Ink and Steel (6 page)

A door at the top of the stair stood open to catch what breeze there was. Burbage paused at the landing and softly hailed Oxford within, while Will stood two steps below.

“Enter, Master Players.” Edward de Vere did not stand to meet them, but he did gesture them to sit. Stools and benches ranged about the blemished table, and the small room was dark and confining despite the open door: it did not seem the sort of chamber an Earl would frequent. Incense-strong tobacco hung on the air in ribbons, the sharp, musty tang pleasing after the stench of the streets.

“Lord Oxford, as you've summoned us,” Burbage said, taking a stool. Will doffed his hat, reseated it, and sank onto a bench and stretched his legs.

Oxford nodded to the player, but turned his bright eyes to Will. “How comes the play, gentle William?”

The question he'd been dreading, and Will twisted his hands inside the cuffs of his doublet, folding his arms. He almost laughed as he recognized Kit's habitual pose, defensive and smiling, but kept his demeanor serious for the Earl.

An Earl who studied him also seriously, frowning, until Will opened his hands and shrugged. “Not well, my lord. The story's all in my head, but—”

“Times being as they are.”

“Yes.”

“I understand thou hast tried thy hand at some poetry. A manuscript called
Venus and Adonis
has been commended to me. Compared to our Marley's”—Oxford's nostrils flared momentarily, as if he fought some emotion—“unfinished work. I'd see it read.”

Heat rose in Will's cheeks as he glanced down at his shoes. “You'd see my poor scribblings gone to press, my lord?”

“I would. And command some sonnets. Canst write sonnets?”

Oh, that stiffened his spine and brought his hands down to tighten on his knees. Burbage shifted beside him, and Will took the warning. “I've been known to turn a rhyme,” Will answered, when he thought he had his tongue under control.

“I need a son-in-law wooed,” Oxford said. He stood and poured wine into three unmatched cups. Will raised an eyebrow when the Earl set the cups before Burbage and himself.
More than mere politeness, that.
“Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton: I'd see him married to my daughter Elizabeth, where I can perhaps keep him from trouble. He's close to Essex
and
to Raleigh, no mean trick. Kit'd befriended Sir Walter's lot—their School of Night, so-called—and learned a few tricks by me of the philosopher Dee. It's trouble waiting to happen: too many of the Queen's favorites in one place and rivalries will brew.”

Will's eyebrow went even higher at the familiar form of Marley's name. “And you wish me to—”

“Dedicate thy book of poems to Southampton. As if thou didst seek his patronage. Afflict him with sonnets bidding him marry. Raleigh is an enigma: there's no witting which way he might turn in the end. Essex is trouble, though.”

“Though the Queen love him?” Burbage said, when Will could not find his tongue.

Robert Devereaux, the second Earl of Essex, was thought by many a dashing young man, one of Elizabeth's rival favorites and a rising star of the court. But her affections were divided, the third part each given to the explorers Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake. And there was something disingenuous in the look Oxford drew across them both, just then; Will was player enough to recognize bad playing.

“Gloriana,” Oxford said, toying with his wine, “is a shrewd and coy Queen, equal to the title
King of England
which she has once or twice claimed. Despite her sex. Ah, would that she had been a man.”

That tripped Will's tongue. “Do you suppose she mouths those same words, when she feels herself alone?”

Oxford tilted his head as if he had not considered it. “Master Shakespeare, I would not disbelieve should I hear her Maid of Honor mutter such gossip to the bees.” He stared past his guests to the smoky vista beyond the open door. “So. Thou wilt write me these poems? Or write Southampton these poems? And bring me the manuscript for
Venus and Adonis
, that the ages might know it?”

“Will you see
Hero and Leander
published as well?” Will hesitated at the cloud that passed Oxford's face.
He Liked Kit as well.
And then Will smiled. Kit had had that about him, the ability to inspire black rage or blind joy.

“It's fine work, isn't it?” Oxford didn't wait for Will's nod. He knocked the dottle from his pipe and began to pack the bowl again. “Chapman—another of Raleigh's group—proposes to complete it and see it registered. In Kit's name, not his own.”

