Ink and Steel

Act II, scene xvii

Like untun’d golden strings all women are,

Which long time lie untouched, will harshly jar.

Vessels of Brass oft handled, brightly shine

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Hero and leander

Kit leaned back on Murchaud’s shoulder, his right side to the wall and his rapier twisted aside so he could rest his heels on the padded bench while they watched the dancers. The prince’s warmth soaked the knot between Kit’s shoulders, and the warmed wine at least began to ease the pain in his neck. And contributed to the headache he still carried, since waking from another evil dream in the black hours of the morning.

“A pavane,” he said amusedly. “It will be country dances next.”

“Country dances. You like them for kissing the ladies in passing,” Murchaud said, elbowing Kit in the ribs.

“Better in passing than in matrimony,” Kit answered, turning his head to watch Morgan whirl across the floor, her wild hair spinning around her, her ivory silk skirts swaying heavily as she moved. “We re failing utterly to look disaffected with one another, love.”

We’ll quarrel after the dancing. Murchaud draped his right arm over Kit’s shoulder and around his chest. “I’m expected in my lady’s chamber’s tonight, and perhaps tomorrow as well. Besides, a stormy love affair is so much more intriguing to a gossip or conspirator than a quiet one, or a simple parting of the ways. You might after all be disaffected enough to turn, and yet still close enough to exert influence.”

Kit shivered, nodded. I’ll just sit up tonight,he thought. I’ve that masque on Orpheus to turn to a proper play, anyway.“Renewed interest?”

Relief, that the tone in his voice was amused pique and not the terror of waking alone that knotted his gut. Six days nightmares, he thought. Perhaps on the seventh day my demons will let me rest.

“Renewed interest in getting an heir,” Murchaud said.

“I’d presumed thee childless by inclination,” Kit admitted, and Murchaud laughed.

“The Fae are not known for our overwhelming fertility, save when we breed with mortals. And even then.” Murchaud shifted against Kit’s shoulder. “The Mebd’s one daughter, Findabair, is dead these thousand years. I barely knew her: she married a mortal king a short time before I was born, and died barren. There has not been another.”

“And the Mebd is suddenly keen to get an heir?”

“War is brewing,” Murchaud answered. “I’m her heir, as it stands: there is no spare.”

“Ah,” Kit said, as the music shifted. “There’s my country dancing. Come pick a fight when you’re ready to go to bed.”

“Kiss enough pretty women to make it look convincing.”

“Oh. Never fear on that account, my dear.”

The wine was cool, and sharp enough to cut the exhaustion cloying Kit’s throat. He’d probably had too much of it, and the hall was nearly empty, false silver creeping across the blackness of the high windows. But he couldn’t face the trek from his lonely seat at the end of the high table upstairs to his bed and his nightmares yet. Kit leaned on the back of his fingers and contemplated lifting the tall glass goblet again. It seemed like a lot of effort for very little reward, and he raised his gaze to the last few dancers on the floor below.

He saw Geoffrey and Cairbre, whom Morgan was relieving at the music stand. He knew the names of the others by now, but did not know most of them beyond a casual conversation.

I should remedy that tonight.It took a moment to grope out the edge of the table and grasp it. Oiled silk and linen slipped under his hands; he took a firmer grip and hoisted himself to his feet, the floor lurching. He leaned on the table edge heavily, reached for his cup, and overset it. He righted the glass in the midst of spilled wine and looked up again, glancing around the room for someone to talk to.

Geoffrey, he thought. Perhaps the stag will be a little more forthcoming tonight. Given the obvious disrepair of my love affair with the Prince.But the stag was nowhere to be seen, and, in fact, Kit found himself quite alone. He didn’t recall hearing the music stop, but the hall echoed in its emptiness, and he realized that everything was tidied except for his own place at the table and that single glass of wine. He imagined the castle’s corps of brownies and elves sweeping the place clean in a matter of instants, and rubbed his face with his hand. Well, passing out drunk at the high table will certainly convince them your heart is in disarray. Hast no dignity at all? At least it wasn’t face-down in a puddle of vomit. To bed,he decided, and set about working out how best to clamber down the low steps from the dais without breaking a limb. There was no railing, and misperceived heights were enough of a problem sober and fresh.

“Sir Christofer.”

Kit closed his eye. “Robin.” Drunk enough that gratitude soaked his voice effusively. “Your assistance, good Puck?”

“Ah.” A jingle as the Puck took his arm. “No one bothered to inform you that the wine was fortified, I take it?”

Kit giggled. “Is that what it was? I thought I was merely a shame, a shameful drunk.”

“You have your reasons.” The little creature steadied him; Kit clung to his hand. “I’ll see you to bed.”

The spiral stair wasn’t as bad as Kit had anticipated, for all his head reeled. Robin’s long fingers were cool and soothing, and there was a railing to cleave to. Left on his own, he thought, he probably would have had to crawl.

“Oh,” he said, surprised to recognize his own door. “Here we are.”

“Yes, Kit. Come inside.” Robin turned the knob and chivvied him into the bedroom, kindling a light from the lamp at the top of the stairs. “Can you get your boots off on your own?”

