Ink and Steel

Act III, scene iii

Mercutio:

Without his roe, like a dried herring: O flesh, flesh,

how art thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers

that Petrarch flowed in: Laura to his lady was but a

kitchen-wench; marry, she had a better love to

be-rhyme her; Dido a dowdy; Cleopatra a gipsy;

Helen and Hero hildings and harlots; This be a gray

eye or so, but not to the purpose.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Romeo and Juliet

Will knew something had happened, that Kit’s rendition of “Greensleeves” had somehow been a challenge, the smack of a gauntlet against an unprepared face. Knew it more when the music that resumed after Kit left the small stage was wordless, and Morgan excused herself, smiling, and went to climb the dais beside the Queen and the Prince. Who shortly thereafter removed themselves from the hall. Will, rested from the afternoon’s nap, mingled joyously with musicians and poets, with the Faerie players that Kit had recruited for his masques and plays, until at last Kit found him and tugged his sleeve toward the stair.

“It looks desperate to be the last one at the party,” Kit said. “Unless you were planning on leaving with the brunette.”

Will glanced back at her. She smiled coquettishly behind a fan of painted mauve silk, and he waved and turned away. “The fangs are a bit disconcerting.”

“She’s Leannan Sidhe. You’d never be the same.” Kit lit a candle at the base of the spiral stair, and Will climbed in silence beside him.

“Leannan Sidhe?” He tried to mimic Kit’s pronunciation.

Kit hesitated, his hand still warm on Will’s arm as they made their way upthe stairs. “Blood drinkers. A man can’t be too careful, in Faerie.” Will watched Kit open the door. “Black Annie,” he said. “Only men, not children. She’s got a special affection for poets.”

Kit ushered Will inside, latched the door, and found cups and a bottle in the cupboard, upon which he left the candle. “Tis said her love gives inspiration.”

“And have you availed yourself of this inspiration?”

Will took the cup Kit offered him and held it under his nose. The scent made his eyes tear. “Brandywine?”

“Better. Tis called uisge. Be careful.”

As Will sipped, and coughed, and Kit laughed at him. “No, dying young once was enough. But I wanted to talk to you about your play.”

The fire of the liquor sliding down Will’s throat did nothing to calm the tension in his shoulders. He told himself, any ripples shivering across the tawny fluid in his cup were just the effects of his palsy, and set it down before he could spill it. “You disliked it.”

“I could not adore it more,” Kit said, refilling his cup. He leaned against the great carved post of the bed, curtains rumpling against his cloak. As if irritated, he unfastened the clasp and leaned forward enough to free himself of the tattered finery, tossing it to the bed. The single candle cast gentle shadows across his face; he drank and continued talking into Will’s silence.

“You’ve cast me again, haven’t you? As you like your Rosalind. Your Ganymede.” Will laughed. “You caught me out. The first to notice it enough to warrant a mention.”

“How could they miss? Ganymede, Leander, dead shepherds. A crack about a great reckoning in a little room and another about incompetent historians? You should not take such risks.”

“Not a risk if no one notices.” Kit laughed, staring down into his cup. “Kit in skirts, I should be offended, I suppose, but she’s a delightful girl. Although to call her Ganymede were an ungentle jest”

“Ungentle? I thought to reference your Dido… ”. And not painted boys un trussing in doorways? I suppose that’s all right.”

“I beg your pardon,” Will picked up his cup and gulped more liquor, liking the second swallow better. “I intended no offense.”

“Naive, Will.” Kit dismissed it with a tilt of his hand. “She’s a marvelous character. Any man with the wit to choose a resolute wench would die for such a maid.” And then hastily, as if afeared: “Is that how thou seest me, Will?”

“How I … Damn.” How does he always manage to weasel me into the honesty I don’t want to give?The liquor gave Will courage, and he wondered if Kit had intended it so. “Perhaps how I would see thee, if I could.”

