Ink and Steel

“Tell me whence comes this sudden affection of thine for poets.” He brushed her bare leg with the side of his foot. A tremendous hollowness still haunted him, something as consuming as a flame, but for now he could set it aside along with the images it taunted him with and draw the silence of his heart over himself as Morgan drew the sheet.

“Not sudden,” he admitted. “I knew it years ago.”

“Oh?” A quiet sound of interest, after a long and companionable wait. Damme, what an intelligencer she would have made.He sighed, and managed not to sound sullen. “Damn you, Corinna. Is’t not enough to have us both? Must also step between?”

She turned against his neck, tasting his skin with her smile.

“There are reasons I stopped going to London.”

“When knew you, then?”

Kit laughed. “He tripped climbing a stair and I almost swallowed my tongue in panic.”

Her fingers coiled his hair and pressed unerringly against the sore places in his neck. “Speaking of falling. You should have come to me after you did.”

His and Will’s ignominious tumble through the Darkling Glass, of course.

“How did you know I fell?”

“The bruises on your arse.”

Their laughter drew the tension out of his shoulders almost as effectively as her fingers; he rolled on his stomach and let her lean over him, working the pain from his back. “The teind is soon,” she said, stressing every other word as she leaned into him, an oddly artificial pattern of iambs. “The sacrifice will have to be chosen.”

“Ow.”

“When you tense, it hurts.” Warmed oil drizzled onto his back; he didn’t ask where it came from, as her hands never left his body.

“How is that done?”

“This?”

“The sacrifice chosen.” He groaned as she ran strong thumbs from the top of his spine to the base, and did not stop there. “Gently, my Queen.”

“Poor Kit. Black and blue from here to here.” Her fingers measured a span bigger than his palm. “Thou’rt lucky didst not break thy tail”.

“Art certain tis unbroken?” And realized he’d thee’d her, and thought, and would it not be an irony to you her so engaged?

“Evidence would suggest.” He gasped, burying his face against her herb-scented pillow, and she laughed.

“Wilt urge me proceed gently here as well, Sir Poet? Will you write me poems on this?” Her hair swept his shoulders; he shivered, jolted from his fantasy of whose touch he labored under.

“When will we know who is chosen?”

“When they bring the horse before the one who will ride him to Hell. There. Is that nice, my darling?” A kiss between his shoulder blades; another brushing the downy, well-oiled hollow at the small of his back. “Are you thinking of your poet now?”

He couldn’t bring himself to answer.

   Act III, scene ix

By my troth and maidenhead I would not be a queen.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, King Henry VIII

The Queen’s withdrawing room, revealed through an opening door, wasn’t as grand as Will had expected; rather a quiet sunlit place appointed with rich paintings and more of the extravagant carpets, these in harvest-gold and winter-white, with touches of emerald and sapphire in the plumed weave. A small table stood in the center of it, a cushioned chair at either end, a service of silver-gilt and golden plates laid on linen as white as Morgan’s sheets.

He smiled at the memory and executed a sweeping bow, resisting the urge to reach into his pocket and fumble the scrap of iron nail Kit had pressed upon him before the appointment. The Mebd stood before the window, her hair gleaming under her veil; she turned to acknowledge him. “Gentle William. You brighten our court. Pray rise.”

“Your Highness is most gracious.”

They were seated, and attendants Will could not see poured wine and served them both. Nervousness robbed him of his appetite: his knife shivered on the richly decorated plate. The Queen herself ate delicately; he was surprised to see that what she cut so tidily and placed in her mouth was wine and capon, and not flower petals and dew.

“You hunger not, Master Shakespeare?”

“I am curious,” he admitted with whatever charm he could muster. And now I’ve met three Queens,he thought. And swallowed a broader grin as he also thought, and bedded one.

“Curious?”

“Curious what Your Highness would have of me.”

She smiled and laid her knife across the plate. “Perhaps you and Sir Christofer would consent to honor us with a play.

“A collaboration? We’ve done it before, Your Highness. I’m sure Kit would agree.”

“We have faith in your ability to convince him,” she said.

Will picked up his goblet as she contemplated her words. “We were favorably impressed with your Midsummer Night’s Dream. Although it saddened us to see your Queen in the end humiliated and defeated by her unsavory husband. It seems to us that she, Titania, had the right of it, and that is not merely our sympathy for a sister Queen.”