All Night Awake (21 page)

“A fine lady in a silver dress, with hair as dark as coal and skin as pale as moonlight,” Imp said.

Kit nodded.

The woman.

She existed, for Imp had seen her. And before his plot proceeded any further, Kit must make sure that this woman would not protect Will Shakespeare.

He must verify that Will was indeed friendless, indeed bereft of courtly favor, indeed safe to set up as a sacrificial lamb.

“Now you run home,” he said, and ruffled the boy’s hair.

“Will you come home anon?” Imp asked.

Kit nodded.

“And will you tell me a story when you do?”

Kit nodded. He ruffled the child’s hair again, and the boy was gone, running down the street.

Kit turned his steps toward Shoreditch, up the narrow, muddy road where Will Shakespeare lived, up to where a light shone on the highest window of the otherwise darkened house.

An odd light, not like the light of any earthly tapers, but a shine diffused and glowing throughout the entire space at once, a shine like a million fireflies, captured and held within that room.

Kit had seen that light once.

It was the light of Fairyland.

His heart beating at his throat, his hands trembling, his mind protesting with desperate certainty that such a thing could not be, that it happened not, that elven ladies—or lords—didn’t haunt squalid rental rooms in London, Kit hurried forward.

He grasped the slippery banister of the staircase and he climbed, step on step. Had it been the stair to paradise, he would have been no more eager.

Kit knocked at the door and heard an exclamation from inside.

Though yet he could see nothing, standing on that tiny platform outside the scabrous door, he fancied he smelled, all around him, the smell of lilac, intoxicating him like the best wine.

And something like a voice from his heart whispered that the Lady Silver loved him. Aye, and so did Lord Quicksilver. His elf love had come back to Kit.

The door opened.

Silver stood there, the elf’s female form, her black hair falling unfettered down her back, every strand seemingly charmed into place. And her broad silver skirt had been slashed to display a diaphanous white fabric beneath, which revealed, in its transparency, the length of Silver’s white legs. That inner gown that, beneath her bodice, cloaked her arms in long sleeves was yet so molding, so transparent, that he could see all of her revealed, save for the narrow waist hid beneath the silver bodice. And that mattered little as her breasts, rounded and pale like twin moons rising above a silver sea, were more than half exposed, lifting with her every deeply drawn breath that matched Kit’s own aching, slow, painful breaths, and played a dancing tune to Kit’s mad, beating heart.

“Kit,” she said, her voice little more than a breath, taken by the wind as soon as it was pronounced. “After all this time! Kit.”

He touched her hand. In touching it, she trembled.

Love deeply grounded hardly is dissembled. These lovers parled by the touch of hands. True love is mute, and oft amazed stands.

Thus, while dumb signs their silent hearts entangled, the air with sparks of living fire spangled.

Kit’s breath, drawn, brought him her perfume. Her perfume swelled his heart in further breath. Not knowing why, nor how, nor when, they closed the door behind them and, still no more touching than their hands met, stumbled inside the dim, shabby room.

“I thought you away,” she said, her voice still rushed and wind-driven, as if passion pushed breath and hurried it through her soft red lips. “I thought—”

He touched her lips with his, not so much kissing her as a pilgrim acknowledging his reaching the shrine of his desire. “Away?”

“Away from London. In Lord Thomas Walsingham’s estate. Scagmore. I thought you living there and away, and safe, from all the madness that might come.”

Kit, his ears love-stopped, heard no more than that she’d informed herself of his place of residence, and known, known with certainty where he should be at this time. That was enough. That was plenty.

He’d never thought she’d have allowed a stray thought to venture his way, and here she was, confessing that she knew his current estate.

He kissed and kissed, and again he kissed, those lips of whose taste he’d dreamed, those lips like liquor that no mortal vine could ever equal.

With his love he assayed her, till in his twining arms he locked her fast, and then he wooed with kisses and, at last, her on the bed he lay, and tumbling upon the mattress, he often strayed beyond the bonds of shame, being bold.

And craving, joint craving ignited, that which, lonely, might have stayed itself for eternity. It ruled them and held sway.

The mattress protested beneath them, the bed shrieked and complained like the much-abused thing it was.

Silver said, “Stay.”

She cried, “Forebear.”

But all and all were taken as enticements aimed at making his trespass sweeter.

Kit, surrounded by the lilac smell of faerie kind, her taste on his tongue, the smoothness of her skin traveling like alcohol through his own skin into his veins to intoxicate his brain, thought to die and knew he lived, and knowing he lived knew he died of bliss.

Why did he love this creature and no other?

Why this elf, this fleeting being of moonlight and shadows and deep forest? Why this creature, neither man nor woman—neither and both—and not a mortal chained by the thrall of time? Why was it this creature he must love, in both its bewildering aspects and thus trespass beyond the boundaries of human love?

Why love here, not elsewhere?

Why one especially does the heart affect, of two gold ingots, like in each respect?

No more was there an answer to this riddle than to Kit’s heart-pounding, driving need.

The reason for it all, no man knows. Let it suffice that what we behold is censured by our eyes. Where both deliberate, love is slight.

Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

Scene 20

Will walks in front of the grand houses on the expensive shore of the Thames toward a particular grand house—the town house of the Earl of Southampton. Two iron gates stand open to a small quay, and past that, broad marble stairs disappear into the green shade of a large garden. At the quay someone in rich livery—presumably a footman—waits. He steps forward.

W
ill’s legs hurt.

He’d had to cross the Thames by the bridge, as he lacked a penny to pay the ferryman.

