Ink and Steel

Kit nodded. Will wouldn’t look away, for all Kit must have been barely a shadow in the starlight. Kit could see Will perfectly well, out of his righ teye at least. Could see in the dark like a demon. “What happened, then?”

Will smiled, and clapped Kit on the shoulder too quickly for Kit to flinch away, stinging his flesh beneath the thin lawn of his shirt. “My faith was rewarded, he said softly. My savior came. Come to bed, Kit; you don’t have to armor yourself in nightshirts and dressing gowns like a maiden.” Will turned away, moving through the darkness to their bed, peeling the covers back, leaving a trail of clothes like breadcrumbs behind him on the floor. “Don’t give up hope. I know for a fact that someday your savior will come as well.”

“How do you know it?” Kit ran a comb through his hair in the darkness, scattering crushed beech leaves on the floor. He peeled the nightshirt off again and slid into bed beside Will, tugging the cloak up close to his chin and inhaling the complex scent saturating the petal-soft velvet collar.

“Because,” Will said quietly, stretching against the far edge of the bed.

“That’s how all the best stories end.”

Not Romeo and Juliet,Kit thought. But he couldn’t bring himself to break the warm darkness to say so.

   Intra-act: Chorus

With this ring I thee wed:

with my body I thee worship:

and with all my worldly goods, I thee endow.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Ghost. Amen.

The Book of Common Prayer, 1559

Annie Shakespeare touched the breast of her bodice with two fingers, paper rustling between her chemise and her skin. Her second-floor sitting room was quiet and gleaming with sunset; her needle paused before her frame, glinting in the cold winter light. It had hovered so for minutes as she leaned forward in her chair and looked out the window, and now she sat back with a sigh, and pressed her bosom again. He won’t be here. He won’t.A clatter of hoof beats on the road. Only one horse, and no creak of wheels. A messenger, then, and not my Will.She tucked the needle through the cloth and stood, stretching before the window with her hands against the small of her back, to see who came to her house too late to be sent along to the tavern for supper. She couldn’t see his face for the broad wings of his cap, but he sat his horse as awkwardly as a sack of barley, and the animal shook his head in complaint.

He reined up before the gates of the New Place and tilted his head back, looking up at the facade and the five gables. Annie pressed her hand against the glass: if Will had described the ramshackle century-old dwelling he’d bought for her, that she’d bought under his signature, to be truthful the messenger was unlikely to recognize it, whitewashed and gracious now as a bride in her mother’s remade wedding dress.

The rider pushed his hat back on his forehead, looking up from the shadow of the roadway into the light that still gleamed on the wall, and Annie’s hand on the window rose to her mouth. She turned, tripped on her hem, knocked the embroidery frame sideways with her hip and dove down the stairs pell-mell, calling for Susanna and for Judith and for Cook.

Will went to put the girls to bed with a story, a little child’s treat, and perhaps not fitting for young women nearly old enough to go into service or off to wed and Annie turned the mattress and the featherbed and tucked the covers straight. Will found her, she guessed, as much by the spill of candlelight into the hall as by knowing where the bedroom lay.

“The house has changed, wife,” he said. He shut the door behind and, trembling softly with his palsy, set his own candlestand on the shelf beside it. “Tis much improved. As it was uninhabitable when we bought it, I should hope.”

“Tis empty, though without a man.” Annie bit her lip, and tugged the coverlet down. And bit it harder when Will came up behind her and stroked both hands down her hips, laced his fingers across her belly and tugged her into his embrace. “Will, don’t tease.”

His mouth on her neck, tracing the line of her hair, the dints along her spine. “I should not attempt such cruelty.” He strung something about her throat, the soft, lingering touch of his fingers, a stroke as of satin. “I have confessions, Annie. And promises to make.”

“Confessions?”

“Aye.” He was knotting a silken ribbon, a braid of red and black and green. Something that weighed like an acorn hung upon it; she slipped her hand beneath. A silken pouch no bigger than her thumb. “Annie, I have loved thee.”

She held her breath. “And now do not?”

He turned her in his arms and looked into her eyes. Curious, she reached up to touch the golden earring that adorned him. He smiled at the touch. “And love thee more than ever I could have told thee. I, Will, love thee to wordlessness.”