Perfect Shadows (31 page)

“You could join me, if you like. There’s room enough, if we are
very—friendly.” He shook his head, but stripped off his doublet and shirt, and
came to trail his hand in the hot scented water. As I made to step into the tub
he stopped me, his trembling hands catching at my arms, a mute look of entreaty
in his eyes. I nodded, and allowed myself to be drawn back to the bed.

Hal rested his head on his lover’s chest in an ambiguous state
between vexation and hazy contentment, then raised it to gaze on the quiescent
man beside him. The split on that full lower lip had broken open again with the
ferocity of Hal’s onslaught, and that explained the odd taste in his mouth, he
decided, rich and almost sweet, but with an underlying, unmistakable
bitterness. He bent his head and licked the forming blood-drop, savoring the
odd flavor once more. It was difficult to tear his eyes from that snowy skin;
even the fading bruises that defaced it seemed beautiful. He had always shunned
deformity, sickened by the scars that are shown as marks of valor, but now he
wanted to hold that maimed face close, to kiss the blemished eyelid, and every
purpled bruise. Robin owes me twenty nobles, he thought giddily, recalling the
callous bet that the eye-patch was an affectation, which they had made when
Essex had returned from one of his country sulks to find the insolent foreign
prince usurping his place.

Hal’s lips brushed the scar, and Kit reached a lazy hand to
tangle in those soft auburn curls, pulling the willing Hal into another deep
kiss before releasing him and sitting up. As if summoned, Jehan appeared to
scoop some of the tepid water from the bath, replacing it with boiling water
from the can he carried, before leaving as silently as he had entered. There
truly was not room enough for two in that tub, however friendly they might be,
but Hal discovered what great pleasure it could be to stand thigh deep in hot
water while your lover washed you, and then the possibly even greater pleasure
of returning the attention.

Northumberland stood back and studied the new form of his old
friend. Not bad, he decided. The cast-off clothing had been refitted into a
quite passable wardrobe for an obscure scholar, and having his housemaids do
the work had saved considerable expense. He spared a brief damning thought for
Eden Bowen and her brothers. She had been truly gifted with her needle, and
being beholden, worked for their keep in lieu of the wages her skill might
otherwise have commanded. He brushed the distractions aside and returned to the
examination of his guest. The patchy, moth-eaten beard had been shaved, the hair
brushed and trimmed into tolerable order, and a cobbler had been called into
make several pairs of specially fitted boots and shoes to accommodate the
clubfoot. That had been the most galling expense, and served to add to the
irrational grudge Percy nursed against Marlowe, a cobbler’s son. He nodded,
satisfied. He would take the man with him to the Twelfth Night Masque at court.

One of the maids squeaked and scurried from the room, propelled
by a vicious pinch from Montague, who had discovered certain compensations in
the conformation of his new body. He had berated the earl for making him a
cripple, brushing aside the explanation that, apart from the consideration that
the beggar would never be missed, the very fact that he was a cripple made the
spell more likely to succeed under the auspices of sympathetic magic, since
Montague himself had been abnormally formed. A few days after the rite,
stroking himself in the bath, a look of incredulous delight had spread over the
ugly face as the body’s natural endowment revealed itself in all its outsized
prominence. It had stopped the complaints from the restored man, but started a
round of new ones from the servants, as Montague ploughed his way through the
staff, sometimes by seduction, and sometimes by rape. If his knowledge was not
so damned important he would turn him back out on the highway, Percy fumed,
thinking of the money it was costing to outfit and keep the man, and to pay off
the servants. He sighed, and turned to the matter of the Masque.

It was to be a black and white affair, but apart from color,
there would be no restrictions on the costumes. Percy had met the night before
with Essex, who had a wild scheme for using the masque to regain favor at
court. The cause of Robin’s disgrace was keeping himself well to the shadows
since the moonlight hunt, and short of a royal summons, would probably not
appear. Not for the fear of Essex, as that vain fool thought, but for the fear
of Robert Cecil. And rightly so, Percy smiled to himself, the crooked little man
having been foremost among the authors of Marlowe’s murder.