“Decent.” Burbage rocked back in his stool, rattling the legs on the floor. “My lord, you'll put Will in a place where, if Southampton is flattered, they may become friends—”

“Even if the courtship fails, we'll have an eye in Southampton's camp. There've been a dozen attempts on Queen Elizabeth's life in as many years: your Kit's sharp wit helped foil two of them, and he was friendly with Essex's rival, Sir Walter. Now we have neither a hand close to Essex, nor one close to Sir Walter. Intolerable, should what I fear come to fruition. Essex has links to the—” He stopped himself.

Will observed calculation in that pause. “What you fear, my lord, or what fears Walsingham?”

Surprise and then a smile. “The two are not so misaligned. We were one group, the Prometheus Club, not too long since. All of us in service of the Queen. But Essex and his partisans are more interested in their own advancement than in Britannia. So, Will. Wilt woo for me, and win for my daughter?”

Will swallowed, shifting on the hard bench. “I was to write you plays, my lord. And you would show me how to put a force in them to keep Elizabeth's subjects content and make all well. I was not to spy for you—”

Oxford tapped a beringed finger on the table. “I'm not asking thee to spy, sirrah. Merely to write.”

“Not plays—”

“No. The playhouses are closed, Will, and they'll be closed through the New Year. We'll try our hand there again, fear not: but in the current hour, the enemy has the upper hand.”

“The enemy. This plot against the Queen. Closing the playhouses is—a sort of a skirmish? An unseen one?”

Oxford smiled then softly. “
You
begin to understand. They know what we can do with a playhouse. Art is their enemy.”

“Puritans.”

“Naught but a symptom. Walsingham and Burghley are ours, after all—” Oxford drained his cup. “I offer you a poet's respect. Nothing is so transient as a play and a playmaker's fame. Except a player's.”

Will looked at Burbage, who sat with his hands folded between his knees, thumbs rubbing circles over his striped silk hose. Burbage tilted his head, eyes glistening. 'Twas true.

“The poem's the thing, then,” Will said, when he thought he'd considered enough. “Give unto me what you would impart, and I will wreak it into beauty with my pen.”

Oxford twisted his palm together, fingers arched as if to ease a writer's cramp. “Excellent.” Another intentional hesitation. “Your play.”

“Titus Andronicus
.”

“Send it me. I fancied myself something of a poet in my youth. Perhaps I can be of some small aid.”

“My lord,” Will answered, covering discomfort. “I shall.”

Act I, scene iv

—CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE,
Faustus

Kit's heartbeat rattled his ribs inside his skin. He clutched the balustrade in his left hand, Morgan steadying him on his blind side as she led him down the sweeping marble stair and into the midst of creatures diabolic and divine. His riding boots clattered on the risers: inappropriate to an audience with the Queen of Faeries, he thought inanely. But it was homely and reassuring that they hadn't had time to make him boots and that the doublet, for all its fineness, bound across his shoulders.

“Breathe,” the ancient Queen whispered in his ear. “You'll need your wits about you, Sir Kit, for I can offer thee but small protection, and my sister the Queen is devious.”

He turned his head to glimpse her; the movement brought a twisting sharpness to the savaged muscles of his neck and shoulder, which were stiffening again. Morgan must have seen him wince, for her fingers tightened. “Thou'rt hurting.”

“Fair face of a witch you are,” he answered with a stab at good humor. “Without herbs or simples better than brandy to dull a man's pain.”

She paused on the landing above the place where the stair began to sweep down and made a show of fussing right-handed with her skirts. He leaned on the rail and on her other arm while the pale gold-veined stairs reeled.

“I'd dull your pain,” she answered, glancing at him before ducking her head to flick the soft moiré one last time. “And thick your tongue, and set your head to reeling. Which canst ill afford when you go before the Mebd, Sir Poet.”

