Ink and Steel

Act III, scene xii

Mortimer:

Why should you love him whom the world hates so?

Edward:

Because he loves me more than all the world.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Edward II

Much later, they dressed and trussed and sorted the scattered sonnets in silence and the morning light. Kit was concerned to see Will moving with stiffness as he crawled beneath a bench to reach out papers.

“Will … have I hurt you? Possibly we could have exercised more restraint but,” Kit’s lips twitched as he went to help, Carpe noctem, after all.”

Will sat back on his heels, holding a bit of foolscap in a hand that shook enough to flutter the edge of the paper. He laid his left hand over the right, as if to silence the trembling. “Tis just a palsy,” Will said. “Such as my father suffers, and one of his brothers had. It comes with aches and clumsiness, worse when I’m tired.” He smiled, then, and pushed himself to his feet. “And I am very delightfully tired. And thank you for it.”

“You’re young to be trembling, Will. Thirty-four is not such a great age.” The words seemed to swell until they stopped Kit’s throat, and he could neither swallow nor speak past them. His fingers tightened on the sheaf of poems in his hand as the meaning of the words came plainer.

Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,

Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

Will handed papers to Kit, which Kit took to the table they shared. Shared.

Tis a fancy, Marley. He leaves thee soon. To return to London and his wife, and even here, he is not thine alone. Oh, but it was a pleasant fancy. And thou wilt outlive him, too. But not in name, an he’s writing poetry like that.

“Will you lie to me?”

“Fear not. Morgan’s helping me. And I’ve decades left,” Will answered, and let his shoulders rise and fall in a shrug as he stood. “More, if like my father. Well, tis not a bad death. The trembling grows, and the body perishes in the end for want of breath. Sir Francis died far worse. And I might still, on the path I walk. If Oxford has his way.”

Decades.

That time of year you mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold

“Your poems don’t speak of decades, love. If I have mine,” Kit replied, and lifted a candlestick to weight the poems. “Gloriana will protect you. But come. This is not an hour for such thoughts.”

“No, Will said thoughtfully. It’s an hour for breakfast, I think. And perhaps I owe Morgan a little groveling.”

“Does she expect your attendance every night?” Kit regretted the words as soon as they left his lips, and fetched Will’s boots to cover his discomfort.

Will laughed, paying with a kiss as he took them from Kit’s hand. “No. But I rather suggested I would meet her for supper. And she no doubt thought to find me this morning.”

There had been a tapping at the door a little after sunrise, which had not awakened Will and which Kit, roused by dreams, had ignored as unworthy of the price of lifting his head from its throne on Will’s shoulder.

“Well, we can’t hide here forever, living on love.” Kit sighed and shrugged, his doublet settling onto his back like duty. “I suppose tis brave the day and regroup when the enemy gives up an advantage.”

“I’ll see you at dinner,” Will said. “And then this afternoon, more centaurs.”

Kit opened the door, turned back, and smiled. “And satyrs?”

“Christ,” Will grumbled, following. “A little pity on an old man.”

Kit laughed as he left, bracing himself for the knowing smiles that certainly would greet his and Will’s simultaneous reappearance after eighteen hours of silence and a locked door. Things were different in Faerie, aye; for one thing, the gossip galloped three times faster. He picked his way down the stairs, one hand on the railing, as Will went up, and tried not to frown. Trouble thyself not with that thou canst not command. Thou lovest, and art loved. Twill serve.

Breakfast had no more formality in the Mebd’s palace than it had at Cambridge or in a shoemaker’s house in Canterbury, but Kit had paid in two missed meals for the pleasure of an uninterrupted afternoon and evening, and he made haste to the hall in the hope that there would be bread and butter and small beer left. The tables had not been cleared for dinner, but there wasn’t much left to choose between. He piled curds and jam on thick slices of wheat bread with gloriously messy abandon, balancing two in his left hand and the third atop his tankard until he found a place at a crumb-scattered trestle and fell to with a passion. He was halfway through the second slice, leaning forward over the board to save his doublet the spatters, when a shadow fell across the table. He looked up, chewing, into Morgan’s eyes and swallowed hastily.

