Ink and Steel

Act III, scene xix

I’ll frame me wings of wax like Icarus,

And o’er his ships will soar unto the Sun,

That they may melt and I fall in his arms.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Dido, Queen of Carthage

A pleasant enough chamber, if a room walled with shadows and floored in cold stone floating like a ship on a nothing sea were one’s ideal of pleasantry. Kit turned at its center as the ferry poled into oblivion, noticing spare furnishings, a master mason’s hand in the angles where the stones turned down into the abyss. “Christ wept,” he murmured.

“So he did.” A voice like a fistful of velvet dragged across Kit’s skin.

Kit swallowed and turned toward his blind side. He might have raised his right hand to check if his jaw was hanging open, but didn’t quite. Father of lies,Kit reminded himself, but nothing could have prepared him for the confounding beauty of the figure in black who faced him, a raptor’s fanned wings glowing soft and pale as moonlight.

Lucifer Morningstar tugged elegant fingers through tousled golden locks and smiled. “Sir Christofer,” he said, furling his wings. “What an unexpected pleasure. May I offer you some refreshment?”

Kit licked dry lips with a tongue that failed to moisten them. He shook his head. The Devil sauntered catlike toward him and shrugged as if to say suit yourself. A casual gesture and a wine glass appeared in his hand, his fingers cupped around the bowl as if to a lover’s cheek.

“God help me.”

“He looks in now and again.” Lucifer commented, brow bent like a bow to dart that glance. “Thou dost interest me. Such eloquence in thee. And such pain.” As if pain were a thing to be savored. The wings flipped and settled, and Kit’s stomach flipped with them, in fear and something else. One white wing extended, a drift of snow glittering against the dark. Primaries trailed on dark stone as Lucifer paced in slow orbit. Deosil, sunwise, moving always to Kit’s blind side and so forcing Kit to turn. Idly swirling that red wine in its glass, until a few drops scattered over the rim and splashed.

“Thou hast a gift for the ages, Sir Christofer. Would that thou wouldst consider an allegiance with Hell.”

Kit drew a breath. Feathers flicked the back of his calves. They carried a rich, earthy musk he knew. He wasn’t sure where he found the humor he put into his voice, but he managed it.

“I’ve come to bargain, not offer allegiance.”

“I could make it very pleasant for thee. Thou hast a fascination with power”

“Get thee behind me, Satan.”

A wink broke the horse-trader’s appraisal in the Devil’s gaudy eyes. “The thought had occurred”

“Are angels equipped for such roguery?”

“like man, made in God’s image”

“So God has an arsehole?”

“Yes. He calls him Michael.” Lucifer laughed in such merriment that Kit smiled, despite the trembling knot in his belly. “Surely, thou hast heard of osculum infame.”

“The infamous kiss. Your kiss. The one that bestows power of witchcraft. Tis not a kiss on the mouth, I hear.” Lucifer only smiled. “Rutting with devils is sorcery.”

“So is rutting with boys. Of a kind with bestiality in thy human law books. It’s all sodomy, dear poet.”

“Only sodomy.” Kit laughed. Enough to burn on; but hanged for a lamb, hanged for a ewe is that what you insinuate? What virtue lies in your kiss, then, Prince of Darkness?”

“No virtue at all. But power. Come, kiss me and discover.”

“Am I Faustus? Shall a man be confused with his creations?”

“Nay. Thou art Marley, who should know better, and come to bargain nonetheless.” The Prince of Darkness spread his wings as if stretching. Kit had never seen anything so white, swans nor snow, limestone nor linen. They gleamed as if sunlit from behind. Kit’s fingers itched to stroke their arm-long primaries. Face burning, he forced his gaze to the well masoned stones under his boots.

“Thou’rt fascinated.”

“… Yes.” Kit folded his hands like a repentant schoolboy.

“Wouldst care to touch?.”

“Touch?”

Lucifer smiled over the rim of his wineglass and flexed the trailing wing forward. Kit clenched fist in fist as the pinions breathed coolly across his cheek, trailed down his throat, bending where they brushed his doublet, a pressure like fingertips braced against his breast.

“Touch.”

