Hell and Earth

“Ah – ” Will raised his eyes to the impassive, alabaster masks of two women who had never looked so much like sisters as they did at this moment, for all the Mebd rode sidesaddle, swathed in layers of color‑shifting silk, and Morgan wore those damned riding breeches that had once so discomfited Will.

“Master Shakespeare,” Morgan said musically, patting a stray strand of hair back into her pearl‑braided chignon. “It appears thou hast a thing which doth belong to me.” She raised a hand imperiously, fingers belled loosely into a fist, and her eyes were not on Will’s but on the raven’s black ones.

Will told himself that the raven could not smirk.“He doesn’t leave the Tower,” Will said. “His life is England’s, now.” The poet rubbed his beard. Ice crystals were forming between the spiral hairs; they dusted his breast when he lowered his hand.

Morgan left hers upraised, her head tilted as if she, herself, were some strange new sort of raptor. The Mebd, still silent, turned only her head to regard her sister, her pale lips twitching toward a smile. The long, woven braids of her hair slid like a fisherman’s weighted net around her shoulders.

Morgan did not return her sister’s glance. “What wouldst thou see done with him?”

“I’d see him ensconced with Sir Walter, I think. The brave captain can see to his safety, can any man–and is conveniently unable to leave the Tower.”

“I shall reclaim the bird sooner or later, sweet William.”

“Aye,” Will said. “But not until ravens flock these grounds again. Do we have an agreement, my lady?”

She bit her lip, ignoring the Mebd’s arch amusement. “He’s hidden from me for a thousand years, ” Morgan le Fey said at last, acquiescing. Her hand slid gracefully down to rest on her thigh, cupped inward, palm open. “A few more days mean nothing.”

Will looked at the raven. The raven looked at Will. Their silent regard was interrupted by the measured clop of hooves.

Kit’s horse wasn’t white at all, Will saw with relief, but a sorrel gelding so red he gleamed like wet blood even by the cold fey light that surrounded them. His saddle and bridle were leather, even redder, a saber sheathed on the harness by Kit’s left hand. A white blaze graced the animal’s nose, dripping so low he seemed to drink it, and Kit’s free hand rose again and again to stroke the coarse blond mane back from the crest.

The fond gentleness of Kit’s touch contrasted harshly with the expression he turned on Morgan. Murchaud took a half step forward. Will shot a hand sideways and gripped his sleeve, staggering with the force it took to stop the Prince’s movement.

“Will–” Tom said behind him, and Will shook his head just enough to make his hair brush against his collar.

“‘Tis his to play out, Tom,” Will said under his breath. Ben grunted on Murchaud’s far side, but stayed steady as if planted. “Stand fast, and be ready for whatever might befall.”

“My kingdom for a good iron blade, ” Tom answered. Will grinned at the sideways flattery despite the tension in the air.

“Don’t say that where the Fae can hear you,” Will answered. “They’ve been known to take men up on bargains like that.” He didn’t take his eyes off Kit and Morgan, listening to the long silence stretch between them, wondering when it would break. He smiled to himself, and thought, and now is the time to brace Salisbury, while he’s still considering blackmail and England.

Silently, controlling his limp as best he could, Will disengaged himself from Murchaud and went toward the thunder‑browed Secretary of State.

Fie on that love that hatcheth death and hate!

–Christopher Marlowe, Edward II,Act IV, scene v

Morgan met Kit’s gaze calmly, her eyes dark and mysterious as emeralds in the weird, cold light. Over her shoulder, the Queen of Faerie looked on. Beyond her, not even turning his head to the scene, Cairbre the Bard sat his saddle like a statue, a ruby gleaming in the tip of his pointed ear where it parted the black strands of his hair.

The sorrel’s hooves were steady on the rimed cobblestones; nearby, Will and Tom and Murchaud and that damned self‑satisfied Ben Jonson stood side by each, bloody and ragged and ready for more. Kit’s breast filled up with a warrior’s pity and indignation, that men so tired should be made to fight endlessly on–

Wrath held him silent long enough for the corner of Morgan’s mouth to twitch with discomfort. Kit cleared his throat. “You lied to me.”

“Sir Christofer?”

Such patent innocence, her hand raised to her throat. Kit turned his head and spat, the sorrel dancing a sidled step. A fragment of motion caught his eye: the flip of Puck’s ear, where Puck sat his pony. “Such pretty nonsense you all told me–and chief among the liars, you, Morgan. Poets and rades and battles of song and powers and portents–”

“Dost see a rade before thee?” Morgan’s gesture swept the gathered Fae, touched Murchaud and his mortal companions, swept up and dismissed Salisbury and his men.

Kit raised an eyebrow when he spotted Will, moving between the groups. The laugh he could not contain sliced like a fish bone at his throat. “Thou hadst no care for me, my Queen–”

“Not so‑”

“–I was only the vessel. The container. The prison for the being thou didst truly wish to touch, to win–”

“–not so,” she said again, even softer. The tone in her voice was too much.

He flinched, and stopped, the gelding shaking his mane as Kit’s grip tightened on the bloodred reins. His nervousness affected the horse; he could see white traces of foam against the crimson neck, where the reins rubbed the animal’s cold sweat into lather.

“We’re here for thee,” Morgan said, lifting her head on her long white neck. “We would not have permitted thee to be sacrificed–”

“No,” Kit continued, finding his voice again. He shivered no longer, Mehiel’s power warming his shoulders like a feathered cloak. “You did not come to fight a war, but to twist another sorcerer’s magic to your uses. Baines would not have completed his ritual, had thou thy choice of events. But thou wouldst have waited until he had the opportunity to fill me up with his power and his plans, as if I were no more than a talisman, a crystal to be cut into a lens–”

“We could have used the power, ” Cairbre said quietly.

“I imagine you could,” Kit answered.

“It does not mean that we have no fondness for you–”

“No, teacher.” Kit’s outrage and fury were failing him. The warm horse breathed between his legs, the ears swiveled one forward, one back, switching with every nervous ripple of the gelding’s tail. “No, I know the Fae and their fondnesses. Fondness would not stop you from spilling my blood.” He gave his attention back to Morgan. “What did they offer thee for thine assistance, my Queen?”

He didn’t need her answer. He saw her eyes flick to the raven, and to Will. Murchaud stepped forward, away from Ben and Tom. “Mother,” he said. “You should have trusted me.”

A ripple of power, the sound of wings inside his mind. Kit forced his hand open, forced himself to stroke the sorrel’s rough mane rather than knotting his fingers in it as he would have liked to as Murchaud walked calmly to his mother’s stirrup and drew her down by her sleeve to whisper in her ear. The gelding turned his head slightly, enough to roll his eye at Kit. Could you move this along, please? ‘Tis tiresome, Sir Poet, standing here in the cold on rough cobbles.

Kit bit his cheek on tired laughter, all his irritation draining away. Perhaps I’ve just been used too much to care any more,he thought. And also, I’m keeping this horse.

“Trusted thee?” Kit asked the Prince, when Morgan did not comment. He wondered at the speaking look Murchaud gave him, and hesitated. Twisted the reins around his fingers until they cut his skin. Nausea twisted likewise in his belly; he caught himself looking after Will, bent in whispered argument with Salisbury, and away from Morgan and Murchaud.

‘Tis time to pick a side.He touched the trusted sorrel’s mane again. “I wish I knew your name.”

“Gin,” Puck said, having come up silently on his pony.

“Gin?” The sorrel’s ears flicked back. “For Ginger?”

“‘Cause he’s a rum one,” Puck answered. His laugh smelled of juniper and loam, and Kit’s confused expression showed; it made the little elf laugh the harder. “What will you do, Sir Poet?”

You, not thou. It stung, and Kit could not deny he deserved it. “What do you think the Prometheans’ ritual, their capture of Mehiel, will mean over time, Master Goodfellow?”

Puck shifted on his shaggy pony’s saddle. The barrel‑bodied animal shook itself, its wiry upright mane rippling with the motion. “If the angels are clever, it means an end to miracles.”

“And an end to martyrs?”

The little Fae’s wide mouth twitched. “There will always be martyrs. You did not answer me.”

“No,” Kit said. “I did not. First we deal with Baines.”

“And then?”

“This will never end,” Kit answered, “as long as I live, and Mehiel lives in me.’

“Aye. Shall I ask you a third time, Sir Poet?”

Kit lifted his reins. Murchaud stepped back from Morgan’s saddle and moved away. He caught Kit’s eye under the arch of her horse’s neck and mouthed something–two words. Trust me.

Ah, my Prince. If only.Kit’s gaze slid off Murchaud’s, and found the back of Will’s head as Will laid his hand quite boldly on Salisbury’s sleeve, demanding the Secretary of State’s attention. Kit sighed. “Will is for England,” he said with a tired shrug. “And I am for Will.”

The devil knew not what he did when he made man politic; he crossed himself by ‘t: and I cannot think but in the end the villainies of man will set him clear. How fairly this lord strives to appear foul! takes virtuous copies to be wicked, like those that under hot ardent zeal would set whole realms on fire.

–William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens,Act III, scene iii

Salisbury looked up, still scowling, as Will closed the distance between them until he was close enough to the Earl that Salisbury visibly resisted stepping back. Will gathered himself, drawing on a player’s dignity as he framed himself against the Tower wall and the Faerie lights behind. He waited a moment, until he was certain of Salisbury’s full attention, and deepened his voice when he spoke. “I think I know what you want, Mr. Secretary. And I think I can give it to you.”

Cecil paused, his head angling sideways on his short, wry neck. “What I want, Master Shakespeare?”

