Ink and Steel

Please that this find you well, I have prevailed upon one Robin of my present company to deliver unto you this letter & my fondest remembrances, that all passeth well with you & the fair Anne your wife & that you me recollect fondly as you serve our fair Prince. It is to me as my days creep by that, gone as I am from England, England is almost near enough to touch: a great frustration to an exile. But even as my spirit sometimes flags, I find I am come home, & am given to hope perhaps my necessary & permanent absence will not prove so onerous as fear’d. I have an eye for you, my dear Will, & will be of assistance as I may find opportunity. I beg you trust me safe, if in politics, & well-occupied with many pleasures and problems. A letter may reach me through unusual channels, although perhaps not privily: FW knows the path. I hope you will forward your Adonis, & whatever other works you think may interest me. I would send gold to afford the purchase of books but it would not outlast the sunset as other than dross, & having been taken once for coining I’ll not will that adventure on you. So if you seek to do me this kindness I fear you shall have no recompense but mine unending affection. I am closer than you imagine. This 14th day of January 1593 (as I think it) I remain yrs affectionately & in good hope of our eventual re-acquaintance your most distant friend.

Postscript: Yr Shrew was an outstanding success. I will be observing your future career with some interest.

   Act II, scene i

ALL. God forbid!

Faustus:

God forbade it, indeed; but Faustus hath done it

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Doctor Faustus

Murchaud had reach on Kit, and two good eyes, and Kit was not used to fencing with a surrounding audience hampering his movement. But Kit sidestepped as the pale sunlight of Faerie flashed along the spirals decorating Murchaud’s rapier. Despite the unkempt grass tugging his boots, a little spatter of dignified applause followed the gesture of his main gauche as it knocked his opponent’s foiled blade off line. Foiled, but still razor-sharp along the edge: the blade brushed Kit’s shirtsleeve in passing, parting the linen as easily as the skin of a peach. Kit stepped in to take advantage of the break in Murchaud’s guard, ducked a thrust of the main gauche, and, extended along the line of his blind eye, lunged. Murchaud barely twisted aside, Kit’s rapier stroking the brownleather jerkin over his muscled belly, and his riposte fell short as Kit skittered back, swearing breathlessly, sweat trickling between his shoulders. The onlookers shifted, a murmuring riot of colored costumes against the sweep of green lawn, the gardens of heartsease and forget-me-nots, the high golden walls of the palace.

Kit forced his attention away from the audience as Murchaud advanced, teeth white in the angle between his lips, lips coral pink against the black of his beard. Stop looking at his smile, Kit you ruddy fool. Watch his chest, his eyes hah! as if that will keep you from distraction!A thrust, a flurry of parry, riposte, bind Murchaud’s breath on his face as he pressed with all his greater weight and the strength of his arm. Kit locked his elbow, holding against the press, went for Murchaud’s belly with the main gauche and felt his hand knocked wide. Murchaud bent a knee, bulled and lifted, hilt ringing on hilt, shoving Kit’s rapier high and wide. Kit scrambled aside, sucking his belly against his spine and out of the path of the blade, feeling through the shifts of Murchaud’s weight for where the main gauche would be. Somewhere on his blind side, and Kit’s hand was out of line. He ducked backward, wove, dipped a knee as he parried another lunge and felt the edge part not just shirt but skin, the hotter trickle of blood joining the drip of sweat down his forearms and froze at the needle prick of Murchaud’s eighteen-inch dagger in the curve of his jaw where the pulse ran close. A slow, thick thread of blood curved down his throat, delicately as the pad of a thumb dragged over skin, and he shivered. Murchaud smiled in earnest now, and Kit tilted his head away from the knife and closed his eye as the applause swelled.

“Yield?”

“Yield.” Kit forced clenched fingers to unwind from the grip of his rapier. The blade rasped on Murchaud’s and thumped pommel-first into the grass. He waited for the knife point to ease away from the red-hot dimple it wore. Instead, the blade caressed his throat, came to rest in the hollow of his collarbone, pressed just sharply enough to sting as Murchaud covered Kit’s mouth with a kiss as claiming as any bridegroom’s. The applause for that was more than a polite ripple.