Ill Met by Moonlight (7 page)

Will looked at the palace, and his heart turned within him. Nan amid the dead? No, it couldn’t be. When she’d given birth he’d feared for her and the baby but nothing had come of it, and Nan lived, and Susannah with her.

He frowned at the beautiful lady in front of him, at her silver eyes that gazed into his.

Will’s mother held with the papist belief in which she’d been raised, and even kept—well-concealed in the attic—an image of the Virgin Mary amid the angels, a painted cloth given to her by her prosperous father. But Will had heard the preachers say often enough that those apparitions of the Virgin, hailed by mystics of the past had been no more than deceptions of the devil.

Were these devils, then? Had Nan been captured by their deceptions, and had Will, with her, unwittingly fallen into their trap? And where was Susannah?

The lady smiled quizzically at him, while Will, uneasy, looked at the translucent palace, the dancing company. He remembered stories of the fairy people dancing, cursed dances that could hold those who joined in them captive for years or centuries. When the dancer emerged, he would crumble into the dust of the centuries he’d ignored while dancing.

Nan.

Will muttered the words of the Our Father under his breath, fully expecting the lady, the palace, and all to dissolve and leave him and Nan alone in the forest.

The dark lady laughed at his whisper. “We’re not afraid of the divine. I’m sorry. Those are only legends. We are, it is true, bound by certain rules, as all creation is. But because we’re different from you, doesn’t mean we’re unhallowed. We’ve respected the religions of men, and their beliefs, through the centuries, but they have no more power over us than we over them.” Her laugh damped down to a muffled giggle. “No, my dear. If you want your wife back, you’ll have to try another way.” She wrapped her hands around his arm. “My way.”

Will fought free of Silver’s grasp and, half-maddened, ran to the immense staircase that led to the translucent palace’s arched doorway.

He would rush in and grab Nan and pull her back. He seemed to remember, from the legends he’d half-listened to, that this was the way to reclaim a loved one stolen by the hill people for their unholy merriment.

Only, instead of climbing the staircase, as he intended, he ran through it—through the stone, and the walls, and the people, and the high columns, and through a series of crowded halls beyond. Guards and maids—all of them too pretty to be mortals—gathered in groups, or went about inscrutable errands.

He tripped on twigs and stubbed his toes on stones obscured by translucent courtiers, and he cried out the holy name in vain as he ran headlong into a translucent kitchen where fire that didn’t burn him flamed in the hearth, maids and women tended pots that swung right through him, and roasts that he could neither smell nor touch turned on crystal-bright spits.

Above him, in the throne room, couples danced on and on, in indefatigable merriment. Looking straight up, Will saw, through the translucent marble floor, the length of his Nan’s legs, encased in white stockings, moving beneath her green silk dress.

He ran back to the first hall he’d crossed, and tried to climb a spiral staircase to the floor above.

Instead of making progress, he ran deep into the marble of the staircase, and felt not even a tingle as he did so.

Encased in stone, his lungs still drew breath from the cool vegetation-scented air of Arden Forest. Fine lords and ladies walked up the staircase, not noticing him.

He heard a fine titter, a musical giggle.

The dark lady stood next to the staircase, and bid him come, with a gentle wave of the hand.

If any of the other courtiers saw her, they gave no sign. They didn’t see Will. That was quite plain.

Reluctantly, Will came to the wave of the lady’s hand. He’d gone back to thinking it was all a mad dream. Only in dreams did people walk through walls. Only in dreams did people run unnoticed amid the high and mighty. Only in dreams.

Yet, if this was a dream, Will would control it. He would do what he’d set out to do.

“I’m going to Shottery,” he said, loud and clear, as he came near the lady Silver.

She smiled and kicked up her skirt with the tip of her silvery, pointed shoes, as if mocking him with a martial step. “To Shottery, then,” she said. “And I’ll talk to you along the way and tell you how you might rescue your wife and daughter.”

She slipped her arm in his, and led him quietly out of the hall, through the wall, which she, too, crossed, as though it didn’t exist. “It is no use,” she said. “You cannot reach your Nan this way. She is in the world of the elves, in Fairyland, and you’re in the world of humans. The two do no more touch than two leaves in a pair of tables, wax to wax, right next to each other, but unable to mingle the figures that the merchant has scrawled upon each. Credit and debit remain thus separate.” Silver smiled.

