A swarm of moths beat hungry wings toward the candle flaring in his breast, he jerked free. A string of saliva stretched between their mouths, glistening. “Pity,” Kit said, and broke it with a fingertip, stepping away. “More wine before we sleep?”
“No,” Will said. “I think I’ve had too much already. Art ready, for sleep?”
“Aye,” Kit answered, unbuttoning his doublet’s collar. “To sleep.”
“Will lay in darkness, listening to Kit’s slow breathing, hugging his nightshirt close to his sides. How can he sleep like that, as if nothing transpired? Sleep is what you should be doing as well,he reminded himself, and closed his eyes resolutely on the faintly moonlit swells and valleys of the canopy overhead.
Will nibbled his thumbnail, stopped quickly at the subtle reminder of the pressure of lips on lips. He turned on his side, careful not to shift the coverlet, and buried his face in a tightly clutched pillow as if the greater darkness could silence the voice in his heart.
What if I had shown him those poems? He knows. He must know. Or was he just being Kit? He shocked all Faerie with that song of old Harry’s. Did he want to shock me too? Did I want him to know?
Kit never stirred. Will cursed him his complacency, the even rhythm of his breath, the relaxation in his shoulders under the whiteness of his nightshirt when Will turned to look at him in the moonlight. Wondered what would happen if he, Will, put out his right hand and took Kit by the shoulder and turned him to the center of the bed, and stole another kiss. It would be more than a kiss now, and that, thou knowest.He sighed, and rolled back to his own side of the bed. O let my books be then the eloquence, And dumb presagers of my speaking breast. And what if I told him that? Would he kiss me like that again? What else would he do? Would I want him to?
An unanswerable question, for all Will would have known the answer short hours before. The night passed in discomfort, until the last grayness before the first gold of morning, when Kit’s muttered whimpers and bedding-snarled struggles drew Will upright.
“Kit?” No answer, but a low, tangled moan. Kit’s hand reached out, as if to grasp something, or ward it away, and Will impulsively caught his wrist with both hands. “Kit.”
Who blinked, and drew the hand back, self-consciously, rubbing at his scar. Who looked strange in the half-light, divested of the eyepatch.
Will still hadn’t quite accepted; Will wanted to reach out and touch that long whitescar, the drooping eyelid, the bland, pallid orb underneath. He tucked his hands below the covers.
“Dream,” Kit said softly, turning aside as if Will’s gaze discomfited him. “Damn me to Hell, Robert said they were supposed to get better after I made the cloak”
“What sort of a dream?” Will drew back among the pillows, propped against thebedpost. “Nightmares?”
“Robert said they were prophecy, and indeed I had one of you in Baines clutches. Twas what drove me to your rescue. But stitching that cloak was meant to bring their power under control. Prophetic dreams are all very handy, I’m sure, but if I cannot sleep at night, any night, I’ll be of no use to anyone.”
“You slept a little,” Will said.
“I had …” Kit stopped, his hands fretting the bedclothes. “Just drifted off a moment ago.”
“Oh.” Wariness, and then a cold sort of delight. Not so cool as he pretends, Master Shakespeare. It will not behoove you to be cruel.
“The cloak,” Will said; anything to break the fraught, gray silence. “What if you spread it over the bed? There’s herbs that keep dreams off if placed under your pillow. Perhaps it holds the same sort of virtue.”
Kit lifted his chin and slid his legs out of the bed. He’d pulled the cloak off its foot the night before and folded it neatly over the back of thechair; now he shook it open and laid it over the coverlet. The fabrics dark and bright, rich and plain, were hypnotic; Will reached out and stroked a rose-colored trapezoid of brocade. “Why a patchwork?”
“Kit smiled. Morgan and Cairbre say it signifies all the hearts a bard has pleased with his music; it represents protection, for the good will of all those listeners and lovers interlinks to a garment that keeps ill magic and ill fate away like ill weather. A very old kind of sympathy.”
“So not a fool’s motley, then?”
“They both represent something sacrosanct.” Kit clambered back into bed, making a show of pushing his pillow around, and lay down with his back to Will again. “A tatterdemalion sort of magic, but there you are.”
“Which patch is from your Prince?”
“He hasn’t given one.” A hesitation. “The green-figured velvet embroidered with the unicorn, though. That was from Morgan, and oddly formal for a thing that’s meant to be made of scraps and ragged leavings.”
“As if the Bard, in exchanging pleasure and truth with many, isn’t entitled to a single whole life of his own.”
“Rest easy, Kit,” Will said, because he could not think what else to say. “I’ll wake you again, if need be.”
For such outrageous passions cloy my soul,
As with the wings of rancor and disdain,
Full often am I soaring up to heaven,
To plaint me to the gods against them both:
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Edward II
Kit awakened for the second time almost rested, and he wasn’t entirely certain whether it was the mingled silken and harsh fabrics of the cloak bunched in his fists that made the difference, or Will’s arm around his shoulders, bridging the careful four inches that separated their bodies. The rhythm of Will’s breathing told him the other poet was not sleeping. “Was I dreaming again?”
“Complexly, I gather, from thy conversations.” Will drew back as Kit turned to face him, and Kit frowned.
Aye, Marley. And your own damned fault it is. What wert thou thinking? More to the point, what wert thou thinking with?
“Conversations? What did I say?” Kit sat upright, reaching for his eyepatch.
At least I didn’t wake up screaming this time; the cloak must have its uses.Will blushed, and as Kit asked, he remembered a flurry of wild white wings like Icarus, doves? Swans? If it’s swans, does it mean Elizabeth? There seems to be a symbolism running through these dreams of mine, rather than a literal thread. And there had been blood, and pentagrams.
“Thou didst call on Christ to save thee. Begged someone to finish something, or make it done. And then Consummatum est.”
Kit stood and pulled his nightshirt over his head, stumbling across the carpet to the wash-basin. He all but felt Will avert his eyes. “I remember now. If I could only remember what it is that was done…”.
“Yes. Kit.”
Kit turned back, preserving some semblance of modesty with the nightshirt in his hand, amused at Will’s reaction to his nudity. Unkind, Christofer. I am what I am.
“What is that mark on thy side? Oh, there’s another.”
“Five,” Kit answered, remembering how they had burned as if writ anew on his flesh, in the dream. “One on my breast. One to each side, just below the ribs on my belly. One gracing each thigh, like the points of a star.”
“The circle of Solomon or the pentangle?”
“I imagine the circle would have required more men. And then, circles are for keeping something out; pentagrams for keeping something in. Stopping my voice in my throat, like the bridle. And when my Edward proved to them they had failed to break me, they killed me. God in heaven, I hope I never know what Oxford was thinking when we Lacrima Christi. When we were together.”
“How much did he know? ALL of it?”
“Not an accident, then. Rheims,” Kit said, and waited. “Did you think I was kidding about the irons, Will?”