Ink and Steel

Act II, scene i

ALL. God forbid!

Faustus:

God forbade it, indeed; but Faustus hath done it

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Doctor Faustus

Murchaud had reach on Kit, and two good eyes, and Kit was not used to fencing with a surrounding audience hampering his movement. But Kit sidestepped as the pale sunlight of Faerie flashed along the spirals decorating Murchaud’s rapier. Despite the unkempt grass tugging his boots, a little spatter of dignified applause followed the gesture of his main gauche as it knocked his opponent’s foiled blade off line. Foiled, but still razor-sharp along the edge: the blade brushed Kit’s shirtsleeve in passing, parting the linen as easily as the skin of a peach. Kit stepped in to take advantage of the break in Murchaud’s guard, ducked a thrust of the main gauche, and, extended along the line of his blind eye, lunged. Murchaud barely twisted aside, Kit’s rapier stroking the brownleather jerkin over his muscled belly, and his riposte fell short as Kit skittered back, swearing breathlessly, sweat trickling between his shoulders. The onlookers shifted, a murmuring riot of colored costumes against the sweep of green lawn, the gardens of heartsease and forget-me-nots, the high golden walls of the palace.

Kit forced his attention away from the audience as Murchaud advanced, teeth white in the angle between his lips, lips coral pink against the black of his beard. Stop looking at his smile, Kit you ruddy fool. Watch his chest, his eyes hah! as if that will keep you from distraction!A thrust, a flurry of parry, riposte, bind Murchaud’s breath on his face as he pressed with all his greater weight and the strength of his arm. Kit locked his elbow, holding against the press, went for Murchaud’s belly with the main gauche and felt his hand knocked wide. Murchaud bent a knee, bulled and lifted, hilt ringing on hilt, shoving Kit’s rapier high and wide. Kit scrambled aside, sucking his belly against his spine and out of the path of the blade, feeling through the shifts of Murchaud’s weight for where the main gauche would be. Somewhere on his blind side, and Kit’s hand was out of line. He ducked backward, wove, dipped a knee as he parried another lunge and felt the edge part not just shirt but skin, the hotter trickle of blood joining the drip of sweat down his forearms and froze at the needle prick of Murchaud’s eighteen-inch dagger in the curve of his jaw where the pulse ran close. A slow, thick thread of blood curved down his throat, delicately as the pad of a thumb dragged over skin, and he shivered. Murchaud smiled in earnest now, and Kit tilted his head away from the knife and closed his eye as the applause swelled.

“Yield?”

“Yield.” Kit forced clenched fingers to unwind from the grip of his rapier. The blade rasped on Murchaud’s and thumped pommel-first into the grass. He waited for the knife point to ease away from the red-hot dimple it wore. Instead, the blade caressed his throat, came to rest in the hollow of his collarbone, pressed just sharply enough to sting as Murchaud covered Kit’s mouth with a kiss as claiming as any bridegroom’s. The applause for that was more than a polite ripple.

It could have been an hour later or a dozen, although sunlight still streamed between the bed curtains to stain Murchaud’s pale skin tawny. Kit pillowed his head on the man’s ridged belly and sighed, idly picking at the clean wrap of linen covering the scratch on his arm. Murchaud wound a few of the long fair strands of Kit’s hair around his fingers like a girl playing with her ribbons. That was better. Wryness twisted Kit’s mouth into something only a fool would call a smile.

“What?””

“The fencing, or the fencing?”

“Thy swordsmanship is improving,” Murchaud continued blithely. “And the strength of thine arm.”

“Exercise is the best remedy for a weak arm, I’m told.” Kit still tasted that public, thrilling kiss. Still heard the roar of approving laughter that had followed.

Now, Murchaud’s laughter trailed into thoughtfulness. “We’ll make a warrior of thee yet, Sir Christofer. How long hast been among us?”

“Four days? Five? Time passes quickly with thee by my side.” He’d expected from his previous visit that by the time a month passed in Faerie, the world of London would be thirty years gone. Not so: perhaps the difference changed with the whim of the Mebd, but the once or twice Kit had found an unattended moment in which to prowl through the palace’s golden corridors and peer into the Darkling Glass, it seemed only a few hours had passed for Will and Sir Francis. He had sought the Prometheans behind his murder, as well, but the glass shied from them, as if he would pick up ice with an oiled hand. Kit didn’t feel himself guarded, precisely. Or watched. But he was seldom left alone, waking or sleeping. Of course Morgan can watch me if she wishes. And no doubt the Mebd can, as well.

