Ink and Steel

Act I, scene viii

Hark, countrymen! either renew the fight,

Or tear the lions out of England’s coat …

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, First Part of King Henry the Sixth

Will itched with the sensation of words filling his brain, like a pressure behind his eyes. Kit saw it: Will could tell from the sly way the other poet abandoned him in the drawing room amid cider and staling crumpets, beside a leather-surfaced secretary fitted with every tool for writing a man could want. Will fetched another cup of cider and settled himself with his back to a window so light could fall over his shoulder. He proceeded to deface first one and then another sheet with his cramped looping hand. Fewer mark-outs this time, fewer words scratched through. It was well that Kit walked into the edge of the door frame on his way back into the room, or Will might have upset the ink pot in startlement. Will glanced up. The light had changed and he’d turned in his chair to follow it without noticing, and he’d covered half a score of folded leaves with notes and lines of dialogue, scanned lines sketched here and there with a double-underlined blank, waiting for the perfect word.

Christus lacrimavit, Kit growled, rubbing his shoulder. He’d changed to a shirt of cobweb lawn, this one without scorches on the sleeve; a doublet of black silk taffeta, slashed crimson, was slung unbuttoned around his shoulders.

“Walsingham is resting. How comes it?”

“It comes.” Will pushed the pages across the desk, waving Kit an invitation. “I don’t remember you so clumsy, even drunk.”

“If I were still drunken, I’d have something to answer for. Tis noon. Didst not hear the bell?” Kit riffled pages until he found the first. “I’ve been tripping on nothings since …” He tapped a knuckle on the eyepatch without looking up.

“Not yet accustomed?”

“It seems only an hour gone by when I had two good eyes to see with. Will, that any mortal man can write such verse so quickly is an affront to angels. This exchange betwixt Marcus and Titus with Titus unhanded, and his sons beheaded, and his daughter dismembered …. Why dost thou laugh? it fits not with this hour.”

“Why, I have not another tear to shed.”

That’s good, I warrant. It does sing true: to read it, you can see the man smile, and it is terrible.” Crisp pages rustled; Kit held each up, opened along the folds to read slowly, tasting the words. Learning them,Will thought. Is he truly so blind to the irony?

He found himself looking at his friend’s face for a shadow of pain, and saw only a player’s concentration, a thin line etched between Kit’s dark brows. Will went to the window. He rested a hand on the glass and stood looking over the garden, watching yellowing leaves twist in a soft October breeze.

“If you mean to go about London unnoticed, you might dress less like Christofer Marley and more like a cobbler’s son. I can bring a false beard from the Theatre, and a bit of gum. No one will see aught but that and the eyepatch, an you play the role.”

“A cobbler’s son.” Amusement in that. “Only a man who dresses like a glover’s son would say so.”

One more rustle, then silence as the pages stopped turning.

“We’ve come from close places, haven’t we, Will? And worn very different roads to the same end: poetry and service.”

“Your father saw the value of an education.”

“As yours did not. I may have to teach you latin.”

Shakespeare snorted. Another leaf tugged loose of a pear twig before Kit spoke again. “I shan’t be in London long.”

“Where will you go?”

“I cannot tell.”

“Where can I write to you?”

“I do not know.”

Will paused. “You’ll be on some mission for Her Majesty,” he said, considering. “I understand.”

“No,” Kit answered. “I go tonight, under cover of darkness, to beg my service back from Gloriana, in point of fact. I have been offered refuge by a foreign monarch, that I might live.”

“That you might live?” Will set his rump on the window ledge. Kit still stared at the pages, but his eye no longer scanned the lines.

“What mean you?”

“I am …” A breath, and a sigh. Kit’s shoulders rose and fell as he stepped back from the desk, scrubbing his nails on his doublet. The motion arrested;he plucked at the material, pulling it into the light to examine. “It is a little Kit Marley, isn’t it? No matter. I’m poisoned, Will, with a slow poison, and the cure lies in a foreign land. If I do not return I shall die.” He ruffled paper. “Horribly, I am assured.” Which was truth, Will decided, watching Kit. Or as much of a truth as anyone was like to get from Marley.

“I shall worry.”

“And I for thee. You’ll be in more danger. But I shall discover how a letter may find me, if a letter may find me, and send you word on the means.”

“I may take a month in Stratford come Christmas time. If the plague stays in London. If the playhouses stay closed. If you send a letter.” Will resumed his chair and reached for a fresh sheet. He could feel Kit’s smile resting on him.

“Annie is speaking to you again.”

“Annie thinks I should see my children, as she had Susanna write me, before we’re grown and gone. I’ll be sleeping in the third-best bed with Hamnet, I imagine. And she’s yet a better wife than I deserve, Kit: there’s few enough women who would even pretend to understand why a man might leave kith and kin to crawl through the gutters of strange cities, all for the grace of a poem.”

“There’s few enough men who understand it,” Kit replied. “And, here or in Stratford, I may be capable to make a visit, now and again.”

“From overseas?”

“Not so much overseas as under them,” Kit said cryptically. He glanced at the window, measuring the light, and fanned the folded sheets upon the desk.

“Shall we work on these a little, before I must disguise myself for Her Majesty?”

“Will Sir Francis loan you a cloak?”

“A hood should suffice in a carriage.”

“Keep the doublet: you’ll want to look pretty for the Queen. Otherwise she won’t believe you re Marley.”

“At least I don’t dress like a Puritan,” Kit answered, with a scornful glance for Will’s brown broadcloth, and reached across the desk for a pen.