An attempt at coolness, and Will saw through it. For all his political savoir‑faire, Salisbury was no player. “You wish English security,” Will offered, smiling and holding tight to the sleeve of Salisbury’s warm woolen robe when the Secretary might have pulled away. Will’s hand trembled only a little. He leaned forward to make the nodding of his chin seem chosen rather than uncontrolled. His breath steamed in the air between them; he was grateful for the drama of the effect. “You wish the power of the Romish and Puritan factions lessened, the Prometheans brought to heel” – a gentle cough – “and your own, shall we call it, future assured.”

“Very astute, Master Shakespeare,” Salisbury said, lowering his tone. “You do not mention the King.”

“No. My lord, I do not. But England –I mention her. Not the King. Not the Church. But the land, and the men.”

“All this love for a spit of rocky land cast adrift from the Continent?” It was mockery, but not dismissal. Mockery that hid something else, something slick and sapient, and Will went after it carefully as tickling fish.

“All this love for Englishmen,” Will answered.

“You expect me to believe that?” Low intense, the man’s teeth flashing.

Will smiled and stepped back, only half a pace. Eight inches, no more, and he knew Salisbury heard his foot scuff lightly over the cobbles. “And nothing for myself?” Will brushed a hand across the expensive, stained brocade of his doublet, the King’s livery badge on his breast. “Haven’t I more than any common man should dream? Both from James and from Bess?”

“Yes,” Salisbury answered.

Will glanced over his shoulder, and saw Kit’s eyes drop a second too late to hide the intensity of his regard. Relief and pity warred in him, and a cold white flame he knew for bitter, possessive love. Frustrated love.

Is love nonetheless.The raven stirred on his shoulder. Salisbury’s eyes were drawn.

“We can be allies,” he offered, striving to keep his tone generous. “Or we can be enemies. You are who you are, my lord, but Earls before you have found me a very bad enemy to have.”

It was Salisbury’s turn to glance over Will’s shoulder, and Will wondered what he saw. “Are you going to threaten me again, Master Poet?”

“Not unless you force me, Mr. Secretary.” Will looked down at his hands, let them fall, folded them in front of his belt. “Speak with our King. Talk to him about our Bible–”

Salisbury scoffed. “What purpose will that serve?”

Will raised his eyes again, held Salisbury’s with his own practiced, disquieting gaze. “The power of the Romish and Puritan factions lessened, the Prometheans brought to heel”–he recited, the same tones as before–“and your own, shall we call it, future assured.” A tilt of his head. “Believe in me.”

Salisbury blinked. “We’ll discuss it when the conspirators are captured–”

“If we live so long.”

“Little danger of any other outcome,” Salisbury replied. He paused, considering. “The King would wish to involve Bishop Andrewes.”

Who had been Will’s own parish cleric, after a fashion: the Bishop of Southwark, at Saint Saviour’s. Will sighed, but nodded.

He’d worked by committee before.

Salisbury raised his head a moment before the clop of hooves alerted Will that they had company.

The Mebd’s soft voice followed, furred like catkins, complex as honey. “Master Shakespeare,” she murmured as Will turned and dropped her a deep and heartfelt bow and another for the red‑haired Queen beside her. A poet flanked them on either side–one dark, one fair and blood‑smeared–and a Fool rode a pony between. “My Lord of Salisbury. Dawn is coming.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Salisbury answered. Will stepped to the side. “I am at your command.” With a sideways glance to Will– this is not settled.

“Ride,” she said. “See to your Romish conspirators. You may find them more challenging to catch than anticipated.”

“And your royal selves?”

She smiled, sunlight through the first pale leaves of spring. “We shall see to Richard Baines.”

Act V, scene xx

Stand up, ye base, unworthy soldiers!

Know ye not yet the argument of arms?

–Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great,Part II, Act IV, scene i

Sir Walter welcomed the raven’s company enough that Kit rather suspected he would have been happy to stage a small escape and come with them. Unfortunately, Salisbury had been reluctant to let the poets go up to see him alone, and so they had climbed the stair–each limping, leaning on one another despite the way Will’s touch still made Kit’s skin crawl–in the company of four of Salisbury’s guard, Kit’s lacerated and blistered foot as painful as if he had roasted it carefully over one of the braziers below. They climbed down again poorer by one mythic raven, who seemed remarkably sanguine about being left behind with Sir Walter.

When they returned, they found Salisbury no longer in evidence and his men more or less dispersed. Murchaud, Ben, and Tom had all been given Faerie mounts; Kit wondered if they were real fey animals, or if they would disappear into dried leaves and twists of straw with the dawn’s advent. He checked the horizon, catching Will’s bemused expression from the corner of his eye, and the rosy glow over the Tower wall told him if that were the case, they had best ride fast.

Puck came forward, leading Gin and a soft‑eyed gray mare, but Will looked at the horse askance. “I’d rather ride pillion behind Tom or Ben,” he said, hesitantly stroking her nose.

“Ride pillion behind me,” Kit offered. Will glanced sideways and grinned, surprised. Kit hid his flinch as Will’s gloved fingers tightened on his own. “I don’t suppose you know where in Hell we’re going?”

“Not Hell,” Puck said. “Well, perhaps Hell, but I think it unlikely.” He handed Kit the sorrel’s reins, and Kit tugged his hand from Will’s and leaned on the saddle instead.

“Where then?”

“We go a‑hunting Richard Baines,” the Mebd said, riding toward them, her horse’s hooves making not a sound. Kit swore he saw her ears prick and swivel. “Welcome, poets. Welcome, bards. Master Shakespeare, I have a task for thee–”

Kit tightened his grip on the warm, smooth leather, fumbling for the stirrup as the gelding snorted impatiently but stood steady as a menhir. Up, clumsy mortal! Up!

“How does Your Majesty intend to find him?” Kit asked, pitching his voice in the courtly range. “He’s warded against the power in the Darkling Glass.”

He stilled his hand with an effort when he found his thumbnail picking flaked blood from his opposite wrist. Instead, he patted the comforting weight of the saber still slung from Gin’s saddle. Will crossed to lay a hand on his boot; Kit reached down to help swing him into the saddle, and paused when the Mebd cleared her throat.

The Mebd glanced over at her sister Morgan, and the two women shared an enigmatic smile. “Hounds,” the Queen said, and reached out with one pale lily of a hand to touch Murchaud on the thigh. He startled, his clubbed hair bobbing as his head snapped up, his horse fussing at the sudden uncontrolled jerk on her reins. The Mebd let her hand slide down his thigh, turned, transferred the reins as smoothly as a trick rider and leaned perilously far from her sidesaddle to trail the other hand down Morgan’s white‑sleeved arm. “Hounds,” she repeated, and–in a transformation that was over in an eyeblink – a red dog and a black‑brindle crouched in the saddles where Morgan and her son had been.

Kit reached blindly for Murchaud, stunned, his hand trembling. The black dog showed teeth and laid his ears flat on his head, and Kit let his fingers flex softly and his hand fall to his side. He heard Will’s startled gasp, the long slow rattle of his breath permitted to slide back out. “Your Highness.” Kit raised his eyes to the Mebd’s. “Change them back.”

Her long nails scrabbling for purchase on the sloped leather of the saddle, the red hound hopped to the ground and wove between the horse’s legs, sniffing intently. And the Mebd smiled. “We shall,” the Mebd answered. “After we have your nemesis in hand, Sir Christofer. Surely thou hast ridden to the hunt before?”

“Nay, “he said. “Surely you have other hounds, my lady… . The black dog joined the red, sniffing, circling, wiry coat undulating in the cold gray predawn. Kit blinked, realizing how bright it had grown. He reached down right‑handed to grab Will’s fingers, still resting on his ill‑fitting boot.

“No hounds such as these, ” she said. “Master Shakespeare, come forward.”

Kit clutched Will’s cold gloved fingers, but Will tugged them loose and moved three steps away. Gin shied and sidestepped away from the pressure of Kit’s knee when he would have gone after, and he could only watch skinny, shiny‑headed Will limp up to clasp the stirrup of the Queen. “Will – ”

“Your Highness,” Will said, quite ignoring Kit. The Mebd nodded to him silently and lifted her chin to stare Kit down.

He lasted perhaps a minute and a half. “Why these hounds?”

“They are hounds that have a certain link to thee which will help them find the sorcerer who used thee so badly, Sir Kit,” she said, and smiled. Kit heard Tom’s sudden indrawn breath, the creak of leather as he swung from the saddle of his own Faerie mount. Kit turned to fix him with a withering stare, but it was as if Kit had grown as invisible as Mehiel. The red hound craned her neck up to nose Kit’s stirrup once.

“Your Highness,” Tom said, raking both hands through his graying auburn hair. “If I understand you correctly, I would serve in this capacity as well.” He looked at Will, as if for permission. Will tilted his head, smiling, and shrugged, and finally both men turned to look at Kit. Who looked down promptly, away from Ben Jonson’s startled cough.

Kit turned to fix Ben with a glare, but the wry bemusement on the young poet’s face turned a searing glance into a sideways shrug. One that made Ben cough again, and then burst out laughing, both hands over his face.

The Mebd laid her hands on Will’s head, and Tom’s, and flinched. “You have iron on ye,” she said, leaning back in the saddle. The spare Faerie horses withdrew as she spoke, milling in back of the rest, docile as if led.

Kit watched as Tom divested himself of various things – boots and dagger and what else came to hand that might have so much as a flake of iron in it. Will did the same, but when he searched his pockets he paused and turned back to Kit. “Hold this for me,” he said. “Safekeeping.” And pressed a silk pouch containing a bit of iron into Kit’s palm.