“She is of my world, Nan is,” Will said. Even in dreams, there should be some rationality preserved. “And Susannah.”

Silver sighed. “Yes, but they were taken to ours, as I am in yours. This is a magic possible only to elves, not to humans. Humans must do something particular to acquire magic and gain admittance to Elvenland.”

She’d led him by the arm onto his accustomed path through the forest and walked him along it.

The palace, with its lights and glimmering dancers, vanished from view, leaving the forest all the darker in its absence.

“So, what must I do to get Nan back?” Will asked, defeated. Even if this were only a dream, if it turned out that Nan had truly vanished, perhaps it was a prophetic dream and perhaps by following its instructions, Will could recover Nan nonetheless. “And is Susannah with her?”

“Well, Susannah is with her mother, and, should you recover your wife, the babe will be given to you. But first you must tell me your name, sir. And who you are.”

“William Shakespeare. Will, son of John Shakespeare, the glover of Henley Street, in Stratford.” He hoped, incongruously, that this fair lady wouldn’t know the state of his father’s business, as if it mattered what a dream, a chimera, thought or knew.

“Ah. And you’re . . . a butcher’s apprentice?”

Will tugged away the arm the lady held. Did he look like a butcher, and born to such low calling? An insulting dream, this was, that he dreamed. “No. I’m a schoolmaster. A petty-schoolmaster. I teach in the petty school in Wincot.”

The lady smiled, and her hand retrieved Will’s arm and grasped it tighter. “A worthy calling, and you must be a man of learning. So it will not surprise you to know that in the sphere of elves and fairies, as in that of men, there can be treachery and base deceit. Nor, knowing as no doubt you do that all spheres are linked, the stars arrayed around the sun just like all worthy men are arrayed around your most high sovereign, you cannot fail to know that injustice in the world of fairies will lead to injustice in the world of men. And my own tribulations have thus led to your losing your wife.” She squeezed Will’s arm while she spoke in her low, sweet voice, of how if something went wrong in one sphere, it would go wrong in another. Will wanted to tell Silver that perforce he knew that mechanism, had learned it at his master’s knee when he himself was in petty school.

But he couldn’t find the voice to interrupt her as she explained it. Her bosom pressed tight against his arm, and it felt warm and springy, like freshly kneaded dough. Her scent filled his nostrils, making his sportive blood rise.

She so patently took him for a clod of the basest origin, incapable of knowing the simplest things, that Will couldn’t dispute it.

Her intoxicating perfume, the grip of her hand on his arm, the way she moved like a vision floating, her superhumanly beautiful features, all of it conspired to keep him in awe-stricken, weak-kneed silence, unable to do any more than admire her. They walked down to where the river murmured amid the trees of Arden, and turned, following the path, toward the small town of Shottery proper, and Hewlands Farm at the outskirts of it.

Will’s heart beat fast, very fast. Nan had been the only woman he’d ever touched, and never—even in dreams—had he thought to have such a fair companion as this dark lady.

“So, you see,” she said, “I’ve suffered a great injustice. I should have been the rightful sovereign of the elven people, but my wicked relative usurped the throne, and because of that a great many calamities have come to pass, among them your father’s decline, and the loss of your wife. Only by killing the king so that I may regain the throne, will everyone get back their proper due and thus will the world be set right again.”

Will couldn’t remember telling Silver of his father’s misfortune, but he must have, because she spoke of it knowingly, with such deep understanding.

Her voice flowed like honey over warm bread: easy, sweet, and persuasive, penetrating and drenching every pore.

Hewlands Farm—the bulky square stone building where the Hathaway family housed—came into view in the moonlight. The scent of roses and stabled beasts mingled with Silver’s perfume. No light shone from the windows.

Will stared at the house, puzzled. If a woman was in labor within, wouldn’t there be more activity? But maybe it was all past, and the new mother contented with her child, and Nan, too, asleep somewhere within.

He remembered Nan dancing in the forest and told himself it had to be a dream.

And then that other piece of the dream, soft-spoken Lady Silver, still beside him, asked, in a seductive whisper, “So, will you be man enough to kill the elven king and regain your wife and daughter? Or are you only a boy, playing at being married?”

