Ink and Steel

Act I, scene iv

Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,

And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

Her lips suck forth my soul; see, where it flies!

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Faustus

Kit’s heartbeat rattled his ribs inside his skin. He clutched the balustrade in his left hand, Morgan steadying him on his blind side as she led him down the sweeping marble stair and into the midst of creatures diabolic and divine. His riding boots clattered on the risers: inappropriate to an audience with the Queen of Faeries, he thought inanely. But it was homely and reassuring that they hadn’t had time to make him boots and that the doublet, for all its fineness, bound across his shoulders.

“Breathe,” the ancient Queen whispered in his ear. “You’ll need your wits about you, Sir Kit, for I can offer thee but small protection, and my sister the Queen is devious.”

He turned his head to glimpse her; the movement brought a twisting sharpness to the savaged muscles of his neck and shoulder, which were stiffening again. Morgan must have seen him wince, for her fingers tightened. “Thou’rt hurting.”

“Fair face of a witch you are,” he answered with a stab at good humor. “Without herbs or simples better than brandy to dull a man’s pain.”

She paused on the landing above the place where the stair began to sweep down and made a show of fussing right-handed with her skirts. He leaned on the rail and on her other arm while the pale gold-veined stairs reeled. “I’d dull your pain,” she answered, glancing at him before ducking her head to flick the soft moir one last time. “And thick your tongue, and set you rhead to reeling. Which canst ill afford when you go before the Mebd, Sir Poet.”

Her hair moved against the back of her neck, a few strands escaping the braid. He stopped his hand before it could brush them aside. A blade of guilt dissected him at the impulse, and he embraced the pain, gnawed at it. He had nothing left to be unfaithful to, save Elizabeth, now that his sweet Tom had discarded him. Kit welcomed the cold, the distance that came with the thought. Nothing like ice for an ache. She’s very like Elizabeth would be, had she leave to be a woman and not a King. “Queen Mab?”

“The Mebd,” Morgan corrected, steadying his arm again. Below, faces turned up like flowers opening to the sun. “Queen of the Daoine Sidhe.” She pronounced the name maeve, the kingdom theeneh shee. “She has a wit about her Ah! Sir Kit. Come and meet my son.”

“Mordred?” Kit asked, putting the smile he couldn’t quite force onto his lips into his voice.

“Dead at Camlann,” Morgan answered. “He was fair. Fair as thou art, ashen of hair and red of beard. A handsome alliance. Come and meet Murchaud the Black, my younger.”

Something in her tone made him expect a lad of thirteen, fifteen years. But the man who met them at the foot of the stairs, a pair of delicate goblets in his hand, was taller than Kit by handspans, his curled black hair oiled into a tail adorned with a crimson ribbon, his beard clipped tighter and neater than the London style against the porcelain skin of his face. Kit’s palms tickled with sweat as he met the man’s almost colorless eyes, saw how the broad span of his neck sloped, thick with muscle, into wide shoulders. It was a different thing from the inexplicable warmth he felt for Morgan. More raw, and less unsettling. He’d like to see those black curls ruffled.

“Mother,” the lovely man said, extending a crimson glass of wine. His voice was smooth, at odds with the power in his frame.

She unwound her hand from Kit’s elbow, but let her fingers trail down his arm before she stepped away. Her son pressed the second goblet into his hand, taking a moment to curl Kit’s fingers about the delicate stem. The touch lingered, and Kit almost forgot his pain.

“Your reputation precedes you, Master Poet.”

“Sir Poet, Morgan corrected. I knighted him while no one was looking.”

“You did? Mother, bravely done!”

She laid a possessive hand on his shoulder. Kit looked after her in confusion, and she gave him only a smile.

“Things are different in Faerie, she told him,” and dusted his cheek, below the bandage, with a kiss. “Now drink your wine and go ye through those doors and court and win a Queen.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“Kit. Show them strength, not a cripple leaning on a woman’s arm.”

He met her loden eyes, then nodded, tossed back the wine, and set aside the glass. Rolling his shoulders under the too-tight doublet, he stepped into the rivulet of courtiers threading toward what must be the Presence Chamber. Frank stares prickled Kit’s skin as he followed the crowd, conscious of the antlers and fox-heads, the huge luminescent eyes and the moss-dripping armor of those who moved around him.

