Ink and Steel

Act III, scene xviii

Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows

Her pretty looks have been mine enemies;

And therefore from my face she turns my foes,

That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:

Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,

Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 139

Lucifer’s own long hands steadied Will down from the white mare; Will staggered as someone stroked brands of fire up his thighs, and Lucifer caught him.

“Pained by the ride?”

“Excessively.” Will forced his body to straighten and limped away. “By my troth, if I never set arse in a saddle again, it will be sooner than I like.”

The white mare regarded him expressively from under fringed eyelashes. He bowed a pained apology, spongy pine needles squishing under his feet. “No offense intended, madam.”

Lucifer folded his wings tight against his doublet and slanted the identical look at Will.

“None taken, I presume” The angel patted her on the shoulder. She leaned against him briefly, smearing white horsehairs on the black velvet of his doublet, and trotted away through the pines. Drifts of needles thicker than a rush mat muffled her hoofbeats to a rainy sound, and then she was gone, trailing the tinkling of bells behind her. Lucifer’s black stud followed.

Will closed his eyes and breathed deep of still. “A forest? In Hell?”

“They call it the Wood of Suicides”

Will turned quickly to catch Lucifer’s expression, but the Devil’s face remained placid.

“It’s so serene. I thought the trees…” Will looked up at their soaring heights, at the greeny-gold light that filtered through the needles. He heard the ridiculousness of his own unconsidered words. You’re talking to the Father of lies as if he were a familiar friend, as if thou wert on a country outing.“…would be sad.”

“Why?” Lucifer’s wings resettled. Will wondered whether the fidgeting reflected the angel’s emotions. “They have what they wanted. I imagine they are as content as such folk may ever be. Beside that, tis oaks who hate and oaks who act. As thou well shouldst know by now”

“Oaks who?”

Lucifer smiled. “Surely thou knowst the rhyme. The Faerie trees: Ellum grieve, and oak he hate…”

“Willow he walk, if yew travels late,” Will finished, and sank down on the ground with his head clutched in his fingers, his eyes shut so tight they pained him. It didn’t hurt enough to satisfy; Will ground the heels of his palms into his eye. The Faerie trees. Oh God. Oh Christ.

The angel crouched beside him, wings opening wide for balance, or perhaps to shield Will’s grief from the pitiless sky. He did not touch Will, and Will was grateful for it. “I see” he said softly, “that thou didst not understand how strongly some factions in Faerie oppose the Mebd, and Gloriana, and anything that supports them. Master Shakespeare, I must plead thine indulgence; it did not occur to me that thou hadst not realized the connection.”

“The Fae killed Hamnet,” Will said, just to hear it given voice. So calm and even. It must have been someone else, speaking the barb-tipped words. “It was my fault. They did it to stop me writing. To break me and drive me home. The Fae killed Hamnet. Because of me.”

“Aye,” Lucifer said. “Not all the Fae. But those who have no love for Elizabeth and less love yet for the Daoine Sidhe”

Will’s throat burned. His eyes were dry, somehow, although there was no strength in his arms or legs to lift him from the sweet-smelling carpet of needles. “It didn’t work.”

“Nor shall it now. Thy will is greater than it seems, Master Shakespeare.” The wings spread, arched, sheltering. Despite himself, Will laughed painfully at the pun. The smell of woodsmoke surrounded him, sweet and pungent, as if exhaled from Lucifer’s feathers and skin.

“Someone will pay for this,” Shakespeare said softly.

Lucifer patted him on the shoulder and offered him a hand. “Someone generally does. Come, Master Shakespeare, let me show you to your cottage, where you may begin your revenge.”

Will wobbled when he stood, his hands trembling more than they had in Faerie, his arse and his inner thighs still aflame. He was thankful when Lucifer dropped his hand. The angel’s touch was not what Will would have expected. “A cottage and not a dungeon, Your Highness?”

“A poet with naught to poesy on but dungeons is of but little use.” Lucifer walked ahead, arms swinging freely with his stride, wings luffing like sails.

“Thou mayest go where thou list, and pass without fear. Here in Hell”

Will almost walked into a tree, unable to take his eyes from Lucifer. Lucifer did not return the regard.

“I’m free?”

“Where couldst hide that Hell’s master could not find thee, an I wish’t?”

“Ah.”

“Here is thy home”

Home. The word had the sound of a hammer driving coffin nails. Will turned to regard a little cottage under the trees, a vegetable garden in a sunny glade beside it, a stone well with a yellow bucket resting on the lip. The smell of cool water and vegetable blossoms filled the air. “This?”

“Aye,” Lucifer said. “I think thou wilt find what thou dost need within. Goodmorrow, Master Shakespeare.”

“Your Highness, Will said softly. Don’t leave me alone. What am I to do here?”

“Lucifer, turning, looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Write poetry”

Will stood, mouth gaping. “A quiet cottage in the woods is Hell, lord Lucifer?”

The angel smiled. “It shan’t be quiet. Thou’lt have thy son and all thy many loves and failures to keep thee company, or I misjudge thee sorely”

Will shuddered. And Lucifer smiled, but it looked like sorrow. He dropped his eyes to the forest floor and drew a breath. Will saw it swell his wings. “I trust thou wilt find those adequate companions”

Will said not another word, but watched Lucifer vanish through the trees. He didn’t turn to look at the homely cottage, its verdant garden, the warm coil of smoke rising from the chimney. He sat down on the arched sweep of a root and laid his chin in his hands.

“Oh, Annie,” he said, miserably, what might have been hours later. “Oh, Hamnet. What have I done?”