Ink and Steel

He didn’t, of course: quick as Spencer was, Ben was half again his size, half again his reach, and almost as fast, with a soldier’s nerve. The blades rang silver on silver, with a purity of tone the debased coins burning Will’s chest couldn’t hope to match. Spencer lunged and shouted above, at the window, a cry of ‘murder!’ went up Ben parried, riposted, the passage too fast for Will’s eye, trained only to stage combat, to follow. The big man moved in, Spencer’s main gauche tearing his sleeve but not the arm beneath, and a moment later blood stained eight inches of steel at the tip of Ben’s blade. Shouting and running footsteps rang down the street. Will never saw how it happened. Ben wiped the blade on his kerchief before he sheathed it, while the witnesses and then the watch crowded close around them. You tell Tom he’d better stand my bail, Ben muttered, and Will nodded as Ben was led away.

   Act II, scene xix

It lies not in our power to love, or hate,

For will in us is over-rul’d by fate.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Hero and Leander

In absolute blackness, Kit paced in the cramped circle afforded him. His right hand trailed on the damp stones of the wall. He had no fear of tripping; his feet knew the path, and the dank earth was where he slept when he grew too tired to walk. Wasting energy, he thought, but he could not sit still. The sink wherein the filth of all the castle falls, he mumbled, but it wasn’t, quite. More an old, almost-dry well, lidded in iron as much to keep light out as the prisoner in, for the sides were twenty foot and steeply angled. He had paced forever. He would be pacing forevermore. A strange sort of irritation, first an itching and then a raw, hot pain, grew in patches on his torso and his thighs. To pass the time he told himself stories. Bits of verse, Nashe’s plays, half memorized, Kyd’s Tragedy, Will’s Titus. The Greeks and the Romans and his newest acquisition, the Celts. And none of them could drive the mocking voice of Richard Baines out of his mind.

“Good puss. Wait there, I’ll be back for thee when I can.”

“Damn you, Baines, don’t leave me alone down here.”

“Oh, thou wilt not be alone. There’s rats and frogs. And they tell me Edward’s ghost still screams. He’ll be company for thee; thou hast so much in common. Dost remember the irons, puss? Thou canst look forward to their acquaintance again.”

Kit closed both eyes. It made no difference: he walked, and turned, and walked, and turned. Christ, Richard. For the love of God, what made you such a monster?

“Froggy frogs,” someone answered. Kit startled, felt about him. He kicked something that rolled and rattled in darkness, a heavy iron jangle, but nothing that felt like flesh.

“Master Troll?”

“Froggy frogs. Froggy frogs. Froggy frogs…” faint as an echo up a drain pipe.

Kit felt after whatever had rolled. Maybe a tool, something that could be used to dig, or pry, or climb. He found it after some scrabbling and sat down against the wall to explore it with his fingers. Round, a sort of ball of iron straps… . It smelled of rust, the cold savor of iron. He felt inside it, and yelped when something pricked his thumb.

Oh. Of course he would have left this here for me to think on.

Carefully, almost reverently, Kit laid the scold’s bridle aside and scrubbed his hands on his breeches as if he had inadvertently grabbed two fistfuls of meat writhing with worms. His breast burned, his belly, his thighs. In five discrete patches, now, one for each brand, an agony as fresh as the day they had been seared into his skin. How did I get here?He didn’t know.

“Hurm. And harm.”

“Master Troll? Is there a way out of this pit? This oubliette?” A forgetter, some helpful portion of his mind supplied. Where you put someone to forget them. But Baines said he’d be back. ‘Listen carefully, Kit. Can you hear Edward screaming?’

There must be a way out of this.

“Ah, Sir Christofer.” A voice like brushed silk. “There is always a way. Come with me, my love. I am the way.”

There was light, suddenly. Light cast from over his shoulder, and as he found himself standing he turned to it, turned into it. The scent of pipe tobacco surrounded him, a comforting memory of Sir Walter Raleigh’s chill parlor and many late nights. He walked through it, heard voices hanging on a glittering arpeggio, felt air stirred by a suggestion of wings.

God.

He walked past, and through. Found himself elsewhere, in a tower room, high in the air: an autumn or early winter evening and the unmistakable reek of the Thames, the cry of ravens in the graying light. Harsh wood scraped Kit’s knuckles; something writhed ineffectually against his grip. He looked down, at the skinny, stripped man of middle years he pinned against the rough table, in an all-too-familiar pose.

God. God, hear me now.