Ink and Steel

Act III, scene xiv

And here upon my knees, striking the earth,

I ban their souls to everlasting pains

And extreme tortures of the fiery deep,

That thus have dealt with me in my distress.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, The Jew of Malta

Kit rubbed a corner of his eye in the dimming room and thought of candles. He stretched against the back of his chair, his spine crackling, and stood a moment before a hesitant knock rattled the door. “Come!” He crossed to the fire to light a rush. The door swung open, revealing Murchaud leaning against its frame in a pose at once consciously arrogant and restlessly self-aware.

“Christofer.” The prince flipped a stray curl behind his ear, an un-characteristically tentative gesture. “Art thou … ? Alone?”

“Aye.” Kit touched his spill among the embers, then stood to apply the resultant flame to a lamp wick. “Come in.”

Murchaud stepped onto the jewel-patterned carpet, cautious as a stag. Kit blew out the rushlight, adjusted the lamp, and fitted its chimney, carrying it to his table as a scent of char filled the room. It spilled golden light across his poems and paper, and Kit slid them aside until he found pipe and tobacco pouch among the clutter.

“Filthy habit,” the Elf-knight said, latching the door. “I’d thought thee quit of it.”

Kit turned to face Murchaud, tamping the pipe with his thumb. “I was.” He didn’t know how to explain that he woke from his dreams of late with the smell of tobacco and whiskey clinging to his skin, full of strange cravings nothing would assuage. He dipped a second spill down the chimney of the lamp and lit his pipe from it. Settling down on his stool again, he let the first breath of smoke drip down his chin.

Murchaud leaned against the locked door and crossed his arms. “I came to wish thee well tomorrow.”

“The Chiron? Thank you. Will needs your luck more than I do; my part is finished. He’ll be on the stage.”

“Will,” Murchaud grimaced is with my mother tonight.”

“In rehearsal first.”

“I know. And so I came to thee. I expect thou planst to be with him after the play.”

“So I had anticipated,” Kit answered slowly, cupping the warm bowl of his pipe in his hand. The embers had gone out from inattention: he reached for a rush. “He returns to London on All Saints Day.”

Murchaud straightened away from the door. “And will your cruelty to me end when he is gone, my love?”

Kit froze with the pipe between his teeth, the relit spill pressed to the weed within it. The poet forgot to draw; the flame flickered out and he laid pipe and burnt rush on a shallow pottery tray. “Cruel? To thee? As if I had the power.”

“Thou goest to Morgan still, and dost hide it from thy mortal lover, who sports with her quite openly. And yet to me, who was more a friend to thee than ever my mother proved, thou wilt barely speak in passing.”

Kit pushed his stool back and stood as the Elf-knight came to him. The room was growing chill; he thought absently of tending the fire. He lifted his chin to meet Murchaud’s gaze directly. “What couldst thou wish of me?”

Murchaud’s fingers slid under Kit’s hair, caressing his neck. “Tell thou me, O Elf-knight with thy human lover,”

“I’m not.”

“what does he give thee that I cannot?” Murchaud’s breath was warm on Kit’s skin.

Kit swallowed, and considered. “The Fae are very cold,” he said at last, hopelessly.

“And mortals a flame we warm ourselves upon.”

Kit turned his head to avoid the kiss, but did not pull away as Murchaud bowed his face against the poet’s throat. “I’ll be thine again after tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Murchaud said. “I rather think thou wilt not.” There was grief in hiswords; so much pain that Kit shivered in reaction. “Why Morgan and not me?”

“I do not know.”

“Liar.” Murchaud breathed deep, as if fastening Kit’s scent in his memory, and stepped away unruffled, his pale eyes chill. “Is it vengeance upon thy poet, for not loving thee alone?”

Kit shivered and shook his head. The words came strung on knotted wire: each one tore his throat. “Kissing thee does not hurt enough.”

Murchaud chuckled, his hand on the door. “Half Fae already,” he said, and left Kit alone in the lamplight, unkissed.

Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,

At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand!

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, from Sonnet 128

Will poured golden wine into Morgan’s glass and then his own. It filled the fire-warmed air with a scent of summer, grape arbors, and clipped grass. He cupped the glass in both hands, leaning against Morgan’s chair, stretching his feet to the fire. “I’ll miss thee.” Without looking at her. “And thou me?”

She leaned forward, knees pressing his shoulders, and took her glass from out his hand. Her lips brushed the top of his head; she sat back. “One becomes accustomed to loss.”

