Ink and Steel (16 page)

“Ah,” Will said. “Yes,” he said. “Carefully made friends are a good thing to have, if they return the care.”

Walsingham's eyes darkened. “An excellent play. May you write many more, and be as careful in your friends. Sometimes their care can have an—unexpected source. Do contact me. Oh, here is Doctor Lopez. Do wish to counsel this fine playmaker on his health, good Doctor?”

“A moment of his time, if you can spare it,” Lopez said in his accented voice. Walsingham, nodding, withdrew. “Master Shakespeare, I wish to congratulate you on the success of your work tonight.”

He did not mean the play. As Will turned to him, he was as certain of that as he was of the mockery behind Lopez's arch expression. “The Ambassador honors my poor efforts,” he said.

Lopez rubbed the tip of his nose. “Honor puts no beef on the table,” he said, and dropped a clinking purse in the rushes at Will's feet, where Will would need to stoop to retrieve it. “I've a word from Burghley. The word is ‘well done.' ”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Will said.

Lopez patted him on the arm, a ruby ring worn over his glove glittering with the motion. “You're more biddable than the last one,” he said, as he turned away. “That can only bode well.”

Will's shoulders tightened; his arms hung numb. Five heartbeats later he took a breath, and ducked down to retrieve the purse. However callously offered, a shilling was a shilling, and the purse had clinked like a great many of them.

It had the aspect of a dance, he thought, as he stood and found himself facing Essex. “My lord,” he said, and bowed low.

“Take your ease,” Essex answered. He was alone, for a wonder, with neither courtiers nor the simpering Southampton in attendance.

Will relaxed incrementally. “What is my lord's pleasure?”

“A word of warning,” Essex said. “Have a care in handling the coin of a poisoner, Master Shakespeare. You know that damned Portugall was Sir Francis Walsingham's doctor when Sir Francis breathed his last, in agony.”

“I have heard it so bandied, my lord,” Will agreed.

“Hmph.” Essex regarded Will down the length of his nose, expectantly, and Will cringed like a bumpkin. There was something to be said for having the face for comic parts. “Moreover,” said Essex, “it's well-known that Sir Francis' papers vanished from his chamber at his death, and Lopez was among the few with access to the same.”

And you so upset by it, my Lord, for you would have wrested control of his agents after his death?
“I shall be entirely cautious, my lord.”

“See you are.” And now Essex in turn was withdrawing, after a short glance over Will's shoulder. “Lopez is a traitor, and I do not doubt he'll hang. It would be a shame to hang a poet with him. Good day, sirrah.”

“Good day, my lord.”

Will counted three, and turned from Essex's receding back—and into the orbit of Her Majesty, the Queen. Her gown was figured silk, white on white, her mantle thick with ermine against the January cold that even the press of bodies couldn't drive from the hall. Sir Walter Raleigh in his black hung at her shoulder, a raven to Elizabeth's gerfalcon, all devilish beard and tilted cap, eyes sharp as a mink's over his impressive nose, an air of pipe-tobacco and dissolution on his shoulders in place of a cloak. Robert Devereaux, the Earl of Essex—
God is merciful
—was now nowhere in evidence.

“You—Your Majesty.” Will dropped a hasty bow, wondering if his face would tumble to the floor and shatter like a mask if
all
the blood really did drain from it.

“At your ease, Master Shakespeare,” she said.

Raleigh stayed a step behind and to her left. He caught Will's eye as Will stood, sure he was about to faint, and he winked. Her Majesty never saw it, but the slight gesture calmed Will enough to get a breath, and as the air filled him the panic retreated. “Your Majesty is very kind—”

“Rarely.” Her gray eyes crinkled at the corners, irises dark in the alabaster of her paint; it was the only trace of her smile. By her breath, her teeth were rotten, and Will pitied her that. “And only when it suits me. Do you serve England, Will?”

“With a will, where I may—” he said daringly, remembering that she had laughed at his dirtiest jokes. Raleigh's nose twitched. “—an it please Your Majesty.”

“Clever lad,” she said. “You'll do well, if you play the games of court as well as you played your art tonight. Of which art speaking, I understand we have common friends.”

“Surely, I could not claim equal to the title of friend to any who Your Majesty might grace with that station.”

She turned to Raleigh, amused. “He's got a courtly tongue in him, at least. Sir Walter—”

“Your gracious Majesty.” The pearls on his doublet glimmered like moonlight as he bowed under her attention.

“What think you of this one, stepping into the place he must fill?”

“Walsingham likes him. That's never a good sign.” But it was said wryly, one black eyebrow arched, and Raleigh's eyes held Will's as he spoke.

“So long as Robin of Essex doesn't like him as well. Tell me, young William, what factions do you favor in our petty dickering?” A direct, bright question, her voice mild and interested, the turn of her neck like one of her swans within the elaborate serpentine of her ruff.

Oh, that is one question that is many questions, Madam.
“The Earl of Southampton is my patron, Your Majesty, and Lord Strange the patron of my company. But my loyalty is given to my Prince, and she alone may command my heart.” She seemed to wait expectantly, and he permitted himself a bold bit of a grin. “That portion my good wife permits me the use of, in any case.”

Gloriana laughed, showing the powdered curve of her throat, and stopped as abruptly. “Don't teach this one to smoke, Sir Walter. 'Tis a filthy habit. Master Shakespeare, good evening.”