“Your Highness.” Her smile had a flinty glitter as she hiked up her skirt and stepped over the bench opposite. “Sir Christofer. I see you’re in good appetite.”

“I missed my supper. Will was looking for you just now.”

“I shall seek him. I trust you had a productive evening…”

“Most.” Oh, that smile. Deadly. She helped herself to his tankard, sipped, and frowned over the beer before pushing it back at him. Kit never dropped his gaze as he drank.

“One can send down to the kitchens for a tray, if one is indisposed. If one wishes the distraction.”

“Poetry waits for no man.”

Now she gave him a better smile. “And was it poetry?”

“Of the sheerest sort.”

“I expect you shan’t be calling upon me this morning, in that case.”

“Now that thou hast had thine use of me.” The wrong tack; Kit tore bread with his teeth and swallowed more beer, giddiness in his newfound power. “Consider all debts paid for the use you had of me. Touch.You won’t take him from me, you know.”

A possessiveness he wondered if she’d ever shown over him flickered across her face. The jealousy he’d thought well-sated flared, and he chased it down with beer.

Must she own everything she touches?

The question was the answer. “Madam, he is a married man, with a home and children. I won’t see him bound to you.”

“No? How will you stop me? If I offered him surcease from pain and a place in Faerie at my side? At your side too, Kit. Help me. He’d half like to stay here. He wouldn’t deny us both.”

Will. Here. Alive, not ill any longer.

“He’d have to become like me. A changeling.”

“An Elf-knight, Sir Kit. Where’s your blade, I wonder?”

“In my room. An Elf-knight? And yet you wear your rapier wit.”

She shook her head. “What else did you think you were become? Help me, Kit. Help me save your true love’s life.”

Oh. Oh. He thought of Will’s hand shaking. Knew Morgan had been waiting, lying in wait, and this was the opportunity he’d given her. Closed his eye for an instant, and covered his mouth with a hand that smelled of sugar and blackberries. And damn his soul? He watched her face, the thin line between her crow-black brows, the way her eyes went green in passion and the mounting morning light, and realized he’d misjudged and misunderstood her again.

“Morgan.” She startled at her name, and at the tenderness in it, which startled him as well. “Wouldst take his family from him, my Queen? Bind him as thou hast bound Marley, and Murchaud, and Lancelot, and Arthur? Should the list of names continue? Accolon, Guiomar, Mordred, Bertilak. How many great men hast thou destroyed?”

“How many have I made greater than they were? How many have I healed and defended? I am not merely that evil that thou wouldst name me, Christofer.”

“Morgan,” he said, understanding. He took her immaculate hand and cupped itin his own. “I know what thou art.”

She blinked. The tone in his voice held her; the revelation un-scrolled. “Thou art that which nourishes and destroys: the deadly mother, the lover who is death. Because that is what we have made thee, with our tales of thy wit and sorcery. Thou art too much for mortal men to bear.”

She sighed and sat back, but did not draw her hand away. “Wouldst see him die?”

Kit stuffed another piece of bread into his mouth with his left hand, refusing the bait. “Morgan. You re a story.”

“Aye, Master Marley. Poet, Queen’s Man, cobbler’s boy,” she said. “I’m a story. And now, so art thou.”

He sat back. He would have let her fingers slide out of his own, but she held him fast and looked him hard in the eye. “A story who’ll live to see his mortal lover grow old and gray, totter and break. Canst bear it, Kit? Canst thou bear to see that light extinguished in a few short years?”

He shook his head. “No. I cannot bear it. But I rather imagine Will couldn’t bear to bury his son, either. And Morgan, I will not see him owned. Mortal men are not meant to live in your world; we cannot bear that either.” Heads were turning around the hall at the intensity of the whispered conversation, the white-knuckled grip across the table. Kit breathed deep.

“Morgan. Tis true what I say.”

“Aye.” And it was a curse when she said it, and her eyes were blacker than he had ever seen them. “I was a goddess, Kit.”

“Madam,” he said with dignity. “You still are.”