All Night Awake (19 page)

And perhaps, he thought, remembering Will’s unsuspecting friendship, Will’s trustingly offered confidence, perhaps those men were right. If Will’s friendship, thus proffered, was true, how foolish and how dangerous.

“What do you know of the way a woman looks on a man, Lord Curious?”

Imp shrugged, and looked away. “I’ve seen it,” he said.

“Well, and right. But you must stop following me,” Kit said. “Besides, I’ll need your good services, milord, if you wish to gain the boon of such a distinguished father.” He winked at the child, who giggled back.

“What do you want me to do, Kit?”

“I want you to go to Hog’s Lane in Shoreditch. Did you see the man who was just with me?”

“What?” Imp asked. “The one with the head like a polished dome?”

“Right,” Kit said, and smiled at the image. “Yes. Would you go to Shoreditch? He lodges above Bonefoy Hatters, and I wish you to spy him out, and find when he leaves, when he comes. And report to me any visitor he has. Would you do that, Imp?”

Imp nodded.

Kit set him down and watched his streetwise, London-bred son lose himself amid the crowds of Southwark.

How could Kit feel such trembling anxiety for such a self-sufficient creature? And yet he did.

As for him, Kit must go to Southampton House and lay the trap that would catch his hare.

Scene 16

Kit’s lodgings. The door is open and Madeleine, in a dark cap, and dark, prim clothes, stands in the doorway facing the splendorous Lady Silver. Humble apprentices and workmen walking by give Silver curious glances.

“M
ilady, I’m sure I know not.” Madeleine Courcy tightened her lips in a disapproving, ponderous frown.

Silver knew she should be here as Quicksilver. Silver’s splendor and her looks were bound to offend Madam Courcy. But that morning her body had taken Quicksilver’s shape only reluctantly, and had flickered back to Silver instantly.

Silver held both her hands demurely in front of her, the fingers entwined.

They stood in front of the good wife’s house, a ramshackle building whose door opened onto an immaculate hall strewn with fresh rushes.

Silver piped in her most innocuous honeyed voice, “This is about my husband, good wife, I’m sure you understand that. He frequents places where he should not go, and finds his pleasures elsewhere. I can no more control him than control the moon above, the inconstant moon that waxes and wanes with every changing day. But I must know. For my ease I must know.”

Silver squeezed what she hoped were convincing tears from her metallic-colored eyes.

To be honest, she
did
need to know.

Searching the dark trail of Sylvanus’s power, of Sylvanus’s tainted soul, she’d followed it to this unassuming house in Southwark. “Lives a woman here?” she asked, looking demurely toward the upper windows. Glazed, as she would not expect in such a poor place, and clean, too, shining in the scant light of early evening. “Lives a woman here with whom my lord might be consorting?”

She had heard in the neighborhood that Madam Courcy ran a boarding house, and it might well happen that one of her guests was the deposed King of Fairyland.

Silver must find the dark creature and return everything to the way it was before Quicksilver’s unwitting sin had released it.

Madam Courcy twisted her mouth into an expression of distaste, as she followed Silver’s eyes to the high, lead-paned windows. “No woman lives here. I have only one lodger now and he has been with me for long enough. His name is Christopher Marlowe. He is a man of unrighteous living.” She looked at Silver. “Should your husband have been visiting him, it would bode nothing but ill for your husband, aye, and your home also.”

Kit Marlowe. Silver gasped at the name. Kit Marlowe, again.

She thought she detected something like a glimmer of amusement in Madeleine’s eye, and heard Madeleine’s lightly accented voice, “Ah, but I see you know him, the villain. Then you know well enough what it means for your husband to be seen visiting him, no?”

“Has a man with dark hair, and a dark beard, and wearing dark clothes also been here?” she asked. “Has anyone asked for him whom you’re not accustomed to seeing?”

Madeleine shrugged. “People ask for him every day that I don’t know and have never seen.” She looked away from Silver and spat daintily onto the muddy ground of the alley. “Master Marlowe is a spy, an assassin, and other things that even though true, I wouldn’t say for a true lady shouldn’t speak of that.”

A spy? An assassin?

Possible. That was often the way with mortals loved by elves.

After the love of fairykind, the love of human paled, and the human must seek his excitement in other ways: in theater and politics, in crime and high charity. Some became monsters and some saints, according to the bend and dint of that one soul.

But one thing happened to one and all.

Every man touched by Fairyland—and every woman, too—became more vulnerable to the supernatural in the world, to the other things that traveled through the world of mortals, unnoticed by most, disregarded by others.

Pixies that flew in the motes of light, and fairies in woodland glades late at night, became as visible to those people as the twigs and sticks of everyday reality.

It was belief that did it, and not some ointment as old people would say was rubbed on the eyes of the captives in Fairyland. It was only that those who’d once believed in faerie could never again ignore it.

And those who saw more were also more vulnerable to the things that went unseen by others.

Silver sucked in breath as she realized that the only common link between the unfortunate Nick and Kit was their having been touched by fairykind.

Was that, then, the only indication of peril?

But then, what about Will, Will who had been Silver’s, Will who had been loved by fairykind? Loved with a love hotter than that of Fairyland’s normal run?

“Where did Kit—Master Marlowe—go? Know you that?” Silver asked.

