where's this danger?”

“The danger's in the men who don't want the plays written. Men like Baines, and Sir Walter's rival, the Earl of Essex.”

“Raleigh is an ally?”

“Raleigh is someone I cultivated a bit, but he is not one of ours. Robert Devereaux, though—Essex—is one of theirs. Though both sides still use the same name, and trade alliances like chessmen.”

“What do
they
want?”

Kit marshaled half-drunken thoughts. “As I think it? Elizabeth off the throne, for one thing. A ruler in her place without such— personality. Gloriana is the Faerie Queene. The other Prometheans, their goal is the elevation of man.”

“Admirable.”

“They want safety and an end to poetry, Will. An end to greatness of spirit, and all men made equal. They want to own God, and use him to make all men subject. I should liefer lose my life than my liberty of thought.”

“And our half?”

“
Our
half, is it still? Elizabeth and England, we stand for. 'Tis rough work. Even for a rogue like myself, whose works drip with gore, unacquainted with gentle thoughts.”

“Can the man who wrote
Hero and Leander
claim to be unacquainted with gentle thoughts?”

“Acquainted and yet unacquainted.” Kit shifted before the iron could scorch his leg. The tip was not yet glowing. “ 'Tis a quaint small thing, a poem about passion—”

“Kit, it's a poem about Leander's arse.”

The iron slipped: Kit caught it right-handed and hissed, juggling a twist of sleeve around the metal to shield his hand. “ ‘How smooth his breast was, and how white his belly, / And whose immortal fingers did imprint, / That heavenly path, with many a curious dint, / That runs along his back, but my rude pen—' ”

“ ‘Can hardly blazon forth the loves of men.' ” Will's long nose dented sideways with the twisting mouth. “I'faith, I think betimes you purpose to shock. You underestimate the wit in your pen, rude as it may be—or so I've heard tell. From those with more interest in the loves of men than I.”

“Rude enough for most purposes.” It was his last chance to impress upon the man the severity of his choices. “Is this pen enough to write with?” He lifted the poker until the smoking end hovered a finger's width from Shakespeare's eye.
Will. Move not.

“Kit, what are you about—” There was a little squeal in Will's voice, good. And a tremor under it as Will pressed his head back hard against the wall. Ah, there was a red glow at the tip after all, like a pen dipped in blood.

Excellent.

“Look on it well,” he said, watching Will's shoulders rise as if that could protect his face from the cherry-hot iron. Kit swallowed bitterness when it rose up his throat one more time, but couldn't quite get the taste down. A thunder in his chest like beating wings prevented it. Will's eye was gray-blue and looked very soft; he didn't blink, and the dark pupil swelled as if it would encompass the whole of the iris in velvet black. Will's eyelashes curled from the iron's heat; Kit drew it back a little. “That could be thy final vision. Imagine it. Can you imagine? Image yourself unhanded like Stubbs, or racked like Kyd, or branded and blinded like me. Damn you, William Shakespeare.
See it.
”

The apple in Will's throat bobbled. He dared not nod.

“Tell me once more you mean to do this, and I'll let it lie.”

Will's mouth worked. “I mean to do this thing.”

“Bloody hell.” But Kit said it tiredly, and turned and strode to the table, and drew back his arm. The poker was heavier than a rapier, but he managed well enough to be pleased: the strength wasn't out of his shoulder.

A
thump
first, and close on its heel a sizzle. Kit thrust the fireplace poker through the body of the unfortunate hen—off-center, his aim untrue with his missing eye—and into the mortar of the wall. It didn't hold: he stepped back from the clatter as it fell. “Damn you to hell, William Shakespeare.”

“Oh.” Will stood. “I can probably manage that for myself.” He came and threw an arm over Kit's shoulder, and Kit dropped an arm around his waist. “I knew you wouldn't put my eye out.”

Kit heard an edge of hysteria in his own laugh, and wished he could afford to get drunker. Clearheadedness was the last thing he wanted. “I wouldn't rely on that
knowing
too much, my friend.”

Act I, scene viii

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, First Part of
King Henry the Sixth

Will itched with the sensation of words filling his brain, like a pressure behind his eyes. Kit saw it: Will could tell from the sly way the other poet abandoned him in the drawing room amid cider and staling crumpets, beside a leather-surfaced secretary fitted with every tool for writing a man could want. Will fetched another cup of cider and settled himself with his back to a window so light could fall over his shoulder. He proceeded to deface first one and then another sheet with his cramped looping hand. Fewer mark-outs this time, fewer words scratched through.

It was well that Kit walked into the edge of the door frame on his way back into the room, or Will might have upset the ink pot in startlement. Will glanced up. The light had changed and he'd turned in his chair to follow it without noticing, and he'd covered half a score of folded leaves with notes and lines of dialogue, scanned lines sketched here and there with a double-underlined blank, waiting for the perfect word.

“Christus lacrimavit,” Kit growled, rubbing his shoulder. He'd changed to a shirt of cobweb lawn, this one without scorches on the sleeve; a doublet of black silk taffeta, slashed crimson, was slung unbuttoned around his shoulders. “Walsingham is resting. How comes it?”

“It comes.” Will pushed the pages across the desk, waving Kit an invitation. “I don't remember you so clumsy, even drunk.”

“If I were still drunken, I'd have something to answer for. 'Tis noon. Didst not hear the bell?” Kit riffled pages until he found the first. “I've been tripping on nothings since . . .” He tapped a knuckle on the eyepatch without looking up.

“Not yet accustomed?”

“It seems only an hour gone by when I had two good eyes to see with. Will, that any mortal man can write such verse so quickly is an affront to angels. This exchange betwixt Marcus and Titus—with Titus unhanded, and his sons beheaded, and his daughter dismembered—
‘Why dost thou Laugh? it fits not with this hour.' ‘Why, I have not another tear to shed.'
That's good, I warrant. It does sing true: to read it, you can see the man smile, and it is terrible.” Crisp pages rustled; Kit held each up, opened along the folds to read slowly, tasting the words.

