Ink and Steel

“Then don’t listen to it.” A jingle of bells, the tangling and untangling of improbable limbs. Puck shifted on the bones of Will’s shoulder and made himself as steady a place as any horseman well accustomed to the saddle. “Tis not Murchaud going to the teind tonight, Will Shakespeare. And a sacrifice gone willing to Hell buys not seven, but seven times seven years.”

On the stage, Chiron was dying, beasts and mortals gathered close about. Will stopped and watched as the noble centaur went to his knees, a majestic fall. “How do you know?”

“It is kept close secret Will,” the Puck said softly, “I’m the Queen’s Fool. I know everything . I am just not often privileged to speak on it.”

“Then who will it be?”

Crowds have a way of moving, of breathing, of falling silent at once as if they were some giant dreaming animal. Will looked up as the animal sighed and stretched and turned in its sleep, as it rolled and broke open along his lineof sight. A tingle ran up his skin; he felt the nail that Kit had given him grow hot in his sleeve. Sorcery? But the thought was lost as a drape blew back from the curtained shadows of a window embrasure like the one he had just left, one toward the back of the hall and away from the crowd gathered before the stage. Will, slowly walking, froze so abruptly that Robin clutched at his head in a most undignified manner.

“Oh, Hell,” Will said, reaching out a hand blindly for balance. For Will recognized the figures intertwined within its moon-touched shelter, caught a kiss that seemed sheerest delight, the smaller all in black except his ragged cloak, his fair hair gleaming; the taller in a gown of palest green, her black hair tumbling over her lover’s hands like a living thing.

“Kit,” Will said, crossing his hands over his belly as if to press his vitals back inside. “Ah. No.” On his shoulder, Puck slid down, flexible as a squirrel, and threw both arms around Will’s neck. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Will mouthed. He was staring; the curtain fell back, mercifully, and he managed to turn and look away. The chorus took the stage for the epilogue. He raised his eyes. “You have no cause for sorrow, Master Goodfellow.”

“Sorry I could not tell you sooner,” Puck said, as Will closed his ears on the savage poetry of the thing that he and Kit had created together. The words left a taste like vinegar in his mouth; if the floor were berushed over the soft-sheened marble, he would have spit the grit and savor of bitterness out.

“It was hardly your place to tell a man his loves betrayed him.” Even as he said the words, Will tasted their hypocrisy. Puck slid down his shoulder. He wobbled, half realized he was sitting on a bench when Puck thrust wine into his hands. Will drank it greedily and put the goblet under the bench; his fingers itched to hurl it, hard, against the wall. “Oh, Robin. I’ve nothing to complain.”

“You feel betrayed? Then why not sing it?”

“Because,” Will said around the taste of ashes that the wine could not rinse from his tongue, “tis neither Kit nor Morgan who broke a bed-vow to a wedded wife, is it?”

“You know he went back to her bed almost as soon as she took you into it.”

Dear God in Hell.But Will kept enough control of his tongue not to say it. Then what did either one of them have to do with me for? Unless twas pity. Yes, pity. For poor, inept, sickly Will. How could a balding poet hope to content things out of legend.

But Robin was still talking. “…and that’s not what I’m sorry for.” Hopelessness, and the void in his belly sharp-edged as a fresh-dug hole. His eyes burned. His knees would not support him when he tried to rise. Somewhere, Will thought he heard a bell pealing; Chiron resurrected bowed for the end of the play. And the cold voice Will recognized as his own aggrieved conscience: Say you deserved it not. Say Annie’s courage in the face of your misbehavior was nothing. Then what?

Robin sucked his wide lips into his mouth so that every rosy trace of colorvanished from them. “Will,” he said. Murchaud isn’t the teind. Sir Christofer is.”

Will blinked, demanding that his ears report some other phrase. “Kit,” he repeated, stupidly. Robin laid a twiggy hand on William’s arm.

“I don’t think he can bear it.” Somehow, Will found his feet. “I know he can’t. Robin.” Enormous brown eyes turned upward, seeking Will’s expression. Will schooled it to impassivity.

“Master Shakespeare?”

All a player’s urgency and power of command imbued his tone when he found his words again. “Robin, what must I do?”

Faustus:

How comes it, then that thou art out of hell?

Mephostophilis:

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it:

Think’st thou that I that saw the face of God,

And tasted the eternal Joys of heaven