All Night Awake (54 page)

“Folly,” he said, but it was a weak scolding. “Folly to go out as a woman, unaccompanied. If any man should decide to think you a bawd -- ”

A smile crept upon Silver’s lips, joy surprising the elven lady like a thief in the night. For a bare heartbeat, mirth climbed to her eyes, and irony sharpened her features. “Oh, we wouldn’t want that, Will, now, would we?”

Will blinked, shocked at seeing a glimmer of the old Silver, the hint of that teasing flirtation that he’d fallen prey to, years ago.

He forgot everything, save his adoration of Silver, as he smiled back. And, like a man reaching out for a rope to steady himself against drowning waves, he said the first thing that crossed his mind, the first thing that might stay this elf from a course of seduction -- if she intended such. “How fares my lady Ariel?”

Silver looked surprised. For a faint moment, her form wavered, so that she almost became Quicksilver, in his fair youth aspect. But then her shape steadied again, upon the bed, and Will had the impression that she’d done so purposefully.

A faint flush tinged Silver’s cheeks pink and the words she said came oddly from the small, heart-shaped mouth. “Well, and well. My lady is... more than I deserve, and better. Gentler and kinder and more understanding than I could ever have hoped.”

Something about her words, a feeling as if she hadn’t quite finished the sentence, made Will carry on, “Were it not that...?”

Silver looked at Will, startled, then smiled. She lifted herself on her elbows, and looked earnestly at Will. “Were it not that she hates Silver, and she thinks me weak and a coward. But that is no fault of hers. It is all mine. Perhaps I am a coward. This thing I am.” Again the faint blush, again the wavering.

It was like meeting a friend, Will thought, from whom you’d been long separated, and feeling awkward and strange, not knowing what to do or say first, where before there had been familiar discourse.

And yet, there had never been comfort for him and Quicksilver or for that matter, Silver. They’d never been friends. They’d been enemies and lovers, and finally allies, but never friends.

As Will thought that and stared at the alien creature on his bed, Silver looked at him, with her bottomless silver eyes. “I’ve always thought you my friend, Will. My only friend, outside elven kind.”

Will inclined his head and said nothing.

“And to elven kind I can’t be a friend, really, because I’m their king. But you....” She shrugged. “I thought I’d come to you for help, as likely you’re in as much danger as I am.”

Will looked at this odd elf, at this wan elf, sickly and pale near London, though admittedly stronger than he’d been in the city itself. “Danger?”

“My....” Silver dragged the word out, as he dragged herself up to sitting. “My brother has fought free of his bonds to the Hunter. I think he already tried something against you....”

Will was moved. His heart relented. He thought of the dream he’d had, of standing outside his house and guarding it. The quiet spectator who had sat back, listening to this tale with dispassionate interest disappeared. So did the curious poet, entranced by Silver’s beauty.

In their place stood the husband, fearing for his family. “My wife?” he said. “My wife and babes?”

The dark Lady’s glamoury no longer mattered, no longer affected him. Who cared for satiny skin, bottomless silver eyes, perfect figures, when those dear splinters of his very heart might be threatened?

Silver looked sour, the softness vanishing from her features. “They’re well, they’re well. At least I believe they’re well. They’re well.”

She looked up at Will who now stood right close to the bed, looming down over Silver. Her dress fell at a most becoming angle, her hair shone like spilled silk, and yet Will wanted to know how his wife was, whom he had left at their humble cottage in Stratford.

Silver looked amazed, and Will couldn’t fault her. His feelings amazed even Will himself, and yet they were true.

“They’re well, they’re well, Will, but I can’t tell you how long they’ll stay thus, how long it will all stay thus.

“It is like this,” she said and drew herself further up, and faced Will. “The Hunter is an old force, a dark force. He was, I believe, once to the elves what your many old gods were to you.” Silver lowered her eyebrows over her eyes, not so much thinking as in an expression of intense concentration. “A personification of nature, a force given power because we believed in it. But like a force of nature it was, it is, not evil. Or not evil in the way men and elves understand evil, with free decision and power and the strength to choose. Rather old evil, impersonal evil. He’ll take you if, like Sylvanus, you’ve made yourself corrupt and rotted and fit only for his company. But he’ll not come and get you from your bed, uninvited. And, being part of nature, he’s a part and parcel of the spheres and their harmonious, eternal gyrations. He’d never dream of seizing power over the world of men, even if he could.”

