Ink and Steel

“I bethink myself,” Kit said carefully, “that in such case the beloved is as much at fault as the unfaithful lover. I knew a man, a man enough like Edward to share his name.” Kit closed his eye so he wouldn’t see the name Murchaud slips shaped, questioningly. ‘Oxford?’ Kit continued, “I cared for him. I did not much care for how he used his wife. I wrote a play to let him know it, and mayhap change his ways.”

“Success?”

“None to speak of.” Murchaud chuckled. “Is now the wrong moment to tell you that I am also a married man?”

“Married?” Kit shrugged, forcing his expression to blandness. “Most men are. Most women as well. I had thought myself, one day …” He paused at Murchaud’s smile, recognizing amusement and anticipation. “Where is your wife?”

“She sits on Faerie’s throne,” the Elf-knight answered.

“The Mebd. Is your wife.”

“Tis less impressive when you consider my parentage,” Murchaud said dryly, taking Kit by the wrist and drawing him down among the bedclothes. “And things are different here.”

“Yes,” Kit said against the pillow. “I’ve noticed.”

Kit woke uneasy in waning light. The wound in the valley of his throat stung, and beneath the door he heard the footsteps of servants, a rattling scratch. He drew the sheets up to cover his shame and called a welcome once he rubbed enough grit from his eye to be assured Murchaud was no longer in the chamber. A brownie entered bearing a taper twice his own height. He was a wee man clad in tattered brown trousers, braces strapped over his teacup belly.

“Sir Christofer?”

And the whole castle knows to find me in the Prince-Consort’s bed.Kit touched his lips, remembering a kiss; the aching hollowness that lately emptied him when he was away from Morgan gnawed his belly. “Awake. More or less.”

“I’ve brought hot water and your dinner clothes.” The brownie gestured with his taper, and other candles about the room flared to life. Kit wondered how someone so small would tote water, but steam rose from a silver ewer beside the wash-basin, and Kit saw a black doublet and breeches and smallclothes laid out on Murchaud’s clothes chest.

“Thank you,” Kit said. In London, he would have offered a tip. Here, he’d been given to understand, gratuities would be perceived an insult.

“Anything else?”

“Soap and some tooth powder?”

“Seen to,” the brownie replied with what might have been a grimace or a grin. “You’ve the three-quarters of an hour before dinner is laid.”

“Where is Murchaud?”

“With …” The candle flickered, and that was disapproval, even in the half-light, “his royal wife.”

The door shut between them. Kit let the sheets fall aside to release their perfume of sweat and almond oil as he stood. Disapproval of me? Or of Murchaud? Or of the Queen?He ached with the battering, but it was pleasant enough. Unlike what gnawed his belly. Kit, this is obsession.

He cleaned himself at the basin, scrubbed his hair with the rose-scented soap, and wished he had someone to pour the rinse water for him, but managed. The shirt was silk again, and wrought with pearls about the bands: he wouldn’t have been permitted that in London, but here he was a knight. I wonder if Faerie has sumptuary laws. The doublet was new. It wasn’t black after all, he saw when he held it up to the light, but a deep undulled green no mortal dye could match. The slashes were lined with silk of a paler green, and the embroidery and the buttons shone in some oil green peridots. There were clean white hose, a cap and gloves, the silver sword he’d practiced with that afternoon, its same plain, functional hilt adorned by a much finer belt and scabbard. And there were shoes with jeweled buckles, which gave him pause.

“Well, I can’t very well wear the one pair of riding boots every day for eternity. Even my father’s nailing won’t stand up to that,” he said out loud, with a little bitterness behind it. John Marley had not been kindly disposed to Kit’s choice to leave Corpus Christi without taking holy orders. A priest in the family … There had been five other mouths to feed, and a man might hope his eldest son would be in a position to provide for his dotage. A poet living on the largesse of other men was unlikely to manage that. Or respectability either.

You said you had a calling, Father, I did. Which had been half the problem.Kit dressed carefully, combed his damp hair, buttoned his buttons, laced his points. He wished he had a mirror to check the effect, although he didn’t mind that the shoes gave him an extra inch of height. He squared his shoulders, tucked his hair behind his ears, and went downstairs to meet his fate.