That beautiful, ruined face turned toward him, and Kit set down his cup on a relief-carved trunk and closed the distance a few hesitant steps. His forehead shone pale, candlelight burnishing a thin gloss of sweat. Will swallowed.

Kit’s careful, measured voice coiled his limbs like the tendrils of a fog, cat-amused. “And were I a woman, a maid, what wouldst will of me?”

Will grinned and stepped back, far enough that he could breathe again. The closer Kit came, the vaster grew the tightness in Will’s throat. He tossed back what was in his glass; it seemed easier to swallow, and a pleasant looseness imbued his muscles.

“Wouldst measure thy will gainst mine? I’d say a maid at thine age hadn’t been striving for another state.”

“I’d be inclined to agree. Dost wish more drink?”

“Wine, an thou hast it.” His throat was dry; wine would comfort it.

“By all means, put me to use.” Kit busied himself at the sideboard; Will watched how his curls snagged and slid on the velvet across his shoulders. He would have made a lovely girl. To use? Pouring and fetching?

Kit checked as if Will had flicked his nose for overcuriosity. “Pity mine impertinence. Tis queer to see oneself given a woman’s body. And, in my situation, a rare pleasure to be remembered.”

Bitterness on that last word, and Will flinched from it as Kit returned his cup.

Will drank, and Kit drank too. The silence lasted until they’d drained the wine. Will set his cup on the window ledge with a soft click and twisted his heavy new earring in his ear before he spoke. The words that came were not the words he’d intended.

“Kit, why would any man permit …” He swallowed, stuffed his traitor right hand into the pocket of the borrowed sunflower doublet. “Isn’t it agonizing?”

Kit cleared his throat, looking away, dispossessing himself of his cup as well. “Rather thou shouldst say, exquisite.”

“I find it difficult to comprehend.”

“I,” Kit paused, still looking down, face suddenly pale around a flush that marked consumptive circles on his cheeks, bright enough to show by candlelight, “could show thee.”

“Ah.” Will’s mouth that had been so dry was full of juice now. He swallowed it.

“Thou…”

Kit was trembling. Like a leaf, like a girl, like a rose petal twisting in the breeze, about to be lifted from the stem.

“Do not I possess mine own body, to pray God as I wish, to speak as I wish, to love with as I wish?”

Which was heresy again, and sedition, and half a dozen other things. To which Will had no answer.

Kit smelled of sweet wine and herbs, and that fiery taint of uisge. Soft boots silent on red-and-gold carpet, in one endless moment, he came the few short steps to Will diffidently, like a man wooing a maid. Gaze on gaze, as if watching for the instant when Will might startle, he raised spread fingers and slid them up Will’s cheeks, brushed his ears, combed his curls with them. Then took Will’s face tenderly between his hands and, tugging him down, nibbled Will’s lips until they parted. “William, my love.” A kiss at first as hesitant as a maiden’s, but then deepening as Will softened into it; and yet unlike kissing a maid, for all Kit’s lush mouth and pouting lip, because that mouth and tongue were knowing. There was the aggression of it, the light control exerted by Kit’s hands in his hair, the yielding lips fronting a seeking tongue, the brush of beard against beard, the hardness of a man’s muscled body in his arms. Literally in his arms; Will blinked to realize he’d pulled Kit close, dust-colored curls between his fingers, leaning into the forbidden, erotic kiss that drained blood from a suddenly light head to warm and throb in his loins.

A swarm of moths beat hungry wings toward the candle flaring in his breast, he jerked free. A string of saliva stretched between their mouths, glistening. “Pity,” Kit said, and broke it with a fingertip, stepping away. “More wine before we sleep?”

“No,” Will said. “I think I’ve had too much already. Art ready, for sleep?”

“Aye,” Kit answered, unbuttoning his doublet’s collar. “To sleep.”

“Will lay in darkness, listening to Kit’s slow breathing, hugging his nightshirt close to his sides. How can he sleep like that, as if nothing transpired? Sleep is what you should be doing as well,he reminded himself, and closed his eyes resolutely on the faintly moonlit swells and valleys of the canopy overhead.

