All Night Awake (60 page)

Genuinely baffled, Will stepped back and braced for further attack. “You’ve drunk too much ale,” he said. “Or else are your senses addled with moon madness. Of what do you speak?”

“Of my love,” Marlowe said, and though he spoke in a low voice, yet it seemed to Will that he wailed. “Whom you have stolen from me.”

“Friend Marlowe,” Will said. “I know not by what false report you understood this, nor what manner of creature has thought to send you against me by these means, but I have stolen no love, yours or anyone’s. I love no one, save only my own lady, Nan, at home in Stratford....”

A brief thought of Silver, in the room, of his lust for her, made Will flinch from so bold a statement, and yet he spoke true and knew it in speaking it. For Nan’s sake had Will resisted Silver’s blandishments. “And unless you aspire to her favor -- in which case I hope to stand firm as her lord should, I -- ”

He could go no further. Marlowe’s face, ravaged by grief and marked by shock, changed aspect. His eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open, then his eyes half-shut, his mouth smiled, and a dry cackle rose out his throat, like the sound of a creature surprised at itself. “The good wife?” he asked. “Oh, but that’s rich.”

“Rich or poor, she’s the only one I got, and tell me not I’ve trifled with some fine lady, or with the wife of some nobleman, or whatever women move in those circles to which you aspire, Kit Marlowe, for I’ve none of it, and well you know.”

Marlowe stopped laughing as abruptly as he’d begun, and opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it on the words unuttered. After a while he took in breath, and said, “Maybe you’re right, and maybe I was ill informed. Who am I to doubt what you so earnestly say?” Standing in the street, he composed himself, though his shirt still protruded below his doublet, and his hair still looked like a tangled mess. He brushed ineffectually at the slime and mud on his jacket. “I’ve done you injury, good Will.”

“Nay, no injury, but let me walk you home.” To be honest, with Marlowe in this state, Will didn’t trust him to go more than a few steps without getting in another brawl. And the next ruffian might bring Marlowe down.

Will realized, with a shock that almost made him laugh that, envious though he was of Marlowe’s gift of words, he didn’t wish Marlowe ill. No, let the wretched creature go on living, if it meant he’d go on producing poetry.

Kit tilted his head sideways. “I live not very far off. There’s a tavern beneath my lodgings. I pray you let me, repay it in some measure by taking you to the tavern, where you shall drink my health and I yours, and we shall be friends again.”

Will opened his mouth to say they’d never been friends, but closed it again. Neither seemed it a good time to remind Marlowe that if anyone had suffered injury in this fray, it had been Marlowe himself.

London contained taverns aplenty and Will thought that in many of them he could be killed and disposed of and no man the wiser. Yet, he looked at Marlowe and at Marlowe’s seemingly open countenance and honest proposing of a drink.

Will sighed. After all, much to his own surprise, Will had managed to stop Marlowe in private brawl. Surely in a tavern he’d only be safer. “I’ll go with you, Marlowe,” he said. “But I’ll keep your dagger, yet a while.”

And Marlowe bowed, but it seemed to Will that something weary spied out of the corner of the playwright’s eye.

Scene Sixteen

The palace of faerieland. Upon the throne, Ariel looks more than ever like a doll -- a waxen-pale doll. The court has fallen silent, the deep silence of the profoundly shocked.

I
t was the silence that woke Ariel from her horrified contemplation of the image in the drop of water.

Quicksilver used to say, joking, that the court became quiet only for regicide or treason.

Quicksilver. She remembered his smiling at her, as he said that. She saw him as Silver, within the drop of water, smiling on another, a mortal, a young man. And not Will.

It had come to this, then, that her lord -- her lord’s other aspect -- would be a bawd unto human kind.

He had promised Ariel -- promised -- upon their wedding day that he would never change again, not voluntarily. She’d seen him break that yesterday.

And then he’d promised her, promised her, she’d be his only love, lifelong -- a promise most uncommon for a marriage between near-immortal beings.