The woman shook her head. Her suspicious look had returned. “He could be here or there. More than likely whoring in some tavern.”

Whoring in some tavern, he would be safe. Even Sylvanus couldn’t cut out a human from amid a crowd and claim him in public.

But Will . . . . Where was Will? Was he, likewise, safe from Sylvanus?

Silver wrinkled her brow in thought, and clenched her hands on the fine silvery fabric of her dress. If Kit was vulnerable to Sylvanus, then so was Will.

And where would Will be at this hour, with the sun going down and the creatures of the night becoming more powerful than they were in daylight?

She must find him.

Silver thanked Madam Courcy and, giving her two coins from the store of old gold coins that Silver carried about with her—the store scavenged from old lost treasures that men had forgotten—Silver bowed and walked away fast.

When far away enough that she’d be lost to Madeleine’s sight within the crowd of apprentices and artisans hurrying home for supper, Silver ducked into an alleyway.

There, she winked out of existence.

She materialized again in Will’s room.

Scene 17

Will’s bedroom. Will is in the middle of changing his clothes. He has his hose and shirt on, and is inspecting his doublet by the insufficient light of a small taper set on his table.

W
ill thought that his doublet looked well enough.

His best suit, purchased ten years ago at Will’s wedding, it had developed weaker spots and places where the nap had not worn so well. But all in all, it looked well enough.

Nan had mended it, once or twice, with her large, uneven stitches. Will smiled at the stitches, which were so characteristic of his wife.

An excellent woman, was Nan, but always more adept at fishing and walking through the woods, at digging in the garden, and even at cooking, than at the daintier arts of womanhood.

When she’d been a young girl, Nan had often escaped a house ruled over by an unsympathetic stepmother and several large, bossy brothers to wander the Forest of Arden till she came to know all its paths. Will smiled, remembering the young, tomboyish Nan.

He started slipping his doublet on when Silver materialized beside him in the still, shadowy air.

Will’s heart skipped a beat.

He’d thought himself well rid of her.

When he’d returned from the tavern, feeling the glowing warmth of his unexpected and much-needed meal, he’d found his house empty, no Silver in sight.

He’d been relieved. He’d thought the elf had finally desisted of seduction, finally given up on whatever deranged lust and wanton craving had brought her to London.

Instead, here she was again.

Will stepped back away from her. “Milady. I didn’t expect to see you again.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. Her bosom, overspilling from the tight confines of its lacy nest, rose and fell rapidly, as if animated by some uncontrollable passion.

“I had to tell you,” she said. As she spoke, she stepped closer, and held each of his arms in one of her long, white hands.

Her hands felt so hot that, even through his doublet, he feared they would burn his arms.

He tried to step back, but found the wall behind himself, found himself surrounded by her lilac perfume.

He could go no farther.

“Lady,” he said, and turned his face away.

She moved her face closer. She pulled his face forward to look at him earnestly, with her large, silver eyes. “I must tell you, Will Shakespeare, that you’re in danger. Those who’ve once been touched by the fairy realm always crave fairy love and as such—”

Will slid away from her and, diving under her arm, made away. “Lady, for Jesu sake, forebear. I crave nothing. It is you who seem to have uncontrollable cravings.”

She looked surprised, offended, as if he’d slapped her.

Her dainty foot in its silver slipper stomped hard. The dusty rushes on the floor crumbled. “My cravings do not matter. It is those who’ve been touched by Fairyland, you see, who forever crave excitement. Almost always in their souls there remains an unquenchable thirst, like a hole that swallows normal human emotion and normal intercourse and that . . .”

Will had ceased listening to her. Her voice faded out of his ears as he looked at his doublet, where she had held him.

The force of her holding him, the force of his pulling away, had left several tears in the fabric.

Will could not go see an earl attired in this way. Oh, curse the elf and his-her mutable needs and his-her annoying demands.

Opening his clothing trunk, which was in the main empty, Will rummaged inside for a needle and wool thread. He knew that Nan had packed him some, when he’d left Stratford. If he could only find it.

He turned over his possessions, two shirts and some spare, much-worn stockings.

“Will Shakespeare, are you listening to me?” Silver asked, and grabbed him by the sleeve once again.

Will straightened. His long-simmering acceptance of her needling was at an end. “No, my lady. No. I hear you not. And you will not entice me with your charms, no matter how you try. So cease already.” His gaze persisted, nonetheless, in visiting the milky-white mounds of her bosom. “I have to mend my doublet so I can go and see the Earl of Southampton. Kit Marlowe has arranged for me to be introduced to the earl.”

“Kit Marlowe?” It came as a shriek, and the Lady Silver stomped her foot harder than ever. Dry dust of rushes rose from the floor. “The wolf has gone to search for Kit Marlowe. The dog is for him, Sylvanus is. Can’t you see the danger? Can’t you see he’ll come for you next?”

Will was tired. Silver spoke in riddles and, even now, held on to Will, leaned into him, her warm bosom against his shirt, soft and resilient against his arm.

If she persisted, he would hold her. He would take her in his arms and he would hold her, and then he’d be as unable to stop as he’d been ten years ago.

And what would he tell his Nan when he returned? How would he explain, once again, violating their sacred bond, their joint sacrament? Or could he lie to Nan? Deny this ever happened?

No, Will couldn’t countenance it.