Her hair moved against the back of her neck, a few strands escaping the braid. He stopped his hand before it could brush them aside. A blade of guilt dissected him at the impulse, and he embraced the pain, gnawed at it. He had nothing left to be unfaithful to, save Elizabeth, now that his sweet Tom had discarded him. Kit welcomed the cold, the distance that came with the thought.
Nothing Like ice for an ache.

She's very Like Elizabeth would be, had she Leave to be a woman and not a King.
“Queen Mab?”

“The Mebd,” Morgan corrected, steadying his arm again. Below, faces turned up like flowers opening to the sun. “Queen of the Daoine Sidhe.” She pronounced the name
maeve
, the kingdom
theeneh shee
. “She has a wit about her— Ah! Sir Kit. Come and meet my son.”

“Mordred?” Kit asked, putting the smile he couldn't quite force onto his lips into his voice.

“Dead at Camlann,” Morgan answered. “He was fair. Fair as thou art, ashen of hair and red of beard. A handsome alliance. Come and meet Murchaud the Black, my younger.”

Something in her tone made him expect a lad of thirteen, fifteen years. But the man who met them at the foot of the stairs, a pair of delicate goblets in his hand, was taller than Kit by handspans, his curled black hair oiled into a tail adorned with a crimson ribbon, his beard clipped tighter and neater than the London style against the porcelain skin of his face. Kit's palms tickled with sweat as he met the man's almost colorless eyes, saw how the broad span of his neck sloped, thick with muscle, into wide shoulders. It was a different thing from the inexplicable warmth he felt for Morgan. More raw, and less unsettling. He'd like to see those black curls ruffled.

“Mother,” the lovely man said, extending a crimson glass of wine. His voice was smooth, at odds with the power in his frame.

She unwound her hand from Kit's elbow, but let her fingers trail down his arm before she stepped away. Her son pressed the second goblet into his hand, taking a moment to curl Kit's fingers about the delicate stem. The touch lingered, and Kit almost forgot his pain. “Your reputation precedes you, Master Poet.”

“Sir Poet,” Morgan corrected. “I knighted him while no one was looking.”

“You did? Mother, bravely done!”

She laid a possessive hand on his shoulder. Kit looked after her in confusion, and she gave him only a smile. “Things are different in Faerie,” she told him, and dusted his cheek, below the bandage, with a kiss. “Now drink your wine and go ye through those doors—and court and win a Queen.”

“You're not coming with me?”

“Kit. Show them strength, not a cripple leaning on a woman's arm.”

He met her loden eyes, then nodded, tossed back the wine, and set aside the glass. Rolling his shoulders under the too-tight doublet, he stepped into the rivulet of courtiers threading toward what must be the Presence Chamber.

Frank stares prickled Kit's skin as he followed the crowd, conscious of the antlers and fox-heads, the huge luminescent eyes and the moss-dripping armor of those who moved around him.
Masques,
he told himself, and didn't permit himself at first to return the curious glances. Hooves clattered on the floor on his blind side: he flinched and turned to look, and a naked satyr caught his eye and bowed from the waist.

Kit blushed and stepped back, looking at the floor.
As if I had an idea of precedence here.
The rose-and-green tiled floor rolled under his boots like the rising, falling deck of a ship. He hesitated and put a hand on the paneled wall. A woman brushed his arm, elegantly human except that the diaphanous robes which stroked her swaying hips and breasts seemed to grow from her shoulders like drooping iris petals. Then his attention was drawn by an antlered stag, richly robed in velvet green as glass, resting one cloven hoof on the jeweled hilt of a rapier and walking upright like a man.

Kit's pulse drummed in his temples and throat.
Adrift,
he thought, and raised his right hand and touched the silk handkerchief binding his bandage. The fingertips of his other hand curled into detail carved upon the wainscoting. “I don't know what to do.”
A novelty. I wot a knife in the eye does change one or two things.

“Follow me.” A sharp voice dripping wryness. Kit looked down, putting it to a wizened man who seemed all elbows and legs like a grasshopper. He came to Kit's belt; his long ears waggled under a fool's cap. “Before Her Majesty waxes vexed.”