Ink and Steel (22 page)

“—Excellent. What news from the Continent?”

A band of heavier rain swept the alley, and Kit couldn't bear in any case to listen longer. The pang that wracked his belly was the final consideration: he couldn't be sure if it was hunger, or the doom that would drive him back to Faerie, but he didn't dare stay wedged under the stair. He slung a leg over the crossbrace and locked his ankles around the timber again, thinking,
At Least going down will be easier than coming up
.

Except his hand slipped on slimy wood as he shifted his hip off the crossbrace, and he grabbed wildly for the timber and got a slick handful of rain-soaked bark that peeled free.

He wasn't sure how he remembered not to shout as he skidded two feet, asmear with whitewash and crumbs of wood, that splinter lodged so deeply now he thought he'd die of it, his eyepatch tearing loose a knot of hair as it went into the gulf underneath. His sword stayed blessedly fast in its scabbard, though, and for a long moment Kit hugged the timber and just
breathed
—long, slow rattling breaths that hurt more coming out than going in.

Somehow he made it to the ground and stood against the timber, shaking more with his realization about Oxford than with the terror of the climb. He knew the length of such reports to the minute, and Poley and Baines would be emerging soon.
What's another betrayal? I already knew what he was—

—At Least I've confirmation
Edward II
stung him. Although perhaps more than I intended.
And then a bright flare of hope, quickly doused.
It wasn't Tom.

Kit pulled himself away from the timber and bent to retrieve his cloak. He couldn't find his eyepatch; the rainwater felt odd trickling over the drooping eyelid and the scar on his blind side. But at least with the cloak too sodden to wear, it was unlikely anyone would look past the whitewash daubing his form, the blood and mess and the long-healed wound to recognize a dead man's profile.

He needed Morgan. He needed to get another message to Francis, that his cousin was innocent and Oxford the man not to be trusted.
We—

Kit, there is no
we
any more. You serve a different Queen
.

He would have laughed if he'd dared: first the sinking horror of betrayal and then relief that left him giddy.
Edward, not Thomas. Why is it so much better to be betrayed by one former Lover than another?

He picked his way out into the steadier traffic of the street, too weary and pained to keep to the shadows though passersby were offering his bloody, whitewashed, rain-streaked visage curious stares and wide berths. There was a rain barrel up on bricks a half block further on, and he thought he might wash his face. Kit kept his eye on his shoes, cautious of the slick cobbles. He wouldn't have looked up at all if a hurrying figure hadn't drawn back a startled step and gasped.

“M—Marley?”

God's blood.
Kit looked into the eyes of a narrow little man with a narrow little face. He was well dressed and well wrapped against the rain, and he skittered back three steps and bared his teeth like a trapped rat as Kit advanced, reaching across his body for the rapier.

“Nicholas Skeres,” Kit muttered between the draggled locks of his hair. He tasted lime and blood and soot, and spit them out upon the road. “Thou murdering bastard. I'll see thee hang.”

Skeres' eyes widened so the white showed in a ring. He gave a scream like a startled girl and shuffled backward, tripped on a stone, and sat down hard in the slops. “Kit—stay thy hand—”

“As thou didst stay Ingrim's?” Another step forward, the naked blade in Kit's hand pointed at Skeres' left eye, only a few short steps distant.
The damage is done. You're recognized. You may as well get the pleasure of his blood—
Passersby were halting, drawing back, staring and muttering.

“ 'Tis Master Marley's ghost.” A woman's shocked voice: one he knew not, but he'd been well enough known. “The murdered playmaker—”

From some window open to the rain, a drift of music followed. Kit turned his head to regard the semicircle ranged on his blind side. A half-dozen men and women huddled in the rain, frozen with fear or fascination. He ran a cold eye over them and they drew back. He was all over whitewash and blood, and he knew what they must see: a tattered figure smeared with the lime of the grave, the blood of his fatal wound rolling from the socket of his missing eye, leveling a naked blade at a sobbing killer.

It was too much for a player's imagination. And a few reports of a dramatic revenant wouldn't risk the sort of intelligent questions that a dead man returning from the grave to slaughter his own murderer might. Skeres claiming a visit from Kit's ghost could be drunken fancy.

Or—
Hell
—a ghost, for all that.

Kit had been careless and greedy, and he wouldn't have Will or Francis or a true innocent like Burghley's changeling cousin Bull caught in the net of that carelessness.

Kit smiled through the blood and tilted his head to look his prey in the eye.

“You'll die screaming, Nick Skeres,” he whispered. The man flinched down into the gutter, a fresh reek of urine hanging on the rain-wet air, and Kit whirled on the ball of his foot. Silent in his nail-less boots, carrying his naked blade, he ran into the storm and made himself gone.

Act II, scene vi

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
Much Ado About Nothing

"Thou didst send for me, and I am here.” Annie lay on his bed, her shoes lined side by side beneath it, her hair unpinned and spread like a river on his pillow, spilling over the hand and arm she propped her head upon. “I stink with travel, Will. Wouldst call up water?”

Will, fussing with the lamp, smiled. Her terseness had the welcome sound of home. “I'm glad thou didst come.”

He stepped out the door and down the stairs, found the landlord's ten-year-old boy, Jack, dozing in the common room. “Warm water for my wife.” Will dropped half a silver penny on Jack's lap. “And see if there's any of the pig left—”

He's only a little older than Hamnet
. Jack vanished into the kitchen so fast he blurred. Will clumped back up the stairs, dizzy with the effects of a long day's work in the heat. “Water is imminent. And thy supper, too, if thou likst. How are Hamnet and the girls?”

“Growing. Susanna's tall as a willow. They're with thy sister Joan. Come home, Will.”