Masques, he told himself, and didn’t permit himself at first to return the curious glances. Hooves clattered on the floor on his blind side: he flinched and turned to look, and a naked satyr caught his eye and bowed from the waist. Kit blushed and stepped back, looking at the floor.

As if I had an idea of precedence here.The rose-and-green tiled floor rolled under his boots like the rising, falling deck of a ship. He hesitated and put a hand on the paneled wall. A woman brushed his arm, elegantly human except that the diaphanous robes which stroked her swaying hips and breasts seemed to grow from her shoulders like drooping iris petals.

Then his attention was drawn by an antlered stag, richly robed in velvet green as glass, resting one cloven hoof on the jeweled hilt of a rapier and walking upright like a man. Kit’s pulse drummed in his temples and throat.

Adrift, he thought, and raised his right hand and touched the silk handkerchief binding his bandage. The fingertips of his other hand curled into detail carved upon the wainscoting. I don’t know what to do. A novelty. I wot a knife in the eye does change one or two things.

“Follow me.” A sharp voice dripping wryness. Kit looked down, putting it to a wizened man who seemed all elbows and legs like a grasshopper. He came to Kit’s belt; his long ears waggled under a fool’s cap. “Before Her Majesty waxes vexed.”

“Waxes vexed, and wanes kind?” Kit pushed against the wall. “Dizziness, Master Fool. You know me?”

“Your plays have a wide circulation.” The little man grimaced: it crinkled his face so oddly that Kit at first did not recognize a smile. “Art Marley, and I’m Goodfellow, but mayst call me Robin if I may call thee Kit. We’re fools both, after all, and of an estate.”

“I’ll not dispute it.” Kit pressed the heel of his hand to his injured eye, as if the pressure could ease the throbbing that filled his brain. “I’ve the belly to make a go of it if you’ll steady me, Master Fool. One fool hand in hand with another. A Puck for a puck.”

“You’ve the belly for many things, I hear.”

“I’m notorious.” The banter was tonic to a flagging confidence.

A tall man with four horns and the notched ears of a bull swept past, wearing a breastplate of beaten gold and trailing a cloak of burned blue velvet and vair. A circlet crossed the man’s fair brow, just under the horns, and Kit returned his stare.

“I am notorious.”

The bull-horned man turned his head, maintaining the eye contact, and almost stumbled over a side table. Kit wished he had a rapier to rest his hand on; a heady rush he liked better than wounded dizziness filling his breast. As if air filled his lungs again after a blow to the gut.

I’m Kit Marley. I’m Kit Marley.He curled his lips into a grin and stiffened his shoulders, put a cocky sparkle in his eye. Flickering torchlight picked out the river of

Fae, limned them like the demons of Faustus, and the heat of it stroked Kit’s cheek. The bull-horned man turned suddenly to watch his feet.

Marley the poet. Christofer Marley the playmaker. Marley the duelist. Marley the player, the lover, the intelligencer. I’ve the honeyed tongue to seduce wives from husbands and husbands from wives, secrets from seditionists and plots from traitors. I’m Christofer Marley, by Christ! I can do this thing.He tasted a breath, and then another one. For Good Queen Bess. For Elizabeth. I can do this thing and any other.

“Lead on, Merry Robin,” he said without letting the grin slide down his face, though it tugged his stitches and filled his mouth with musky blood. “And show me your merry men.”

“Tis not the men that need concern you. Tis the maid stands at their head.” Twiglike fingers encircled Kit’s wrist and the elf tugged him forward, creeping on many-jointed toes.

Kit had a brief, swirling impression of heavy paneled doors worked in bas-relief with masterful artistry, designs more Celtic than Roman. The throne room was longer than it was broad, the floor tiled in patterned marble of rose and green, the dark windows hung with rippling silk and open to the night. The Fae moved freely, clumping in knots of whispered conversation, calling witticisms across the table set with glasses and wine.