“Oh, Will,” Kit said, words forced past a wall of emotion.

Will just shook his head. And a moment later a tall, wire‑coated gray hound and a blue‑brindled one stood beside the red one and the black.

“Christ,” Kit said, not caring that the Queen made a moue of distaste and the Puck clapped his hands over his lolling ears. “What sort of hounds are those?”

“Faerie hounds, Sir Poet,” Puck answered, patting Kit’s boot as he hung the little silk pouch around his neck. “With yawning mouths, sharp teeth, and wet lolling tongues. Fleet of limb, compact of foot, and tireless in the hunt.”

The dogs circled, casting for a scent. Kit watched, slowly shaking his head, and bit his lip when the red bitch belled in a voice he would have known anywhere. A moment later and all four hounds gave throat, and Cairbre and the Mebd wheeled their steeds around.

“Come on,” Puck cried to Kit and Ben, giving his heels to his shaggy pony. “Come on! We hunt!”

If the trail took them through London, Kit never knew it. He crouched low over the gelding’s blond mane and watched the running hounds–their half‑pricked ears, their wiry coats, their long muzzles and longer legs stretched out in flight. The gray limped, he thought, but it still outran the blue‑brindle. Kit could not force himself to give them names. Will. Tom.

The horses’ hooves might have flailed air, for all the sound they made, and Kit thought they ran through walls and buildings as easily as if they coursed along roads. The whole world went to shadows, rosy with the dawn and gray with winter, and all around was the silent rhythm of horses running like ghosts, their breaths and those of their riders trailing back in plumes of white, the pulse of air through their lungs, the creak of leather, the bell of hounds the only sound. Ben’s big bay surged along on Kit’s left; on his right side the Mebd’s leggy black outran the rest. Beyond her Kit glimpsed Cairbre’s mount steady at her flank, nose even with the post of her sidesaddle, and when he ducked his head to glance under his arm, he saw Puck’s strange little pony striving gamely in their wake, almost lost amidst the Mebd’s flock of courtiers.

Kit pulled his eyes away, rocking with the motion of the horse, wincing when his weight hit his injured foot in the stirrup and fresh blood oiled the inside of the dead man’s boot, wetness soap‑slick on the glassy surface of sweat‑cured leather.

The hounds ran on, and the horses ran behind them, and the sun rose from behind the ghosts of houses and trees. Glimmerings moved among the city’s landmarks: Gin ran through the shadow of a girl who stood one moment golden‑haired and garbed in blue, laughing – and the next sodden and dark, clad for mourning. It was a dream of London, Mehiel told Kit. A dream of England: not quite Faerie, but a place that was neither quite Faerie nor real. So this is how Baines hides himself so well.Except… how did he come here? How did he know of this place? What is it, a shadow world, world of the half‑told stories?Kit glanced sideways to catch Ben’s face over the lofting mane of his bay, saw the wonder and the bitten lip and the big hands steady in concentration on the reins.

Five hounds now, not four, Kit saw, and the fifth one white as starlight on snowdrifts, running strongly alongside the others, close as if teamed. The fifth dog was larger and more beautiful than the others, like an idealized alabaster statue rather than any real hound, even a transformed one, Kit felt Mehiel’s wings flutter, cup air almost strongly enough to tear him from the saddle, more real here in this place of half dreams than elsewhere. A caution, my friend.

Kit’s scars flared with pain, subsided. «He hunts with us,» Mehiel said, wondering. «Can the Devil serve two masters?»

And Kit blinked, and raised his head to look at the red dawn spilling over the shifting landscape they ran through, sure‑footed fey horses clearing withy hurdles that were jumbled stone‑crowded stream courses when they landed beyond, charging up hills that turned into houses, and he understood. Of course.

«Kit, I do not understand.»

Mehiel would not. For Mehiel was a creature of service, a creature under will, made to obey: a moral imperative made flesh. He could have no doubt, no hesitation, no regret, no hope. Except. Except he had stayed his hand when he could have struck Lucifer down. When Lucifer, mocking, had spread his arms wide and offered himself like a sacrifice. Like Kit. When Lucifer had come at the summons of those who had held Kit, who had treated them as a lord with servants, had sworn–

Had promised them everything they had asked him for.

And then … led Kit’s rescuers among his own servants, interrupted the ritual that would remake God in the image they desired? It made no sense, and Kit worried at it, shredding it like a falcon shreds a rabbit haunch. Because, because, because.

Because Lucifer was a legend too. A legend like any other, a construct, a fable, a myth.

And Morgan had had hair as golden as straw once, and she had been a goddess then.

«A11 stories are true,» Mehiel said, comprehending. «He can be both things at once.»

Not if Lucifer can help it,Kit answered, and crouched back in the saddle as Gin collected himself to scramble down a slope that was gravel, was slick mud, was traprock, and scree. The five hounds ran before them; the fey steeds strove beneath. The light shifted gold for crimson as the sun broke free of the horizon, and Kit leaned closer to Gin’s neck and held on for dear life. Mehiel, my brother, I dare say the one thou lovest doth care for thee, as well.

Act V, scene xxi

Be thy mouth or black or white,

Tooth that poisons if it bite;

Mastiff, grayhound, mongrel grim,

Hound or spaniel, brach or lym;

Or bobtail tike or trundle‑tail;

Tom will make them weep and wail:

For, with throwing thus my head,

Dogs leap the hatch, and all are fled.

–William Shakespeare, King Lear,Act III, scene iv

The scent is hot wine, acidic and intense. Spicy, irresistible. His legs move tirelessly, tremors stilled by the willow‑being’s magic, only a slight limp affecting his stride. The quarry lies ahead, the pack lies behind; the grass and gravel and tramped earth lie steady under his feet.

He follows that scent–that hated, enticing, bittersweet scent–to its inevitable conclusion. A man, a man who does not serve. A man who threatens something the hound holds dear. A man who will not be permitted to continue.

Close. So close. Running feet, the jostling shoulders of brothers and a sister beside him. Sweet motion, hot scent, follow it down – fox to his lair, wolf to his den, badger to his burrow. The scent hot, metallic as blood, bitter as the sap of monkshood dabbed against the tongue. The red bitch whines low in her throat, levels her strong, slender body. On his other side, a smoke‑and‑gold brindled dog bends low to the ground, hard into an angle, and runs.

Over hedgerow and ditch, down bank and through privet–it is not his concern how the horses will stay with them. That’s a worry for the horses and their masters. His concern is to hunt, and to run.

The scent’s hotter now, fresher. Borne on the wind as well as the earth. It’s not a scent, precisely, more a contagion, a trace of the passage of the one they hunt. The one they hunt. And the ones they hunt forride behind–

There!he shouts joyously. There! There! There! There!The quarry turns, a broad figure on a dark‑colored horse, floppy brim of a thing on his head, gray cloak wrapped tight. A rogue wind swirls it about his shoulders, about his thighs.

The gray hound collects himself for the leap. His brothers, his sister, they gather themselves. The white hound who runs before them is gone, vanished, tattered and blown apart by the freshening breeze as if he had no more substance than a twist of smoke. The gray dog can already feel the panicked horse shying from his scrabbling nails, the way they’ll furrow saddle leather and flesh, taste the man’s blood hot over his tongue, muscle stretching and tearing between ripping teeth –

“Hold!”

Somehow he stops the killing leap, braces front feet hard enough to furrow turf, trips on the black‑brindle dog who likewise struggles to a stop before him, and they go down yelping, tumbling one over the other, coming to their feet again almost under the horse’s belly. It shies and dances a step, and the rider gentles it; deftly, not harshly, but the motion unseats his hat, and pale hair glitters in the strange sunlight.

The gray dog whines and crouches low, his limbs tingling uncomfortably, baring his teeth in a silent, warning snarl. Behind him, a woman’s voice rises, fluid and mellifluous on words he does not understand, until Will pushed himself upright with both hands flat on the dew‑wet grass and got his feet under him in a crouch. Around him, Morgan and Murchaud and Tom all stood as well, Murchaud rubbing a wrist that Will thought he might have rolled over when they tripped into each other.

Will stood, scrubbing his earth‑stained hands on the front of his breeches, unmindful of a little more muck on the ruined cloth, and tilted his head back at Richard Baines. “Your master’s thrown you to the wolves, Dick,” Will said mildly as the horses came up behind him, their hooves that had been ghost silent clopping on the strangely solid turf. “Or perhaps I should say, the hounds. I suppose it’s too much to ask that you would come quietly? ”

“For the sparing of my life?” Baines chuckled, spreading his hands. Something glittered between them. Will stepped back. “Somehow, Master Playmaker, I do not think that is a vow you can make on their behalf–”

“Will!” Kit’s voice, a startled shout as Baines moved suddenly. Will threw himself backward hard, scrambling to get out from under the gold‑shot shadow that flared from Baines hands like a fisherman’s high‑spun net.

He was not fast enough. What settled over him felt like the brush of a silk sheet down his skin. What followed that touch was blackness, utter and complete.

Act V, scene xxii

Talk not of me, but save yourselves, and depart.

–Christopher Marlowe, Faustus,Act V ,scene ii

The saber hung useless from Kit’s hand as Baines spun light over Will and yanked it tight, his gestures efficient. Will didn’t fall. He raised his hands and froze there, still as an oil painting, posed like a man shielding his face from divine light.

The same radiance that netted and shrouded Will twisted around Baines as well, knotted in his hands, drawn up to his chest. The dark bay gelding he rode stood steady, one white‑stockinged forehoof cocked but not lifted. Kit froze where he was, half standing in the saddle, one hand upraised, the hilt of his borrowed saber warm in his palm, the red horse breathing convulsively beneath him.

