All Night Awake (15 page)

“Quicksilver,” Sylvanus said, speaking through the mortal’s mouth.

Quicksilver’s hair stood on end. What was here? What evil was this?

“Milord,” the tavern owner called, finally having thrown open the door. “Milord.” He was a big man, as wide as tall, with a scraggle of red hair on his amiable face. “You’ll pardon me, I didn’t know it was your highness knocking. I thought it would be a ruffian, a cutpurse.” As he spoke, he wiped his hands on the front of his white nightshirt, as no doubt he would wipe them on his apron during the day.

Quicksilver looked at him for a moment.

“Trouble you not about my intent,” Sylvanus’s voice yelled from the window above. “For soon nothing will matter to you.”

And on those words, energy—a bolt, a searing flame of magic—flew past Quicksilver’s face, to singe the door post.

The hosteller stepped back, shocked, while Quicksilver wheeled upon his heels to look up.

Where had Sylvanus got so much power? And if he had it, why misspend it so? Sylvanus could not fail to aim well.

“Canker blossom, dog, bastard,” Sylvanus’s voice yelled from above.

The face retreated within, and beyond the window, a man’s shape twisted and writhed, as if fighting something invisible. He looked like a puppet, ill-commanded by an inexperienced puppeteer.

Quicksilver stepped back, ready to hold the power of the hill as a shield between himself and eminent attack. But no attack came.

“He’s drunk, milord. Just drunk,” the hosteller said. “You there,” he shouted, looking up at the window. “Stop that, and do not defile my premises.”

“You will do as I command,” Sylvanus yelled.

The man at the window turned. His face emerged again. Then, with a violent, writhing twist, he fell from the window.

Quicksilver jumped back as the body hit the hard-packed dirt of the lane with a sickening sound.

Quicksilver’s heart pounding fast, he thought the man would be dead, would he not?

Had Sylvanus killed this man?

But even as he thought it, he heard Sylvanus’s voice, no longer coming from the man’s throat, “It failed this once, little brother. But triumph not, I will be back. And then will you rue the day you were born.”

“Sylvanus?” Quicksilver asked, stepping forward. Charity dictated that Quicksilver see if the man was still alive, that Quicksilver lend what help he could. But what if this was, again, Sylvanus’s trap, as the one back in Arden Woods?

As he neared, the man’s eyes fluttered open. Pale blue eyes, guileless and round.

“I got rid of him, didn’t I?” he asked in a thread of voice.

Quicksilver nodded, amazed, yet shying away from the still body.

“You’re the king,” the man said. He spoke slowly, in a voice little more than breath. His body lay twisted on the pavement, and he moved nothing save his eyes and lips. “The king of my lady’s queen.”

Quicksilver nodded.

“Tell her, tell Peaseblossom that Nick Bottom didn’t kill himself. He jumped from a window, aye, but to kill the bastard who had taken control of his body. Will you tell her that, lord?”

Quicksilver nodded, swallowed. “He took control of you? Sylvanus did?”

“Aye, if that’s his name. If that’s his name, he did. Last night, while I was drunk he approached me and then—he wore me like a doublet, milord.

“But an ill-fitting doublet I proved. I surprised him. I threw myself down. But I didn’t kill him. He ran off. I will die for it.”

Nick Bottom’s words came further spaced, and his eyes had acquired a stillness not likely to be dispelled by reviving life.

When Quicksilver thought he was dead, Nick Bottom yet revived, and taking a noisy breath, he said, “Only tell Peaseblossom, would you, lord?”

“I will tell her,” Quicksilver said.

“And would you have, milord, a bard set my story to music, the story of a weaver who loved an elf lady?” The blue eyes seemed to look onto the distant yonder, a distance even Quicksilver’s immortal eyes couldn’t penetrate. “And it shall be called Bottom’s dream, for it has no bottom.”

A last breath whispered through Nick Bottom’s lips and he lay still.

Quicksilver remained, horror-stricken.

So Sylvanus had learned to take over the bodies of men.