She stared at Will as if not sure of getting this point across, then sighed as one who hopes that the human’s inferior reasoning will be able to follow. She was all business, having shed all tempting glamoury.

“But Sylvanus.... I believe Sylvanus is evil. Truly evil. Evil from within and through and through. Don’t know what he is or how he came to be born of my gentle mother, my honored father. But there he is, like a hyena whelp engendered by two lions, ferocious and dark in his bitterness and born with sharp fangs with which to do the world to death. And he means to do it, Will. Sylvanus means to do it.

“The impersonal evil of the Hunter could no more keep him confined than a net can keep a wild, wily wolf at bay. I was a fool to think it, a fool to expect it.” Small drops of sweat formed on Silver’s forehead as she spoke.

“I had a vision, and in my vision I saw not just my kingdom but all of it in balance, if Sylvanus should succeed in getting the help of just one man. Just one man and he’ll overthrow me. Just one man and he’ll undo everything and take over both worlds, and set the spheres clashing.”

She paused. “And Will, I fear for you, because of your contact with faerieland. I fear you’ll be vulnerable, specially you, being in London, where my brother would think he’d be free from me, the iron and the disbelief keeping me away. And as for the Hunter, he too is still enough a creature of glade and forest, that he cannot pursue Sylvanus here, either. But Sylvanus is dark enough, corrupt enough, that iron though it affects him, it will not weaken him as much as it weakens proper elves. It cannot kill him. And so, he might very well be free here. Free to seek his power and what will feed it, free -- in this safe haven of humanity -- to find ways to increase his power. Then will he go to Stratford and wreak vengeance on your wife; then will he destroy and level my palace, and turn it all to rubble and to nothing.”

She looked scared, her eyes wide, as if she looked on her own doom. “It will all be as if it never existed and in the enchanted glades of my kind, in the sacred glens, the peaceful woods, no more will elf or faerie, gnome or dwarf, sport, but only dark creatures, evil, transformed by Sylvanus’ rule over them. Then shall we like demons hunt the night, and lash out of our damnation, haunting your dreams, making the babe die between breaths in his crib, and the good wife cry in fright and say prayers that will never avail her. And, little by little, the spheres, poisoned and darkened by my brother’s power, by my brother’s taint, will clash and crash and climb the inharmonic scales of destruction till nothing is left, nothing....”

Silver had talked long. Her voice, that had been low and tired to begin with, descended ever lower, ever fainter, until in the end it sounded like a mournful wind rustling through the trees of Arden forest.

Will was thinking that this creature had once -- well, many times -- before lied to him, yet still felt enchanted by her fatal charm. He reached for the canteen from the corner of his table, and took it to Silver, and offered it to her with, “I don’t know if—”

Silver smiled and for a moment glamoury flared and lit up around her, making her seem the most perfect of beings, fit to be loved.

Then she damped it, giving the impression of doing it consciously, of consciously diminishing her brilliance, as if muffling a lantern by throwing a cloth over it. “It won’t hurt me,” she said, taking the ale canteen and drinking. “And I’m not near death, as I might appear. I feel better here, Will, in your room, in this quiet place, away from the crowds. The travel here, and London itself.... There’s a dark core to the city, something that rises, together with the smell from the Thames river and like fog blankets the city. Perhaps my brother is already here, perhaps already working his mischief.” She took another sip from the ale and made a face.

“Or perhaps my tiredness looms before me, making me perceive things, like a child who wakes in the night in his own, accustomed room, and, not having light, imagines every familiar shadow a monster and every piece of clothing an assassin with drawn dagger.” Silver smiled, though the smile seemed faded and turned faint.

“I don’t know. That is the problem and the misery of being in the city, Will. I will not die. Perforce, I will not die, in this fortress of cold iron, in this heart of disbelief that is London. But, Will, whatever the darkness is in your city, that very darkness covers my eyes so that I must go, blind like a beggar in strange territory, beseeching all I meet for direction and help. And I’m begging your help.”

