Ink and Steel

“Aye,” he answered, at last able to laugh. “Too thin, undereducated, set above my station, and disinclined of writing the sort of masques and humors in fashion in London, for all Faerie loves me. Chapman or Jonson will be happy to tell you more of my failings.”

But there was a sort of magic in that unmoving hand. Its warmth spread through him and unlocked the chains that held him taut, unknotted the fear in his belly. Will let one hand slide down Kit’s leg, thumb caressing the inside of his thigh.

“Undereducated?” Kit leaned forward to claim another kiss. “I had promised to improve your understanding of classics. Shall we start with some Latin, then, before we move on to the Greek?”

“Think you my Latin insufficient?” Will opened his mouth for the kiss. Kit hadn’t touched his wine. His mouth was flavored with traces of pipe tobacco and the fainter bitterness that was just Kit. He stroked Will’s hair as if gentling the wild thing Will suddenly felt himself to be. Kit stretched like a cat while Will unlaced his collar and then stopped, as sunlight caught the shiny unevenness of old scars. Will pushed the edges of lawn apart and reached up to brush Kit’s breast with his fingertips, outlining a shape that had the look of a sigil in some arcane alphabet.

“Christ, Kit.”

“Ancient history,” Kit said, and kissed Will’s fingers. Thou’rt trembling. Art certain … ?”

“Aye,” Will said, and put his fingers through Kit’s hair. “I hate to think of thee…”

“Peace, Will. There’s less that’s pretty, I’m afraid.” Kit shrugged out of his shirt, biting his lip, refusing to meet Will’s eyes while they made a fresh inventory of his scars. And then Will reached for him, and it was all right, after all.

Someone’s foot scattered papers across the jewel-red wool rug, and mismatched scraps of parchment and foolscap crinkled and adhered to skin. Will laughed, and Kit bit his shoulder gently, sliding up to cover him. “Skinny and furry,” he said. “I apologize for the state of the poetry.”

“I needed to make a fair copy anyway.”

“The words could hardly be fairer.” A lingering kiss, fraught with intricacies. Will ran a slow hand up Kit’s spine, enjoying the abandoned expression that followed his touch. Fear filled his throat, but he said, “Thou offer’d to instruct me.”

“Tis not often I’m privileged to instruct thee.”

“Other than blank verse and buggery?”

Kit choked, turning his face aside until he mastered the giggles that warmed Will’s throat. “Buggery,” he recited, lips twitching with the effort to maintain a bored pedant’s tone. “So-called in reference to the purported practices of the Bougres, gnostics of France, who held the world so evil that procreation was a sin.”

“Kit,” Will interrupted, “surely you are the most erudite of sodomites.”

Kit wheezed laughter. “Been said.”

“Art … willing?” he asked when Kit’s shoulders stopped shaking.

“Willing and more than willing”

Will caught his breath. “Work thy will on thy William, then.”

Kit, regarding him seriously, touched the tip of his nose. “Still frightened?”

“Not enough to matter,” Will answered, and let Kit lead him to the bed.

   Act III, scene xii

Mortimer:

Why should you love him whom the world hates so?

Edward:

Because he loves me more than all the world.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Edward II

Much later, they dressed and trussed and sorted the scattered sonnets in silence and the morning light. Kit was concerned to see Will moving with stiffness as he crawled beneath a bench to reach out papers.

“Will … have I hurt you? Possibly we could have exercised more restraint but,” Kit’s lips twitched as he went to help, Carpe noctem, after all.”

Will sat back on his heels, holding a bit of foolscap in a hand that shook enough to flutter the edge of the paper. He laid his left hand over the right, as if to silence the trembling. “Tis just a palsy,” Will said. “Such as my father suffers, and one of his brothers had. It comes with aches and clumsiness, worse when I’m tired.” He smiled, then, and pushed himself to his feet. “And I am very delightfully tired. And thank you for it.”

“You’re young to be trembling, Will. Thirty-four is not such a great age.” The words seemed to swell until they stopped Kit’s throat, and he could neither swallow nor speak past them. His fingers tightened on the sheaf of poems in his hand as the meaning of the words came plainer.

Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,

Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

Will handed papers to Kit, which Kit took to the table they shared. Shared.

Tis a fancy, Marley. He leaves thee soon. To return to London and his wife, and even here, he is not thine alone. Oh, but it was a pleasant fancy. And thou wilt outlive him, too. But not in name, an he’s writing poetry like that.

“Will you lie to me?”