Since the vampire’s rescue, Percy had been watching carefully
for any changes in himself, any indication that the blood exchange had taken
its effect, but aside from a tendency to headaches and an aversion to the
strong sunlight that caused them, he had noticed nothing. Well, perhaps a
predisposition to irritability, but that was all. And all normal, according to
Doctor Newman Sommers as the former dwarf now called himself. It would not be
until he suffered his own death that the real changes would occur, and he had
to make arrangements ahead of time to avoid complications after.

Percy fully expected some sort of strike by the prince calling
himself Geofri, had expected it before now, and had taken steps with his old
friend Ralegh to forestall him. But when he died, if—when— he rose triumphant
from the grave, that was when he would be most vulnerable, that was when he
would need a stratagem. Musing on the matter Percy drifted from the gallery
towards his workroom, not really noticing where he was going or the cries of
his libidinous companion’s latest victim.

Hal knew that the court expected him to plan the Twelfth Night
costume around the oyster satin. That would be the prudent course, he smiled to
himself. That outfit, with the lace and pearls removed, was already resting in
the property box of the Lord Chamberlain’s players, orbits of it adorning the
shareholders, more like. That was the grand gesture, the point of the whole
exercise. Let Mounteagle try to top that! But the pinchpenny fool would not
even discard his own shamed garment, and one could count on the sleeves forming
part of Will’s own costume for the masque. Ah well, you take your pleasures as
they occur, he thought, and frowned.

He had avoided Libby since his failure that night, but it was
unlikely he would be able to dodge her much longer. Perhaps it was as well that
Kit was resisting his teasings to attend the masque, if he was to expect an
unpleasant scene with Libby, although he would give a fair price to see the
prince decked out, say, as a Venetian duelist, or in the slashes and shreds of
a Landsknecht. But Kit was adamant: without a direct order from the hand of the
Queen, Twelfth Night would find him quietly in Chelsey.

Kit had appreciated the costume Hal modeled for him, however. It
was stylishly cut of heavy silk velvet in black of the deepest dye, and slashed
a hundred times to show the sarsenet lining, a rich red color, glowing against
the black like so many drops of blood. He looked like a murdered gallant,
bleeding from countless wounds, and the death’s-head mask, a realistic skull,
framed by his flowing locks, added the final macabre touch.

Essex was putting the finishing touches on his own costume, and
drilling the serving-men in their parts. He was dressed as the sun, in cloth of
gold from head to foot, and glittering with thousands of tiny spangles to catch
and reflect the light. His headdress was a crown shaped of many rays like the
sun itself and polished mirror-bright. His grooms were dressed in azure satin
to represent the sky and wore white hats heaped with ostrich plumes to simulate
clouds. They would pull him before the Queen in a chariot of gold, with
cushions of azure silk. His conceit was based on the intelligence he had
gathered, that Elizabeth was to be costumed as the moon, in silver and white,
her maids all in black and spangled with stars. He would portray the sun coming
to worship and woo the moon, to lay his shining crown at her feet. With all the
court bound to black and white his gilded entrance could not fail to be a
prodigy. He smiled to himself for a moment before a frown crept over his
features. Hal was having but little success in his efforts to cajole the
foreign prince into attending the masque. That would take some of the savor out
of the evening, to be sure. Well, that plan could be implemented at a later
date, but it would be beyond compare to be able to occasion the interloper’s
ultimate disgrace before the entire court.

His frown deepened as the silver chiming clock on the table told
an hour much later than he expected. He would have to leave immediately to
reach Durham house and the meeting Ralegh had worked so hard to bring about
between Robert Cecil and himself. His brother-in-law Percy would be there as
well, and the snare closing around the Prince Kryštof ’s throat would begin to
tighten. Essex drew on the fur-lined gloves and threw his cloak over his
shoulders, striding across the courtyard to the waiting grooms and mounting the
stallion with effortless grace. He wheeled his mount and vanished into the
dying light of the short winter afternoon.