Oh, elven legend spoke of that, of dark elves who did so. The humans called it possession and blamed it on demons.

But it had not been done in millennia, and it had come to be doubted.

Why had Sylvanus chosen this man? How had Bottom managed to rid himself of Sylvanus?

“And now he’s dead,” the hosteller said, wringing his hands upon his nightshirt. “He was drunk and now he’s dead and what am I to do with him?”

Numbly, Quicksilver reached into his belt purse and handed the man coins. “Here is for burial,” he said. “And to send word to his family.”

“Thank you, milord. But will you not stay?”

The last question the hosteller yelled at Quicksilver’s retreating back as the king of elves walked down the street.

Here was an enigma, for which Quicksilver had no answer.

Why would Sylvanus need to take over the bodies of humans to drink the life force of other dying humans?

None of it made sense.

Scene 13

Kit Marlowe’s room, where he shaves at a basin set in an ornate iron stand, in front of a polished metal round, nailed to the wall. Imp, squeezed between the wall and the stand, beneath the improvised mirror, holds an empty ceramic jar of water, and stares at the movements of the blade with utter fascination.

K
it shaved.

His troubles whirled around in his mind, while his hand, unfailingly, scraped the blade against his cheek.

He must get to The Rose and intercept Will. He must get to know Will better and introduce the man to high personages.

Kit rinsed the hair from his dagger in the basin of water in front of him.

A twelve-penny dagger and it wouldn’t last him long, at this rate.

He remembered, when he’d been at Cambridge, where a barber attended to the students’ shaving needs daily, the barber complained that Kit’s red-tipped beard, light and downy-looking, did more damage to his blade than the hirsute cheek of the most black-haired of villains.

“Will my beard come in soon?” Imp asked. His large, almond-shaped grey eyes watched the dagger, fascinated.

“Aye,” Kit said, and dipped the dagger in the water of the basin, to rid it of the tips of hairs and of soap. “Aye, soon enough.”

Imp ran a long, thin finger along his smooth, pale cheek. “And will I have to do that every day, then?”

Kit paused in his shaving because his face insisted on flourishing a smile, and how could he shave himself while grinning like a lunatic?

“Ah, no. You need not shave, Milord Laziness. You may go about unshaven and hirsute like a savage.”

He dipped the tips of his fingers in the cold water of the basin and flicked the droplets at Imp. “I tell you what, Milord Adventurer, I shall speak to Lord Raleigh for you and he can take you to his lands in Virginia, where you may join with the savage tribes of men there, and not only need not shave, but run about naked and barefoot, if you well please.”

Imp giggled as the droplets of water hit him and he squeezed away from his perch, but only to return again, to watch Kit.

He ran his hand, wishfully, down both his cheeks. “My mother says that my father had a big black beard.” He sighed and squirmed and stared at Kit, as though expecting from Kit a confirmation of his paternity.

Or else, perhaps the child suspected . . . . He looked at Imp’s features, a mirror of his own, and wondered how Imp could
not
suspect. But the human eye was thus, in thrall to the heart and ever ready to see only what it wished to see.

Besides, Imp had never known his mother’s husband. For all the child knew, Master Richard Courcy had looked exactly like Kit, but with a black beard.

Kit made a sound in his throat, neither assent nor denial, more of an invitation to proceed.

“My mother says he was a man like no man,” Imp continued in a needling voice, prodding like a butcher that searches the tenderest part from which to cut the steak.

He blinked at Kit and almost smiled. “And that she could never find his like.” He paused, and shifted his feet, rustling the rushes on the floor. “Kit, why don’t you marry Mother?”

The words so surprised Kit that he cut himself and, feeling the bite of the dagger upon his cheek, cursed, and reached for his handkerchief from within his sleeve.

Kit hated pain, even so small a pain as this.

He remembered his sisters mocking him when he was a child and cried at having skinned his knee. They said he made as much fuss over that small injury as soldiers wouldn’t make over battlefield wounds.