Learning them,
Will thought.
Is he truly so blind to the irony?
He found himself looking at his friend's face for a shadow of pain, and saw only a player's concentration, a thin line etched between Kit's dark brows.

Will went to the window. He rested a hand on the glass and stood looking over the garden, watching yellowing leaves twist in a soft October breeze. “If you mean to go about London unnoticed, you might dress less like Christofer Marley and more like a cobbler's son. I can bring a false beard from the Theatre, and a bit of gum. No one will see aught but that and the eyepatch, an you play the role.”

“A cobbler's son.” Amusement in that. “Only a man who dresses like a glover's son would say so.”

One more rustle, then silence as the pages stopped turning.

“We've come from close places, haven't we, Will? And worn very different roads to the same end: poetry and service.”

“
Your
father saw the value of an education.”

“As yours did not. I may have to teach you Latin.”

Shakespeare snorted.

Another leaf tugged loose of a pear twig before Kit spoke again. “I shan't be in London long.”

“Where will you go?”

“I cannot tell.”

“Where can I write to you?”

“I do not know.”

Will paused. “You'll be on some mission for Her Majesty,” he said, considering. “I understand.”

“No,” Kit answered. “I go tonight, under cover of darkness, to beg my service back from Gloriana, in point of fact. I have been offered refuge by a foreign monarch, that I might live.”

“That you might live?” Will set his rump on the window ledge. Kit still stared at the pages, but his eye no longer scanned the lines. “What mean you?”

“I am—” A breath, and a sigh. Kit's shoulders rose and fell as he stepped back from the desk, scrubbing his nails on his doublet. The motion arrested; he plucked at the material, pulling it into the light to examine. “It is a little Kit Marley, isn't it? No matter. I'm poisoned, Will, with a slow poison, and the cure lies in a foreign land. If I do not return I shall die.” He ruffled paper. “Horribly, I am assured.”

Which was truth, Will decided, watching Kit. Or as much of a truth as anyone was like to get from Marley. “I shall worry.”

“And I for thee. You'll be in more danger. But I shall discover how a letter may find me, if a letter
may
find me, and send you word on the means.”

“I may take a month in Stratford come Christmastime. If the plague stays in London. If the playhouses stay closed. If you send a letter.” Will resumed his chair and reached for a fresh sheet. He could feel Kit's smile resting on him.

“Annie is speaking to you again.”

“Annie thinks I should see my children, as she had Susanna write me, ‘before we're grown and gone.' I'll be sleeping in the third-best bed with Hamnet, I imagine. And she's yet a better wife than I deserve, Kit: there's few enough women who would even
pretend
to understand why a man might leave kith and kin to crawl through the gutters of strange cities, all for the grace of a poem.”

“There's few enough men who understand it,” Kit replied. “And, here or in Stratford, I may be capable to make a visit, now and again.”

“From overseas?”

“Not so much overseas as under them,” Kit said cryptically. He glanced at the window, measuring the light, and fanned the folded sheets upon the desk. “Shall we work on these a little, before I must disguise myself for Her Majesty?”

“Will Sir Francis loan you a cloak? A hood should suffice in a carriage. Keep the doublet: you'll want to look pretty for the Queen. Otherwise she won't believe you're Marley.”

“At least I don't dress like a Puritan,” Kit answered, with a scornful glance for Will's brown broadcloth, and reached across the desk for a pen.

Act I, scene ix

Dido
:
What stranger art thou that doest eye me thus?
Aeneas:
Sometime I was a Troian, mighty Queene:
But Troy is not, what shall I say I am?

—CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE,
Dido, Queen of Carthage

You'll want to look pretty for the Queen
. Kit caught himself examining his fingernails in the light of the candles burning on a gilt wooden table, and let his hands fall to his sides. There was ink along the knuckle of his forefinger, but that was nothing unusual, and at least he was tidier than Shakespeare. Will took no pride in his appearance—or his scribing—whatsoever.

Gallant thoughts, for a man alone in a small white marble room with no escape, when anything could be coming down the narrow passageway he'd entered through. A long table and a few narrow windows dominated the room, lit between flickering shadows by a rack of candles like stag's antlers. He wondered if he were quartered in a priest's closet, or some stranger appurtenance—and how riddled the walls of Winchester might be.

Walsingham had led Kit through a secret passage within a chapel at Winchester Palace, and then taken Kit's dagger and abandoned him. Kit wasn't sure what garden the small, tight window looked over, but it admitted a breath of air, and over the flowers he could smell the river.

At least it wasn't an abattoir, as in Deptford.

The Queen was letting him cool his heels. He examined the ink stain on his fingertip again: it resembled a map of Italy. He pressed back a mousy handful of hair. At last, soft footsteps sounded beyond the panel, and Kit turned with a question on his lips, hoping it would be Walsingham come to retrieve him but fearing it could be another sort of visitor altogether—one armed with sharp steel and a quarrel.

The panel slid open, and Kit stepped forward. And met, open-mouthed, the masterful gaze of his Elizabeth. Alone and without escort.

“Highness!” he stuttered, and bent a knee somewhat credibly, for all his head-kicked foolishness. His breath hurt his throat, but he held it and kept his eyes on her shoes. Gold cloth, sewn with pearls. Toepointed slippers clicked daintily on the marble as she stepped forward, her hem so stiff with lace that it made a sound brushing the threshold like a curry down a horse's back. The scent of herbs and musk as she hesitated, and Kit wondered for a moment if she might strike him. She was not unknown to lay her wrath on those who displeased her.