Ink and Steel

Act III, scene xv

Hermia:

Out, dog! out, cur! thou drivest me past the bounds

Of maiden’s patience. Hast thou slain him, then?

Henceforth be never number’d among men!

O, once tell true, tell true, even for my sake!

Durst thou have look’d upon him being awake,

And hast thou kill’d him sleeping? O brave touch!

Could not a worm, an adder, do so much?

An adder did it; for with doubler tongue

Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Will’s role was small, Asklepios, and he’d written it so intentionally. After his own sad death, struck down by Zeus thunderbolt, the erstwhile physician scrubbed the paint from his face and made his way into the audience, seeking companionship. The revelers were masked and gowned as gorgeously as Will had ever seen; they bowed or curtseyed graciously or, pleasing him more, failed to, rapt in the performance as he walked among them, seeking Kit or Morgan. He found neither, but Puck’s small, twisted form beckoned among the window draperies, and Will went there. The sounds and scents of Faerie surrounded him; he sighed, settling into the window seat.“

“Master Goodfellow, well met.”

“Master Shakespeare, as well.” Spry as a goblin, Puck swung up the draperies and clung to them lightly, at a height from which to hold comfortable converse with a seated man. “They approve of your work.”

“They seem to,” Will answered, over the hollow clatter of hooves as the centaur playing Chiron took the stage, remonstrating with the Gods over Asklepios death. “Kit and I put some magic of our own into the ending.”

“When Prometheus takes Chiron’s immortality, to permit Chiron death I should think our enemies would find that more to their liking than our allies, Master Poet.”

Will grinned and tilted his head to look Robin in the soft, goatlike eye.

“Ah, but Prometheus dooms himself in doing so.”

“Dooms to eternal torment,” Puck answered, nodding. “Clever. But surely outside the scope of the play?”

“There is an epilogue.”

Silence, and then Puck tittered a high fey giggle like a child. “Speaking of eternal torment Aye? What think you of the teind?”

Will swallowed hard and looked away from the Puck, running his eyes once more across the crowd. Neither Kit, nor Morgan, nor Murchaud could be seen. “Kit thinks it will be Murchaud,” he said. “I imagine he is making his farewells.”

“Think how glorious the pain will be. How deep, how lasting. There’s poetry in that.”

“Pain?” Will hauled his legs up onto the window seat and hugged his knees. “Glorious pain? If you think pain is glorious, perhaps you have never known it practically.”

“When you live as the Fey live, any sensation is precious.”

“I see.”

“Not yet.” Puck smiled. But you will”

“I’ve had enough of prophecy,” Will said. He sighed and stretched and stood; Robin swung on the drape and hopped to Will’s shoulder, no more than a featherweight, holding Will’s ear with his long bony fingers.

“Then don’t listen to it.” A jingle of bells, the tangling and untangling of improbable limbs. Puck shifted on the bones of Will’s shoulder and made himself as steady a place as any horseman well accustomed to the saddle. “Tis not Murchaud going to the teind tonight, Will Shakespeare. And a sacrifice gone willing to Hell buys not seven, but seven times seven years.”

On the stage, Chiron was dying, beasts and mortals gathered close about. Will stopped and watched as the noble centaur went to his knees, a majestic fall. “How do you know?”

“It is kept close secret Will,” the Puck said softly, “I’m the Queen’s Fool. I know everything . I am just not often privileged to speak on it.”

“Then who will it be?”

Crowds have a way of moving, of breathing, of falling silent at once as if they were some giant dreaming animal. Will looked up as the animal sighed and stretched and turned in its sleep, as it rolled and broke open along his lineof sight. A tingle ran up his skin; he felt the nail that Kit had given him grow hot in his sleeve. Sorcery? But the thought was lost as a drape blew back from the curtained shadows of a window embrasure like the one he had just left, one toward the back of the hall and away from the crowd gathered before the stage. Will, slowly walking, froze so abruptly that Robin clutched at his head in a most undignified manner.

“Oh, Hell,” Will said, reaching out a hand blindly for balance. For Will recognized the figures intertwined within its moon-touched shelter, caught a kiss that seemed sheerest delight, the smaller all in black except his ragged cloak, his fair hair gleaming; the taller in a gown of palest green, her black hair tumbling over her lover’s hands like a living thing.

“Kit,” Will said, crossing his hands over his belly as if to press his vitals back inside. “Ah. No.” On his shoulder, Puck slid down, flexible as a squirrel, and threw both arms around Will’s neck. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Will mouthed. He was staring; the curtain fell back, mercifully, and he managed to turn and look away. The chorus took the stage for the epilogue. He raised his eyes. “You have no cause for sorrow, Master Goodfellow.”