Will nibbled his thumbnail, stopped quickly at the subtle reminder of the pressure of lips on lips. He turned on his side, careful not to shift the coverlet, and buried his face in a tightly clutched pillow as if the greater darkness could silence the voice in his heart.

What if I had shown him those poems? He knows. He must know. Or was he just being Kit? He shocked all Faerie with that song of old Harry’s. Did he want to shock me too? Did I want him to know?

Kit never stirred. Will cursed him his complacency, the even rhythm of his breath, the relaxation in his shoulders under the whiteness of his nightshirt when Will turned to look at him in the moonlight. Wondered what would happen if he, Will, put out his right hand and took Kit by the shoulder and turned him to the center of the bed, and stole another kiss. It would be more than a kiss now, and that, thou knowest.He sighed, and rolled back to his own side of the bed. O let my books be then the eloquence, And dumb presagers of my speaking breast. And what if I told him that? Would he kiss me like that again? What else would he do? Would I want him to?

An unanswerable question, for all Will would have known the answer short hours before. The night passed in discomfort, until the last grayness before the first gold of morning, when Kit’s muttered whimpers and bedding-snarled struggles drew Will upright.

“Kit?” No answer, but a low, tangled moan. Kit’s hand reached out, as if to grasp something, or ward it away, and Will impulsively caught his wrist with both hands. “Kit.”

Who blinked, and drew the hand back, self-consciously, rubbing at his scar. Who looked strange in the half-light, divested of the eyepatch.

Will still hadn’t quite accepted; Will wanted to reach out and touch that long whitescar, the drooping eyelid, the bland, pallid orb underneath. He tucked his hands below the covers.

“Dream,” Kit said softly, turning aside as if Will’s gaze discomfited him. “Damn me to Hell, Robert said they were supposed to get better after I made the cloak”

“What sort of a dream?” Will drew back among the pillows, propped against thebedpost. “Nightmares?”

“Robert said they were prophecy, and indeed I had one of you in Baines clutches. Twas what drove me to your rescue. But stitching that cloak was meant to bring their power under control. Prophetic dreams are all very handy, I’m sure, but if I cannot sleep at night, any night, I’ll be of no use to anyone.”

“You slept a little,” Will said.

“I had …” Kit stopped, his hands fretting the bedclothes. “Just drifted off a moment ago.”

“Oh.” Wariness, and then a cold sort of delight. Not so cool as he pretends, Master Shakespeare. It will not behoove you to be cruel.

“The cloak,” Will said; anything to break the fraught, gray silence. “What if you spread it over the bed? There’s herbs that keep dreams off if placed under your pillow. Perhaps it holds the same sort of virtue.”

Kit lifted his chin and slid his legs out of the bed. He’d pulled the cloak off its foot the night before and folded it neatly over the back of thechair; now he shook it open and laid it over the coverlet. The fabrics dark and bright, rich and plain, were hypnotic; Will reached out and stroked a rose-colored trapezoid of brocade. “Why a patchwork?”

“Kit smiled. Morgan and Cairbre say it signifies all the hearts a bard has pleased with his music; it represents protection, for the good will of all those listeners and lovers interlinks to a garment that keeps ill magic and ill fate away like ill weather. A very old kind of sympathy.”

“So not a fool’s motley, then?”

“They both represent something sacrosanct.” Kit clambered back into bed, making a show of pushing his pillow around, and lay down with his back to Will again. “A tatterdemalion sort of magic, but there you are.”

“Which patch is from your Prince?”

“He hasn’t given one.” A hesitation. “The green-figured velvet embroidered with the unicorn, though. That was from Morgan, and oddly formal for a thing that’s meant to be made of scraps and ragged leavings.”

“As if the Bard, in exchanging pleasure and truth with many, isn’t entitled to a single whole life of his own.”

“Rest easy, Kit,” Will said, because he could not think what else to say. “I’ll wake you again, if need be.”