Kit disentangled his fingers from each other, lord, how can he be so beautiful, and hesitantly raised his right hand as if in oath and laid it gently, gently on the leading edge of that vast white wing. Rapture swelled his breast; he half expected to yank his hand back, fingertips scorched, but the feathers were cool and firm and slick over buried warmth. Bone and muscle moved beneath strong flexing plumage, tiny barbs catching the ridges of his fingertips with a rasp more felt than heard. He let those fingers burrow through feathers, into down soft as blown thistle seeds, to the blood-hot membrane beneath. And what has become of the burns on my hands?Lucifer shivered, a reflexive twitch of skin like a fly-bitten horse. Ravishing.

“Can you fly?” The wing flicked from his fingers like snatched paper, snapped shut with a slapped drumhead sound.

“If I care to.” Lucifer set his glass aside; it vanished when it left his fingertips, and moved toward Kit, golden curls in disorder against the black velvet of his doublet. He raised sinewy fingers and pressed them curiously against Kit’s forehead, hooking the strap of his eyepatch and dropping it to the floor.

“Oh, thou art too lovely for this.”

Kit thought he should step back, but the Devil’s fingers were cool against his scar. “I should think, to you, the damaged vessel might hold more appeal.”

“Perfection in all things.” Lucifer said. He caressed Kit’s sightless eye with rose-pale lips, the writhing shadows of his crown brushing Kit’s face with a palpable touch. “There. Scars do not suit thee.”

Kit blinked. And then gasped, because he could blink, and beyond blinking he could see. Not as he would have seen before. Not as he would see with his left eye, even now. But, he looked for a word, but otherwise.

The Devil still stood before him, close enough to kiss again, but on the right side Kit saw him as a vining of light and darkness, a twist of contradictions. Kit would have stepped back, but somehow those wings had crossed behind his back; he stood encircled by them and enfolded by the rich, heady pungency of sweat and good tobacco.

“I’ve dreamed of you,” Kit said, wondering.”

“And hast thy dream come true?”

“Not yet.” But he wasn’t sure it was truth as he said it.

“Now.” Lucifer whispered, and his breath at least was as hot as Kit thought it should be. “Bargain with me.”

Kit swallowed, shivered. The Devil’s hands stayed slack and open by hissides; only the wings restrained Kit. Who raised his chin to meet eyes that twitched at the corner with an almost smile. “Will Shakespeare,” he said. “I’m here to buy his life.

“The cost of that is dear.”

“How dear? I could take his place if I had to. But mayhap there’s somethin gelse…. I could pay you with a song.”

“Thine art might be enough to buy his freedom. Thy soul.”

“Mine art. All of it?”

Just that smile. The wings parted, shifted, opened. Lucifer stepped away half lovely swan-winged man, half vortex of light and shadow, and looked down, bowing his long aristocratic neck.

“What about my body?”

A gesture, as if the Devil reached out and pulled something from a table, although there was no table near him. He wheeled about, wings furled tight, their peaks reaching three foot or more over his head, their primaries brushing the floor. Still silent, he tossed the black thing that swung from his fingers at Kit. It sailed heavily though the air; Kit got his hands up in time and caught it, barking his fingertips. And almost dropped it, when he saw what he held.

Rough iron bands abraded his skin; if it were locked in place they would go across the top of his skull, under the chin, around the sides. Hinges made the thing to be opened. A padlock hung from the cheek-piece. The bit or mouthpiece was flat and broad, the size of a small woman’s palm, scattered with blades that would score his tongue and palate, worse if he was so foolish as to try to talk. It weighed a great deal.

“A scold’s bridle.”

Lucifer smiled, and as if the smile cast a shadow over him, seemed to change and darken. Kit found himself looking further up, into eyes he saw in his nightmares. Richard Baines. God help me.

“Holla,” the image said, his lips moving gently, “ye pampered Jades of Asia.”

Kit might have dropped the thing in his hands and run. But there was only abyss to run to, and his right eye showed him that same dancing twist of mocking light with the suggestion of wings behind it. And Will was here.

Somewhere.

“Father of lies,” Kit said. White feathers settled.

“Welcome to Hell, Christofer Marley. What wilt thou sell me for the freedom of thy friend?.”

“I…” He looked down at the instrument of torture in his hands, and remembered something a Faerie Queen had said, about mortal men and bindings. “If this is what it takes, Satan, I will do it. But I think I have something you would value more than a little sport to my torment.”

