All Night Awake (52 page)

But the Lady Silver didn’t answer. Her weight heavy upon his arm, she looked at everything, all around, with the startled, scared eyes of a deer seeing the hunter’s bow. And like the deer, she seemed incapable of saving herself.

Cold iron, she’d said. Cold iron, Will remembered, acted like poison to Silver’s glittering kind. Once, not quite knowing what he did, Will had encircled her in iron chains. With a shudder, he remembered how quickly that iron had almost killed her, and the blue, scorching flashes that had arisen between her flesh and the metal.

Now, as they crossed the gates, Will fancied he saw an answering blue flash from the gates. Weakened and mitigated compared to when he’d wrapped those chains around her, but a flash nonetheless.

And Will, half crazed with fright and compassion, felt he must get Silver out of here.

Oh, the glamour flowing off her might be untrue, and his passion that answered it was surely an illusion. Yet the need to save her was real, though he knew not how to accomplish it.

If the city itself was killing her, how could he, Will Shakespeare, save her? He couldn’t take her from London, could he?

Still, Southwark, where Will lived, could be said to be another place. A slummy place, full of taverns and bawds and light, easy women, yet less populated than London, certainly less populated than London during the day.

Perhaps Silver would receive material relief from being, however little, removed from this bustling crowd, this overabundance of iron in gates and grates, in signs and fastenings of signs.

Will dragged an almost unconscious Silver along Cheapside -- the broadest of London’s streets -- with its tall, stately houses, its signs, its carts, its press of shoppers and talkers and merchants and bawds. Never had Will noticed so much iron. Never had he thought that London could seem so confining, even here in Cheapside.

Will felt a hand on his side, reaching for his purse, and withdrew his left hand from Lady Silver, long enough to pull his purse to a more secure location, on the other side, where it would be trapped between his and Silver’s bodies.

In that moment, the Lady Silver started to fall forward, as if she could no longer stand on her own two feet, and Will hastily grabbed to hold her once more.

She seemed to remain conscious -- just -- with her silver eyes showing between eyelids so far lowered that they looked like slits upon her pale face.

“Just a while longer milady,” Will said, though it was a while longer indeed -- almost an hour's walk to his lodgings. And once there, what could he do? How did one revive a dying elf?

Yet, looking at the beautiful pale face, the ethereal sweetness of the delicately drawn features, Will knew he couldn’t allow her to die without fighting for her life.

She was a dream he’d dreamed when all the world and love were young, and now, in this time of dying dreams, Will did not wish to see Silver die also.

He grabbed a fresh hold on her arm, and, with his arm around her, prepared to drag her all the way to Southwark, if need be.

It would be a long way.

Scene Eight

Southwark -- a neighborhood of hastily built, slummy-looking houses, many of them leaning one on the other, like drunkards desirous of company. Where an alleyway or passage is left between two houses, it is invariably taken up with rickety stairs. One of these houses, the bottom part of which houses a hat shop, is a three-floor-tall, dark-brown, shabby building. The inevitable rickety stairs up the side lead all the way to the third floor. Across from the house is a tavern, whose sign “The Crook and Flail” swings in the modest breeze. Beneath the sign, Kit Marlowe stands. An older, shorter man in severe black clothing approaches him.

“A
nd I thought I should tell you, Sir,” the short, man said, bowing slightly and speaking in the tone of one continuing a conversation.

“What?” Kit asked, startled, pulled forcibly back from his contemplation of the far-distant door, up the rickety staircase, and the seemingly even farther-distant dirty window up top, its diamond-shaped panes opaque with dirt and grease. Looking at the man, he amended, “Beg your pardon?”

The man looked pained at Kit’s rudeness, and barely contained a sigh. He touched his hand to his dark hair, nonetheless, and bowed again, with maybe too much show of respect. “I think I should tell you that this tavern only opens after sundown.” The man spoke with a deep nasal French accent and something to his tone, and the glance he cast Kit told Kit that the man thought Kit a reprobate lush, for being out at this hour, searching for a drink.

Kit looked up, realizing for the first time that he stood underneath a tavern sign. “Oh. I did not seek a tavern. I sought...lodging. Yes, yes, lodging.” Carried away by this happy idea, he forged on. “A friend of mine, a Mr. Will Shakespeare, has told me you rented rooms.” He assumed the little man had come from the house across the street, but even had he not, he would probably know Will as a neighbor.

“No, Sir,” the man said, and this time looked truly respectful, as he bowed again. “No, I mean, not really. Our only room is let to the good Will, as my wife and I and our daughter and my three apprentices take up the rest of the house. But, should Will leave the room, well, then I’m sure I’d be happy to rent to a gentleman such as you.”

The man cast a look at Kit’s attire and it was quite obvious to Kit that, despite his own puritan clothing, this man was skilled enough at evaluating clothes to have judged Kit a better -- or at least higher paying -- tenant than Will.

“Oh,” Kit said, and struggled in vain to find an excuse, any excuse that would allow him to stay here and watch the house for a sign of life.

He’d followed Will here, so entranced and hypnotized by the sight of Lady Silver that he’d cared little where he went. And now he knew not what to do or say, except that he did not want to go away from here. He did not. “You do not know if my friend Will would be home, then, do you?”

“Ah, m’sieur, no, he is not. The poor Will, how he’s been worrying himself over the theaters being closed, and the good wife back in Stratford, waiting for money. I fear, I very much fear,” the good French puritan looked duly pained, “That if he does not soon find a way to keep his income here in London, he will have to go back to the country.... In which case, Sir, you could have the lodging.” He cast a glance at Kit.