Murchaud continued, “Thou wilt need learn something of the factions, if thou art to be ours. I’ll presume a certain comfort on thy part with politics, given thy career fair enough.” Murchaud’s fingers tugged Kit’s hair as Kit turned his head to kiss the Elf-knight’s belly.

“There is thee and thy mother,” Kit continued. “By whom I read I have been claimed. But I know not yet what task you mean to set me to.”

“We’ve uses for poets. Not unlike the uses to which thou hast set thyself, in thine old Queen’s court.”

“Commission thy poem,” Kit answered. “I could pen a sonnet on the arch of ev’ry rib, passage of verse on thine eyes, and lay a very pastoral over field and fallow of thy flank and loin. I’ll hang a golden tongue about thy throat.”

Murchaud’s sweat was bitter and sweet; a droplet of Kit’s own blood had dried on his breast, and Kit kissed it away. Murchaud pressed fingertips to the hollow of Kit’s throat. “It should have sealed by now.”

“Like any corpse, I bleed at the touch of my murderer.”

“There is Faerie and there is Hell,” Murchaud interrupted, with the air of one reciting a catechism. “They are allied under a contract drawn up long ago, when the Christian, now Romish, church first came into its glory. Portions of that Romish church are under the sway of those who oppose science, poetry, freedom of thought, and liberty of speech. Those same men have their fingers in the puppet Puritans too.”

“I know this,” Kit answered. “The secret underbelly of the Prometheus Club. The claims and counterclaims as to who has honest right to the name are too complex for me to follow, but as I understand it, once …”

“Hush,” Murchaud interrupted. “Faerie pays a tithe to Hell for Hell swardenship. My mother, Morgan, wishes to see the tithe ended, and Faerie to stand on its own.” The Elf-knight’s calloused fingertips traced the curve of Kit’s ear. They played languidly on, even as Murchaud’s next words froze Kit’s breath into stone. “What didst thou intend, when I overheard thee to tell Shakespeare that thou wert no Gaveston?”

Kit sat back out of the bedclothes, tugging his hair out of Murchaud’s grasp and squinting against the sunlight to meet his eyes. “You watched me. In the Glass.”

“Aye: we stayed to ward you, should someone take your reappearance amiss.”

Kit swallowed the self-loathing that filled his mouth. You’ve gotten careless, Marley. Careless and unbalanced, and it will have you dead twice over if you don’t find your feet among these stones.

“Sir Piers Gaveston, Kit said calmly, was the leman of Edward the Second. For whom Edward abandoned a loyal wife and peers who would have supported him, neglected his Kingdom, and paid with his freedom and eventually his life and Gaveston’s life, now that I think on it. For all Edward was a selfish spoiled boy more than he was a King, he died quite terribly for his sins. There’s a story about an impalement.”

“I know it,” Murchaud answered. “But that does not play fair with my question, sweet Kit.”

“I bethink myself,” Kit said carefully, “that in such case the beloved is as much at fault as the unfaithful lover. I knew a man, a man enough like Edward to share his name.” Kit closed his eye so he wouldn’t see the name Murchaud slips shaped, questioningly. ‘Oxford?’ Kit continued, “I cared for him. I did not much care for how he used his wife. I wrote a play to let him know it, and mayhap change his ways.”

“Success?”

“None to speak of.” Murchaud chuckled. “Is now the wrong moment to tell you that I am also a married man?”

“Married?” Kit shrugged, forcing his expression to blandness. “Most men are. Most women as well. I had thought myself, one day …” He paused at Murchaud’s smile, recognizing amusement and anticipation. “Where is your wife?”

“She sits on Faerie’s throne,” the Elf-knight answered.

“The Mebd. Is your wife.”

“Tis less impressive when you consider my parentage,” Murchaud said dryly, taking Kit by the wrist and drawing him down among the bedclothes. “And things are different here.”

“Yes,” Kit said against the pillow. “I’ve noticed.”