An arched eyebrow rose. The Devil tilted his head politely, waiting for Kit to continue.

“My name,” Kit said, and let the bridle fall. It vanished before it could clank on the stones. He wondered if it had ever existed. “I’ll sell you my name, for Will’s freedom.” He swallowed, but the Devil smiled.

“Done.” he answered promptly, leaving Kit to wonder if he had made a bad bargain indeed. “Thou art Christofer Marley nomore. And more, I tell thee it will be a long time indeed before thou art remembered for what thou hast been, and not what thine enemies proclaim thee. Thy trials are not over, in Faerie or the mortal realm.”

“How bad will it be?”

“Bad. But all is illusion and memory. Thee, and me. God, and the world. Faerie and Hell.”

Kit turned and walked to the edge of that vanishing tile of stone, floating in an infinite absence. Where are the damned? he asked, which was not what he had intended to ask at all. The words seemed to surround Kit, floating on the air like the toll of the bell, the fumes of the snuffed candle that should accompany them.

“Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing, in Heaven and on earth, we deprive Christofer Marley himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance, and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.”

“Is that what thou didst expect?” Satan asked. “Eternal fire, and the demons of Hell forking souls into furnaces like so much coke for burning?”

“No. Ridiculous, on the face of it. But…”

“The damned are all around thee.”

“Those creatures on the glassy plain. Lost creatures, aye. But I saw I see no souls in torment, Father of lies.”

“Seest thou not thyself? Seest thou not Satan and his angels, then?”

“Am I damned? I feel no fire upon my skin, or on my soul.”

“Fire cannot kiss thy soul, who was Christofer Marley. Such conceits are for simpler hearts than thine. Thou art in Hell, and have been every day of thy life since thy God abandoned thee in a little room in France. And thou, brave soul, reconstructed Him into a God that could love thee. But thou hast not the power to change God.”

Kit closed his eyes, without turning. He felt the cup of a warm wing against his shoulder, and knew Satan came to stand beside him. “Haven’t I?”

“Perhaps thou art more powerful than I.” Lucifer admitted, and Kit studied his profile. Leander. Adonis. Apollo. His body straight as Circe’s wand. Eyes as blue as Heaven looked on the darkness, unflinching, and then turned to regard Kit from beneath lashes frosted in gold.

“I have not succeeded. Is it not what children wish, a father’s acceptance? His love?”

“Yes,” Kit said, into a hollowness that echoed. “If Hell is not torment,” he asked, knowing the answer, “then what is Hell?” If I fell, would he come after me? On those white, white wings? Or would I fall forever, like…

Kit stepped away from the abyss, retreated to the center. Like him.

“Sweet child.” Lucifer said. And then said what Kit had always known he would. “Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Thinkst 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 deprived of everlasting bliss? O Faustus leave these frivolous demands, which strikes a terror to my fainting soul.” Kit’s own words, given into the mouth of a seductive devil. Mephostophilis. And again, the angel smiled. “Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place. But where we are is hell, And where hell is there must we ever be. And to be short, when all the world dissolves, And every creature shall be purified, All places shall be hell that is not heaven.”

That agony in his chest must be his inability to breathe, Kit thought. The burning in his eyes, the taint of Hell.

“O child.” Lucifer said into Kit’s silence, “how canst thou deny what thou thyself hast written, and known to be Truth as it was revealed to thee?.”

Kit scrubbed his hands on his breeches, as if to remove some rusty stain. He tried to ignore the Devil circling, wings fallen into expansion like a courting hawk’s, but Lucifer caught his wrists and drew him close, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. “Hell,” he said, “is where God is not.”

I am damned.His knees rattled. The Devil’s strength held him up. “Thou art as God made thee.” Wry, startling humor. “As are we all.”

“What could such as you want with such as me? “We have our reasons. Thou livest with demons that fright thee more than I do, and so for that which thou art as much as that which thou dost carry inside thee, as I have healed thy scars, I will give thee the power to destroy thine enemies.”

“That which thou dost carry inside thee?”

“Power.”

“How?”

“Why,” the Devil answered, his fingers dimpling Kit’s skin, “Be thou a warlock, who was Christofer Marley. I shall make of thee a witch, as I have bewitched men before thee. As thou hast said … Tis only sodomy.”

