Will’s elbow banged against the side of the coach. “They are old. And we are young. Comparatively speaking.”
“Fellows!” Tom’s shock was evident.
“Listen.”
And somehow, Tom did. Kit drew a breath, but Will cut him short, surprising Kit with the depth of his understanding.
“When Burghley and Sir Francis are gone, their successors can be thee and me, Master Walsingham. And Robert Cecil, and Thomas Carey’s son George. Or they can be our enemies. Men like Poley and his masters. Baines. And the Spaniard.”
“What of the Queen?” And the Tom stopped himself before he said the unfavored word, succession.
Kit shrugged. “In any case, you must step into Sir Francis shoes. And quickly.”
Tom turned his face into the light. It illuminated his silhouette, limning lips and nose and brow in gold.
“He’s barely now begun to warm to me again, Kit. We did not speak o’er much after your murder.”
“Mend it soon,” Will said. “Or not at all.”
“That bad?”
“We must sire our own conspiracy.”
Kit could see Tom tasting the word. “Conspiracy.” He realized with shock that threads of silver wound Tom’s hair.
“Kit, and what of thee?” Kit closed his eyes on pain, knowing the answer. Knowing what it had to be, as soon as Will had effortlessly picked up the thread of his thought, and explained it. Known from the way Will had tailed him so deftly that Kit, Kit had barely even known he was watched, and how Tom had put Audrey and Chapman out of harm’s way without taking time to think.
“I am dead in this world.” Everything I could do, they can do better. Sweet Christ, I love these men. Better to remember them young and fierce, than like Sir Francis.
“Tom, your man Frazier was duped?” Tom’s lips twitched. He nodded once, his eyes focused on Kit’s scar.
“I am commanded elsewhere, Kit said.” You’ll outlive it. Outlive all your loves and hates, and when your mortal span is past …“Thou wilt not see me again. Nor shalt thou, Will, I warrant. But I leave my Queen in capable hands.”
“Kit,”— Two voices as one, and the tone of them warmed him even as he shook his head.
“I am commanded elsewhere,” he repeated. “And so tonight I shall give you everything I know.”
Kit laid the palm of his right hand on Will’s mirror and pressed forward against a sensation as if jellied mercury flowed to admit him. He glanced over his shoulder at Will and at Tom Walsingham standing beside him, fixing the two men’s faces in his memory. They had kissed and clipped him as brothers, and that embrace was a sort of hollowness resting on his skin. Dead men must trust the living to get on with their business, I suppose.
“I’ll write,” Will said.
“I don’t think I shall reply.” Kit looked away before Will’s expression could change. “Tom, give my love to your wife.”
He pushed through the mirror. He emerged in the corridor between the curtains that flanked the Darkling Glass, tendrils of crystal loathe to resign their grips.
No sooner had his boot touched the tiles than he bowed his head, startled, and dropped a knee, his silver scabbard-tip clinking and skipping. The Mebd stood over him: he had almost stepped into her arms. A scent of roses and lilacs like a breeze from a June garden surrounded him; he lifted the embroidered hem of her robe to his lips, heavy cloth draping his fingers.
“Your Majesty.”
“Sweet Sir Kit.” He heard the smile in her voice and clenched his teeth in anticipation of a hammer blow of emotion. Her hand touched his shoulder and he almost fell forward, realizing as he put a hasty hand to the floor that he had been braced against a raw spasm of desire. It never came.
“Mayst rise.” He did as she bid, keeping his eyes on the woven net of wheat-gold braids that lay across her shoulders, pearls knotted at the interstices. She tilted his chin up with flowerlike fingers, forcing him to meet her eyes.
“Needst not fear our games this night, Sir Poet.” She released him and stepped back, her fingers curling in summoning as she walked on. “We’ve been most wicked to thee, my husband, my sister, and me.”
“I’ve known wickeder.”
The pressure of violet eyes in her passionless oval face was almost enough to force him against the wall.
“Thou dost wonder at thy place in our court.”
“I do.”
She smiled, and reached into her sleeve. “When our royal sister Elizabeth dies, things will change.”
“Your Highness?” He stepped back as she drew out a long fluid scarf of transparent silk and twined it between her fingers. It shifted color in the light, shimmers of violet, green, and gold chasing its surface.
“And there will be a war. If not that day, soon after.”
“I am a poet, Your Highness. Not a soldier.”
She smiled at him, and reaching out, wound the scarf around his throat three times, letting the silk brush his face, softer than petals.
“For thy cloak, she said. Give me a song.”
“What sort of a song?”
“An old song.” She started forward again, and he paced her, reciting the oldest song he knew
‘… Young oxen newly yoked are beaten more,
Than oxen which have drawn the plow before.
And rough jades mouths with stubborn bits are torn,
But managed horses heads are lightly borne,
Unwilling lovers, love doth more torment,
Then such as in their bondage feel content.
Lo! I confess, I am thy captive I,
And hold my conquered hands for thee to tie.’
“No,” the Mebd whispered, interrupting him with a hand on his wrist and seeming for a moment a woman given to softness rather than a cold and mocking Queen. “Not that. An English song, for thou art an Englishman.”
“Thomas the Rhymer?” he suggested waggishly, wondering if she would let him press the advantage. A gamble, but they that never gamble have no wit.
“Perhaps not that either. It’s no mere seven years thou wilt serve.” But she smiled, an honest smile, and tilted her head so her braids moved in disarray over her neck.
“I know it.” He nibbled his mustache. “I’ve made my farewells, Your Highness. I’m ready to set it behind me.”
“Thou shalt find it easier. And Morgan has released thee from what bondage she held thee in.”
He blushed. “It influenced my decision.”
“Of course.”
“Free, and myself,” he said. “But never free to leave.”
“No.” Her sorrow was not for him. Never that. They walked on in silence. She led him through tall, many-paned glass doors and into a garden that smelled as she did of lilacs and roses.
“Mortals can be enchanted,” she said, gravel rustling beneath her slippers and turning under the brush of her train, “but they cannot truly be bound the way the Fae can be bound by their names, by iron. Every knot in my hair is a life I possess, Sir Kit, a Faerie entangled to my will forevermore. I could not bind thee so. Nor canst thou be released by the gift of a suit of clothes, or a new pair of shoes. So thy folk require more careful handling. Tis better to let them grieve at their own rate, and leave at their own rate, too.”
She smiled, and recited a scrap of song of her own. “‘Ellum do grieve, Oak he do hate, Willow do walk if yew travels late.’ Dost know that one? No Ah, well. Thou wilt learn it, no doubt. Do you toss like an elm, or break like an oak, Sir Kit?” She stopped and bent to smell a rose.
“This war that you expect, Your Highness.”
“Aye?”
“How will it be fought?”
“Oh,” her smile was lovely. Even through vision unclouded by fey magic and glamourie.
“With song, Sir Poet. With song.”
Jessica:
I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so:
Our house is hell, and thou, a merry devil,
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice