“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.”
Rosalind:
Oh how full of briers is this working-day world.
Celia:
They are but burrs, Cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday foolery, if we walk not in the trodden paths our very petticoats will catch them.
Rosalind:
I could shake them off my coat, these burrs are in my heart.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, As You like It
Will’s days seemed longer than the span of their hours, a languorous blur of lovemaking, companionship, and poetry that expanded to include time for every eventuality and sunsets too. The nights he spent with Kit or Morgan by turns, the days in rehearsal for Chiron planned for the Hallowmas entertainment or with his lovers. He hadn’t felt anything like it since the first flush of his affair with Annie. It cannot last. No, only through the autumn, and when winter came to England Will must be homeward bound. Still the days were endless, the weeks longer than months, the perfection of his happiness such that he almost did not move himself to ask how time passed in the mortal world. “Worry not,” Kit assured him as they sat on rocks over the ocean, watching sunset stain the white manes of the waves, listening to their whickering. “Hallowmas will be Hallowmas, here as there, and then…”
“We’ll have the bloody slaughter of the noblest of centaurs under our belts, and I will bid thee adieu.” Will pulled a stalk of salt grass and slipped the tender inwards from its overcoat to chew. He gave the dry brown husk to the air; the sea wind blew it back over his shoulder. “Kit, what will we do?” Kit tugged his slowly growing cloak around his shoulders and bumped Will’s shoulder with his own. “Ford it when we come to it,” he said. We should.”
“Aye. We should. It will only grow harder.” The wind stirred Will’s hair. The locks had outstripped the length they should have in the time he’d been in Faerie. “I can picture myself pining by my window for my Faerie lover, growing gray and sere. A legend will grow up.”
“Will!” Kit grabbed his wrist, and jerked it. Will turned, startled; Kit’s expression was wild. “Don’t joke about such things. Never joke about such things; you’re on the edge of legend here, and names have power, and things listen.” His plain fear brought an answering tingle to Will’s spine, to his fingertips.
“Morgan wants me to stay.” The chewed stem grew bitter. Will tossed it away.
“I want thee to stay,” Kit said, still staring. “And Morgan wishes me to plead with thee as well. But I will not permit it.” Kit’s pulse flickered in the hollow of his throat.
Will wrenched his eyes away. “Art my sovereign, Marley?” Soft as the ocean’s breath playing over them both.
“Aye.” The fingers on Will’s wrist tightened. “Aye, in this thing, I am. What would thy girls do, without thee?”
“What they do now, I expect. I’ve hardly been an exemplary father and husband.” Will kissed Kit’s brow, by way of example.
Kit released him to pluck a smooth, moon-white stone from a crevice in their sand-worn perch. He tossed it thrice before it slipped between his fingers, rattling on the rocks below. “Blast. Thou hast the chance to be better at both, at least.” His gaze lifted to the darkening horizon.
Abruptly, Will understood. “Kit, forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive. I’d live to bury any wife or child I’d left behind; aye, and their grandchildren, too. If I’m fortunate enough that no one puts a knife in the other eye.” The wind freshened. The day’s warmth soaked the stone they sat upon; Will pressed his back against it. “After Chiron,” he said, dropping his arm around Kit’s shoulders, “I suppose I shall go home.”