Ink and Steel

Silk rustled; Kit thought Murchaud shrugged. “What do you suppose they wanted of him?”

“Conquest,” Kit said promptly, and then, a moment after, “Salvation. Love? Do you suppose?

“My father loved him,” Murchaud said softly, and Kit turned to him in surprise. The Elf-knight hadn’t moved: he stood, still, with bowed head over Arthur’s bier. “Your father betrayed him.”

“Aye,” Murchaud answered, glancing up with shining eyes. “That’s what makes it a tragedy, my dear.”

   Act III, scene vii

Had my friend’s Muse grown with this growing age,

A dearer birth then this his love had brought,

To march in ranks of better equipage:

But since he died and Poets better prove,

Theirs for their style I’ll read, his for his love.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet 32

Kit lay on his back against the emerald coverlet, lamplight snarled in his light brown hair, and idly turned the swan-white quill between his fingers while Will watched from the chair by the window. The ornately carved back was winning the war against Will’s spine; Will leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

“These lamps are very fine. They burn paraffin?”

“Spirits of some sort,” Kit said. “Tis a lovely bright light, isn’t it?”

“I might sit up a little,” Will said, feeling dishonest. “If the light will bother you, I can retreat to the library.”

“No need,” Kit said, kicking his legs high to swing himself out of the bed. He dropped the pen onto a shelf as he stood, his fingers returning to stroke the stainless plume briefly before he turned away. “What a little mystery this is, isn’t it?”

“What will you do with it?”

Kit shrugged, his eyebrows arching in cheerful mockery. “Tis too lovely to strip and stain with ink. Keep it as a token of affection, I suppose; I musthave an unconfessed admirer.”

“Perhaps she wants you to write a sonnet to her loveliness. Or,” Will grinned, “on her loveliness, for that matter.”

“Ah, but sonnets are thy idiom, not mine.”

Will leaned back into the shadows, feeling the grin slide down his face. “Where have you read my sonnets, Kit?” He managed to hide a guilty look at his cloak and the brownie-cleaned boots that he had come to Faerie in. They were tucked into the corner beside the clothes press with his sonnets rolled up inside them. Surely Kit would be, if anything, too proud to sneak.

“Romeo and Juliet,” Kit answered. “And nicely done it was. I wouldn’t mind seeing those others you mentioned, though, when you think they re fit for the public eye.”

Somehow, Will managed not to choke. “They may never be so.”

“Really? Not as off-color as Tom’s dildo poem, I trust.” Kit poured water to wash his hands and face and made a little ceremony of it.

“With a better meter, at least.”

Kit turned to him surprised, reaching for linen to dry his hands, and Will laughed. “No; I’ve a touch more decorum than Tom, though I’ve read the poem in question. I rather imagine that one will never see printer’s ink. You don’t mind my rustling papers and cursing by lamplight while you try to sleep?”

“Not at all.” Kit shrugged. “You re not like to have much time for work here. You re a puzzle to them, a toy, and if you claim the library, this palace holds enough creatures who do not sleep to distract you with their demands. Besides, if you’re here, you can wake me if I start to dream.”

“Sensible,” Will said. May I have that lamp by the bedside as well?”

“Yes, and use my table.” Kit brought the squat globe with its odd, tall chimney over to the broad walnut writing table, shoving layers of papers aside. Will picked up the lamp from the square table beside the window and joined him, angling the two so they gave enough light to write by.

“That’s not bad. Better than candles.”

“Aye.”

“Sleep well, Kit.”

Kit pursed his lips as he turned away. “Just don’t wish me dream sweetly, I pray.”

A few hours later, Will rolled the mismatched sheets of sonnetry into a tubeagain and fastened them with a ribbon. He weighed the poems in his hand: a few ounces of ink and paper and emotion and clever word play. Surely nothing to feel such pride and consternation over.

He’d lied to Kit when he said Jonson had a copy; a few he’d shown to friends, but not most of them. Certainly not to anyone who might recognize the subject.

Poley and Baines know Kit is alive now, he realized suddenly. I have to draft a letter to Tom Walsingham.Which he did, hastily, and sanded and sealed it, explaining the situation and that he, Will, would return by Christmas. ‘And may I meet my promise to a conspirator better than I meet my promises to my wife.” Will stood, the poems in one hand, the letter in the other, and hesitated. I don’t know how to send it.