“Bargain well,” Puck said, and held the stirrup.
Grief and gratitude welled into Kit’s eye. He blinked them back and took the reins when Robin held them up.
“I know not how to thank you.” The Fae skipped away from the gelding’s hooves.
“Come home safe, Christofer Marley.” He stepped into a shadow and was gone. Kit tucked his cloak about him to keep it from flapping, turned his mount with his knees, and urged the sorrel toward the palace gate.
What, do you tremble? are you all afraid?
Alas, I blame you not; for you are mortal,
And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Richard III
The road stretched broad and easy before Will and his docile, mannerly, ghost-colored mare. Her shoes chimed carillon on the smooth cobblestones. She arched her neck as if proud of her burden, for all he slumped on her back like a bag of fresh-killed game. The stirrups cut through the arches of his court slippers; he did not even attempt to ride over the beat of her stride, as the women riding astride did.
The Mebd rode on Will’s left side and Morgan on his right; as they had passed under the archway of the palace gate, Morgan caught his sleeve. When he had turned to her, unwilling to meet her eyes, the Mebd had reined her ink-black gelding shoulder to shoulder with the milk-white mare and reached over Will’s bowed head and hunched shoulders to press something onto his brow. A circlet, a band of resilient gold; he saw its reflection in Morgan’s eyes.
“You knew,” he said to the woman he had loved.
She nodded and swept a hand through the wire-curled tumult of her hair. “I chose,” she said simply, turning away again. Her bay horse dipped a white-blazed face as if to crop the grass at the roadside; Morgan twitchedthe reins and the mare snorted, soft purls steaming from her nostrils.
“I thought it would help him, in the end. We need your Christofer whole, sweet William.”
“Do not…” The mare tossed her head as his hands tightened on the reins. He forced himself drape them loose against her neck. She settled into her easy pace again. The horse knows her own way home.
“Don’t … what, my love?”
The Mebd rode close, within hearing of the softest murmur. Shadows seemed to grasp around the edge of things. Clutching branches and rustling limbs. Willow be walk, if yew travels late.
“Don’t call me pet names,” he said, hoping his voice sounded disinterested. “I saw.”
She smiled. White teeth winked in the corner of his eye. “Kit and me?”
“Aye.” The heat of his furious blush. And what did it matter now, lust or love, fornication or sacrament? He was damned.
The clawing shadows crowded closer to the road; Will, with ease, could imagine them, pitchfork-wielding demons.
“Ah,” she said. Yes. “Lovely boy. Very sweet in bed. Far too easy to manipulate. Twas one of the flaws I had hoped Lucifer could correct in him.”
“As if Hell were a schoolboy caning.”
“But Master Shakespeare,” honest startlement, her gray eyes wide in the moonlight, “it is.”
Whatever he might have found to say in response was ended by the flicker of a lantern a few hundred yards ahead, emerging through gaudy, rustling October leaves. The low yellow flame rested at ground level, silhouetting a square, glass-sided frame, the interleaved cobbles of a crossroads, and the shining dark hooves of a massive steed. It limned the figure on the stallion’s back from beneath the soft black velvet of his doublet, the sovereign shine of his hair. The kind alabaster arch of his enormous wings cast their own pale glow, feather edges stained gold over silver by the candlelight.
For Kit,Will thought, as Lucifer Morningstar lifted his chin and regarded the approaching trio. His wings fanned softly; he leaned back in his saddle in feigned surprise. “Why, tis not the soul I was bid expect. Good even, Master Shakespeare. How pleasant to make thine acquaintance again”
Morgan placed a warm hand on the small of Will’s back. He rode forward as much to elude the touch as because that was where his white mare took him. From the corner of his eye, Will thought perhaps he saw Morgan’s cheeks shining. Ridiculous that Morgan le Fay should weep for me.And then he smiled. As ridiculous as that she should moan for me.He turned back over his shoulder. Distantly, he thought for a moment he heard the echo of galloping hooves. Morgan wept indeed: Will forced himself to meet her eyes and speak coolly. Love her all you will, foolish heart. She’ll have no more kindness from thee.
“Tell Kit,” he said, his voice cracking. “Tell Kit I bid him care for my Annie and my girls.”
Whatever she might have said in return died on her lips, or under the peals of the white mare’s hooves as she bore Will forward beneath the mighty wings of the Prince of Hell. Lucifer turned his horse and, leaving the lantern where it lay, led Will and his strange knowing mount into darkness and down.
“You have the look of a man who will be hard to buy, Master Shakespeare”
“Buy, and not break?”
“And yet you have an imagination. That is well. I invite you to contemplate that we will be together for eternity. Will you serve willing?”
“I came willing, Will answered.”
“No one comes willing” Lucifer said. “They come because they have no other choice. Or because they will accept no other choice presented them. Or rarely, as thy lover Marley learned, because they have come to understand that Hell is all around them, and that they have never been out of it once”
Will blinked. The sway of the white mare under him was growing comfortable. He forgot himself enough to turn in the saddle and look up at Lucifer’s face. The rebel angel smiled down slantwise.
“This is Hell? I had expected”
“Torment.”
“Aye”
Lucifer hesitated. Will realized that his black steed wore no reins.
“What torment, Master Shakespeare, could I heap upon thee worse than that which thou hast chosen for thyself?”
“Your … Highness?”
Really, Master Shakespeare. How dost thou think thou can serve us, poet, when thou canst not keep even thy troth to thy wife, or thy Ganymede, or thy mistress? All three at once thou hast betrayed.”
Stung, Will reined his mount further from the Devil’s side. She protested when he tried to bring her too far, and afraid of being thrown, he desisted.
“Kit lied.”
“Nay” Lucifer’s sky-blue regard spurned him. “He told thee whatever truth thou wouldst hear. How darest thou press thy lovers, thy wife to meet a standard thou canst not uphold?”
Will raised his right hand to his mouth, feeling the moment of realization like a dagger in the breast. This is what Annie felt,he realized. Felt and forgave. And as I cannot love less neither then can she.
“I have,” he said, the reins tumbling from his fingers. The white mare sidled next to Lucifer’s black stud, rubbing her shoulder against his, brushing Will’s knee against the Devil’s with a tingle Will would have preferred to deny. “I have made mine own Hell. I deserve it.”
“Every creature does.” the Devil answered, and they rode on in silence for one hour or a thousand, until they passed the low-arched gates of Hell.
My bloodless body waxeth chill and cold,
And with my blood my life slides through my wound;
My soul begins to take her flight to hell,
And summons all my senses to depart.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Tamburlaine the Great
The red gelding ran hard. Kit bent low over his neck, mane stinging his face, and did battle with the impulse that would have had him clutch the reins like a fool and kick the willing horse faster. The gelding’s hooves rattled on gravel and then thudded on packed earth; the way grew narrow and dark. Kit hunched closer to his horse and reined the gelding back, swearing, as the long angry claws of leafless oak trees reached across to bar the path and scrape his face, yank at his cloak and hair. This should be the beech wood. I should smell the sea.