He’d outridden the others on Gin’s game back, just by a stride or two, and now he could feel Cairbre, the Mebd, Ben Jonson, the Puck, and the rest of the fey courtiers drawing up in a half circle. Murchaud had been standing closest to Will; both he and Tom stepped up beside the paralyzed poet, flanking him and facing down Baines while Morgan dusted her hands on her riding breeches and fell back to stand at Kit’s stirrup. “Dick,” Kit said, without lowering the saber. “Let Will go.”

Morgan laid a hand on Kit’s boot. Gin sidestepped, mouthing the bit, Kit’s tension flowing down the reins like cold water.

“Why should I wish to do such a thing as that?” A timeless ray of sunlight singled Baines out, fingering his blond hair gold. Perhaps we are in Faerie after all,Kit thought, and the Mebd has stilled time’s passage.

And then Will’s lips moved. No, not precisely moving so much as compressing rhythmically, as if attempting to shape speech despite their immobility. Kit could read the panic in Will’s eyes, the tightness in his face. How hard is this for him, who lives with the fear of his body’s rebellion every day?

Poetry,he realized, watching Will’s face. A furious brightness sparked in Kit’s breast, equal parts pride and fury. Even now, he corner back with poetry.

Morgan did not try to move closer again. Murchaud’s face stayed impassive; Tom’s expression was that of a man who wished he had a pistol in his hand. Kit glanced over his shoulder, not certain what he was seeking besides reassurance, and found himself looking into the Mebd’s swirling violet eyes. Somehow, she’d come up beside him on the side opposite Morgan, her mount shoulder to shoulder with his own.

The corner of her mouth quirked; it wasn’t humor. “‘Tis in thy hands, Sir Poet.”

“Sister, nay!” ‘Twas Morgan’s protest, and the Mebd silenced her with a glance.

Kit turned back to Baines and smiled like a small animal baring his teeth. “Let him go,” Kit said, feeling Mehiel’s understanding and acquiescence. “And I shall go with you.”

“Kit!”Murchaud and Tom cried in unison. Will’s mouth also worked, his eyes squinting tight.

Fight it, William.

Morgan shook her head, sunlight glinting from her hair, but she said nothing. Kit sheathed his saber without looking, clenched his right hand on the nail in his pocket, his left hand tightening on the reins. Gin sidestepped, feeling Kit’s tension, the hair on his neck drying into salty spikes where the leather rubbed them. Trust me,Kit prayed, catching Murchaud’s eye for a moment before looking back at Baines. “Set him free, Dick.”

“I know what thy parole is worth.” Baines’ smirk gave the words layers Kit did not care to think about. Baines jerked his hands as if tugging reins; the web of light around Will tightened. Will staggered woodenly, like a jangled marionette.

“I did everything I swore I would,” Kit answered, refusing to flinch or look away.

Baines smiled, voice like a velvet glove across the back of Kit’s neck. “Pussycat. Isn’t it time thou didst admit where thou dost belong?”

“I’ll do what you wish, Dick,” Kit said, the words like grit on his tongue. He hated that he did not have to pretend to the fear and diffidence in his tone. “But let Will go, or you’ll get nothing from me.”

Kit closed his eyes, feeling Baines’ consideration. Mehiel stirred restlessly under his skin. The man pushed the angel down, and waited. Morgan touched Kit’s boot again, and this time Gin did not shy. Kit leaned down to her, never taking his eyes off Baines, and she hoisted herself on the edge of his saddle until she could speak into his ear.

“Is this the side thou’rt choosing, then, sweet poet? After all the kindness of the Fae to thee?”

“Kindness?” Kit snorted, not caring that Baines could see his lips. “Is that what thou callest it, my Queen?” He hoped she could hear the irony in his tone. He drew his hand from his pocket and let his fingers brush her hair behind her ear. Trust me.“Do not vent thy wrath on Will, when I am gone,” he murmured, taking a chance and dropping his eyes for a moment to catch hers. “And trust us. I think, my Queen, at last we understand our destiny.”

She chuckled. He straightened in the saddle, raised his head, and nudged Gin forward, aware that Ben had joined the Queens in flanking him. Kit warned the big man away with a glance, and turned his attention back to Baines and the tangle of light in his hands like so much knotted yarn.

“Well?” Kit said.

“I have your word, puss?”

“I have been many things,” Kit answered, “but I have never been forsworn. I swear to thee that Christofer Marley will do your bidding, Master Baines, and do unto thee no harm.”

“And your friends.”

Kit pinned each one of them with a glance, registered their looks of protest, anger, grief, betrayal. “I give my parole for them,” he said, not looking away.

Baines laughed low in his throat and opened his hands. “So mote it be.” And boldly, calmly he collected his reins and turned the bay gelding with his knees. “Thou’lt forgive me if I lay a compulsion and a binding upon thee, this time–”

“I’ll forgive anything,” Kit answered, and reined Gin up alongside the bay, leaving the Mebd and Morgan and Ben staring after him, and Murchaud’s long fingers digging into Will’s shoulder to hold the poet back. He clenched his hand tight on the nail in his pocket and listened while Baines whispered the words, made slow passes in the air. The two steeds maintained a stately pace, down the bank toward a river that might almost have been the Thames, or might have been the Stour of Kit’s childhood memories: it twisted back and forth in his vision, from a broad tidal thing, green and brown with eddies, subtle enough to drown a man no matter how strong a swimmer he might be to a brook a man might ford on horseback and barely wet his boots.

Kit felt the magic clutch at his mind and heart and liver, a mindless obedience that would have sucked the wit and love and courage from him. He bit his lip, and let the ensorcelled iron pierce his palm until his own blood wet his hand and his hip through the fabric of his doublet. He heard himself whimper, and felt his own power flare and then slither back, pressed aside by the practiced might of Baines’ sorcery. He quailed like a man slipping on ice toward a cliff face, clutching at slick grasses, and his fey horse shuddered beneath him. Mehiel–

«Hold fast,» the angel answered, and quoted poetry. «Angels and ministers of grace defend us.»

The pain of the nail in Kit’s palm was just enough to keep the laugh from bubbling from his lips. Baines’ spell clutched his throat; he could not breathe; he dropped the reins and clutched his collar, tearing it open, sagging forward over Gin’s blond mane. The pressure crushed him, swept him aside, rolled him under. Shoved.

And eased.

Baines’ hand was on his sleeve, tugging him upright. “Sit straight, Puss,” Baines said, and Kit obeyed without thought. “Come along.”

Kit opened his hand, the nail driven through his palm grating between the bones. He gasped and sat back in the saddle, feeling the eyes on his back. The eyes of his friends. Trust me.

Baines could destroy him in any fight. Sorcerous or physical, it mattered not. Kit had no hope of meeting him in open war.

Which left just treachery.

Kit gave Gin a little leg on the off side, sending him shoulder to shoulder with Baines’ bay. Kit’s knee banged Baines’ calf; Baines cursed good‑naturedly, raising his right hand to Kit’s shoulder to ward man and horse away.

As he turned, Kit skinned the saber from its saddle sheath and put the whole curved, wicked length into Richard Baines’ belly and out his back, low and angled for the liver, a kidney, both if Kit was lucky. His hand on the hilt, the iron nail in his palm, his blood binding him to the blade, Kit felt skin pop before the blade’s knife tip –a slashing weapon, not designed to stab, awkward and unbalanced. But it went through.

He leaned across his saddle and twistedthe weapon in Baines’ guts, and the nail thrust through the back of his own hand.

Gin shrieked and planted both forehooves at the cataract of blood that drenched them both, and Baines’ bay horse too. The bay reared; Kit yelped as the saber was dragged from his grip, Baines somehow staying in the saddle as his horse curvetted.

Staying in the saddle, Kit estimated, but not for long, with both hands folded across his belly like that, holding his guts inside like an overfull armload of mold‑slicked gray rope. Gin’s eyes were white‑edged, his ears laid back hard as he backed away, one step and then another, his head down to protect his throat as if he faced a slavering dog.

“Puss – ” Baines managed, more a bubble of blood on his lips than a word. He blinked, his expression the strangest blend of grief and hurt betrayal; Kit saw it with a clarity that made a mockery of the ten feet between them. “Forsworn?” And then his grip failed, and his guts slid out over his thighs and the saddle, and his body tumbled backward as his bay horse said enoughand put its hooves hard to the ground.

Kit gentled Gin with a hand that left bloody streaks on the sorrel’s blond mane, remembered a moment later the nail sunk into his palm. He picked it free while his gelding’s quivering slowed, and bound the wound with a scrap torn from his filthy white doublet. He trembled like shaken paper, and it took all his concentration to wind the cloth around his hand. By the time he had the bleeding stopped, the Fae had joined him, and the mortal riders too.

Morgan got to him first, Will seated pillion behind her. She reined her mare in close enough that Gin could lean a shoulder on her to be comforted, and slid her own arm around Kit’s waist, seeming not to notice that it took all of hisflickering strength of heart not to shy and buck. “Clever,” she said, and left it at that, leaning away.

He sighed, stealing another glance at the ruin of his worst nightmare sprawled messily on the bank. He couldn’t quite look at Baines; nor could he–quite–look away.

“Kit.” Will’s voice, and Will’s gentle hand on his arm.

Kit flinched, held himself steady as Gin tossed his head in protest of the blood and his rider’s plain fear. “Aye, love?”

“You forswore yourself for me?”

Kit laughed, and looked up, feeling suddenly lightened. “No,” he said, and shook his head, feeling how his hair gritted against his neck. “I told Dick that Christofer Marley would do as he bid.”

“And?”

