Ink and Steel (28 page)

The tremors still subsided when Will put his fingers to a task. Such as flipping a silver shilling older than Annie. Mayhap as old as John Shakespeare: turning it in his fingers, over and over again, Will could just see the shadow of a hawk-nosed face when the light fell against it right. The shadow of Henry the Eighth, father of Elizabeth, founder of the English Protestant Church.

And author of all my troubles,
Will thought, laying the coin on the table beside the inkwell. He spread his pages across the desk and recut a quill, nicking his finger on the knife when his right hand trembled. He thrust the knife into the tabletop and his left middle finger between his lips. “Damn it to Hell—”

“Now there's a scene from Faustus,” an amused voice said from the corner. “Writing our plays in blood now, are we? That should be some sorcery.”

Will pulled his bloody finger from his mouth and raised his eyes to the mirror. Kit lounged beside the fireplace, one elbow on the mantel, his left hand steering the hilt of a rapier. “You could have announced yourself.”

“I was waiting for you to set down the knife,” Kit said dryly. He straightened and came forward, producing a kerchief from his sleeve. “So you wouldn't cut yourself. Let me see.”

Will held out his left hand, picking up his pen with the right one to conceal its tremors. “ 'Tis just a scratch.”

“Not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door? But deep enough, Will. Ah, you've missed the tendons and the bone. Good. It shouldn't bleed longer than half an hour. Morgan would say to wash it with soap—”

“Lye soap?”

“Aye, and it might be wise. She saved my face from taint that way. Is there water in the ewer?”

“Some.” Bemused, Will suffered himself to be led to his bedroom and fussed over. He gasped when Kit scrubbed the wound, then pressed the edges of the cut tight and bound his first and middle fingers together with the kerchief to hold them closed and sop the oozing blood. “Who is Morgan?”

Deftly, Kit tightened the bulky bandage. He gave Will's hand a squeeze and let it go. “My mistress in Faerie. A sorceress. That will bleed less if you hold it up.”

“Yes.” The sidelong glance. Kit's face was pale, and Will thought if he touched his friend's cheek it would be cool. “
That
Morgana. Will, about your letter—”

The bandage pressed the pain back to a dull, warning throb. Will gestured widely with his bloodied hand, and went in search of a rag. “I've wine—hock. Can you stay a little?”

“I'd meant to. Are you expecting company?” The stress on that word brought Will to alertness.

He led Kit back into the sitting room. “
Company?
Burbage, you mean? Or Mary Poley—?”

“If they come, I can step through the looking glass. Give me that rag. I'll mop the blood. You pour the hock. Tell me what Mary says of Fray Xalbador de Parma.”

That stress again, and Will puzzled it as he poured left-handed, despite his bandages. He got the harsh Rhennish white strained into the cups without spilling it and found bread and an end of cheese, which he set on the table beside the upright knife. “I've sugar for the wine—”

“I've gotten out of the habit,” Kit answered, tasting. “And this is sweet enough without assistance.”

“You know the name of the Spaniard.”

“We were acquainted. He pretends to many things—but I had asked about Mary.” Kit twisted the knife free of the boards and cut cheese dyed with carrot juice, broke bread, handed the first bit to Will. “More on the Spaniard when the wine is drunk.”

“Everything she told me was in the letter. She'll come again when she can.” The bread was hard to swallow. Will dipped it in his wine to soften it, much to Kit's amusement.

“I see. And little Robin?”

“Sleeping better.”

Kit rubbed bread between his fingertips. He rolled the crumbs against the tabletop.

Will picked the shilling off the boards and turned it in his right hand. “Art jealous?”
Or is it that I'm jealous, and I pass it on to thee?

“Jealous?” Kit looked up. He pushed the crust of bread away, and cupped both hands loosely around his wine, leaning back on his stool as if the scent of London—the reek of the gutters twining the perfume from the gardens—pleased him.

“Of Mary—”

“Why should I be jealous?”

“Robin's your son, isn't he?”