He left the door unlatched and plumped down on the boards beside the bed in the flickering lamplight, the window thrown open despite the stench and sound of the streets. “Thou knowst I can't.” He reached up without looking, caught her skirts, and tugged until her legs slid over the edge of the bed and her feet dropped into his lap. “I'm good at this, Annie. And—” The door swung open at John's tap. Will moved Anne's legs aside and rose to relieve the boy of his bucket and the cold pork and bread.

Will latched the door and set the food on the table, shoulders aching as he hefted the bucket. Anne peeled her stocking down, her leg raised in the air, her skirts in disarray and a wanton gleam in her eye. “Wash my feet for me, Will.” Her bare foot ran up his calf, tickling the back of his knee.

“Annie.” He set the bucket down and sat on the bed beside her, a careful six inches away. “Dost want thy supper?”

“ 'Tis not supper I'm hungry for.” She curled against his back, pressing her soft bosom against his shoulder, her hair across his shoulder like a veil. She smelled of dust and travel, of sweat and great distances, and of sachet lavender.

“I won't risk thy life for another babe, Annie.”

“ 'Tis not a babe I crave, sweet William. I'm too old to catch.”

“Oh, Annie.” He turned and put his hands through her hair, and closed her eyes with a kiss. “Not so old as that, I warrant. They say a love match never comes out well, but after all I went to winning thee, Wife, would I risk thee? Another birth like the twins would finish thee, and thou wert younger then—”

“It wasn't so bad.”

“There was blood through the ticking, Anne.”

“There's someone else.” Flatly, a dead inflection that squeezed his heart like a fist.

“A player's dalliances. No one who matters—”

“A husband's prerogative, in the absence of his wife.” She tugged her skirts out from under his leg and squatted beside the bucket, unlacing her bodice and pushing aside her smock as if the bitterness in her voice were the tones of idle conversation. He watched her wash her arms and neck, the shadows under the well-nursed softness of her breasts. The lamplight streaked her hair with an unfair quantity of gray. “I'm well provided for. Where does the money come from, Will?”

“I'm in favor at the court.”

“And living over a tavern.”

He looked around the Spartan room, seeing it through her eyes. “I'm not here often,” he said at last. “I should see to better lodging.”

“Thou canst write plays in Stratford. Thou canst see thy children grow. I'll content myself with stable-hands—”

He turned to her, startled, and saw her rock back on her heels and smile.

“If a husband may seek comfort elsewhere, Husband—”

“Mouse. Thou wouldst not.”

She sighed and stood, her hands linked palm to palm before her thighs. “If thou'lt not risk me, should I risk myself? I die of idleness, Will.”

“Three children and a cottage are not enough housewifery for thee?”

She kilted her skirts up, standing first on one leg and then the other to wash the grime from her feet. Will watched her toes flex, the arch of each foot grip the floor. “I'll clean my hair tomorrow,” she decided, and stepped around the bucket, leaving footprints like jewels on the boards. Her hands on her hips again, challenging, and the curve of her clever neck—

—Not so different than she'd been when they'd conspired to marry over family objections, all those years ago. He coughed into his hand.

“If thou wilt not tumble me,” she said as she came to him, “wilt at least come to thy bed and comfort me with thine arms?”

He blew out the lamp and did as she asked, and pretended not to hear her weep. Until the small hours, when the noise from the street below grew slighter and she moved against him, mumbling into the dark. “I want a business, Will. If thou hast playmaking, then give me something other than—stitchery and child-chasing—to fill the hours.”

“What wouldst thou?”

He felt her smile against his shoulder, and knew he was lost. “My lord husband. I could make thee a wealthy man—” A long pause, and shimmering wryness. “I want to buy land.”

Which she could do only in his name and person. “With the income I send?”

“And mine own portion.”

Her held breath stilled against his cheek, he considered. “Annie—” he said, and still heard no hiss of breath through her lips. “Send me what needst my mark,” he said. “Mean old biddy.”

“Stripling,” she answered, and kissed his cheek above the beard, and he was sorry that was all.

Act II, scene vii

—CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE,
Edward II

"Sweet Kit.” Murchaud shook his head, black curls uncoiling across the silver-shot gray silk taffeta of his doublet. He reclined beside the fire, an octavo volume propped on his knee.

Kit looked up from the papers spread on his worktable and smiled through the candlelight, wary at Murchaud's tone.

“You must not weary yourself on the affairs of mortals, my love. It will bring sorrow.”

Kit blotted his quill and laid it across the pen rest. Methodically, he sanded black words, setting the letter aside unfolded when he stood. “A command, Your Highness?”

Murchaud set his book aside and stretched on the divan, gesturing Kit closer, but Kit stood his ground.

“Nay, my lord.”

“Kit.”

“
Nay,
my lord.” He scraped a bootheel across the flags and frowned, turning to look into the flames of the cross-bricked hearth. “Where has Morgan been?”

“What mean you?”

“I mean,” Kit said, watching ash crumble at the edges of a cave among the embers that glowed cherry red as a dragon's eye, “she has not summoned me in—”
How Long has it been?
He shrugged, running his tongue across the cleft in his upper lip and then frowning as he nibbled his mustache. “—some time.”

Kit heard the Elf-knight stand, his almost-silent footsteps as he closed the distance on Kit's blind side. “She has a cottage where she flees the court. It lies behind yonder beech wood. I will see that she knows of your sorrow. There's worse to come.”

“What mean you?”

The hesitation was long enough for Kit's gut to clench. “I'm leaving in five days. The Mebd sends me on diplomacy.”

“Where?”

“I cannot say. But it will be hard for you; Morgan must keep her distance now, and you must seem alone while I am gone. It must seem she has tired of you. You've played this game before. She said she warned you.”