Kit shrugged, pressing his right hand to his thigh to slow the piercing agony in it to a throbbing ache. “There is no Christofer Marley any longer, Will.” He picked flakes of blood off the back of his hand with a thumbnail and did not stop himself this time. “Come away, love. I want a bath. Come away from this place.”

Act V, scene xxiii

And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,

Never to hope again.

–William Shakespeare, King Henry VIII,Act III, scene ii

Catesby would not be taken alive. Will heard later that the chase led the King’s Men as far as Warwickshire, his cousins gone to ground in a gatehouse and pried loose only at the cost of blood on both sides. He heard, and nodded as if it had been no more than he expected, and–wishing he had more grief left in him–turned his face back to the fire.

There was an ugly bit of business when they returned to London and learned that Salisbury had arranged to have the recusant Ben arrested for questioning regarding the Gunpowder Treason. But he was pried loose soon enough, following a renunciation of his convenient Catholicism and a few earnest threats from Will and Tom, and the comments of the Baron Monteagle, roused from his bed at an inconvenient hour.

The following morning, Will took himself to Westminster in the company of Thomas Walsingham and that same Ben Jonson, where the three of them presented themselves again before the Secretary of State. Salisbury met them in a red‑walled receiving room where Will had once been greeted by a Queen, and Will suspected the canny old Earl had chosen that location on purpose. There were wine and a fire; Tom and Ben availed themselves of the former, Will of the latter, and they stood in wolf‑pack silence while Salisbury sugared a cup of sack for himself.

“Master Shakespeare,” Salisbury said finally, turning to face the hearth and Will. “I’ve considered thy proposal, again. And I am afraid I cannot allow–”

Will drew a breath and raised his hand, not quite believing himself what he was about to say. “I’m afraid, my lord, that my request is no more negotiable than Ben’s freedom.”

“Not–” Disbelief. Salisbury set his cup aside.

“Would you care, my lord, to see my talents turned to the sort of satire our friend Ben is known for? To the odd anonymous broadside? The Devil makes work for idle hands.”

“I have mine own resources,” Salisbury countered, the threat patent in his voice.

Will laughed, crossing his arms in the King’s red livery, trying not to show how much he needed the support of the wall he leaned back against. “What can you threaten me with? I am dying, my lord. Behead me tomorrow; you cost the world at most a few plays, and my wife the pain of nursing me through my decline.”

Salisbury’s mouth worked. He glanced at Ben, who remained perfectly still, a shaggy, menacing figure in incongruous wire‑rimmed spectacles. Will did not need to turn to know that Tom Walsingham smiled. He could see its effect, the sudden nervous flicker of Salisbury’s smirk. Tom’s voice was light, level, and as sweet as a woman’s when she has her husband dead to rights. “I too have resources, ”Tom said. “And while I am not Secretary of State, my lord Earl, I amTom Walsingham.”

Will took his cue from the heavy downflex of Tom’s voice, the emphasis of the accidental rhyme of verb and name. “And I dare say,” he continued pleasantly, “that we three know enough of your dealings, and have enough trust from the King and Queen between us, to see you in the room beside Sir Walter’s. No doubt His Majesty would not be averse to seeing one of his loyal Scotsmen in your place; you know how he prefers them to the English‑bred men of the court.”

The silence stretched taut. Salisbury’s breathing slowed, a muscle in his jaw flexing in time. Will concentrated on that muscle, on Salisbury’s eyes – so arrogant and full of the awareness of power–and almost winced and glanced down. Almost. And then he thought of Burbage, and he thought of Lucifer Morningstar, and Will Shakespeare dropped his hands and pushed himself upright, retrieving his cane before he shuffled forward. Rush mats crackled under the ferrule – iron, of course–but Will kept his eyes on Salisbury’s. His two short steps framed him before the fire, and he lifted his head and crossed his arms once more, keeping a disinterested glare fixed on Salisbury.

Salisbury folded his arms, an unconscious mirror of Will’s position. Will permitted himself a little smile of triumph, quickly quenched, as the Earl bit his lip and then sighed. “What is thy desire?”

“You’ll convince the King that his legacy should be a new English translation of the Bible,” Will said. “And you’ll extend your personal patronage to Ben.”

Salisbury coughed lightly against the side of his knuckle. “You feel entitled to a great deal, Master Shakespeare.” But there was an echo of capitulation in his tone.

Will smiled. “Yes,” he said, stopping his hand a moment before it could rise to tug his earlobe, where Morgan’s earring no longer swung. “I will admit that failing, my lord Earl.”

Salisbury sucked his teeth and turned his head aside quickly, raising one shoulder in a lopsided shrug, more at Ben than at Will. Ben chuckled low in his throat, but Salisbury’s voice rose over it. “Thy judgements proved better than adequate this week past,” he admitted at last, as if it pained him. “I will speak to the King. And thou wilt have a play for us by Twelfth Night.”

“By Lady Day,” Will corrected. “I am going home for Christmas, to see my daughters and my wife.”

The New Place was warm despite the weather that heaped snow to windward until it touched the windowsills, and warmer still with the presence of the friends and family crowded between its thick walls. Will straddled a bench beside the fire, leaning back against the wall, and breathed Annie’s scent as she leaned on his chest, her knees drawn up under her skirts. He closed his eyes and closed also his hand on her upper arm, drowsing to the sound of Susanna’s voice raised in caroling.

“People will whisper of thy licentious London ways,” Annie said sleepily, leaning her head on his shoulder.

Will turned his face into her hair, resting his cheek against the top of her head. He sighed, just slightly, and felt her stiffen.

“Art lonely for London, husband?” She pressed her shoulders to his chest, her tone light. “The applause of the crowds – ”

“The rotten fruit hurled in our faces – ”

She snickered. “Thou knowest, Susanna and Judith will be married before all that much longer.”

“Aye, ” he said, although he wanted to deny it.

“I had thought…” She hesitated, leaned back harder. “When the girls are gone, Will. There will be naught for me in Stratford.”

Will held his breath lightly, trying to anticipate what she might be dancing up on with such intensity. He gave up, and blew some loose strands of her hair aside, trying to brighten her mood. “Out with it, my Annie.”

She drew a breath. “May I to London with thee?”

He didn’t hear her at first. The words were so entirely what he had never expected to hear, and all he could do was blink slowly and shake his head. “To London?”

With thee. Surely thou couldst make enough room for a wife, and I’d not wheedle to be taken to court or interfere in thy trade. …”

“Oh, Annie,” he said. He heard her held breath ease from her, then, and felt her shoulders slump in defeat.

Foolish notion,” she murmured. “Thou’lt to home for Lent, my love?” Just like that, forgiven for what she saw as a dismissal, again.

Will’s eyes stung. “Silly wench,” he murmured. “Thou canst not come to London with me, Annie. Because I’m coming home.”

She sat up and turned, swinging her legs off the bench. Guests and daughters turned to look, then averted their eyes quickly as she leaned in close, her eyes on his. “Don’t tease me, William.”

“I’d never tease,” he said. “I can make a play here as well as there, and playing’s finished for me. I’m coming home. I love thee, Annie. …”

She leaned back, eyes wide, blowing air through wide nostrils. She studied his eyes for a moment, assessing, her spine stiff with wrath. Which softened, inch by inch, until she tilted her head to the side and blew the lock of hair he’d disturbed out of her eyes. “Thou daft poet,” she said. “I know.”

Act V, scene xxiv

Why did it suffer thee to touch her breast,

And shrunk not back, knowing my love was there?

–Christopher Marlowe, Dido, Queen of Carthage,Act IV, scene i

Kit rose with the sunset and went to the window, leaving his bed rumpled and unmade behind him. The casement stood open; it might be winter in England, but at the castle of the Mebd it was high spring, and the wood was in leaf as gold as primrose blossoms. He leaned a hand on either side of the window frame and stared out, watching darkness unfurl along the horizon.

«Sir Poet.»

Mehiel?Feeling eyes on him, almost, Kit turned back to the room. The way his shadow fell behind him was warning enough. A glimpse of arched eyebrow, of swan‑white wing followed.

«Surely thou knowest my name by now, my love,» Lucifer said, and opened his wings in welcome.

“What makes you think I would greet you, Morningstar?” Kit folded his arms, trembling in the warm spring breeze. The wall he put his back to was smooth as glass. He would have preferred the purchase of rough‑hewn stone.

Lucifer tilted his head and smiled, and Kit felt his knees turn to water where he stood. The fallen angel wore a white‑worked shirt of ivory silk with sleeves that flowed like water, as full as a second set of wings. The crown of shadows that capped his golden hair seemed to draw a rich dark tint from the crimson velvet of his breeches, and his eyes caught more light than the sunset sky had to offer.

Kit held his breath as Lucifer came to him, tilted his chin up with a wing‑tip touch, wordlessly eased open his tight‑folded arms with the brush of gentle feathers. The Devil’s lips hovered over Kit’s, satin as rose petals, the warm brush of breath on Kit’s skin and the warmth of a presence close enough to stir the fine hairs on his cheek.

Kit drew breath in an agony of anticipation, felt Mehiel’s surrender in the coldness in his brands. The wall stood firm behind him; his hands flattened on the stones, but they gave him no purchase and less strength. The fire in his belly was chill.

“I could give thee wings,” Lucifer murmured. His true voice rang Kit like a bell, with a sensation of flying. Of falling. Kit closed his dark, dark eyes.

Mehiel turned his mouth upward for the kiss.

And Kit’s fingernails found a crack.

A finer and a smaller chink than he had picked away at during his confinement in the pit. But a crack nonetheless, and he drove nails into it, clutching, clawing. Drawing his own bright blood, feeling the pain of the nail bed tearing as the nail folded.