In front of Southampton’s garden gate—seven feet tall and twice that much wide, of wrought iron worked in fantastic shapes—Will put his hand inside his sleeve and touched the paper Kit had given him. Here was his safeguard, here his passport, to that life of ease and fame that he wanted. Here his way to send money back home, to make enough money for Hamnet to attend the inns of the court, or some college, enough money for Judith and Susannah, both, to marry well, enough money to make Nan into the lady she didn’t wish to be . . . . But enough surely to get Nan a kitchen wench or two, and let her rest and lose some of those wrinkles that marred her face.

Will walked down a long path that bisected a garden, with millenary trees on either side and flowers that dizzied the air with fragrance.

A part of Will felt amazed that he dared be here; him, Will Shakespeare, the son of the Stratford glover.

But he had to go in and pluck fortune up by her few, thin feathers, did he not?

Just at that moment, in the dark of night, something moved and a voice said, “Good Shakespeare, I can help you.”

The voice resembled Marlowe’s and Will turned on his heel and faced the place whence the sound came.

He stared at a face, surrounded by dark, curly hair, tipped with a well-trimmed black beard. Dark eyes laughed at him.

“You need better clothes,” the creature said.

Will was sure it was a creature, not a human, because a thick smell of lilac, almost too heavy, almost gagging, filled his nose. “And shoes, and you must look better, if you wish to get the patronage of the lord.”

It had taken Will a moment, but in that moment he recognized the face and the look, the expression, the voice.

It was Sylvanus, once King of Fairyland, Quicksilver’s deposed brother.

The last time Will had seen this creature, it had stolen Will’s wife, and bid fair to keep her a prisoner in Fairyland.

Through Will’s mind, in a tumbled confusion, came that impression, and Quicksilver’s warnings about Sylvanus.

Will backed away from the dark creature, and he said, “No. I’ll have nothing from you.”

A carriage went by him, in a rumble of horses’ hooves, and voices of merry youths singing merry songs.

Some clots of earth splattered onto Will’s suit, and he brushed them off despairingly.

By the torches on either side of the carriage, Will saw there was no one close by, certainly not Sylvanus.

He took a deep breath and shook his head. He was scaring himself with nothing. His contact with Fairyland was indeed driving him crazy, but it was Silver herself who ensured his madness.

To be one of those youth in the carriage, born to wealth and fortune and all that was good, oh, what he would not give.

But Will had been born to a failing business, to a medium station in life in a small town.

He turned a curve in the path and saw the house before him: a massive stone building, looming against the moonlight sky, its every window displaying a taper or a lantern and making bright heavens dark with its riches.

Will fingered the note inside his sleeve anew.

At the top of the steps, a footman blocked his path.

“Your business, master—?” he said, looking at Will with a gaze that implied that Will might have as much business here as a cow in a palace—or perhaps less.

Will handed the man his note, his hands trembling.

The servant received it and looked at the address: from Kit Marlowe to the most High and Honorable Henry Wriostheley, Earl of Southampton. With raised eyebrows, the man appraised Will again, from the top of his domed, balding forehead, to his ill-shod feet, and something very much like puzzlement lit his gaze.

Will could almost read in the man’s eyes how unlikely an acquaintance Will was for the glittering Marlowe circle.

But after a long while, the man nodded. “Follow me, please.”

He took Will into a vast, glimmering salon, and through it, into a narrow hallway, and through this again, into another salon.

From somewhere came the sound of music and men’s laughter.

Another servant appeared, barring their way, and Will’s guide into these secluded regions whispered something to this new man, as if it were of great import, and handed him the paper.

Reading the address, the man raised his eyebrows and gave Will a puzzled look. Then, with a nod and a wave of the hand, he indicated that Will should follow.

He opened gilded doors, and again passed Will onto a fellow servitor’s care.

That way they went, seeming to circle the palace, past magnificent rooms and statues such as Will had only read about—statues of heros and statues of nymphs and gods made to resemble carvings of Greek antiquity.

Along the gleaming marble hallways and through halls plated with leaf of gold, farther into Southampton House they went until, at long last, they fetched to a door, from beyond which male laughter rang clear.

By this time, Will’s legs were trembling, and the butterflies in Will’s stomach had risen to a fever pitch, flying up his throat and making him feel nauseous.

The servitor lowered a massive, golden carved handle and a heavy oak door flew open.

Within opened a smaller room—smaller than the ones they’d crossed—and filled with minuscule tables that tottered on thin golden legs.

On these tables games were laid. Backgammon and dice and other games for which Will lacked names. At each table sat several men.

Servants circled, mute and stone-faced amid this babel, carrying trays with drinks and dainties, which the gamers quaffed and devoured without ever once losing the thread of their betting, the elation of victory, the disappointment of loss.

Youths pushed money back and forth upon the tables, as the turn of fortune brought forth a lucky win or a dastardly loss.

More money than Will had seen in any single room, in his whole lifetime, now winked and shone at him from every corner.

For this much money one could buy a house in Stratford, aye, even buy New Place, the best and most spacious, the grandest house in Stratford, whose possessor was assured of a pew close up by the altar to listen to the service at the church.

This much money, even half the money in this room, would assure Will of his highest ambitions—of a better house for his family, servants to help Nan, an education for Hamnet, and even money to purchase himself a device and become a gentleman.

He watched, fascinated, as the glimmering coins passed around, tossed from one to the other of the careless young men, with no more than a mock expression of disgust, a mock sound of indignation.

So absorbed was Will in this contemplation, he didn’t notice that the servant stopped by one of the tables, looking pointedly back at Will.