“That is not an answer, my Queen.” The rug beneath him was soft, her fingers kind in his thinning hair. Fine ripples trembled as he raised the wine to his lips.

“I will miss you. If it is important to you to be missed.”

“To be missed? To be loved.”

“You are loved.” Something in her voice reminded him of when she had read hispalm: an assurance like prophecy. “And shall be more loved still.”

“By whom?”

“One can never tell, until it is too late to do anything about it.” A light click told him she set her glass on a low table. Her fingers found his shoulders, sought deep into his tension. Do you regret this, “Master Poet?”

“Regret leaving? Or regret Faerie?”

“If we shadows have offended…”

He laughed, and then her touch made him sigh. “It is rather like a dream. A dream of peace and healing. Is it your medicines or is it Faerie that mends me so well?”

“Both,” Morgan answered. “Time stands still for thee here. And my herbwifery lends some relief. But when thou goest back to the world, thou wilt begin to die again.”

“You still wish me to stay.”

“Thou hast ten years. Perhaps as much as fifteen.” She bent and kissed his forehead, tilting his face up with a hand under his chin. “Go to him,” Morganle Fey whispered. Her lips brushed the heavy earring. He shivered. “Tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow is too late,” she said, and stood out of her chair. She stepped over Will lightly, her kilted skirts sweeping his shoulders. “Go now. Tell him to wear his boots and cloak tomorrow, and his sword.”

Will pushed himself to his knees. “I had written something for you.”

She stood facing the fire with squared shoulders and softened hands. “A sonnet?”

“About your music.”

“I do not need your poetry. It belongs to the mortal world. I have a poet of mine own.”

Silence. Will rose to his feet. The fire popped, scattering coals on thehearthstones; Morgan’s precisely applied shoe ended their escape. “Morgan.”

“I have a poet of mine own,” she repeated. “If you are wise, you’ll go to him now; you have so little time left before I reclaim him.”

The cruelty in her tone left him gasping. His lips shaped her name again, but that very breathlessness kept it mercifully silent. She stood before the fire and did not look at him. He turned and left her presence. The door of the room he shared with Kit was unlatched. Will pushed it open gently and found Kit bent over papers on their table. Kit’s table, Will thought as the poet looked up.

“Forgotten something?”

Will hoped he imagined the chill in Kit’s voice. He latched the door, breathing deep the aromas of wood smoke and cold tobacco.

“Morgan’s finished with me: she couldn’t make me stay. You said that quill was too beautiful to use.”

Kit glanced at the gorgeous alabaster feather in his hand. “I changed my mind. It writes well. You have a play tomorrow: come to bed.”

“You re working.” But Will unfastened his doublet as he argued, struggling only a little with the golden buttons.

“I can work in November.” Kit dropped the quill into jet-black ink and stood. He came around the table. “Will, I’m frightened.”

“Frightened?”

“I think,” He shook his head. “If you stayed in Faerie, love, you could live.”

“I want to see my son again,” Will said quietly, knowing Kit would not argue the point. “That’s not what scares you.”

Kit tugged the doublet from Will’s shoulder and took it to lay out to air. “Murchaud was here. And very fey.”

“He is.”

“No. Will, I think he’s going to the teind.”

“What do you mean?”

Will laid his hand against Kit’s cheek. The skin was cold and damp. Kit let the doublet drop on the floor and Will pulled him close, feeling Kit’s heart like a terrified sparrow trapped in the cage of his ribs. “I mean,” Kit said, “I think it was farewell. And he’ll be gone, and you’ll be gone.”

I’ll write,” Will said. “You’ll visit.”

Kit turned around and looked at him, unapproachably distant from inches away. “You’ll die. I’ll care for you. Morgan said she would have you back.”

“I have no plans. To return to Morgan.”

So they were lovers, then. Will laid his hand on Kit’s cheek. “I wonder who ended it.”

“I misspoke.”

“Take you back.”

“I’ve worn her collar enough for one lifetime.” Kit shivered and drifted away, running his fingers inside the band of his ruff, disarraying the careful pleats. Abrupt gestures betraying annoyance, he untied it and tossed it on the chest. “Morgan is a fool.”

The thing on Kit’s face approximated a smile, Will decided, but it wasn t, really. “Shakespeare is a bigger one,” he answered, and was glad Kit kissed him before he could compound that foolishness somehow.