He turned his head away and pressed his fingertips to Lucifer’s mouth, crimson staining palest dog‑rose pink. “I love thee, ” Kit whispered, and Lucifer smiled against his fingers.

“And I thee, poet and angel.”

Kit shook his head, dropped his hand to Lucifer’s chest, and pushed. The Devil stepped back smoothly, offering no resistance, and all Kit could see was the red of his own blood on the whiteness of Lucifer’s breast. “I love thee,” Kit said again. “And thou wilt destroy me. Be gone. And take thy witchery with thee.”

Lucifer’s wings cupped air, a sound like a backhanded slap. Kit flinched, but the Devil flinched moreso. And looked Kit in the eye. And nodded once, slowly, and closed his eyes that were bluer than the twilight.

And ceased to be where he had been.

Kit stood a moment in darkness, the sunset wind riffling the fine hairs on his neck, and slid down the wall until he could bury his face in his arms.

A tap on his door roused him. It seemed as if moments had passed, but as he stood the dawn air felt cold through his linen nightshirt. He limped across the chamber. The knotted red wool of the carpet pricked his bare soles and the tender flesh of his bandaged foot. He lifted the latch without asking a name, knowing from the sound whom he would see.

“My Prince.”

The Elf‑knight stepped past him and pulled the door from his grasp. “Kit, what hast done to thy fingers?”

Kit looked down, startled. “Split a nail or two,” he said. “‘Tis nothing.”

“‘Tis not nothing,” Murchaud answered, relatching the door. “Let me clean it.”

Kit followed in obedience, gasping at cold water spilled across his palms and wrists. And then marveling at the Prince‑consort of Faerie, bent over his–Kit’s–sad, calloused hands with a rag. “My Prince,” he said again.

Murchaud dabbed at a bit of blood, and looked up. He’d dressed, but his hair was still tousled from the night and his eyes were so bruised with exhaustion as to seem kohled. “Is that all I am to thee?”

“No….” Kit protested, Mehiel silent within him. Murchaud took one step away.

“I came to bring thee something. I’ll be quick. I did not mean to presume.” Murchaud cast his eyes down, and Kit’s breath snagged as he understood.

“Murchaud,” he began, and couldn’t find the next word.

The Elf‑knight dug into his sleeve, unmindful of the water pink with Kit’s blood that spotted it, and came out with a scrap of silk. He held the cloth out, and Kit numbly took it. It was like quicksilver, the highlights blue as shadows on snow and the shadows the color of twilight. Kit stared uncomprehending.

“For your cloak,” the Elf‑knight said, and turned away.

Kit’s mouth worked, his tongue dry and dumb as un‑inked paper. Murchaud crossed the room in five long strides, lifted the latch, turned the handle on the door, and opened it, unhesitating, back straight, lean and dark in the half‑light so far from the window.

He stepped into the hall.

“Wait,” Kit whispered, but the door was closing. “Wait!”he shouted, and froze, listening for the click of the latch.

Silence.

And then the door opening again, and Murchaud framed against the gold stone of the hallway. “Kit?” he asked, lifting his chin.

“Do–” Kit took up a breath, and his courage with it. “Dost love me?”

Murchaud considered the question, turning his answer over on his tongue. He dropped his eyes to his hand on the door handle, stepped back into the room, shut the door behind himself. Latched it, and leaned against the boards. “Can an elf be said to love?”

Kit nodded, his sore fingers knotted white on the bit of silk in his palm.

Murchaud did not leave the door. The air between them grew golden with the rising, indirect light. “Then as elves love, aye.”

Kit closed his eyes on the fear, closed his heart on Mehiel’s startled protest. “Wilt prove it?”

Mute, Murchaud nodded. Drew a breath and another, came one step toward Kit. “Anything.”

Kit gasped, and laughed. “Thou swearest.”

“Anything.I vow.”

And Kit felt his own heart break.

“It is not fair or just, what I will ask of thee,” he began, calm now that the die was cast. “I need thee to undo what was done.”

It was the kiss that broke Kit. Not the kisses on his mouth; he lay still, hands clenched into fists on the coverlet, through those. Murchaud lingered over them, a hand on either side of his head, all that black hair freed from its tail and tumbling down around Kit’s face, no contact between them except lips and tongue.

No, it was when Murchaud kissed his eyes closed that Kit knew he had made a mistake. “God,” Kit said, and Murchaud flinched but did not draw away. Instead, he caught Kit’s lip between his teeth, but Kit continued to speak anyway, his fingernails bloodying his palms as he struggled not to shove the Prince to the floor. “Murchaud, just finish it.”

Murchaud gnawed at his own lower lip. “I said I will unbind thy angel, though it mean thy life. Wouldst have me misuse thee, also?”

It wouldmean Kit’s life. But if the bonds that trapped the angel in his body were severed first, then Mehiel need not die with him, but–when his cage was shattered–might go free.

Kit drew breath and said, “I would it were done.”

Murchaud leaned down on an elbow, close enough that Kit could feel the heat of his body. He raised his right hand and outlined the scar over Kit’s heart. Kit gasped as that scar and its brothers flared on his skin as if freshly seared. “Is there no means to make this gentle?”

Kit swallowed and closed his eyes. “It is mine to endure.”

“If enduring is what thou chooseth.”

I cannot do this. I cannot lie still for this. I cannot bear it.

«And thou wouldst have had no choice, were it Baines.» The voice startled Kit, coming as it did with a sense of unfurling and a gazing awareness within. Eyes like a falcon’s, gold as the sun, and wings whose stunning plumage was banded in black and gold, not swan‑white at all. Mehiel.

A rape I could have endured,Kit answered. And yet my lover will be kind.“Murchaud,” he whispered.

“Kit.”

“Bind my hands.” Love?” Honest dismay. “I will not–”

“Thou must.” Kit drew a ragged breath. “I will refuse thee otherwise. I have not the strength of will for this. And I must not be permitted to refuse.”

“I would not force thee–”

“It is not force,” Kit said. “For I am begging thee.”

“Dost thou?”

“So we do,” Kit answered, and realized only after the words had left his mouth that he had spoken for himself, and for Mehiel too. “Bind my hands. And my legs. It will reinforce the sorcery in any case; cut the bonds when thou’rt done with me. If we steal those other Prometheans’ symbols to undo their black work, ‘tis no more than they deserve.”

Murchaud regarded him thoughtfully, and then nodded. “As thou wishest.”

Kit closed his eyes as Murchaud left the curtained confines of the bed. The straw tick dimpled under Murchaud when the Elf‑knight returned. Kit turned to watch him fasten a yard‑long length of silk scavenged from a drapery about Kit’s wrist and draw it outward, to one of the massive bedposts. Kit’s heart beat faster as Murchaud repeated the process on the opposite side, exquisitely gentle and completely without pity.

Every inch the Elf‑knight again.

“Do you have the knife?”

“Aye.” Murchaud covered Kit’s eyes with a blindfold and carefully tugged it down over his cheeks. “I’ll not stop thy mouth,” he said. “‘Tis thy poetry I need of thee, and all thy power. ”

Safer in the darkness, Kit nodded, and Murchaud bound his feet apart as well.

The room was warm, and yet Kit shivered at every brush of the air on his sweat‑drenched skin. If he were a horse, he thought, he would be lathered white with fear. Terror, which crystallized into something else entirely when Murchaud, without otherwise touching him, laid the ice‑cold blade of the dagger against the brand on the inside of his thigh and – cut. And moved the blade to the other thigh and cut again. And once more. And again, defacing each sigil in reverse of how they had been layered on Kit’s skin.

Kit strangled the whimper that rose in his throat, not out of pride–he was beyond pride–but out of fear for how it would sound to Murchaud. Instead he pulled against the twisted cloth that bound him, grunting like a birthing woman dragging at a knotted rope. The pain of the knife was still better than the touch of Murchaud’s hand.

Murchaud kissed his mouth again, quickly, guiltily, before Kit could jerk away. And then, the Elf‑knight straddled Kit’s belly, with the heat of flesh on flesh, his weight like stones. Peine forte et dure.This time, Kit could not silence the sound that rose in his throat. Murchaud swallowed it, kissed it away. He settled over Kit’s hips, toes dug under Kit’s thighs, and must have laid the knife aside, because the next touch was the flat of both hands upon Kit’s breast. The brands on Kit’s sides burned so hot Kit thought they must blister, knife slashes trickling blood across Kit’s ribs to soak into the coverlet.

“For Christ’s sake,” Kit snarled, “get it overwith.”

He felt a small, cruel joy when Murchaud flinched hard enough to shake the bed, but then the Elf‑knight drew himself back and said “As you wish it,” and that was a small kind of victory. Until Murchaud wrapped a rough, calloused hand around Kit’s prick and began, with abrupt motions, to manipulate it.

Every touch was irritation, and the longer it continued the more Kit’s rage grew. It started in his belly, a small uncomfortable coal, and grew swiftly to a venom that would not be contained; he cursed and whimpered and heaped abuse. He used the name of God like a whip, and felt the Fae Prince shudder under it and continue, while Mehiel struggled in Kit’s breast like a fox in a snare’s sharp jaws.

Kit visualized the tumble of crimson fur rolling, tail flagging like a banner against the snow. Not much Longer, sweet Mehiel. Soon we part company. Soon you go home.

And as for Kit? He supposed he had a destination, too.

