Ink and Steel (53 page)

Puck abased himself. “It is in all the songs.”

"BLast!”
Kit jumped at the outburst before he realized it was his own. “Am I to make my destiny as dead singers direct?”

“Exactly.”

Kit glanced over his shoulder at Cairbre, finally, and was surprised to see the master bard grin. “The Puck's right, Your Highness. Kit has to follow his love to Hell.”

Kit leaned his forehead against the gelding's sweet-smelling sorrel neck, coarse straw rustling about his ankles, and steeled himself to swing into the saddle. “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

“Nay. You can save him,” Robin said from his perch on the stall's half-door.

The sorrel snorted, shaking his head as if in annoyed agreement.
Pray stop teasing me with the prospect of an outing, Master Marley, and Lead me from this stall,
Kit extemporized. He chuckled bitterly under his breath, and then caught a glimpse of the gelding's expression.
Damme if he isn't thinking just that.

“I can't even save myself, Master Goodfellow.”

“Who among us can?” The Puck slid down from the door and came forward to tug the reins from Kit's hand. Kit gave them up, and the little Fae led both horse and man out of the stable and into the courtyard. Silver shoes and iron bootnails rang on the pale cobblestones. The courtyard was empty in the moonlight except for the two of them and the gelding; Kit refused on his pride to crane his neck to the windows to see if Murchaud might be peering out. “Bargain well,” Puck said, and held the stirrup.

Grief and gratitude welled into Kit's eye. He blinked them back and took the reins when Robin held them up. “I know not how to thank you.”

The Fae skipped away from the gelding's hooves. “Come home safe, Christofer Marley.” He stepped into a shadow and was gone.

Kit tucked his cloak about him to keep it from flapping, turned his mount with his knees, and urged the sorrel toward the palace gate.

The road stretched broad and easy before Will and his docile, mannerly, ghost-colored mare. Her shoes chimed carillon on the smooth cobblestones. She arched her neck as if proud of her burden, for all he slumped on her back like a bag of fresh-killed game. The stirrups cut through the arches of his court slippers; he did not even attempt to ride over the beat of her stride, as the women—riding astride—did.

The Mebd rode on Will's left side and Morgan on his right; as they had passed under the archway of the palace gate, Morgan caught his sleeve. When he had turned to her, unwilling to meet her eyes, the Mebd had reined her ink-black gelding shoulder to shoulder with the milk-white mare and reached over Will's bowed head and hunched shoulders to press something onto his brow. A circlet, a band of resilient gold; he saw its reflection in Morgan's eyes.

“You knew,” he said to the woman he had loved.

She nodded and swept a hand through the wire-curled tumult of her hair. “I chose,” she said simply, turning away again. Her bay horse dipped a white-blazed face as if to crop the grass at the roadside; Morgan twitched the reins and the mare snorted, soft purls steaming from her nostrils. “I thought it would help him, in the end. We need your Christofer whole, sweet William.”

“Do not—” The mare tossed her head as his hands tightened on the reins. He forced himself drape them loose against her neck. She settled into her easy pace again.
The horse knows her own way home.

“Don't . . . what, my love?”

The Mebd rode close, within hearing of the softest murmur. Shadows seemed to grasp around the edge of things. Clutching branches and rustling limbs.
Willow be walk, if yew travels Late.
“Don't call me pet names,” he said, hoping his voice sounded disinterested. “I saw—”

She smiled. White teeth winked in the corner of his eye. “Kit and me?”

“Aye.” The heat of his furious blush. And what did it matter now, lust or love, fornication or sacrament? He was damned. The clawing shadows crowded closer to the road; Will, with ease, could imagine them pitchfork-wielding demons.

“Ah,” she said. “Yes. Lovely boy. Very sweet in bed. Far too easy to manipulate. 'Twas one of the flaws I had hoped Lucifer could correct in him.”

“As if Hell were a schoolboy caning.”

