Ink and Steel

Will came back to him, carrying a cup. Kit slung the cloak across the coverlet, as if he meant to sleep beneath it. Accepted the wine. “I have a gift for thee as well,” he said. “I meant to give it upon thy leaving.”

“Kit, what could you…”

“Hush,” he said, and turned to root in the box on the bedside stand. The ring was gold, cool and heavy in his hand, the flat face marked with Will’s initials, which were both surmounted and linked by true-love’s knots a pair of them. “You’ll need a signet, if you’re to be a gentleman.”

Will took it from his hand and stared down at it, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

“We should sleep early. As early as we can.”

Tomorrow Will dragged a stool over, crouched on it, and began to work on his boots. “I have to go home to Annie, Kit.”

“Aye.” Kit tossed back the wine, set his cup aside, and methodically began stripping his buttons from their holes. “I’ve decided not to get drunk after all.”

“Wilt stay by me tonight? Wilt flinch when I touch you?

Kit couldn’t look at Will, but he could imagine the expression on his face.

“And what will I do for peace now, now that this is lost to me too?”

It seemed an ungrateful question, given what he had traded that chance of peace for. Power. The ability to protect Will. And his children. The strength to do something about Richard Baines.

He tossed his doublet aside and stripped his shirt off over his head. And heard Will’s sucked-in breath and remembered his own dramatic gesture with the candles and the brilliance of the lighting a moment too late. Kit, you’ve a bruise… . Kit reached up and over, felt down the sprung plane of his shoulder blade. His left arm with its old injury wouldn’t flex so far; he reached with the right. Blood-gorged flesh heated his fingertips. He could feel, almost, the outline of each perfect tooth, the roughness of a seeking tongue. Right where someone might bite a lover taken from behind Right where a wing would take root, if he had wings. His burn scars pained him suddenly, a low, sweet ache like the ache inside him. A longing that almost made him reach for the wine bottle again.

“It’s a witch’s mark,” Kit said without turning, and pulled on his nightshirt with a grimace. “Lucifer’s unclean brand. Come, Will. Get ready for bed.”

“Kit.”

“Will, no.”

“Kit. What was it that thou didst in Hell?” Kit read the play of emotions across Will’s face: fear, grief, concern.

I don’t want him to know. I want anything but for him to know. And if I pretend I do not understand what he’s asking, I’ve lost not only a lover, but the trust of a friend.

Kit swallowed. He doused the candles with a snap of his fingers, feeling the power move to his whim as if he tugged a dozen tiny threads. The room fell into near darkness; starlit from the window, a glow like the blue light of Hell except where it cast shadows. He reached up over his head and knotted his fingers in his hair, pulling; the pain felt good. Clean. Will’s words, again: for them both, it always came back to the blasted words. And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil by telling truth: tell truth and shame the devil

He smiled at Will, a smile no more thick than gilt on a page, and said, “I whored myself out to the Devil.” And was surprised when it felt good to say it, another good pain like ripping a scab back from the wound. “I let, God. Don’t touch me. Please. I can’t.”

Will drew back the hand he had been about to lay on Kit’s shoulder. “For me,” he said softly, and jerked back in surprise when Kit shook his head.

“Nothing so noble,” Kit answered. “I had thee back already by then.” He turned and looked Will in the eyes. “I love him still, for all I can’t so much as lay my damned hand on his arm. Aye. Damned indeed.”

“Then what?”

Kit shrugged. “Baines. Poley.”

“You could just out wait them. Outlive them.”

Placating. A pleading voice, and he hated to see Will beg.

“Elizabeth is over, Will. Walsingham and Burghley are gone. Whatever happens next is ours. Ours, or De Vere’s and Essex’s. Would you see that come to pass?” Kit smiled.

Will drew back from something: the fervor in his eyes, the glitter of his teeth.

“And now I can melt their Godsrotted eyes in their heads, if I’m lucky. Besides, it’s too late now to give the gift back. I took the shilling, so to speak. Up the arse. Christ, Will.”

“No,” Will said, quietly. His blue eyes were black in the darkened room. “Do you know what Lucifer told me?”

Kit shook his head; whatever he felt was too complex to speak through. “Nor do I want to know.”

“He told me who killed Hamnet. And showed me how to use my poetry to get vengeance on them.”

“Oh.”

“As long as I gave him mine allegiance.”

“Will, I…”

“I didn’t write a word,” Will said. “Fifty years and more I spent in his damned birdcage. Alone. Without books, without conversation. I didn’t write a word for all that time. And then something changed.”