Kit's eye went wide, his face seeming to elongate as eyebrows rose and his jaw sank. “What gave you that idea?”

“ 'Tis as good a reason as any for Poley to hate you. Beyond the political motives, which seem inadequate. Adequate for murder. Inadequate for
Loathing
. I won't think less of you. . . .”

“Nor should you,” Kit answered, reaching for his cup. “Given the somewhat hasty circumstances of your own marriage.”

Will laughed, knowing he'd touched a nerve to draw that response. “Touché. Is he yours?”

“Why does it matter? I would not impugn the lady's honor. A man can have care for a dead friend's sister—”

“It matters,” Will said, “because a man can also have a care for the children of a dead friend.”

Kit balanced the knife across the palm of his hand. “Damn, Will. I don't know.”

“What does that mean, you don't know?”

Kit reversed the knife in his hand like a juggler; Will jumped as he drove the blade neatly into the same gouge Will had left earlier, and a full inch deeper. “By Christ's sore buggered arse, Will. It means the possibility does exist. I shouldn't think I'd need to draw you a plan. Given
yours
come in litters.”

The glare as Kit shoved himself to his feet left Will speechless and stung. He stood more slowly, holding out his bandaged hand, the right one tightened on the coin. “Kit—” Will swallowed, a task that was growing uncomfortable. “I apologize.”

“Damn you.” But the edge dropped from Kit's tone, and he settled onto his stool again, resting his forehead on the back of his hand. “Thy pardon, Will. I am overwrought.”

Will nodded, and sat as well, reaching out right-handed to grab Kit's wrist, hoping his hand would not shake. “The boy will want apprenticing soon. Had you a desire to see him in some trade or another?”

“God.” Kit's voice was shaky. He clapped his left hand over Will's right and squeezed. “Anything but a player, a moneylender, or an intelligencer.”

“Not to follow in his father's footsteps, then?”

“Whatever those footsteps be.”

The silence grew taut between them. Will drew his hand back and dropped it into his lap. “Right. Cobblery it is.”

When he finished laughing, Kit emptied his cup and pushed it aside. “Xalbador de Parma. Fray Xalbador de Parma.”

“A Promethean. I had discerned that.”

“More than that.” His voice seemed to dry in his throat. Will pushed his own barely touched cup of hock across the table, and Kit took it with a grateful nod. “A Mage, they call him, plural Magi. As if he had anything in common with great spirits such as Dee or Bruno. Fray Xalbador is also an Inquisitor, one of their infiltrators in the Catholic church.”

Will wished suddenly he had not given his wine away, remembering Kit's voice on another occasion, in the dark kitchen of Francis Langley's house.
Still, an Inquisitor. I'm tempted to count it some species of honor.
“Oh.”

“It bodes not well.” Kit shoved the cup back at Will with still some wine in it. “You must see to it that Francis gives Thomas Walsingham the name. Or better, see to it yourself. I'm sure your status is enough, these days, that he would grant you an interview if you sent him a note.”

“You sense a move against the Queen?”

“I can see no reason otherwise de Parma would be in England. You'll want to pour wine, if you've finished that.”

“More wine?” But Will stood, and collected Kit's cup as well, and again filtered the dregs through cheesecloth to produce something potable. “Here.”

“Sit,” and Will sat.

“What is it?”

“The reason Elizabeth protects Oxford. And what will make your task all the harder, though Essex has o'erplayed his hand.”

Will studied Kit's face, its deadly earnest placidity except for a sort of valley worn between the eyes. “I listen.”

“You know Edward de Vere was raised as William Cecil, Baron Burghley's ward after the sixteenth Earl of Oxford died. At the Queen's request.”

“I do.”

“This does not leave this room.”

“I understand.”

Kit drank off his wine at a draft, and plucked the dagger from the tabletop to clean his nails. “Oxford is Elizabeth's bastard son.”

Act II, scene xi

—CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE,
Edward II

Kit tugged his hood higher. "Latch the door after I leave.”