His help. “What can I do?”

“I don’t know and I can’t tell you. Only to keep your eyes open for signs of corruption, for signs of wrongness. You’re a Sunday child, Will, able to see the invisible and know the unknowable, and perhaps Will, perhaps, your sight will avail you where my greater sight fails me. I don’t know. I know only that you’re my friend and I’ve come to you for help.”

Friend. Was Will the friend of this strange, magical creature? And was this creature good or evil, or yet, like the Hunter something else, something old and moss-eaten and corroded, like an idol found in an old cave, its features so time-eroded that no one can tell if it was once a god or a demon, an angel or a devil.

Did Silver indeed mean well? Did Silver even know what she meant, once a course of action was started, a decision undertaken?

Will stared at Silver, and silently thought that he would send Silver away and joyfully run from this threatened complication, this expected entanglement. Were it not for Nan and his children, and how the supernatural world might affect them. Oh why had his dream taken him to Stratford? If his dream was a true seeing of evil, did that mean that Stratford was threatened?

They’d left the elves behind, Nan and Will, the elves had left them alone and Will and Nan had hoped that would be all and that from that moment on, when they’d walked away from the lighted palace of faerie kind, that from that moment on their lives would be clean and rational and natural and human. Mortal. Nothing but mortal. But maybe it couldn’t be. Maybe such bliss couldn’t ever be. Hidden knowledge once obtained could not be forgotten.

As Will stared at Silver and thought of Quicksilver, he realized that he’d been, in a way, loved by a god. And those the gods love they first drive mad. Maybe he was being driven mad. He thought of Diana in her bath turning Acteon into a deer for spying her nudity. He thought of Venus who’d loved Adonis and yet let him go to a cruel death.

Perhaps, perhaps, Silver wasn’t the worst of it.

And perhaps Silver was truthful, or meant to be truthful. In the end, the last time they’d met, Silver -- or Quicksilver -- had helped Will win Nan back, hadn’t she? Even if that had meant a crown and throne for Quicksilver himself.

“So, friend Will,” Silver said. She had recovered a little, whether by virtue of the ale or of her rest on Will’s poor bed. Her voice came out stronger, with overtones of amusement. “Will you believe me? Or will you throw this supernatural pollution from your room and make me search my way alone and blind through London?”

Will shook his head. He couldn’t think of throwing Silver out there, into that cold city that seemed to eat at the elf’s own soul. Whatever Silver was -- and she was several things, several of them reprehensible in human terms -- in her own mind, in her own heart, she’d tried to be a friend to Will. And she’d called Will friend.

Will took a deep breath, which shuddered through him as if the air were too cold for his thought-fevered heart. “What can I do, Milady Silver? What can I do? I’m a small poet from the provinces, who knows no one. The company of actors with whom I sometimes worked, like a shadow upon the stage, that company is gone on tour of the provinces, escaping the closed theaters, the plague of London. And I, fool that I am, stayed behind thinking that perhaps I could find other work, work that would pay as the tour of the provinces won’t. I have a young son, two daughters and a wife to provide for. And these six months the only work I found was holding the horses of the gentlemen who visit the bear garden, the bawdy houses nearby. And that didn’t pay enough to keep my lodging and to eat. Barely enough to keep body and soul together, and was unpleasant besides. I’m hoping tonight to impress Milord Southampton and get the commission of writing masks to entertain his friends, till the theater opens again. Of course, Kit Marlowe told me this morning that I should—” Will stopped.

The most marvelous transformation had taken place in Silver, more wondrous than her change between male and female forms, because that was natural for Silver and this was quite different.

Silver had sat up, all in one movement, feebleness and exhaustion seemingly forgotten, shed like an ill-fitting dress. Sitting up in bed, her eyes animated, her cheeks and lips tinted with a faint blush, she said, “Kit Marlowe? Kit Marlowe, the playwright? He’s in London?”

Will all but groaned. Even in the realm of faerie, apparently Marlowe, the muses’ darling, held sway and made sovereigns and servant fairies alike swoon.

Will’s voice, as he responded, came out sharp, edged all around with professional envy. “Yes. He’s in London. Why? Do you perchance know him?”