Kit’s head throbbed with the scent of rosemary and mint, strewn with flower petals underfoot. Robin Goodfellow tugged his fingers, and Kit turned his head slowly so he would not miss a detail on his blind side. No hush fell when he entered, but the conversation flagged for half an instant before Robin led him forward. On the far end of the hall, raised on a dais, the Queen lifted her head. Kit would have gasped if he’d had any wonder left in him.

She curled in a beaten gold chair, languid as a lioness. A cloth of estate stretched over her head, and as Kit approached uncouth nails ringing on the paving stones she raised eyes that struck him through the heart. It wouldn’t have taken much to send him to his knees, true, but Robin was there, and made the stumble look a genuflection. Kit didn’t look up, but the image of the Queen’s golden hair knotted in braided ropes stayed with him, and the haunting perfection of eyes that caught the light and glimmered one moment green, one moment violet, like orient jade.

That most perfect creature under heaven,he thought, the moon full in the arms of restless night.

She moved an arm, by the sound of it. Stretched in leonine grace. Unfeeling of the hard, cold stone he knelt on, he imagined the purple silk of her mantle drifting from a wrist as white and smooth as a willow branch. He imagined the perfect pale mask of her face marked with a rosebud smile, and shivered deep in his soul. Her voice was furred like catkins, soft as the wind brushing his hair, and he heard a rustle of slick cloth and a jingle of bells, as if she stood, or stretched, or danced a step and stopped. His breath froze in his belly when she said his name. She’s just a wench,he thought desperately. She’s ensorcelled me. This is sorcery. Glamourie.

“Gentle Christofer.” Another whisper of bells. Robin got up and shuffled aside. He didn’t dare raise his eyes. “You grace our court with your presence. We have seen your work. It pleases us, and we know of your other duties before your Queen, and Gloriana pleases us as well.”

Somewhere, he found a voice, although it didn’t sound like his own. “You are gracious, Your Majesty.”

“Look upon us, she said,” and his chin lifted without his conscious will. I am bewitched,he thought, and then realized how close she had somehow drifted, silent as a thistledown. She reached out with soft fingertips, laced them through his hair, and traced the outline of his ear as if exploring a flower petal. He whimpered low in his throat, an anxious whine, and gritted his teeth as a low, amused chuckle swept the room.

They knew what she was doing to him. His breath came like a runner’s around the fire in his chest, but he managed to answer in pleasant tones. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Like velvet stroked along his spine, like a hand in the hollow of his back, her voice kept on.

“I’d grant you a place in my court, Master Poet. Your old life is lost to you. Will you play for my pleasure, sir?” A little ripple of delight colored her tone at her own double meaning.

“I’m sworn to another,” he began. The hardest words he could imagine speaking then, but the Mebd cut him short with a wave of her lily-white hand. Pearls and diamonds slid about her wrist when she moved, and emeralds and amethysts sparkled on her fingers.

“Hath been our royal pleasure to assist our sovereign sister Elizabeth in maintenance of her realm, whether she wits it or not. She’ll not grudge us your service, Master Poet”

“Sir Poet.” A voice like the yowl of a cat after the Mebd’s silken perfection. A voice from his blind side. Kit turned his head. Morgan stood beside him and a few steps back, her hands loose by her sides as she dropped a brief curtsey to the Queen. “I’ve knighted him, sister dear.”

“Ah.” The Queen let her fingers trail across Kit’s neck. “Stand, then, Sir Poet.” Her voice said she smiled, but her eyes didn’t show it, and Kit struggled but didn’t have to take Morgan’s subtly offered hand.

“A man cannot serve two Queens, Your Highness,” Kit said softly, against the pressure within that told him to throw himself down and kiss this woman’s slipper, the perfect hem of her perfect gown. Much as it may pain him. He shook his head, in pain.

“Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air

Clad in the beauty of a thousandstars;

Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter

When he appear’d to hapless Semele:

More lovely than the monarch of the sky

In wanton Arethusa’s azured arms …”

“Your Faustus,” she said, but she seemed well pleased. She stepped back, a silver slipper gliding through the rose petals curling on the tile, and Kit felt something snap in the air between them as cleanly as if he’d broken a glass rod between his hands.