“Sorry I could not tell you sooner,” Puck said, as Will closed his ears on the savage poetry of the thing that he and Kit had created together. The words left a taste like vinegar in his mouth; if the floor were berushed over the soft-sheened marble, he would have spit the grit and savor of bitterness out.

“It was hardly your place to tell a man his loves betrayed him.” Even as he said the words, Will tasted their hypocrisy. Puck slid down his shoulder. He wobbled, half realized he was sitting on a bench when Puck thrust wine into his hands. Will drank it greedily and put the goblet under the bench; his fingers itched to hurl it, hard, against the wall. “Oh, Robin. I’ve nothing to complain.”

“You feel betrayed? Then why not sing it?”

“Because,” Will said around the taste of ashes that the wine could not rinse from his tongue, “tis neither Kit nor Morgan who broke a bed-vow to a wedded wife, is it?”

“You know he went back to her bed almost as soon as she took you into it.”

Dear God in Hell.But Will kept enough control of his tongue not to say it. Then what did either one of them have to do with me for? Unless twas pity. Yes, pity. For poor, inept, sickly Will. How could a balding poet hope to content things out of legend.

But Robin was still talking. “…and that’s not what I’m sorry for.” Hopelessness, and the void in his belly sharp-edged as a fresh-dug hole. His eyes burned. His knees would not support him when he tried to rise. Somewhere, Will thought he heard a bell pealing; Chiron resurrected bowed for the end of the play. And the cold voice Will recognized as his own aggrieved conscience: Say you deserved it not. Say Annie’s courage in the face of your misbehavior was nothing. Then what?

Robin sucked his wide lips into his mouth so that every rosy trace of colorvanished from them. “Will,” he said. Murchaud isn’t the teind. Sir Christofer is.”

Will blinked, demanding that his ears report some other phrase. “Kit,” he repeated, stupidly. Robin laid a twiggy hand on William’s arm.

“I don’t think he can bear it.” Somehow, Will found his feet. “I know he can’t. Robin.” Enormous brown eyes turned upward, seeking Will’s expression. Will schooled it to impassivity.

“Master Shakespeare?”

All a player’s urgency and power of command imbued his tone when he found his words again. “Robin, what must I do?”

Faustus:

How comes it, then that thou art out of hell?

Mephostophilis:

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it:

Think’st thou that I that saw the face of God,

And tasted the eternal Joys of heaven

Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,

In being depriv’d of everlasting bliss?

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Faustus

There in the shadows of the embrasure, behind the bowering curtains, Morgan put her arms around Kit and kissed him lingeringly. Blood rose in his face, ran singing through his veins. A storm-prickling wind swirled around them, rustling his cloak, lifting his hair like a lover’s fingers. He pressed his body to hers, drunk on the heady beauty of the words that flowed from the incomparable players at the far end of the hall. A measured cadence of church bells pealed close enough to reverberate in hishead; Morgan’s lips firmed and yielded by turns.

“A bone healed twisted must be broken again,” she murmured without pulling back. “What I do I do out of necessity, and I hope you find the courage to forgive me, someday. You have your boots and sword, your cloak and your wits. And now a lady’s kiss. It will suffice.]

Murchaud, he thought, panicky. “Morgan,” He pushed her back a moment before she would have stepped away on her own. “Your own son?”

She shook her head. “It is done.” The bells were hoofbeats, he realized; the tolling of silver horseshoes on the flags. He turned and looked up, stepping past the curtain, out of the recessed gap before the window, and into the suddenly silent hall. A milk-white mare, caparisoned all in silver and blue, bowed her snow-soft nose before Kit and blinked amber eyes through the froth of her mane.

“Oh,” Kit said, as Morgan moved away from him. “Of course. It’s not Murchaud; it’s me.” And laid his hand quite calmly on the pommel, fumbling for the stirrup with his left foot.

Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me:

He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, from Sonnet 134

The white mare’s hooves rang on the cobbles; she shifted restlessly as Kit swung into her saddle. Will limped up with dreamer’s footsteps too slow, too slow and came forward as Kit settled himself, feeling under her pale mane for the reins. She was white, stark white to the tip of her nose not a pale gray at all, but some Faerie breed and she gazed at Will with a knowing eye as he came up to her. Kit’s dark suit outlined him like a pen slash on the paper-white of her hide, his jewel-colored cloak spreading over her rump. The Fae parted before him, opened like the Red Sea before Moses, and Will stumbled forward and grabbed Kit’s boot at the ankle.

“No.”

Kit looked down; looked Will in the eye, the strap of his eyepatch starkagainst the pallor of his brow. That grimace must be meant to be a smile.

“Gentle William,” he said, transferring the reins to his right hand andlaying the left on Will’s shoulder for a moment. “I must. I have no choice.”