“Your Majesty. Sir Walter.” Will bowed, watching jeweled skirts soar away. A firm hand clapped him on the shoulder and he glanced up, into Raleigh's glittering presence. “Sir Walter.”

“Good to show her spunk, William.” That wink again, before he too took his leave. “We'll see you at court again, I expect.”

Will stood shivering as they left him, and almost jumped out of his clicking court shoes when Burbage appeared beside him, holding a cup of wine. “I see I danced away just in time. How was your pas de deux with Her Majesty?”

“More a pas de trois, I think. A game was just played over me, Richard, and I do not know the name of it.”

“As long as you didn't lose,” Burbage said, and thrust the cup into his hand. Will took it, fingers half insensate.
Tom Walsingham Likes me?

Intra-act: Chorus

Two weeks later, the playhouses opened as scheduled, and a letter arrived at Will's lodging house, forwarded without comment by Annie from Stratford.

Act II, scene i

—CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE,
Doctor Faustus

Murchaud had reach on Kit, and two good eyes, and Kit was not used to fencing with a surrounding audience hampering his movement. But Kit sidestepped as the pale sunlight of Faerie flashed along the spirals decorating Murchaud's rapier. Despite the unkempt grass tugging his boots, a little spatter of dignified applause followed the gesture of his main gauche as it knocked his opponent's foiled blade off line.

Foiled, but still razor-sharp along the edge: the blade brushed Kit's shirtsleeve in passing, parting the linen as easily as the skin of a peach. Kit stepped in to take advantage of the break in Murchaud's guard, ducked a thrust of the main gauche, and—extended along the line of his blind eye—lunged. Murchaud barely twisted aside, Kit's rapier stroking the brown leather jerkin over his muscled belly, and his riposte fell short as Kit skittered back, swearing breathlessly, sweat trickling between his shoulders. The onlookers shifted, a murmuring riot of colored costumes against the sweep of green lawn, the gardens of heartsease and forget-me-nots, the high golden walls of the palace.

Kit forced his attention away from the audience as Murchaud advanced, teeth white in the angle between his lips, lips coral pink against the black of his beard.
Stop Looking at his smile, Kit you ruddy fool. Watch his chest, his eyes—hah! as if that will keep you from distraction!
A thrust, a flurry of parry, riposte, bind—Murchaud's breath on his face as he pressed with all his greater weight and the strength of his arm. Kit locked his elbow, holding against the press, went for Murchaud's belly with the main gauche and felt his hand knocked wide. Murchaud bent a knee, bulled and lifted, hilt ringing on hilt, shoving Kit's rapier high and wide. Kit scrambled aside, sucking his belly against his spine and out of the path of the blade, feeling through the shifts of Murchaud's weight for where the main gauche would be. Somewhere on his blind side, and Kit's hand was out of line. He ducked backward, wove, dipped a knee as he parried another lunge and felt the edge part not just shirt but skin, the hotter trickle of blood joining the drip of sweat down his forearms—

—and froze at the needle prick of Murchaud's eighteen-inch dagger in the curve of his jaw where the pulse ran close. A slow, thick thread of blood curved down his throat, delicately as the pad of a thumb dragged over skin, and he shivered. Murchaud smiled in earnest now, and Kit tilted his head away from the knife and closed his eye as the applause swelled. “Yield?”

“Yield.” Kit forced clenched fingers to unwind from the grip of his rapier. The blade rasped on Murchaud's and thumped pommel-first into the grass. He waited for the knifepoint to ease away from the red-hot dimple it wore. Instead, the blade caressed his throat, came to rest in the hollow of his collarbone, pressed just sharply enough to sting as Murchaud covered Kit's mouth with a kiss as claiming as any bridegroom's.

The applause for
that
was more than a polite ripple.

It could have been an hour later or a dozen, although sunlight still streamed between the bedcurtains to stain Murchaud's pale skin tawny. Kit pillowed his head on the man's ridged belly and sighed, idly picking at the clean wrap of linen covering the scratch on his arm. Murchaud wound a few of the long fair strands of Kit's hair around his fingers like a girl playing with her ribbons. “That was better.”

Wryness twisted Kit's mouth into something only a fool would call a smile. “What? The fencing, or the—fencing?”

“Thy swordsmanship is improving,” Murchaud continued blithely. “And the strength of thine arm.”

“Exercise is the best remedy for a weak arm, I'm told.” Kit still tasted that public, thrilling kiss. Still heard the roar of approving laughter that had followed.

Now, Murchaud's laughter trailed into thoughtfulness. “We'll make a warrior of thee yet, Sir Christofer. How long hast been among us? Four days? Five?”

“Time passes quickly with thee by my side.” He'd expected from his previous visit that by the time a month passed in Faerie, the world of London would be thirty years gone. Not so: perhaps the difference changed with the whim of the Mebd, but the once or twice Kit had found an unattended moment in which to prowl through the palace's golden corridors and peer into the Darkling Glass, it seemed only a few hours had passed for Will and Sir Francis. He had sought the Prometheans behind his murder, as well, but the glass shied from them, as if he would pick up ice with an oiled hand.

Kit didn't feel himself
guarded
, precisely. Or watched. But he was seldom left alone, waking or sleeping.
Of course Morgan can watch me if she wishes. And no doubt the Mebd can, as well.

Murchaud continued, “Thou wilt need learn something of the factions, if thou art to be ours. I'll presume a certain comfort on thy part with politics, given thy career—”