“Aye,” he answered, at last able to laugh. “Too thin, undereducated, set above my station, and disinclined of writing the sort of masques and humors in fashion in London, for all Faerie loves me. Chapman or Jonson will be happy to tell you more of my failings.”
But there was a sort of magic in that unmoving hand. Its warmth spread through him and unlocked the chains that held him taut, unknotted the fear in his belly. Will let one hand slide down Kit’s leg, thumb caressing the inside of his thigh.
“Undereducated?” Kit leaned forward to claim another kiss. “I had promised to improve your understanding of classics. Shall we start with some Latin, then, before we move on to the Greek?”
“Think you my Latin insufficient?” Will opened his mouth for the kiss. Kit hadn’t touched his wine. His mouth was flavored with traces of pipe tobacco and the fainter bitterness that was just Kit. He stroked Will’s hair as if gentling the wild thing Will suddenly felt himself to be. Kit stretched like a cat while Will unlaced his collar and then stopped, as sunlight caught the shiny unevenness of old scars. Will pushed the edges of lawn apart and reached up to brush Kit’s breast with his fingertips, outlining a shape that had the look of a sigil in some arcane alphabet.
“Christ, Kit.”
“Ancient history,” Kit said, and kissed Will’s fingers. Thou’rt trembling. Art certain … ?”
“Aye,” Will said, and put his fingers through Kit’s hair. “I hate to think of thee…”
“Peace, Will. There’s less that’s pretty, I’m afraid.” Kit shrugged out of his shirt, biting his lip, refusing to meet Will’s eyes while they made a fresh inventory of his scars. And then Will reached for him, and it was all right, after all.
Someone’s foot scattered papers across the jewel-red wool rug, and mismatched scraps of parchment and foolscap crinkled and adhered to skin. Will laughed, and Kit bit his shoulder gently, sliding up to cover him. “Skinny and furry,” he said. “I apologize for the state of the poetry.”
“I needed to make a fair copy anyway.”
“The words could hardly be fairer.” A lingering kiss, fraught with intricacies. Will ran a slow hand up Kit’s spine, enjoying the abandoned expression that followed his touch. Fear filled his throat, but he said, “Thou offer’d to instruct me.”
“Tis not often I’m privileged to instruct thee.”
“Other than blank verse and buggery?”
Kit choked, turning his face aside until he mastered the giggles that warmed Will’s throat. “Buggery,” he recited, lips twitching with the effort to maintain a bored pedant’s tone. “So-called in reference to the purported practices of the Bougres, gnostics of France, who held the world so evil that procreation was a sin.”
“Kit,” Will interrupted, “surely you are the most erudite of sodomites.”
Kit wheezed laughter. “Been said.”
“Art … willing?” he asked when Kit’s shoulders stopped shaking.
“Willing and more than willing”
Will caught his breath. “Work thy will on thy William, then.”
Kit, regarding him seriously, touched the tip of his nose. “Still frightened?”
“Not enough to matter,” Will answered, and let Kit lead him to the bed.
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.