“Only.” But he tasted something on the word. Revenge. “Lover.” the Devil whispered. “Brother. Thou givest me that only which isalready mine.”

Kit closed his eyes on the glorious eyes, the broad white wings, the twist of fire and purity that was the Prince of God’s Angels, and whispered yes. Lucifer smiled, and this kiss tasting of whiskey and smoke began with Kit’s lips and ended there after an exploratory interval, during which clothing vanished by magic under the touch of caressing hands. Kit pressed both palms to the fallen angel’s smooth-muscled back, clawing fingers digging for purchase against the base of those wings. Lucifer’s forked tongue stopped his mouth as effectively as the scold’s bridle would have, and Kit didn’t care; the angel’s arms clipped and embraced him, lifting him bodily, cradling him against the perfect strength of a chest that might have been carved of warm white marble by some Grecian master. The angel knelt, never breaking the kiss, wings fanning wide for balance, their breeze pulling soft fingers through Kit’s hair as Lucifer drew him down to straddle white thighs. Powerful shoulders, deep-rooted muscle nothing like a man’s flexed under Kit’s fingers, sliding beneath soft skin and slick feathers. Kit broke the breathlessness of the kiss to gasp sharply. With one hand he stroked the angel’s belly, wrapped the silken member that dented the flesh of his thigh. The angel shuddered again, as he had when Kit touched his wing. Lucifer drew back, glanced down, and smiled in intimate provocation. Kit’s loins ached as if the regard were a caress.

“Come unto me.” The Devil’s hands clenched on his flanks, lifting him without effort, indenting flesh and coaxing him open. Soft hands, strong. Kit winced in anticipation, wrapped his arms around Lucifer’s neck to bear his weight, for all it seemed as nothing to the angel. Witchcraft,he thought, how cunning, how quaint.A silent chuckle shivered his belly, breath becoming an expectant whimper as Kit braced himself for a pain that never arrived. If He hurts you, silly boy, it will not be out of carelessness

It came not as a thrust, or as the lingering accommodation that gentleness had almost seduced Kit into expecting. But one massive downsweep of those incredible wings hurled them upright one, and then another, as the pale perfect mouth found Kit’s again and Lucifer stood in a fluid arc, and Kit was pierced.

“Christ,” Kit whispered, impassioned, hearing his own awe and fear, disbelief thick in his voice.

“Tis not Christ thou wilt bear on thy back.” Amusement, wryness. Wrathful irony, almost a lover’s teasing. Lucifer’s hair tumbled down around Kit’s face, bearing his smoky, bitter, musky scent.

This is not real. This is not happening. There is no Devil. There is no Hell. God is love, and God judges not what is done in love Christ, Christ, Christ… . Rapt. Speaking in tongues. Possessed. Yes, possessed.

“God.” Warm arms and wings supported him. “God judges. And He is not pleased with His creation, for it can never echo His perfection and His will. He does not wish thy love. He commands thine obedience and fear. The lord thy God i sa jealous God, and thou wilt have no Gods before him.”

Bitterness? Sorrow? Oh, but that mouth on his throat, on his breast. The effortless puissance bearing him up. A decade and more of rationalization stripped away by that calm, gentle voice in his mind. Passion on him again, divine will, and remembering the agony that had come with the realization that whatever God had made of Christofer Marley, that Marley was a thing whose love the God of the Church would never return. A calling. The craving they named vocation. Put away now with other childish things. Raped away from God, and So this is what Leda felt, which made him giggle. Kit leaned into the embrace, trusting himself to those powerful arms, body decisive while his heart struggled and tore itself in his breast.

“No Gods before Him. Not even love. To love God completely, thou must set aside all others.” The Devil moved in Kit, and Kit wept and clung. “Christ the Redeemer.”

“God’s Redeemer, perhaps.”

“Oh God, forgive me.”

“First He would have to forgive Himself. And that, I assure thee, he will not.”

“Father of lies. Oh, Christ, Christ, Christ.”

Silent laughter. “Is that the name thou chooseth for me?.” A lingering caress. “Tis sweet, isn’t it, child?.” ‘Did you like it, puss?’ But even that pain was so far buried that Kit had no answer, no speech, no reason; was too far lost for anything more eloquent than whimpered sacrilege. Died blaspheming,he thought, and laughed out loud, and cursed again.