“Know I was in Hell.”
“A man has ways,” Kit answered. And he was assured that he had set Murchaud’s memorized papers back in order so neatly that no one would know they had been riffled. “Thou didst travel to negotiate the tithe. The seven-year’s teind.”
“We will need Hell’s protection as much as ever we have when Gloriana passes.”
“What of thy Queen?”
“What of her?” Murchaud let his hands fall to his knees. “Marriages are what they are, and politics are what they are.” Surely and the note of pain in his voice was masterful: so little, so bright, and so manfully repressed that Kit could almost believe it.
“All that love thou didst show me was not merely black magic and bindings?” Almost believe it. “All that love?” Kit smiled, and reached down with his left hand to slip his scabbard from his belt and lean the sword against the wall. He came to Murchaud, and ran his fingers through the other man’s jet-black curls, lips so near to lips that Kit could taste Murchaud’s breath, with a trace of wine on it, and a scent like roses.
“All the love I have given thee in subjugation is but shadows of the love thou shalt have. We keep nothing, who serve.” And he pressed Murchaud’s head back against the window frame and kissed him as if Kit’s mouth were a branding iron and Murchaud the property it marked.
Kit did not ask himself to whom his service went. And it was he who rose from the warmth of the bed in the darkest hour of morning, retrieved his sword, and dressed. And turned the key in the lock. And left.
There were mirrors in Faerie, after a fashion: glass, water in a bowl, wine in the bell of a glass. Morgan had not precisely been truthful in saying there were none. What was true was that they did not reflect. The Darkling Glass drew all reflections to itself: into its embrace, and into its power. All reflections save those in a blade. A silver dagger polished to mirror brightness gleamed on the marble mantel over his fire, which lay as cold and unkindled as the one in Murchaud schamber. Kit stripped to his shirt and washed in cold water from the ewer beside the bed. He rinsed his mouth and spat, combed his hair, and went to throw the window wide so the autumn nighttime could fill his chamber. Which is when the light dancing in the polished blade of that dagger caught his eye. A light he hadn’t seen in …
How long?
He left the window open and walked toward the dagger, which glittered as if reflecting the light of a single candleflame. Will, Kit whispered. How long has it been? He lifted his hand toward the thick bundle of papers that lay beside the blade, visible in shadowy outline. A letter, he knew, with his name written on it in Will’s fast-scrawled secretary’s hand. Set on the mantel before a mirror, with a candle lit beside it. News of Robin, perhaps. Mary, Chapman, Sir Francis, Tom. England. The Queen. The papers were insubstantial, glimmering like shadows: a reflection cast on air by the light in the dagger’s bright blade. If Kit’s hand touched them, they would appear in his grip, firm and crumpled. He reached out and willfully tipped the dagger over. The light in the blade died as if snuffed. The bundle of papers flickered like a blown candle andvanished. Kit bit down until he tasted blood, and took himself to bed.
Gloucester:
O, madam, my old heart is crack’d, it’s crack’d!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, King Lear
The house was dark when Tom Walsingham’s carriage rattled to a stop on the summer-baked road. Will put his foot on the iron step, clinging to the door for support as lathered horses stamped.
“There’s an inn not far, John.” The coachman tipped his cap. “I know it, Master Shakespeare. I’ll see to the horses and I shall find you tomorrow.”
I am grateful. Will would have tipped the coachman—another man’s servant, after all but John clucked to his horses, gentling them into the twilight as if he hadn’t seen Will’s outreached hand. It was a measure of the trust of the horses that the coachman never reached for the whip, and they went willing though their hides heaved like bellows. Their clatter receding, Will turned toward the thatched and half-timbered cottage as swaying exhausted as if he had run from Kent on his own two legs. The door was latched, painted wood tight against timbers set in stucco that gleamed a soft pink-gray, stained with ochre earths. Anne had let the flowers by the doorstep die. Will tugged twice to free the latch, although he knew before the door opened that his house was empty: no smoke rose from the chimney, and he could smell cold ash. Twilight streamed down from the loft. Annie had left the windows under the eaves unshuttered.
He fumbled his habitual shilling as he stepped inside, the glass-smooth coin ringing on the door stone. He crouched to retrieve it, feeling among the rushes strewing the floor, and suddenly found he had not the strength to stand. Cold silver between his fingers, he crouched on the threshold in the open doorway and buried his facein his hands. It was Edmund who found him. Will had curled forward, his knees drawn up against his forehead and his back pressed to the timber. He heard the footsteps up the walk and looked up, blinking in the twilight, scrubbing a hand across his face although his eyes stayed dry.
“Will. You should have written you were coming.”
“I got here faster than a letter would have,” Will said, and covered his mouth as he coughed. “From Kent. We only stopped to rest the horses. Where is Annie?”
“With Mother. Are you … ?” Edmund’s voice trailed off. Will pushed himself to one knee and stood.
“No, I’m not well. How did you know to find me?”
Edmund took Will’s elbow as Will hid his shaking hand in his sleeve, the shilling folded tight inside his palm.
“Bill the landlord had it from your driver. He sent his boy. Come.” Both men pretended it was exhaustion alone that left Will leaning on his brother’s strong young arm. “Let’s go home.”
He dreaded Anne. Feared anything she might be speaking, unspeaking. Eyes black with weeping. Eyes cold with consideration. Was there anything I could have done? If I had been here, surely’t were something I could have done.
She sat by the fire when he came into his parents house, her dress overdyed drab in black that would fade as one might expect mourning to fade: eventually. One expected to lose babies. Or young children to the flush of their illnesses, the measles and the scarlet fevers and the great and smallpox. Will’s parents had lost three girls before Will, one of them the first Joan of two at nearly Hamnet’s age. Children of schooling age, however, an only and an eldest son …Will didn’t notice if Edmund came through the door with him. His father might already be abed; Susanna and Judith were nowhere in sight. Will’s mother left her darning in a pile on the board and came around it, past Annie, who looked up, but no more than that. Mary Shakespeare squeezed her own child’s shoulders and leaned her forehead briefly on his neck. She kissed the cornerof his mouth. “Oh, Will”
Her voice broke and he clutched her tight for a moment, then set her back the length of his arms.
“Thank you.”
She nodded and ducked away, knuckling her eye, a hasty clatter on the stairs telling her passage. Will went to his wife. Annie’s hands were white on her skirts. She crouched on a three-legged stool as if warming herself before the fire, but Will knew her chill would take more melting than that. He knelt down before her. The stool wobbled under her when he took her hands, the one leg shorter than the other that his father hadn’t mended in fifteen years gone past. He opened his mouth; she closed it with a look.
“You came,” she said. She leaned forward, her unbound fair hair falling around him, tangled with her lack of care.