Kit thought they would tear him apart between them, the angel and the Faerie Prince. He was grateful for the bindings, which let him thrash however he would and yet held him secure. He was grateful for Murchaud’s hands that held him likewise, and with a strength and negligence that carried no remembrance of Baines’ sick mock‑gentleness. And he was grateful for his unstopped mouth, for the freedom to blaspheme and beg even when he knew the efforts would be ignored.

He thought it would grow easier to bear, the Prince’s touch, that in the darkness it would be all he had to focus on and he would learn to withstand it, as he had Baines’ damned iron bridle. But he grew instead angrier and fiercer, an unstoppered wrath that would not be silenced again. Murchaud, meanwhile, was thorough and remorseless, and Kit wept when his body at last surrendered, arching himself to the touch, scrabbling against the bonds.

Murchaud tarried for a moment, ducked to kiss the bloody scar on Kit’s thigh with a mouth that was wet and hot, and then kissed each of the other three ruined brands in turn. It was a farewell, and that was all it was. And Kit, to his shame, fought and wailed like an orphaned child. It was well he was bound, or he should have used his fists against Murchaud.

When the Prince at last placed pillows beneath Kit and knelt between his thighs, placing the dagger upon his breast, Kit’s gratefulness swelled. The straw tick crunched under the Elf‑knight’s knees; his flanks were warm against the insides of Kit’s thighs as Kit bent his legs, taking the slack from the bonds. “I have thy freedom in my hand.”

Kit “wasn’t sure how he found his voice, but find it he did and made it firm to support his lover’s hand. “Finish it.”

“So mote it be,” Murchaud said, and pressed the dagger to the center of the brand upon Kit’s breast. “The Fae should know better than to love mortal men.”

He leaned into the dagger as he rose into Kit.

The dagger slid through Kit’s heart like a serpent’s tongue, slick and easy. He feltthe force of it, felt the gallant muscle striving to beat, shredding itself on the ice‑cold blade. He might have screamed, but all he could manage was a breathless whine that he meant for a sorry sort of joke: Consummatum est.And then the darkness was no longer merely the darkness behind the blindfold, but encompassing and deep and edged with penetrating cold.

And thou’lt go to Lucifer after all, but shed of the thing he wished of thee.

Kit’s last thought through the pain was that he was glad–so glad–that he could not see Murchaud’s face as he died.

Murchaud, who pulled the dagger free and gathered Kit close to his breast, while the sharp heat of blood spread between them and Kit felt warm arms and stickiness and the wetness that might be an elf‑Prince weeping all recede on a river of dark, as he remembered something long forgotten–that he had come this way before, not once but twice, in Deptford and at Rheims.

Pure white light enfolded him and he smiled at the lie. It would not be Heaven awaiting beyond that gate, but there was something to be said for the refinement of that deception. Some must come this way, Kit imagined, who did not honestly know what to expect.

Imagine their disillusionment.

And then Mehiel’s falcon‑cry of a voice that was not a voice, and his eyes like living suns as he bowed down in the space that was not a space and spread his wings before a Kit who was not Kit. Kit who was whole, and who was not in pain. «God is good. I shall not be able to save thee again, poet.»

Farewell, Mehiel,Kit answered. I expected no salvation. I expect we shall not meet in Heaven, Angel of the Lord.

«Thy life thrice,» the angel answered. «Rheims, Deptford, Hy Brйаsil. Be healed one last time, child, and may our paths cross nevermore.» Barred black and gold, the bright wings blurred, and Kit stepped back, or dreamed he did.

«Consummatum est!»Mehiel shouted. And rose. And was gone.

“Consummatum est,” Kit whispered. He opened his eyes, lashes sticky with his own red blood, and cursed because his hands were bound and he could not bury them in Murchaud’s hair.

There was a scar in the center of the scar in the center of his breast and another on his back between the shoulder blades and to the left of his spine, where Murchaud’s weight had driven the blade through his body and into the featherbed. Beside the witch’s mark, in fact, and just opposite it.

And there was blood: so very much blood, indeed. Blood through the ticking and onto the floor.

Blood, and blood only. That was all.

Epilogue

“I hate” she altered with an end,

That followed it as gentle day

Doth follow night, who like a fiend

From heav’n to hell is flown away

“I hate “from hate away she threw

And saved my life saying, “not you.”

–William Shakespeare, Sonnet 45

April 22, 1616

Annie helped Will lean back in the pillow‑upholstered chair as he finished coughing. He was weak, too weak. He couldn’t get air into his lungs and the fever that burned him wasn’t even strong enough to grant the surcease of delirium, just the misery of aches and sweat.

He thought it was a natural sickness, at least. We’ve seen an end to the Promethean plagues. That’d something. And something I’ve lived this long, with Kit’s help and Morgan’s.

And who would have thought ‘twould not be the damned palsy after all?

Annie soothed his forehead with a cloth, her grayed brow wrinkled with concern. Will opened his eyes as a second shadow fell across him. Kit, bringing a basin cool from the well.

Will sighed. “Was ever man so unworthy, so well loved?”

“Unworthy?” Kit scoffed. “Who’s worthy of love? It makes us worthy by loving, I wot.”

Annie said nothing, but Will knew the twisted mouth she gave Kit for approval.

Will coughed again, too weak to raise a rag to his lips. Annie did it, and when she lowered the cloth it was spotted red. Will did not miss the look she traded with Kit, or the way Kit looked down and to the left. “Do you suppose I’ll be damned for sorcery, like poor Sir Francis?” Which wasn’t quite what Will had planned to say, but talking weakened him too much to retract the question and start over.

“You must not think such things,” Annie said. “Tomorrow’s thy birthday, husband. Surely thou’lt heal?”

Kit met her eyes again when Will did not manage an answer, and set the basin aside. Annie cleared her throat and turned hastily away. “Sorcery was the least of Sir Francis’ sins, ” Kit said, stroking Will’s hair back from his brow.

“I’ve lost my ring, Kit,” Will said. “At Judith’s wedding–” His trembling fingers tried to tighten, and Kit took them in a savage grasp.

“You won’t need a ring with Annie and I to hold your hand.”

Will turned his head to regard the smooth line of Kit’s jaw behind the beard. “Thou didst age nary a day, my love.”

“The price for dying young.” Kit stepped away to make room for Annie as she came back with a cleaner rag.

“Love,” she said. “Thou shouldst rest. Thou shouldst sleep, and thou wilt heal–”

Will closed his eyes. The cold water did help, but his thoughts were startlingly clear for a fevered man, and from what he knew of deathbeds, that was no hopeful sign. “I don’t want to go to Hell, as Sir Francis did.”

“Thou dost wish not the Promethean Heaven, either. You’d know not a soul.” Kit, still joking, but his fine‑fingered hands were knotted in the sleeves he had folded them over.

Will forced a wavering chuckle. “Nay… . Oh, there’s going to be such poetry, Kit. I am sorry that I will miss it.”

Annie cleared her throat. “You’re not going to Hell, gentle William,” she said, and wet her cloth again. Kit rose when she gestured him away and left the fireside to lean against the wall. Will saw his face, and turned his face away. Oh, Kit. Were you ever privileged to love where love was not given first elsewhere? Even once?

“Annie. Kit will tell you–”

“Kit told me,” she said, and Kit cleared his throat and looked down at the floor. “Will, the priest is here.”

“Priest?”

“A Romish priest,” she said firmly. “If after thirty‑four years of marriage, you think I’m going to Glory without you, you’re a bigger fool than I imagined, Will Shakespeare!”

Kit, leaning against the wall, stood suddenly upright, turned his head, and laughed. “Annie, you’re brilliant.”

“Hardly,” she said, taken aback. She twitched her hair over her shoulder and turned.

Kit’s expression practically shone with excitement. “A Romish priest. Whose doctrine is that bodies must be buried in hallowed ground, and that the soul remains with the flesh until the End of Days.” He paused, and looked down at the rushed floor, laughing harshly. “Apparently, God can’t be arsed to check under the cushions for the souls that slip out his purse.”

“Aye,” she said. “It’ll give you a chance to get what you owe Will sorted out before Judgement Day, and find this kinder God you’ve been pratting about for the last three days. Lord knows, Kit Marlin, it’s likely to take so long, for thee.”

Will huddled under his muffling blankets, sick with stubbornness. Repent of your sins and be forgiven.No. He would not. He would not repudiate Kit, on his deathbed or for any reason. “Nay. I shall not repent of thee.”

“Will‑“

“Wife,” he said. “Do not ask it.” He looked to Kit for support, but Kit, looking as if his heart were squeezed in a bridle, shook his head.

“Do you,” Kit commanded, and Will flinched–not at the command, but at the distancing–and saw Annie look away. “Do you repent of me, and you are Heaven bound. Thou didst brave Hell for me one time. ‘Twill serve.”

Will glared. “And wilt thourepent, Kit?”

“I will not.”

“I will not leave thee alone in Hell.”

“You will. Imprimus, I have no plans to die. Secundus, you married Annie. You willhonor your loyalty to her.”

“The world…” Will said, frustrated. And turned his face aside. He would not see Kit weep. Kit would not care to have him do so. The list of what the world would not allow was long for mourning over.

Kit, his face strangely taut, turned to Annie and clapped her on the arm. “Only a woman would think to stall God to her convenience. Well‑reasoned, chop logic.”

She nearly smiled, and touched Kit on the shoulder lightly. And Will almost imagined he heard, nearby, the flicker and settle of massive wings.

Author’s Note

First and foremost, I would like to thank Mr. Tony Toller, trustee of the Rose Theatre Trust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the remains of Bankside’s first theatre, the Rose. It was through the kindness of Mr. Toller that I was able to visit the site of that theatre, and stand – quite literally– where Ned Alleyn, Philip Henslow, and Christopher Marlowe stood, although the Rose was not then an archaeological site housed in the damp, breathing darkness under a modern skyscraper.