“No,” Will said, a second time. “And No.” A third, and he reached up and yanked the reins from Kit’s hand as Kit was shifting them again. A sacrifice gone willing,he thought, a sacrifice gone willing to Hell buys not seven, but seven times seven years.

“Dammit, Will.” Kit knotted his right hand in the white mare’s mane, reached down to pluck the reins back. Will shivered as the mare sidled and shied, jerking against his inexpert touch. Kit slid and bit back a curse, struggling to regain his stirrups.

“It’s my place.”

Will tilted his head back to look Kit in the face. He’s immortal. I’m dying. Why should I not do this thing? Annie would be better off a widow, given the husband I have been. Although I wanted to see Hamnet again.And didn’t admit even to himself he thought, And let it punish him for loving Morgan more than me.

“I understand.”

Will laid his hand on Kit’s knee and offered up the reins, straight over his head. Kit leaned out to reach them; just as he overbalanced, Will let them fall. Will’s right hand darted to Kit sswordbelt. Will’s left closed on the cuff of his boot. “I understand tis not your place at all.” The mare shied in earnest as Will leaned backward and yanked, Kit’s face blank with sudden panic. Leather creaked in Will’s hands, velvet soft against his knuckles. The white mare sidestepped, and Kit tumbled all elbows and flailing into Will’s waiting arms. Will rolled with it, prepared, a stage fall that nonetheless knocked the wind out of him though he made sure Kit landed on the bottom. They fell face-to-face for a moment, and Will pressed breathless Kit hard against the harder floor.

“Mine,” Will said, and kissed Kit roughly, briefly on the mouth. He pushed himself back with both hands on Kit’s collar, a knee still on the smaller man’s belly, shoving him down, looking up into Murchaud’s eyes and the amused, changing eyes of his wife. Puck stood between them, tugging them forward by their sleeves. Kit reached with both hands to clutch Will’s wrists, opening his mouth, unwilling to strike Will hard enough to hurt him. Will doubled his fists and lifted, and banged Kit once against the floor.

“Your Majesty,” Will said, with what dignity he could muster over Kit’s betrayed shout. “I claim the right to go as your teind to Hell.” The Mebd’s lips pursed. She stepped away from Murchaud and from her Puck, while Kit raised his voice in a string of incoherent objections. She crouched before Will, her skirts a pool of green water tumbling around her, and silenced Kit with a brush of her fingers across his angry lips. He must have longed to shout, to rage.

Will felt Kit’s voice fluttering in his throat. But her magic held him silent, and seething he fell impotently still under Will’s hands. And then Kit’s trembling started in earnest, both hands pressed against his mouth, and Will thought, Oh, Jesus. Rheims.

“William Shakespeare,” she murmured. Dost know what thou offerest?”

“Nay,” he said, sick in the bottom of his belly and determined nonetheless. Kit surged against his grip, and Will kneeled down. “But I am willing. Only tell me, Your Majesty, that you will spare my love.”

Kit was weeping. His hands dropped from his mouth and circled Will’s wrists, jerking, chafing, but he fought no more. The Mebd smiled, and nodded, and closed her eyes; Will thought they shone more than they should have. Kit pulled Will’s hand to his mouth and kissed the fingers, a pleading gesture, even his hot gasping breath coming silent through the potency of the Mebd’s negligent spell. Will tugged his hand free, the image of those lips kissing Morgan hot behind his eyes.

“You do us honor,” the Mebd said softly; Will did not miss that she addressed him as an equal in that moment, before she rose and swept away.

Kit slumped as Will pushed himself to his feet; Kit pressed his fist against his mouth and curled on his side, dragging his face down to his knees. “Jesu,” Kit gasped, and Faeries ducked away, wincing; one sprite covered her ears and dropped to the floor. A circle had grown around them. Will stood at its center, turning slowly, and none of the Fae would look down from his regard, and none would quite meet his eyes.

Except Puck, and the Prince. Robin Goodfellow stepped forward, and Murchaud followed him a half step behind. Murchaud bit his lip and nodded to Will. His lips parted as if he would speak, and Will, trembling now, stepped back from Kit’s huddled form. Murchaud knelt, gathering him close, and Will turned away. Puck laid a hand on his wrist, fingers dry as kindling and as knobby a sknotted rope.

“Master Shakespeare.” He drew Will’s attention to the wild-eyed mare. You need to go now. Will bit his lip, trembling harder under the mare’s amber regard. She prodded him with her nose; he fell back. “Robin.” His voice broke; he pretended he didn’t see Kit’s shuddering flinch at the sound. “I am at a loss. I do not ride.”

“Fear not,” Puck answered, taking his elbow. “Thy steed knows the way.”