Her question stung like a blow. He turned around to look at Silver’s perfect features, her smiling lips, her reflective, shiny, silver-colored eyes. “I’ll do what it takes,” he said, “to get my Nan back.” His voice echoed, seemingly much louder than hers and stronger.

From the farmyard, a dog barked.

“Whatever it takes,” Will said.

That this lady made his blood boil and set desire throbbing through his veins as he’d never felt it, made his claim of Nan all the louder, more defensive. They’d been married six months and she was his own true love. He would not compare her to mad, fevered visions that couldn’t be real.

Silver smiled. “Good boy. Only, I know you don’t half believe it.” She shrugged prettily, raising her shoulders and letting them fall again in a graceful movement. “No matter, you will. Go, go and make sure her kin hasn’t sequestered your dancing wife, and when you’ve not found her elsewhere, I’ll come to you again.”

The lady smiled again and, suddenly, took Will’s head in her two hands and brought her mouth down on his.

In the next moment, it stopped mattering whether she was true or a dream, as her hot mouth radiated heat to his body, her probing tongue acquainted itself with the depth and breadth of his mouth, her searching, hungry lips seemed to wish to suck his very soul away.

Will’s heart throbbed, in joyful, painful dance. A din of unholy music filled his head, reverberated from the walls of his cranium, set his bones afire. Convulsively, he embraced the lady, feeling her body taut against his, her body perfect and pliant in his arms, her breasts soft and warm against his chest.

As suddenly as it had begun, the kiss ended. The lady he’d held in his arms vanished.

Alone, on a patch of moonlight outside dark Hewlands Farm, Will wiped his mouth which, inexplicably, tasted sweet and spicy like the best wine.

Heat coursed through Will’s veins and made him want to sing and dance for joy. He forgot he was tired and hungry. He felt as he had on wakening when he’d been quite small and the whole day stretched in front of him full of unending possibilities.

He sauntered down the path to the farm. He must have dreamed while he walked, and whatever restless sleep his brain had snatched while his body strode through the forest path had left him wonderfully renewed. Sleepwalking, he must have been, and no wonder, as hard as he’d been working.

Now, he would knock on the door and they would admit him to the chamber where Nan bid the night, and the fantastic nightmare would be over.

His blood surged in him and protested the idea of the dark lady’s being gone forever, but he shook his head at it. A dream. Or if not a dream, a succubus that tormented sleeping men in their loneliness.

He remembered Nan in silk and pearls dancing with the royalty. That’s what came from listening to his mother’s nonsense. Now, he’d dream of it, and his mother’s fantasies would pursue him until he knew not truth from folly.

He walked across the still-warm threshing yard and to the house proper, and knocked at the door.

It took a while to rouse anyone. As it would be if there had been a birth in the house. Everyone would be asleep and exhausted, of course.

But when Bartholomew opened the door, Will saw Bartholomew’s wife right behind him, standing and swollen as big with child as ever.

Bartholomew, a tall, fair man with eyes so pale they always reminded Will of much-boiled blackberries, frowned down at Will, his bristly eyebrows meeting in disapproval above his eyes. “Hello there, Brother Will,” he said, with forced heartiness. The long white shirt he wore looked creased and grey smeared. “How come you disturb our peace in the night? Is Nan well?”

Nan. Bartholomew asked if she was well. Wasn’t she here
?

“Nan? Have you not. . . ? Is Nan not here?” Will looked from Bartholomew to the other members of his household, arrayed behind him: young men and women, and small children. “Nan wasn’t home. House dark. I thought . . . Gentlemen in velvet, my mother said. But I thought perforce Nan would be here. Is she not?”

“Wine,” one of Nan’s other brothers said, from behind Bartholomew. “I much fear you’ve been drinking, Brother Will.”

The Hathaways were good religious people and disapproved of alcohol, except for the smallest of small ale.

Will shook his head. “No.” He tried to discipline his tongue to a coherent telling of his woes. Of a sudden, all the tiredness of the day returned, its weight falling on his shoulders like an accustomed cloak. “No. When I returned home from work, Nan was gone and I couldn’t find her.” He told the whole tale, even mentioning the block of wood in the cradle, but leaving his visions and dreams out of it.