Will folded his arms. "I fail to see what errand could be of so much import that you must risk yourself in the street.”

"Some things,” Kit said, “a man must simply do. I'll return by dawn. I swear it.”

“I'll be at the Mermaid if you want me, then,” Will said, shaking his head in stagy frustration.

Kit walked through London with a feeling in his breast like freedom, his left hand easy on the hilt of a silver rapier forged as hard and resilient as steel. Carts clattered in the twilight, whorish girls and boys called from doorways, and men and women hustled home from market or out to taverns for their dinners. A commonplace scene, London in the sunset, and one at odds with the determination that coiled in Kit. He kept his eyes downcast and let his hair fall in front of his face, concealing as best he could his eyepatch.
A sunny day for staging a vengeance tragedy, Marley.

'Tis not vengeance
, he told himself.
'Tis preclusion.

Two hours' walking and half the Faerie gold in his purse bought him the location of Richard Baines' home: a house rather than a lodging, on Addle Street. He'd done well for himself.

Kit skulked through an alley almost too narrow for his shoulders to pass without scraping the wall on either side. The house had a little garden: he hoisted himself to peer over the wall, but every window was darkened.
Damn. At the Sergeant, do you suppose?
A bell tolled nine of the clock, and he let himself drop on the outside of the wall.

Kit stroked the hilt of his sword again, thinking perhaps he should try his hand at finding Oxford, instead.
A dead man may accomplish many things a Live one might balk at.
But he wanted Baines' blood, that was the truth, and wanted the false Inquisitor's more.

He could scale the wall and lie in wait, since it seemed not even a servant was at home. Or he could go in search, aimlessly pacing. His feet decided for him. He walked through the much-thinned crowds, amused at how little apprehension he felt at strolling London's streets in the darkness.
Dead men Lay their burdens down.
But it was a lie, and he knew it.

With an intelligencer's assessment of risk and reward, Kit knew that Fray Xalbador was worth Kit's own lifeblood to put an end to. More than worth.
Might as well trade Faerie gold for a good English sovereign.
But as much as Kit would have liked to hunt Robert Poley to his death at the Groaning Sergeant, Kit knew his life wasn't worth Poley's. His secret wasn't even worth Poley's life.

Surprised at a familiar voice, Kit stopped, looked up, stepped away from the square of light cast by an open door. A slow baritone, with something of the luff and fill of thoughtful sails behind it.

“Chapman,” he murmured. And indeed, his wandering footsteps— no doubt primed by Will's words on where to find him—had led him into Cheapside and onto Bread Street. As he looked up he saw George Chapman's portly girth silhouetted against the open door of the Mermaid.

Laughter followed Chapman's unheard bon mot. Kit drew into the shadows, hoping Chapman didn't think him a cutpurse or lurcher lying in wait. He need not have feared: Chapman never saw him, but set out whistling down the street, swinging a stout stick and holding a half-shuttered lantern.

Kit glanced longingly at the sharp-cut panel of lamplight on the cobbles, and swore. He could hear Will's laughter now, too, and someone else—Tom Nashe?—a voice cut clean by the closing door. He turned on his heel and followed Chapman.
At Least I can see him safe home. Arrant fool, walking through London alone after curfew.

But Chapman moved east, and Kit followed at a little more distance, now curious more than worried as his old friend let that stick tap lightly on the cut stone kerb. Dark houses loomed: a crack of stars were visible only directly overhead, and only a few lights gleamed through the slits in shutters, stars of a different sort. The rats grew bolder after dark, and twice Kit heard the squealing of their private wars.

Chapman was walking to Westminster Palace, a goodly night's jaunt. The lantern was a godsend: its light both steered Kit and blinded Chapman, so Kit need fear neither recognition nor the loss of his quarry in the dark. He fell back a little as they passed Blackfriars: there were carriages in the streets, parties of walkers, and groups of armed men to keep the Queen's peace. King's Street was quieter, once they passed through the gates, and there was little traffic beyond Charing Cross.