Ink and Steel

Kit stifled a laugh at himself. “That was simply naive patriotism, I’m afraid.” And there was only one side that wanted me untrue,he realized as he said it. Or I wouldn’t have been able to enter Rheims at all.

“Well, then, to be wanted so desperately now tells thee something.” Murchaud drifted away, plucking dusky blue berries from the evergreens hedging the walk and flicking them away with his thumbnail. Kit caught their resinous scent and thought it erotic.”

“And what am I taught, my love?”

“Thou art important to someone. Come, I wish to show something to thee.”

Kit considered that as he followed the suddenly animated Prince across a wide green lawn toward a copse of thorn trees hung with berries red as blood. Curiosity galled him, but he wouldn’t give Murchaud the satisfaction of seeing it manifest.“

“You’ll know soon enough. The Mebd said once that when Queen Elizabeth passes there will be a rade. A procession.”

Murchaud’s strides were long. Kit hastened to keep up, soft greensward dimpling under his boots. “Aye, we’ll go to honor your Gloriana.”

“And your wife,” the faintest emphasis, “said also that there would be a war. A war of song.”

“A war of spells. Not that they are much different, in Faerie or on Earth.”

Murchaud led Kit under the bowering thorn trees, lifting the branches aside. Red blood welled from the Prince’s thumb; he licked it and laughed.

Beyond the trees rose a simple pavilion of classical design, a miniature Parthenon of milk-white stone.

“How can she know what will happen when Elizabeth is dead? How can any of us know?” To contemplate her death alone was a marvel: Iron Bess had reigned and ruled longer than Kit had been alive.

“We can’t,” Murchaud answered, turning impatiently to Kit, who must have mounted the steps more slowly than the Elf-knight liked. “I can only guess.”

“And it may not be hard on the heels of her death. I rather expect there will be a few years subtlety and manipulation, first. Edging the pieces about the board. The midgame starts when Elizabeth dies.”

“Why?”

“Because faith in Elizabeth herself is half the faith that holds England and the Protestants together,” Murchaud said. “And that faith alone is enough to send enemy ships storm lost at sea, and bring forth men like Burghley and Walsingham and Shakespeare and Marley to serve.”

“What’s that?” Kit gestured to the long marble box, chest-high and seemingly hollow within, that dominated the center of the pavilion. The only other furniture was a pair of marble benches along the walls.

“England,” Murchaud answered. “Come forward, Sir Christofer, and meet my family.”

Curious, Kit walked up beside him, through the softly breezy shadows, until he stood beside Murchaud over the tall plinth, as long as a coffin. An apt comparison, because … A plinth, he realized. Or a bier.

Its high marble sides enclosed the form of a man on a platform some twelve inches below: what Kit would have taken for a waxwork had not the impossible profusion of copper-blond hair stirred in the passage of the sleeper’s even breaths. Someone had combed those locks to softness, shining like hanks of silk in the filtered light, and Kit judged it would reach beyond the sleeper’s knees if he stood, on a man as tall and as broad as Murchaud. A golden circlet crossed his splendid brow, and a scattering of freckles dusted the skin over the aristocratic bones of his face: last stars fading at dawn. By contrast with his hair, his beard was neatly barbered and as red as Kit’s, but streaked with steel under the corners of the mouth. Powerful elegant fingers enfolding the hilt of the bronze Roman sword laid down the center line of his chest gave Kit the first soft inkling of who this was.

“How long hashe lain here?”

“A thousand years.” Breathless, and the weight of all those years was in the Prince’s voice. Fingers very like the fingers of the sleeper twined Kit’s own, and Murchaud drew Kit’s hand out to brush Arthur’s warm and pliant cheek.

“I always rather liked the tale,” Kit said, just to break the hush, “that he had become a raven. And that is why ravens are sacrosanct, and why should they all ever leave the Tower, it is assured that England will fall. Pity it isn’t true.”

Murchaud smiled. “But it is true. As true as the story that he sleeps here in Faerie.”

“How can that be?” Kit, softly, wondering.

“All tales are true,” Murchaud answered, squeezing Kit’s hand before he let it fall. “Some are simply more true than others. Look here, unto thy lover, Sir Poet: here stands a man born nigh unto Roman times, son of a story not invented until seven hundred years later.”

Kit couldn’t bear to break the silence. He stepped away from the bier, his eyes stinging, and turned away for a moment to watch the sunlight move through the branches of the thorn trees. A thousand years. When he re-collected himself, he asked, “What do all these factions want of me, Highness?”