I watched for Hal until close to midnight, then made my way to
the small study to make a further attempt at my books. I pushed the door open,
stopping abruptly at the muffled sobs I heard within, then softly stepped into
the room. “Richard? What is wrong?” I asked softly. The sobs cut off and the
boy held his breath. He was face down on the high-backed settle near the fire.
I crossed the room to lay a hand on his shoulder. It was immediately shaken
off, but the lad would not face me. A gasping sob shook the slender frame, and
he sat up and glared at me through his tears.

“Will you leave me alone?” he demanded.

“Possibly, when I know what troubles you so,” I replied evenly.
Richard looked rebellious for a moment, then his face twisted with his grief,
the tears spilling from his swollen eyes, and the words poured from him.

“It is my fault that Eve died,” he started, cutting off my protest
with an abrupt wave. “Gwennan was our mother. Lord Morgan ap Owain was my
father, and he acknowledged me his bastard. Bran, Gwennan’s man, never made a
difference between his treatment of me and his own children, but treated me as
his own son. They were proud of my scholarship and it was planned that I should
go to University when I was fourteen. In the meantime Lord Morgan arranged for
my schooling and later brought me to live in his house. But ap Owain had no
other children, and a cousin, Lord David, considered himself the heir, but
feared that I would be named instead. That’s legal under Welsh law. He visited
Lord Morgan, and they parted with sharp words.

“Then I took the smallpox. My brother and sisters successfully
avoided the contagion; indeed, mine was the only case, and none could fathom
where I caught it, though I cannot but help to think that David was behind it,
somehow. Gwennan came to the manor and nursed me day and night, hanging red
cloth at the windows to keep my skin from scarring, and just wearing herself
out. I recovered, and she took the disease and died of it.” The voice was
distant and bleak.

“Bran lost the will to live and grieved himself to death before
the month was out. Then Lord Morgan died as the result of a fall he took hunting,
and Lord David took the land, and accused me of contriving the deaths of both
my natural and my foster father. We fled that night, and eventually reached
Northumberland, where the earl took us in. If it were not for me, they would
not have had to leave their home, and Eve would be alive.” He stared down at
his hands, wet with his falling tears.

“Or she may have been dead at the hands of her new lord,” I said
dryly. “Or they could have watched you hang, and then they could be wallowing
in guilt instead of you.” The tear-stained face turned to me in disbelief, and
I continued. “They made the choice to flee with you, after all. If-onlys and
might-have-beens profit you nothing, Richard. Life is what it is, and we must
make the best of it.”

“You can say that? Surviving foully as you do on the stolen
blood of others?” His face was a mask of disgust. “What sort of creature are
you, that you would choose to continue your life at such cost? How can you bear
it?” He drew back sharply at the anger on my face, the snarl on my lips.

“I could show you what I am, Richard, and make you like it, make
you crave it above all else, if I so chose. I bid you remember that.” I caught
the flinching boy’s wrists in my hands and drew him nearer, his terrified eyes
locked on the sharp teeth drawing ever closer until his breath brushed my pale
lips. The craving was on me then, I realized. I wanted to make good my threat,
to sink my aching teeth into this beautiful boy’s throat, to feel his sweet
blood slide down my own, to fill his body with a pleasure he had never known
before, one impossible to match in any other way. Swiftly I shoved him away,
regaining my will against the desire that had come so close to overwhelming me.
“You must not bait me, Richard,” I said wearily. “I vow that you and your
family are in no danger from me. However, if you wish, I will try to find you
places elsewhere. But for now, go and take your rest.” Richard stood somewhat
shakily and made for the door, stopping at the threshold to cast a speculative
glance at me as I bent over the ledgers, apparently oblivious.

I watched him go, aware of the sudden desire that had risen in
him, warring with a fear that was itself seductive. Perhaps Tom would place the
Bowens in his household, though I would be loth to lose them, especially
Richard. I needed a secretary, as the meaningless scribbles in the ledgers
clearly told me, and when the boy was older he would make an excellent steward.
But I needed a man that I could trust, and how could I trust someone whom by my
very nature I disgusted? I pushed myself away from the table and left the room.
I would walk along the river to clear my head.