He thought of the threat of torture that hung over his head and shuddered. How could he take torture when he couldn’t even take this?

Staring at the small flower of blood on his handkerchief, Kit gave Imp a wary eye. Had Madeleine put her son up to this?

No. Kit shook his head to his own question. No. From the anxiety in Imp’s look, the mock-relaxed posture of his body, the idea was Imp’s entire.

“If you married her, she wouldn’t turn you out,” Imp said. “And then you’d be my father.”

Kit swallowed. Oh, to be extended such a bait on such an enticing hook and by such an unwary fisherman.

A day ago, two, Kit might well have been fool enough to take it.

Marrying the dour Madeleine would be worth it, so long as he could stand up and announce to the world, full voice, “I am responsible for this Imp. I am his father.”

Yes, twenty-four hours ago, had Imp said these very words, Kit might well have sent him to his mother, as a pleasing Cupid, to press Kit’s suit.

But in twenty-four hours, all had changed.

Kit’s admission of fatherhood would do no more for Imp than bring the knife nearer him, tighten the noose of conspiracy closer round Imp’s unsuspecting neck.

Torture and prison rode at Kit’s back, and death not far behind.

And Kit had seen someone uncommonly like his Lady Silver. Silver, that dream that Kit had given up but not forgotten, that dream that made the reality of any human love pale and shrink in Kit’s mind.

Kit had seen someone like Lady Silver with Will Shakespeare.

Kit closed his eyes, and behind his eyelids as on a stage, he saw the Lady Silver—graceful beauty, ethereal grace—and he could almost smell her lilac perfume making him dizzy and drunk.

He opened his eyes and saw, beyond the opened door of the room, beyond Imp’s anxious glance, a fine gentleman in green velvet pants and doublet.

A gentleman with blondish hair and a fine, open face, which added bonhomie to his sparkling blue eyes and seemed to announce to the world that here stood a man who liked all men, a man who’d never betray any, a man full of the milk of human kindness.

With a chill down his spine and a burning acid at the back of his throat, Kit recognized Robert Poley—Sweet Robin Poley—master spy, the uncoverer—many said the engineer—of the Babington conspiracy, which had sent fifteen hapless men to the gallows.

It was said that these men had tried to kill the Queen, that they planned to install Mary, Queen of Scots, in Elizabeth’s place, but Kit, who’d been close enough to the apprehension to hear the behind-the-scenes stage setting—even if he’d taken no real part—had long suspected the plot had been no plot.

Kit thought that Cecil and this, his minion, Robin Poley, had hatched the whole thing entire from their heads, Zeus giving birth to Athena. Without them there would have been no plot, only the stray words of foolish young men. Without them, Mary Stuart would still be alive in her captivity. Without them, the Crown would be no shakier than it was and Queen Elizabeth no more threatened.

Babington himself had been in Robin Poley’s room, supping, when he’d been arrested and so deceived that he’d sent Poley a letter from jail, begging for help from
Poley’s true affection
.

Since then, Kit had never been able to face Poley without feeling a sick pang to his stomach and a strange, shrinking fear, like that of a rabbit scenting fox.

Now he felt all that, added to the heart-tightening sense that he was no better than Poley. He was, after all, planning to involve Will Shakespeare in a plot like the Babington plot, wasn’t he?

Kit’s knife clattered into the wash basin.

He reached blindly for the much-worn towel that hung beside the wash stand, and wiped his hands and the remaining soap from his face.

Kit dared not tell Imp to go away.

He didn’t want to call attention to the child, but he frowned ponderously at Imp who, not seeing Poley, stared back with wide open, uncomprehending eyes.

“Well met, Kit,” Poley said from the hallway. “You do not seem happy to see me.”

“Surprised,” Kit said, and forced a smile. “Surprised.” Robin Poley was not someone he would want to show a sour face to. Not a courtier or a fine gentleman, yet Poley’s displeasure would have more material consequences than a royal frown or a lost benefit. The first consequence would be a whisper in the night, the second a misstep in the dark, and the third a dagger in your bosom.