She looked at the image in the water and felt heartsick. Fool she was, she had believed in him.

Opening her hand, she let the drop roll out of it, roll onto the floor.

Shaking, she stood up, she said, “You will forgive me. I do not feel well. I will....” Her voice failed.

“Milady is ill,” Malachite said, hurrying forth. “Milady is ill. Give her space.”

But she stood and shook her head and said, against the pressure in her heart. “Not ill, not ill. Only I must.... Deliberate.” She rose from her throne, and fought free of Malachite’s hands. “No, leave me be. I’ll be well enough.”

She almost ran out of the throne room, ignoring the bobbing waves of courtiers who ran out of her way and bowed and curtsied in her wake.

Her feet picking up speed, her eyes filling with tears, she ran down a long, echoing hallway, ignoring the disturbed flights of servant fairies, and the courtiers who cleared her way just in time. She thought she heard running steps behind her, but she didn’t turn back to see who it was. She didn’t care.

She ran all the way to her room, threw herself at the oaken door, opening it with the impact of her weight, and rushing into her own room, surprised her maids, Pease Blossom and Cobweb.

Pease Blossom, holding one of Ariel’s silken dresses, half-turned, looking shocked. “Milady.”

“Out,” Ariel said. “Out.” Her voice came out raspy. She leaned against the wall taking deep breaths. “Out, both of you, please.”

“Milady,” Cobweb said, and bobbed a curtsey, but hazarded, “Is aught wrong?”

Yes, it was all wrong. Ariel was acting like Quicksilver upon one of his flights of fancy, when he interrupted councils and ordered servants about to suit his caprice.

And Quicksilver was
wrong
also. She’d thought that Quicksilver, weak as he was, was hers. She’d just realized that such possession, such dream of possession had been just that. A dream, and vain like all dreaming.

But Ariel could not say that, dared not say that, so she shook her head and said, “My head aches, what a head have I.” And, putting a hand to her forehead in languid gesture, she leaned further against the wall and implored, “Please, fair maids, if you love me go, and leave me to rest in peace a while.

The maids retreated, walking backwards, bobbing courtesy, and left Ariel alone, in the splendors of her solitary room.

The door opened. “Milady, I must apologize. I did not know what he meant to do. Had I known what he knew, what....”

She opened her eyes, to see Malachite standing by the door.

“Oh, cease,” she said. “Cease. I care not who knew. Now everyone knows.” She felt tears falling, scalding hot, down her cheeks. Everyone, the whole court knew of her vow with Quicksilver, a vow considered lunacy by all the old elves. And now, now they all knew that she alone kept that vow.

“Milady,” Malachite advanced, and held both of her hands, and knelt in front of her. “Milady, I would not hurt you for the world. My lord is what he is. He is inconstant, but I have worshiped you only, with a constant.... loyalty from the time we were children. Milady, I beg you to believe I wouldn’t hurt you. I’ve often and often kept what I knew to myself, to save you pain.”

Through her tears, Ariel saw Malachite’s face intent and eager turned up to her, his eyes burning with a fanaticism humans reserved for their religion. What he knew? What had he known? So this wasn’t the first time that Quicksilver....?

She shook her head. “I believe you didn’t mean to give me pain, kind Malachite. Now, go, please go and leave me with my grief yet a while. Presently, when I have nursed my grief well, mayhap it will, like a well-fed baby, go to sleep.”

He rose from his knees, he took her hand. Bowing deeply over it, he touched warm lips to the back of her hand. He left.

Alone in the room, Ariel wanted to cry. But her tears had, unaccountably, dried. Like fields under the merciless sun, her eyes had no water in them. Water might have brought life, and without water all was dead: her emotions, her fears, Ariel herself.

This grief she felt, this sense of loss at no longer possessing -- maybe never having possessed -- Quicksilver’s affection loomed too large to be squeezed into mere salt water wrung from the eyes.