“But Master Shakespeare”—honest startlement, her gray eyes wide in the moonlight—“it is.”

Whatever he might have found to say in response was ended by the flicker of a lantern a few hundred yards ahead, emerging through gaudy, rustling October leaves. The low yellow flame rested at ground level, silhouetting a square, glass-sided frame, the interleaved cobbles of a crossroads, and the shining dark hooves of a massive steed. It limned the figure on the stallion's back from beneath—the soft black velvet of his doublet, the sovereign shine of his hair. The kind alabaster arch of his enormous wings cast their own pale glow, feather edges stained gold over silver by the candlelight.

For Kit,
Will thought, as Lucifer Morningstar lifted his chin and regarded the approaching trio.

His wings fanned softly; he leaned back in his saddle in feigned surprise. :Why, 'tis not the soul I was bid expect. Good even, Master Shakespeare. How pleasant to make thine acquaintance again:

Morgan placed a warm hand on the small of Will's back. He rode forward as much to elude the touch as because that was where his white mare took him. From the corner of his eye, Will thought perhaps he saw Morgan's cheeks shining.
Ridiculous that Morgan Le Fay should weep for me—

And then he smiled.
As ridiculous as that she should moan for me.
He turned back over his shoulder. Distantly, he thought for a moment he heard the echo of galloping hooves. Morgan wept indeed: Will forced himself to meet her eyes and speak coolly.
Love her all you will, foolish heart. She'LL have no more kindness from thee.

“Tell Kit,” he said, his voice cracking. “Tell Kit I bid him care for my Annie and my girls.”

Whatever she might have said in return died on her lips, or under the peals of the white mare's hooves as she bore Will forward beneath the mighty wings of the Prince of Hell. Lucifer turned his horse and, leaving the lantern where it lay, led Will and his strange knowing mount into darkness and down.

:You have the look of a man who will be hard to buy, Master Shakespeare:

“Buy, and not break?”

:And yet you have an imagination. That is well. I invite you to contemplate that we will be together for eternity. Will you serve willing?:

“I came willing,” Will answered.

:No one comes willing: Lucifer said. :They come because they have no other choice. Or because they will accept no other choice presented them. Or rarely, as thy lover Marley learned, because they have come to understand that Hell is all around them, and that they have never been out of it once:

Will blinked. The sway of the white mare under him was growing comfortable. He forgot himself enough to turn in the saddle and look up at Lucifer's face. The rebel angel smiled down slantwise. “This is Hell? I had expected—”

:Torment. Aye: Lucifer hesitated. Will realized that his black steed wore no reins. :What torment, Master Shakespeare, could I heap upon thee worse that that which thou hast chosen for thyself?:

“Your . . . Highness?”

:Really, Master Shakespeare. How dost thou think thou can serve
us,
poet, when thou canst not keep even thy troth to thy wife, or thy Ganymede, or thy mistress? All three at once thou hast betrayed—:

Stung, Will reined his mount further from the Devil's side. She protested when he tried to bring her too far, and afraid of being thrown, he desisted. “Kit lied—”

:Nay: Lucifer's sky-blue regard spurned him. :He told thee whatever truth thou wouldst hear. How
darest
thou press thy lovers, thy wife to meet a standard thou canst not uphold?:

Will raised his right hand to his mouth, feeling the moment of realization like a dagger in the breast.
This is what Annie felt,
he realized.
Felt and forgave. And as I cannot Love Less—

“I have,” he said, the reins tumbling from his fingers. The white mare sidled next to Lucifer's black stud, rubbing her shoulder against his, brushing Will's knee against the Devil's with a tingle Will would have preferred to deny. “I have made mine own Hell. I deserve it.”

:Every creature does: the Devil answered, and they rode on in silence for one hour or a thousand, until they passed the low-arched gates of Hell.

