Ink and Steel

“What torment, Master Shakespeare, could I heap upon thee worse than that which thou hast chosen for thyself?”

“Your … Highness?”

Really, Master Shakespeare. How dost thou think thou can serve us, poet, when thou canst not keep even thy troth to thy wife, or thy Ganymede, or thy mistress? All three at once thou hast betrayed.”

Stung, Will reined his mount further from the Devil’s side. She protested when he tried to bring her too far, and afraid of being thrown, he desisted.

“Kit lied.”

“Nay” Lucifer’s sky-blue regard spurned him. “He told thee whatever truth thou wouldst hear. How darest thou press thy lovers, thy wife to meet a standard thou canst not uphold?”

Will raised his right hand to his mouth, feeling the moment of realization like a dagger in the breast. This is what Annie felt,he realized. Felt and forgave. And as I cannot love less neither then can she.

“I have,” he said, the reins tumbling from his fingers. The white mare sidled next to Lucifer’s black stud, rubbing her shoulder against his, brushing Will’s knee against the Devil’s with a tingle Will would have preferred to deny. “I have made mine own Hell. I deserve it.”

“Every creature does.” the Devil answered, and they rode on in silence for one hour or a thousand, until they passed the low-arched gates of Hell.

   Act III, scene xvii

My bloodless body waxeth chill and cold,

And with my blood my life slides through my wound;

My soul begins to take her flight to hell,

And summons all my senses to depart.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Tamburlaine the Great

The red gelding ran hard. Kit bent low over his neck, mane stinging his face, and did battle with the impulse that would have had him clutch the reins like a fool and kick the willing horse faster. The gelding’s hooves rattled on gravel and then thudded on packed earth; the way grew narrow and dark. Kit hunched closer to his horse and reined the gelding back, swearing, as the long angry claws of leafless oak trees reached across to bar the path and scrape his face, yank at his cloak and hair. This should be the beech wood. I should smell the sea.

Somewhere ahead, unwavering, growing more distant despite their deliberation and Kit’s weeping haste, he could hear the even pace of hooves laid against stone like church bells. Trees closed across the path. Kit bulled the sorrel through branches; the horse went snorting, plunging, shivering with eagerness to be free of the trees and run. Kit closed his eye against welling tears of frustration, could do nothing for the ones that soaked his eyepatch. He pulled his cloak around his sore bruised body against a chill; Morgan’s patch, and the troll’s. One from the Mebd and one from Will. Cairbre, Geoffrey, Puck….

The wood was dark as the bottom of a well. Even the sorrel shivered. A good gelding, steady and swift. Kit patted his neck. I wish I had thought to ask your name.

Low and distant, a croak. “Froggy frogs.”

Master Troll? How odd, when I was just now thinking of him. Trust the horse.

The voice came from the left. If it was a voice, and not Kit’s desperation and the wind. He can’t possibly do a worse job of it than I have. Kit swore one more time, for good measure, and let the gelding have his head. He stroked the sorrel’s rough mane and looped the reins around the pommel, then leaned forward to speak into a swiveling ear. “Find him for me. Please.” The red horse snorted, both ears back briefly, then switched his tail and walked boldly forward through the thickest stand of oak. The road lay beyond, broad and shining in the starlight. Kit reached for the reins again, let them fall when the gelding tossed his head.

“If you know what you re doing He caught the mane in both hands. Well, let us make haste.” The horse struck out at an easy canter, clatter of hooves on stone. Over it Kit heard that pealing, tang tang tang, measured as a pavanne. I don’t pavanne.But he kept up now, never gaining, rising in the saddle to see farther ahead. A glimmer of golden light shone on the pavement: acandleflame.

A lantern. A crossroads. Bloody Hell. Where went they?

The sorrel never hesitated. Kit touched the horse with his boots; he sprang past the abandoned light as if it had caught his heels on fire. The way was darker here, tending downward. Relief and horror did battle in Kit, and for a moment he thought he caught the acrid scent of whiskey and char. The trees fell back from the roadside. Alone in the night, Kit heard something huge rustling through leaves. Just the wind. Of course. But there was no breeze on his neck. And now the road descended through nothing at all but blackness to either side.