Kit woke uneasy in waning light. The wound in the valley of his throat stung, and beneath the door he heard the footsteps of servants, a rattling scratch. He drew the sheets up to cover his shame and called a welcome once he rubbed enough grit from his eye to be assured Murchaud was no longer in the chamber. A brownie entered bearing a taper twice his own height. He was a wee man clad in tattered brown trousers, braces strapped over his teacup belly.

“Sir Christofer?”

And the whole castle knows to find me in the Prince-Consort’s bed.Kit touched his lips, remembering a kiss; the aching hollowness that lately emptied him when he was away from Morgan gnawed his belly. “Awake. More or less.”

“I’ve brought hot water and your dinner clothes.” The brownie gestured with his taper, and other candles about the room flared to life. Kit wondered how someone so small would tote water, but steam rose from a silver ewer beside the wash-basin, and Kit saw a black doublet and breeches and smallclothes laid out on Murchaud’s clothes chest.

“Thank you,” Kit said. In London, he would have offered a tip. Here, he’d been given to understand, gratuities would be perceived an insult.

“Anything else?”

“Soap and some tooth powder?”

“Seen to,” the brownie replied with what might have been a grimace or a grin. “You’ve the three-quarters of an hour before dinner is laid.”

“Where is Murchaud?”

“With …” The candle flickered, and that was disapproval, even in the half-light, “his royal wife.”

The door shut between them. Kit let the sheets fall aside to release their perfume of sweat and almond oil as he stood. Disapproval of me? Or of Murchaud? Or of the Queen?He ached with the battering, but it was pleasant enough. Unlike what gnawed his belly. Kit, this is obsession.

He cleaned himself at the basin, scrubbed his hair with the rose-scented soap, and wished he had someone to pour the rinse water for him, but managed. The shirt was silk again, and wrought with pearls about the bands: he wouldn’t have been permitted that in London, but here he was a knight. I wonder if Faerie has sumptuary laws. The doublet was new. It wasn’t black after all, he saw when he held it up to the light, but a deep undulled green no mortal dye could match. The slashes were lined with silk of a paler green, and the embroidery and the buttons shone in some oil green peridots. There were clean white hose, a cap and gloves, the silver sword he’d practiced with that afternoon, its same plain, functional hilt adorned by a much finer belt and scabbard. And there were shoes with jeweled buckles, which gave him pause.

“Well, I can’t very well wear the one pair of riding boots every day for eternity. Even my father’s nailing won’t stand up to that,” he said out loud, with a little bitterness behind it. John Marley had not been kindly disposed to Kit’s choice to leave Corpus Christi without taking holy orders. A priest in the family … There had been five other mouths to feed, and a man might hope his eldest son would be in a position to provide for his dotage. A poet living on the largesse of other men was unlikely to manage that. Or respectability either.

You said you had a calling, Father, I did. Which had been half the problem.Kit dressed carefully, combed his damp hair, buttoned his buttons, laced his points. He wished he had a mirror to check the effect, although he didn’t mind that the shoes gave him an extra inch of height. He squared his shoulders, tucked his hair behind his ears, and went downstairs to meet his fate.

The great hall bustled. Kit moved through Fae both less and more familiar, already missing the click of bootnails on marble floors and the protection of forged iron. He paused at the doorway, but the herald saw and announced him, and as he moved forward, looking for a place below the salt, his eye was drawn by a jaunty wave from the high table.

Robin Goodfellow, the Puck, who sat beside what must by its chair and cushions be the Mebd’s chair of estate, held open a position on his left. Kit strode toward him, conscious of how recently he’d made a spectacle of himself in this very hall, more conscious of the ripple of hushed conversation that followed. Murchaud sat at the Queen’s right hand, his mother further right, and Kit’s stomach clenched and twisted with unkind recollection. But Morgan looked up at him and smiled as he walked before her. He returned the nod, and knew he blushed crimson when she stood to reach across the table and caress the velvet of his sleeve. “A lovely color on you, she said. Is the fit well?”

“My lady,” he answered, with a nod that mayhap concealed his desire to catch her black hair in both hands and scour his face with it. “Your gift?”

“You can’t go about clad in castoffs,” she said. We’ll see about a wardrobe tomorrow. And outfitting your chambers.”

“My lady is too kind.” He searched for the marks of violence on her skin, near the deep narrow neckline of her gown. There might have been a bruise, powdered over, but he wasn’t absolute. The looking left him sick, and he could not look away. “Your lady is not kind enough. Go, take your place.”

