“Lethe.”
Kit licked blistered lips. So the ifrit urged me drink. Drink, and forget all pain. Kit leaned back against the bow. The bank they had left retreated rapidly. He turned to look over his shoulder; the far bank seemed no nearer. All pain. All joy. No, thank you.The ferryman poled in silence for a little.
“You were eight years old in 1572.”
“I turned nine at the end of it, aye.”
“But in November? December?”
“I had measured eight summers.”
“Aye.”
“How do you know me so well, Master Ferryman?”
“It is my task to know. Do you remember what was special about that Christmas, Master Poet?”
Kit thought back. “The new star. Bright orange, it was. Visible by daylight.”
“Aye.”
“A new star in the heavens. A change upon the face of what many said was ineluctable destiny. It tormented the learned astrologers greatly.” Kit swallowed frustration; even though he spoke, the man poled fast. Surely they must be nearing the far bank shortly. He turned, and was surprised by the distance still to cover.
“What purpose these questions?”
“Idle conversation,” the ferryman said, and fell silent.
Kit glanced over his shoulder again. “How wide is this river, Master Ferryman?”
“As wide as it needs to be.” The steady rhythm of the pole continued, a little wake lifting in curls beside the bow. “You cannot land until you pay.”
Kit pressed his blistered palms together. He needed the gloves off, and to bathe his hands; not in this water, but he started peeling off the ruined kidskin anyway. “The thing I can least afford to lose? My life? I cannot pay that.”
“There’s something that has done you great service in your life, though you oft have denied it.” The ferryman never looked up from the water. “Not Will either. You lost that yourself. Hell had naught to do with it.”
Lost. Kit threw his gloves at his feet. Blood welled from his burns; he’d torn the skin. Lost. “Then what?”
The ferryman kicked the soles of Kit’s boots, never skipping a beat with his pole. The river made sounds against the boat like a maiden’s kisses. “Those will do for a symbol. Because it is. It’s symbols and the manipulation of symbols. Names and poetry. Even here.”
Kit’s brows rose in comprehension; the band of his eyepatch cut his forehead. “Those are all I have from my father.”
“No,” the ferryman said. “You have also his love, which led him to let you become this thing he could not understand. Because you needed it so desperately, my boy.”
“Oh, Christ.”
The ferryman shrugged. “One thing is the other.”
Kit hesitated. “My father did not love me.”
“Didn’t he? Doesn’t he? In his own narrow, thoughtless, assuming tradesman’s way? Hast never wished thou couldst love so, without the burden of thinking? Always thinking?”
Silence. And then, “Aye.”
“Hast never wished to be free of his love, his demands?”
“… aye.” Kit’s voice had gone small again. He didn’t bother, this time, to correct it.
“Then take off his boots.”
Kit lifted his foot across his knee and touched the leather. It smelled of saddle soap and bootblack. The old hide was supple and well-worn under his hand. His wrist had no strength suddenly; he hooked his fingers around the heel and wriggled his foot, and the boot would not shift. Or perhaps, more precisely, Kit would not shift it. He looked once more. The shore was no closer.
“Tis the same to me if we never arrive. I pole eternally.”
Will. Kit closed his eye and jerked the boot hard enough to burn his foot. He yanked the other one off as well and tossed them at the ferryman’s feet. Is that all?
“Get up,” the ferryman answered as the prow of the boat ground on the rocky shore. “Get up, Kit Marlowe.” His eyes flashed blue, amused. Kit shuddered. “Get up. Go in.”
Socks on his feet, hands reddened and weeping, mouth split with fiery kisses, Kit stood and turned in the ferry and did as he was bid.
Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies;
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:
Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 139
Lucifer’s own long hands steadied Will down from the white mare; Will staggered as someone stroked brands of fire up his thighs, and Lucifer caught him.
“Pained by the ride?”
“Excessively.” Will forced his body to straighten and limped away. “By my troth, if I never set arse in a saddle again, it will be sooner than I like.”
The white mare regarded him expressively from under fringed eyelashes. He bowed a pained apology, spongy pine needles squishing under his feet. “No offense intended, madam.”
Lucifer folded his wings tight against his doublet and slanted the identical look at Will.
“None taken, I presume” The angel patted her on the shoulder. She leaned against him briefly, smearing white horsehairs on the black velvet of his doublet, and trotted away through the pines. Drifts of needles thicker than a rush mat muffled her hoofbeats to a rainy sound, and then she was gone, trailing the tinkling of bells behind her. Lucifer’s black stud followed.
Will closed his eyes and breathed deep of still. “A forest? In Hell?”
“They call it the Wood of Suicides”
Will turned quickly to catch Lucifer’s expression, but the Devil’s face remained placid.
“It’s so serene. I thought the trees…” Will looked up at their soaring heights, at the greeny-gold light that filtered through the needles. He heard the ridiculousness of his own unconsidered words. You’re talking to the Father of lies as if he were a familiar friend, as if thou wert on a country outing.“…would be sad.”
“Why?” Lucifer’s wings resettled. Will wondered whether the fidgeting reflected the angel’s emotions. “They have what they wanted. I imagine they are as content as such folk may ever be. Beside that, tis oaks who hate and oaks who act. As thou well shouldst know by now”
“Oaks who?”
Lucifer smiled. “Surely thou knowst the rhyme. The Faerie trees: Ellum grieve, and oak he hate…”
“Willow he walk, if yew travels late,” Will finished, and sank down on the ground with his head clutched in his fingers, his eyes shut so tight they pained him. It didn’t hurt enough to satisfy; Will ground the heels of his palms into his eye. The Faerie trees. Oh God. Oh Christ.
The angel crouched beside him, wings opening wide for balance, or perhaps to shield Will’s grief from the pitiless sky. He did not touch Will, and Will was grateful for it. “I see” he said softly, “that thou didst not understand how strongly some factions in Faerie oppose the Mebd, and Gloriana, and anything that supports them. Master Shakespeare, I must plead thine indulgence; it did not occur to me that thou hadst not realized the connection.”
“The Fae killed Hamnet,” Will said, just to hear it given voice. So calm and even. It must have been someone else, speaking the barb-tipped words. “It was my fault. They did it to stop me writing. To break me and drive me home. The Fae killed Hamnet. Because of me.”
“Aye,” Lucifer said. “Not all the Fae. But those who have no love for Elizabeth and less love yet for the Daoine Sidhe”
Will’s throat burned. His eyes were dry, somehow, although there was no strength in his arms or legs to lift him from the sweet-smelling carpet of needles. “It didn’t work.”
“Nor shall it now. Thy will is greater than it seems, Master Shakespeare.” The wings spread, arched, sheltering. Despite himself, Will laughed painfully at the pun. The smell of woodsmoke surrounded him, sweet and pungent, as if exhaled from Lucifer’s feathers and skin.