Kit nodded, and tried to show eagerness, but added, “But it would be a pity to lose Will.” In truth, he knew not what he said, only that he wanted to keep talking and stay here, so maybe Silver would look out of that window, or walk down that staircase, or in some other way make herself known.

“Well, he’s tried everything. He even held the horses, you know for pay, outside the Bear gardens, where the bear bating is, for a while. But he said he could not bear the late nights, used as he is to the country schedule of early nights and early mornings too. And, really, for a theater gentleman, Mr. Will keeps very regular hours and rarely goes out drinking.” He smiled at Kit. “As I suppose you know, since you’re his friend.”

“Oh, yes, yes, Master Will Shakespeare is a model of virtue,” Kit said, and something in his heart stung and protested that maybe this was why even elves preferred Will.

“But, enfin, today he stopped by an hour ago and, he has told us that this evening he won’t be joining us for dinner. He has an appointment with the young earl of Southampton who is a great admirer of theater, now, is he not?” The question was obviously rhetorical, as the little man plunged on. “He has an appointment to show the earl some of his poetry and maybe the good earl will give him a chance to put on his plays in the private theater the earl had set up for him, won’t he?”

This question was obviously not rhetorical, and Kit caught his breath and cleared his throat. “Yes, yes, who knows? Milord Southampton has given his patronage to many a worse poet.”

“Well, so Master Will will not be coming home for dinner, either, as he will, of course, be in the earl’s company at his house. But for that, you’d have the pleasure of seeing your friend come dinner time. Indeed, he has dinner with us most nights.”

“Ah, it is no problem. I’ll look for him tomorrow, then,” Kit said, and yet didn’t move. Unlike the little man, Kit knew that Will was inside. He’d followed Silver and Will here, breathless, attempting to catch up with them.

With his breath caught in his throat, he’d followed Silver and Will here, and watched them ascend the narrow precipitous wooden stairs that, climbing up the side of the house, led to Will’s room on the topmost floor.

He’d watched Will dart out and visit the little hat shop, then go back into his room again.

Since then Marlowe had been riveted to that spot, watching that door as though it were the door to heaven or the pathway to salvation. From those, Kit believed himself well excluded, but from this....

He remembered that short summer, now so far away and yet still fresh in memory, like yesterday’s meal or this morning’s awakening from slumber.

He remembered Silver’s hands, and her smile, and the sweet smell of summer sweat, beneath great trees, in the quiet woods. And like a fool who can’t let go of folly, like a child, ill-awakened from a dream who yet talks on the spinning toys and the glazed fruits of his fantasy, thus Kit stood, riveted by his desire to that mundane corner of that narrow Southwark street, watching that grim little door in the tall, grey, awkward building.

Apprentices and merchants walked past, busy with their own concerns, and if they gave him more than a passing look it was because his clothes looked too fine for this time of day in Southwark.

Marlowe watched. Up in the narrow window, he thought he caught a glimpse of dark hair, a body. He imagined it was Silver’s, but, at that distance, it might have been Will, or even just the reflection of the sky on the irregular glass of the window. Yet Marlowe wanted it to be Silver. He willed the window open, he willed to see Silver’s perfect features, even from this distance, even if it availed him nothing.

Would it avail him nothing?

Kit remembered too well the pain of parting, and the look on Quicksilver’s face when -- in his male aspect -- he had told Kit goodbye. Kit had wished to see pain or regret there, but all he could remember of pain and regret now was his own, embossed and embedded in the memory from which he still flinched, like a cur from a kick.

The look in Quicksilver’s moss-green eyes, those many years ago, when parting from Kit beneath the great, green trees of the forest where they’d loved so long and so well, had been boredom with a strange, overlaid mischievousness. Nothing else.

Kit shifted his feet, on the mud of the lane. Cursed be the day he’d beheld the creature and so shamelessly lost heart and reason. Cursed be it, as Kit was cursed. Because, even with the sting in his heart, from the elf’s remembered scorn, even with his head hurting from the memory of the elf’s dismissal of him, that dismissal of what could only have been an amusing pastime for Quicksilver and had been Kit’s own, life-twisting, heart clenching one love -- even now, Kit wished his false love to return.

Fool, fool that he was, but what could he do, but stand there and look at that window, and that door, and stare and wait for a glimpse of Silver?

He was not so foolish he’d climb the stairs and knock at the door. Oh, he remembered the scorn in Quicksilver’s eyes much too well.

Kit removed his fashionable gloves and worried at them, twisting and turning them between his sweaty hands.

The little Frenchman still stood, a little way off, staring at Kit. Kit sighed. He would have to go. He supposed in a neighborhood like this, even in London, neighbor watched for neighbor and, despite the richness of his dress, he would not be allowed to stand and loiter long beneath neighborhood tavern signs. He bowed slightly to the little man. “I will go now,” he said. “If you’ll so kindly inform me at what time you usually entertain Will for dinner, I’ll look for him tomorrow at that time.” Presumably the good Will, being a creature of habits, would search out his dinner today at roughly the same time he usually ate it. And then the lady would be alone in Will’s room.

“Of course, Sir. We usually have dinner around five o’clock, just as the taverns open.”

Again Kit Marlowe nodded, this time smiling. He’d come back at five, and if the taverns were open then, so much the better. Surely there would be many strangers in the area at the time, and that would give cover to Kit’s presence.

And tonight, win or lose, he would see Silver face to face.

Scene Nine