Plans are afoot to preserve the site and continue excavations and research, and as of this writing, fundraising for these projects is under way. If you are interested in learning more about this important historical and archaeological work – or in supporting it –details may be found at www.rosetheatre. org.uk.

This pair of novels has been a labor of years, and over the course of that time a lot of people have offered comment or listened to me whine. I also wish to thank first readers, bent ears, inspirational forces, and others both on and off the Online Writing Workshop (and the denizens of its invaluable writers’ chat) and various other online communities: Kit Kindred, Matt Bowes, Lis Riba, Sarah Monette, Kat Allen, Stella Evans, Chelsea Polk, Dena Landon, Brian and Wendy Froud, Liz Williams, Treize Armistedian, Rhonda Garcia, Leah Bobet, Chris Coen, Ruth Nestvold, Marna Nightingale, Hannah Wolf Bowen, Amanda Downum, Rachele Colantuono, John Tremlett, Gene Spears, Mel Melcer, Larry West, Jaime Voss, Walter Williams, Kelly Morisseau, Andrew Ahn, and Eric Bresin. I would also like to thank Ellen Rawson and Ian Walden, who graciously opened their home in England to me when I visited on a research trip in 2006. I’d also like to thank my editor, Jessica Wade, and my agent, Jennifer Jackson. Most sincere gratitude to my copy editor, Andrew Phillips, who is not only something of an Elizabethan historian in his own right, but also meticulous and intelligent. And I’m sure I’ve forgotten several people who deserve to be here, but as I’ve been writing this book since Christmas of 2002, I hope they will forgive me.

The present work would have been impossible to complete without the recent outpouring of popular scholarship concerning the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, and in particular Mssrs. Shakespeare, Jonson, and Marlowe. In addition, I consulted the work of multifarious authors, dabblers, artists, and historians. I have never met Park Honan, Anthony Burgess, Stephen Booth, Peter Ackroyd, Charles Nicholl, Michael Wood, Liza Picard, Stephen Greenblatt, David Riggs, David Crystal, Constance Brown Kuriyama, Peter Farey, Jennifer Westwood, Antonia Frazier, Alan H. Nelson, C. Northcote Parkinson, Elaine Pagels, Jaroslav Pelikan, Lawrence Stone, Gustav Davidson, Richard Hosley, Alan Bray, Michael B. Young, Peter W. M.. Blayney, Katharine M. Briggs, or any of the other wonderfully obsessed individuals whose work I consulted in preparing this glorious disservice to history. However, I owe them all an enormous debt of gratitude, and I spent immeasurable pleasant hours in their company while in the process of writing this book.

A couple of historical and linguistic quirks for the reader’s interest: the Elizabethan year began on Lady Day, in late March, rather than January 1. In result, Christofer Marley was, to his contemporaries, born at the end of 1563 and William Shakespeare at the beginning of 1564. To a modern eye, their birth‑dates would be in February and April, both of 1564.

I have chosen to preserve this quirk of the times, along with a characteristic bit of English in transition: at the time to which the writing refers, the familiar form of the English second‑person pronoun (thee) was beginning to drift out of use, but had not yet lost the war, and the plural pronoun (you) had–under French influence–come to be used as a singular pronoun in more formal relationships, but was not exclusive. As a result, conversation between familiar friends showed a good deal of fluidity, even switching forms within a single sentence, depending on the emotion and affection of the moment.

I have not availed myself of such transitional forms of address for nobility as were in use at the time, under the belief that it would cause more confusion than it would be worth; instead, I’ve tried to limit courtesy titles to one per customer, for clarity. Also, I have discarded the Elizabethan habit of referring to oneself in the formal third person (“Here sitteth –”), with the exception of sparing use in correspondence, etc. As well, during the time period in question, that same older third‑person verb conjugation ‑eth (She desireth, he loveth, she hath, etc.) was being replaced by the modern ‑s or ‑es, so that in some cases words were written with the older idiom and pronounced in the modern one. In the interests of transparency–this is a work of fiction, intended to entertain, after all – sincere attempts have been made to preserve the music of Early Modern English while making its vocabulary transparent to the modern eye and ear, but what is rendered in this book is, at best, nature‑identical Elizabethan flavoring rather than any near approximation of the genuine animal.

I recommend David Crystal’s excellent books Pronouncing Shakespeareand Shakespeare’s Wordsfor an accurate picture of the speech of the times.

I was unable or unwilling to avoid the use of some words that have a well‑defined meaning in Modern English, but are slipperier in EME, and to which our own cultural assumptions do not apply. Those who were spoken of as Atheists did not necessarily deny the existence of a God, though they denied God’s goodness and agency in intervening in mortal lives, for example. Likewise, the word “sodomy” covered a lot of ground, and it was legally punishable in proportion to witchcraft and treason… but the practice of male same‑sex eroticism seems to have been largely winked at, or at worst satirized. You can explore two conflicting takes on the homoeroticism of the day in Alan Bray’s Homosexuality in Renaissance Englandand Michael B. Young’s King James and the History of Homosexuality;feel free to draw your own conclusions, as I have. At the very least, the modern ideas of homosexuality or heterosexualiry as the foundation of one’s persona did not have much currency to the Renaissance mindset; however, we can be fairly certain that, the social demands of reproduction aside, the desires of men (and the less‑well‑documented desires of women) no doubt inhabited the usual sliding scale of preferences.

Of course, even Platonic Elizabethan same‑sex friendships

could be very intense, passionate in modern terms, and one can find examples in Shakespeare and other chroniclers of the times of the vocabulary of love used casually between friends and nothing thought of it. However, some squeamish criticism to the contrary, it is this reader’s opinion that the language of Shakespeare’s sonnets is homoerotic rather than homosocial, and I have chosen to run with that reading. It also seems to me that, while those poems were at first only privately circulated, he does not seem to have believed his friends would be too shocked. Of course, this leaves open the question of whether any biographical analysis of those selfsame sonnets can be considered reasonable; they may very well have been an interesting work of fiction.

Much as this.

Back to cultural drift. On the family front, a cousin was not the child of an aunt or uncle, but merely any relative close enough to be considered kin, but not a member of the immediate family – a niece or a third cousin twice removed as easily as what we might consider a “cousin.”

Some historical events have herein been consolidated for the sake of narrative clarity, and a few dates altered (notably moving the construction of the Globe back a year to ease narrative clutter, moving the Essex rebellion by a day for purposes of pacing, and removing Master Richard Baines to France some few years afterhis historically documented tenure at Rheims to put him there when Marley might have theoretically been in residence). Several taverns of historical interest have been condensed into the famed Mermaid, which I have made the haunt of poets and playmakers some years before its historical heyday. Certain notable individuals have been dispensed with entirely, or prematurely, or their lives extended somewhat. In addition, Robert Poley’s daughter, Miss Anne Poley has received both a sex and a name change, and Mistress Poley, is the recipient of a first name chosen only for unobtrusiveness in the milieu, as her own is lost to history. The relationship of that same Mistress Poley, born “one Watson’s daughter,” to our old friend Tricky Tom Watson is strictly a matter of conjecture. And that is merely the most glaring alterations listed… .

As I was trained as an anthropologist rather than a historian, and as the preceding is a work of fiction, I have chosen to apply the standard that absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence, and I’ve chosen to make free with some conjectures frequently presented as absolutes (such as Anne Hathaway’s alleged illiteracy) which are not documented but rather a part of the common legendry and educated guesswork. In addition, certain questionable bits of tradition relating to the authorship of various notable works of sixteenth‑ and seventeenth‑century literature (Edward III,the King James Bible)and the original ownership of certain objects (notably the Stratford churchyard “W.S.” signet ring) are treated as fact rather than rawest speculation. And I must admit that my interpretation of intentions behind the post‑Lopez revival of The Jew of Maltaand The Merchant of Veniceis, at best, bogus–though not quite as bogus as my chronology of Shakespeare’s plays.

History is not narrative, alas. And Elizabethan political and theatrical history is less narrative than most. To paraphrase Velvet Brown, the facts are all tangled up together and it’s impossible to cut one clean.

This is a work of fiction. While there are any number of actual factsenmeshed in the web of its creation, it should not be treated as representative, as a whole, of my opinion on any particular historical theories or opinions. Nor should my suggestions regarding additions to the seemingly endless litany of Christopher Marlowe’s suspected lovers be taken seriously. It’s vilest calumny, all of it.

Well, except the part about Edward de Vere’s proclivity for transporting choirboys across international boundaries for immoral purposes. That’s the gospel truth.

The choirboy in question was sixteen at the time of the transportation; his name was Oracio Coquo. “I knew him, Horatio – ”

… okay, that was uncalled‑for.

To sum up, I consider this novel to be a grand disservice to antiquity in the tradition of those innovators whose Fictionalized Histories linger in vogue to the present day, and don’t consider it necessary to be any more faithful to Kit and Will than they were to assorted British Sovereigns not of the Tudor persuasion.

Really, considering what they wrought upon various Edwards and Richards and maybe the occasional Henry or so, Kit and Will deserve whatever the Hell they get from me.

It’s been a deep and abiding joy telling lies about them, however, and I’m pleased they came into my life. I do, however, hope that they are sharing a fine laugh at the irony of it, wherever they are.

After all, we’re each storytellers here.

About the Author

Originally from Vermont and Connecticut, Elizabeth Bearspent six years in the Mojave Desert and currently lives in southern New England. She attended the University of Connecticut, where she studied anthropology and literature. She was awarded the 2005 Campbell Award for Best New Writer.