“Will I See you tonight?”

Her smile was the flex of a mayfly’s wings. “Perhaps, she said,” and froze him with her dismissal. Murchaud said nothing, but acknowledged him with a wink. He went to take his place between the fool and another Fae whose name he did not know.

“Sir Kit.”

“Master Robin.”

“Ah.”

“You remember my name better, then I apologize,” Kit said, and stood beside his chair rather than trouble himself to sit only to rise and sit again. “I was overwrought.”

“It is understandable. How fared you in the mortal lands?”

“Miserably,” Kit said, which was an answer. One cut short by the flare of trumpets. The Mebd entered, and was made courtesy to, and took her chair. She did not seem to notice Kit, though her long sleeves and her mantle of pure white silk brushed his leg as she passed. Kit seated himself as Robin did, and invisible footmen attended their chairs.

“I’m bid to tell you,” Puck said, “you’ll be called upon when the meal is done. There’s poetry in your future.”

“Something new?”

“Impress us, is the word.”

Kit bit his knuckle, thinking. I could manage a stanza or two of blank verse between then and now.There was an oiled cloth on the table, and he sketched a few letters in it with the hilt of his blade. He’d had a thought before. ‘That most perfect creature under heaven, The moon full in the arms of restless night’— but the second line limped, and he wasn’t sure this was a time for pretty flattery and praising one lady over another. He smiled. Proserpine and Hades. Oh, can I get away with it?

Kit stole a glance at the Mebd and past her to his master and his mistress. Morgan saw him; he raised his brows in question. Her eyes sparkled as she tilted her head. Yes. They delight in being shocked. The question is, can I manage more than a half-dozen lines by the time the subtlety’s presented?

He leaned toward the Puck as the meats were passed, and the Mebd made her selections.

“Why am I seated at the high table, Master Robin?”

Robin’s bells jangled, a scent of peppermint arising. “Because it amuses someone to see you here.” Twig-fingers tapped the back of Kit’s hand as the poet broke his bread into tidbits. “Your manners are dainty for someone who is not accustomed to eating with nobility.”

“Not unaccustomed to it,” Kit answered. “I’ve done my share of dining above my station.”

“And what is your station, Sir Poet?”

Kit stopped, a buttered morsel of bread to his lips. There was more to the question than the obvious: the glitter in the Puck’s huge soft eyes, wide and wicked as a goat’s, made that plain.

“It varies with the weather,” he said at last, picking up a cup he had no taste for just to feel the wine swirl within it. “Cobbler, preacher, poet, spy. Which would you have me?” The Puck chewed noisily, dipping greasy fingers in a bowl of rose-water after setting a leg of swan aside. He swallowed, enough of a mouthful that his throat distended. “Lover, killer, playmaker, thief…”

“Never a thief. But all the others, if that’s the one that stings. Only a vile playmaker in the end,” Kit answered, with a shrug he himself wasn’t sure was acknowledgement. What turns a cobbler into preacher, Kit? Or a preacher into a Queen’s Man? That too.Kit opened his mouth on a glib lie and shut it. He glanced over Robin’s shoulder, where the Mebd sat, and beyond her, her husband, and beyond her black Morgan le Fey.

“When I was thirteen,” he said, “my father beat his apprentice so badly he was fined by the Guild. I thought I’d rather a scholar’s beatings than a prentice’s. I entered King’s School at fifteen.” The words came quietly, and he was proud of that. “I was too old. They took me anyway. I went to Cambridge on a scholarship. My family were proud. Some years later, I came to find that the vocation I thought I had was a lie, for the Church’s God was no God of mine. Or if it was true, then I was called by mistake. If God makes that sort of mistake.” Kit stopped and sat back in his chair.

The Puck slid a bit of roast meat before him. Kit lifted his dagger and poked at it, but did not eat.

“And then?”

“And then it was live by my wits or live not at all. Tis easy to starve in London. And unlike the Church, the only thing Gloriana asks of her servants is that they love her above breath and fortune. Why am I telling you this?”

The Puck laughed. “Because you need a friend, Sir Kit.”

Kit looked up. He set his knife aside. “Do I? Aye. Well, then I wot I do.”

“Eat, Puck said. You’ll need strength when you tell your poetry.”