“Not.” Kit swallowed. His throat burned, which was bad: it meant he was sobering. “Not going to bed.”

“Suit yourself,” Robin said. “How’s the stomach?”

“I am unlikely to disgrace myself. Further.”

“Good. You knew he was married, Kit.”

“Not that,” Kit said, then cursed himself for honesty. “Nightmares,” he explained, as Robin led him to a chair. “Do you dream, Robin?”

“These nightmares,” the Puck said, jumping up on the arm and turning to face him. “Are they new?”

Kit shook his head. He reached out and gently caught Puck’s wrist, turning it to see the way the spidery fingers joined each other in a palm no bigger than a shilling coin. “Amazing, he said. New? No. But worse of late. And dif… different.”

The Puck’s bells rustled. He twined his other long hand around Kit’s wrist: a gesture of comfort. “They’ll get worse before they get better. Are you stitching your cloak yet?”

Kit shook his head, regretted it when the room kept wobbling after. “Should I be? Tomorrow.”

“The sooner the better. You’ll have to claim this, or it will claim you.”

“What is it?”

Great brown goat eyes examined Kit, their horizontal pupils swelling in interest. “A bardic gift,” Robin said plainly. “The gift of prophecy. If a gift you can call it.”

“Cassandra,” Kit said thickly. “Wonderful. Serve forth Apollo: I’ll fuck him. Cairbre didn’t warn me …”

“Cairbre doesn’t have it.” Robin laid his hand in his lap, and curled cross-legged on the arm of the chair. “Tis rare, even among bards. Taliesin had it, if you know that name.”

“Nay”

“Merlin?” The Puck smiled at Kit’s expression.

“The slip of a clerk’s pen nearly metamorphosed this Marley into a Merlin in younger years,” Kit said, remembering amusement at the name misrendered on his scholarship papers. And his sisters good-natured cruelty over the mistake. ‘Merlin’s going to university, Father.’

“A turn of prophecy, then. Make your cloak, Sir Kit. You re close on becoming a bard: you’ll need it.”

“So hang thee me in thy rags of honor,” Kit said after a considering pause.

“In the tatters of Autumn’s fair fastness clothe me in patches of moss-shag’d boulders that all who attest shall know thy banner, thy brand, thy choice, thy mark in this vastness for all the world, thy witness: my shoulders, bah. It needs internal rhyme. And banner/honor, that’s not so good.”

“Pretty,” Robin commented. “What is it?”

“Slightly less than the back half of a very bad sonnet. The Italian form. The scansion limps outrageously and it doesn’t close properly; I was never very good at them. But that Oxford could do better. I am most foully drunk, Master Goodfellow.”

Puck laughed, and turned on the arm of the chair so he could lean back on Kit’s shoulder, as Kit had leaned on Murchaud. Kit shifted to make the creature more comfortable; his rapier hilt jabbed floating ribs, and he lifted his chin to clear the Puck’s half-floppy ear from his field of view. They settled into companionable silence while the room grew brighter.

“There are many sorts of bindings,” Puck said. “I myself am knotted in the Mebd’s hair, and have no choice but to serve her loyally inasmuch as she commands me. I feel your grief, Kit.”

“There are bindings and bindings,” Kit said, as the sun peeked the horizon and Kit’s wine-soaked dizziness receded like the tide before morning.

“Have you heard from your playmaker in England?”

“No,” Kit sighed. “I thought it best to make a clean break, after all.”

“His son has died.” Kit blinked. He arched his neck and angled his head to get a look at the Puck, who snuggled closer on Kit’s blind side. The words hung in the air, unaltered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“His son. A year past now, of a fall from an oak.”

Kit heard a Queen’s voice, a smiling rhyme. Ellum do grieve; Oak he do hate;Willow do walk if yew travels late

“Hamnet,” Kit said. “Dead.”

“Aye.”

“Oh, God.” Numbly, remembering an undelivered letter a year past, though I am no judge of time in Faerie.And then hugged the Fae close as Robin flinched, covering his ears with his spidery hands. “I beg your pardon, Master Robin Goodfellow.”

“Tis nothing.” Robin hopped up, his moist eyes dark. “I must to mine own tasks, Sir Kit. I hope you find your surcease.”

“Perhaps,” Kit said, a little soberer and sadder. He grasped the arms of his chair and pulled himself to his feet to walk Robin to the door. They exchanged a handclasp, and Kit closed and latched the door behind the Fae. He turned and leaned his back against it, eyeing the smooth-tugged counterpane of his broad, empty bed. A few rays of sunlight lay across it, but the bedcurtains would see to those

“His son. Oh, Will.”

Decisively, he turned again, steady enough if he did not bend or stand, and pulled his door open. Mouse-soft footsteps carried him up the stairs and through the gallery, to a door he had not tapped in quite some little while.

His knock wavered more than he liked; he was about to turn and walk away, almost with a sense of relief, when it swung open and Morgan stood framed against the morning, blinking, in a white nightshirt and a nightgown of apricot silk, barefoot, no nightcap and her hair a wilderness of brambles on her shoulders.

“Madam,” Kit said, shifting from one foot to the other. She stood aside, and let him enter.