Through grief her thoughts marched, asking questions, like a clear-eyed general upon a conquered city.

Who had thought to get that image? And how so quick? For Quicksilver had left only the night before, and Ariel thought what she’d seen must have happened tonight, maybe minutes ago.

No servant faerie was strong enough to fly into London and take those images there, and no elf could have traveled there so quickly.

Indeed, the presence of the big city made it necessary that travel there be made on foot, or horse, or even enchanted flying horse conjured out of any stick or twig -- which was probably what Quicksilver himself had used. And no elf could have traveled there that quickly.

Unless one would have followed Quicksilver. No. That was no sense at all. Quicksilver would have felt his being followed.

No. Something else was here, something, which gave rise to all of Ariel’s fears. There was something wrong. The drop of water.... It went beyond what it showed her. The drop of water itself was wrong.

There had been magic used there, she was sure, to capture the image at a distance.

But how could that be? No one but Quicksilver had enough power, in this hill, to do something like that. And how could such spying be done upon the king of faerieland, to the being that held all of his subject’s power -- their very souls -- in his grasp, and him not feel it?

Her head hurt, truly. The false headache she had claimed pounded upon her, in reality, like a booming thunder that obscured her thoughts.

She wished she could go out to the terrace and take the air. But it was the night of mortals, daytime in faerieland, and the terrace would be crowded with promenading courtiers discussing the newest piece of gossip.

And then there would be Hylas. And, Ariel suspected, Malachite waited outside her door, wishing only to pounce upon her, to press upon her all his unwanted affection, all of his overwhelming loyalty.

Ariel found herself staring at the broad window of her bedroom, a fine sheet of magically created glass, enclosed within a wooden frame that unlatched to allow one to get fresh air. Or to walk out.

She remembered when Will’s wife, Nan, had been prisoner in faerieland, she’d tried to escape that way.

That was nonsense, of course, at least for a captive mortal, for the woods upon which the window looked were the woods of faerieland. And mortals could not step between the worlds at will, but only at specified points and even then only with an elf’s consent.

But Ariel could avail herself of the window, and take a walk outside, amid the woods.

She opened the window and vaulted over the frame.

Woods in faerieland looked tidier -- were tidier -- than woods in the mortal world. Here, no creature ran, unheeded, through the undergrowth, no bird dropped feathers upon the ground. The ground was a soft, spongy grassland, and the trees grew straight and unhampered to the very blue sky.

Ariel took deep breaths of the air scented with flowering plants and green grass.

Yes, she felt better already. She’d needed this: a little time to recover from her shock and find her feet.

“It will be no time at all,” a voice said.

Ariel jumped. She thought the voice addressed her, but, looking around, she saw that she remained alone in these woods. And the voice went on, conversationally, “No time, at all, dear Hylas, till you see me crowned sovereign of faerieland.”

Now Ariel’s eyes widened, because she recognized the voice as Malachite’s.

She looked with renewed frenzy at the windows of the palace. One was open. Quicksilver’s room.

From it, Hylas’ voice came, grave and impertinent, tainted with a horse-like snorting. “If this were in Centauria, we’d have killed him. Made short work of him. Creature like that, with no strength to defend himself.”

“Ah, dear Hylas, you do not understand,” Malachite said.

“Oh, I understand plain enough,” Hylas said. “The weak have no right to live.”

Malachite laughed. “Centaurs have it easy,” he said.

Ariel took a deep breath. Her head was reeling again. If they should look out and see her....

She crept close to the wall of the palace and, knitting herself with it, crept nearer the window.

If they looked out they wouldn’t see her, then. It would take suspicion and looking just this way to find her. She damped her aura of power, she made herself as inconspicuous as she might, as she crept to the window.

She wanted to hear more. And she wanted to see. Because, despite her ears, she did not believe Malachite could be saying these things. Was he, perhaps, playing a game to entrap the centaur?