“We know it.” She settled back on her chair. “Thou canst never go home, Christofer Marley. Art dead unto them.”

Kit swallowed around the dryness in his throat. The dream was broken, the moment of perfection fled like the touch of the Queen’s soft hand. His belly ached, his chest, his ballocks, his face; he trembled, and only half with exhaustion.

“Your Highness,” he said, and his voice was again his own, if raw as the cawing of crows. “I crave a boon.”

“A boon?” She leaned forward in a tinkle of bells. “We shall consider it. What offer you in return?”

His luck had been running. Let it run a mile longer. He stepped away from Morgan, nearer the throne, dropping his voice.

“A bit of information, Your Highness. You have an interest in Elizabeth’s court?”

She smiled. Oh yes, he’d guessed right, from the fragments of information gleaned from her speech and Morgan’s.

“Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster? He lives, in hiding.”

“As do you,” she answered, with a slight, ironic smile. “It signifies. What wish you in return?”

“Let me speak to him but once. I have information I can give no other, and it is vital to the protection of the realm. If Elizabeth’s reign means something to your Royal Highness and I can see your sister Queen is dear to you, I beg you. On bended knee. Let me make my report.”

“And?”

“And secure my release from service.” For all his practiced manner, he could hear the forlorn edge in his own voice, and imagine the mockery in Elizabeth’s. ‘Am I so easy to set aside then, Master Marley?’

The Mebd watched him as he suited action to words, bowing his head, sinking on the stone steps of the dais though they cut his knee like dull knives. The queen sighed; Morgan shifted from foot to foot behind him. At last, he heard the sibilance of her mantle as she nodded, and her voice, stripped now of glamourie.

“Let me see your wounds, Sir Christofer,” she answered, not cruelly. “Draw off your bandages.”

His fingers fumbled when he tried. The room spun, and he laid his palm flat on the edge of the steps to keep from tumbling down them. Morgan came up beside him and lifted the coils of linen with gentle fingers, and the Faerie Queen sucked air between her teeth like any woman would at what she saw.

“Hist, let me lay hands on thee,” she said, leaning forward on her throne to probe with cool fingers. “I cannot heal the scar or give you back your vision, poet. But I can seal the cut. Have I consent?”

“Yea,” he answered. Morgan’s hand on his shoulder, only, kept him upright. The Queen stroked the wound again, and the pain ebbed, and the floor and the walls blurred and spun. She muttered a word or two he did not hear.

Well,Kit thought when she leaned back, I’ve benefited from sorcery and had dealing with the fair folk. If there’s a hell after all, no chance of avoiding it now.He thought of Faustus and managed a smile as Morgan and someone on his other side—Murchaud—helped him rise.

“Art dismissed.” The Mebd turned her attention away.

To complete Kit’s disgrace, Murchaud had to carry him back up the stairs to Morgan’s chamber. The knight took his leave, and Morgan stripped Kit over feeble protests and placed him in bed. Sometime before morning, she drew the hangings back and crawled under the coverlet, and he found to his delight that a little rest had restored him more than he’d expected. There was something to be said for living after all, and for being alive, and the simple joy of a woman who threaded strong hands through his hair and touched the seamed white scar across his face as if it were merely another thing to be caressed like his nose, his ears, the lower lip she nibbled into silence when he would have whispered fair words in her ear.

She left again by dawn, wriggling from under his arm, and though he lifted his head to see her slip through the door, he did not turn when the door reopened and he thought she returned. A warm body slid beside him as he drowsed. He startled from sleep to wakefulness in a moment, stifling a cry;the hands on his shoulders were dry and calloused with bladeplay, big enough to close a circle around his upper arm, and the lips that touched his throat and the teeth that caught at his skin were framed with a tickling rasp of beard. A flutter of breath trickled through his teeth. He forced the words to follow it.

“I’m unfit for wrestling, Sir Knight.”

Murchaud chuckled, his mouth growing bolder as his long hands tightened on Kit’s shoulders, around Kit’s chest. “Come, come, Sir Poet, he answered. “I’m understanding of your plight. Needs do nothing but sigh just like that, and I shall see your sighs well answered on this morn.”