Act III, scene xvii

—CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE,
Tamburlaine the Great

The red gelding ran hard. Kit bent low over his neck, mane stinging his face, and did battle with the impulse that would have had him clutch the reins like a fool and kick the willing horse faster. The gelding's hooves rattled on gravel and then thudded on packed earth; the way grew narrow and dark. Kit hunched closer to his horse and reined the gelding back, swearing, as the long angry claws of leafless oak trees reached across to bar the path and scrape his face, yank at his cloak and hair.
This should be the beech wood. I should smell the sea.

Somewhere ahead, unwavering, growing more distant despite their deliberation and Kit's weeping haste, he could hear the even pace of hooves laid against stone like church bells. Trees closed across the path. Kit bulled the sorrel through branches; the horse went snorting, plunging, shivering with eagerness to be free of the trees and
run
.

Kit closed his eye against welling tears of frustration, could do nothing for the ones that soaked his eyepatch. He pulled his cloak around his sore bruised body against a chill;
Morgan's patch, and the troll's. One from the Mebd and one from Will. Cairbre, Geoffrey, Puck—

The wood was dark as the bottom of a well. Even the sorrel shivered.

A good gelding, steady and swift. Kit patted his neck. “I wish I had thought to ask your name.”

Low and distant, a croak.
Froggy frogs.

“Master Troll?”
How odd, when I was just now thinking of him—

The voice came from the left. If it was a voice, and not Kit's desperation and the wind.

He can't possibly do a worse job of it than I have.
Kit swore one more time, for good measure, and let the gelding have his head. He stroked the sorrel's rough mane and looped the reins around the pommel, then leaned forward to speak into a swiveling ear. “Find him for me.”
Please.

The red horse snorted, both ears back briefly, then switched his tail and walked boldly forward through the thickest stand of oak. The road lay beyond, broad and shining in the starlight. Kit reached for the reins again, let them fall when the gelding tossed his head.

“If you know what you're doing—” He caught the mane in both hands. “Well, let us make haste.”

The horse struck out at an easy canter, clatter of hooves on stone. Over it Kit heard that pealing,
tang tang tang
, measured as a pavanne.
I don't pavanne
. But he kept up now, never gaining, rising in the saddle to see farther ahead. A glimmer of golden light shone on the pavement: a candleflame.

The sorrel never hesitated. Kit touched the horse with his boots; he sprang past the abandoned light as if it had caught his heels on fire. The way was darker here, tending downward. Relief and horror did battle in Kit, and for a moment he thought he caught the acrid scent of whiskey and char. The trees fell back from the roadside. Alone in the night, Kit heard something huge rustling through leaves.
Just the wind
.

Of course.

But there was no breeze on his neck. And now the road descended through nothing at all but blackness to either side.

By the time he saw the broad-pillared gate, his tears had dried, leaving the taste of salt on his tongue. The sorrel snorted and struck sparks from the roadway, refusing the passage. Kit nodded and checked to make sure the reins were knotted so they wouldn't foul the horse's legs. “Brave enough,” Kit said, swinging down. He rubbed the sorrel's nose, turned him back up the road, and slipped his bit. “I could not ask more. Go, get home. There's a warm stable for thee.”

The gelding looked over his shoulder dubiously. Kit raised his left hand over the animal's lathered flank, trying for menace; the sorrel shrugged and ambled back up the road as if to say,
I might have waited a bit. Just to see if you were coming back. But if you insist—

Kit squared his shoulders, turned his back on the sorrel, and walked quickly toward the gate. Quickly, because if he let his feet drag he would never pass under that plain black archway, no higher than the overhead reach of his hands.

It was as well he'd left the horse behind; within the gate the road turned to a narrow stair, and Kit fumbled down in the chill, over dank, slick stones. He leaned on the wall, sweat freezing in sequins on his skin, and willed his heart to beat. Cold, searing cold, and he chuckled nastily in memory of a scene he'd written so many years before, Mephostophilis warming Faustus' frozen blood with a brazier so that it would run through a pen.